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"MMOs Need More B*******"
vaultbrain
Member Posts: 122
I was perusing some articles regarding the status of MMOs today when I came across this little gem. All I can say is, truer words were never spoken.
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MMOs Need More Bastards
Let's be honest. Most of today's successful MMOs are basically the same. I'm sorry to be the one to tell you, but that probably includes the one you've been playing for years as well. Now, before you send your max-level goblin berserker to hunt me down and change my mind with a mace-to-brain high-five, let me be a bit more clear. I'm not talking about the revolutionary epic armor sets or the groundbreaking numpad combat systems that people use to distinguish these games from one another. I'm talking about the pervading rule set that governs them, the core philosophy that defines them. MMOs today don't give players the free will they once did. They just don't.... {mod edit - do not copy full articles from other sites. Thanks}
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/features/9160-MMOs-Need-More-Bastards.3
Comments
Well, I agree to an extent...I am an old UO player from the beginning, and played EQ well past them screwing the game up with instances.
If they opened a classic UO server, and slowly came out with content, but kept with the classic theme, and kept everything open, I would resub now...I hated the new skill system, and I actually have resubbed to UO 3 times, once with an emu, but it was too dead. I even prefer the 2d client. When they introduced the new lands that were pve, it killed the game and I left when EQ came out (also the game had horrible rubberband lag that pretty much pushed me over the edge, dont think the servers could handle all the new land/area at first).
EQ - Yeah it sucked when someone came and ks'd your camp, or another guild beat you to a spawn, or blocked people from something.....But it was also exciting, to go along with the headache. It made things seem more urgent, aware, tense, and fun....Even though you moaned and groaned.....Open world dungeons were the same....yeah trains would wipe you or catching mobs from someones train could wipe you....But you had to be more aware of your enviorment, watch what others were doing, to identify bad groups, so you could be on the look out....Surviving a massive train with a good cleric/chanter/tank team was also super rewarding/fun. I really miss open world dungeons like in EQ.
I find instanced dungeons pretty boring, no sense of urgency for the most part, its like numbing half your brain...Also it's called massive multiplayer for a reason....Not massive multiplayer....Well unless you want to explore that place with nice items and loot....No one else would have that thought of entering that dungeon. I also prefer open world pvp, even if zoned like in daoc, over scenarios and the such.
It would be great if someone would make a big world, and the system could create randomly placed dungeons, and when they were 'completed', the boss of the dungeon killed...It would collapse, and be done....IT would add exploration to the world....I miss a big open world, with fun and interesting things in it....Not just everything copy/pasted, where their is like 2-3 building types and all the land has no different feel to it. Devs have been really lazy lately it seems...Its all about rails.
Funny article, but I disagree with the cause and effect. Let's reverse it. If there were less Bastishes in MMOs, there would be less reason to restrict free will.
I am convinced there is only one way to eliminate these grave evils, namely through the establishment of a socialist economy, accompanied by an educational system which would be oriented toward social goals.
~Albert Einstein
Odd way of looking at it, what is the point of free will if you cannot go against the grain?
The article is spot on, but prepare for people straight away crying "grief" without even reading it.
"Come and have a look at what you could have won."
The same point of me not going out and killing a bunch of random people, then burying their bodies in random locations just because I might get away with it? You don't have to be a seriel killer to go against the grain, in real life or in games.
I am convinced there is only one way to eliminate these grave evils, namely through the establishment of a socialist economy, accompanied by an educational system which would be oriented toward social goals.
~Albert Einstein
Ah I see, you didn't actually read the thing then?
I know it sounds odd defending a player's right to give others a bad time (likely the same reason it eventually lost out to the utopian online game worlds in which we dwell today) but don't get me wrong, as a player I'm neither the senseless griefer nor the masochistic victim. I simply appreciate genuine conflict, something that I know is best bred from an actual, thinking mind, not an NPC or artificially intelligent baddie.
There is a distinct difference between randomly killing and griefing and games offering the opportunity for people to "be baddies".
Regardless there is no such thing as free will if you cannot exercise the extremes. Mass murder (lol at the reference on a fking game forum) is an extreme of but not the underlying factor of free will.
"Come and have a look at what you could have won."
You just filled me with nostalgia for Dark Age of Camelot dungeons and my love for the Tomb of Mithra, Keltoi Caverns, Catacombs, and all those others... Nostalgia is such a depression factory lol.
The thing about griefing and baddies, often you only need one asshat in a crowd and it can potentially ruin the experience of many. Those players experience displeasure whereas the one baddie may experience pleasure. I think the sum all these from all of the involved players is negative.
Causing displeasure is a lot easier than bringing pleasure. And oftentimes the displeasure of one is disproportional to the pleasure the other one gets. For example when you gank someone just to escape boredom, you create a lot more displeasure to your victim than what you got as pleasure.
Like I've stated in many threads before, if people have choice, they will not play your game. Today they can simply avoid griefing by jumping games. There's plenty to choose from.
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been -Wayne Gretzky
Oh I read it, it's just I happen to know that, given the freedom to act like a serial killer in a game, too many players will be idiots that do so. Doesn't matter what the author does or doesn't do, what matters is what your typical MMO player drawn to that sort of game will do. I know plenty about it from having tried various open world pvp games and given them up as pointless wastes of my time.
I am convinced there is only one way to eliminate these grave evils, namely through the establishment of a socialist economy, accompanied by an educational system which would be oriented toward social goals.
~Albert Einstein
Errrr isnt that what we do in MMOs every single day?.. ok sometimes its animals.. and more often than not they are computer controlled and not player controlled.. But 99% of all MMO and a great deal of other computer games are about killing stuff in droves.
They might be a plot to give us a reason to kill all these creatures.. But in UO and indeed EVE and other PVP games, the players come up with the reasons..
You might want their stuff or for them to keep their hands off yours. You might consider them criminals (and there have been sooooooo many times in MMOs where an "ally" was higher on my kill list than any "enemy". But I couldnt touch them to show them the error of their ways because of hard coded rules..
So indeed with more rules we actually got more bastards, hiding behind those rules.
DEVs dont always know best, and they rarely get it right the first time. I liked it more when the players reached a working relationship / consensus on how things should be done. I will ofcourse accept that if the DEVs and players agree on a solution to a problem, that it could be put into the game code.
But all this automatic rolling for loot and binding on pickup, soft death penalties, limitations on who can do what to whom. and instances has increased the number of bastards that can exist in games.
If people were bastards to others in the older games they would be opposed.. And if they couldnt figure out how to be nice to anyone (and make an alliance of bastards) they would have a very hard time.
Of course many of them did manage to find other bastards to ally with.. but still you could oppose them and atleast you knew them for what they were.
Oh and that reminds me... the Buddylist.... bah.. sure I add a few friends to it.. but more often than not I dont need it for that as Im in a guild with them.. and I would surely remember their names if they were truly my buddies..
What sort of failed social touchy feely idea is depriving me with a list for my enemies as well?..
We have the ignore list.. but I would be a fool to ignore my enemies wouldnt I.. I mean they might even say something intelligent that I could benefit from.. I need my ignore list for spammers.
But I need my list of enemies along with a note of how they have transgressed against me. And in todays games.. that list can be long. So a scrap of paper wont do :P
Well I have had to use my fallback solution.. if I cant remember what they did to piss me off.. Then they must have served their time on my shit list.
Funny that you mention an enemy list. Strange to me that open world pvp games never seem to adopt one. It would be preferable to roaming random slaughter. I haven't seen any opposition to bastards in open world games, either. I've seen nothing but don't care attitudes from the vast majority of players. As in, if you aren't a guildmate or a friend, I don't care what happens to you. Even if it's the other side doing it and even if it makes it difficult or impossible for new players to level and get to a point where they can look after themselves.
But most of all, what I learned from my forays into open world pvp games and servers is this: it gets very boring very fast. You know when someone comes after you that either he's much better geared, much higher leveled, or that his buddy is waiting to open from stealth right behind you. Bastards are just no fun to play MMOs with at all, especially MMOs where they can interfere with whatever you feel like doing in game.
I am convinced there is only one way to eliminate these grave evils, namely through the establishment of a socialist economy, accompanied by an educational system which would be oriented toward social goals.
~Albert Einstein
Well EVE made their list so you could set positive and negative standing to people... and you could append little notes to their profile to help you remember the good and the bad. also had another system of notes to remember other things too.. that was nice.
I didnt play UO all that much.. but I know enough to have heard about PK'ers and PKK'ers. And in EVE you had pirates and anti pirates as well as a host of other groupings of people.
And yes, both are brutal places for new players that have barely mastered the basics and have yet to make friends. But when you do make those friends... It will be a great experience.
But ofcourse, it is not to everyones taste. Most MMO gamers today seem to prefer scything through mobs and grinding battlegrounds.
To me, that menu, is an insult. I want politics, tactics, strategies, challenges in hunting and warfare. Something I can discuss in depth with my allies.
I want venison.. not canned beans.
From my experience people just see holding grudges like that to be a waste of their time. Existing game mechanics simply do not allow you to exact proper revenge against the bastards. It becomes the equivalent of having the bastard set fire to your home and all you can really do in retaliation is tickle them with a feather. A sensible player will not waste their gaming time on this.
There are enemey lists in many games.... p2p and f2p. In Rohan you could even teleport to the person who killed you... how's that for karma?
I suppose, I did get a bit sidetracked on that point.
Even if I have only really played one game with such a list. But that is just my personal experience, and I thank you for enlightening me.
I like it, actually. But even so, within a few days, I'd still be asking myself the same thing I've asked in every game that gave the bastards free rein- Is this really what I enjoy doing? Hunting down and killing bastards? The answer turns out to be yes, but only from time to time, not constantly. And there are just too many of the bastards....just too many!
I am convinced there is only one way to eliminate these grave evils, namely through the establishment of a socialist economy, accompanied by an educational system which would be oriented toward social goals.
~Albert Einstein
There are quite a small number of them really. It just only takes a couple for one to think that a gamestyle is totally "stupid". I've had the most fun in L2, SWG, Shadowbane, and an F2P game Rohan. SWG felt the most realistic...you were basically a character (not a hero) in the star wars universe. If you were an imperial, rebels would fight you and vice versa. You could play the game factionless and not ever get fought. It wouldn't make sense for an imperial not to fight a rebel really... In L2 the consequence for becoming a PKer was so HIGH that you only fought players who you were at war with... SB servers could have such fast XP gain and money drop rates that you could go out for 1 hour and come back fully satisfied (you could also be ganked in that hour too, but you would just go somewhere else). Then you had HotZones that would attract the PKers and you'd be safer in the other places.
There are so many ways that these games can allow all playstyles to coexists. Everything I played after WoW (including Rohan... people would gank lowbies all the time, but then your guild would come in to protect you
) does not implement sound PvP mechanics that prevent griefing. You might be killed a couple times, but hey... all PvPers HAVE to struggle through PvE as well. The mechanics aren't new in preventing most rampant griefing. Devs probably make just as much money slapping a PvP on the server name and turning on flagging for all players as they would if they actually tried to make a real PvP server set within their gaming world.
-To clarify... I'm not a PvPer or a PvEer... I'm an MMO player who likes an mmo that's it's own decent virtual reality instead of just another good game. The former is a bit harder to make because it's gotta be decent at both.
I must have picked the wrong MMOs to play, because their numbers were not small. And I don't care for having to call in a guild to protect or avenge me when I'm out wandering by my lonesome. If I'm out alone, it means I want to be alone. I did give several games that allowed bastards free roam a fair shake. I tried several of them, concluded that none have proper disincentives for keeping the bastards contained, leashed, or at very least tolerably few.
Sometime in the far distant future I might try another such game, but meanwhile, I'm staying with MMOs that control their behavior, if not their population. That doesn't mean I won't be pvping, because I will be. That doesn't mean I don't wish there was a AAA sandbox on the horizon because I wish there was. But not if I have to tolerate packs of roving bastards to play it.
I am convinced there is only one way to eliminate these grave evils, namely through the establishment of a socialist economy, accompanied by an educational system which would be oriented toward social goals.
~Albert Einstein
Interesting subject.
However, UO is a terrible place to base an opinion off of.There is a reason that game changed and people make and play different games now.
And it is pretty SIMPLE.
UO was great, at first, then a few bastiges started playing like brigands and robbing and stealing and PVP was the way they lived,and it was fun. The problem was that there were only so many sheep to be sheared. In normal society actual criminals are a very small percentage, maybe 1-2 % of the population.That is mostly due to serious repercussions for breaking the law.
Lord British himself has stated they fully misunderstood and misguessed the amount of people who would prefere to remain law abiding citizens and how many would want to live as outlaws. By like a full 50%. With no real means of punishment, the lawless could basically do what they wanted. And they did, and did they ever.
This lawlessness, or "conflict" seems enthralling at the start but as UO and EVE found out its, just gang warfafre after the civil niceties are irrelevant.
Once the bad guy has less restrictions actually and is stronger than the good guy "secret" got out of the bag it was all over.
Money buys you out of bad behavior? Or theres not even the consequence of maybe losing anything?
Or
Be a goody two shoes that live by a misguided feeling that you are doing things "the right way"
(The real way it works is one of those players above is wearing a bell and covered in wool and is about to get sheared.
Have a sense of humor, no need to get ALL MODDY !
A Simpson's quote shouldn't be worth a warning. You are lucky anyone is bothering to read this rag.
Odd how many times ive seen people say that more than 50% of UOs population were the "bastards". Now, when I played UO, back from 1997-1999, the open PvP years, I saw more blue players than reds. Actually, over the course of those three years, I was PK'd a grand total of about 15 times. 15 times over the course of 3 years. And when I say PK'd, I mean a red attacking me without provocation and just because they want to kill someone. My characters did die alot, but that was because they were mostly embroiled in guild wars as a mercenary. But in terms of being "murdered", only 15 deaths at the hands of PKs.
Now, I dont know what people were doing back then that got them demolished by PKs to the point where they whined to the devs that killed the game, but whatever happened to them was their own fault for being careless. Im guessing they were the show-off types who wanted to strut around in high end gear and rub it in everyone's face that they were better than them and got killed for their arrogance, and rightfully so IMO. But there were steps to take that would prevent PKs from being a problem at all. Its not the game's fault that these people did not learn how to play the game effectively.
The PKs were playing their role. Some did it as raging bastards, others as honorable theives, but anyway you cut it, they were an intricate part of the world, just as much as any crafter or fighter. They were, in fact, a driving force behind the economy and gameplay in general. Once they were removed from the equasion, things hit a massive lull. Gold farmers moved in and took advantage of the risk free PvE, flooding the market with too much gold. Items were no longer lost, meaning players had no reason to replace gear and thus had no use for crafters. Conflict was reduced to risk free guild wars where you couldnt even loot the corpses of your enemies anymore. Eventually, the game became so stagnant that people lost all interest.
This all brings us to UO today.... Its a joke, a bad joke. The perfect example of what happens when developers sell out and give up their vision and their souls all in the pursuit of being like EQ and trying to ride the coattails of the next fad.
It all boils down to the removal of free will, the eradication of the force which has driven the world and humanity since the dawn of recorded history, and that force is conflict. Good vs Evil, Survival against death, people uniting against a common threat. Take these elements from a world, and things become too complacent, too easy, too corruptable. Players get bored and then they start to quit.
Sure, other MMOs out there have PvP, but what is the point to it? To grind for points for gear? What is the unifying force? How many times in WoW have the horde raided Stormwind and killed the king because the players dont see a point to defending him? Or the Alliance raided Ogrimmar and killed Thrall and had no reaction from the Horde players? There is no point for them to act. No consequence.
They call them MMORPGs, but where is the RPG aspect? To RP, a player must have the power of choice, to do good, evil or nothing at all. Take that away, then the game is just that, a game.
Without choice and consequence, there is no world, just a game. At that point, its just a WoW clone.
I guess it's the trend nowadays to make MMOs more casual gamer friendly and therefore reduce or even totally remove old school "kill and loot their armor" type of gameplay but I miss it.
Yeah, sometimes you die and it sucks a lot when you lose all of your good stuff but hey, it made life more exciting back in the day. You had to keep an eye out for those murdering player killers all the time. I mean, if a player went up to you and noticed you were afk, say goodbye to your armor. Heck, if I went up to a lower-level guy and he was afking, I would kill him myself even though I am not a hardcore pk. It was just how it was.
Nowadays you can probably play any MMO without worrying about anything at all. Just go and play solo, complete your quests and level up. That's what I do in WoW.
MMORPG.com blog
You would totally hate my world. No Player Looting (or Player Killing for that matter..I know ZMOG!! NO PVP!! sorry not here..)
The monsters in the world are perfectly capable of killing you without help from players.
Looking for a good time with no B.S? come back to the best MMO ever made (and the most customizable) Neverwinter Nights - The First Edition.
Cheers
Lol I am watching the new E3 Neverwinter MMO trailer right now. Weird coincidence.
MMORPG.com blog
The article isn't stupid but misses that the problem isn't that MMOs have less freedom now, some of the old had very little freedom as well. The problem is that they are all the same, or to be more precicesly gives the same experience to the playrs who plays them.
The old games varied a lot and by playing a few you got different experiences, instead of just leveling 6 weeks, 2 weeks of dungeons and then the old raid hamsterwheel all games today with few exceptions have.
Different skins and names of the attacks and possibly the classes ain't enough, it is still all the same crap.And having 80 instead of 40 levels at launch changes nothing at all even though some companies seems to think it does.
I remember when actually learning a new games took time and at least some basic skill. Games like Rift took about 2 minutes to get into. No surprises, nothing unexpected, just the same old familiar things.
Are MMO players really that boring that most of us just want more old familiar stuff year after year?
Or are the players getting old and wanting the same safe stuff they liked when they were younger, as so many people seems to do with music?
I personally hope at least it is just the uninspired few publishers like EA and Activision that is behind it all.
It was a great game, but not really a MMO. 128 players on each servers is just too small, it is a MORPG, not a MMORPG.
I wish Bioware could get back the FR license and remake this game, it is one of the few oold games good enough for that.
As for Cryptics version, I am at least glad their new owners took them in the ear and forced them to mave back the game a year and actually release something that is close to complete this time.
This article is a huge pile of bull.
First, if you want to play UO, then go play UO. Dont annoy me with demanding that MY MMO should be UO, too. I dont want to play UO, end of story.
Second, the point of games is that they should be fun. Yes, a chance for failure, a challenge, helps fun.
But getting killed by a ganker is no failure. You stand no chance. If you would stand a chance, the ganker wouldnt bother to attack. Thus, there is no failure on your part.
Thus, gankers do not cause fun. Gankers do not cause thrill. Gankers simply kill other peoples motive to play the game. Gankers are assholes that should get banned the faster the better, end of story. Either you remove the bastards from your game, or the nice people will leave. Thats your only two choices.
Third, its just too funny that the article cites AGENT SMITH to support his theory, and doesnt even get what Agent Smith was actually saying. The Matrix is a lie in the first place.
And if I would actually want to see bastards, I can just go into politics. I really dont need any game for that.