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Why hard mmorpg's were better...
Angier2758
Member UncommonPosts: 1,026
When I was in highschool back in 2000 I was playing Everquest fairly hardcore (I slept through classes and my gpa was LOLworthy... but don't worry I do great now). I also played football... why do I mention this?
Well anyone who's played football will tell you 2-a-days and 3-a-days (fairly intense practices) are not only tedious and difficult, but they also build a team... a community. Why? Shared suffering and shared effort brings people together.
If you talk to people (or even remember it yourself if you're like me) some of the best memories of these older games were when things went bad. We all have corpse run stories and how teams of people came to help; friends were made this way. People spent hours carefully crawling through dungeons; and succeeding or failing TOGETHER.
Today's MMORPGs lack the difficulty. I think because there's that lack of shared effort and shared suffering (don't get caught up on that word.. think shared bad stuff) therefore it stops or impedes a strong community from forming.
Without that shared experience people find it harder to relate to eachother. I'm not going to sit here and tell you the community back in the day was perfect, but people did find it easier to relate to eachother. That made the games better in the end.
Your thoughts?
Comments
I'd love for MMORPGs to involve more difficulty.
But let's not pretend the word "difficulty" should be used interchangeably with the word "suffering". I don't play MMORPGs to suffer. If your interface or gameplay isn't chock-full of fun, interesting decisions, I'm gone. So are most gamers. Anything else is just a waste of my time.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
I'm with you. Sadly, I think too many people have deluded themselves into thinking some very strange things.
Back in the day mmos were challenging and your efforts actually meant something. Today it is the complete opposite. It is more about how many boxes can we sell and how much can we simplify our game to sell those boxes.
Grim Dawn, the next great action rpg!
http://www.grimdawn.com/
I feel that Everquest had stricter requirements in a lot of different ways.
Because of how hardcore the game was at the start and how tight the community got, you were forced to behave in a certain way. EQ was very much a social game, being chattty and enjoyable to be around greatly enhanced your ability to progress in the game. I think it's "hard" in that sense, more so than in terms of gameplay itself. EQ required you to be accepted by the community, especially within guilds.
Yes we need this, I am playing the trial for Istaria currently (Horizons) and am having 10x the fun then I had in SWTOR. The in-depth sandboxy character customization of schools and crafting and combine that it actually feels like a "World" as oppose to the game I mentioned above.
I understand your distinction, I am not a fan of unnecessary timesinks.
However, I am a fan of being punished in the game if you mess up, to a certain extent. When grouping with others, it tends to put some responsibility upon the user to play to their ability and no just walse through the game carried by others.
It also improves the community, when you're forced to play well, you are also forced to get to know teammates and engage with them than if it was a simplified experience where anyone would do.
I agree with the OP fully. To those who call older games complexity and requirement to think a useless time sink, i would like to direct your attention to the fact that these are games...entertainments...they are time sinks.
My first game was Anarchy Online, and i played before they made it easy (nerfing death penalty and adding shadowlands xp)
I just loved the depth and complextiy in characters. Very few were built the same way, had the same gear and the same implants...in fact id argue that almost no two characters were the same...which is something i lust for in this age of games where everything is premade, and expected to be the same. Leveling is nearly automatic with no choice, and any variation is a huge disadvantage and shunned.
Anyway, i really miss games that invole a huge amount of learning complexity, variation in characters and the whole lot. I guess i dont miss much the unexplained quests and such, but in hindsight, they required community interaction to complete usually and really were not as necessary as in todays giant linear quest chains.
Its sad that the people have voted with their wallets and voted overwhelmingly for fast easy progression, making your achivement in reaching max level meaningless and making the fact that you learned your character, thought every point through, and built a solid character something of the past. I use to really enjoy having made the right decisions and having that advantage over someone who guessed their way through the game.
The only modern game where i got that old game feeling was in Darkfall, which sadly was taken over by FPS players who hated the long progression blocking their need to be max character for pvp. That game has endured may progression nerfs and systems to make leveling an offline affair now. It wasnt nearly as complex as sa, anarchy was, but it was a game i knew that would take me years to progress in, a real achievement, something that makes me stick around even if there isnt much to do. Sad so many people macroed their way through the game only to complain how they wanted it easier.
I really think that in 10 years if we want a complex and deep game were all going to be heading back to everquest and anarchy...i really dont see the trend here reversing...not enough people want a serious RPG, they just want an MMO-Action game.
I have to agree that difficulty adds to that sense of accomplishment and allows communties to strengthen as players struggle and depend on each other to survive. However, it is very important to note that it can become a nuisance warrantable of quitting. For instance, I was playing Minecraft and had literally spent hours working through a cave until I found a large deposit of obsidian. It took forever to mine around 100 of those chunks and when I was about to leave, some jackass monster knocks me back, I fall inside lava, and burn to death. I got so pissed off that I simply could not be bothered to open Minecraft again.
Was it my fault that I died and lost hours upon hours worth of items and XP? Of course, yet I can't help shake that feeling of absolute uselessness. Some are able to get back up, start over, and gather those items and XP all over again. Yet I am willing to bet that most do not cope well with that sentiment of disastrous loss in a game.
never gonna happen. There's no money in it.
I think another reason communities aren't as strong today as they were back then is the huge mass of abilities you're constantly button-mashing to get the combat over with as quickly as possible.
Having played a tank and a healer in EQ, I could take part in a group or even raid encounter and still chat w/ my group or guild, and carry on in private tells, too. While I appreciate having lots of interesting abilities, I think it detracts from the social aspect of grouping - NOT GAMING - but grouping, because you're caught up in button-mashing and if you're not constantly firing your abilities someone will give you grief for it.
One of my all-time favorite jokes to play on my guildies in EQ was to pull too many mobs in a heavily camped area so the enchanter (crowd-control class) would get frantic trying to mezz/lull/charm all the adds, and then asking him questions which I know he couldn't answer in chat because he was too busy trying to keep us alive. Good times!
No godless person can comprehend those minute distinctions
in doctrine that provide true believers excuse for mayhem.
-Glen Cook
At least, I wish companies would at least have 'hard level' servers. There are many people who will argue against you. they can go to the 'normal' servers.
EQ had 3 different types of PvP servers, a special RP server, and normal servers; Now it has progression servers...
It should be doable.
_____________________________
"Ad eundum quo nemo ante iit"
As I've stated many many times before I didn't find EQ harder than any other game out there, just longer. And EQ also had a horrible community. Remember this is the game that the developers, after the game had allready launched, had to implement a play nice policy because people were such jerks. You don't need to implement a play nice policy if people are allready playing nice.
So no, EQ wasn't a hard game, and no a hard game doesn't make a good community. However you are right about one thing, shared experiences make a good community.
Venge
I honestly don't believe you played EQ for long or at all after your remarks.
The reason EQ has extra policies is because unlike most MMO, it has hundreds of ways to grief others, it has free looting, it doesn't have combat that locks, it has killstealing, it has trains, it had open world raids that were required for keyflagging, it has freedom to do a lot of things that aren't possible in other games that put more restrictions and automation onto you.
THAT is the reason EQ has those policies, not because the community was bad, on the contrary, it's those things that actually strenghtened the community and forced one to respect other players. Not to mention most of those policies are now found in many other games.
Regarding your comments that a hard game doesn't make a good community, again I disagree, when you depend on others and spend a lot of time together, unlike in current MMO where groups can last under an hour and you are able to solo to max level in a few days, you are forced to get along and to abide by certain rules.
In EQ people actually communicated with each other, people engaged with one another (and still do) for a much longer time and there was a bond and trust built after you grouped with someone over extended periods.
As far as "not harder", when you need to manage 70+ players instead of the small groups people call raids nowadays, it makes the game a lot harder. The gameplay wasn't really the hardest part of EQ, for me it was management of all those guild people, and all the troubles that came with that and all the DKP systems that were invented in EQ.
I also must point out that many people who talk negatively about the EQ community are often people who themselves were blacklisted by the community, I'm not saying that's the case for you, but when I ask who those people were, they usually never played longer than a few months and were never part of any guild or community themselves.
You can believe what you wish. But I played for almost three years on Brell Serilis (sp) from just after Kunark to just after Ldon. Yes it did have lots of ways to grief players, and players did grief a lot, which goes to the point about the community. It was bad, ksing was bad, constant trains done on purpose was bad, the community did all of these. The community was not nice, thats why they had to implement the polcies, the community was full of jerks.
As far as managing 70+ players, all EQ mobs were tank and spank. Even killing the sleeper was done by just chain healing. There was also no black list. No one listened to any of the, "so and so is a ninja," not for any longer than a few hours/days at most.
For managing guilds, all big guilds that have any intention of doing anything have this issue. Managing a guild is tough, whether your organizing a 70 person raid, or a 20 person raid. Thats just the nature of leadership.
Jerks still got to high level, they still got to raid, they still got great gear. Anyone who thinks there was ever any serious community blacklisting didn't play EQ.
Venge
edit - regarding community - in comparison to other games the community was the same. There were nice people in EQ and in other games, but there were an awful lot of jerks in EQ and in other games. If anyone ever decided to research it I wouldn't be surprised if the percentages were about the same.
edit - and bards. Bards is the one class I'll concede took any skill to play. Man I loved my bard.
You really need to learn a thing or two about EQ then.
Mobs were tank and spank up until PoP, with the introduction of Tacvi and DoN, mobs were no longer tank and spank and they introduced a lot of scripts that required you to kill with certain weapons (inktu'ta), charmed tanking (Txevu) keep different mobs balanced (tacvi), manage emotes, adds and use different weapon sets (DoN, Vishimtar), many of the MPG trials were increasingly complex. This difficulty kept increasing, and in the latest expansions there is not a single raid mob that is simply tank and spank anymore.
And yes, there were most definitely black lists on many forums.
I'll agree with you about Pop, thats also when the game started to slide. But not about the blacklists, as I said any lists were very very very temporary and gone in a matter of days.
Venge
If you want harder games, why don't you assign yourself some handicaps?
Some people do this, but that wasn't the OP's point.
His point wasn't about the difficulty itself, it was about how the community is positively impacted by a harder game, that doesn't work when everyone is allowed to change this on an individual basis.
You don't impact the community by putting restrictions onto yourself, it only starts to impact the community when players start to depend on each other because the difficulty of the game demands it as a whole.
Except that everyone sets their own objectives when they log into a game. In a "hard" game, people scale back their expectations until they find the fun. In an "easy" game, people tie one hand behind their back until they find the fun.
Well alot of the time it is good to remember that not all people are team oriented, and actually can find people failing, or causing issues as problematic to themselves that make them not enjoy or even find the game ruined for them by that person. Also many people do not treat games like you would a team-based sport like football, martial arts, or such are as to them it s entertainment that is paid for with money from working hard. Older games were better for those that liked them most from the fact you were playing with, or had the chance to play with people of the same character/type ass you are which will always create a better community feel as you get less butting of heads. Yet when you had the influx of players that were not all the same type of player as you had pror you merely have the issue that you will have tempers flaring or arguements when bad stuff happens. The older mmos that had more difficulty were funner for those that sought to feel challenged or achhieve something that was difficult, but for most of tthese newer gamers they are seeking entertainment that does not mean they like or want the same difficulty as lder players, and that fact of a large differing of what each player base see as fun is why you have many games feeling not as fun. You have those that want a relaxing time playing with not having to work like it is a jo for their entertainment, and then those tthat want to be challenged for that feeling of achievement is what they desire, while the devs/companies are trying to get the biggest amount of players, which by making a slightly less challengeing, but not completely easy mode game gives them a vast feld of players to market to. As such the harder games were not better except that you had more like minded people playing to keep yoru prefered playstyle prominent for the primary players.
You can't scale the difficulty or change the objectives in many games. I know games like WoW now have scaled dungeons and most is soloable, but that didn't used to be the case and one of those example of the OP is EQ, but there are plenty more examples of games where you can't just scale the difficulty as you please.
It's not even just about the difficulty, it's about needing other people to do things, it's about limiting your ability to solo and promoting teamplay and dependency.
Of course you can scale the difficulty. I change the difficulty of every game I play simply by changing my goals of what I will attempt to accomplish and what taboos my character follows.
Disclaimer: I do tend to prefer easier content and simply avoid games that force grouping
Well, difficulty is not a question of hard and easy, its a question of the right, sweet spot.
A game that is too hard will frustrate players.
A game that is too easy will bore players.
Sooo... .. . First and foremost, would yuo OP be so kind and take of the rose-tinted glasses of nostalgia. Thank you.
Games of today are still complex and i dare say difficult, even hard. But what the smart game designers of today have figured out is that a major part of the community no longer have a desire for boring. After all i am pretty sure the guilds running heroic raids in WoW would agree that there is a good amount of trials and tribulations there and that they are a fairly close group of people. And that of course trickle down. Same goes for most other games i have been in contact with. I don't think any one can call EVE a "easy" game nor would i call a game like Darkfall easy (i would call it a sinkhole for people with severe crawings of self inflicted pain, but that is just me).
Sure i can agree with the OP that bleeding and crying together does build a strong group but to dismis most modern games as void of these is to stick your coinslot/joystick out there and dare people to whack you with a stick because you are over-simplifying a rather complex issue and are in several cases wrong. Most of the games of today have some hard challanges but most of the people with opinions like the OP refuses to see it and actually when confronted with it tries to worm their way out or get all defensive and agressive about it.
"I know games like WoW now have scaled dungeons and most is soloable,"
Only by over-gearing them... No body solos dungeons in WoW with the same teir of gear unless they are very very skilled. SW:TOR does this to a ceartin level since a smart player can use their companion to almost act like a second person... But they still can not take down a flashpoint alone with out out-gearing/out leveling it.
This have been a good conversation
Why not do it the way nobody would argue against? Difficulty options.
"Hard level" servers which are just a multiplier on required XP aren't really hard mode at all. That's Tedious Mode. It's longer, but not harder.
Difficulty options, meanwhile, would let everyone tailor the actual difficulty of the mobs precisely to their own preferences, and reward them accordingly (fastest progression would be attained by tackling the hardest difficulty.)
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver