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What made the games of old great
Elikal
Member UncommonPosts: 7,912
I am a gamer of the early days. I started with simple C64 games, Sword of Fargoal was the first I can recall by name, Ultima single player RPG, Wizardry and Might and Magic were my fondest memory. Aww, just to be the Avatar of Britannia again, to see Iolo, Shamino and Dupre once more. Once more to wander the realm of Xeen! Or visiting the old Baldur's Gate just for once more.
Those were grand days. And while Elder Scrolls still kinda holds up the torch of old, by and large RPGs in particular and games per se, seem no more what they were to me. Also other game types I used to love, Civilization II, Sim City 2000, Command and Conquer, Warcraft 1 & 2... such games I played for months, sometimes years!
So often I wondered what happend. And while sure I changed, by and large games changed. Of course a main reason is, back then games were made by small companies, a handful creative people and the influence of the publishers was small. Today, once legendary studios like Origin, Bullfrog, Westwood, Sierra and what they all were, perished. And with them many of these legacies.
But if I think about these games of old, I strongly feel about three facts which made the games of old great. They were daring, and they left a lot to imagination of the player and they had soul!
First the daring. If you recall the games of Origin, like Ultima, Crusader and Wing Commander, you know Origin always pushed the boundaries of gaming. Many of their games often demanded an entirely new computer! Each new game was really innovative. Just compare the various Ultimas! Origin's motto "we create worlds" was literally their motivation! And even in Ultima the MMO this was visible. All the things you could do, you could be! Just things like the day and night cycles, the weather changes, how from sowing crops to baking bread and whatnot, what a complete world a game like Ultima VII was. Or how memorable games like Might and Magic World of Xeen or Wizardry VII were. Or how much Civilization II and Sim City were REAL breakthroughs! They dared to make more than just a mass market average product.
Second, they left a lot to imagination! I think this is a VERY vital thing. If you recall Ultima VII or Baldurs Gate or Sim City or Civilisation, you didn't see much. It was advanced beyond the bare minimum graphics, but a lot was still left to the imagination. I never will forget the Ultima V ending, where Blackthorn is banished, and heck, that was 256 coloured pixels with a bit of text! But the imagines in my mind were always greater and better than anything even today's engines can show me. Or maybe they COULD now, but for some reason the game developers don't do it.
Third, the soul. God, call me nostalgic, but for me Iolo, Shamino and Dupre from Ultima always were real persons! And they often didn't even have so many backstories and conversations like, say Dragon Age characters. But WHAT they had was top. I can't even place my finger on it. But chars from RPGs of these days were... memorable. Like Minsc from Baldurs Gate, heck like ALL Baldurs Gate chars. And they didn't need detailled personal dialogues and whatever to stick in my mind! Or the many small chars from these games. Or the cities I built in Sim City (1) and Civ II. I was immersed like in magic! Those games had soul despite their simplicity.
I miss those days. More in single player games, but also in MMOs of today. Even the old Everquest II and SWG had their old fashioned charm, their own magic, despite their many shortcomings. Todays games are so mass market, so smooth, so NOT daring. It is mediocre, playing safe stuff like SWTOR. And this thing of not aiming high, not daring and replacing soul with lackluster copy paste chars... I loathe that development of things.
I'd wish to see the old places again. Yes, maybe even in a new engine. And yes, maybe they would not be as they were. But Ultima, Wizardry, Might and Magic RPGs, Sim City, Civ, King Quest, C&C, Lands of Lore and all these were legends, of which the modern games are only weak epigones. Why their legacy was never again taken up is beyond me.
I miss you, my old friends.
People don't ask questions to get answers - they ask questions to show how smart they are. - Dogbert
Comments
I remember being 8 or 9 years old, playing Wolfenstein 3D when it first came out and me and my buddies getting dizzy staring at the screen as we spun the character in circles.
THE GRAPHICS SEEMED SO REAL.
Spec'ing properly is a gateway drug.
12 Million People have been meter spammed in heroics.
They were made for gamers, by gamers, not for masses.
Old games had options for failure. Depth. Risk vs Reward. Unique systems. Heart and soul poured into them.
Modern games don't.
Old MMOs were about coming together as a community against the harsh game world. Modern MMOs are about every individual being the hero and never failing.
That, Devs have taken the community out of games for whatever idiotic reason.
That is exactly right! Games of old understood the Risk/Reward function. If there is little risk, there is little reward. I haven't felt the rush of excitement in a game for many many years, because i know that in current games, if I die.....it means jack squat. In the games of old, WHERE you died depended on the severity of the new quest that was just formed "Get Alasti's corpse back". If you died in a rough spot, you worried that you may NEVER get your corpse back, and THAT was what was exciting!
In the old MMO's I wondered IF I would get to the highest levels of the games. In new ones, its not if but when and how fast it happens.....BORING and Pointless.
Honestly think it comes down to two little things.
1. Games have to little risk today, in the "Old days" we didn't even have save files, and death would be frustrating, and because of it winning would feel all that much better, like you overcame something big.
The problem was that often difficulty was used as a means to lengthen a game, and give it more gameplay because you had to start over, and when save files appeared this was no longer neccesary
2. Developers simply dont care anymore - Gaming has grown from a group of outcast nerds who loved what they did, to the public masses who dont give a crap and just want to shoot people for 10 minutes instead of being immersed in a good long questline/story, companies just want money, and CoD / WoW copies run rampant.
As far as i see it, the future is in Indie gaming right now, AAA titles offer absolutely no innovation, or just very little of it.
I personally hope Guild wars 2 will be good, I really want it to be, but hyping things in the past has taught me not to.
Heres to Titles like Minecraft, Bastion, and Dungeon defenders
And even to the little guys such as Darkfall and mortal online, they tried but failed to interest the masses, Darkfall just did things wrong, Mortal online had the idea - But simply has a Piss poor developer behind it.
Edit: Ah i guess theres 3.. Rose colored glasses are a massive darn problem here, as said below this post.. >.>
guild wars had 3 faction,silkroad had 3 faction,daoc had 3 faction etc etc etc!the number one rule to rule them all!AAA title will need 3 faction just to have a possibility of thinking to be considered a good game!one other thing the game will need to at a minimum support simplified chinese and english.last but not least game will need to be planetary!no ip block etc!
with these 3 feature alone a game can be considered AAA !
What makes them great? Rose-colorred glasses.
There are plenty of games out there today that rival and surpass the games of our youth. It seems like people mostly want to wax nostalgic rather than play though.
I want a mmorpg where people have gone through misery, have gone through school stuff and actually have had sex even. -sagil
Lack of competition made them great.
Now the market is littered with copies of copies of copies and pretty much zero innovation (cept few games under developement).
Well said.
+1
Games olf old had bite. You screwed up, it cost you. Now a days the "Risk/Reward" system blows. Btw you didn't even list the older text based DOS games which many of us did play.
All the blinking prompt waiting for your command patiently.
Darn, Garvon3 beat me to it and said it better.
Well posted Garvon3.
While "rose-colored glasses" is a factor, it is not the main fact at all. Everyone in life has that potential for things they have done in their past. You can not ignore the points made by a few posters including me, they are not invalid points.
What I personally would love to see is the currently technology of hardware and software used to create something like a Dragonrealms online by Simutronics in a graphical format.
What made games of old great? The fact that you were young when you played them, if not by age then by gaming experience. You always remember your first, even if it wasn't your best. I'm not saying that's the only factor to consider but let's be realistic, something is a lot more special when you're experiencing it for the first time. A simple little roller coaster can beat a behemoth of speed and stature in terms of an experience if the simple little roller coaster was #1 and the behemoth was #100. Beer is special when you have your first few bottles and after that it's not that special anymore. I think there's a natural degradation there with games too.
Some old timer might talk about how EQ was awesome and WoW is crap, but nobody ever considers the guy who's never played EQ and started on WoW. Just as the old timer that started on EQ thought that EQ was awesome, the guy that started on WoW thinks that WoW is awesome. It's not because WoW's an awful game, it has more to do with which one you've cut your teeth on and which one has been a completely new experience for you in terms of the MMO genre.
My first baseball game ever was Bases Loaded on the NES, and I remember playing it with my father all the time when I was young. Hey, some kids played catch with their dads, I played games with mine. Thus Bases Loaded is special and I'll always remember it. Does it make it the best baseball game of all time and everything else after it a soul-dead conformist? Absolutely not.
I think it's a bunch of bunk to look at the industry that way. There have always been non-risk takers, people who play it safe all the time. There are always innovators too. It's not that innovators don't exist anymore, I think it's more an issue of people not knowing where to look. The commercial version of Dear Esther came out less than a month ago, that's not a game for the conformist. Catherine's another game that I think falls in that category. Shoot, I think Minecraft is the ultimate example of this generation.
In terms of MMOs, unfortunately devs seem to be fairly boxed in for the most part. Unfortunately I also think many people are misguided and think that the genre can be totally revolutionized, and it simply can't... at least not in any significant way. We've had games come around that attempt to innovate but people simply don't bite. Tabula Rasa's a good example of a game that tried something different and fell flat on its rear end. While not totally MMOs in their own right, Hellgate London and APB that were more hybrid also failed(to be fair both live on as free to play).
I'm a fan of genre-mixing and I think Realm of the Mad God's not bad at all. It recently came out on Steam and it's free to play, I suggest you guys take a look. It's only a 30-something meg download. It's basically a 'bullet hell' multiplayer game. The way you unlock classes is fairly unique too. Innovation? Maybe.
Now Playing: Mission Against Terror, Battlefield 3, Skyrim, Dark Souls, League of Legends, Minecraft, and the piano. =3
Visit my fail Youtube channel(don't leave me nasty messages!): http://www.youtube.com/user/Mirii471
Since when is leveling one class to get access to a more interesting class of a similar type unique? Maybe someone just has limited gaming experience.
This.
Oh, and corporate greed. Fail. So much fail.
"Censorship is never over for those who have experienced it. It is a brand on the imagination that affects the individual who has suffered it, forever." - Noam Chomsky
Nah .. that was frustrating and stupid. People have lives. What if i am having dinnerin 10 min and i just die? To penalize players when they cannot devote hours and hours to a GAME is just bad design.
In the old days when i played EQ, there was more waiting, less doing, less variety (killing the SAME mob with a group for the 1000000 times was incredibly boring .. modern dungeon leveling .. even the same dungeons are 100x better).
I am glad the market moves on.
What made the old games so great was that they introduced a new genre & that was something most people playing them had never done before.
14 years on there's millions of people with 1 -13 years years of MMO gaming under their belt....and boy are a lot worn-out & jaded by that experience so badly it spoils their enjoyment of anything made since...
It's so true, and what's so much more frustrating is hearing people newer to gaming blindly defending the dumbed down trash that oozes out now, that's probably an insult to their intelligence anyway, due to some kind of faulty defense mechanism or because they have no basis for comparison.
Even before MMOs, older crpgs had a much higher learning curve and often very deep and complex systems, yet 11 year old me had no trouble learning and delving deeper into them (Knights of Legend for example had some fairly complex combat systems and no handholding, MUDs required a fair grasp of english and some critical thinking). And loved the hell out of them. So I would assume the kids of today should be able to do more than click a link that walks them to a target that has no chance of ever harming them, repeat. If I'm not overestimating their intelligence (which I doubt as my 8 year old nephew quickly understands and masters many of the more challenging games) then they're being robbed and should demand better instead of defending the rubbish.
This. I don't know why people can't see this for some reason (denial maybe).
Experience and age DO affect how you interact with your new experiences.
How awesome is riding a bicycle these days? Exactly, you could give a crap about it. But when you were 5 and your parents took those training wheels off, you were f**ing flying like a rockstar. Holy crap was riding a bike amazing back then, even if you fell and gashed your knee, you slapped a huge bandage on it and went for more.
On top of youth and first time experiences, there is information. Overlooked as a factor almost every time this conversation comes up.
When we were playing Dark Queen of Krynn or Quest for Glory every new area you went to in the game was unknown, everything was met with awe and imagination. But, if you see similar stories over and over (let's say hundreds of times over thousands of hours of gaming) you're gonig to know what comes next. That's what experience does. People say, "I want a story that is compelling and really immerses me into the world."
But they forget that there's only so many ways to tell a story, and if you've been gaming for 10-20 years, you've probably already seen them all in one form or another.
Then there's the internet. Forums and websites with quest, zone, item, mob and every other type of tracking and data aggregation. So even if you're playing a new game, you can look up every bit of information about that game before you experience it. How can you expect a dungeon to be difficult if you look up how to pull and defeat each mob/pack/boss?
How can you say a game "isn't hard" because it has skill rotations, while going to a popular online resource that tells you which buttons to press, how often, what stats work best for your character. THIS is what takes out the difficulty, people gaining information that they otherwise would not have determined on their own as an individual because the internet compiles aggregate data from everyone at the same time.
So when you played those old games, you didn't know if delayed blast fireball was going to be better than chain lightning, or how it would be used in this particular game. But you took that spell and tried it out. If the results were satisfactory, you continued playing. But now, you will find out which spell does even 5% more damage and opt for that because "it's better".
Games haven't changed much, a lot of them are worse, a lot of them are worse, and there's still and bunch of mediocre ones. But the one common denominator one this forum, and amongst the gaming community is US the players. WE have changed.
We have spent years learning, experiencing, gathering information, to the point where it's easy to be jaded. Want to know how you are a gaming "expert" (it's thought that experts are typically people who have sunk 10,000 into something), just put someone who isn't a gamer infront of a computer with an MMO up and running. Ask them to play and offer then no assistance. See how long it takes them to get to level 10.
When you pop open a new MMO, you already know so much about it. This is your hotbar, you can add and remove skills which correspond to keys (also, you can re-assign keys). WASD = movement. "B" is for bag, and if that doesn't work, what do you press next? "I" that's right, because "I" is for Inventory. Tab will cycle through nearby targets, right click means attack. And so on. You have an entire catalog of information stored in your brain. The list just keeps going, you know and understand so much about games that you don't even know it. They're so second nature to you that you may as well think of it like writing your name. Remember when writing your name was hard? Remember when you barely had the motor skills to stay in the lines?
So please, if you are a long time gamer, try and remember that your experiences are cumulative. The more and better games you play, the more demanding you will become of the next one because your expectations have changed. If you can objectively say that every game since _____ has sucked, then I don't know what to tell you other than, maybe it's time to find a new hobby.
Don't make generalization that is not true.
I start playing MMOs (or pre-cursors of those) even before UO (kingdom of drakkar), UO and EQ. And i FULLY embrace the new modern MMOs.
Finally, MMOs are good games without the need to break up your marriage so that you have enough time to devote to it. Finally it is a game that entertains instead of a virtual world that bores you and make you work.
I have plenty of basis of comparison. I even played MUDs before. And the developers have finally figured out how to make MMOs into good games with instances, phasing, looking for group tools, fast travel, scripted boss fights ....
This I agree with to some extent. How many people actually do dungeons and raids without looking them up? People actually have the balls to get mad at you if you're in a pick-up dungeon group and say that you don't know how to do the upcoming boss. Raiding got to a point where it was required to watch boss kill videos and reading into a fight before showing up to that particular raid. Do we do that with every game that we play and then claim that they're not difficult? In all seriousness, I can tell you that early WoW raiding was more difficult than current WoW raiding though. I blew through the very last raid instance Blizzard released in 2 weeks. By comparison, Razorgore when Blackwing Lair first came out was absolutely brutal, and that's 1 boss in a fairly large raid zone. How would WoW raiding fare for a guild if they made it a point to not look up anything ever and learned each encounter on their own? Try to tell a group like that that raiding isn't difficult.
Now Playing: Mission Against Terror, Battlefield 3, Skyrim, Dark Souls, League of Legends, Minecraft, and the piano. =3
Visit my fail Youtube channel(don't leave me nasty messages!): http://www.youtube.com/user/Mirii471
OP, what has happened is that you have changed over time. You don't approach games the same way you use to approach them.
Epic Music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vAigCvelkhQ&list=PLo9FRw1AkDuQLEz7Gvvaz3ideB2NpFtT1
https://archive.org/details/softwarelibrary_msdos?&sort=-downloads&page=1
Kyleran: "Now there's the real trick, learning to accept and enjoy a game for what it offers rather than pass on what might be a great playing experience because it lacks a few features you prefer."
John Henry Newman: "A man would do nothing if he waited until he could do it so well that no one could find fault."
FreddyNoNose: "A good game needs no defense; a bad game has no defense." "Easily digested content is just as easily forgotten."
LacedOpium: "So the question that begs to be asked is, if you are not interested in the game mechanics that define the MMORPG genre, then why are you playing an MMORPG?"
They were made by geeks, coders and artists, you didn't have these guys with a ma in marketing that became "game directors" and thought of themselves as frustrated film directors who had to impose their "vision" on you through endless cut scenes
There wasn't all this high production values so a small group of people could make these games in their bedrooms without having to pay for voice actors, fancy graphic engines and composers instead concentrating on innovation and gameplay. It's a lot like the music industry, you've got say talented individuals making music on their own and doing it the hard way through touring and making fresh music or you've got instant POP stars coming through fame academies with an army of writers and production staff putting out main stream sachirine pulp
Why its mostly indie takes these days that innovate
I couldn't disagree more. When I had my first beer, I would have gladly taken any brand, warm or cold, just to try it and maybe get drunk for the first time. Now, I am a connoisseur of beer and would most likely not even try to get drunk. I learn more and more about beer as I age and my taste becomes more refined.
I created a new character in UO (IPY) just last night and I'm enjoying playing this "outdated" game more than I've enjoyed anything in years.
You may remember your first fondly, but you can still do so while recalling its warts and wrinkles. And you can experience new pleasures every day. Sometimes the first really was the best, because it was the best, not the first.
As much as I dislike the philosophy of WoW, it's a much more fun game than those that have come after it. Shouldn't I be enjoying the latest and greatest if your theory is correct? Because I'm not. I'd rather never play another game than log another minute of SWTOR.
Trammies need to stop polluting the MMORPG landscape. They already have enough games in which to emote hugs and sell garbage by the banks.
The time in which i played them.