I did not vote because there is no option that I wanted to choose. I think that there should be many games to fit many peoples' playstyles. I don't like instant gratification myself, but there are things from the oldschool games I would rather see gone completely and prefer the newer MMOs for, but there are things in the oldschool games I love and hope to see again.
However, if people prefer playing instant gratification games, who am I to say that it is totally ruining MMORPGs ? Perhaps for me, but not for those who enjoy that. I just want to have the option of playing something that is not instant gratification.
I think you give a good analogy, it's almost sad in a way. What happened to the days of finding a good MMO and sticking with it, seems many have turned into journey men. This site has a long list of MMO's to choose from but i would bet that all of us haven't even gone through the whole list since we joined if ever.
Seems that following the hype path is the norm and the only option but it's not. Sometimes straying off the beat and track can take you to places you never knew existed, suddenly you find a place that is pleasing. Thing is, you will never know what is out there if you constantly stick to the same path.
Turn a corner and you might very well be supprised, in other words don't follow the hype.
You can blame the "hype" if that makes you feel better.
But maybe the expectation of turning a gaming corporation into a lifelong spouse was (always) never going to happen.
Most people don't last beyond the seven year itch, right? That little red sports car zooms by, and it looks like it just might be better than this tired, old game I've been shacking with for so many years already... And so the chase begins, search to recover lost youth, the parade of 20-something blondes, and none of them ever seem to fill the basic empty hole.
The anti hype thing is a characteristic of forums like this where, a gathering point for the cynical and jaded. Hype has allways been around, starting in the 80's, remember the massive hype for ultima games? Noone then cried foul and objected to the excited expectations ( didn't use word hype then). And do on and so forth throughout the history of gaming, until now with the age of jaded players and journalists in denial.
rpg/mmorg history: Dun Darach>Bloodwych>Bards Tale 1-3>Eye of the beholder > Might and Magic 2,3,5 > FFVII> Baldur's Gate 1, 2 > Planescape Torment >Morrowind > WOW > oblivion > LOTR > Guild Wars (1900hrs elementalist) Vanguard. > GW2(1000 elementalist), Wildstar
MMORPGs were once a genre of endless levels where players were on a scale compared to one another, not on a scale compared to the maximum level achievable.
New games always boast about their maximum level, what you can have once you arrive at it, and how long it takes to get there.
Crafting typically requires you to stand in one place, or to visit between the crafting place and an auction block, and the levels rise up 2 to 5 per visit.
Also, in modern mmo games, you're a noob until you're max level, and then you're still a noob.
Once you reach maximum level, it transforms into a dungeon running game, or a repetitive pvp grind, or you simply keep doing quests and the levels go away.
The genre was never meant to be any of these things. They were supposed to be a serious time sink with no top, no end game, no actual possibility of getting to maximum level. I'm not talking about since WOW, I'm talking about 10 years ago + when the genre was what it was meant to be.
Reaching maximum level in your crafting skill used to be a year long endeavour, now it's a month, and the year long endeavour is to get the recipe books to craft the item.
We used to have crafting chars that we trained on 8 hour shifts around the clock getting towards maximum level, and we calculated how many months it'd take of dedication to get there. Now 1 guy can sit there for an hour a day and get there in a month.
You used to have to search for what you were looking for, and maybe get frustrated and go google it. Now theres always an arrow or dotted line under your character pointing towards your next quest destination. There's this giant city, with no need to ever explore it because you're always directed to the next spot. Sure I know guildwars bandaided it with the climb a wall and see a cutscene thing but that's kinda pathetic because if you just want to quest, it's a guided tour.
I'll just sum this up by saying, people get what they're working to achieve, there are just a giant pile of short term goals with no real long term goals. People reach a batch of their short term goals and leave, or they realize that the new mmo game they're playing is just a hamster wheel of short term goals (where sometimes every stop is a trip to an item mall) and leave.
What happened to the old fashioned never-ending story mmorpgs where there was a theoretical maximum level, but no real hope of getting there because you'd have to spend 3 years 18 hours a day and get a divorce. Where if you really wanted to be maximum crafting level you better have an alt and 3 people from your guild chipping in.
Every new title we see, deep down when we say we're hoping for a challenge, we really mean we're tired of the rat-race to maximum level followed by instance running to get the latest tier set followed by standing in a building chatting with other bored people. With the option of pvping which requires you to work on a second set of gear which you have problems finding a place to store.
1000% yes. Exploration, community, character progression that makes you feel more like the character instead of it just being a vessal to get achievements in, meaningful crafting, and quests with some meat to them are all nearly extinct, or are in most modern MMORPG's. Hell...most shouldn't even have the term MMORPG placed with them.
When I mean complexity I am talking complexity of gameplay for the player, not the software. Come on now we have mulled over that enough times.
Also the Sim City problems were mentioned, how many more times, do not pre-order, let the game settle after launch, buy it if you like what you are hearing then.
When you have to use help to optimize DPS .. a part of gameplay, it is complex. Don't tell me that is not .. look at all the theorycrafting, spreadsheet, and stuff.
And don't tell me optimizing DPS is not part of the gameplay. Many players live for upgrades, and power. Today's MMOs are way more complex than the old ones.
WOW has much more complex combat mechancis, compared to EQ. Heck, even ARPGs are more complex. Sitting on a spot, and keep using your big nuke on mob grind is not complexity.
I feel like most games I play are just like watching a movie, the devs know exactly what I'm going to do and lay the game out before me. I want a game where the devs make a world and let me do what I want.
Games are trying to attract players by getting easier and easier, I remember when a game I used to play took over a week to get to level 50. 8 Years later the same game takes less than 2 hours to earn level 50. The games try to get easier and easier to compete with other easy games.
How is hundreds of hours played considered "instant gratification"?
Ken Fisher - Semi retired old fart Network Administrator, now working in Network Security. I don't Forum PVP. If you feel I've attacked you, it was probably by accident. When I don't understand, I ask. Such is not intended as criticism.
there is one thing that is ruining mmos, and that's the players.
nothing else to blame, no matter how long you guys search.
seriously, play a game when you have fun doing so, stop playing it when it's not fun.
thats the way it works, we dont need 1000 theoretical posts about "why mmos are ruined".
your talking ruins it.
there is no reason you HAVE to play a game that is no fun to you. your clique plays it? fine, play it IF YOU LIKE IT or DONT!
stop this dumb mass hype. i didnt smoke because my friends did, i wont play games just for them.
become YOU. stop being THEM.
I know this particular post is from 7 days ago, but I think Thane nailed this right square on the head. Unfortunately this will slip past the majority of the posters here. To many times people try to get others to rally with them when it comes complaining about features in a game, when they don't even own the game or when the game isn't even out yet. I really don't understand how some posters here just absolutely refuse to accept that not all games are made for their particluar playstyle. Then to try to get others to agree with them and to label others as fanboys. I guess everyone needs a hug every now and again, but to seek solace on the forums becuase you don't like a game is just kind of,...well I don't know.
I don't sit around and complain about games, I don't go in and detail the things I don't like about them.
My only complaint is that there are no longer any quality games targeted at my audience. There is no new quality grinder game, the only asian grinder games are low budget skins on hero engine. Don't care about that.
If you're a themepark lover, who wants a guided tour through level 50 in your first week, you have 800 games to choose from.
If you want a long experience where you slowly grind your way through the content, you either have to settle for games from the 90s or you are out of luck.
Eh can't fully agree with 'bring back difficult leveling' but if anything it should by far have a curve. Having that 'instant gratification' has hampered it greatly in terms of both the reward and I feel has made it far easier for people to lose interest in a game. People have such a deep found "i want to have this and need this or else it is boring" kind of mindset I feel is ruining games for them. Why stick with a game if you get everything given to you and get nothing out of it. Look at shooters having even evolved a "leveling" system to keep attention upon them.
I really feel its the very same people who cry for everything being given to them that are being ruined by their own mentality from finding a 'connection' with a game.
There are more questions to be asked for why mmorpgs have changed lot the past 10 years or so.
If you want to hear my personal opinion then read othervise dont:-)
Many years ago mmorpg's were few and had few players.Those players often met ingame and became friends,they figured out how to solve quests together(often those quests need lot of players to compleete)Those guys came even closer friends and even set up a rl pub evening even if those were from different countries)Happy guilds were made people had fun grouping with eachother.
Now something happens, big game companies start to make mmorpgs, and lot of people start to play those fantastic games made.
Now nobody has to figure out how to solw anything anymore but just go to this place and kill this amazing boss you need to bring 60 friends with you to kill it.
This did work fine for a litle vile, but very soon ther came some complications. In one ot those large groups there were one guy that felt "I'm the best fu,, the rest" and this one guy seem to have been playing all games released ever sinse. and when a regular player ends up in same group as this guy he/she choose to never group anymore in games.
That is imo the reason why grouping and raiding are fading away in our games and games are and will be focused more to solo and small group play.
I voted no. I hated the entire way this OP was phrased anyway, and part of me wanted to lash out about it. But thats not really doing anyone any favors. So, instead, I thought about what this trend is really trying to do and why its failing. Its not failing because we all want to play a game that takes 5 years to even see some content, in fact such an ideal is ludicrous. The only way to gate such content is to require the player to play the previous content over and over and over....blah blah blah...for those years. Its dull, unimaginative, and uninspired. Its lazy development, and it should neither be lauded or heralded by us.
Instead we should be looking at which moments of a game really impact us, which moments steal us away and stay with us forever. We should try to understand why those moments mattered on level more than just the basic system that allowed it. My favorite moments, for the record, are often never about some specific piece of content but about content that created itself naturally thanks to how a games systems allowed it to. In my post about PvP in a different thread, I mentioned how much I actually enjoyed WoW PvP long before it even had features to support it simply because the option to DO it created moments in the game that gave me choice and consequence that stuck with me. Similar things have happened regarding dungeons or raids. My happiest moments were never about killing a boss, or looting the chest at the end. They were always about something fun that happened within the confines of that system before the reward.
I loved having my raid afk before the Spider boss in ZF, only to have my friend pull her into them shouting that I had done it. The shambled escape, and interesting use of my skills to try and save people in that moment were more fun than the actual boss fight because it made me think outside the box AND have a good laugh. I loved the time I was grinding on orcs in EQOA as a wizard and jumped in, moments before the tank died, to unleash all my damage and pull the mob. I sat there casting and dismissing a familiar to heal me tiny bits each time to give the healer the 5 seconds they needed to get the tank back up. The grind was boring, but the moment of rush felt by really pushing the limits of what the game intended to really save the day and wow your party was awesome.
Really, its not longer levels we need...its more systems designed around getting variety of play and tools to allow the players to have more moments of personal and deep interaction. Dragging out levelling doesn't make a game fun at all. But rewarding the player for doing nothing all the time isn't fun either. The only reason a game like borderland is fun, while being a giant loot pinata, is because it was designed with that silliness in mind. The game was about being rediculous and over the top. Modern MMO's aren't, the loot pinata is just a carrot to make you do content. The content, or system creating it, should BE the reward. Too much focus is spent assuming we all just want loot all the time. Plenty of games prove that to be false.
It is never too late and as long as we have a solid idea of what it is we want to go back to it would be a big boost to MMO's. We do have good ideas in the newer MMO's, I would not advocate abandoning everything from them. But their inability to maintain traction with players is the writing on the wall. If MMO's just carry on as they are now, there will be no such thing as a AAA title again. In fact we may already have reached that stage.
If you want the only MMO titles around to be poorly funded and last a couple of months then its going to be a great next few years for you. Ask yourself this, why has no MMO beat AOC in graphics when it came out 5 years ago, why has hardly any MMO beat Lotro for landscapes when it came out six years ago, why are you never going to see a MMO with as many voice overs as SWTOR again? The funding is drying up and the MMO industry will not be able to give new games the development time they need.
The same as players measure their performance, game makers look at what they do vs just what they say they are interested in. When they don't do "different" as much as "same", they lock & load that "sameness" as a functional feature.
As such, when players don't pay for "longer term efforts" but for "instant rewards", then they offer more and more instant rewards.
It's a balancing act for them but works about the same as a DPS person "optimizing their build" - the players parse the numbers and balance gear with crit rates vs base-damage, etc. Game makers "optimize'" their designs based upon what actually is done vs what people talk about.
Originally posted by Bladestrom Hype has allways been around, starting in the 80's, remember the massive hype for ultima games? Noone then cried foul and objected to the excited expectations ( didn't use word hype then).
Oh, yes we did. It was just confined to (at best) Usenet.
You have to remember, no plethora of web sites to complain ON.
Our gaming magazine was...Dragon...published on paper, snailmailed....
yup i myself purchased the $60 pack.. why? because after playing beta/alpha i find it would be worth putting a little money into.. MMOs imho are almost always worth the money. You can easily put hundreds upon hundreds of hours into and still not see all the game has to offer.. for that many hours of entertainment $60 is nothing...just the foundry system is worth it for me in neverwinter.
I am intrigued, would you mind showing us which games you recently played for hundreds of hours? Screenshots please. It can't be just GW2 and if so then show us the hundreds upon hundreds of hours you spent there.
not sure how you can't see the value in these games.. hell i get more play hours on betas of most MMOs than i get from the average single player game
Not loading for me, but i already know you play guildwars. What about other games recently released. You can't play more than one if you commit hundreds of hours into them.
i have played almost 420 hours since launch.. that really isn't that much I still got plenty of time for other games even with a job and family
I find it hard to find games to put that much time into. Most of them are way to repetitive and boring.
Isn't this the crux of the whole argument, because some old time MMO players find modern MMO's boring therefore they are bad and no one in their right mind can play these games for 100's of hours? I have 400 hours in SW:TOR, probably nearly 800 in WoW, over 100 hours in many others so I'm with Aerowyn I find there to be lots of value in modern MMO with lots of activities that interest me. But I do not denegrate others for not enjoying modern MMO's as this thread is doing to those who do.
This doom and gloom thread was brought to you by Chin Up the new ultra high caffeine soft drink for gamers who just need that boost of happiness after a long forum session.
It is never too late and as long as we have a solid idea of what it is we want to go back to it would be a big boost to MMO's. We do have good ideas in the newer MMO's, I would not advocate abandoning everything from them. But their inability to maintain traction with players is the writing on the wall. If MMO's just carry on as they are now, there will be no such thing as a AAA title again. In fact we may already have reached that stage.
If you want the only MMO titles around to be poorly funded and last a couple of months then its going to be a great next few years for you. Ask yourself this, why has no MMO beat AOC in graphics when it came out 5 years ago, why has hardly any MMO beat Lotro for landscapes when it came out six years ago, why are you never going to see a MMO with as many voice overs as SWTOR again? The funding is drying up and the MMO industry will not be able to give new games the development time they need.
The problem is that you only look at a narrow definition of MMOs. If you look at MMO-like games, or games with some MMO features, there are lots of successful, and AAA development because of that.
LOL, DOTA2, WOT, MWO, ARPGs ....
But you are right ... a narrow definition of MMOs ... those games are going out of favor. Embrace new ideas & new types/variations of games. Isn't that what innovation and gaming is about?
I think the people who long for "instant gratification" and the people who want "long and painful gratification" are more similar than different. They are, because they think that the purpose of an MMO is somewhere out there, in the tasks the developers place in front of them.
But what is missing from both of these sorry ass players is the desire to roleplay; the desire to create their own works of fiction as rolled up in their characters. When playing an MMO is a matter of playing a character, the content and the "gratification" isn't dependent on levels or grinding. That's why the early games, and the MUDs, could get away with permadeath, slow levelling and so on. The play wasn't about mechanics back then. It was about personality.
I could give a damn about "instant gratification" or "impossible levelling." Either system is equally meaningless, when all we do is push around "toons."
__________________________ "Its sad when people use religion to feel superior, its even worse to see people using a video game to do it." --Arcken
"...when it comes to pimping EVE I have little restraints." --Hellmar, CEO of CCP.
"It's like they took a gun, put it to their nugget sack and pulled the trigger over and over again, each time telling us how great it was that they were shooting themselves in the balls." --Exar_Kun on SWG's NGE
I think the people who long for "instant gratification" and the people who want "long and painful gratification" are more similar than different. They are, because they think that the purpose of an MMO is somewhere out there, in the tasks the developers place in front of them.
But what is missing from both of these sorry ass players is the desire to roleplay; the desire to create their own works of fiction as rolled up in their characters. When playing an MMO is a matter of playing a character, the content and the "gratification" isn't dependent on levels or grinding. That's why the early games, and the MUDs, could get away with permadeath, slow levelling and so on. The play wasn't about mechanics back then. It was about personality.
I could give a damn about "instant gratification" or "impossible levelling." Either system is equally meaningless, when all we do is push around "toons."
why can't people see the middle ground? I didn't say long and painful.
MMORPG games are supposed to be a never ending experience.
The day the term End Game was introduced was the end of MMORPG games as we knew them.
why can't people see the middle ground? I didn't say long and painful.
MMORPG games are supposed to be a never ending experience.
The day the term End Game was introduced was the end of MMORPG games as we knew them.
"supposed to be" .. dictated by you?
MMORPGs are not supposed to be anything. The genre changes .. just like any other responding to market demand.
So what if a MMORPG is like a SP game but slightly longer? Finish the content. Move on. Come back if there is more content released. Don't tell me that is not how many play MMORPGs today.
The entire premise of my post is that there is no game alternative for people who actually want a good old fashioned mmo like what was offered in the late 90s, just with modern graphics.
All the games that are out now are just mildly different skins of eachothers, and people like me, who actually want a long and challenging game experience, have nowhere to turn at ALL.
Just 1 game, is that too much to ask? you dont have to play it, theres already 900 games for people who want to play the same old easy story and get directed to the next quest.
Anyhow, I respect everyones opinion here, keep it civil, I'm not dictating anything to anyone.
It is never too late and as long as we have a solid idea of what it is we want to go back to it would be a big boost to MMO's. We do have good ideas in the newer MMO's, I would not advocate abandoning everything from them. But their inability to maintain traction with players is the writing on the wall. If MMO's just carry on as they are now, there will be no such thing as a AAA title again. In fact we may already have reached that stage.
If you want the only MMO titles around to be poorly funded and last a couple of months then its going to be a great next few years for you. Ask yourself this, why has no MMO beat AOC in graphics when it came out 5 years ago, why has hardly any MMO beat Lotro for landscapes when it came out six years ago, why are you never going to see a MMO with as many voice overs as SWTOR again? The funding is drying up and the MMO industry will not be able to give new games the development time they need.
The problem is that you only look at a narrow definition of MMOs. If you look at MMO-like games, or games with some MMO features, there are lots of successful, and AAA development because of that.
LOL, DOTA2, WOT, MWO, ARPGs ....
But you are right ... a narrow definition of MMOs ... those games are going out of favor. Embrace new ideas & new types/variations of games. Isn't that what innovation and gaming is about?
This has nothing to do with narrow definition, we are taking about a genre which will not be able to fund its titles as well as it used to. I do not believe any of the online game types you mentioned have had the funding that the likes of SWTOR or GW2 have had.
Comments
I did not vote because there is no option that I wanted to choose. I think that there should be many games to fit many peoples' playstyles. I don't like instant gratification myself, but there are things from the oldschool games I would rather see gone completely and prefer the newer MMOs for, but there are things in the oldschool games I love and hope to see again.
However, if people prefer playing instant gratification games, who am I to say that it is totally ruining MMORPGs ? Perhaps for me, but not for those who enjoy that. I just want to have the option of playing something that is not instant gratification.
Playing MUDs and MMOs since 1994.
You can blame the "hype" if that makes you feel better.
But maybe the expectation of turning a gaming corporation into a lifelong spouse was (always) never going to happen.
Most people don't last beyond the seven year itch, right? That little red sports car zooms by, and it looks like it just might be better than this tired, old game I've been shacking with for so many years already... And so the chase begins, search to recover lost youth, the parade of 20-something blondes, and none of them ever seem to fill the basic empty hole.
Gamerdom is wallowing in midlife crisis.
rpg/mmorg history: Dun Darach>Bloodwych>Bards Tale 1-3>Eye of the beholder > Might and Magic 2,3,5 > FFVII> Baldur's Gate 1, 2 > Planescape Torment >Morrowind > WOW > oblivion > LOTR > Guild Wars (1900hrs elementalist) Vanguard. > GW2(1000 elementalist), Wildstar
Now playing GW2, AOW 3, ESO, LOTR, Elite D
1000% yes. Exploration, community, character progression that makes you feel more like the character instead of it just being a vessal to get achievements in, meaningful crafting, and quests with some meat to them are all nearly extinct, or are in most modern MMORPG's. Hell...most shouldn't even have the term MMORPG placed with them.
When you have to use help to optimize DPS .. a part of gameplay, it is complex. Don't tell me that is not .. look at all the theorycrafting, spreadsheet, and stuff.
And don't tell me optimizing DPS is not part of the gameplay. Many players live for upgrades, and power. Today's MMOs are way more complex than the old ones.
WOW has much more complex combat mechancis, compared to EQ. Heck, even ARPGs are more complex. Sitting on a spot, and keep using your big nuke on mob grind is not complexity.
I feel like most games I play are just like watching a movie, the devs know exactly what I'm going to do and lay the game out before me. I want a game where the devs make a world and let me do what I want.
Games are trying to attract players by getting easier and easier, I remember when a game I used to play took over a week to get to level 50. 8 Years later the same game takes less than 2 hours to earn level 50. The games try to get easier and easier to compete with other easy games.
Makes them all just feel tiring and boring.
you mean asian grinder games?
in those games it's virtually impossible to reach max level...
ya I mean if you play 15 hours a day over 3 years you might reach max level but ....
I think what you means is a game which don't focus on those short term goals, but have deep insightful design and system.
How is hundreds of hours played considered "instant gratification"?
I know this particular post is from 7 days ago, but I think Thane nailed this right square on the head. Unfortunately this will slip past the majority of the posters here. To many times people try to get others to rally with them when it comes complaining about features in a game, when they don't even own the game or when the game isn't even out yet. I really don't understand how some posters here just absolutely refuse to accept that not all games are made for their particluar playstyle. Then to try to get others to agree with them and to label others as fanboys. I guess everyone needs a hug every now and again, but to seek solace on the forums becuase you don't like a game is just kind of,...well I don't know.
"If I offended you, you needed it" -Corey Taylor
I don't sit around and complain about games, I don't go in and detail the things I don't like about them.
My only complaint is that there are no longer any quality games targeted at my audience. There is no new quality grinder game, the only asian grinder games are low budget skins on hero engine. Don't care about that.
If you're a themepark lover, who wants a guided tour through level 50 in your first week, you have 800 games to choose from.
If you want a long experience where you slowly grind your way through the content, you either have to settle for games from the 90s or you are out of luck.
Eh can't fully agree with 'bring back difficult leveling' but if anything it should by far have a curve. Having that 'instant gratification' has hampered it greatly in terms of both the reward and I feel has made it far easier for people to lose interest in a game. People have such a deep found "i want to have this and need this or else it is boring" kind of mindset I feel is ruining games for them. Why stick with a game if you get everything given to you and get nothing out of it. Look at shooters having even evolved a "leveling" system to keep attention upon them.
I really feel its the very same people who cry for everything being given to them that are being ruined by their own mentality from finding a 'connection' with a game.
I did vote yes to this question.
There are more questions to be asked for why mmorpgs have changed lot the past 10 years or so.
If you want to hear my personal opinion then read othervise dont:-)
Many years ago mmorpg's were few and had few players.Those players often met ingame and became friends,they figured out how to solve quests together(often those quests need lot of players to compleete)Those guys came even closer friends and even set up a rl pub evening even if those were from different countries)Happy guilds were made people had fun grouping with eachother.
Now something happens, big game companies start to make mmorpgs, and lot of people start to play those fantastic games made.
Now nobody has to figure out how to solw anything anymore but just go to this place and kill this amazing boss you need to bring 60 friends with you to kill it.
This did work fine for a litle vile, but very soon ther came some complications. In one ot those large groups there were one guy that felt "I'm the best fu,, the rest" and this one guy seem to have been playing all games released ever sinse. and when a regular player ends up in same group as this guy he/she choose to never group anymore in games.
That is imo the reason why grouping and raiding are fading away in our games and games are and will be focused more to solo and small group play.
I voted no. I hated the entire way this OP was phrased anyway, and part of me wanted to lash out about it. But thats not really doing anyone any favors. So, instead, I thought about what this trend is really trying to do and why its failing. Its not failing because we all want to play a game that takes 5 years to even see some content, in fact such an ideal is ludicrous. The only way to gate such content is to require the player to play the previous content over and over and over....blah blah blah...for those years. Its dull, unimaginative, and uninspired. Its lazy development, and it should neither be lauded or heralded by us.
Instead we should be looking at which moments of a game really impact us, which moments steal us away and stay with us forever. We should try to understand why those moments mattered on level more than just the basic system that allowed it. My favorite moments, for the record, are often never about some specific piece of content but about content that created itself naturally thanks to how a games systems allowed it to. In my post about PvP in a different thread, I mentioned how much I actually enjoyed WoW PvP long before it even had features to support it simply because the option to DO it created moments in the game that gave me choice and consequence that stuck with me. Similar things have happened regarding dungeons or raids. My happiest moments were never about killing a boss, or looting the chest at the end. They were always about something fun that happened within the confines of that system before the reward.
I loved having my raid afk before the Spider boss in ZF, only to have my friend pull her into them shouting that I had done it. The shambled escape, and interesting use of my skills to try and save people in that moment were more fun than the actual boss fight because it made me think outside the box AND have a good laugh. I loved the time I was grinding on orcs in EQOA as a wizard and jumped in, moments before the tank died, to unleash all my damage and pull the mob. I sat there casting and dismissing a familiar to heal me tiny bits each time to give the healer the 5 seconds they needed to get the tank back up. The grind was boring, but the moment of rush felt by really pushing the limits of what the game intended to really save the day and wow your party was awesome.
Really, its not longer levels we need...its more systems designed around getting variety of play and tools to allow the players to have more moments of personal and deep interaction. Dragging out levelling doesn't make a game fun at all. But rewarding the player for doing nothing all the time isn't fun either. The only reason a game like borderland is fun, while being a giant loot pinata, is because it was designed with that silliness in mind. The game was about being rediculous and over the top. Modern MMO's aren't, the loot pinata is just a carrot to make you do content. The content, or system creating it, should BE the reward. Too much focus is spent assuming we all just want loot all the time. Plenty of games prove that to be false.
It is never too late and as long as we have a solid idea of what it is we want to go back to it would be a big boost to MMO's. We do have good ideas in the newer MMO's, I would not advocate abandoning everything from them. But their inability to maintain traction with players is the writing on the wall. If MMO's just carry on as they are now, there will be no such thing as a AAA title again. In fact we may already have reached that stage.
If you want the only MMO titles around to be poorly funded and last a couple of months then its going to be a great next few years for you. Ask yourself this, why has no MMO beat AOC in graphics when it came out 5 years ago, why has hardly any MMO beat Lotro for landscapes when it came out six years ago, why are you never going to see a MMO with as many voice overs as SWTOR again? The funding is drying up and the MMO industry will not be able to give new games the development time they need.
Somewhat.
The same as players measure their performance, game makers look at what they do vs just what they say they are interested in. When they don't do "different" as much as "same", they lock & load that "sameness" as a functional feature.
As such, when players don't pay for "longer term efforts" but for "instant rewards", then they offer more and more instant rewards.
It's a balancing act for them but works about the same as a DPS person "optimizing their build" - the players parse the numbers and balance gear with crit rates vs base-damage, etc. Game makers "optimize'" their designs based upon what actually is done vs what people talk about.
Oh, yes we did. It was just confined to (at best) Usenet.
You have to remember, no plethora of web sites to complain ON.
Our gaming magazine was...Dragon...published on paper, snailmailed....
All video games are pointless. Some more so then others.
Sandbox means open world, non-linear gaming PERIOD!
Subscription Gaming, especially MMO gaming is a Cash grab bigger then the most P2W cash shop!
Bring Back Exploration and lengthy progression times. RPG's have always been about the Journey not the destination!!!
Isn't this the crux of the whole argument, because some old time MMO players find modern MMO's boring therefore they are bad and no one in their right mind can play these games for 100's of hours? I have 400 hours in SW:TOR, probably nearly 800 in WoW, over 100 hours in many others so I'm with Aerowyn I find there to be lots of value in modern MMO with lots of activities that interest me. But I do not denegrate others for not enjoying modern MMO's as this thread is doing to those who do.
This doom and gloom thread was brought to you by Chin Up the new ultra high caffeine soft drink for gamers who just need that boost of happiness after a long forum session.
The problem is that you only look at a narrow definition of MMOs. If you look at MMO-like games, or games with some MMO features, there are lots of successful, and AAA development because of that.
LOL, DOTA2, WOT, MWO, ARPGs ....
But you are right ... a narrow definition of MMOs ... those games are going out of favor. Embrace new ideas & new types/variations of games. Isn't that what innovation and gaming is about?
I think the people who long for "instant gratification" and the people who want "long and painful gratification" are more similar than different. They are, because they think that the purpose of an MMO is somewhere out there, in the tasks the developers place in front of them.
But what is missing from both of these sorry ass players is the desire to roleplay; the desire to create their own works of fiction as rolled up in their characters. When playing an MMO is a matter of playing a character, the content and the "gratification" isn't dependent on levels or grinding. That's why the early games, and the MUDs, could get away with permadeath, slow levelling and so on. The play wasn't about mechanics back then. It was about personality.
I could give a damn about "instant gratification" or "impossible levelling." Either system is equally meaningless, when all we do is push around "toons."
__________________________
"Its sad when people use religion to feel superior, its even worse to see people using a video game to do it."
--Arcken
"...when it comes to pimping EVE I have little restraints."
--Hellmar, CEO of CCP.
"It's like they took a gun, put it to their nugget sack and pulled the trigger over and over again, each time telling us how great it was that they were shooting themselves in the balls."
--Exar_Kun on SWG's NGE
why can't people see the middle ground? I didn't say long and painful.
MMORPG games are supposed to be a never ending experience.
The day the term End Game was introduced was the end of MMORPG games as we knew them.
"supposed to be" .. dictated by you?
MMORPGs are not supposed to be anything. The genre changes .. just like any other responding to market demand.
So what if a MMORPG is like a SP game but slightly longer? Finish the content. Move on. Come back if there is more content released. Don't tell me that is not how many play MMORPGs today.
I'm not saying 'every' mmo has to be this way.
The entire premise of my post is that there is no game alternative for people who actually want a good old fashioned mmo like what was offered in the late 90s, just with modern graphics.
All the games that are out now are just mildly different skins of eachothers, and people like me, who actually want a long and challenging game experience, have nowhere to turn at ALL.
Just 1 game, is that too much to ask? you dont have to play it, theres already 900 games for people who want to play the same old easy story and get directed to the next quest.
Anyhow, I respect everyones opinion here, keep it civil, I'm not dictating anything to anyone.
This has nothing to do with narrow definition, we are taking about a genre which will not be able to fund its titles as well as it used to. I do not believe any of the online game types you mentioned have had the funding that the likes of SWTOR or GW2 have had.