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Where is the mystery in MMOs?
Bananaramaa
Member Posts: 34
http://kotaku.com/5955326/we-are-explorers-in-search-of-mystery-in-videogames
Great read that highlights what I personally dislike about modern MMOs and many other AAA SP titles.
"Mystery is not just something in games. It responds to how we approach games, our attitude towards play. When my object is encounter not victory, surrender not sovereignty, awareness not oblivion. I am plunged into the very weirdness of virtual experience with my body intact and my whole nervous system alight.
Concerns for value or content subside. I'm not at a buffet, shoveling it on my plate, down my throat. I treat it not as a balm or distraction or prop for my ego.
Primed for mystery, I am vulnerable to transformation. I am curious about every odd reaction in myself. My senses are on fire.
I want to believe something is there. I offer the game a chance to earn my belief. I open myself to my own experience.
Why do we diminish our own experience? Are we afraid of not connecting, of confirming our solitude? We retreat to structure, design, quantifiable entanglements. All important but also insufficient, incomplete. We think subjectivity means only opinion and bias. We cry nostalgia at the first hint of feeling.
Yes, our experiences are unprovable. That is why we voice them."
We need that feeling of the mysterious, I don't want a shopping list of what will be in my MMO before it's released. And neither do I want my MMO to look like a shopping list of "features" at release.
One of the things I loved about PoE (although it's not exactly an MMO) was that feeling of just being dropped in the game, and then I branched out, discovered and explored.
I didn't give a damn about the balance.
Neither the umpteen other issues that might have plagued my experience in a lesser game. The vision of it captivated me from the off.
I've had this with older MMOs aswell, that feeling you don't know what's round the corner and neither does anyone else. A lot of people bring up the issues in the games, we never cared about the issues, it was the journey those games gave us that was special, it's the same in all good single player games.
What say you?
Comments
I say .. go play good SP games.
MMOs are now evolved to be progression and achievement focus. Why? Because other in your group may not have the patience to wait for the mystery to drop.
In a SP game, you can play at your own pace, and don't read spoilers. You don't have that luxury if you want to raid (or you can do LFR and face-roll the content).
Nothing, I've never played it. It looks great, I didn't think of it and it probably is one of the few games that fits the bill up here.
I just think this highlights a lot of what goes wrong for a lot of titles.
The mystery in MMOs was buried deeper and deeper as the web evolved and you can get an answer to almost anything with a few keystrokes. Now, that is not to say you cant have mystery in new MMOs, its just that a lot of new games now hold your hand and tell you where to go which kills the experience of exploration and figuring stuff out on your own. However, if they really just threw you into a game with little to no guidance the average player would get frustrated and quit which is bad for business.
I still recall my first time with WoW back in late Vanilla, i wasn't sure what i was doing and where to go sometimes, but back then the game really did a good job of balancing those factors. It made you have to think and pay a attention to your surroundings, but helped in some instances so you wouldn't be completely lost. Now WoW and many other newer games just mark everything on the map and you can literally navigate around anything by looking at the map 90% of the time.
Little to no replay value.
I did battle with ignorance today, and ignorance won.
To exercise power costs effort and demands courage. That is why so many fail to assert rights to which they are perfectly entitled - because a right is a kind of power but they are too lazy or too cowardly to exercise it. The virtues which cloak these faults are called patience and forbearance.
So, play it once and move on.
Is the first play through fun? I would prefer quality (fun) than quality (long game), you know.
This was actually the first thing that popped into my head when I saw the title. Yeah, it's behind in that shopping list of features that was talked about, and it's becoming more progression-focused everyday, but it certainly tries to avoid "quantifiable entanglements" and actually makes you stop and think (unless you just google the spoilers and skip all that).
Mystery only exists without knowledge and experience.
Remember when you were a child and thought magicians were awesome? Exactly. Now you see their lame tricks and could care less.
There can be no mystery when people spoil puzzles in chat or even worse, you google it yourself (TSW's biggest problem is that it literally tells you to use google).
"What has been seen cannot be unseen" is the internet's second motto after "the internet is for pron."
Once you know something, you forever lose that sense of mystery.
Couldnt agree more, I just picked up TSW and am enjoying the questing rather than the levelling which is a pleasant novelty. Great storytelling is grossly underestimated these days.
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
The Mystery is all over the internet. Players who want to beat a game instead of experience it outnumber those who feel differently.
- Al
Personally the only modern MMORPG trend that annoys me is the idea that MMOs need to be designed in a way to attract people who don't actually like MMOs. Which to me makes about as much sense as someone trying to figure out a way to get vegetarians to eat at their steakhouse.- FARGIN_WAR
Good mystery takes good writers. The lack of good mystery can only mean that there is a lack of good writers. I just watched last weeks episode of “The Following”. The mother was just reunited with her kidnapped son. In my opinion the first thing out of her mouth to the boy should have been, “Joe Carol is not your father, FBI agent Ryan is your father. You remember him, you ran away from him when he came to rescue you.” But that is not what happens, why? Because of bad writers.
Good writers are expensive, and bad writers are cheap. Businessmen always chose cheap over good. The Businessmen’s goal is to have a product that is nothing, and make the customer pay through the nose for it. By nothing I mean No material cost, No development cost, No Maintenance cost, absolutely No cost whatsoever. These Businessmen get so focused on this cost free goal that they run past minimum acceptable quality of product.
Also if you look at the responses to this thread, many players believe that mystery belongs in a single player game and not an MMO.Boy: Why can't I talk to Him?
Mom: We don't talk to Priests.
As if it could exist, without being payed for.
F2P means you get what you paid for. Pay nothing, get nothing.
Even telemarketers wouldn't think that.
It costs money to play. Therefore P2W.
I disagree that the mystery went with the internet, that's certainly a part of it but a lot of the time IMO the developers are out to ruin the mystery in their own games by putting everything there for you. They tell you everything up front.
I can play a game and ignore internet people completely but I cannot ignore the adversting and in game aspects the developer throws at me. GW2 is a classic example of this, they hyped their game with all the features and now that's what it feels like, a bunch of features and gameplay elements. It's a clusterfuck right the way through, do this, do that and all right now, and eternal stream of now being thrown at you.
But where is the time to stop and breath and let the game take you somewhere special. Nowhere, anything of any emotional or artistic method has been covered over by gameplay features.
We need someone brave enough to strip these games back and let the essence of it really shine.
Everyone and quite likely their mom know your preferences already. You pushing it into every thread is just getting annoying. Your response has absolutetly nothing to with my point in this thread.
I did battle with ignorance today, and ignorance won.
To exercise power costs effort and demands courage. That is why so many fail to assert rights to which they are perfectly entitled - because a right is a kind of power but they are too lazy or too cowardly to exercise it. The virtues which cloak these faults are called patience and forbearance.
I'd agree with this.
The only way for devs to prevent "Database" websites giving it away will be to create drops/quests that change location randomly. I'd love to see at least several zones like that in some games.
Take the Magic: The Gathering 'What Color Are You?' Quiz.
I'm not sure you're going to convince us that you accurately predict every story arc and location in a new MMORPG, let alone flawlessly play your character from the get-go.
So yeah...there's still mystery.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
This ^^^
There is no inherent reason why MMO needs mystery. Mystery is obviously not a requirement for fun.
And multi-player is just not conducive to mysteries. You can't prevent others from spoilers even when you don't want them. You can't prevent another to tell you the secret so you can hurry up the dungeon run. You cannot prevent another player to look something up from the web and tell you.
I don't think mysteries can be done well in a MMO, and probably hard to do even in small group multiplayer unless the experience is very controlled. (For example, you go through the SP campign with a friend, and both have to be at the same stage and play toether).
Well, it will still be a mystery but very little surprise to come with it. Random stuff will feel .. random.
And you can always go to the internet to read about how teh random process is generated.
How is my response not releveant?
You mentioned that the problem, you see, with the Secret World is "little to no repay value". If "little to no repay value" is not important to the player (obviously not to me, and probably not to many), then your point is less valid, and does not apply depending on teh preference of the player.
I see direct consequences of what i said, and the point you are trying to make. The fact that you are annoyed probably means that i am on the right tracked.
Mystery is gone when the developer has put so many helpful hints in the game that it doesn't feel like a world. And what I mean by that is is the little things above npc's heads and portals everywhere, whats the point of playing them anymore?
Sorry for the EQ reference, but when it first came out I had no clue on what to do and attacked my guild leader acouple times and was instantly killed LOL. Just getting lost in the starting citys created alot of mystery and wonder about all these diffrent factions withen my own race as some npc's wouldn't even talk to me.
I can ignore the Internet but I can't ignore the ingame immersion breakers.
Not at all actually. The response was not just at Tsw, but mystary in general. It has no replay value and therefore makes a terrible general subject for an mmo.
I did battle with ignorance today, and ignorance won.
To exercise power costs effort and demands courage. That is why so many fail to assert rights to which they are perfectly entitled - because a right is a kind of power but they are too lazy or too cowardly to exercise it. The virtues which cloak these faults are called patience and forbearance.
What i say is general to MMO too. Replay value is not important to everyone, for MMOs.