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[Column] General: MMOs are Hurting RPGs
SBFord
Former Associate EditorMember LegendaryPosts: 33,129
January is the perfect time for reflection. It’s the start of a new year, a breath of fresh air after the last; a time to look back on the prior twelve months and learn the lessons that need to be learned before moving forward. I have a lesson for the games industry in case it missed it: stop trying to copy MMORPGs. Your games are worse because of it.
Read more of Christopher Coke's The RPG Files: MMOs are Hurting RPGs.
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Comments
MMO's may be hurting games like DAI but they are not hurting games like dark souls and the up and coming Bloodbourne.
As for The Witcher 3 pc specs, CD Projek have always made their games to a high spec and long may it continue. The game will still look nice without everything maxed.
Stole my thunder. I was going to do a video on this very subject, but from the perspective that the current MMORPG model makes for stale and uninteresting gameplay. RPGs that depart from that model, like Skyrim and Divinity: Original Sin, offer the most rewarding RPG experience.
As you state in your article, the hellish level grinds from games like EverQuest are a thing of the past in the MMORPG market, so there is not reason (except laziness) that we couldn't have Skyrim type questing in MMORPGs.
Don't realy agee with the statement.
DA:I maps aren't that different from quite a lot older RPG's in terms of trash content. Maps form the Wizardry-Series, Might&Magic are very similar in many ways. Major difference is the gameplay of theese games felt a lot more rp-like while DA:I is a lot running around and simply rolling over most simple encounters.
The other negative development is the trivialisation of things like classes, skills, party-mechanics but again that development didn't started with MMO's but with more and more "action" influencing rpg's. For me it is much more an issue that is shared between rpg's and mmo's right now.
I wouldn't say that it is MMOs fault that lazy devs put in rat killing quests in them and that it started to show up in single player games as well.
It is more our fault that we accept filler content that adds very little to the game.
Someone said that the game couldn't always be fun but I don't see why not.. Why should I be forced to do others of boring stuff to get to something that is fun?
And a lot of how fun the content is depends on how you introduce it to the players as well. A well made quest can surprise the players, force them to think and interact with NPCs while a badly made one tells you exactly how to do it and let you kite the mobs so you can solve it without risking anything and then simply return to collect the reward.
One of the both best and worse examples on how to use quests are in EQ2. Some of the HQs there are epic, well made and takes an effort to complete but the game is filled with lazy fillers that forces you to menial tasks as well.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
It's the sad state of mainstream big budget game development these days. Can't really blame some other genre... I mean you can if you want but you're not seeing the larger issue. Yes, gather/fetch/kill quest are pretty horrible in any genre for the most part. But instead of change it, developers strive to add interesting context to mundane gameplay. If you can even call it gameplay. Because this isn't game design, really. It's just taking the same regurgitated garbage that has proven to satisfy the largest audience possible and just make changes to the who where and why. It's storytelling under the guise of a video game.
Thank you for this article. I totaly agree. What you describe has even to die in MMOS. seriously, this website has so many bad columns like "EverQuest Next Column: Reflections on a Year Closer to Next". This one is good and true though.
mmos arent hurting RPGs, companies are hurting RPGs by making them feel like mmos. Thats why i havent bought DA inquisition. Sure it has high production value, good story, etc etc, but everyone ive seen playing it says the exact same thing, gameplay (questing) feels like a generic F2P mmorpg full of mindless tasks that have nothing to do with the story.
I really dont want single player RPGs to suffer from the flaws that mmos cant overcome (or at least dont try hard enough)
The problem is that those kind of quests are quick and easy to make and quick and easy to complete. Games get streamlined to hell and back, nothing has to offer even remotely of a challenge or any kind of diversity. The irony is that sometimes they even get rid of directional quest objective indicators because everyone does them different, and that would be "diversity", and having to many markers (for every one of the 212782 kill/fetch quests) would be complicated on it's own.
And hearing that DA:I suffers from the TES syndrome, being saviour of the world etc. and getting asked to what even a peasant would take as an insult..
Hope the don't fall into that trap with TW3, given that they creatly increased the size of the world they had to fill it with *something*...
Stil, not all hope is lost: The quests in DA:I are still "handcrafted" and not automatically generated like in Skyrim. They *are* handcrafted, right..?
I'll wait to the day's end when the moon is high
And then I'll rise with the tide with a lust for life, I'll
Amass an army, and we'll harness a horde
And then we'll limp across the land until we stand at the shore
I don't agree. The game makes it very clear when you can leave the hinterlands. I am the only one who doesn't bother too much with side quests in RPGs? I think I spent a grand total of 30-40 minutes in the Hinterlands. If people decided to do the boring side quests, it's their choice.
Mission in life: Vanquish all MMORPG.com trolls - especially TESO, WOW and GW2 trolls.
Bioware games have never been known for amazing side quests. It's the main storyline that's interesting.
Do you play your games on your highest possible difficulty right from the start? If not. there is no point in complaing about lack of challenge.
Mission in life: Vanquish all MMORPG.com trolls - especially TESO, WOW and GW2 trolls.
the issue is not about player choice, its about the devs completely replacing good content with bad filler tasks.
How is this MMOs fault and not Bioware? Ignoring Destiny (which Bungie claims is an MMO but isn't at the same time, so it's not ruined by MMOs but is one), let's focus on DA:I. Bioware has long made pointless quests in their games since Mass Effect, even Jade Empire and of course their gem Knights Of The Old Republic. And they themselves designed SW:TOR, which is peppered with pointless quests. It's their company's own design philosophy that makes their own games be so-so rather than MMOs being blamed for this issue.
Just look at The Witcher 2 and the upcoming 3rd in the series, how they make it so great with quest interaction and design that there's no pointless quests. It's called doing it better and doing it right.
Yeah, the incredible number of filler quests has been getting to me, too. This form of questing adds two complications to the game which reduce the overall enjoyability. The first is that it is difficult to know when a quest will have some hidden effect on the story. Previous games in the series did have side quests, and those quests most definitely had an impact on the story in the long run. Outside companion quests, its like finding a needle in the haystack.
The other problem is that it derails the carefully laid pacing of the story found in the previous two Dragon Age entries. Dragon Age has always been an RPG with a laser focus on storytelling. With that as a precedent, it really hurts when a player spends countless hours grinding on quests and making no progression in the story whatsoever. Again, questing in order to find that one moment that will effect the story in some important, if minor, way.
almost everything is lazy garbage compared to Fallout 3 and even more, FalloutNew Vegas.
There is no such garbage as "kill ten rats" in Fallout. This world tells stories and you have an absolute decision making impact on the gameworld especially in New Vegas.
Bioware should be ashamed throwing lazy MMO grinding trashquests into single player RPGS.
Yes, be ashamed.
Games like TSW and ESO prove quests don't have to be dull in an MMO. GW2 showed us that quests can just happen all around you.
So why would this type of kill ten rats questing be limited to only ruining RPGs?
I honestly think the bigger issue is production values are ruining RPGs and MMORPGs alike. These games are getting glitzier and flashier but they're sacrificing content and stuffing it with filler.
Imagine if a AAA studio were to take half the team and half the budget a normal MMO gets and build a modern 2D MMORPG? The things they could do would probably be mind boggling. The features would be endless, the content would come so fast your head would spin and the fastest locust would fail to keep up!
That's just my 2 copper though..,
I'm sorry but I'm not a huge fan of DAI thus far or any new Bioware franchise in general, but FO3 and NV are full of trash quests, all of bethesda's/obsidian (NV) games are full of them, they are by far my favorite studios.. yet I can't deny that they are just as guilty in this regard.
You say this as if every single quest in the game is some deep story, not even close. So many kill/collect quests that basically boil down to help me make a pie, or kill those pesky rabbits for the farmer (MMO like filler). Learn to be at the least a tad objective rather than prop up your current FOTM.
The same could be directed at the guy trying to say The WItcher series has no "pointless quests".. Most of this is starting to look like studio/franchise bias. "my game's sh** doesn't stink"
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
MMOs themselves suffer the flaws of MMO pointlessness, so yeah I totally agree that it is stupid for single player RPGs to copy those things. Single player RPGs should focus on stories like all the best ones did (baldurs gate 2, oblivion, etc). MMO-RPGs should focus on role playing, world, exploration, and generally all kind of mechanics that makes players interact in some way.
The crazy thing is that single player RPG are actually best when they are themeparks with stories, while MMORPGs are best when they offer freedom and the "stories" are made by the players - The exact opposite to Themepark. And yet.. Look at what we are getting labelled as MMO.
And that is why players don't stick with MMOs very long... Use and discard, no incentive to invest, no reason to care, nothing to explore... Hop on the train and look out the vindow when the guide tells you to do so.
"I am my connectome" https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=HA7GwKXfJB0
Was about to respond with the same thing until I read your post.
Just to reiterate, these sorts of trivial quests have been and will always be horrible. Theres nothing wrong with a quest that requires you to kill something per se, but the generic way its been utilized by developers since WoW is just lazy. I'd go further and explain exactly how these quests are horrible and how they are further propagating a lazy model of mmorpg design, but its been done ad naseum and if you happen to be someone that likes these uninspired quests, theres no sense explaining it to you anyway.