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Sad, Weary Veterans vs Naive Newbies
patient32
Member UncommonPosts: 96
Always see the same arguments.
"MMOs are rubbish now, in my day they were good!"
VS
"Maybe you just don't like gaming anymore! I'm having fun!"
Feels like it's just the veterans vs the newbies.
The veterans are fed up with the same old, same old and are longing for something new and interesting and truly next gen.
Where as the newbies to MMOs, are perfectly happy. They are still not much beyond their "honeymoon period" of MMO and they never got to experience what the Veterans did "back in the day"... So they are happy with what they have and don't get why the more seasoned MMOers are so unhappy.
Who has the best position? Don't know.
I'd love to enjoy what we have now... But then, not if meant I never got experience things like "Back in the day". As I think you really "had to be there" to really appreciate the older MMOs. Newbies going back to them... I'd imagine they just seem old and boring.
"It's like a finger pointing away to the moon... Don't concentrate on the finger or you'll miss all the heavenly glory" (Bruce Lee)
(Insert your favourite mmo here): ......And behold, a pale horse.... And a million hellishly bad mmos followed with it.
Comments
Epic Music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vAigCvelkhQ&list=PLo9FRw1AkDuQLEz7Gvvaz3ideB2NpFtT1
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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?"
One of the forum posters here has the cool title "Bitter Vet" (tm). I can't for the life of me remember who it is so I'm not going to speculate. :-)
I do agree that someone completely new to MMOs would probably enjoy current gen games just fine. I also think they might struggle with the "legacy" MMOs of the so-called Golden Age of MMOs. At least, most of them anyway. And there are always threads every month like "Say It's Nostalgia, But We Should Be Able To Go Back In Time And Bring Back Everquest 1."
I don't think this is a "who is right" sort of situation; it's just the natural evolution of MMOs, online gaming etc. Bitter vets are gonna be bitter, new players will have their fun, and everyone else in between will probably enjoy some and despise others. :-)
Anyway, I've only been around since 2004 on MMOs so I missed the true "legacy" days. I don't see the current state of things as a galactic crisis. Then again, I have gotten older with much less playtime available than in 2004. It's pretty subjective eh?
Many of them did try the old MMORPGs and hated the experience. The genre was not for them, like FPS is not my cup of tea. Instead of moving on and finding something else to play in their "limited time" (busy lives and all that), they bitched and moaned and cried. "Too hard!" "Takes too long to DO anything!" "Failure (death) is too tough!" "Combat is too slow!" "Combat sucks because *I* do not control EVERY aspect of it!" They changed the whole genre to suit their own needs, met much better in almost any other genre.
Now, since the genre population has increased 10x (a guess) with maybe 25% paying to play the games, there is no going back. One and done with a very high turnover rate is the norm, now.
- 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
Gamer veterans pre-dated MMORPGs and MMORPG veterans. Gamers pointed out early MMORPGs had lousy timesink-focused gameplay. A few gamers happened to work for a company that made gameplay-focused games. They made a gameplay-focused MMORPG. It was rather successful.
Nobody has a 'best position' since it's all subjective, but a whole lot more people subjectively like games which are about gameplay (decisions) than games which focus on timesinks and punishment. That was never what made games successful.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
You didn't miss much (except for watching it all "unfold").
Even with updated graphics many of the older MMOs would be dismissed as rubbish by the great majority of players today. Many of them were full of horrible gameplay elements that served little purpose except to create timesinks. Sitting down to "rest" for a minute after whacking a few mobs would have most people quitting the game very quickly these days.
Then there were death penalties that you had to rest off for x amount of time (cumulative even if I'm remembering some of them correctly) forcing even more downtime on you. Death penalties that could rob you of days of progress if your internet failed you, or if some jerk trained you with a gazillion mobs or griefed you in some other way.
I'll take today's games anytime.
My SWTOR referral link for those wanting to give the game a try. (Newbies get a welcome package while returning players get a few account upgrades to help with their preferred status.)
https://www.ashesofcreation.com/ref/Callaron/
Between the two, I'm more of a bitter vet. It's not to say that I don't find any joy in new MMOs (I think WIldstar and ESO are both good titles), it's just that i'm also older and less willing to pay for bulllshit. I'm less willing to support a game that hammers me with advertising. I was pleasantly surprised that ESO's store was obscured and I couldn't immediately identify it.
I still largely feel the promise of the early games has gone unfulfilled and will continue to be due to market forces. I'd ideally want a world not just a game, and I felt that few games really offer than in a polished form. Conversely, it's time to let go of that notion and enjoy games that are out. There are good ideas out there and they're worth supporting. It's always going to be a bumpy ride, and I can say that I enjoy games now more than I did then.
Yeah I didn't really agree with his "veterans wanting new and next gen".
I think we just wanted our games upgraded but with more old school mechanics.
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This. This, so much. I don't need to a game that punishes me left and right. I need a place to explore and roleplay.
Games WERE better back then. Not in terms of graphics or sound or any of the technical aspects of internet gaming, but they were most certainly better in terms of gameplay.
Early EQ, SWG before all the changes, Ultima Online and Asheron's Call. Those games had serious game systems whether it was crafting or group combat or questing or whatever.
WOW became popular because it was solo friendly and everything was easy, and that was the end of that.
It's sort of rare for things to devolve, usually things get better with time, but MMO gaming is certainly the exception to that rule. If you were not around for those early years 1999-2003 or so, you missed out on the best the genre had to offer. Anyone who played then will tell you there is no comparison with those games and the games today.
There is no best position. I played Star Wars Galaxies. (still do on SWGEMU). There is no open sandbox community based game like that anymore. And if you think it exists please let me know.
I don't want to go back. I want an updated PVE Sandbox like I had with Star Wars Galaxies. What I noticed over my tenure of gaming is that the audience has changed and gaming has advanced. I was naive to think when I was younger that what I was playing was just the beginning and that it was going to get better. That didnt happen. They moved away from open sandboxes and went with (what I call) the console model which is more based of flashy action and singular play.
But what I have noticed is this new way of MMO gaming cant keep the audience/community the older sandboxes had.
Maybe Star Citizen will be it. Or perhaps the Repopulation. Or Crowfall. But I definitely believe it will have to be an indie title as the corporation have no idea nor love for the genre. Just the limited money it generates.
IMO the grouping mentality needs to go, I've been playing MMORPG's since 2002, which to me means nothing, We're all newbs when we jump into new games. I certainly don't see it as giving me some status as a "veteran".
I still have fun in new games, I'm sure many other gamers who may have played and enjoyed old MMO"s do as well. My favorite so far was SWG, but that was because of certain features, not exactly the game as a whole, as with other MMO"s back then game-play itself as well as content was overly generic in delivery. That aspect of MMO's has changed, it's been evolving for quite a while. While it still doesn't compete with most single-player games, it's come a long way. Presentation as well...
That's really the big difference between games then and now... Development focus shifted, from there it boils down to preference. Do you want scripted content, tight game-play, good story/npc presentation, etc.. OR do you want a huge open world, that requires everyone providing each other with a game?
That's essentially the crux of it all... You can boil it down in smaller degrees, but each want is a compromise to another... It will be a long time before we can get it all. SC is essentially the first real step in that direction since SWG.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
I think the OP misses the point entirely but maybe he wasn't around back when gaming started seriously on PC's?
It is not a matter of games were better than now,it was a matter of developers getting all they could out of C code,limited Microsoft libraries and just overall limited technical knowledge.
Now fast forward,developers have TONS of knowledge,tons of resources,better Libraries thanks to Microsoft,better GPU bandwidth to work with,better code and what do they do with all that,they make games that could be made 15 years ago.
So their effort is extremely sub par when compared to what they COULD be doing.
So when you hear stuff like "we listen" and we are building the best game possible,they are listening to what they want to hear and doing what their budget calls for,they are NOT listening and definitely not making the best game they can.
Just look at SC as one example.What do we hear the most about this game,it's tech?It's size?It's systems?It's depth?NO we hear about the ships they have for sale.
Look at H1Z1,they CLAIMED their game was Alpha phase,early access gaming.Over 3 months they have made the news twice for their cash shop,not exactly an effort to get the game to a QUALITY state when all your worried about is the cash shop.
Go check out Steam and see how many of those early access,Greenlight games are still being worked on and how many have been stagnant for a year.
EVERYTHING now is a quick cash grab,nobody is putting out FINISHED products.Where else in society do we give out money for half ass?I mean if you got half your newspaper,i bet you would complain right?If your case of Beer had only 22 bottles instead of 24 ,complain right?If your cigarette pack was short 3 cigs,complain right?SO why does gaming get a free ride for unfinished work or half ass effort?
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
This shows a lack of understanding of what it takes to make any game of the scope of a modern AAA MMORPG.. You expect to get it all, because of tools available...Then comparing games made over 20 years ago, when failing to acknowledge, there wasn't nearly as much going on under the hood. Your post goes all over the place without providing any real logical point... DO you not realize how much time, resource as well as funds are put into these titles?
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
And this thread right here tells me there was always a divide among gamers. This isn't new versus old, just the same old argument of one opinion over the other. Some people value time driven content others enjoy just going through content.
It's somewhat like LoTR-extended movies versus Avengers. One takes commitment the other is quick fun. To each their own right? Nothing wrong with this.
Do you?
In the early 90's most of the engines were built from the ground up, so the initial time investment in just getting a base code infrastructure was intensive. A great deal of effort went into simply building an optimized design pattern, before a single artifact of the game was a reality.
Now we have a hugely robust and scalable framework for developers to work with. However there is so much overhead in adapting this tech it takes teams of people, and various SMEs to do it. Gone are the days of three people making a leading edge game together in their garage.
So really you are both correct. Tech evolved and with it there is a larger requirement for resources. However I still believe with concerted effort and passion developers could do a hell of a lot better.
Blizzard has already proved this. They put A and B together (well optimized design and self made framework) & (large team of developers) made billions.
where do you get your nostalgia goggles? They work fantastic. . .
I especially like the part that vanilla WoW was solo friendly and thats what made it popular. . .
I am the original, but not so bitter these days, I've made my peace, returned to the game I've most enjoyed, but keep an eye on the next crop, because who knows, one might strike my fancy.
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
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My point was comparing those games made in the 90's with what goes into these products today. At least compared to a AAA MMORPG..
Especially if you're trying to call those old games deeper, it's not a logical comparison, those old games were mostly nothing more than a learning lesson on how to present an action roll vs an attribute roll in a virtual environment... all of that is still being used today too a much larger degree in a AAA MMORPG. It also ignores standards of modern development, which are governed by our expectations. That's where wanting it all comes into play.
It's unrealistic to expect the best of both of those worlds, as the scope of said game would be astronomical. Meaning the budget is over the top.
The cost of moving forward in tech and scope is much larger than it was back in the day. Sure you can use some stock engine assets and create a game in Unity for free if you have no studio behind you. You can even go the IOS route and make something with RPG creator.. Which can be pretty deep in their own right given how much you want to account for in scripts. These will rarely if ever meet AAA standards though.
Also in terms of engines few MMORPG's are made on stock engines, many are Frankensteined into doing what the company wants/needs it to do. Mostly due to the time as well as budget that would be needed to create their own in house.
Look at SOE, taking all that time,effort as well as resource hasn't helped them much thus far.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
Well, you have to actually play a few different MMOs to notice how similar most of them are. That kinda takes noobs out of the picture but plenty of regular players who just played a couple of years say the same thing.
I don't think it being sad and weary to have the opinion that it would be good for both the games and the players if there were more diverse from eachother.
Lets see here:
Generic fantasy game close to Forgotten realms.
Character development based on levels for the first 20-60 hours or so of gameplay, after that gear based first on dungeons and then raids.
8-16 classes, some of them mirrors.
Around 20 skills, most from your proffesion, a few from speccing. They all uses cooldown and some skills are very similar to others but with a sligthly different animation.
Qestbased as long as you levels. 75% quests are Fedex, rat exterminator and escort the moron quests.
Combat is based on a very simple trinity, tank, healer and DPS.
And so on. Far from all games have exactly the same things in them but most have a lot in common both mechanics and world/story. And I ain't saying anything there is wrong but there are so many possible settings and mechanics you can use.
For example is fantasy pretty popular with gamers, but it is hardly the only popular setting. In pen and paper roleplaying it have maybe a third of the players, maybe even slightly more but scifi, cyberpunk, modern, horror, western, steampunk and many other settings are very popular as well. With MMOs at least 9 out of 10 games are fantasy and I am not so sure it is because the players want it, not to that degree.
To me it seems a group of investors and publishers just decided that this is how it should be and can't bothered giving us any other kind of games as long as they think they get in enough money on it.
And it is pretty sad, look on the different types of single player RPGs that have been made, while a bunch do have been D&D based even them often had rather different and interesting mechanics, from Eye of the beholder to SSIs Heroes of Krynn to Biowares Neverwinter nights.
That doesn't mean there is a problem with any specific game but the genre could be way larger if there were more games for different types of players. Stuff like Musketeers, Vikings, British 12th century outlaws and many other settings are popular enough to make hit TV series, any of them should be big enough for a good MMO.
Some of us predate mmorpgs by a long shot. I had the pleasure of playing video games a good twenty years before the first mmorpg came out. And I never stopped myself from experiencing all platforms, all genres. Consoles, PC, handheld, arcade everything you name it.
I've played games long enough to know there is no such thing as one true formula. There is always the possibility of experiencing something new even if at first glance it may seem the same old thing.
MMORPG vet here, but not bitter.
After mumbling around in this genre for +15 years, I've learned to make the best out of what comes my way. I have a firm grasp on what the old school wants, and I also have a firm belief that if it was delivered to us, we'd be disappointed. The games have changed, but so have the gamer mindset.
You know what will happen with the community when a game of an SWG/UO/EQ1 feel releases? It will be exactly like it is now... non-existent. As many many many have stated before, older MMORPGs made for extremely piss poor gaming, but they thrived successfully by providing other avenues of social entertainment between others. We no longer need the venues the MMORPG aided us with 10 years ago to engage with others. Guilds with plus +50 members have been established for +10 years remains in contact with each other via Ventrilo, TS, or social media. They will come together into this new 'old school' game pre-made, pre-determined, pre-loaded with MMO experience, and be completely interdependent which will totally wreck the idea in-game communications. Coordination will still be made out of game, recruitment will still be spammed with the individual requiring a mic and TS, and forced downtime will feel like a baron because people will still hate/have no need to pug.
Don't get me wrong, I believe that developers have the capability to make awesome sandboxes GAMES, but they don't have the ability to create the social experiment of the old because... well, it's old. The Repop has quite a few testers... with no local chatter. My crew has no need to chat in game. VOX will always be more efficient and there is nothing devs can do about it.
IMO, a world can't be established if there is no need to communicate in it...
For me, my patience is worn out. I hate gear grinds in a competitive environment such as instanced pvp that makes me useless and I have to put up with 100s possibly above 500s of hours to get good enough gear for pvp. Ruins the want to alt and try new things in the same mmo.
Pvp gear grinds should be something minimal. Raids and pve gear grinds should have high drop rates. I dont like to repeat raids just for a piece of armor.
The dev can try to reward players different by making their content more replayable. Make the dungeon dynamic and load differently but also offer diffferent rewards for beating certain times and rare drops for a recipe to make raid gear for example.
I find content is designed mostly to cover up how plain and limited certin experiences are with long grinds and impossible scenarios in pvp. I would prefer to find out I dont like a class early on knowing its maximum capabilities in pvp rather than invest 500 hours to get top gear. Which could have been spent playing alts in the same MMO as well.
So point being, gear grinds take too long for me as a veteran of mmos. I hate it, and makes me more cynical of the content of repeating rather than enjoying the content. Again, the gear grind design makes people focus less on the actual content (which might be medicore) and more on the grind. I would rather be bored of a class that I have done everything in regards with pvp rather than depressed, also considering being bored with one class does not mean its over for the MMO... there are alts/ other classes.
And new MMOs offer variety of quest mechanics. That is key. Groupoing content, solo, mini games etc, while older and small games have less variety. So, the journey also becomes more enjoyable in newer games or more developed games. Swtor is solid in this regard for VO and class story (side quests are lame- but there is group content as well while lvling), and I would say WoW does a decent effort of mixing it up a bit with different mechanics and pet battles, but maybe there are too many side quests that take away from the epicness of the main stories in WoW... and it would be better to just have dynamic events with different quest mechanics and some bounty hunting for npcs and main class stories. side questing is becoming a bane to my mmo existence.
In my mind... i imagine a new kind of fun mmo combat. Imagine an fps system but with lots of hotkeys and cds like an MMO. You load the spell by pressing hotkey, and fire it like it were an fps. Its a fps and mmo hybrid while bringing the fluidity of fps games with their movements and strafing tactics, im sure its been done similarly in other games ... maybe darkfall? but i think darkfall is more mmo than my suggested idea where you have to load it first then fire.
tdlr; Gear grinds dont work well for vets imo. And limits experience for alting.
Write bad things that are done to you in sand, but write the good things that happen to you on a piece of marble
Challenge yourself to not do what you think you're supposed to do. Pick an MMO and literally force yourself to play how you want to play and forget the trappings. Forget about the treadmills and quest hubs. Just do what you want. You will be surprised how much the game opens up to you and how many other people are playing the same way. It's like when you see a car you like and then you start seeing it everywhere. Trust yourself to play an MMO the way you want.