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Does our nostalgia hinder our enjoyment of newer MMOs?
mgilbrtsn
Member EpicPosts: 3,430
The intent of the question is to see if people's perception from yesteryear affects perceptions and expectations of newer games. Do you find that because of your older experiences, that you find it difficult to recapture the spice and fun from your first generation of games. If you can, explain how or why.
I self identify as a monkey.
Comments
I would still like to up the difficulty in many games and there were certainly some things in older games that were really fun but ÅI always taken every game for what it is without looking at other games.
But I didn't vote since my answer is both yes and no.
I have a question for you... does your knowledge of History make you wish you lived a few hundred years ago or a few thousand? Does this knowledge of the past and how things were THEN cause a diminished enjoyment of the present?
It most definitely does for me and frankly I believe it should make me desire what was lost.
The fact that so few People even care what has been lost is what I see is the real problem.
So the answer is yes and no.
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2024: 47 years on the Net.
Still, some games are at least as good as old games, just look on Minecraft.
I think what really is needed is a technology that allows 2 guys to make a good modern game in a cellar instead of demanding 100s of people and millions of dollars. That really is what differs now from the 80s where a good idea and a little talent go you a hit game.
I think there are some who have this problem in MMOs. To a certain extent, this is natural, and some things should be sought after from the past. However, if it's to the extent that nearly everything is tainted that is new, I think it might be unhealthy.
I self identify as a monkey.
I actually enjoy it even more than my first time. Probably because I was 15 when I started playing EverQuest and around 19 when I quit. Because of my age and lack of gaming experience at the time I just didn't have a clue when it came to a lot of the game. I'm experiencing so much more of what the game has to offer playing now. The information available on the internet now is also so much better. There's also the fact that P1999 doesn't allow multi-boxing so grouping is way easier. The population is also more mature which has a huge impact on my enjoyment.
Thing is I can say my nostalgia doesn't prevent me from enjoying the game now more than I ever did. What prevents me and no doubt other people from enjoying current games is just that current games don't offer the same gameplay experience as before. Everything is so much easier and less social and in all games I play I like a good level of challenge and I think social interaction is the #1 reason why MMO's as a genre were even created.
Too bad the design of games now are being modeled after the world we live in - everything being made about ease of access and convenience and eliminating social interaction. No need to talk to people now to know whats going on, all the local gossip and news is available on your phone. No need ask a knowledgeable friend how to fix something. Nah, you can just look up how to fix it on youtube and then avoid looking like an idiot. However, maybe we're missing out by not having those people we rely on to help us with different things. Less of a need for that friend who's a car guy, friend who can help out with computer problems, etc.
I have two strong ideas i like to see in games, a very in depth yet easily playable combat system and in depth characterization.No i couldn't much care less about the looks of my character just so long as the gear looks good.
Well i do have a third preference,game ideas need to make sense,otherwise i am likely not playing them.I need to use my brain and my brain needs to make sense of ideas,i don't play games just to press the keyboard keys and see a level number go up.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
Other than that, no, not at all. I enjoy the new ones as much as I ever enjoyed the old ones. In some ways, even more.
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?”
― CD PROJEKT RED
I don't long to play the old games again. The ones I liked most are still online, and I could go play them if I so desired. I just want new MMOs to have the same passionate creativity that old ones had.
We constantly call most games "themeparks" because it's an apt description, but mmo development itself is a themepark. "Ok, developer don't forget to include easy leveling, homogenous jobs, meaningless transport system, ilevel gear, a dungeon finder (make that cross-server if you can)".
In most cases the innovation is gone, or is the sole focus of the team that everything else feels like crap. TERA and TSW are great examples because they came out at roughly the same time.
TERA did everything it could to make the greatest combat ever and it was fun and engaging and hard and put responsibility on each player. Maybe MMOs are only doing active combat now because the technology (especially connection speeds) wasn't there ten years ago, but this is a great example of how MMOs can progress! If combat is active enough, it almost doesn't matter if all you can do offensively is auto-attack (that wasn't the case, don't worry). TERA's problem is that it phoned it in on everything else. One starting point, questing was the worst in that game and you were tired of doing the same quests halfway through your second character.
The Secret World knew that questing was killing MMOs, so quests (and thus story) is where they were really really focusing the game, but combat sucked. The deck system? "No more Holy Trinity"? It was BS and it was slightly different button mashing than we'd did in WoW/etc for years.
I still stand by what I've always said, if a game came out with TERA's action combat, TSW's questing and FFXI's (or even FFXIV's) job system (largest point being multiple jobs on one character, and mixing in abilities from other jobs you've leveled), it would cause an upheaval in the genre.
Spec'ing properly is a gateway drug.
12 Million People have been meter spammed in heroics.
It doesn't for me. I think there are some people that misremember how broken some games were. I play SWG back in the day and am constantly amazed at how people gloss over some of the really broken aspects in that game.
I don't think the quality or enjoyability of MMOs has changed drastically over the last 12+ years. I get the feeling that is where some of the dissatisfaction comes from. People wanting things to be further along and far more innovative than a decade ago.
I know someone will yell open work open world. There are games with very large open worlds out there. That does not make them fun.
--John Ruskin
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein
"Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
With that said many people think it's the time period that made the communites great. It's not, it's the size. I've been apart of a fan-base for some time now, and it went from huge, to small and back to huge again. When it was small you tended to get very nice people. No conflicts and everyone was helpful and endearing to each other. When it got bigger again, you started getting people fighting, difference of opinions, people saying what the version you like sucked or was terrible, and sometimes even tension and it seemed like the community was going downhill. It's not. it's just the more people you have in a community the higher the chance you or the material will do something they don't like and you'll hear about it, especially if you are getting people who are just coming in for the popularity of it.
Help me Bioware, you're my only hope.
Is ToR going to be good? Dude it's Bioware making a freaking star wars game, all signs point to awesome. -G4tv MMo report.
I agree with the posters who said part of it is the community in terms of MMO games. The community wasn't nicer IMO, but it was more focused. Most of the people who played were fairly similar.
I don't like how mechanical most games feel these days. They are like copy and paste of each other with new content. The only new things are usually interface items that are said to make the game easier. I would say it again, but adventures can't be had with this structured environment. It needs to be more random and rely more on the player then on a large selection of helper tools. I feel like when I'm playing and MMO especially that I can see the ideas the developer had and it wasn't to make the game fun. Generally it is some underlying mechanic to keep people playing and repeating certain small set of select things over and over again.
I guess that nostalgia does impact my enjoyment of games in the sense that I'm better at seeing through game mechanics now and the way current games are structured it's a lot easier to kill the immersion for me with what MMOs are presenting today. In a lot of the older MMOs I could just jump in a get lost even though they had no quests. Part of it was lack of experience and part was the games had no structures, tutorials, GPS, auction house, etc. You were just dumped into a world and you figured things out.
I self identify as a monkey.
A lot of the personal player aspects have improved tremendously over the years. Unfortunately the aspects that are most important to me - community, interdependence, and game worlds - have degressed for the sake of convenience.