Funnily enough I still prefer your example over something like:
Kill skeleton Kill skeleton Kill skeleton Kill skeleton Kill skeleton 100X Oh wow look, sword +1 Kill skeleton Kill skeleton Kill skeleton 100X Get killed, lose xp you gained the last 10 hours killing those skeletons.
Pretty much the only thing I agree with is that Morrowind is a much better game then Skyrim or Oblivion (hated both). I also think a lot of people here confuse 'streamlined' with 'dumbed down' and 'accessible' with 'simple.'
/Cheers, Lahnmir
Totally agree.
People complaining about modern gameplay are simply ignoring the fact that earlier games -- and especially early MMORPGs -- weren't exactly bastions of game depth.
This is even more true of the OP's criticism of fast travel. With endless skeleton grinding at least there's some gameplay there. With slow travel, you simply watch a tedious run animation with the barest hint of mob-avoidance gameplay. Incredibly shallow.
I'm certainly not saying all modern games are deep. Most aren't.
But when depth stares players in the face, a lot of players look at the wrong metrics and make incorrect assumptions like, "The number of abilities my WOW class has is fewer this expansion, therefore my class must be dumbed down." Meanwhile in spite of fewer abilities, the actual nuance involved in the better WOW rotations is as intricate as it's ever been! So the depth of WOW is as high as it's ever been, and I'm aware of only one playstyle in any other MMORPG (FFXIV's Lancer rotation) which achieves similar depth.
It'd be nice if everyone looked at things with a scientific/objective perspective, but that's not how people generally work. And so you get 'dumbed down' flung as an insult, typically by players who enjoy games which were legitimately quite shallow.
New MMORPG are like being placed in a cell with the same 7 games to repeat play over and over. Got to the next cell or prison with new decoration same 7 games. Older ones were more like hiking in a park and making your own adventure and where random things could happen.
The depth of say EQ since that's popular was more subtle then what quest 7. Some places were more dangerous because mobs were tougher, the area more deadly, NPCS were smarter or your class just matched up badly/well. You could handle each encounter at a spawn point fine, then one time a trash mob could get away and call reinforcements. Somebody could train on you. High level creature caught you unaware. Those NPC heal or stun or whatever the next one doesn't. That's more variable then running doing the same quest in every game... clicking crap and steam rolling everything neatly arranged for you to level perfectly.
You'll see a lot of people say EQ isn't hard just tedious. I think its just revisionist history.
what is so hard camping the same mob over and over and over again? I take a number and wait to get help in grocery stores too. Is that challenging now?
Tedious ... that is the definition of tedious.
You're picking one thing I mentioned. IT was harder. I named a lot of things and like I said revisionist history focus on spawn camping.
You'll see a lot of people say EQ isn't hard just tedious. I think its just revisionist history.
what is so hard camping the same mob over and over and over again? I take a number and wait to get help in grocery stores too. Is that challenging now?
Tedious ... that is the definition of tedious.
You're picking one thing I mentioned. IT was harder. I named a lot of things and like I said revisionist history focus on spawn camping.
lol .. staying in the same place killing the same mob again and again is hard????
If you can kill it again and again (or may be die like 5% of the time) .. that is hard? In what universe?
And what else is there? Spawn camping is 99% of the game. It is there when you level and it is there when you camp for gear.
You'll see a lot of people say EQ isn't hard just tedious. I think its just revisionist history.
what is so hard camping the same mob over and over and over again? I take a number and wait to get help in grocery stores too. Is that challenging now?
Tedious ... that is the definition of tedious.
You're picking one thing I mentioned. IT was harder. I named a lot of things and like I said revisionist history focus on spawn camping.
Subjective, I don't find EQ harder than todays MMOs. The game didn't require more thinking or skill than todays MMOs, far from it.
But like Distopia has said, MMORPGs have never been about requiring much skill or thinking. They're probably the most casual when it comes to combat.
Yes, I would say people simply understate the how harsh EQ was especially compared to now. The unknown predictable variables. One mob escaping in a dungeon could mean everyone dies.
I think most understand it was harsh, but have no desire to go through that experience. I think most have a different idea of what is fun these days. Even I have a different idea of what is fun these days, but it doesn't appear to be current MMOs.
You'll see a lot of people say EQ isn't hard just tedious. I think its just revisionist history.
Modern MMORPG experience is just too predictable and too bland. Before you log on you pretty much know what you're going to do.
"What will I do tonight?" I know! We'll take over from the morning shift and stand around on our camping spot all night waiting for the boss to spawn!
--
Side note: I think games became "too easy" when they stopped showing the combat math. (Before the first mmos)
Of course, games also reached a point when they stopped punishing failure. It's up to the individual mmoasochist whether they enjoy entertainment punishing them (or not).
And (at some point) the developers seem to have reached a conclusion that leveling content is not the game; it's trivia before the game begins. (Plenty of disagreement with the Old Skool POV on that one.)
To me hard means it takes a lot of practice to be good... RPG's really aren't about that, they're more about building stats. Which is just time consuming, not exactly hard. Dying a lot in a game like EQ is more about the stats and numbers behind the scenes (the variables in dice rolls).
Same goes for older games like BG, NWN so and and so forth. Contrast that to something like Divinity original sin, or Wasteland 2 (modern RPGs) they require far more strategy than games of the past, especially D:OS... Tactics play far more of a role than they did in older games of the sort (say compared to FO 1+2).
D:OS and WL2 requiring strategy lol. These are the type of games that require you to notice a tiny switch on a wall to progress and call it a challenge. That searching everywhere like a moron strategy tho.
I was referring to combat, and the way in which elements play into the game, it allows two players to work together in ways few games have in the past...
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
New MMORPG are like being placed in a cell with the same 7 games to repeat play over and over. Got to the next cell or prison with new decoration same 7 games. Older ones were more like hiking in a park and making your own adventure and where random things could happen.
The depth of say EQ since that's popular was more subtle then what quest 7. Some places were more dangerous because mobs were tougher, the area more deadly, NPCS were smarter or your class just matched up badly/well. You could handle each encounter at a spawn point fine, then one time a trash mob could get away and call reinforcements. Somebody could train on you. High level creature caught you unaware. Those NPC heal or stun or whatever the next one doesn't. That's more variable then running doing the same quest in every game... clicking crap and steam rolling everything neatly arranged for you to level perfectly.
You say that like these games today don't feature any of that... Elite mobs, adds, high level creatures, what games don't have that? all MMORPG's I've played have featured these things, they've all featured trash mobs as well... The main difference in difficulty is the rate in which you advance as well as become outfitted. The main difference in the experience as a whole is that now, they're centered around scripted content as well as storyline content. Without that they'd be the same old games as always (as far as non sandboxes go). Which is probably the real problem for most people, yet that doesn't carry with it some bragging right of superiority. Some of you folks act as though you're the only ones who played old games around here.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
LOL... Blizzard does what it does, often without regard to what the players want.
The issue at hand here is that there is no game anymore... just end game. A book without a story, just an ending. What's the point of raiding and dungeons if the people you are running them with are complete total strangers and remain that way? What's the point in having a world when 90% of your time in game is spent in an instance?
The game used to have a game... now it doesn't. People seem to think that the center of the tootsie roll pop is the only thing there is... forget about the candy shell, it's just keeping you from getting to the tootsie roll.
It's a lobby game because we play it that way. Why develop for the 10% that don't play it that way when 90% are at end game within a week? We got to keep their treadmill going otherwise they'll just leave.
Content is all that stuff BEFORE endgame. Endgame should only be something you do when you literally are at the end of the game and the next expansion is imminent... not within a week of installing the game.
You blame the new generation when in fact it is as much the older generation doing it as anyone else. No one is crying for these changes... they are being made BASED on what they see the players DOING.
You ignore the content, they stop making it. Common sense. You embrace the content more than endgame and they will focus more on the content again. But if endgame is all you want, you're not looking to play an MMORPG in the first place... just a lobby game. And damn if that isn't what they gave you.
Well said friend ... I could not have said it better. We all are at fault for this.
You'll see a lot of people say EQ isn't hard just tedious. I think its just revisionist history.
what is so hard camping the same mob over and over and over again? I take a number and wait to get help in grocery stores too. Is that challenging now?
Tedious ... that is the definition of tedious.
You're picking one thing I mentioned. IT was harder. I named a lot of things and like I said revisionist history focus on spawn camping.
lol .. staying in the same place killing the same mob again and again is hard????
If you can kill it again and again (or may be die like 5% of the time) .. that is hard? In what universe?
And what else is there? Spawn camping is 99% of the game. It is there when you level and it is there when you camp for gear.
As, I said you're point out spawn camping. The game world was a lot harder. Others have point out the differences. I have played modern MMOPRGs to my 30's where I simply never died. Everquest you could die easily to things you simply couldn't control from level 1. If you died somewhere bad it was hard to get your body back. If you died you lost something.
What you have to remember is that I don't support grinds of any kind be it quest, NPC, camp or whatever. I don't car about group combat. I am not even an EQ fan in general because I prefer sandbox games like UO and SWG. But to deny the game was harder than current easy mode games is silly.
What is this sentiment that "We play MMORPGs to have fun?" Yeah, some games I do. But I never played old school MMORPGs to "Have fun". I played those games to fill a sense of "job well done" within my entertainment world. I'm not talking about finding fulfillment in life, but just a different motivation for playing a certain type of game. I never once deluded myself into thinking spawn camping was fun or mindless grinding was fun. It wasn't. It wasn't supposed to be. It was what you did. You repeated activities that no one wanted so that you could stand out. You could differentiate yourself from the pack in some way. You did things others did not want to and got something to show for it.
But instead some movement within the genre started thinking "This should be fun" But given the nature of what this genre is, "Fun" isn't sustainable. And I think the developers knew this. But they tired anyway.......and failed. Maybe if it was possible, we'd have seen real evidence of all this "innovation" and the genre would leaped forward. Instead we get endless pages like this one indicating a problem in the genre. Look at Wildstar. I remember how much they hyped their combat. and how it was going to be different. But MMO combat, is one of the most repetitive activities in these games. It needs to be fluid, basic and intuitive. That's not Wildstar. What is challenging for an hour simply become busy-work very quickly and this became a negative for the game.
Anyway, that was then, this is now. Now we have a mix of players who can't agree on what is good for the genre.....And some who don't even know what the genre is. The key for success going forward would be to try to achieve some measure of balance between them.
New MMORPG are like being placed in a cell with the same 7 games to repeat play over and over. Got to the next cell or prison with new decoration same 7 games. Older ones were more like hiking in a park and making your own adventure and where random things could happen.
The depth of say EQ since that's popular was more subtle then what quest 7. Some places were more dangerous because mobs were tougher, the area more deadly, NPCS were smarter or your class just matched up badly/well. You could handle each encounter at a spawn point fine, then one time a trash mob could get away and call reinforcements. Somebody could train on you. High level creature caught you unaware. Those NPC heal or stun or whatever the next one doesn't. That's more variable then running doing the same quest in every game... clicking crap and steam rolling everything neatly arranged for you to level perfectly.
A cynical person might oversimplify FPSes as "just about shooting things", using that as a basis to claim every FPS is "the same game over and over".
But unlike that person surely you can tell the difference between modern MMORPGs. Surely you see ESO, GW2, RIFT, and TOR are just as different from one another as those various FPSes. They're all games in the same genres, so they share a lot of similarities, but the differences are quite distinct and meaningful.
Citing some subtleties to EQ and then ignoring the subtleties that set modern games apart is textbook rose-colored glasses.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
New MMORPG are like being placed in a cell with the same 7 games to repeat play over and over. Got to the next cell or prison with new decoration same 7 games. Older ones were more like hiking in a park and making your own adventure and where random things could happen.
The depth of say EQ since that's popular was more subtle then what quest 7. Some places were more dangerous because mobs were tougher, the area more deadly, NPCS were smarter or your class just matched up badly/well. You could handle each encounter at a spawn point fine, then one time a trash mob could get away and call reinforcements. Somebody could train on you. High level creature caught you unaware. Those NPC heal or stun or whatever the next one doesn't. That's more variable then running doing the same quest in every game... clicking crap and steam rolling everything neatly arranged for you to level perfectly.
A cynical person might oversimplify FPSes as "just about shooting things", using that as a basis to claim every FPS is "the same game over and over".
But unlike that person surely you can tell the difference between modern MMORPGs. Surely you see ESO, GW2, RIFT, and TOR are just as different from one another as those various FPSes. They're all games in the same genres, so they share a lot of similarities, but the differences are quite distinct and meaningful.
Citing some subtleties to EQ and then ignoring the subtleties that set modern games apart is textbook rose-colored glasses.
I would say that there actually is more difference with different FPS games then MMOs, far more. It is very different to play a Co-OP Rainbow 6 game (yeah, they are still making them) and playing Battlefield PvP.
The MMOs might at first glance seems more different but the goal is always to get cooler gear and you play them about the same way no matter if you play TOR or ESO even if TOR have more cutscenes and higher soloing focus.
FPS games tend to be more focused on a specific type of gameplay, you can certainly solo or PvP in Rainbow 6 but the main focus of the game is to co-op a small Swat team to hunt down the bad guys.
EQ did have it's advantages over modern MMOs just like it had it's disadvantages. It was grindy and buggy but it also offered a danger we don't see in any modern games today. Some of those things I miss while I am happy we are ridd of others.
Playing GW2 is quite different from playing WoW, Rift, or SW:TOR, or EQ/EQ2, so different actually that most of the crowd which was used to the "EQ/WoW" model were lost when they started playing. Those who played Asheron's Call though were used to the exploration based progress and didn't have a problem to adapt to it. Neither did the ex-UO players. That's what I've observed in my guild at least, and on these forums based on the various comments too.
The EQ/WoW clone model players who have never tried anything else seriously are lost when a developer tries something different. So who is to blame... the developers... or the players?
That's a very Interesting observation. But I am going to have to say it's the developers. If they are creating a game and don't know who their market is, then they didn't do their homework. If developers are going to target a certain demographic, in this case, players who only know WoW, and the game they are developing is quite different, and they don't take this into account by designing mechanics that help transition these very players they target marketed, then that is definitely the developer's failure.
Wow. Auto-pathing? Quest map markers? Instant fast travel? Dungeon finder? Leveling while AFK/Offline?
Oh my gosh, there's so many ways to raise up all your variable indicators in video games without actually having to do the R, P, or G in RPG. Yes these games are massively multiplayer and they have WOWZOR graphics and really neat animations and excellent music.
I spent the last weekend playing Morrowind (Elder Scrolls III for those of you in Rio Linda,) and realized the same things have happened in Oblivion and Skyrim / Fallout NV and Fallout V. Even the single player games are getting worse not better. Some how game developers think games are better when you have to be less invested in them. You go on there, next next next, fast travel, accomplish mission, look for next quest indicator, have no idea what you just did or why you did it, but YAY you finished a quest.
I remember spending 3-4 hours in the afternoon farming skeletons in a dungeon. It wasn't dreary or monotonous... We were looking for epic loot, it was 0.00001% for the epic loot, but me and 3 or 4 people I didn't know would have some of the greatest conversations while doing it. The games were super fun. Max level? End Game?? What's that?
The problem is not the grind, or lack of grind, it's purely the presentation. Games have gotten so focused on removing all essence of grind, that it's usually a slippy slide to max level, then an ATARI game once you get there. That's why these games die, once people get to the bottom of the slippy slide and realize they don't care for the ATARI game, they come back on these forums looking for the next one.
So here are my list of things that are obviously getting scraped off of games that's making them less fun: Time investment, critical thinking (Figuring out what you're supposed to do, and where you're supposed to go,) social interaction (dungeon instafinder,) decisions, consequences, and risk/reward (just reward).
Oh, you clicked the exclamation point guy, here's you're new sword!!!!! YAYYYY. I want to puke, you don't have to earn anything on games anymore, you're just supposed to spend 3 days clicking next and auto-pathing in line with all the gold-farm bots. What happened to crafting your gear, or rounding up friends to go try to take down a big monster that might drop it. LOL even the big monsters are easy now, I remember back in the day raid bosses were usually failures and guilds would take turns pulling them.
Can 1 developer, just 1, please, download Morrowind and play it for 24 hours in-game time. Can just 1 download... Well, I was going to say Lineage 2, but it's been made over into a 'modern game' lol. I was going to say put 8 hours into the original Runescape, but I don't think they let you do that either. Ultima Online? Try it for 6 hours for the concepts, no I don't want the graphics. Forget you ever saw WoW, it's not to be replicated, the reason there's the drought of amazing games is because of the constant incessant attempts at bringing WoW elements into other games.
Hah, lets even follow the progression of WoW. Vanilla: With a baseline of quest indicators and other things we really hadn't seen before, lots of talents (hundreds of viable builds), very expensive to change them. Black rock depths was a dungeon most casual players couldn't finish. Getting to the entrance of the dungeon with your group was a task of itself, really meant if you died in the dungeon it was going to be even more frustrating. Timed dungeons where if you weren't really good you'd actually fail the dungeon. ... Molten core? Youtube: MC Raiders "We ain't got no lifffeee" BWL, 90% couldn't get past the first boss. BC: Missed it won't pretend. WOTLK: I played this one. A lot less talents by now, less decisions, more similar character builds. In fact, it got to where you weren't viable unless you put your points in the right places so there were like 20 to 25 viable builds per class. Easy / Hard mode dungeon, so everyone can win!! Play easymode until your gear = X then go to hard mode and maybe fail a dungeon once or twice, but then back to winning. (Did dungeon finder come at the end) Cataclysm: Dungeonfinder!!!! Now I can troll global chat in Orgrimmar while getting ready for my dungeon. Even less talents, Down to like 15 viable builds per class. Rated battlegrounds were freaking awesome. If you enter a dungeon you can finish it, you might wipe once or twice, but you can finish it, no problem. (Raids are still hard) Pandas: Raidfinder!!! Now I don't have to get a group for that either. Less talents, down to like 8 viable builds. Got mad and quit about the talent dumbing down. Now: Almost to atari game.
Just to show you how over the last 10 years games have been made more narrow and freedom has been traded for fairness. Risk/Reward has been traded for quest rewards. Even social grouping has been traded for random grouping.
I Totally agree with you. But today everything have to be easy in order to sell to many as possible
New MMORPG are like being placed in a cell with the same 7 games to repeat play over and over. Got to the next cell or prison with new decoration same 7 games. Older ones were more like hiking in a park and making your own adventure and where random things could happen.
The depth of say EQ since that's popular was more subtle then what quest 7. Some places were more dangerous because mobs were tougher, the area more deadly, NPCS were smarter or your class just matched up badly/well. You could handle each encounter at a spawn point fine, then one time a trash mob could get away and call reinforcements. Somebody could train on you. High level creature caught you unaware. Those NPC heal or stun or whatever the next one doesn't. That's more variable then running doing the same quest in every game... clicking crap and steam rolling everything neatly arranged for you to level perfectly.
You say that like these games today don't feature any of that... Elite mobs, adds, high level creatures, what games don't have that? all MMORPG's I've played have featured these things, they've all featured trash mobs as well... The main difference in difficulty is the rate in which you advance as well as become outfitted. The main difference in the experience as a whole is that now, they're centered around scripted content as well as storyline content. Without that they'd be the same old games as always (as far as non sandboxes go). Which is probably the real problem for most people, yet that doesn't carry with it some bragging right of superiority. Some of you folks act as though you're the only ones who played old games around here.
Today's games have that in a much more limited way.
Everything is sectioned off. Pretty much all solo quests are non questions in terms of weather you will be able to complete it without help. It's easy to find the quest because the NPC has ! over their head. You are shown by a GPS where to go so you don't really need to read the quest text or find out what the purpose is. Something will pop up and say wolves killed 0 or item delivered 0. The mobs for solo quests are easily steamrolled with little resistance. Chances of dying are unlikely and even if you did there is no penalty for doing so. You have 100% chance to progress no matter how bad you might be.
Compare that to EQ where there are no indicators of where to go or what to do. Mobs will team up on you even in the starter areas and kill you. The con system is unreliable because certain mobs will always be more powerful than others depending on their abilities.
As mentioned by Vermillion and ignored there were lots more random factors coming into play like mobs assisting each other, people bringing trains, wandering mobs, and even bad pathing of mobs sadly.
A lot of the difference is that things were not separated from each other. In EQ all mobs were eilte. There was no solo, group, and raid sectioned off. It was a persistent world. One of the things that annoys me most about current MMOs is how everything is so segregated into different sections. Basically everything is very structured and setup to be done an exact way. There is no room for experimentation with different things in the games. Basically it's this area has mobs designed to be easily steamrolled for solo, this area has mobs setup for group, and this area has mobs setup for raid. That is extremely boring and requires no experimentation on figuring out what you can and can't take down. It's basically impossible to solo in group instances in this day and age. The developers make sure you can't do it and even if you could it's boring because it's instanced off away from the rest of the world.
Playing GW2 is quite different from playing WoW, Rift, or SW:TOR, or EQ/EQ2, so different actually that most of the crowd which was used to the "EQ/WoW" model were lost when they started playing. Those who played Asheron's Call though were used to the exploration based progress and didn't have a problem to adapt to it. Neither did the ex-UO players. That's what I've observed in my guild at least, and on these forums based on the various comments too.
The EQ/WoW clone model players who have never tried anything else seriously are lost when a developer tries something different. So who is to blame... the developers... or the players?
That's a very Interesting observation. But I am going to have to say it's the developers. If they are creating a game and don't know who their market is, then they didn't do their homework. If developers are going to target a certain demographic, in this case, players who only know WoW, and the game they are developing is quite different, and they don't take this into account by designing mechanics that help transition these very players they target marketed, then that is definitely the developer's failure.
You pretty much understood the point I was trying to make. MMORPGs are games which cost millions to make, and the AAA developers won't make a product only a few souls lost in nostalgia will play. They need income to get a return from their investment. And the more players, the more income.
So if the genre supposedly "stagnates", it's not because of the developers. It's because many players are unable to adapt when a developer tries something even just slightly different from the EQ/WoW clone norm, which actually comes from Dungeon and Dragons and it's class/level model, which engendered the DikkuMUD which was the model for EQ which was the model for WoW (and its bad clones).
Yeah, I think I was looking at it from the other side of the coin. You are saying, they understand this "gap" and aren't going to spend the money?
I would say that there actually is more difference with different FPS games then MMOs, far more. It is very different to play a Co-OP Rainbow 6 game (yeah, they are still making them) and playing Battlefield PvP.
The MMOs might at first glance seems more different but the goal is always to get cooler gear and you play them about the same way no matter if you play TOR or ESO even if TOR have more cutscenes and higher soloing focus.
FPS games tend to be more focused on a specific type of gameplay, you can certainly solo or PvP in Rainbow 6 but the main focus of the game is to co-op a small Swat team to hunt down the bad guys.
EQ did have it's advantages over modern MMOs just like it had it's disadvantages. It was grindy and buggy but it also offered a danger we don't see in any modern games today. Some of those things I miss while I am happy we are ridd of others.
Strange arguments:
It is very different to play GW2 keep siege and a WOW PVE raid. Are you suggesting you think these two activities play the same?
FPSes can cynically be summarized as "shooting". RPGs can cynically be summarized as "progressing" (as you've just done.) These summaries completely ignore the meaningful differences that exist among different RPGs and different FPSes.
It's true that FPSes are more likely to focus on one type of gameplay, and if you're suggesting MMORPGs should be more specialized and less generalistic, I think I'd agree.
It's also true that MMORPGs as a genre have failed to offer difficulty selection (except CoH and DDO). While it's a definite failure point and should be improved, it's not like you can't find danger in these games -- unless you're claiming to have straight-shot every boss in every MMORPG you've ever played without ever wiping.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
You wouldn't want to play old MMO's. The standard back then was totally unforgiving & unrewarding. Games actually do that now and people complain... lol.
Lets compare to say Everquest one of the most popular MMO's for its time.
1. Racial & class exp penalties.
I played a troll shadowknight. People used to complain saying that when I joined their group exp slowed down. Sometimes people wouldn't group with Troll Shadowknights. Turns out they were right. Due to troll shadowknights racial & class exp penalties they sucked more exp per kill from everything which reduced the rest of the groups exp. Verant would later remove this after many years of denial.
2. Vanilla EQ had 2 dungeons for end game
There was Solusek B & Lower Guk for levelling to 50. That was it. Back then you had to zone in & ask to get on lists for a group. Nothing was instanced. Wherever a named npc spawed a group would sit and wait and kill stuff. Sometimes the named wouldn't even spawn you'd get a placeholder. So you'd sit there for hours killing the same shit hoping for the named npc to spawn. If you were lucky to get into a group. If you didn't get a group you'd be killing guards outside cities. That was it !
3. Quest givers didn't have ! above their heads.
You actually had to type key words to trigger quests... npc's would talk and their dialogue would have key words that led to other options but you had to actually type the key word to trigger that.
4. Hell levels.
Once you get to level 30, every 5 levels after was called a hell level. Verant would eventually acknowlege & remove this but to be honest they were fucking horrible. So you'd get to 35 and find damn.. exp is super slow. Turned out yes every 5 levels took double the exp to get through. You'd be farming for 3 hours and get half a bubble of exp. If you died you lost almost 2 bubbles of exp.
5. Death & Corpse Runs
If you died you not only lost exp & possibly a level but you'd respawn wherever you were bound. You could get bound outside cities. Then you'd run naked all the way back to your corpse to loot items.
6. Racism
Different factions were killed on sight. I played a troll shadowknight who worshipped Cazic Thule who was pretty much the Satan of the universe. My poor TSK was killed on sight EVERYWHERE in the game world other then a few evil cities, even then tney let the godamn froglock race have the hometown of Grobb and moved trolls into Dark Elves city.
7. Quests sucked
Quests usually required a ridiculous amount of time & effort by 20+ people for miniscule rewards. They'd often require rare drop items from rare spawning npc's that you'd hand in for something that wasn't even that great. When I say rare spawn in some cases you'd get one per week. Or you'd have to form raids to get your quest done and hopefully everyone was into helping otherwise you got jack.
8. No instances
Everything open world.. sound good ? Nope. Once guilds could actually raid stuff you'd enter a so called raid area and find the entire place cleared with a respawn of couple days. Guilds had to make schedules for raiding so everyone had their chance & if you had one guild that said F-you and took it all guess what you couldn't do shit.
Playing GW2 is quite different from playing WoW, Rift, or SW:TOR, or EQ/EQ2, so different actually that most of the crowd which was used to the "EQ/WoW" model were lost when they started playing. Those who played Asheron's Call though were used to the exploration based progress and didn't have a problem to adapt to it. Neither did the ex-UO players. That's what I've observed in my guild at least, and on these forums based on the various comments too.
The EQ/WoW clone model players who have never tried anything else seriously are lost when a developer tries something different. So who is to blame... the developers... or the players?
That's a very Interesting observation. But I am going to have to say it's the developers. If they are creating a game and don't know who their market is, then they didn't do their homework. If developers are going to target a certain demographic, in this case, players who only know WoW, and the game they are developing is quite different, and they don't take this into account by designing mechanics that help transition these very players they target marketed, then that is definitely the developer's failure.
You pretty much understood the point I was trying to make. MMORPGs are games which cost millions to make, and the AAA developers won't make a product only a few souls lost in nostalgia will play. They need income to get a return from their investment. And the more players, the more income.
So if the genre supposedly "stagnates", it's not because of the developers. It's because many players are unable to adapt when a developer tries something even just slightly different from the EQ/WoW clone norm, which actually comes from Dungeon and Dragons and it's class/level model, which engendered the DikkuMUD which was the model for EQ which was the model for WoW (and its bad clones).
Sounds like what we currently lack now is a solid formula that can inspire confidence in those who could create it as well as those who would play it.
I will also add that there was something about WoW that so far to my experience has not been successfully cloned. Some games have come closer than others, but no one nailed it. And given that we still see some decent theme parks still out there keeping people playing, I dare say that if someone is able t ofigure out what that something is, and repeat it, I think we would see a game that could at least hold it's own in this current market.
Meaning, I think it's less of an issue that people are tired of that formula as much as they are tired of poorly designed clones.
Players are simply confused about how and MMORPG should be played. In an attempt to appeal to a wider gamer base developers have incorporated many of the game play featured in other popular MMO genres. While this has succeeded to some extent in increasing the MMORPG player base, it has also had the negative effect of bringing in a player base that not only does not know the meaning of MMORPG, but does not know how an MMORPG should be played.
That confusion is prevalent throughout this entire thread. Like chess, checkers, monopoly, or any other game, there is a certain game play/rules that a game must abide. With an MMORPG that game play, or those rules, have been blurred and bastardized with the constant incorporation of other video game genres in an effort to gain broader appeal.
It really has very little to do with "old school" or the "newer generation" and everything to do with the different game play preferences, and expectations, of gamers of all video game genres that have been brought down unto the MMORPG arena due to the bastardization of the genre. Many of these players don't care to know, or learn, the meaning of an MMORPG or how it should be played. Their only interest is that the game incorporate their game play features regardless of the fundamental rules that make up an MMORPG.
No other video game genre is as "confused" as the MMORPG genre. We will never get a consensus of player approval as long as the MMORPG genre is in the state of flux it is in today. We have players playing an MMORPG who are not interested in a story line for crissakes. I mean, having a story line is fundamental to an MMORPG. If you do not read quests, or follow a story line, every step of the journey will become a grind.
We have players playing MMORPGs whose only interest is end game and could not care less about the journey. Having a "journey" is fundamental to an MMORPG. It simply can not be categorized as an MMORPG without a journey. A video game without a journey is an FPS or a MOBA, it is everything but an MMORPG.
I can go on and but for the sake of brevity I will simply conclude that the reason MMORPG's are in the sad state they are today is simply because they have very little in common with MMORPG game play and how an MMORPG game should be played ... and yes, developers are to blame. For they are the ones that have allowed the MMORPG genre to be bastardized, creating confusion within the player base, and all in their quest to line their pockets and maximize profits.
As, I said you're point out spawn camping. The game world was a lot harder. Others have point out the differences. I have played modern MMOPRGs to my 30's where I simply never died. Everquest you could die easily to things you simply couldn't control from level 1. If you died somewhere bad it was hard to get your body back. If you died you lost something.
Not untrue .. but again, spawn camping is 99% of the game, including leveling & gearing up.
If you want games with 1% very hard content .. you don't have to go back to EQ. WOW hardcore raid is hard. D3 Greater Rift pushing is hard.
And EQ has the added disadvantage that not only spawn camping is easy mode, it is boring (to me) compared to running instanced dungeons. At least you get to kill different stuff.
So if the genre supposedly "stagnates", it's not because of the developers. It's because many players are unable to adapt when a developer tries something even just slightly different from the EQ/WoW clone norm, which actually comes from Dungeon and Dragons and it's class/level model, which engendered the DikkuMUD which was the model for EQ which was the model for WoW (and its bad clones).
Says who?
If players can "adapt" to MOBAs, and other types of online games, i would say it is not that they cannot adapt to non-themepark mmorpgs, it is that they do not like them.
People here often confused between "unable to" vs "unwilling to".
Outside of PVP I have never played a 'difficult' or ' hard' MMORPG. The only thing you need for this genre is time, not skill. EQ was not harder, it was just more time consuming. This was simply because of lack of actual content, they made everything take 10 times longer. Some players gave that the label ' depth' because they needed meaning where non was given. MMORPGs these days have a shitload of stuff to do, it only takes a lot less time to actually get anything done and this is being labelled as ' dumbed down.' Killing 1000 skeletons is just as hard as killing 10 skeletons to gain a level, not hard at all. Same goes with traveling, watching your screen for 15 minutes as your character rides a horse from one end of the forrest to the other isn't 'deeper' then watching your screen for 15 seconds as your character flies over that same forrest on a flying gryphon.
I could go on and on. More skills on a skill bar does not equal depth (Damn you EQ2 and your ridiculous bloat!). Confusing crafting systems does not make a more meaningful experience. A messy UI with lots of windows and clickable buttons does not make for a more mature game.
I am not saying older games are worse but I sure as hell ain't saying the modern games are. It is just different and people that keep bashing one or the other just seem really immature, or ones completely out of touch with the genre, aka dinosaurs .
/Cheers, Lahnmir
'the only way he could nail it any better is if he used a cross.'
Kyleran on yours sincerely
'But there are many. You can play them entirely solo, and even offline. Also, you are wrong by default.'
Ikcin in response to yours sincerely debating whether or not single-player offline MMOs exist...
'This does not apply just to ED but SC or any other game. What they will get is Rebirth/X4, likely prettier but equally underwhelming and pointless.
It is incredibly difficult to design some meaningfull leg content that would fit a space ship game - simply because it is not a leg game.
It is just huge resource waste....'
Gdemami absolutely not being an armchair developer
Umm there are tons of games with looting corpses, building your character how you want, great housing and everything old games had. Try stuff like Albion Online, Shards, Shroud of the Avatar and many more of these "sandbox" or "hardcore" MMORPGs.
Sick of people talking about the great old days, games nowadays have all that those had and more.
Comments
New MMORPG are like being placed in a cell with the same 7 games to repeat play over and over. Got to the next cell or prison with new decoration same 7 games. Older ones were more like hiking in a park and making your own adventure and where random things could happen.
The depth of say EQ since that's popular was more subtle then what quest 7. Some places were more dangerous because mobs were tougher, the area more deadly, NPCS were smarter or your class just matched up badly/well. You could handle each encounter at a spawn point fine, then one time a trash mob could get away and call reinforcements. Somebody could train on you. High level creature caught you unaware. Those NPC heal or stun or whatever the next one doesn't. That's more variable then running doing the same quest in every game... clicking crap and steam rolling everything neatly arranged for you to level perfectly.
If you can kill it again and again (or may be die like 5% of the time) .. that is hard? In what universe?
And what else is there? Spawn camping is 99% of the game. It is there when you level and it is there when you camp for gear.
But like Distopia has said, MMORPGs have never been about requiring much skill or thinking. They're probably the most casual when it comes to combat.
I know! We'll take over from the morning shift and stand around on our camping spot all night waiting for the boss to spawn!
--
Side note:
I think games became "too easy" when they stopped showing the combat math. (Before the first mmos)
Of course, games also reached a point when they stopped punishing failure. It's up to the individual mmoasochist whether they enjoy entertainment punishing them (or not).
And (at some point) the developers seem to have reached a conclusion that leveling content is not the game; it's trivia before the game begins. (Plenty of disagreement with the Old Skool POV on that one.)
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
As, I said you're point out spawn camping. The game world was a lot harder. Others have point out the differences. I have played modern MMOPRGs to my 30's where I simply never died. Everquest you could die easily to things you simply couldn't control from level 1. If you died somewhere bad it was hard to get your body back. If you died you lost something.
What you have to remember is that I don't support grinds of any kind be it quest, NPC, camp or whatever. I don't car about group combat. I am not even an EQ fan in general because I prefer sandbox games like UO and SWG. But to deny the game was harder than current easy mode games is silly.
But instead some movement within the genre started thinking "This should be fun" But given the nature of what this genre is, "Fun" isn't sustainable. And I think the developers knew this. But they tired anyway.......and failed. Maybe if it was possible, we'd have seen real evidence of all this "innovation" and the genre would leaped forward. Instead we get endless pages like this one indicating a problem in the genre. Look at Wildstar. I remember how much they hyped their combat. and how it was going to be different. But MMO combat, is one of the most repetitive activities in these games. It needs to be fluid, basic and intuitive. That's not Wildstar. What is challenging for an hour simply become busy-work very quickly and this became a negative for the game.
Anyway, that was then, this is now. Now we have a mix of players who can't agree on what is good for the genre.....And some who don't even know what the genre is. The key for success going forward would be to try to achieve some measure of balance between them.
But unlike that person surely you can tell the difference between modern MMORPGs. Surely you see ESO, GW2, RIFT, and TOR are just as different from one another as those various FPSes. They're all games in the same genres, so they share a lot of similarities, but the differences are quite distinct and meaningful.
Citing some subtleties to EQ and then ignoring the subtleties that set modern games apart is textbook rose-colored glasses.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
The MMOs might at first glance seems more different but the goal is always to get cooler gear and you play them about the same way no matter if you play TOR or ESO even if TOR have more cutscenes and higher soloing focus.
FPS games tend to be more focused on a specific type of gameplay, you can certainly solo or PvP in Rainbow 6 but the main focus of the game is to co-op a small Swat team to hunt down the bad guys.
EQ did have it's advantages over modern MMOs just like it had it's disadvantages. It was grindy and buggy but it also offered a danger we don't see in any modern games today. Some of those things I miss while I am happy we are ridd of others.
Everything is sectioned off. Pretty much all solo quests are non questions in terms of weather you will be able to complete it without help. It's easy to find the quest because the NPC has ! over their head. You are shown by a GPS where to go so you don't really need to read the quest text or find out what the purpose is. Something will pop up and say wolves killed 0 or item delivered 0. The mobs for solo quests are easily steamrolled with little resistance. Chances of dying are unlikely and even if you did there is no penalty for doing so. You have 100% chance to progress no matter how bad you might be.
Compare that to EQ where there are no indicators of where to go or what to do. Mobs will team up on you even in the starter areas and kill you. The con system is unreliable because certain mobs will always be more powerful than others depending on their abilities.
As mentioned by Vermillion and ignored there were lots more random factors coming into play like mobs assisting each other, people bringing trains, wandering mobs, and even bad pathing of mobs sadly.
A lot of the difference is that things were not separated from each other. In EQ all mobs were eilte. There was no solo, group, and raid sectioned off. It was a persistent world. One of the things that annoys me most about current MMOs is how everything is so segregated into different sections. Basically everything is very structured and setup to be done an exact way. There is no room for experimentation with different things in the games. Basically it's this area has mobs designed to be easily steamrolled for solo, this area has mobs setup for group, and this area has mobs setup for raid. That is extremely boring and requires no experimentation on figuring out what you can and can't take down. It's basically impossible to solo in group instances in this day and age. The developers make sure you can't do it and even if you could it's boring because it's instanced off away from the rest of the world.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
Lets compare to say Everquest one of the most popular MMO's for its time.
1. Racial & class exp penalties.
I played a troll shadowknight. People used to complain saying that when I joined their group exp slowed down. Sometimes people wouldn't group with Troll Shadowknights. Turns out they were right. Due to troll shadowknights racial & class exp penalties they sucked more exp per kill from everything which reduced the rest of the groups exp. Verant would later remove this after many years of denial.
2. Vanilla EQ had 2 dungeons for end game
There was Solusek B & Lower Guk for levelling to 50. That was it. Back then you had to zone in & ask to get on lists for a group. Nothing was instanced. Wherever a named npc spawed a group would sit and wait and kill stuff. Sometimes the named wouldn't even spawn you'd get a placeholder. So you'd sit there for hours killing the same shit hoping for the named npc to spawn. If you were lucky to get into a group. If you didn't get a group you'd be killing guards outside cities. That was it !
3. Quest givers didn't have ! above their heads.
You actually had to type key words to trigger quests... npc's would talk and their dialogue would have key words that led to other options but you had to actually type the key word to trigger that.
4. Hell levels.
Once you get to level 30, every 5 levels after was called a hell level. Verant would eventually acknowlege & remove this but to be honest they were fucking horrible. So you'd get to 35 and find damn.. exp is super slow. Turned out yes every 5 levels took double the exp to get through. You'd be farming for 3 hours and get half a bubble of exp. If you died you lost almost 2 bubbles of exp.
5. Death & Corpse Runs
If you died you not only lost exp & possibly a level but you'd respawn wherever you were bound. You could get bound outside cities. Then you'd run naked all the way back to your corpse to loot items.
6. Racism
Different factions were killed on sight. I played a troll shadowknight who worshipped Cazic Thule who was pretty much the Satan of the universe. My poor TSK was killed on sight EVERYWHERE in the game world other then a few evil cities, even then tney let the godamn froglock race have the hometown of Grobb and moved trolls into Dark Elves city.
7. Quests sucked
Quests usually required a ridiculous amount of time & effort by 20+ people for miniscule rewards. They'd often require rare drop items from rare spawning npc's that you'd hand in for something that wasn't even that great. When I say rare spawn in some cases you'd get one per week. Or you'd have to form raids to get your quest done and hopefully everyone was into helping otherwise you got jack.
8. No instances
Everything open world.. sound good ? Nope. Once guilds could actually raid stuff you'd enter a so called raid area and find the entire place cleared with a respawn of couple days. Guilds had to make schedules for raiding so everyone had their chance & if you had one guild that said F-you and took it all guess what you couldn't do shit.
Players are simply confused about how and MMORPG should be played. In an attempt to appeal to a wider gamer base developers have incorporated many of the game play featured in other popular MMO genres. While this has succeeded to some extent in increasing the MMORPG player base, it has also had the negative effect of bringing in a player base that not only does not know the meaning of MMORPG, but does not know how an MMORPG should be played.
That confusion is prevalent throughout this entire thread. Like chess, checkers, monopoly, or any other game, there is a certain game play/rules that a game must abide. With an MMORPG that game play, or those rules, have been blurred and bastardized with the constant incorporation of other video game genres in an effort to gain broader appeal.
It really has very little to do with "old school" or the "newer generation" and everything to do with the different game play preferences, and expectations, of gamers of all video game genres that have been brought down unto the MMORPG arena due to the bastardization of the genre. Many of these players don't care to know, or learn, the meaning of an MMORPG or how it should be played. Their only interest is that the game incorporate their game play features regardless of the fundamental rules that make up an MMORPG.
No other video game genre is as "confused" as the MMORPG genre. We will never get a consensus of player approval as long as the MMORPG genre is in the state of flux it is in today. We have players playing an MMORPG who are not interested in a story line for crissakes. I mean, having a story line is fundamental to an MMORPG. If you do not read quests, or follow a story line, every step of the journey will become a grind.
We have players playing MMORPGs whose only interest is end game and could not care less about the journey. Having a "journey" is fundamental to an MMORPG. It simply can not be categorized as an MMORPG without a journey. A video game without a journey is an FPS or a MOBA, it is everything but an MMORPG.
I can go on and but for the sake of brevity I will simply conclude that the reason MMORPG's are in the sad state they are today is simply because they have very little in common with MMORPG game play and how an MMORPG game should be played ... and yes, developers are to blame. For they are the ones that have allowed the MMORPG genre to be bastardized, creating confusion within the player base, and all in their quest to line their pockets and maximize profits.
If you want games with 1% very hard content .. you don't have to go back to EQ. WOW hardcore raid is hard. D3 Greater Rift pushing is hard.
And EQ has the added disadvantage that not only spawn camping is easy mode, it is boring (to me) compared to running instanced dungeons. At least you get to kill different stuff.
Says who?
If players can "adapt" to MOBAs, and other types of online games, i would say it is not that they cannot adapt to non-themepark mmorpgs, it is that they do not like them.
People here often confused between "unable to" vs "unwilling to".
I could go on and on. More skills on a skill bar does not equal depth (Damn you EQ2 and your ridiculous bloat!). Confusing crafting systems does not make a more meaningful experience. A messy UI with lots of windows and clickable buttons does not make for a more mature game.
I am not saying older games are worse but I sure as hell ain't saying the modern games are. It is just different and people that keep bashing one or the other just seem really immature, or ones completely out of touch with the genre, aka dinosaurs
/Cheers,
Lahnmir
Kyleran on yours sincerely
'But there are many. You can play them entirely solo, and even offline. Also, you are wrong by default.'
Ikcin in response to yours sincerely debating whether or not single-player offline MMOs exist...
'This does not apply just to ED but SC or any other game. What they will get is Rebirth/X4, likely prettier but equally underwhelming and pointless.
It is incredibly difficult to design some meaningfull leg content that would fit a space ship game - simply because it is not a leg game.
It is just huge resource waste....'
Gdemami absolutely not being an armchair developer
Sick of people talking about the great old days, games nowadays have all that those had and more.
GAME TIL YOU DIE!!!!