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Opinion on current / Past games
milyen
Member UncommonPosts: 39
One of the earliest concepts I remember in EQ and Meridian 59, when early online games became available was =>
If you died there was a penalty of xp loss. This was not a small / paltry loss of xp it was a massive hit. It could mean loss of the grinding, adventuring and exploring you had been doing for the last few hours or even day.
Basically you would think twice before approaching a mob to try your luck / chance at it. You better make sure you can finish the fight or sure enough the mob(s) would finish you off.
I remember the fun of watching train lines to zone lines or guards as players would be running to save themselves. Occasionally you would see other helpful players join in to heal or take a few mobs off you to give you a fighting chance. Sometimes, the first player would die and the rest of the mobs would turn their unruly attention to the good samaritan who in turn would end up having to run for their lives....
Good memories and good fun. Frustratingly, hard is what games used to be. We'd be on an orc hill with rusty short swords and or bronze weapons and be damn proud to be there. All huddles together by a spot safety in numbers and at night it was DAMN dark. I mean beyond a few yards unless you had a light source you would really struggle to explore / adventure at night. Some of the more recent games have reintroduced this concept which is a welcome.
Anyone with a Silver or Platinum weapons would be OHH AHHh look at them. Anyone with enchanted or magical armor / gear would have god status amongst players.
The other thing I liked was if you died you would have to do a corpse recovery. None of the "ahh well" respawn with all my gear, inventory and gold intact on me.
What is this? There is no penalty to dying to make you think twice before risk vs reward. On the one hand they want to make things realistic / roleplaying. Where's the food and water we used to have to carry to ensure we had no penalties. Encumbered with gazillion coins either in game or the virtual charged premium currency? Leave it at the bank. I am a wizard wearing metal armor on a massive mount with the strength to carry 7 bags fully laden with loot. Umm yeah right.
But I suppose to answer my own questions. Game Developers or companies need an income source and charging for certain "features" makes it an income stream on top of the existing income. Anyway to charm or make certain features accessable with a credit card is a way to ensure a steady source of income on top of the existing model they have. For this what they do is cleverly tap into the greed / desire of their player base and understand what they NEED / WANT and see how they can make some sort of income out of it.
Of course we as players love it. We pay or ask someone to pay on our behalf for the virtual items. We as paying customers need to make a stand for a minimum standard of service. Do not be afraid to leave if you are unsatisfied with the quality of service. I have seen it before in other games where players leave. Sure some existing players make new characters on the same accounts, but there is usually a slow / steady decline after the initial peak which varies from months to a few years depending on the frequency of content updates / fixes and patches to resolve issues.
Just thought I would put some thoughts down. I am not paid by any games mentioned above. I am not endorsing any games. I am like a lot of players out there, "drifters" stuck between a game we play as there is nothing better out there or afraid to jump ship and risk a new game. Dabble in a few games then return to the first game and so on.....
Feel free to share your thoughts, comments and make it constructive. Trolling or flaming achieves nothing here.
If you died there was a penalty of xp loss. This was not a small / paltry loss of xp it was a massive hit. It could mean loss of the grinding, adventuring and exploring you had been doing for the last few hours or even day.
Basically you would think twice before approaching a mob to try your luck / chance at it. You better make sure you can finish the fight or sure enough the mob(s) would finish you off.
I remember the fun of watching train lines to zone lines or guards as players would be running to save themselves. Occasionally you would see other helpful players join in to heal or take a few mobs off you to give you a fighting chance. Sometimes, the first player would die and the rest of the mobs would turn their unruly attention to the good samaritan who in turn would end up having to run for their lives....
Good memories and good fun. Frustratingly, hard is what games used to be. We'd be on an orc hill with rusty short swords and or bronze weapons and be damn proud to be there. All huddles together by a spot safety in numbers and at night it was DAMN dark. I mean beyond a few yards unless you had a light source you would really struggle to explore / adventure at night. Some of the more recent games have reintroduced this concept which is a welcome.
Anyone with a Silver or Platinum weapons would be OHH AHHh look at them. Anyone with enchanted or magical armor / gear would have god status amongst players.
The other thing I liked was if you died you would have to do a corpse recovery. None of the "ahh well" respawn with all my gear, inventory and gold intact on me.
What is this? There is no penalty to dying to make you think twice before risk vs reward. On the one hand they want to make things realistic / roleplaying. Where's the food and water we used to have to carry to ensure we had no penalties. Encumbered with gazillion coins either in game or the virtual charged premium currency? Leave it at the bank. I am a wizard wearing metal armor on a massive mount with the strength to carry 7 bags fully laden with loot. Umm yeah right.
But I suppose to answer my own questions. Game Developers or companies need an income source and charging for certain "features" makes it an income stream on top of the existing income. Anyway to charm or make certain features accessable with a credit card is a way to ensure a steady source of income on top of the existing model they have. For this what they do is cleverly tap into the greed / desire of their player base and understand what they NEED / WANT and see how they can make some sort of income out of it.
Of course we as players love it. We pay or ask someone to pay on our behalf for the virtual items. We as paying customers need to make a stand for a minimum standard of service. Do not be afraid to leave if you are unsatisfied with the quality of service. I have seen it before in other games where players leave. Sure some existing players make new characters on the same accounts, but there is usually a slow / steady decline after the initial peak which varies from months to a few years depending on the frequency of content updates / fixes and patches to resolve issues.
Just thought I would put some thoughts down. I am not paid by any games mentioned above. I am not endorsing any games. I am like a lot of players out there, "drifters" stuck between a game we play as there is nothing better out there or afraid to jump ship and risk a new game. Dabble in a few games then return to the first game and so on.....
Feel free to share your thoughts, comments and make it constructive. Trolling or flaming achieves nothing here.
Comments
Some of the details that you're recalling are reasons why hardly any gamers played MMORPGs back then.
I started with games such as SWG / EQ / EQ2 / VG etc. You buy the game, pay the monthly fee, and earn your rewards via exploring, questing, raiding, world pvp, etc. Gold selling, while it did happen, was nowhere near what it is now. The MMOs of today are littered with everything that I personally consider to be immersion breaking, e.g., e-Sports, RNG Micro-Transactions, Social Media Integration, etc. I honestly haven't felt like I was "part of the game" since 2006.
I do, however, enjoy the new modern combat trend as well as current graphical aesthetics.
In all honesty, the last time I really enjoyed a MMMORPG was during the beta of ArcheAge. That game felt like the perfect blend between current and past MMOs. However, once it was released, everything crumbled due to all the game-shop RNG sass as well as the army of gold sellers / botters.
When the original EQ servers were out they even used to list population statistics so you could choose where to make a new character / acct.
Nowadays the newbie zones or older content becomes redundant and ghost areas, but that is the way of all games.
The death penalty was protected until Level 10 back then in EQ if i recall. After that it scaled up but was not steep until you approached the cap / max level.
Who ever made up that shit where " younger people wouldn't like hard ?...Sure they would !
However, I feel this pendulum swung to far in the opposite direction.
If you are interested in making a MMO maybe visit my page to get a free open source engine.
But today, there are a lot of MMORPGs that I can play without having to deal with ganking or grinding. Back then, there weren't. My preferences haven't changed that much, but the games available sure have, and genre population statistics lead me to believe that I'm far from alone on that.
the unwillingness to try doing the harder things used to surprise me when I were young.
I thought the gear drop was painful but i did not complain and accepted it,after all we are SUPPOSE to be trying to mimic death.
Now i could understand the crying over gear loss and the MAIN excuse was if some lame ass caused the entire group to die,others did not want to feel th epain,but i disagree with that argument 100%.You can't have glory as a group but not the negative,they wanted their cake and eat it too.
The crying over xp loss though was just [pathetic because it took no time at all to recover it.So in essence players id not want to die at all,they did not want to mimic death in any fashion,not by dropping gear and not by losing xp,they wanted to just get back up with zero indication they ever died and that just says miles about the weak people we gamed with.
If we are not oing to mimic death then stop calling it death,call it a KO and then players suffer damage to mimic being KO'd,example injury and stat loss and a KP stun for perhaps 2-5 seconds depending on severity, the same feeling you would have being KO'd in real.
If you don't want role playing features,then wtf are you doing in a rpg?Ok off too many cuties at the gym lol.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
I guess the change is okay. I don't miss it too much. . sort of like the auto saves every 3 steps in todays FPS games. It seems like a wimpy way to go but when I wen't back and played an older game and had to start each level over if I died I was a little put off to be honest
Wa min God! Se æx on min heafod is!
The Risk of Severe Death Penalty is The only thing in any MMO that has ever given my blood pumping fun , everything is else is just mehh compared ...
There is no Risk in todays games the results of our Xbox generation , wanting there participation trophies ....
They are not as popular for games that you can play for days,weeks, and even years. Why they have mostly fallen out of modern games.
Asking most people to play for an hour and then lose all the exp, time, and effort that went into that hour, in a few seconds, just will not work for lots of people.
Unfortunately, ( or fortunately ) depending on what type games you like, most games are ran by business people now, so they make or change games to cater to the most people. Makes most games feel and seem to be "cookie cutter" or clones.
But the harsh games and penalties that went with them are strictly Niche products that most business people will bypass for more lucrative games and play styles.
You absolutely can have challenge separated from risk.
Example...setup a camp,your the puller.On route to your pull target you encounter higher level mobs and mobs that link which could cause total chaos.
Even once you pull you have to worry about your target linking with others on the way back,it adds to all the fun/excitement /danger.
It goes even deeper....
So you return with your pull target but took some damage enroute,does the healer heal you and risk taking hate because the healer also needs to heal the tank.You sadly got a link,so now the roup has to handle another mob how does everyone react?
This is why grouping is a million tons better than solo questing,there is just a lot more excitement and risk and challenge and team work.
BEFORE a fight,i don't call it a "challenge"i call it "preparation".Nothing is predictable,do you remember when you last killed what mob and when they might respawn and cause problems with linking or aggro on the camp.Does the mob cast magic,might he sleep you causing for more problems.
You see a real good game offers a lot of thinking and challenges to over come and i like that,nothing has to be overly difficult but still good enough to keep us on our toes.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
The original dev team at Verant thought that EQ would end up with maybe 15-20 thousand players. Yeah, you read that right, 15-20k. They never dreamed that it would ever hit the numbers it reached. The demand was so high, in fact, that they had to buy a major upgrade to the city's internet line, because the EQ traffic was swamping the local infrastructure.
MMO's were suddenly the new hot potatoe as companies realised how much ongoing revenue they could generate each month, on top of the box price. Each successive generation of MMO has adapted to try and appeal to a bigger audience, resulting in some major changes to things like xp loss and death penalties, corpse runs and difficulty, all being toned down in order to attract more players.
When WoW released with no real death penalty and a risk free run back to where you died as a ghost it set the tone for future MMO's, due to it's freakish success and every subsequent MMO following similar design rules as they all attempted to cash in on a piece of the WoW pie.
When you look at the MMO market from a business point of view these changes were inevitable.
I have to say that a full loot, free for all, sandbox mmo with a tight knit community is incredibly intense and literally the best adrenaline high of any mmorpg. there is no game that makes you feel more focused, alive, scared and elated, ecstatic and rageful.... some of the highest highs and lowest lows. it's truly intoxicating.
however, these days the freedom that those games provide (which usually also means freedom to greef ) tent to attract some of the worst, most obnoxious, mean and abusive individuals known to man. I don't know if those people were there in UO too, but now days they seem to multiply by the hour, and congregate in ever LARGER numbers in whichever game allows them to do the most greefing.
I don't think most people are put off by difficulty, or death penalties as much as all the greefing ass hats that infest these types of games, and seem to simply enjoy noting more than other people's suffering.
That was a long time ago. Now I have been playing WoW for years and years and I may be so soft that I can never enjoy having that level of penalty again. But I plan to try if a new game I am following makes it to market.
EQ1, EQ2, SWG, SWTOR, GW, GW2 CoH, CoV, FFXI, WoW, CO, War,TSW and a slew of free trials and beta tests
I was thinking of the movie Saving Private Ryan.
When i see people afraid of a video game and it's penalties,i think of that go for boy that was bringing ammo,scared shit less to the point of useless and would get you killed more than help you.
So i can't help think that gaming mentality tells me what type of people i would want to be surrounded by in time of war.
I think i would just walk out and ask to be killed or start running the opposite way if surrounded by cowards because the outcome would be inevitable.To think there are REAL people who enter risky situations everyday,that put their life on the line ,knowing the risks and then we have people afraid of some game penalty .....sigh.
I had my way the penalties would be 10x worse,they would actually mimic death,otherwise stop calling it death when it is not.Point being NOTHING we have seen in gaming should be compared to the term severe more like an inconvenience at worst.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
If you die someone come over and loot all your corpse?
I'm not into that so I quit that game. If you are into that, it's probably something for you.