I concur with you Garret on the "burn out" . But I do not agree that his "PvP" solutions are the answer for everyone. I don't play these type of MOG's for PvP. there isn't any. In fact it is my observation that in games such as WoW, DAoC, EQ etc etc. - there is little PvP "satisfaction" per say for those who claim they love PVP other than the satisfaction some need to get from griefing others lower or less equiped. (Note: The mental health issue causing such justification is probably to compensate for a RL situation of little power or control in ones daily life in my opinion. Who knows. ) Example right here in this thread, to quote the post from Vinlyinmoko : "I stay in the game to pwn noobs." There is the typical PvP player I have seen. Point and case.
If anyone claims they disagree on this by the way, here is your test. If you truely love PvP , what is your rank in Battlefield 2? (Mine is Master Sergeant by the way). Your not playing BF2? Of course not. Because you CAN"T have an advantage over anyone. Noob or otherwise. You can play BF2 for the next ten years and rise to the rank of uber sergeant, (get nifty tages too!) but .. and here's the reason you won't play it and nor will Vinylinmoko , every time you log into battle, other than your rank, you get your shirt and you get your gun. None you can choose from are uber. In fact, no uber anything. Only your skill is between you and death. Hence, a day one , hour one "noob" can clean your clock just as easily as someone who has played up to the top ranks and has played since beta. Won't be seeing Garret or Vinyl there, I don't think so .. the PvP'er player crowd from WoW, DAoC and Shadowbane wants an edge - that's why they grind MC for example in the first place. To get an Uber weapon and uber armor to have an uber advantage. And the first thing they do when they get it is to run out to find some one 5 to 10 (or more - hopefully) levels below them to use it on.
Now.. IMHO what IS needed in next generation MOG's is a more interactive environment. Too much is scripted and the "grind to advance" model is worn out. if the outcome of quests and interaction with MOB's had "intelligence" - so to speak - resulting in different outcomes or adventures it would make each encouter with a MOB an event in and of itself and not just "tagging" to fulfill some part of a scripted quest.
In conclusion .. it is predictability that is boring. And now that we have years of experience playing MOG's - as the consumers - new art and names for things added on the same play model is not going to work for MMORPG developers very much longer.
I reached burn out with the type of MMOs that every company seems to be putting out now a while back. Pointless time sinks, espically in loot based economies are something I have no tolerance for anymore and I do find it ammusing Vanguards main selling point seems to be they are putting bigger time sinks in.
But time sinks aren't the only reason I burned out. The lack of different playstyles gets to me, it's all focused on combat with the thin veneer of crafting stapled on where what they craft is next to useless compared to loot and they aren't actuelly an equaly valid playstyle but just a sort of hobby for combat characters. The rigid class level based systems is also something that is just boring to me now.
Oh and nice to see you working your personaly PvP like in again as what all games need.
My first MMO was SWG and be that as it may I had no idea what a waste of time the "game" was. However, I did make quite a few friends who were apart of the genre of "Star Wars" and it was great to hang around and talk while doing some mindless grinding. This is not to say "Thank You SWG for friends" but that is an element many of the responders are missing here.
I believe MMO's do generally bring this type of notion to the table if they are even the slightest successful in the game creation.
I'm currently playing WOW but I also do understand just about everyone here's complaints regarding it. Let me just say this, WOW has put more meaning in to the proper direction an MMO should go well above and beyond SWG could ever have imagined. Where WOW has failed, (back to my understanding with everyone), is what few have suggested here as dynamic content. An ever changing world where you feel you have made some progress or had a hand in it either way (though the AQ opening adventures with supply turn ins were a great start in that direction) brings alot of satisfaction to one as a gamer in playing.
It has been very refreshing to do quests which are interesting and that actually have rewards which are "Useful" well beyond the heavy grind that was SWG. Now I know I only have played a few MMO's (Horizon and FFO also comes to mind) but I sense there were just several levels of "grind" in most of them. I think everyone who has done at least more than 90% of the quests in WOW including the Onyxia line has seen what the devs were trying to do with bringing an adventure here and there for greater adventures in controlled states beyond with instances you dont' have to fight some arse over to enjoy.
The many instances in WOW alone help to answer some of the "DM" type feels and fantasy adventures abound for us all in Azeroth. Unfortunately it does get old and I have to be completely honest here, what the heck were they thinking with making the lvl 60+ instances have to be grindable 100's of times before you could get the right type of gear for your toon? How did this just seem like, "Hey this will be really fun for all of our subscribers!"
Oh...I get it....timesink..... wah wah....waaaaaaaaaaaah
Guess they really need to pay the bills and time to make more content so why not?
Very insightful all. Here is a solution to the content gap.
I see burn out happen in our guild all the time. People leave and then come back for the next great game. Burn out happens in every game no matter how good it is. I suppose that is why new games are written. I no longer feel compelled to stick with any one game. I like new games as much as old ones.
I also think MMORPG's should move away from loot / faction point endgame time sink goal.
I suggest they move to the NWN player made MOD format and actually let players with popular MODs profit from their hard work of content creation. I am sure this is complicated as we have yet to see players effect game content in any significant way.
Content is king. The fact that books sell more now in our digital mass media age should be a heads up for developers that still think mechanics are king.
Mass community content creation would defiantly benefit these games as there would effectively be no end of places to explore or mysteries to solve, etc. I am not saying everyone’s content should be used. I am sure there would be some form of automated vetting process.
The “Spore” game in development is probably just breaking the surface of what should be considered for maybe the fifth evolution of MMORPGs Players of this game will have content filled by other players. So many of these things are being done by game developers, just not all together in a MMORPG yet.
I realised I got tired of my Orc Hunter when login in to the game to go to instances and get more gear became like a job and not a hobby. I ended up erasing her, to make sure I would not return to WOW, which I did a few months later. Orcs are less vulgar as playable race then elves, I never found them in any of the other MMORPGs i played, but she didn't look female enough to me, and I'm a female so I like my avatar to look good. Anyway, in what comes to this kind of game, the only original one I played was Horizons: Empire of Istaria. There we could play Fiend, Pixie, Dragon, and those I haven't seen anywhere else. I found that game a bit late though, and the graphics were already looking a little dated when compared to the ones of Star Wars Galaxies or Everquest 2 that I played in advance. There are a couple of things I realy like to see on this games, one is taming, an adiction I got from my first MMORPG Ultima Online. The other is housing. It can be like the one on Anarchy Online, but i definitly like to log in inside it and not by the entrance like it hapens on EQ2. I didn't like the way the houses blocked the path on Ultima Online to be honest, even if I was the proud owner of one. I also like to be abble to customise my character a lot, changing nose shape and so on. The more options the better. What I do complain like you did, is realy that the developers insist on creating the same kind of playable races, Dwarfs, Elves, Humans, etc. I would like to see more of Horizons concept in other games, or a revamp on the way this one looks so it would display year 2006 graphics quality. Even crafting was fun there.
At the moment I'm trying several diferent games, but I haven't found "The Game" yet.
Quite a response from everyone! I am glad to see so many people feel similar, even if you don't agree with the whole article, I do think the main point is valid.
Many of you seem unhappy that I did not include certain games on the list, please understand that it is an editorial based on experience and I did not play some of the games you mentioned.
I know Meridian 59 and MUDS were the early start of things, sadly I was not a part of that, I started with UO.
Also, I have not played EvE although I know it is growing in popularity and I've followed its progress.
I am a huge fan of PvP, but I do love PvE as well and have spent hours (more than PvP) on that front.
Everyone has there own experiences in gaming and it is great to read them all.
My point with this editorial was to get the community talking (which you have) in the hopes that developers and business analysts will read the article and check out what we all have to say on the forums.
First off, I'd like to say I really enjoyed your article. I too started with UO, and am currently on WoW/FFXI. Both of which are losing my interest rapidly.
Secondly, I haven't got a functional shift key, so I can't use question marks/exclamation marks, certain punctuation marks, etc. I apoologize in advance.
I think I can speak for everyone when I say that one of the biggest and most important parts to an MMORPG is it's community. If I can't log into a game, and find a playerbase that's both humorous and enjoyable to play with, I can't enjoy the MMO itself. I mean, social interaction is the root of the genre; you'll be playing with the same people for days, weeks, months, years. Thus, being able to get along with these people and having fun with them is essential. There are games I would have enjoyed more had it not drawn such a miserable crowd of players to it. While I won't use my personal experience here, the same goes for the vice versa; there have been downright god-awful games which I could never have endured, were it not for the community. Case and point, Star Wars Galaxies. One of the worst games I ever played, but I was able to salvage some small enjoyment from it by playing with good people, who made me forget the god-awful product I was paying to play for far too long.
One thing, however, that I have experienced in every MMO since Everquest is this horrible belief that an MMO'S endgame causes the community to stay alive. However, in every game I've played, the END-GAME HAS BEEN THE DEATH OF THE COMMUNITY. Why do I say this, well, I'll give some examples.
1. Once players start seeing the end-game, all they can think about is that new phat lewt, that new item, killing that new endgame boss better and faster than anyone else. The game shifts it's focus from fun, onto a greed-based style of play. Think about it MMO vets, where do you see more drama, the beginning of the game, or the end of it. I don't recall people lying, cheating, stealing, hacking, or whatever else it takes to make sure that their player/their guild can beat/claim that god-like monster. As a result of making only the most elite items attainable through the end-game, social guilds dissolve in favor of raiding guilds. The worst part is, most of the time, these raiding guilds are filled with people I can NOT stand. Greedy, one-tracked asshats, who care nothing about anything other than lewt and gold. Thus, I am usually forced to say goodbye to my friends, and hello to asshats, just to get something done in the game, and I don't like it.
2. Yet another issue for me associated with the end-game is the fact that I no longer feel like I'm playing a game anymore. I'm not the teenager I once was, I don't have 6 hours to dedicate, 3 nights a week, to raiding some god damned monster. In fact, I don't have the time to dedicate 40 additional hours a week JUST to raiding, on top of my job now, and college, and maintaining a social life. The end-game boils down to killing the same crappy gods, over and over, on a fixated schedule with 1 guild, and then at the end of the month, you get to use your 'guild points' to pick out an item and some gold in exchange for your contribution. I don't think I should look at playing my game like a second job. The fact that it has come down to that for nearly every MMO these days, well, maybe games just aren't supposed to be fun anymore. I just thought I'd never say that.
3. Lastly, with the end-game, developers have seemingly gotten lazy. Yep, raiding is fun...once or twice. But there are people who would prefer not to run around with a group of 18-40 people who they dislike, for 4 hours at a time. When's the last time a developer tried putting something innovative in the end-game...I certainly can't recall. It's just put in a new super-boss, put in a new instance, put in a new zone, blah blah blah.....more crappy 3 hours fights, more crappy colorful gear to waste weeks upon weeks to get it, and less fun to be had. I think end-game is old, and frankly, it burns me out everytime. Maybe when I see a developer putting some time into new things, instead of repetitive raids, slightly enhanced gear, and tedium, maybe then I'll care about the end-game more.
Another thing that burns me out is most definitely the lack of innovation in MMO's these days. As the editorial stated, who the hell wants to see a dwarf warrior running around anymore. In fact, who the hell even wants to play as a god damned elf with a bow anymore... No, I want some unique thinking for once. The thing that makes me sad, is that everytime I see it, people shoot it down immediately, saying 'that can't be done'. Let's cite a recent example, how about the concept of WoW introducing a 2 headed Ogre, played by 2 people, as 2 different jobs. Would that be hard to do, absolutely, would it be difficult to balance, you betcha, would I be willing to play something that original, DAMNED SKIPPY I WOULD. And why are all MMO's geared towards achieving the bare minimums. How about an Octopi class with 8-arms, that can use 8 weapons and no armor, or or the ability to bust out some sort of race that isn't a human-imitation. Am I the only one sick of playing as a cat/frog/tiger/elf/human/dwarf/orc/troll/ogre/SOMETHING THAT'S SUPPOSED TO BE DIFFERENT, BUT IS ESSENTIALLY A HUMAN WITH A SKINS OVERHAUL...because I sure as hell hope not.
Yet even another thing that's burned me out is the lack of variety in games. Granted, AO, SWG, and DAoC seemed to correct it a little, but the majority of games have yet to do so. Why is it that in games I play these days, my character looks just like everyone else at his level...Is it so much to ask for more coloring options, different gear choices, so that I don't have to look just like everyone else. How immersed can I be when there are 800 other players running around who look just like me...
I actually have drawn up my own MMORPG, and if I knew how to acquire a development team, and had some sort of funding, I'd totally try and produce it. The concept of the game would be evolution. No, not like the evolution theory, as in an evolving world, evolving characters, weapons, etc. Start out in the castle age, work up to a sci-fi age. Throw in character evolution based off of elemental attributes/fighting styles, create a PvP basis with the use of an arena, faction warfare, battlefields, and even religious shrines for further enhanced fights. Lastly, incorporate a war mode, and have say...200 vs 200 players at a time. That's the gist of it...and that's a game I would want to paly.
If I didn't have to go to work, I'd post more, but I will be back, rest assured.
Waiting for something fresh to arrive on the MMO scene...
Hello everyone, I have to say, I am burnt out on MMO's. I feel they all off the same thing but 1 will have alittle more in depth then the other. Lets look at a few, WOW is probably one of the most popular for trying to get the uber gear or the PvP system, but FFXI is really good for party atmosphere with good loot, COH and COV is great for their in depth character building options, SWG well it was good for the crafting system and resource gathering until they broke that lol. I think to be honest is that the Developers are getting burnt out as well because you can only tweek things so much. This is what I think would be good, now this isnt going to be good for everyone but cant make everyone happy.
I would like to see, a good crafting system and resource gathering. Each resource would have stats on it and the better the resource the better the crafted item, like SWG was back in the day.
PvP system that has ranking and gear you can get but put more stuff in it like maybe more spells or abilities, quest in the PvP area that each side have to complete together to get like rare items maybe like weapons, gear or even items for your house like a sculpture or items to help crafting like +1 or +2 items bonus for crafting.
I like the housing systems in games. I think it gives people something else to do and something they can say hey this is mine. Also make items to decorate it or just use it for meeting places. I think SWG and EQ2 were going with some good ideas with this but not enough.
I think more games need to intergrate the private server options like NWN's, Its nice to have those people that like to make their own stuff but when you get bored with the content you can log onto a different server and its not exactly the same.
As much as I like Fantasy games, man im getting REALLY burnt out on them. They need to come out with a good Sci FI game. Or do a Fantasy that is alittle different like Ryzom. And have boats, horses, flying mounts, or maybe dragons or speeder bikes, just more options and make like some of the mounts crafted, then some of the mounts buy able, then some lootable, then some from PvP ranking but all of them only optainable in those options not I can go buy my epic or i only have 4 options of mounts. The games just need more personalization.
Well thats just some food for thought hehe sorry I just rambled off.
I am an avid EQ player (not EQ II), and although I've dabbled in a few other games outside this EQ (Star Wars Galaxies, City of Heroes), they never held my attention for long. I keep coming back to Everquest. Why is that? I read Garrett's article with interest, and pondered that question today.
One draw to any MMO is the social aspect of it. I played a lot of single player computer games growing up. I recently bought Dungeon Siege II -- and played it for about an hour before it bored me to tears. I *like* yucking it up in chat with other players in the game. I especially enjoy using a Chat Server (and I think the game developers who integrate chat servers in their game will be brilliant!) when talking with my online game mates. MMO's are a social experience. But I don't think this is the biggest draw -- because I have RL friends who are still playing CoH. I'd have a regular group in their company every night, if I wanted to play the game. But CoH just doesn't appeal to me, even with it's social aspect.
Ok, so what else might it be that anchors me in an MMO? Well, there is the "illusion of self accomplishment". In EQ, as with other MMO's, you can set all types of lofty goals (Level 70, Uber_AA_Ability_442, filling your spellbook, building a bigger AC/HP/Mana pool, max stats/resists). I lost interest in CoH because there wasn't much content to explore, and there were very few "accomplishments" that needed to be worked for. And while the illusion of self accomplishment motivates me, I'm not ranked in the top 100 on the server, I don't have very uber equipment (at least not compared to some of my peers, even within the guild). I don't find myself researching Alla's for better drops, etc. Acquiring wealth and gear, building my stats, seeing new places interests me -- but it's not the main draw to the game.
So what is? For me, I think the biggest draw is the challenge of team accomplishment. Not everyone approaches the game with the same interest, but team accomplishment is the one thing that jazzes me the MOST about EQ. I'm excited about what my guild of 500+ players (200+ active) has accomplished as a team, and the challenges we face to progress further. I love seeing and being a part of these accompishments. I enjoy the raiding aspect of EQ, because I enjoy seeing the guild become more proficient, pushing itself further than it did the week before. I enjoy the strategy discussions we have leading up to a new MOB / encounter, or after we have completed a script encounter (failed or successful). I like watching how we are able to quickly counter scripts that aren't going exactly as our research indicated they should go -- and then being able to pull off a victory, where others thought we were doomed from the very start. I like taking screenshots and posting them on our website for all the world to see. These are written for our own bragging rights, but they are also written to attract new members to our team -- so we can fill our ranks with raiders and continue to progress.
When I'm not raiding, I enjoy leveling up key classes that are otherwise deficient or lacking in the guild. Having these alt classes allows me to keep other members of the guild "busy and interested in the game". How? On a non-raid night, when there is a guild group that wants to do something, I can often supply a needed class to help keep that group busy with a quest or mission. The family that plays together, stays together -- and by keeping them busy on non-raid nights, I'm helping to keep them anchored in the game, as well.
Other than EQ, the MMO I spent the most time on (almost 9 months) was SWG. Even in that MMO, I felt like I was part of a team. Our group (mostly AIF players) had built a message board, we had a "theme" for play time, and were grinding up levels so we could participate in the Galactic Civil War. When most of those SWG members drifted away from the game, my interest in SWG evaporated similarly. I had no community to thrive in, so my interest in the game also dropped.
Garrett sites the time sinks of the game as being the biggest turn off for him. Myself, I don't mind time sinks -- as long as they are part of a forward progression that moves a large group of players (my guild, my team) along, and keeps us challenged.
A great article, and it expresses what I've been feeling too.
I think all the games out now have their achilles heels. EQ2 has bland graphics and poor performance, SWG has been gutted and a horrible combat system put in it's place, in COH their are only a few dungeons which are recycled time and time again, Matrix Online had the interlock system where you can only fight one mob at a time...which is lame, WOW pvp sucks, etc.
One thing I'm getting tired of is all the awesome content at the end requiring big groups. I want to experience some nice content by myself or with a few friends...not 20 or so people. Even 10 is too many in my opinion.
Right now I'm not really playing mmo's too much, except for a month here and there, rotating between the different games I have. But nothing sticks anymore, nothing holds my interest. And nothing I've played makes me wanna play for countless hours upon hours.
In response to the article, I would have to say that there's nothing wrong with burnout in regards to a game. It's a natural, normal way of your brain telling you, “WTF!? Lets do something different with our time.” I don't think that there will ever be any collection of new and unique ideas that will permanently stave off burnout. Even if there is a regular stream of new content introduced to a game, the repetition of the underlying engine will eventually become too much.
Back in the days before MMOs, I would play thru a game beginning to end, just once on average. If bored, or if it was a good game, I'd run thru it again, getting all the side stuff and secrets along the way. Then after that, if it was a really really good game, I would mechanically beat it over and over until I could do it while not even paying attention to it. After a year tops, the game never got touched again.
Then came the MMO. The social aspect of the MMO allows me to follow pretty much the same formula, except it extends it another year or two. Though now i take my time on an MMO. I don't just blast thru it the first time. Sometimes after a time, I haven't even hit the endgame, yet the burnout sets in. It doesn't matter whether your to the end or not, the foundational mechanics of a game are the same all the way thru it. That's what causes the burnout: new level, same routine, different looking mobs.
So I say about burnout: It's no big deal. Play something different when it comes on. Your going to get it no matter what you spend your time doing, whether its games, work, school, TV, dating that annoying person who keeps telling you to play less video games. It's just a sign that you need a little change in your life.
You play a MMO to be with a lot of other people and you can't really have 6 million be uber champs or heros. There has to be people who put in the time and effort to reach the top. How would you feel if you spent 100 hours playing a game but someone who has only played 20 has the same status?
I see this as a design issue. If the game is level based and gear based, then sure - only someone who has put in the time and/or money to gain the levels and equipment will be "Uber". What I'm talking about isn't about being uber, but about feeling involved and part of the world in a way that is rewarding.
Change the design concept - how about a virtual world that doesn't have levels, or "uber" gear. Everyone has basically the same number of hitpoints. Skills make a difference, but a knife in the back is just as deadly no matter how skilled one is. Achievement isn't measured in levels or gear, but rather by what each character contributes to the community. Take a city-state environment where the noble knight takes on the thankless job of guarding a popular road from bandits. The grubby smith who toils for hours making tools and equipment. The lonely hunter who brings the town fresh meat and furs. Then something bad happens, and they band together and solve the problem together, saving the town. The mayor of the town puts their names on a plaque at the city hall building.
Not saying this example is the best, but there's no need to make levels and gear the measure of achievement in a game. There can be other goals, other ways of designing the virtual world. Other ways of rewarding players.
I feel your pain as I too am hitting the burnout point on WoW. I have tried GW, DDO, even went back to DAOC for a time, but it is all the same at the end of the day.
The big problem is that MMo's are designed around static content. They want you to do this content over and over so they make the drops random so you will likely have to do it several times to get the drop you want. Hell Blizzard even added a rep grind to the loot. Now not only do you have to grind to get the stuff you need to get the loot, but then you have to grind rep to get it.
Companies really need to start looking at Dynamic content. It may be a pain in the butt to manage, but imagine picking up DAOC again to find out that Muire Tomb is now an Epic Dugeon because some great Lich from DF came in and took over. After the lich is defeated the dungeon could reset to the lower level dungeon.
There are lots of ways to impolement this type of stuff and still make it so everyone can get special loot. Timed events that happen once every 3 months. Custom quests based on a characters reputation with a certain faction. Developers need to come up with a set of quest creation tools to implement into a game that allows a GM to create a quest on the spot and create realistic rewards.
The same old static grind is just not sutting it anymore. Dynamic content needxs to seriously be looked at and developed.
DOnt havemuch comment,most things you guys write ar all very true, played daoc and WoW myself but got bored with it very fast (4 months) becaus of endles sgrinding and sucky PVP.
currently i am looking forward on trying dark and light and Roma victor
dark and light because of al the promises they gave and roma victor becaus eit is one of the first mmo's in a while that go for gameplay instead of flashy graphics.
greetings
(and excuse me for my typing,i didnt have much time
here lies the problem with a game when it is annouced. everygame when annoucned is written to have all these things in it that will never make it gold. the only way to put out a great game that will make everyone happy is to not tell people what your going to put into the game before you do it. i think WAR is goign to have this. i hope they let people know what they HAVE put in. not what they are GOING to put into the game. keep hopes of a great game reasonable.
So many elements of MMORPGs cause burn out. I disagree on Elves and Fantasy settings. I could play D&D pen and paper every day with a good GM and enought time. Most MMORPGs simply do not build much beyond the original foundations of EQ or UO and the MUDs that were before them. Granted Sci Fi and Westerns and Super Heroes has some room for new stuff but most of them simply rip off a fantasy MMORPG set up and change the scenery.
Another thought is that a growing trend in video games and especially PC games is to release a steaming pile a poop and figure that the rabid geeks will buy it and be OK with patching and testing after release to fix glaring problems. This makes some MMORPGs feel more like a beta than a real game.
Fans of the genre also tend to follow these games thru five and six year development/beta cycles. I've spent at least three years each following Horizons, SWG, EQII, and even Shadowbane because they sounded good in development but then stunk in release. How many times will we as gamers follow these long development cycles including postponements, only to find out we basically waited and clamored and praised yet another AC2 in a different box?
Last but not least is that so many of these games nowadays are trying to make Neverwinter Nights instead of EQI. Easy soloing, fast leveling, quick loot, private instances, and few if any games truely have tried to analyze how they can produce the community that was in those first MMORPGs. WOW has six million but if your not in a guild, how often do you socialize with anyone? Community needs to come back.
Many of these games seem to just go thru the motions. They know that they need rat and fire beatle fields, they know they need the "collect 20 of these" quests, they know they need some particle weapons and the standard Tolkien classes and races. Beyond that the bottom line is that most of the new MMORPGs have no soul. Each seems prettier but also more shallow than it's predecessors.
I have heard many say this next batch (3rd Gen) better be good or we are going to just buy a console or buy all RTS games from now on. Most of what I mentioned is about production and already before a MMORPG is released you can experience burnout. This is beyond typical burnout from grind, lack of content, lack of endgame activity, boring combat etc.
Garrett, I'm in full agreement with you and have been feeling the same gaming blues lately. I think a big part of it is that we're at the end of the 2nd gen of MMO's, where the titles feel old and tired. Hopefully the 3rd gen will breathe new life into gaming for us.
One thing I wanted to mention is that I think part of what I'm seeing in at least some 3rd gen titles is a return to "world simulations" rather than "theme parks". It's interesting, because I seem to remember a lot of your debates with Frank where you take the stance that theme parks are way better than world simulations. The problem is, you get sick of the rides. When is the last time you got sick of a whole world?
UO and EQ are the best two example of world simulations imo. UO because of the incredible variety of lifestyles you could lead within the game. I used to basically "live" in a player-made town called Paxlair, where I spent much of my time socializing with the inhabitants. The town was really a hub for socializing, roleplaying, and crafting. Because of this, roughly half of the citizens were female (a *huge* feat in MMO's pre-WoW). I'm a more action-oriented person, so I spent a lot of my time defending the town from PK's, or going on "quests" to help out my neighbors (getting trade materials for high-end crafting for example). These activities had more meaning than pretty much anything I've ever done in any other game, because they really helped real people.
The other game that came close to world simulation (imo) was EQ1, but in a very different way. To me the "Golden Age" of EQ was from the release of Velious to the release of Planes of Power. The world was simply massive, and yet totally uninstanced. I played on the PvP servers (RZ and SZ) and while there was grief now and then, overall it felt like a huge, dangerous world. The scale of the (expanded) world combined with the harsh penalties on dying (xp loss for mob death, or coin loss plus 1 item loss on RZ), made life a harsh and challenging affair. Before Plane of Knowledge, places in the world just *felt* far away because you actually had to undergo the risk of travel.
To me, those two games were the greatest MMO's so far. I'm looking forward to seeing if Darkfall recreates the UO atmosphere again at all, but I think its reputation as the "hardcore PvP" game will scare away any more peaceful inhabitants and we'll have Shadowbane 2 on our hands. I'm also optimistic about Vanguard for recreating the scale of EQ, but I'm afraid they're neglecting the PvP end-game too much. Age of Conan may somehow bring these two concepts together and have a balanced community, but it's looking very "theme park" oriented to me.
Anyway, in closing I'd just like to say that I don't think you really got sick of your dwarf fighter. In fact, I think you probably love that well-developed dwarf character more than any other character you might play, because in a big way you *are* that dwarf. That identity has grown with you over the past 26 years and is really a part of you. I think that you (both Garrett and the dwarf) got sick of the world you were living in. You saw the sights, you got the T-shirt, you were ready to move on. Hopefully some of the 3rd gen titles bring us a world big enough to keep us exploring, and dangerous enough to make it a fun and exciting challenge.
posting again -- sorry if you prefer a post EDIT as opposed to another post.
Wanted to comment on a few peoples comments. Tho I'm too lazy to go find their posts to quote them here. haha.
1) MMO's added crafting as a way to add more things to do, YES, but I don't believe this successfully added something else to do, and its even something useful. However, this didn't take away from the grinding aspect. Further it added to the frustrations about drop rates, etc. Its grinding! My examples are from WoW (admitedly) so perhaps doesn't pertain to all MMO's. I'm a lvl 60 Human Paladin. I'm also an artisan armorsmith. At level 40 I was grinding an innumerable amount of ORE to fulfill a quest to become an artisan smith. MORE grinding. The skill came in handy when 3 of my nephews startd playing. I was able to make great armor for them as the hit certain levels. And in a way that was satisfying and after the armorsmith quests were done it wasn't so much like grinding. But it added new frustration of feeling like I wasn't in control of my world. I'm an artisan blacksmith...so, why can't I teach other armorsmiths? There are only a few Armorsmith teachers in the world and they are sought after...but I am not sought after...
2)Battlefield2 - someone said its no fun because a bullet is a bullet and a 10 minute old n00b can kill a high ranking general. Umm....welcome to real life physicis? Also, your depiction isn't quite accurate. Higher rank means you take precendence to be the commander of your faction...in bf2 the commander has an entirely different user interface with abilities that no one else in the game (except the opposing commander) has! Next up, you get better weapons...or in some cases, just more variety of weapons to choose from. bf2 has an emphasis on tactics, strategy, team play, action. So the ranks mean less and teamplay and skill mean more. Furthermore, I'm an excellent attack chopper pilot and this took many a failed attempt (offline of course) practicing before I got good at it. I didn't feel like I was grinding when flying the attack chopper but I was definately aware of a honing of my skill...and it payed off. If bf2 had some kind of rank enforcement, then I would see it as more of an FPSRPG.
Stopped playing WoW last November ( a few weeks after hitting 60). Mostly due to the conversion of my guild from a social friendly guild to a Raid emphasis...but then I'm an RP nut and social is whats most important to me.
Currently not playing any MMOrpg -- Lvl 80 paladin WoW
- Finish what you start. Too many MMOs have gone gold without having features they SHOULD have. SOE is obviously notorious for this. - World Simulations vs. Theme Parks - Grymlok hit it on the head. When the world is yours to explore as you will, burying content in that world is paramount. Exploring becomes more than its own time sink, it becomes a purpose. - Write games for PLAYERS, not for PROFIT. When you do that, the profit will come. Developers these days seem to only care about the bottom line. Garrett, you alluded to this in your article in describing SWG's intentional time sinks. That ties back to my previous point a bit. - Cater to, and reward, every playstyle. If my playstyle is PvE and that's it, I should not have to deal with backstabbing smacktards. Ever. If I'm a PvP junkie, then grief isn't a word and I should be rewarded by being able to attack anyone, anytime, or something. - Stop trying to reinvent the wheel. Most MMOs are designed with new engines, which can take 2 years of development time. The game engine determines what you'll be able to do, but after all the games that have been released, aren't there certain engines that simply work better than others, depending on the situation? Spend the money on an existing engine and invest that dev time in putting out a quality game.
Because "MMO" is the youngest addition to genre many still don't get them. WOW and DDO do not define MMOs. What defines a MMO is how massive and multiplayer it is. Gameplay mechanics run the gambit from life simulators (Second Life, There) to First Person Shooters (Planetside, neo-SWG, Huxley, Tabula Rasa), RTS (Shattered Galaxy), and beyond. MMOs let you connect to peers and develop communities of interests. Xbox Live, while a leap forward for the console community, is still not par with MMO. But besides all this the bottom-line is some gamers just love MMOs period (like me).
Originally posted by Shags My point with this editorial was to get the community talking (which you have) in the hopes that developers and business analysts will read the article and check out what we all have to say on the forums.
Oh I hope not, Mr. Fuller. All I see is the industry bending over backwards to give you what you claim you want. Yet, you are still bored, and still burned out.
I have to imagine why you are bored, and why you are upset at games these days. You say in your article:
"There is only so much grinding for faction or raiding you can do before you are so sick of it and you never want to see another giant bug in your life."
I think this is obvious. But if it is so obvious, then what causes players like yourself to power play so hard, that it strips the fun right out of these games? Because I don't think that a game like the old SWG, or UO, or Anarchy Online were ever intended to be consumed in the rapid and determined manner that they apparently are.
These were not games to be played to excess to the point of burnout in a few months. These were games that were designed to play for years, and to be played for years. Whether rightly or wrongly, the game developers naturally assumed that players would perform activities to be enjoyed, not to be conquered.
Koster once said that "grind is a state of mind," and the longer I see players and commentators, I have to say its true. If there is nothing more than "kill these MOBs, grab loot, and grab XP," there are far more cost effective and enjoyable pursuits than MMORPGs. When we look at the first real offerings, they did plenty to make the games less about killing MOBs, and more about the sort of things Flatfingers talked about. Things like player communities, roleplay professions, and various tools that have no impact whatsoever on "MOB killing, loots, and XP."
Those things are disappearing, fast, and they are disappearing because of people like you, Mr. Fuller. People who are given a wealth of tools, personalities, and vast worlds to create fun, yet are still bored, because they cannot figure out what they should be doing, unless the developers mandate it.
Because you do not seem all that interested in creating a fictional character, filled with virtues and flaws, and building a world. You seem to be interested in mashing buttons more efficiently than the next guy, preferably in PvP. It goes to this statement you make a little further down:
"Eventually another game will come out that may draw you away, but a good many months can be spent simply fighting it out with other players."
I have to agree with Bullbyte here, when he says that nobody who really says they like fighting other players, really likes fighting other players, especially for "a good many months." If that were the case, then why even turn to MMORPGs at all, when you have many games like Planetside, BF2, and others which give you great, fast paced, and balanced PvP action?
Because, as Bullbyte's response so masterfully puts, "the PvP'er player crowd from WoW, DAoC and Shadowbane wants an edge - that's why they grind..." So then, its no wonder in my mind why you are bored, burned out, and see all the things you have to do in MMORPGs as a "grind." You and most players these days don't play these games with the purpose of having fun by creating a role, and living as a citizen of the shards. You play these games because the only way you can have fun is when you gather more loot, wealth, XP, and kills than the next guy.
And apparently Mr. Fuller, the industry agrees with you, and are giving you exactly what you claim you want.
Its a shame too, because the MMORPGs I used to play were so much more than that. They had so much we could do, explore, and create. I didn't play UO, or the old launch-era SWG, as much as I lived a story within it, with so many rich and varied personalities. We didn't "grind efficiently," or center the entire game around having highest "kill ratio" for our guilds. We created fiction, and lived epic stories, because the developers made immersion a number one priority.
That's where gjsfaun is coming from, and I agree. But the boring, grind-ridden, and ultimately unsatisfying games these days are not designed for people like gjsfaun and I to enjoy. They are designed for people like Mr. Fuller, and those like him, who only think about action, mashing buttons, and bragging rights over others in "grind to gain ratios," or, "win/loss ratios," or "ladder rankings." Its probably why Mr. Fuller did not "get" what SWG was about:
"In a seminar at GDC one of the developers of SWG admitted that they put time sinks into the game on purpose. If you had a quest to go to the other side of Tatooine, you were running for a good thirty minutes of game time. My answer to that is, WTF? First of all it’s STAR WARS, why can’t players buy a speeder? Second, why do that to your players? The answer they gave, to keep people online. Okay, well that type of philosophy by developers worked “great” on that game, look at SWG now, almost no one plays. If you want to keep your players online, have them fly over in a speeder and maybe fight a few guards on the way to the objective. Give players something to do, not something to sit through. It is these 'sit through' scenarios in MMOs that cause burn out."
So on the one hand, Mr. Fuller is sick of "grinding for faction or raiding." Yet on the other hand, if he cannot get to the grinding or raiding fast enough, its a "time sink" that serves no purpose. No wonder the MMORPG is in a sorry state, and why games are not anything more than a "boring grind." Whenever the developers give us what we say we want, like vast worlds, non-combat activities, richness, and depth, it simply becomes too vast, too boring, too complicated, and too deep in our neverending quest to gain XP, loot everything, and pwn all with our clans.
Thanks to people like Mr. Fuller making statements like the one above, it may please Mr. Fuller to know that SWG mitigated all of those "sit through" scenarios that players said were "burning them out." Things like the long treks, the wounds, the accrued fatigue that needed an entertainer to heal. The buying and manufacture of crafted goods. Things like camps, experience in the different professions, and the Jedi end game. The NGE was made for people like Mr. Fuller.
What was once a realistic and epic staging ground to live a Star Wars life, and create our own stories interacting with the world, and others, is no more. However, it may please you to know Mr. Fuller that at least you can burn yourself out grinding Rancors, Mokks, and Kimogilas faster now than ever before. There is simply nothing that prevents you from doing so, and nothing else to do besides "grind," for there is no more depth, or context.
I am sorry if this sounds harsh, but I am confused. We seem as players at times to be talking out of both sides of our mouths. On the one hand, we say we have nothing to do but burn ourselves out grinding PvE, for the sake of mastering PvP. On the other hand, whenever developers go out on a limb to give us things that prevent grinding, and balance PvP, we call it a "timesink," or a "nerf."
The answer I think are the words nobody wants to hear these days: realism, roleplay, and immersion. Unless we have the sense that what we are doing is more than "grinding to the next level," we'll never see PvE as anything other than a boring means that becomes more boring the more we do it, for a pointless end that becomes more pointless the more we approach it.
Here is the problem though. Every time a game comes out with something that facilitates realism, roleplay, and immersion, it gets called a "timesink," a "waste," a "forced playstyle," or as Mr. Fuller calls it, a "sit through scenario." I have played games before that took immersion seriously, but not so much these days, thanks to complaints by players who say, "what point is there in doing it if I don't get XP and loot?," or, "how does this help me to pwn all?"
Well, it doesn't. It can't, without becoming just another thing to grind. But realism, roleplay, and immersion does sustain a playerbase, and prevents burnout. When there are things that become wothwhile that have nothing to do with XP, levels, loot, or PvP rankings, people have more to do than simply grind and mash buttons until it hurts.
__________________________ "Its sad when people use religion to feel superior, its even worse to see people using a video game to do it." --Arcken
"...when it comes to pimping EVE I have little restraints." --Hellmar, CEO of CCP.
"It's like they took a gun, put it to their nugget sack and pulled the trigger over and over again, each time telling us how great it was that they were shooting themselves in the balls." --Exar_Kun on SWG's NGE
I'm here to reply to some of Beatnik59's responses to the article.
Whether it was intended or not, I'm not sure I quite understand your apparent personal hatred of Mr. Fuller. Seriously, I don't mind saying I disagree, but essentially calling 'that guy' out, and vilifying him as an 'enemy' to the MMORPG genre, well, I don't quite get what you're trying to prove with that.
See, the problem here is that you're not looking at what Fuller was trying to say, but rather, you're reading it the way you want to see it.
Grinding out faction points for example.
I can't think of how many people hate this. I honestly like the idea of faction points. You know what I don't like though, I don't like getting 52 faction points a kill when I need over 218,000 faction points for something I want. That's fine and dandy that devs don't plan on it people trying to get something quicker than usual, but you'd be both presumptuous and ignorant to say that it's the players fault for trying to 'grind' in the first place Beatnik. I used to be able to play an MMO several hours a day, everyday, all the time. I don't have that luxury anymore, and I'd dare to say most people don't get the time to spend 5-8 hours happily earning faction points. Some people only get to play a few hours a week. Should they be penalized by having other priorities in their life, because I certainly don't think so.
The flaws with grinds are that they are deliberately put into MMO's to make sure that players stick around. I don't care if you disagree with that opinion, I consider it a fact. The devs realize the longer it takes to get something done, the longer they'll get subscription fees. The fact is, it's a flaw in the developer, to expect people to 'happily' grind 218,000 faction points. You can only kill the same mob-type so many times before you stop caring. That's not the players fault. Make your quests not suck, make them more varied, make more mob types, make more methods of acquiring faction points. But if you think I would ever just be content with killing the same damned quillrat 6,000 times, then you're a fool.
I realize that was a long example, but I couldn't shorten it anymore...
Another issue I have is your belief that all players need to role-play. I have not, and will not ever enjoy roleplaying. I've tried it. It's not fun to me. You seem to have a chip on your shoulder, that all people who play MMO's without the intention of roleplaying are the reason the genre is dying in the first place.
Yet another problem I have with your statement, the one regarding travel.
Frankly, I completely disagree with you. I shouldn't have to spend 2 hours walking from point A to point B. As a roleplayer, you should understand that, if I were playing my 'role', I'd kindly ride a horse, or a mount, or get a teleport spell, or something else that isn't walking to where I'd like to go. You like sightseeing in your MMO, and so do I. The difference is, I don't see why I should be forced to do so at an unneccesarily slow pace. What is this crap about not being able to ride a mount until level 20...what is that garbage.....how can I immerse myself in a game where common sense and simple practices are limited by poorly-written/expressed lore....
MMORPG's aren't dying because of the player, not entirely. Here's a small list, IMO, of why the genre is suffering
- NO innovation. I can't remember the last time I saw a dev try something new - Lazy players. www.ige.com, hackers/botters/powerlevel-pay-sites, all examples of pathetic human beings - Greedy companies/publishers. No focus on storyline/content, just end-game raids, new gear, and the next expansion pack - Horrible devs. When's the last time devs listened to their playerbase regarding new content...I can't recall anything, unless you consider cries for balance/nerfing 'listening' - 'Emptiness'. Large, empty, useless world. Whoop dee doo. Can I build a house over there, can I cut down that tree, can I interact at all with my environment...most of the time, nope. - 3rd party interference. Nothing like knowing you're playing against chinamen farmers, and the company you're paying isn't doing a god damned thing to stop them from monopolizing drops. - LAME QUESTS. I'm not a god damned mailman, I don't feel like doing monotonous fetch quests, crappy faction kill x number of y enemies for z faction, worthless camp quests. How about something interesting. I'm amazed that, in nearly 10 years of MMO's, the same, crumby, root/base quest types are still the only ones around. - Focus only on end-game, raiding content. Not enough emphasis on the individual.
Again, that's a SMALL list. But I'd dare to say that covers most of the general problems with the industry. You wanna make millions of dollars, it'd be simple. Invent a questing system/style that is innovative and doesn't suck, show no quarter to cheaters/chinamen farmers and remove them immediately...let's not pretend like you don't know who they are in your game, and most importantly LISTEN TO YOUR PLAYERS, as they're the ones who are paying for your game. DON'T do what SOE did, and listen to people on how to attract new customers. You pay attention to your fans first, worry about the acquisition of new ones second.
Waiting for something fresh to arrive on the MMO scene...
I played AO for 2 years of solid, nightly play. At first, the community & teaming were great. The expansions totally changed the nature of the game, and killed the "family" feel for me... just turned it into a grind.
The big problem was that once you reach level 150 of 200, there's no incentive to keep leveling. The end game, which the expansions were supposed to improve, just ended up creating a really grind oriented tiered level of game play. No place there for the casual gamer.
Occasionally I download the free version, just so I can log on & see if it's changed. Typically, I'm still disappointed. Maybe I'll give it a shot & see.
On the other hand, I think I'll go play Guild Wars instead.
Very Intriging. First let me start by saying that it is now 3:45am and i am #^&% tired, but this topic hits VERY close to home(if not landing right in my living room). I have played online games for about 7 years now and I a feel that there is absolutly NOTHING being done to "revolutionize" the genre. I started with Everquest. My oh my what a GLORIOUS game. It was not only a start for just me, but alot of people in my age group. but as we all grow up and want more, we are treated to remakes, and in my opinoin cop-outs, of the game. now we all want something that is easy. no one wants to invest any time into a game. lets use WOW for example..... name ONE thing that is "new and revolutionary" about it........... like i thought.. nothing.... and as the topic stated.... its just raiding... sure we all like raiding. we all enjoy getting the best armor, the best spells... but the same formula is not working anymore. ANYONE WHO PLAYED EVERQUEST CAN TELL YOU THAT THERE IS AN EMPTY SPOT IN THEM WHEN THEY LEFT... i havnt felt that way about anything after.. nothing is new. Im hoping that these new games coming out on the market will fill the empty spot.. SIGIL.... right now u got me. VANGUARD... im watchin ya closly... but can u bring the SOUL back to online gaming.... SOMEONE!
"One day... I'll get my wings..... Then I can fly away from it all...."
We must have dynamic and player created content in our games!
Q: How many times must you kill Nefarion before he will god damn well stay dead?
A: just enough for him to drop the item you want?
now imagin if you could kill him permanently once! and claim Blackwing lair as your own ...populate it with monsters you create and put loot on those mosters you create ...to lure would be adventures there.....and use the gold off there bloody corpse's to fund your research into new kinds of player created magiks
Until one day someone comes to your dungon. Fights his way thu all your monsters and challenges you for control Of BWL and beats you casting you out to the wastelands to plot your revenge.
And then turn BWl into a monastary for contemplation into the mysteries of the divine and create's new divine spells and potions
now imagin hundreds of these dungeons all over the virtual world ...built from scratch
in a world where everything reacts to what the players do and make.......
now forget all that and get back to grinding you Brood rep
Comments
I concur with you Garret on the "burn out" . But I do not agree that his "PvP" solutions are the answer for everyone. I don't play these type of MOG's for PvP. there isn't any. In fact it is my observation that in games such as WoW, DAoC, EQ etc etc. - there is little PvP "satisfaction" per say for those who claim they love PVP other than the satisfaction some need to get from griefing others lower or less equiped. (Note: The mental health issue causing such justification is probably to compensate for a RL situation of little power or control in ones daily life in my opinion. Who knows. ) Example right here in this thread, to quote the post from Vinlyinmoko : "I stay in the game to pwn noobs." There is the typical PvP player I have seen. Point and case.
If anyone claims they disagree on this by the way, here is your test. If you truely love PvP , what is your rank in Battlefield 2? (Mine is Master Sergeant by the way). Your not playing BF2? Of course not. Because you CAN"T have an advantage over anyone. Noob or otherwise. You can play BF2 for the next ten years and rise to the rank of uber sergeant, (get nifty tages too!) but .. and here's the reason you won't play it and nor will Vinylinmoko , every time you log into battle, other than your rank, you get your shirt and you get your gun. None you can choose from are uber. In fact, no uber anything. Only your skill is between you and death. Hence, a day one , hour one "noob" can clean your clock just as easily as someone who has played up to the top ranks and has played since beta. Won't be seeing Garret or Vinyl there, I don't think so .. the PvP'er player crowd from WoW, DAoC and Shadowbane wants an edge - that's why they grind MC for example in the first place. To get an Uber weapon and uber armor to have an uber advantage. And the first thing they do when they get it is to run out to find some one 5 to 10 (or more - hopefully) levels below them to use it on.
Now.. IMHO what IS needed in next generation MOG's is a more interactive environment. Too much is scripted and the "grind to advance" model is worn out. if the outcome of quests and interaction with MOB's had "intelligence" - so to speak - resulting in different outcomes or adventures it would make each encouter with a MOB an event in and of itself and not just "tagging" to fulfill some part of a scripted quest.
In conclusion .. it is predictability that is boring. And now that we have years of experience playing MOG's - as the consumers - new art and names for things added on the same play model is not going to work for MMORPG developers very much longer.
Cheers
I reached burn out with the type of MMOs that every company seems to be putting out now a while back. Pointless time sinks, espically in loot based economies are something I have no tolerance for anymore and I do find it ammusing Vanguards main selling point seems to be they are putting bigger time sinks in.
But time sinks aren't the only reason I burned out. The lack of different playstyles gets to me, it's all focused on combat with the thin veneer of crafting stapled on where what they craft is next to useless compared to loot and they aren't actuelly an equaly valid playstyle but just a sort of hobby for combat characters. The rigid class level based systems is also something that is just boring to me now.
Oh and nice to see you working your personaly PvP like in again as what all games need.
Great conversation piece.
My first MMO was SWG and be that as it may I had no idea what a waste of time the "game" was. However, I did make quite a few friends who were apart of the genre of "Star Wars" and it was great to hang around and talk while doing some mindless grinding. This is not to say "Thank You SWG for friends" but that is an element many of the responders are missing here.
I believe MMO's do generally bring this type of notion to the table if they are even the slightest successful in the game creation.
I'm currently playing WOW but I also do understand just about everyone here's complaints regarding it. Let me just say this, WOW has put more meaning in to the proper direction an MMO should go well above and beyond SWG could ever have imagined. Where WOW has failed, (back to my understanding with everyone), is what few have suggested here as dynamic content. An ever changing world where you feel you have made some progress or had a hand in it either way (though the AQ opening adventures with supply turn ins were a great start in that direction) brings alot of satisfaction to one as a gamer in playing.
It has been very refreshing to do quests which are interesting and that actually have rewards which are "Useful" well beyond the heavy grind that was SWG. Now I know I only have played a few MMO's (Horizon and FFO also comes to mind) but I sense there were just several levels of "grind" in most of them. I think everyone who has done at least more than 90% of the quests in WOW including the Onyxia line has seen what the devs were trying to do with bringing an adventure here and there for greater adventures in controlled states beyond with instances you dont' have to fight some arse over to enjoy.
The many instances in WOW alone help to answer some of the "DM" type feels and fantasy adventures abound for us all in Azeroth. Unfortunately it does get old and I have to be completely honest here, what the heck were they thinking with making the lvl 60+ instances have to be grindable 100's of times before you could get the right type of gear for your toon? How did this just seem like, "Hey this will be really fun for all of our subscribers!"
Oh...I get it....timesink..... wah wah....waaaaaaaaaaaah
Guess they really need to pay the bills and time to make more content so why not?
Ugh and /Sigh
Very insightful all. Here is a solution to the content gap.
I see burn out happen in our guild all the time. People leave and then come back for the next great game. Burn out happens in every game no matter how good it is. I suppose that is why new games are written. I no longer feel compelled to stick with any one game. I like new games as much as old ones.
I also think MMORPG's should move away from loot / faction point endgame time sink goal.
I suggest they move to the NWN player made MOD format and actually let players with popular MODs profit from their hard work of content creation. I am sure this is complicated as we have yet to see players effect game content in any significant way.
Content is king. The fact that books sell more now in our digital mass media age should be a heads up for developers that still think mechanics are king.
Mass community content creation would defiantly benefit these games as there would effectively be no end of places to explore or mysteries to solve, etc. I am not saying everyone’s content should be used. I am sure there would be some form of automated vetting process.
The “Spore” game in development is probably just breaking the surface of what should be considered for maybe the fifth evolution of MMORPGs Players of this game will have content filled by other players. So many of these things are being done by game developers, just not all together in a MMORPG yet.
http://www.dojguild.org/
I realised I got tired of my Orc Hunter when login in to the game to go to instances and get more gear became like a job and not a hobby. I ended up erasing her, to make sure I would not return to WOW, which I did a few months later. Orcs are less vulgar as playable race then elves, I never found them in any of the other MMORPGs i played, but she didn't look female enough to me, and I'm a female so I like my avatar to look good. Anyway, in what comes to this kind of game, the only original one I played was Horizons: Empire of Istaria. There we could play Fiend, Pixie, Dragon, and those I haven't seen anywhere else. I found that game a bit late though, and the graphics were already looking a little dated when compared to the ones of Star Wars Galaxies or Everquest 2 that I played in advance. There are a couple of things I realy like to see on this games, one is taming, an adiction I got from my first MMORPG Ultima Online. The other is housing. It can be like the one on Anarchy Online, but i definitly like to log in inside it and not by the entrance like it hapens on EQ2. I didn't like the way the houses blocked the path on Ultima Online to be honest, even if I was the proud owner of one. I also like to be abble to customise my character a lot, changing nose shape and so on. The more options the better. What I do complain like you did, is realy that the developers insist on creating the same kind of playable races, Dwarfs, Elves, Humans, etc. I would like to see more of Horizons concept in other games, or a revamp on the way this one looks so it would display year 2006 graphics quality. Even crafting was fun there.
At the moment I'm trying several diferent games, but I haven't found "The Game" yet.
Quite a response from everyone! I am glad to see so many people feel similar, even if you don't agree with the whole article, I do think the main point is valid.
Many of you seem unhappy that I did not include certain games on the list, please understand that it is an editorial based on experience and I did not play some of the games you mentioned.
I know Meridian 59 and MUDS were the early start of things, sadly I was not a part of that, I started with UO.
Also, I have not played EvE although I know it is growing in popularity and I've followed its progress.
I am a huge fan of PvP, but I do love PvE as well and have spent hours (more than PvP) on that front.
Everyone has there own experiences in gaming and it is great to read them all.
My point with this editorial was to get the community talking (which you have) in the hopes that developers and business analysts will read the article and check out what we all have to say on the forums.
Cheers,
Garrett
Secondly, I haven't got a functional shift key, so I can't use question marks/exclamation marks, certain punctuation marks, etc. I apoologize in advance.
I think I can speak for everyone when I say that one of the biggest and most important parts to an MMORPG is it's community. If I can't log into a game, and find a playerbase that's both humorous and enjoyable to play with, I can't enjoy the MMO itself. I mean, social interaction is the root of the genre; you'll be playing with the same people for days, weeks, months, years. Thus, being able to get along with these people and having fun with them is essential. There are games I would have enjoyed more had it not drawn such a miserable crowd of players to it. While I won't use my personal experience here, the same goes for the vice versa; there have been downright god-awful games which I could never have endured, were it not for the community. Case and point, Star Wars Galaxies. One of the worst games I ever played, but I was able to salvage some small enjoyment from it by playing with good people, who made me forget the god-awful product I was paying to play for far too long.
One thing, however, that I have experienced in every MMO since Everquest is this horrible belief that an MMO'S endgame causes the community to stay alive. However, in every game I've played, the END-GAME HAS BEEN THE DEATH OF THE COMMUNITY. Why do I say this, well, I'll give some examples.
1. Once players start seeing the end-game, all they can think about is that new phat lewt, that new item, killing that new endgame boss better and faster than anyone else. The game shifts it's focus from fun, onto a greed-based style of play. Think about it MMO vets, where do you see more drama, the beginning of the game, or the end of it. I don't recall people lying, cheating, stealing, hacking, or whatever else it takes to make sure that their player/their guild can beat/claim that god-like monster. As a result of making only the most elite items attainable through the end-game, social guilds dissolve in favor of raiding guilds. The worst part is, most of the time, these raiding guilds are filled with people I can NOT stand. Greedy, one-tracked asshats, who care nothing about anything other than lewt and gold. Thus, I am usually forced to say goodbye to my friends, and hello to asshats, just to get something done in the game, and I don't like it.
2. Yet another issue for me associated with the end-game is the fact that I no longer feel like I'm playing a game anymore. I'm not the teenager I once was, I don't have 6 hours to dedicate, 3 nights a week, to raiding some god damned monster. In fact, I don't have the time to dedicate 40 additional hours a week JUST to raiding, on top of my job now, and college, and maintaining a social life. The end-game boils down to killing the same crappy gods, over and over, on a fixated schedule with 1 guild, and then at the end of the month, you get to use your 'guild points' to pick out an item and some gold in exchange for your contribution. I don't think I should look at playing my game like a second job. The fact that it has come down to that for nearly every MMO these days, well, maybe games just aren't supposed to be fun anymore. I just thought I'd never say that.
3. Lastly, with the end-game, developers have seemingly gotten lazy. Yep, raiding is fun...once or twice. But there are people who would prefer not to run around with a group of 18-40 people who they dislike, for 4 hours at a time. When's the last time a developer tried putting something innovative in the end-game...I certainly can't recall. It's just put in a new super-boss, put in a new instance, put in a new zone, blah blah blah.....more crappy 3 hours fights, more crappy colorful gear to waste weeks upon weeks to get it, and less fun to be had. I think end-game is old, and frankly, it burns me out everytime. Maybe when I see a developer putting some time into new things, instead of repetitive raids, slightly enhanced gear, and tedium, maybe then I'll care about the end-game more.
Another thing that burns me out is most definitely the lack of innovation in MMO's these days. As the editorial stated, who the hell wants to see a dwarf warrior running around anymore. In fact, who the hell even wants to play as a god damned elf with a bow anymore... No, I want some unique thinking for once. The thing that makes me sad, is that everytime I see it, people shoot it down immediately, saying 'that can't be done'. Let's cite a recent example, how about the concept of WoW introducing a 2 headed Ogre, played by 2 people, as 2 different jobs. Would that be hard to do, absolutely, would it be difficult to balance, you betcha, would I be willing to play something that original, DAMNED SKIPPY I WOULD. And why are all MMO's geared towards achieving the bare minimums. How about an Octopi class with 8-arms, that can use 8 weapons and no armor, or or the ability to bust out some sort of race that isn't a human-imitation. Am I the only one sick of playing as a cat/frog/tiger/elf/human/dwarf/orc/troll/ogre/SOMETHING THAT'S SUPPOSED TO BE DIFFERENT, BUT IS ESSENTIALLY A HUMAN WITH A SKINS OVERHAUL...because I sure as hell hope not.
Yet even another thing that's burned me out is the lack of variety in games. Granted, AO, SWG, and DAoC seemed to correct it a little, but the majority of games have yet to do so. Why is it that in games I play these days, my character looks just like everyone else at his level...Is it so much to ask for more coloring options, different gear choices, so that I don't have to look just like everyone else. How immersed can I be when there are 800 other players running around who look just like me...
I actually have drawn up my own MMORPG, and if I knew how to acquire a development team, and had some sort of funding, I'd totally try and produce it. The concept of the game would be evolution. No, not like the evolution theory, as in an evolving world, evolving characters, weapons, etc. Start out in the castle age, work up to a sci-fi age. Throw in character evolution based off of elemental attributes/fighting styles, create a PvP basis with the use of an arena, faction warfare, battlefields, and even religious shrines for further enhanced fights. Lastly, incorporate a war mode, and have say...200 vs 200 players at a time. That's the gist of it...and that's a game I would want to paly.
If I didn't have to go to work, I'd post more, but I will be back, rest assured.
Waiting for something fresh to arrive on the MMO scene...
Hello everyone, I have to say, I am burnt out on MMO's. I feel they all off the same thing but 1 will have alittle more in depth then the other. Lets look at a few, WOW is probably one of the most popular for trying to get the uber gear or the PvP system, but FFXI is really good for party atmosphere with good loot, COH and COV is great for their in depth character building options, SWG well it was good for the crafting system and resource gathering until they broke that lol. I think to be honest is that the Developers are getting burnt out as well because you can only tweek things so much. This is what I think would be good, now this isnt going to be good for everyone but cant make everyone happy.
I would like to see, a good crafting system and resource gathering. Each resource would have stats on it and the better the resource the better the crafted item, like SWG was back in the day.
PvP system that has ranking and gear you can get but put more stuff in it like maybe more spells or abilities, quest in the PvP area that each side have to complete together to get like rare items maybe like weapons, gear or even items for your house like a sculpture or items to help crafting like +1 or +2 items bonus for crafting.
I like the housing systems in games. I think it gives people something else to do and something they can say hey this is mine. Also make items to decorate it or just use it for meeting places. I think SWG and EQ2 were going with some good ideas with this but not enough.
I think more games need to intergrate the private server options like NWN's, Its nice to have those people that like to make their own stuff but when you get bored with the content you can log onto a different server and its not exactly the same.
As much as I like Fantasy games, man im getting REALLY burnt out on them. They need to come out with a good Sci FI game. Or do a Fantasy that is alittle different like Ryzom. And have boats, horses, flying mounts, or maybe dragons or speeder bikes, just more options and make like some of the mounts crafted, then some of the mounts buy able, then some lootable, then some from PvP ranking but all of them only optainable in those options not I can go buy my epic or i only have 4 options of mounts. The games just need more personalization.
Well thats just some food for thought hehe sorry I just rambled off.
A great article, and it expresses what I've been feeling too.
I think all the games out now have their achilles heels. EQ2 has bland graphics and poor performance, SWG has been gutted and a horrible combat system put in it's place, in COH their are only a few dungeons which are recycled time and time again, Matrix Online had the interlock system where you can only fight one mob at a time...which is lame, WOW pvp sucks, etc.
One thing I'm getting tired of is all the awesome content at the end requiring big groups. I want to experience some nice content by myself or with a few friends...not 20 or so people. Even 10 is too many in my opinion.
Right now I'm not really playing mmo's too much, except for a month here and there, rotating between the different games I have. But nothing sticks anymore, nothing holds my interest. And nothing I've played makes me wanna play for countless hours upon hours.
Maybe Vangaurd will be good.
In response to the article, I would
have to say that there's nothing wrong with burnout in regards to a
game. It's a natural, normal way of your brain telling you, “WTF!?
Lets do something different with our time.” I don't think that
there will ever be any collection of new and unique ideas that will
permanently stave off burnout. Even if there is a regular stream of
new content introduced to a game, the repetition of the underlying
engine will eventually become too much.
Back in the days before MMOs, I would
play thru a game beginning to end, just once on average. If bored, or
if it was a good game, I'd run thru it again, getting all the side
stuff and secrets along the way. Then after that, if it was a really
really good game, I would mechanically beat it over and over until I
could do it while not even paying attention to it. After a year tops,
the game never got touched again.
Then came the MMO. The social aspect of
the MMO allows me to follow pretty much the same formula, except it
extends it another year or two. Though now i take my time on an MMO.
I don't just blast thru it the first time. Sometimes after a time, I
haven't even hit the endgame, yet the burnout sets in. It doesn't
matter whether your to the end or not, the foundational mechanics of
a game are the same all the way thru it. That's what causes the
burnout: new level, same routine, different looking mobs.
So I say about burnout: It's no big
deal. Play something different when it comes on. Your going to get it
no matter what you spend your time doing, whether its games, work,
school, TV, dating that annoying person who keeps telling you to play
less video games. It's just a sign that you need a little change in
your life.
http://erickveil.com/
I see this as a design issue. If the game is level based and gear based, then sure - only someone who has put in the time and/or money to gain the levels and equipment will be "Uber". What I'm talking about isn't about being uber, but about feeling involved and part of the world in a way that is rewarding.
Change the design concept - how about a virtual world that doesn't have levels, or "uber" gear. Everyone has basically the same number of hitpoints. Skills make a difference, but a knife in the back is just as deadly no matter how skilled one is. Achievement isn't measured in levels or gear, but rather by what each character contributes to the community. Take a city-state environment where the noble knight takes on the thankless job of guarding a popular road from bandits. The grubby smith who toils for hours making tools and equipment. The lonely hunter who brings the town fresh meat and furs. Then something bad happens, and they band together and solve the problem together, saving the town. The mayor of the town puts their names on a plaque at the city hall building.
Not saying this example is the best, but there's no need to make levels and gear the measure of achievement in a game. There can be other goals, other ways of designing the virtual world. Other ways of rewarding players.
Regards,
Gabriel
I feel your pain as I too am hitting the burnout point on WoW. I have tried GW, DDO, even went back to DAOC for a time, but it is all the same at the end of the day.
The big problem is that MMo's are designed around static content. They want you to do this content over and over so they make the drops random so you will likely have to do it several times to get the drop you want. Hell Blizzard even added a rep grind to the loot. Now not only do you have to grind to get the stuff you need to get the loot, but then you have to grind rep to get it.
Companies really need to start looking at Dynamic content. It may be a pain in the butt to manage, but imagine picking up DAOC again to find out that Muire Tomb is now an Epic Dugeon because some great Lich from DF came in and took over. After the lich is defeated the dungeon could reset to the lower level dungeon.
There are lots of ways to impolement this type of stuff and still make it so everyone can get special loot. Timed events that happen once every 3 months. Custom quests based on a characters reputation with a certain faction. Developers need to come up with a set of quest creation tools to implement into a game that allows a GM to create a quest on the spot and create realistic rewards.
The same old static grind is just not sutting it anymore. Dynamic content needxs to seriously be looked at and developed.
DOnt havemuch comment,most things you guys write ar all very true, played daoc and WoW myself but got bored with it very fast (4 months) becaus of endles sgrinding and sucky PVP.
currently i am looking forward on trying dark and light and Roma victor
dark and light because of al the promises they gave and roma victor becaus eit is one of the first mmo's in a while that go for gameplay instead of flashy graphics.
greetings
(and excuse me for my typing,i didnt have much time
So many elements of MMORPGs cause burn out. I disagree on Elves and Fantasy settings. I could play D&D pen and paper every day with a good GM and enought time. Most MMORPGs simply do not build much beyond the original foundations of EQ or UO and the MUDs that were before them. Granted Sci Fi and Westerns and Super Heroes has some room for new stuff but most of them simply rip off a fantasy MMORPG set up and change the scenery.
Another thought is that a growing trend in video games and especially PC games is to release a steaming pile a poop and figure that the rabid geeks will buy it and be OK with patching and testing after release to fix glaring problems. This makes some MMORPGs feel more like a beta than a real game.
Fans of the genre also tend to follow these games thru five and six year development/beta cycles. I've spent at least three years each following Horizons, SWG, EQII, and even Shadowbane because they sounded good in development but then stunk in release. How many times will we as gamers follow these long development cycles including postponements, only to find out we basically waited and clamored and praised yet another AC2 in a different box?
Last but not least is that so many of these games nowadays are trying to make Neverwinter Nights instead of EQI. Easy soloing, fast leveling, quick loot, private instances, and few if any games truely have tried to analyze how they can produce the community that was in those first MMORPGs. WOW has six million but if your not in a guild, how often do you socialize with anyone? Community needs to come back.
Many of these games seem to just go thru the motions. They know that they need rat and fire beatle fields, they know they need the "collect 20 of these" quests, they know they need some particle weapons and the standard Tolkien classes and races. Beyond that the bottom line is that most of the new MMORPGs have no soul. Each seems prettier but also more shallow than it's predecessors.
I have heard many say this next batch (3rd Gen) better be good or we are going to just buy a console or buy all RTS games from now on. Most of what I mentioned is about production and already before a MMORPG is released you can experience burnout. This is beyond typical burnout from grind, lack of content, lack of endgame activity, boring combat etc.
One thing I wanted to mention is that I think part of what I'm seeing in at least some 3rd gen titles is a return to "world simulations" rather than "theme parks". It's interesting, because I seem to remember a lot of your debates with Frank where you take the stance that theme parks are way better than world simulations. The problem is, you get sick of the rides. When is the last time you got sick of a whole world?
UO and EQ are the best two example of world simulations imo. UO because of the incredible variety of lifestyles you could lead within the game. I used to basically "live" in a player-made town called Paxlair, where I spent much of my time socializing with the inhabitants. The town was really a hub for socializing, roleplaying, and crafting. Because of this, roughly half of the citizens were female (a *huge* feat in MMO's pre-WoW). I'm a more action-oriented person, so I spent a lot of my time defending the town from PK's, or going on "quests" to help out my neighbors (getting trade materials for high-end crafting for example). These activities had more meaning than pretty much anything I've ever done in any other game, because they really helped real people.
The other game that came close to world simulation (imo) was EQ1, but in a very different way. To me the "Golden Age" of EQ was from the release of Velious to the release of Planes of Power. The world was simply massive, and yet totally uninstanced. I played on the PvP servers (RZ and SZ) and while there was grief now and then, overall it felt like a huge, dangerous world. The scale of the (expanded) world combined with the harsh penalties on dying (xp loss for mob death, or coin loss plus 1 item loss on RZ), made life a harsh and challenging affair. Before Plane of Knowledge, places in the world just *felt* far away because you actually had to undergo the risk of travel.
To me, those two games were the greatest MMO's so far. I'm looking forward to seeing if Darkfall recreates the UO atmosphere again at all, but I think its reputation as the "hardcore PvP" game will scare away any more peaceful inhabitants and we'll have Shadowbane 2 on our hands. I'm also optimistic about Vanguard for recreating the scale of EQ, but I'm afraid they're neglecting the PvP end-game too much. Age of Conan may somehow bring these two concepts together and have a balanced community, but it's looking very "theme park" oriented to me.
Anyway, in closing I'd just like to say that I don't think you really got sick of your dwarf fighter. In fact, I think you probably love that well-developed dwarf character more than any other character you might play, because in a big way you *are* that dwarf. That identity has grown with you over the past 26 years and is really a part of you. I think that you (both Garrett and the dwarf) got sick of the world you were living in. You saw the sights, you got the T-shirt, you were ready to move on. Hopefully some of the 3rd gen titles bring us a world big enough to keep us exploring, and dangerous enough to make it a fun and exciting challenge.
Anyway, just some thoughts. Thanks for reading.
Grymlok
Wanted to comment on a few peoples comments. Tho I'm too lazy to go find their posts to quote them here. haha.
1) MMO's added crafting as a way to add more things to do, YES, but I don't believe this successfully added something else to do, and its even something useful. However, this didn't take away from the grinding aspect. Further it added to the frustrations about drop rates, etc. Its grinding! My examples are from WoW (admitedly) so perhaps doesn't pertain to all MMO's. I'm a lvl 60 Human Paladin. I'm also an artisan armorsmith. At level 40 I was grinding an innumerable amount of ORE to fulfill a quest to become an artisan smith. MORE grinding. The skill came in handy when 3 of my nephews startd playing. I was able to make great armor for them as the hit certain levels. And in a way that was satisfying and after the armorsmith quests were done it wasn't so much like grinding. But it added new frustration of feeling like I wasn't in control of my world. I'm an artisan blacksmith...so, why can't I teach other armorsmiths? There are only a few Armorsmith teachers in the world and they are sought after...but I am not sought after...
2)Battlefield2 - someone said its no fun because a bullet is a bullet and a 10 minute old n00b can kill a high ranking general. Umm....welcome to real life physicis? Also, your depiction isn't quite accurate. Higher rank means you take precendence to be the commander of your faction...in bf2 the commander has an entirely different user interface with abilities that no one else in the game (except the opposing commander) has! Next up, you get better weapons...or in some cases, just more variety of weapons to choose from. bf2 has an emphasis on tactics, strategy, team play, action. So the ranks mean less and teamplay and skill mean more. Furthermore, I'm an excellent attack chopper pilot and this took many a failed attempt (offline of course) practicing before I got good at it. I didn't feel like I was grinding when flying the attack chopper but I was definately aware of a honing of my skill...and it payed off. If bf2 had some kind of rank enforcement, then I would see it as more of an FPSRPG.
Stopped playing WoW last November ( a few weeks after hitting 60). Mostly due to the conversion of my guild from a social friendly guild to a Raid emphasis...but then I'm an RP nut and social is whats most important to me.
Currently not playing any MMOrpg --
Lvl 80 paladin WoW
- Finish what you start. Too many MMOs have gone gold without having features they SHOULD have. SOE is obviously notorious for this.
- World Simulations vs. Theme Parks - Grymlok hit it on the head. When the world is yours to explore as you will, burying content in that world is paramount. Exploring becomes more than its own time sink, it becomes a purpose.
- Write games for PLAYERS, not for PROFIT. When you do that, the profit will come. Developers these days seem to only care about the bottom line. Garrett, you alluded to this in your article in describing SWG's intentional time sinks. That ties back to my previous point a bit.
- Cater to, and reward, every playstyle. If my playstyle is PvE and that's it, I should not have to deal with backstabbing smacktards. Ever. If I'm a PvP junkie, then grief isn't a word and I should be rewarded by being able to attack anyone, anytime, or something.
- Stop trying to reinvent the wheel. Most MMOs are designed with new engines, which can take 2 years of development time. The game engine determines what you'll be able to do, but after all the games that have been released, aren't there certain engines that simply work better than others, depending on the situation? Spend the money on an existing engine and invest that dev time in putting out a quality game.
There's a sucker born every minute. - P.T. Barnum
Oh I hope not, Mr. Fuller. All I see is the industry bending over backwards to give you what you claim you want. Yet, you are still bored, and still burned out.
I have to imagine why you are bored, and why you are upset at games these days. You say in your article:
"There is only so much grinding for faction or raiding you can do before you are so sick of it and you never want to see another giant bug in your life."
I think this is obvious. But if it is so obvious, then what causes players like yourself to power play so hard, that it strips the fun right out of these games? Because I don't think that a game like the old SWG, or UO, or Anarchy Online were ever intended to be consumed in the rapid and determined manner that they apparently are.
These were not games to be played to excess to the point of burnout in a few months. These were games that were designed to play for years, and to be played for years. Whether rightly or wrongly, the game developers naturally assumed that players would perform activities to be enjoyed, not to be conquered.
Koster once said that "grind is a state of mind," and the longer I see players and commentators, I have to say its true. If there is nothing more than "kill these MOBs, grab loot, and grab XP," there are far more cost effective and enjoyable pursuits than MMORPGs. When we look at the first real offerings, they did plenty to make the games less about killing MOBs, and more about the sort of things Flatfingers talked about. Things like player communities, roleplay professions, and various tools that have no impact whatsoever on "MOB killing, loots, and XP."
Those things are disappearing, fast, and they are disappearing because of people like you, Mr. Fuller. People who are given a wealth of tools, personalities, and vast worlds to create fun, yet are still bored, because they cannot figure out what they should be doing, unless the developers mandate it.
Because you do not seem all that interested in creating a fictional character, filled with virtues and flaws, and building a world. You seem to be interested in mashing buttons more efficiently than the next guy, preferably in PvP. It goes to this statement you make a little further down:
"Eventually another game will come out that may draw you away, but a good many months can be spent simply fighting it out with other players."
I have to agree with Bullbyte here, when he says that nobody who really says they like fighting other players, really likes fighting other players, especially for "a good many months." If that were the case, then why even turn to MMORPGs at all, when you have many games like Planetside, BF2, and others which give you great, fast paced, and balanced PvP action?
Because, as Bullbyte's response so masterfully puts, "the PvP'er player crowd from WoW, DAoC and Shadowbane wants an edge - that's why they grind..." So then, its no wonder in my mind why you are bored, burned out, and see all the things you have to do in MMORPGs as a "grind." You and most players these days don't play these games with the purpose of having fun by creating a role, and living as a citizen of the shards. You play these games because the only way you can have fun is when you gather more loot, wealth, XP, and kills than the next guy.
And apparently Mr. Fuller, the industry agrees with you, and are giving you exactly what you claim you want.
Its a shame too, because the MMORPGs I used to play were so much more than that. They had so much we could do, explore, and create. I didn't play UO, or the old launch-era SWG, as much as I lived a story within it, with so many rich and varied personalities. We didn't "grind efficiently," or center the entire game around having highest "kill ratio" for our guilds. We created fiction, and lived epic stories, because the developers made immersion a number one priority.
That's where gjsfaun is coming from, and I agree. But the boring, grind-ridden, and ultimately unsatisfying games these days are not designed for people like gjsfaun and I to enjoy. They are designed for people like Mr. Fuller, and those like him, who only think about action, mashing buttons, and bragging rights over others in "grind to gain ratios," or, "win/loss ratios," or "ladder rankings." Its probably why Mr. Fuller did not "get" what SWG was about:
"In a seminar at GDC one of the developers of SWG admitted that they put time sinks into the game on purpose. If you had a quest to go to the other side of Tatooine, you were running for a good thirty minutes of game time. My answer to that is, WTF? First of all it’s STAR WARS, why can’t players buy a speeder? Second, why do that to your players? The answer they gave, to keep people online. Okay, well that type of philosophy by developers worked “great” on that game, look at SWG now, almost no one plays. If you want to keep your players online, have them fly over in a speeder and maybe fight a few guards on the way to the objective. Give players something to do, not something to sit through. It is these 'sit through' scenarios in MMOs that cause burn out."
So on the one hand, Mr. Fuller is sick of "grinding for faction or raiding." Yet on the other hand, if he cannot get to the grinding or raiding fast enough, its a "time sink" that serves no purpose. No wonder the MMORPG is in a sorry state, and why games are not anything more than a "boring grind." Whenever the developers give us what we say we want, like vast worlds, non-combat activities, richness, and depth, it simply becomes too vast, too boring, too complicated, and too deep in our neverending quest to gain XP, loot everything, and pwn all with our clans.
Thanks to people like Mr. Fuller making statements like the one above, it may please Mr. Fuller to know that SWG mitigated all of those "sit through" scenarios that players said were "burning them out." Things like the long treks, the wounds, the accrued fatigue that needed an entertainer to heal. The buying and manufacture of crafted goods. Things like camps, experience in the different professions, and the Jedi end game. The NGE was made for people like Mr. Fuller.
What was once a realistic and epic staging ground to live a Star Wars life, and create our own stories interacting with the world, and others, is no more. However, it may please you to know Mr. Fuller that at least you can burn yourself out grinding Rancors, Mokks, and Kimogilas faster now than ever before. There is simply nothing that prevents you from doing so, and nothing else to do besides "grind," for there is no more depth, or context.
I am sorry if this sounds harsh, but I am confused. We seem as players at times to be talking out of both sides of our mouths. On the one hand, we say we have nothing to do but burn ourselves out grinding PvE, for the sake of mastering PvP. On the other hand, whenever developers go out on a limb to give us things that prevent grinding, and balance PvP, we call it a "timesink," or a "nerf."
The answer I think are the words nobody wants to hear these days: realism, roleplay, and immersion. Unless we have the sense that what we are doing is more than "grinding to the next level," we'll never see PvE as anything other than a boring means that becomes more boring the more we do it, for a pointless end that becomes more pointless the more we approach it.
Here is the problem though. Every time a game comes out with something that facilitates realism, roleplay, and immersion, it gets called a "timesink," a "waste," a "forced playstyle," or as Mr. Fuller calls it, a "sit through scenario." I have played games before that took immersion seriously, but not so much these days, thanks to complaints by players who say, "what point is there in doing it if I don't get XP and loot?," or, "how does this help me to pwn all?"
Well, it doesn't. It can't, without becoming just another thing to grind. But realism, roleplay, and immersion does sustain a playerbase, and prevents burnout. When there are things that become wothwhile that have nothing to do with XP, levels, loot, or PvP rankings, people have more to do than simply grind and mash buttons until it hurts.
__________________________
"Its sad when people use religion to feel superior, its even worse to see people using a video game to do it."
--Arcken
"...when it comes to pimping EVE I have little restraints."
--Hellmar, CEO of CCP.
"It's like they took a gun, put it to their nugget sack and pulled the trigger over and over again, each time telling us how great it was that they were shooting themselves in the balls."
--Exar_Kun on SWG's NGE
Whether it was intended or not, I'm not sure I quite understand your apparent personal hatred of Mr. Fuller. Seriously, I don't mind saying I disagree, but essentially calling 'that guy' out, and vilifying him as an 'enemy' to the MMORPG genre, well, I don't quite get what you're trying to prove with that.
See, the problem here is that you're not looking at what Fuller was trying to say, but rather, you're reading it the way you want to see it.
Grinding out faction points for example.
I can't think of how many people hate this. I honestly like the idea of faction points. You know what I don't like though, I don't like getting 52 faction points a kill when I need over 218,000 faction points for something I want. That's fine and dandy that devs don't plan on it people trying to get something quicker than usual, but you'd be both presumptuous and ignorant to say that it's the players fault for trying to 'grind' in the first place Beatnik. I used to be able to play an MMO several hours a day, everyday, all the time. I don't have that luxury anymore, and I'd dare to say most people don't get the time to spend 5-8 hours happily earning faction points. Some people only get to play a few hours a week. Should they be penalized by having other priorities in their life, because I certainly don't think so.
The flaws with grinds are that they are deliberately put into MMO's to make sure that players stick around. I don't care if you disagree with that opinion, I consider it a fact. The devs realize the longer it takes to get something done, the longer they'll get subscription fees. The fact is, it's a flaw in the developer, to expect people to 'happily' grind 218,000 faction points. You can only kill the same mob-type so many times before you stop caring. That's not the players fault. Make your quests not suck, make them more varied, make more mob types, make more methods of acquiring faction points. But if you think I would ever just be content with killing the same damned quillrat 6,000 times, then you're a fool.
I realize that was a long example, but I couldn't shorten it anymore...
Another issue I have is your belief that all players need to role-play. I have not, and will not ever enjoy roleplaying. I've tried it. It's not fun to me. You seem to have a chip on your shoulder, that all people who play MMO's without the intention of roleplaying are the reason the genre is dying in the first place.
Yet another problem I have with your statement, the one regarding travel.
Frankly, I completely disagree with you. I shouldn't have to spend 2 hours walking from point A to point B. As a roleplayer, you should understand that, if I were playing my 'role', I'd kindly ride a horse, or a mount, or get a teleport spell, or something else that isn't walking to where I'd like to go. You like sightseeing in your MMO, and so do I. The difference is, I don't see why I should be forced to do so at an unneccesarily slow pace. What is this crap about not being able to ride a mount until level 20...what is that garbage.....how can I immerse myself in a game where common sense and simple practices are limited by poorly-written/expressed lore....
MMORPG's aren't dying because of the player, not entirely. Here's a small list, IMO, of why the genre is suffering
- NO innovation. I can't remember the last time I saw a dev try something new
- Lazy players. www.ige.com, hackers/botters/powerlevel-pay-sites, all examples of pathetic human beings
- Greedy companies/publishers. No focus on storyline/content, just end-game raids, new gear, and the next expansion pack
- Horrible devs. When's the last time devs listened to their playerbase regarding new content...I can't recall anything, unless you consider cries for balance/nerfing 'listening'
- 'Emptiness'. Large, empty, useless world. Whoop dee doo. Can I build a house over there, can I cut down that tree, can I interact at all with my environment...most of the time, nope.
- 3rd party interference. Nothing like knowing you're playing against chinamen farmers, and the company you're paying isn't doing a god damned thing to stop them from monopolizing drops.
- LAME QUESTS. I'm not a god damned mailman, I don't feel like doing monotonous fetch quests, crappy faction kill x number of y enemies for z faction, worthless camp quests. How about something interesting. I'm amazed that, in nearly 10 years of MMO's, the same, crumby, root/base quest types are still the only ones around.
- Focus only on end-game, raiding content. Not enough emphasis on the individual.
Again, that's a SMALL list. But I'd dare to say that covers most of the general problems with the industry. You wanna make millions of dollars, it'd be simple. Invent a questing system/style that is innovative and doesn't suck, show no quarter to cheaters/chinamen farmers and remove them immediately...let's not pretend like you don't know who they are in your game, and most importantly LISTEN TO YOUR PLAYERS, as they're the ones who are paying for your game. DON'T do what SOE did, and listen to people on how to attract new customers. You pay attention to your fans first, worry about the acquisition of new ones second.
Waiting for something fresh to arrive on the MMO scene...
The big problem was that once you reach level 150 of 200, there's no incentive to keep leveling. The end game, which the expansions were supposed to improve, just ended up creating a really grind oriented tiered level of game play. No place there for the casual gamer.
Occasionally I download the free version, just so I can log on &
see if it's changed. Typically, I'm still disappointed. Maybe I'll give
it a shot & see.
On the other hand, I think I'll go play Guild Wars instead.
"One day... I'll get my wings..... Then I can fly away from it all...."
We must have dynamic and player created content in our games!
Q: How many times must you kill Nefarion before he will god damn well stay dead?
A: just enough for him to drop the item you want?
now imagin if you could kill him permanently once! and claim Blackwing lair as your own ...populate it with monsters you create and put loot on those mosters you create ...to lure would be adventures there.....and use the gold off there bloody corpse's to fund your research into new kinds of player created magiks
Until one day someone comes to your dungon. Fights his way thu all your monsters and challenges you for control Of BWL and beats you casting you out to the wastelands to plot your revenge.
And then turn BWl into a monastary for contemplation into the mysteries of the divine and create's new divine spells and potions
now imagin hundreds of these dungeons all over the virtual world ...built from scratch
in a world where everything reacts to what the players do and make.......
now forget all that and get back to grinding you Brood rep