alavaz
Trakanon Raider
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Well, now what?
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Tredge
Vyemm Raider
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In its prime - EQ had an addiction level that was unmatched.
No other game has been able to reach this status in my mind, not even close. Even EQ lost its original desire. This is for one very simple reason - Power.
The elite few lvl 65 enchanters per server with KEI. The first dedicated few with epics. The power and sense of accomplishment to achieve goals in the game that took months(years) of work and planning to complete. Quests that took weeks. Rare spawns that were almost legend they were so rare.
Leveling was a seemingly endless grind, but we did it for one reason. Power.
Everyone bitched about the power curve. Bitched about the lvl60 necro farming newb dungeons for rare valuable loot. Bitched about not being able to complete an epic quest because of a perma-camped rare spawn.
This ruined our future of MMO's
We wont see addiction at that scale again until game designers accept that an insane power curve is OK. Those that worked to achieve that power deserve it and having the masses covet that power is NOT a bad thing.
No other game has been able to reach this status in my mind, not even close. Even EQ lost its original desire. This is for one very simple reason - Power.
The elite few lvl 65 enchanters per server with KEI. The first dedicated few with epics. The power and sense of accomplishment to achieve goals in the game that took months(years) of work and planning to complete. Quests that took weeks. Rare spawns that were almost legend they were so rare.
Leveling was a seemingly endless grind, but we did it for one reason. Power.
Everyone bitched about the power curve. Bitched about the lvl60 necro farming newb dungeons for rare valuable loot. Bitched about not being able to complete an epic quest because of a perma-camped rare spawn.
This ruined our future of MMO's
We wont see addiction at that scale again until game designers accept that an insane power curve is OK. Those that worked to achieve that power deserve it and having the masses covet that power is NOT a bad thing.
What I'd like to see for MMO's going forward is a return to making an "experience" for the player, not a game where you're more concerned with numbers and measured achievement from the moment you start playing. You could argue that EQ's goal in the beginning was to create an immersive 3D representation of the D&D/MUD experience, not a roller coaster ride with a defined beginning, middle and end. For me, that was the charm of EQ in the beginning. It was about exploration and true "role playing." I would really love an MMO right now is something like Skyrim with more a little more in-depth gameplay mechanics and multiplayer systems that create a real sense of community and player interdependence.
Let me make one thing clear though. I've learned it's a mistake to think you can recapture the nostaliga of EQ or any other game for that matter--you're just chasing the dragon (no pun intended). What you want is to play an MMO that is fun in it's own right, and maybe in a decade you look back on it with it's own brand of nostalgia.
Let me make one thing clear though. I've learned it's a mistake to think you can recapture the nostaliga of EQ or any other game for that matter--you're just chasing the dragon (no pun intended). What you want is to play an MMO that is fun in it's own right, and maybe in a decade you look back on it with it's own brand of nostalgia.
At this point, original EQ with 2012 graphics seems more appealing to me than anything actually in the pipeline. Yeah, I know. Not gonna happen.
I think the problem is not in making a game that caters to one crowd or the other, because pandering to everyone is a recipe for bland turds, it is that the video game paradigm where you or you + bros fight each other or against computer controlled entities is misused in MMOs. This is the heart of the problem.
For single player games there is a cohesive narrative that the player feels compelled to finish. They player finishes it for whatever reason. To see the story, to get the bro-est gear, to beat the hard-mode bosses, whatever. But applying this mind set to an ongoing, multiplayer "game" tends to fall very short for many players. There is no compelling narrative to finish nor are there compelling reasons to keep playing, other than to acquire something or beat something. Everything else is just fluff.
We are all, for the most part, adults who continue to nit-pick and criticize what is in essence, a way to spend time. Games are no different than any other hobby, however they seem to live in a nether realm of see/consume and creation. We, as "gamers" want both and we want them to be well conceived and executed. But they aren't because we keep buying them up and voting YES with our wallet. We keep talking about hardcore or sandbox, as if these will be elements that save post-WoW MMOs. They won't be. They never will be.
What I want is an amalgam of tabletop gaming and MMOs, where there is a chosen narrative that everyone follows, with meaningful group content that progresses the story without levels, gear checks, badges or other meaningless treadmill bullshit that deviates from the narrative. Think of your month buying you a slot in a group, and this group all decides on what journey they want to go on. You want to rescue a princess, slay an evil wizard or defeat an evil army? Come on down. The game would take all the set players' class/names and construct a meaningful narrative from them to play and complete. You can put hubs and shit around for when people want to farm, craft or the other gay shit MMO players do now to justify "playing" the game. When the journey is over, completed or not, they go back into the normal "world" until they want to pay to go into another one. While in this "world", NPCs and the world terrain/geography change accordingly. You manage to defeat the terror in the north? Cool, that fucker is gone new shit is opened up and everyone gets to check it out. I know there's a lot more to it than that, but that's the general jist of the idea; meaningful, compelling multiplayer content.
Why should I give a third of a fuck if I down a raid boss? Because me and 19 other fucks dance a jig a certain way, avoid the colored lasers and don't stand in the fire, doesn't mean I am worthy to destroy the avatar of Death, it means I can color within the lines. Fucking boring. Make me compelled to wipe this fucker. Make me feel like I've done something substantive, something worth doing. Getting new purps, or new gimmick weapons/gear isn't compelling. The story, my friends and the difficulty of completing this WITH them is. Make me a game that I can talk about over some beers down at the pub. Something that's memorable. If that means I can't sub to a game for 6 years just to upgrade my gear then so be it. I'm done with whole thing (full disclosure, I still PvP WFs in Rift).
For single player games there is a cohesive narrative that the player feels compelled to finish. They player finishes it for whatever reason. To see the story, to get the bro-est gear, to beat the hard-mode bosses, whatever. But applying this mind set to an ongoing, multiplayer "game" tends to fall very short for many players. There is no compelling narrative to finish nor are there compelling reasons to keep playing, other than to acquire something or beat something. Everything else is just fluff.
We are all, for the most part, adults who continue to nit-pick and criticize what is in essence, a way to spend time. Games are no different than any other hobby, however they seem to live in a nether realm of see/consume and creation. We, as "gamers" want both and we want them to be well conceived and executed. But they aren't because we keep buying them up and voting YES with our wallet. We keep talking about hardcore or sandbox, as if these will be elements that save post-WoW MMOs. They won't be. They never will be.
What I want is an amalgam of tabletop gaming and MMOs, where there is a chosen narrative that everyone follows, with meaningful group content that progresses the story without levels, gear checks, badges or other meaningless treadmill bullshit that deviates from the narrative. Think of your month buying you a slot in a group, and this group all decides on what journey they want to go on. You want to rescue a princess, slay an evil wizard or defeat an evil army? Come on down. The game would take all the set players' class/names and construct a meaningful narrative from them to play and complete. You can put hubs and shit around for when people want to farm, craft or the other gay shit MMO players do now to justify "playing" the game. When the journey is over, completed or not, they go back into the normal "world" until they want to pay to go into another one. While in this "world", NPCs and the world terrain/geography change accordingly. You manage to defeat the terror in the north? Cool, that fucker is gone new shit is opened up and everyone gets to check it out. I know there's a lot more to it than that, but that's the general jist of the idea; meaningful, compelling multiplayer content.
Why should I give a third of a fuck if I down a raid boss? Because me and 19 other fucks dance a jig a certain way, avoid the colored lasers and don't stand in the fire, doesn't mean I am worthy to destroy the avatar of Death, it means I can color within the lines. Fucking boring. Make me compelled to wipe this fucker. Make me feel like I've done something substantive, something worth doing. Getting new purps, or new gimmick weapons/gear isn't compelling. The story, my friends and the difficulty of completing this WITH them is. Make me a game that I can talk about over some beers down at the pub. Something that's memorable. If that means I can't sub to a game for 6 years just to upgrade my gear then so be it. I'm done with whole thing (full disclosure, I still PvP WFs in Rift).
Arbitrary
Tranny Chaser
- 27,231
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Personally I can't do this shit anymore. The genre just doesn't feel like it is going anywhere. The part of me that gets any enjoyment out WoW and recycled mechanics of other MMOs has been burned out. Star Wars: The Old Republic was it. I'm not playing anymore WoW or anymore WoW clones or any games that copy paste all the same mechanics I've been seeing for 10+ years now. I'm going to sit down and give Guild Wars 2 an honest try at some point but for now I'd rather split my time between traditional games, League of Legends, and retro console games. When I finally buy a current generation game console I'll have more amazing games to play than I know what to do with.
I bought Guild Wars 2 but I haven't given it a chance yet. So far I've liked what I saw and without a monthly fee I don't feel like I'm losing out by not playing it just yet.
I bought Guild Wars 2 but I haven't given it a chance yet. So far I've liked what I saw and without a monthly fee I don't feel like I'm losing out by not playing it just yet.
Guilds. All the social interaction you are looking for, you can find in guilds. Guild runs, guild chat, etc. Blizz wants you to join a guild for many reasons, the main one is, if you socialize in a guild you are far less likely to quit.
All this talk about no community in WoW or a bad community in WoW is exaggerated at best. Guilds are a basic part of every MMO, not just WoW and WoW does guilds very well. In a guild you can have the community you want.
Yah, if you are solo, you're not going to have access to all the guild socializing. But Blizz even caters to solo types with LFD, LFR, BGs, etc. Sure, these systesm are a poor substitue for a community that you enjoy, but if you don't want to join a guild, what can Blizz do?
So the short answer for people who complain about LFD, LFR, BGs, poor community is join or start a guild. Roll your own community. All the machinery you need is in WoW and it was from day one.
The problem with this analogy is there is essentially little difference between MMO gameplay and Steam gameplay. If all it takes is a friends list, chat, and co-op gameplay then why am I paying 15/mo?
Addicting games are seen every single day. They're just not addicting for you. You can look at all the crazy Korean games if you want true addiction. The truth is that there are millions and millions of more people out there playing games online as well as more games to choose from.
The problem I see with a lot of current day games is that if you have played World of Warcraft, you are fucking spoiled. Gone are the days of dungeon crawls and waiting for a group to do some exp grinding. Gone are the days where you CANT just find information on a wowhead type site to take you through every step at a time. WOW spoiled everything you once loved about your games and made you hate them, because WOW took a generic easy approach to everything.
The big reason I believe EQ was so good was because of that sense of the unknown. Back then it was like what? half a million people play EQ? Today we have what, half a million people playing on 5~ servers? Its impossible for information not too be spoiled.
I wish I could put GW2 and Planetside2 together. I love Sonys approach to say, fuck pve, let the player create its content. Gw2 needs a ladder and promote small scale fights >_>
The big reason I believe EQ was so good was because of that sense of the unknown. Back then it was like what? half a million people play EQ? Today we have what, half a million people playing on 5~ servers? Its impossible for information not too be spoiled.
I wish I could put GW2 and Planetside2 together. I love Sonys approach to say, fuck pve, let the player create its content. Gw2 needs a ladder and promote small scale fights >_>
Nirgon
YOU HAVE NO POWER HERE
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What I don't understand is why do these games take so much time and money to make? In comparison how much was "the realm" UO and EQ made for? Why do these games need to cost multimillions and look and play like shit? Why can small start ups make cheap games for IoS and android that are fully functional and fun? (I have no background in computers or business just really curious)
Whatever you want, but I just notice a lot of these games cost so much time and money and fail within a month because they try to do everything. I dunno who stated it in the past, but small more niche games might be the way of the future.
MMORPGs are incredibly complex monsters when compared to mobile device games or even single player games.
Perspective:
A single player game is crafted to be played from a single point of view and a single angle. The game always knows where it's audience is. This allows programs to customize your experience.
A MMORPG has to assume that multiple people are experiencing content at the same time and must make allowances for that. This increases the magnitude of design.
Time Playing:
A single player game is typically designed to last 5-10 hours these days, if not shorter.
An MMORPG is design to keep a player occupied and hopefully playing for 6 or more months. You want players to continue to pay for a subscription or you want players to feel motivated to continue buying stuff from a cash shop.
Customer Service:
A single player game does not really need to have a CS department as it's not providing customer services. Yes, most studios have some kind of support, but nothing on the magnitude of most MMORPGs. Also, because you're global you have to support multi lingual support as well.
Infrastructure:
Single player games, unless you're creating lobbies for multiplayer portions, don't have infrastructure. An MMORPG needs to be designed to maintain multiple servers of 1000's if not millions of players around the globe. This requires significant network code and database issues. Now not only do you have a game studio that makes fun games, but you have a studio that must maintain vigilance on network stability in several data centers around the world/country. This requires specified network engineers.
Future Game Development:
You have to continuously plan for future game development and then make it. So when you're making a game you have to have a team that is always forward thinking. This isn't much, but it adds additional design elements and project management variables.
There is so much more that I'm not mentioning, but that's why it takes so much money. The scope of the game is just so much more than a single player game. That's why it takes so much more time and money. Also because these were always big project to begin with, the industry is always adding new features that the newest games have to incorporate into their design.
Design creep is probably the #1 enemy in games like this. You are making a game, but you also have to add a social tool element on top of things which adds more layers on design.
Perspective:
A single player game is crafted to be played from a single point of view and a single angle. The game always knows where it's audience is. This allows programs to customize your experience.
A MMORPG has to assume that multiple people are experiencing content at the same time and must make allowances for that. This increases the magnitude of design.
Time Playing:
A single player game is typically designed to last 5-10 hours these days, if not shorter.
An MMORPG is design to keep a player occupied and hopefully playing for 6 or more months. You want players to continue to pay for a subscription or you want players to feel motivated to continue buying stuff from a cash shop.
Customer Service:
A single player game does not really need to have a CS department as it's not providing customer services. Yes, most studios have some kind of support, but nothing on the magnitude of most MMORPGs. Also, because you're global you have to support multi lingual support as well.
Infrastructure:
Single player games, unless you're creating lobbies for multiplayer portions, don't have infrastructure. An MMORPG needs to be designed to maintain multiple servers of 1000's if not millions of players around the globe. This requires significant network code and database issues. Now not only do you have a game studio that makes fun games, but you have a studio that must maintain vigilance on network stability in several data centers around the world/country. This requires specified network engineers.
Future Game Development:
You have to continuously plan for future game development and then make it. So when you're making a game you have to have a team that is always forward thinking. This isn't much, but it adds additional design elements and project management variables.
There is so much more that I'm not mentioning, but that's why it takes so much money. The scope of the game is just so much more than a single player game. That's why it takes so much more time and money. Also because these were always big project to begin with, the industry is always adding new features that the newest games have to incorporate into their design.
Design creep is probably the #1 enemy in games like this. You are making a game, but you also have to add a social tool element on top of things which adds more layers on design.
Lithose
Buzzfeed Editor
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- 113,035
Problem is, between LFD, LFR ect, there isn't much incentive to join a guild unless you're tackling difficult content. However, the difficult content is so heavily scripted now and so "broken down" in terms of sharing difficulty amongst the raid, that everyone in the raid has to be a decent player. This forces guilds who actually, you know, RELY on guild socialization, to pick people based on ability, rather than social skills. That's why you have three guilds in WoW right now. Giant level 25 guilds full of people who do their own thing, or high end uber guilds and uber feeder guilds. There used to be all kinds of different niche guilds, because you could play with bad people as long as you had a strong core--and because so many things in the game required your guild interaction.
All that being said, I'm not a huge fan of absolute forced interaction. You're not going to see me saying ZOMG IF YOU SOLO YOU SHOULD DIE!!!!!!!!!!! No. But I think, right now, there is too much incentive to do things through artificial mechanics. Like difficulty...Having difficulty sliders is absolutely retarded. Go back to MC difficulty. Were the bosses there simplistic? Yep. Did a lot of them only require gear? Yep. Was the most important thing in an "uber" guild not actually skill, but rather efficiency in clearing trash and organization? Yup. And you know what that all lead to? People being forced to rely on guilds BUT guilds being ALLOWED to rely on people that weren't great.
By setting the difficulties in this foreign and obtuse way, you deconstruct the need for a lot of the social benefits in the game--because the computer handles social interactions. The damn difficulty slider took the job of the "core" in most guilds (Except high end ones.) This is the problem with using "outside", artificial systems, to solve in game problems. The developers should always look at a problem first and say "How can I fix this where it makes sense in the world."
That's the question they never ask themselves anymore, and it shows. It really causes a lot of problems in the social end of the game, because your world feels like a giant set of steam games, like Gecko said--except instead of the steam chat, it's connected by StormWind. Blizzard used to be like that great DM that just fucking loved making worlds--the one whose favorite part of the game was thinking up cool weapons and bosses, and characters. Who didn't give a fuck if you screwed with his story or how he "thought" you should play--because he never had any idea how you would play. His only job was to create the world, throw stuff at you and watch the fireworks. THAT is the magic these developers have lost.
And like I've said before. I know LFG and all is needed in modern MMO's. I'm not advocating a return to full on EQ. I'm saying there are middle grounds that were missed. Everything in MMO's feels like it's done to excess. And I mean everything, from having so many abilities that even with Alt/Ctrl I can't fit them all on my keys, to a bland, dull loot system that makes the Hammer of the Fire God hit as hard as Orc PvP Blade B, all in the name of excessive "fairness".
I honestly don't know if it's possible to create a good "community" in MMO's nowadays. I loved EQ, daoc and UO, but my best days in MMO's were in vanilla WoW and TBC.
The teleporting to dungeons and LFG killed the community for me. In vanilla, back when i had the time to raid for 6 hours or whatever, i would spent all of my spare time camping the entrance to blackrock mountain. Generally just pissing everyone off. Eventually i would kill someone from the big rival alliance guilds, and all hell would break loose. They would send a few people out, we would gather a few people, and because the raid sizes were 40 people, it always ended up in a giant calamity of people until someone lost and got corpse camped for a couple of hours. People would brag and gloat on the forums. That would piss everyone off even more and eventually people grew to genuinely hate other players in a video game. And it was wonderful.
Even same faction rivalry was intense. Someone would always end up hopping to another guild, or beat a boss first, or have an agreement with a guild on the other side not to attack them when we were getting attacked.
pve was fun, even if a little terrible. Often overtuned (four horsemen, fire resistance requirements in mc, nature resist requirements in aq) but beating a boss was satisfying, gear was the icing on the cake, not the objective like it is now.
I get that not a lot of folks saw that content, and that LFG and CRZ and whatever is a necessary evil now because you can't run a MMO in a crowded market where 90% of your development resources are spent on 1% of your playerbase. But I just don't know how you can create (or allow) a community that grows when you have tools like lfg, teleporting to dungeons queued up in a city, paid name changes, server changes, guild server changes, crz etc.
I think creating a community should be the first objective, er.. At least one of the most important ones. The content and gameplay, animations and whatnot can't be shitty of course, but I think the MMO marketplace is really missing a game where you know, love and hate the people you're playing with/against.
I could be wrong, maybe I'm just getting older and I shouldn't be playing mmo's, but I've tried every modern mmo since being burned out from wow, and I honestly can't find anything worth spending more than a couple hours a week on.
The teleporting to dungeons and LFG killed the community for me. In vanilla, back when i had the time to raid for 6 hours or whatever, i would spent all of my spare time camping the entrance to blackrock mountain. Generally just pissing everyone off. Eventually i would kill someone from the big rival alliance guilds, and all hell would break loose. They would send a few people out, we would gather a few people, and because the raid sizes were 40 people, it always ended up in a giant calamity of people until someone lost and got corpse camped for a couple of hours. People would brag and gloat on the forums. That would piss everyone off even more and eventually people grew to genuinely hate other players in a video game. And it was wonderful.
Even same faction rivalry was intense. Someone would always end up hopping to another guild, or beat a boss first, or have an agreement with a guild on the other side not to attack them when we were getting attacked.
pve was fun, even if a little terrible. Often overtuned (four horsemen, fire resistance requirements in mc, nature resist requirements in aq) but beating a boss was satisfying, gear was the icing on the cake, not the objective like it is now.
I get that not a lot of folks saw that content, and that LFG and CRZ and whatever is a necessary evil now because you can't run a MMO in a crowded market where 90% of your development resources are spent on 1% of your playerbase. But I just don't know how you can create (or allow) a community that grows when you have tools like lfg, teleporting to dungeons queued up in a city, paid name changes, server changes, guild server changes, crz etc.
I think creating a community should be the first objective, er.. At least one of the most important ones. The content and gameplay, animations and whatnot can't be shitty of course, but I think the MMO marketplace is really missing a game where you know, love and hate the people you're playing with/against.
I could be wrong, maybe I'm just getting older and I shouldn't be playing mmo's, but I've tried every modern mmo since being burned out from wow, and I honestly can't find anything worth spending more than a couple hours a week on.
alavaz
Trakanon Raider
- 2,001
- 713
While this is probably true for the majority, I've actually been in a stable guild with the same 9-10 person core since TBC. We used to team with other guilds to do 25 man content though now we only run 10 man stuff.
I guess what I don't understand (speaking broadly not directed at anyone in particular) is why people feel that they have to be forced into social interaction. I have plenty of social interaction in WoW with my guild. We group up and knock out dailies, run heroics and scenarios, level alts, group queue LFR and do 10-man raiding together, though admittedly most are done with the dailies and dungeons so that's becoming less common. The only real difference between WoW and EQ is that I don't have much of a friends list outside of my guild. In all honesty though, aside from levelling up in EQ, I really didn't socialize much outside of my guild either.
I would challenge anyone who is looking for "community" to get into a good WoW guild and see if the game still feels anti-social. And when I say "good" I don't mean a guild full of progression hard dicks who beat all the things and cancel their subs until next patch - but people who actually enjoy and are committed to playing.
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Part of community building is figuring problems out together. Many of the current mmos have everything figured out on a test realm/data mined and pasted on a website before whatever.patch is moved from test to live. Maybe it's time to make mechanics less stagnant. /scripts.abcs need more variables (please inject creativity here).
Pasteton
Blackwing Lair Raider
- 2,609
- 1,724
This is probably old fashioned of me, but I miss some of the verbal cues of the environment that you had in Eq. I don't believe any mmo since has done this. It felt very old school to me, like something you would hear from a dm in a pen n paper game. I know a lot of it was largely due to technical issues where it would have been much more effort to show something visually than it would take to just type a few descriptions. Still, anyone remember the first time you saw 'you hear the sound of thundering hooves...' in drunder? Little environmental things like that are memorable.
Another thing people often don't mention anymore is how unnatural it is for enemies to come in these 'pre-ordained' packs, which is like the custom nowadays. I first noticed and got annoyed by this in eq2, but wow and every game that followed seemed to do the same. Yes I know splitting enemies in Eq was an unintended mechanic. But the rules made sense - some enemies assisted each other, some don't. Anything that did assist was usually intelligent/humanoid, and there was no artificial limit on who came - if they were close enough to see their pals they would come help.
Ffxi and Eq were both like this. Ffxi had other interesting mechanics too, like mobs that could smell or hear but couldn't see you, and you had to be smart about different mechanics to deal with that.
Another thing people often don't mention anymore is how unnatural it is for enemies to come in these 'pre-ordained' packs, which is like the custom nowadays. I first noticed and got annoyed by this in eq2, but wow and every game that followed seemed to do the same. Yes I know splitting enemies in Eq was an unintended mechanic. But the rules made sense - some enemies assisted each other, some don't. Anything that did assist was usually intelligent/humanoid, and there was no artificial limit on who came - if they were close enough to see their pals they would come help.
Ffxi and Eq were both like this. Ffxi had other interesting mechanics too, like mobs that could smell or hear but couldn't see you, and you had to be smart about different mechanics to deal with that.