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General: Content Locusts Killed My MMO

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  • wmbyrnewmbyrne Member Posts: 35

    What is generally forgotten is that leveling fast or slow must have appropriate number of quest to accomplish that goal.  SWTOR has very few quests, I had to do all, the quests I could find in many areas, just to make level, few quests, or lack of content means faster leveling.  Also remember SWTOR has special quest for each class of character, this is great for that character but ultimately it’s a lot of resources wasted on one class. This debate is more about content, or that lack of it. 

     

  • LoekiiLoekii Member Posts: 430

    I would like to see Developers built 'challenge' into the fun factor of the process -- so that you can be defeated a number of times, but still have fun.

     

    I enjoyed EQ, partically because of the enjoyment of overcomming the difficulties that it had -- trains, aggressive mobs, mix level roaming mobs, even the dreaded 'corpse runs' offered some element of challenge and enteratinment for me.

    Now I obviously can see that not everyone enjoyed that much difficulty, but I am now seeing similarly not everyone enjoys the lack of some difficulty, imo.

     

     

    image

  • LittlebombLittlebomb Member Posts: 152

    SWTOR is a horrible example of a game that "doesn't deserve to fail"

     

    SWTOR is failing because it is literally lacking the most basic mmo functionality.

    No combat log

    no chat bubbles

    tons of load screens

    No lfg in a game that is heavily instanced.............that is super fail.

    No pvp score board, heck you can't even choose which pvp maps you want to play.

     

     

    Don't blame the players for not wanting to resub to a bad game. I wanted to like it and leveled a shadow to 50 but the fact is the game is in beta still and im not paying for that.

  • SWTOR is terrible  {mod edit}

    It's well deserved - too.

    With such a budget it's a shame to see what the game brings to the table. It's WoW in space with 2005 graphics with some added flirty flirty and voiceovers.

     

    Makes me sad because I love Star Wars and Bioware managed to ruin a shot at having a good SW mmo for a while

  • jm11744jm11744 Member Posts: 7

    I think your analysis of WoW is a little over simplified. By your own admission, vanilla WoW's leveling was no where near as fast as it is today. Where Bioware screwed up, is they assumed the same thing you did - that the current rate of leveling in WoW is a by-product of miss-information from the "locusts". 

    The truth is that WoW's leveling rate evolved with the content. Blizzard, love em or hate em, are NOT dummies. 7 years in, they realise that their veteran player base does not want to spend a year leveling their alts. WoW has the end-game content to support it's max-level player base. SWTOR does not. So, it was stupid for Bioware to release a game that has the current 7 years in WoW leveling speed, because WoW is in a whole other universe content wise.

    That Bioware would release a game that shepherds you through the content that quickly and offers nothing at the finish line is completely bafflig to me. I played EQ1 for 4 years, and yes that was a mighty grind. I also remember working really hard on WoW and how excited I was the first time we beat Rag and Onyxia - probably 8 or 9 months in. Blizzard wasn't stupid - they paced the content based on their own development schedule. They still do, that's why they own the market right now. 

    Bioware is ensuring that everyone who hit's 50 right now will only remember the boredom it instilled at max level.

  • TakitonTakiton Member Posts: 73

    Yeah, this got a 9/10 on mmorpg somehow.  =

     

    Love the way the the article blames those paying fans for consuming the game to fast.  How dare they expect more... gasp!

  • FrodoFraginsFrodoFragins Member EpicPosts: 5,897

    If someone wants to sell me an MMO that takes 10x longer to reach level cap.  I ask that it have 10x the number of unique quests and zones.  Otherwise you can get that experience with asian grinders.


  • mmachine88mmachine88 Member Posts: 7

    I played for the first month. I liked it... but to many bugs wernt being fixed, and i feel like im playing  a single player rpg on my xbox rather than playing an actuall mmo. The games good, but not worth $15 a month. The only super hero/comic/movie mmo ill ever play is city of heroes. Now that is a real game, they have one of the best grouping system.

  • soulmirrorsoulmirror Member UncommonPosts: 124

    "Faster leveling trivializes the content devs work so hard to bring us and leads to a bunch of disappointed max level folk who don’t have enough to do and who feel as though they got bait-and-switched"

     No truer words...

    As to how it happened, well first the holy trinity was ground underfoot in the forums (Fighter, healing, Crowd Control) and a lot of posters wanted a change.  Then hybreds were invented, they did nothing great, but enough good to break up the trinity.

    Then, pick up groups got ground underfoot, crucified, hit by a bus and ravaged by a pack of wolves in forums everywhere, so no one wanted to PUG, then everyone wanted soloable content and the ability to solo the game.

    Soloing the game led to speeding up the game, because no one wanted to play the game alone and wanted that end game experience.

    Faster leveling killed crafting and guilds, further reducung the community feel and the want to work together alltogether. 

    Mounts or the ability to teleport anywhere...  In early MMO's, you had to travel in groups to survive or if you were lucky enough you knew a druid (gasp) who could get you anywhere from 1/2 to 2/3rds to your destination.

     

    The last killer of games (the big one) was the internet itself, that ability to google, looking up maps, quest completion, hot items and short cuts,  the DAY, the freakin DAY the game is released. That or slap down $19 and buy the book (cheaper if you buy it on release day with the game), all your in game problems solved.

     

      To me, the day the music died was when I watched a Bard(hybred) solo an area that my group was trying to get items from for a quest.  The Bard could heal, CC, tank, insta travel and had the added bonus of the ability to keep your beer cold.  It was then that I knew that gaming would not ever be the same as there was no longer the need for a group.

     

    Wanted: An MMO with crafting, exploration, individual abilities, housing, guilds, no cookie cutter avatars, guild towns and at least one knock down drag out guild disagreement over a window sconce in the guild buildings foyer.

  • DauntesDauntes Member Posts: 2

    I don't think it's wrong to ask for more content if you pay a sub.  The box value earns you the content that ships with the game.  If I've achieved everything there is in a mmo, the only reason I have left to play is for social purposes.  There are plenty of F2P games that can accomplish this, even if they lack polish.

    I find it amusing how so many mmos will offer me some free time to come back to the game and that time is often sufficient enough for me to complete the majority of the content that was developed in the past 3-4 months I've been gone.

    The leveling speed isn't the problem here.  Sure, if EA/Bioware had prolonged the leveling experience a month or two they probably could have squeezed some more dollars out of the initial player base, but that wouldn't solve the issues that currently exist.  It would have only bought them more time to fix things.

    I feel player driven content/activies will really be the success of future mmos.


     

  • tshack88tshack88 Member Posts: 48

    Valkaern,

    I may be contradicting myself entirely by agreeing with you on a lot of your points...but you're totally right.  They do hold your hand. They do show you exactly where to go, exactly what to be, exactly what you're "supposed" to do.  And it's bullshit, and somehow...we're ok with that.

    I'm not saying it's needs to be a themepark, by any means.  But there does need to be a sense of freedom every player gets to enjoy, which I haven't found in the past 5 years aside from EVE(which is its own beast entirely).  To me exploration and figuring out obstacles on my own, or with the help of others, is extremely important, and can seriously build a community. It is THE most important thing to me in an RPG, and only means that much more in an mmo.

    I won't sit here and lie about how I used to play mmos back in the day, because I didn't.  My first online game, and yes I mean online game period, was Guild Wars.  It was mostly because of our financial situation blah blah blah, either way, that game was my foray into the online world.  That said, I don't ignore what past gamers, like yourself, have said about the golden age of mmos.  I find it extremely important in the design of future games, not just mmos, and it shouldn't be ignored like it has been.  While I wasn't a huge fan of what I've read and watched about the older questing system, I hate the current one even more.  I love the content, but I cannot stand the way it is delivered.

    Which is why I'm hoping GW2 will change it.  After watching videos, though, I honestly think it's going to be just another hand holder in the way it delivers content.  I love ArenaNet, their philosophies, everything about them.  I just don't think they're going to give a ton of room for that exploration aspect I yearn for.

    I don't know if I really have a point in all this babbling, or if I'm making sense. I just don't want you to think of me as a current ignorant mmoer(we both know what I'm talking about), and that I really do respect what this entire genre was built on.  I love gaming, and I like this genre, but something needs to seriously be done to save it.  Unfortunately the majority is filled with ignorant impatient kiddies who jump from one mmo to another like a plague of locusts.



     

  • wyrd_ralphiewyrd_ralphie Member Posts: 1

    I totally Agree

  • meesha035meesha035 Member UncommonPosts: 22

    Originally posted by knapu

    Im just disapointed in the beta testers wtf did they do i would like to know ,pvp sucks unbalanced abd totally usless graphic bugs , skill lags etz i mean wtf .. this game could be rly good perhaps it will in future but by then noone will play it .

    Same story as with most of other new mmos that came out latley




     



    Unfortunately, 99% of 'beta testers' don't test / report anything.  They're in it to get a head start when the game releases or to just play the game for free for a while.

  • RoyalkinRoyalkin Member UncommonPosts: 267

    Could not agree more, I would add though that the direction games have taken was to attract the largest base possible, all the while attracting console and first person shooter types of gamers, who traditionally do not like MMOs. So, therefore we have a large contingent of non-MMO gamers driving development of MMOs.

    The opposite of this is the sandbox virtual world, and I think more people are oppening up to its possibility. Especially so with the popularity of titles such as Skyrim, and other open-world sandboxy SPRPGs. Light speed progression, and empty endgame mechanics are getting stale.

  • meesha035meesha035 Member UncommonPosts: 22

    my apologies for the double post.  went afk to watch a movie and it posted again for some reason.

  • MaelkorMaelkor Member UncommonPosts: 459

    With 288 posts in this thread I will probably be repeating a lot of stuff allready said but here goes anyways. The reason you can "outlevel" content IE quests by a large margin in games like SWToR is because the devs have to make sure even the most inept people can reach max level by just running quests and doing nothing else. When the main leveling mechanism in a game is turning in a quest - there has to be enough quests to reach max level or the game becomes excruciating. Champions Online was the best example of what happens when you dont have enough quests to reach max level that I can think of.

    The difference between games like EQ back in 2000 and current games - most especially post WoW games is that the main leveling mechanism in EQ was killing things. If you got xps for quests it was usually trivial with the exception of a few hand in quests such as several of the bone chip quests. For those they werent trivial because you could buy the hand in item off of vendors at a level where xps were still good.

    The only thing EQ then needed were zones that were interesting enough to hold your attention for X number of days.When you got high enough level you simply moved to the next zone - you didnt have to worry about unfinished quests. The thing you might have worried about was whether or not you got a special drop. In fact the game began to pace itself off of moving from one special drop area to the next and the levels and xps came as a sidenote to to that.

    I personally prefer that model over the quest leveling model so long as the content itself is still interesting enough to hold my attention in its own right. For those who argue the EQ model was just grinding mobs etc and very boring - I say the quests have done nothing to change the grind - it is simply packaged differently - doing a thousand kill quests is just as boring as simply killing a thousand individual mobs.

    If the game is fun in and of itself, however, the leveling mechanic doesnt really matter. The length of time to reach max level and "end" game content are simply measures of how many hours the game can potentially hold a player that enjoys the overall experience before they get bored and move on. Today's games usually hold between 100 and 150 hours of gameplay for me before I get bored and move on. EQ held me for over a year of played time - I did get bored from time to time, however there was enough to keep me engaged and keep playing.

    I will refute one statement in the original article stating WoW's leveling curve wasnt that fast etc. I distinctly remember reports of max level characters within the first week maybe two weeks of WoW's release. Yes they were powergamers who played beta and knew the game - yet that isnt so much different than current games and WoW was the first AAA title I am aware of with a leveling curve that shallow. That leveling curve was the #1 reason I never purchased WoW and never played WoW. WoW is what set the mold for easy mode advancement to max level in MMO's.

  • QuizzicalQuizzical Member LegendaryPosts: 25,346

    The rate of leveling needs to fit the amount of content.  If you're having to skip 3/4 of the content in order to avoid stuff that you're overleveled for, then the leveling is too fast (or else the content is too slow; sometimes the solution is to replace kill 50 rats by kill 10 rats).  If you're doing all of the content and then having to spend 2/3 of your time grinding in order to get to the next batch of content, then the leveling is too slow.

    One problem with six months to max level is, what about people who like to play alts?  Now, that's fine if your game is set up so that one character does everything.  But most MMORPGs (including essentially all class-based MMORPGs) aren't that way.

  • centkincentkin Member RarePosts: 1,527

    It may sound silly but one subtle change from everquest to recent games is that you could hand the guards torches and they would use them.

    You could essentially change the theme of a city through gifts.

    ---

    Another one is merchants not being able to resell goods.  I remember buying hidden items off merchants in everquest in popular areas that were behind trash items...  Stacks of spider silk etc.  And sometimes expensive crafting items or some really decent weapon or armor that for some reason someone sold. 

    I remember buying back lots of useful things in asherons call that people sold to merchants.  This was especially true in the old old days when you had to ID items and people just sold stuff they couldnt ID to shop and then it could be OMG wow -- Sword 6 Sols...

  • TaintedPureTaintedPure Member Posts: 36

     WoW (older MMO) has to balance three goals:

    1. Provide character development.

    2. Provide content for veteran players.

    3. Allow new players to play with veteran players (hence: fast-leveling).

    New MMOs have to balance one goal since there are no veteran players:

    1. Provide character development.

    Why               new MMOs start with the false premise that games must be born with extensive end-game content and a fast way to get there is beyond me unless they just follow WoW's current model hoping for WoW's success.

    WoW devs don't like excellerated leveling - it's a lesser of two evils for an aging game.   The reason this "works" as a fix for WoW is that a buddy can start brand-new to the game and within days/weeks, instead of months, join a group with my characters.  Again, not an issue with new games where everyone starts at the beginning.

    This strawman of "Content Locusts" and how WoW is developed to cater to them is simple bologna.  The incentive to reach a certain point of progression in a game fast  is so your character can fight side-by-side with friends that have progressed faster for whatever reason.  The only content that gets the streamline-express treatment is years old content. The current WoW model is less than ideal but strikes a very fine balance for brand new players as well as release-day players.  I remember the days from EQ & even WoW when the journey wasn't trivial.  The problem is not that developers are catering to "Content Locusts" or hardcore players, but that developers are developing the new games with the self-fufilling prophecy that the journey has to be short so the journey can end.  Game over.

    ~It's taffy.

  • fadisfadis Member Posts: 469

    Thumbs up on this article.

     

  • WeretigarWeretigar Member UncommonPosts: 600

    I watched every cutscene and  did every side quest i could do without hitting the spacebar and for some reason the content still did not last over 23 days, so maybe the reason why the "Locust" killed the game so fast was because the "Farmers" only had enough "Crop" for the weekend>?. With 200 million dollars against Archages not even half the amount and 5x the content they should look at how a gaming company is supposed to do work. 

    However this was still my favorite Fable 3 version game with 2 more people allowed onto my co-op experience, but the endgame ruined all so called immersion when i relised the lack of responsability after i was exploited at illum over and over. 

    Who know thou this might have been the smoothest mmo launch supposedly for those that never played other mmo's besides wow. I have played games like Aion where I only encountered 1 crash the whole 4 months I played the reason why i stoped playing thou was that I thought the territory worked like WoE's on RO, however once I found out it was just over glorified capture the bases I felt like it was not the game for me.

    I would like it however if you stopped blaming the people that care about the games when they turn out to be duds after you fire your staff that wanted to warn us about said issues. I hit hide my headgear i was wearing a robe the hood never came down???? this sint a bug says the forums we were just to lazy to make jedi robes 2 pieces.

  • OrthelianOrthelian Member UncommonPosts: 1,034

    Originally posted by knapu

    Im just disapointed in the beta testers wtf did they do i would like to know ,pvp sucks unbalanced abd totally usless graphic bugs , skill lags etz i mean wtf .. this game could be rly good perhaps it will in future but by then noone will play it .

    Same story as with most of other new mmos that came out latley

    How can the PvP be unbalanced when the two factions have exactly the same abilities to bring to the table? The numbers are perfectly copied. Do you mean the populations are unbalanced?


    Originally posted by bansan

    What a horrid, horrid article.

    It postulates that these locusts somehow ruin the game by going too fast, while at the same time acknowledging that these locusts are tiny in number.  If the rest of the population is going at a normal pace, what's the problem?

    Oh really, the devs are listening to these locusts at the exclusion of everyone else?  Then why is it that every new game that comes out takes less and less time to level to max?  If they were listening to these locusts, people would be complaining about the how long it takes to level, and not the other way around.

    What a sham.

    People who view the endgame as the only game worth playing want it to take longer to get there? What are you talking about?

    Favorites: EQEVE | Playing: None. Mostly VR and strategy | Anticipating: CUPantheon
  • KniknaxKniknax Member UncommonPosts: 576

    Not all of us rushed to the end and got bored. A very large chunk of us working people, people with families and social lives - we who didnt rush to the end, are still very happily plodding through. 

    I started on Early Access Day One. And I am now level 34. I have played most days.

    Most of my guild is the same, with a few of the unemployed guys having hit 50 last week. The rest are all mid-30's.

    The game is not designed for unemployed grinders. Sorry folks, but thats the way it is.

    "When people don't know much about something, they tend to fill in the blanks the way they want them to be filled in. They are almost always disappointed." - Will Wright

  • GilwenGilwen Member UncommonPosts: 48

    I totally agree with the OP. I hate that these new games are just about end game grind and PvP. Where is the chance to experience the world the devs have made.

    It took me one month with my slow going to get to 50, now I'm bored and don't know if I have will to flash another char to the boring 50. As the OP said, in older days (like EQ, which I played since Kunark came out) it took you days to get a single level. And that level actually meant something, you had worked to get that level. Nowdays you get 3-5 levels a day and getting a new level don't mean a thing except it's time to get new and better gear.

     

    About us Beta testers of SW:tOR having done nothing during Beta. Get a life and stop whining about something you have no idea. Yes, I beta tested the game for several months before release and no I didn't do a single PvP match in that time. Why? Because PvP isn't my thing and games aren't only about PvP.

    It's sad that majority of gamers nowdays seem to think that MMO's are only about endgame PvP. I really have no idea when that has happened in the MMO gamers, but it's sad as game companies will then grind out games for them and they generally keep playing few months and then quit. Bringing the game and the company down with them.

  • zWolfzWolf Member Posts: 88

    Heh, add to that this new 'PAtch all Friday Night' debaucle, and you have recipe for dissatisfied customers... 

    To show my Dissatisfaction, I un-subscribed from TOR - seriously, a patch on a friday night?  won't be up again till Saturday morning? WTF man! 

    so, now I'm unsubscribed, and we'll see if I re-up. that was really lame TOR, I'm Chalk Full of Caffine, and had a group of friends, all online and in Vent readdy to play for the night, and you go and shud down your servers?  

     

    Who does that in this day and age!!!! not even the worst games, that's who.

     

    Sigh - any way, my sub is gone.  Can you earn it back?

     

    zWolf -out.

    Thank you,

    zWolf -out.

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