Oldschool gamers were just as impatient. You didn't wait a month for a content patch to make Civ2 or Half-Life fun. You didn't have minutes of travel time in Lemmings or Sim City. You didn't sit around waiting for units to heal in Mechwarrior 2 or Star Control 2.
The only differences are (a) if you visit a game's forums you hear about people quitting (whereas you were ignorant of it happening in early gaming) and (b) MMORPGs can sometimes involve more downtime (which wasn't necessary in early gaming, and usually also isn't necessary for MMORPGs to be fun.)
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
Yes, Patience is no longer a virtue in this society. The culture stresses faster, stronger, brighter, bigger- in a word, a disconnection with reality. This reflects itself in gaming as in any other social/techincal avenue.
If they're charging to tell a story and you finish that story then people will get done with the game and move on.
MMORPGs that want lasting appeal need to focus on being a world, a dangerous world, a world where players want to strive and achieve in without the need for text boxes telling them they did something good.
I don't blame the MMORPG player. I blame the lazy MMORPG developers for cutting corners.
Oldschool gamers were just as impatient. You didn't wait a month for a content patch to make Civ2 or Half-Life fun. You didn't have minutes of travel time in Lemmings or Sim City. You didn't sit around waiting for units to heal in Mechwarrior 2 or Star Control 2.
The only differences are (a) if you visit a game's forums you hear about people quitting (whereas you were ignorant of it happening in early gaming) and (b) MMORPGs can sometimes involve more downtime (which wasn't necessary in early gaming, and usually also isn't necessary for MMORPGs to be fun.)
No.
We old school gamers made our own content, shared our mods with others, extended the games on our terms.
I can be very patient with a flawed game, but I lack game patience when it comes to progress.
Progression is a key element in every RPG, and if my characters get to a point where they can play for days or weeks without making progress, I lose tolerance with the game very quickly.
In modern games I find this very common at endgame, where you play for weeks and get no upgrades at all. It's why I often find the leveling up more enjoyable; you get regular and constant progress.
Just reading about a hoarde of people quitting Secret World and saying they're done with the game. This has been released for a couple of weeks now. Rift, SWTOR, D3 and a lot of other games have seen similar comments being made them
Well first, yes, they are. But that doesn't have anything to do with why people are bailing on these games. They're leaving these games because they aren't well made.
SWTOR and TSW were both designed as singleplayer games with almost no MM components. So, they're played like singleplayer games, which people usually burn through in a few weeks.
Their entire gameplay hinges on doing quests, with nothing else to really distract the player. That gets old fast.
Older MMOs, while being less directed, and slower in many regards, have a plethora of options, and a lot of social oriented, player generated content, which is what keeps people playing. Not quests and "content".
Ah, well, we're heading for the Standard Sandbox thread after all.
Well, at least was better than another hackneyed DamnKids thread.
Self-pity imprisons us in the walls of our own self-absorption. The whole world shrinks down to the size of our problem, and the more we dwell on it, the smaller we are and the larger the problem seems to grow.
We old school gamers made our own content, shared our mods with others, extended the games on our terms.
Um, look around. We're the same humans. Do you see most modern gamers making mods? No? Then why would you believe most veteran gamers made mods?
The modding community has always been a tiny less-than-1% fraction (probably much lower than 1% actually.)
So even if you personally made mods for older games, you can't possibly believe a significant portion of the overall playerbases did that back in the day -- or that a significant portion of the games were even capable of that.
Not trying to badmouth early gamers or anything, but let's be realistic about this shit :P
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
so why are they all addicted to wow clones ? and COD clones?
Just guessing we've forgotten, amongst all the talk of "generations", that this hobby hasn't existed for even one yet?
The internet has...barely.
You're talking in terms of human generations, most others are referring technology generations.
Still, the mmorpg genre isn't old enough to see any real trends or patterns yet.
There are certain queer times and occasions in this strange mixed affair we call life when a man takes this whole universe for a vast practical joke, though the wit thereof he but dimly discerns, and more than suspects that the joke is at nobody's expense but his own. -- Herman Melville
You're talking in terms of human generations, most others are referring technology generations.
Still, the mmorpg genre isn't old enough to see any real trends or patterns yet.
Didn't the last technological generation die with the Pentiums? The lines only get more blurry and the time estimates more indistinct after that. Dual-cores? Quads? 32-bit? 64-bit?
I guess you could go with the DirectX versions, but we haven't really seen that much difference between 9 and 11.
"Generations" for the purposes of this thread, is anyone I can identify with a group younger than I.
Entitling me to sneer at the behavior (and blame the degeneration of society upon) the entire MMO generation, cause we played better games before you guys arrived dammit! All you MMO players are only ruining games in general, everything's gone completely downhill since Pong and Breakout!
[Ed. it would be generally pointless to do so, however]
Self-pity imprisons us in the walls of our own self-absorption. The whole world shrinks down to the size of our problem, and the more we dwell on it, the smaller we are and the larger the problem seems to grow.
So my question is, are modern gamers just too impatient?
The people who are patient probably don't rush out to play an MMO at launch - and are still patiently waiting in their current MMO of choice.
( of course, my question would be whether your assertion that there are an abnormal number of people leaving has any merit; if it doesn't then the rest of this discussion is really moot )
"LUXURY! We used to have to develop our own hardware out of spare metal and string, write an operating system for it, and power it with electricity generated from an old excercise bike."
"And you try to tell the young gamers of today that...and they won't believe you... "
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
"LUXURY! We used to have to develop our own hardware out of spare metal and string, write an operating system for it, and power it with electricity generated from an old excercise bike."
"And you try to tell the young gamers of today that...and they won't believe you... "
More than 1% of gamers modded prior to 2004 I'd wager.
My entire time playing games like the Sims 1 and any Unreal game was with hundreds of other players who at least tweeked things.
My mother used MSPaint to add tags to her mechs in MechWarrior 3 and 4.
I think game devs didn't mind as much then as they do now. Sims progress from 2 to 3 shows this as well.
But my point is for MMORPGs to be something more than flash in a pan borefests they need to incorporate the community adding to the game.
Players and people in general are products of their environments. We've moved to a point of being able to get any information or entertainment we need at the touch of a button instantly. I really don't blame them for being so impatient, it's all they've ever known.
I dare say that if i were a product of todays society, I'd be impatient as well. I guess I'm just lucky i grew up at a time when cable TV was still new and not everyone had it. My imagination was all i needed.
If anything, modern gamers lack imagination to turn what they consider boring into something fun.
The people who are patient probably don't rush out to play an MMO at launch - and are still patiently waiting in their current MMO of choice.
Well, I've launched (twelve?) MMOs at last count, because launch day is a lot of fun. Missed quite a few too, life happens.
But then I don't sweat small costs, or expect flawless perfection on day one.
"MMO of choice"? I've been fighting that one since at least the EQ days; never expected a single title to do it all for me forever.
Self-pity imprisons us in the walls of our own self-absorption. The whole world shrinks down to the size of our problem, and the more we dwell on it, the smaller we are and the larger the problem seems to grow.
Just reading about a hoarde of people quitting Secret World and saying they're done with the game. This has been released for a couple of weeks now. Rift, SWTOR, D3 and a lot of other games have seen similar comments being made them, hell there are even people saying screw GW2 and that they won't go back before it's even friggin launched.
So my question is, are modern gamers just too impatient? I would say 100% of MMOs need time to iron out flaws, rework certain aspects of the game and just grow the thing before it can be considered polished. I know that a game that leaves beta and goes live should have all of these things done in advance, but it wasn't always like that, even WoW needed time to have the game live to gather feedback from players to help improve it. So is it modern gamers at fault (I would suggest that console gamers crossing into MMOs would have a lot less patience than old timers from 10 years ago)? Or should the gaming companies hold off releasing a game until it's 100%?
To answer my own question I think it's importany for a game to get released to open beta asap. We all knows that even a hint of postponing or dragging out release dates can be a death knell for a game. I would also suggest that a company will never know it's near 100% until players actually get in, play the game and give their feedback
Where is this thread or article about hoardes of people quitting? I can't find anything that says that....
"And you try to tell the young gamers of today that...and they won't believe you... "
Well, dunno about that, but I can tell you not many people would believe the Amiga 500 Twist ever happened...heh. My best man coudln't believe it, the first time he saw it.
(Amiga 500 processors were socketed (stunning 1.7mHz!!!), and due to heat expansion sometimes worked themselves out of the socket. You could "fix" the problem fairly quickly, by picking up the entire unit and twisting it slightly between your hands.)
Self-pity imprisons us in the walls of our own self-absorption. The whole world shrinks down to the size of our problem, and the more we dwell on it, the smaller we are and the larger the problem seems to grow.
More than 1% of gamers modded prior to 2004 I'd wager.
My entire time playing games like the Sims 1 and any Unreal game was with hundreds of other players who at least tweeked things.
My mother used MSPaint to add tags to her mechs in MechWarrior 3 and 4.
I think game devs didn't mind as much then as they do now. Sims progress from 2 to 3 shows this as well.
But my point is for MMORPGs to be something more than flash in a pan borefests they need to incorporate the community adding to the game.
You do realize that 1% of The Sims 1 players is 63,000 players (not "hundreds") right?
Also unless you were really digging into Unreal modding it, simply changing the settings doesn't make you a modder. Unless we're gonna pretend most Halo players mod Halo, and choosing Huge world size in Civilization made you a modder, in which case the term loses all useful meaning.
I mean I personally modded games, but I went on to become a game tester and later designer, so I'm not the typical gamer when it comes to that stuff.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
I mean I personally modded games, but I went on to become a game tester and later designer, so I'm not the typical gamer when it comes to that stuff.
A generation earlier (there's that damn word again), everyone still grokked DOS, at least. I don't think a claim that a lot of early games were heavily modded is an unreasonable one.
I'd never try to guess a number though...heh.
Self-pity imprisons us in the walls of our own self-absorption. The whole world shrinks down to the size of our problem, and the more we dwell on it, the smaller we are and the larger the problem seems to grow.
Just reading about a hoarde of people quitting Secret World and saying they're done with the game. This has been released for a couple of weeks now. Rift, SWTOR, D3 and a lot of other games have seen similar comments being made them, hell there are even people saying screw GW2 and that they won't go back before it's even friggin launched.
So my question is, are modern gamers just too impatient? I would say 100% of MMOs need time to iron out flaws, rework certain aspects of the game and just grow the thing before it can be considered polished. I know that a game that leaves beta and goes live should have all of these things done in advance, but it wasn't always like that, even WoW needed time to have the game live to gather feedback from players to help improve it. So is it modern gamers at fault (I would suggest that console gamers crossing into MMOs would have a lot less patience than old timers from 10 years ago)? Or should the gaming companies hold off releasing a game until it's 100%?
To answer my own question I think it's importany for a game to get released to open beta asap. We all knows that even a hint of postponing or dragging out release dates can be a death knell for a game. I would also suggest that a company will never know it's near 100% until players actually get in, play the game and give their feedback
People need to be aware that most games will have some hiccups on release. Part of the problem is the expectation of the genre - people want a living world. Many players are not patient in fulfilling these expectations and will leave ship at the first sign of delay. The flip side is that these developers push out games too soon or with one trick ponies. Take your example of Rift. It's a good game, at what it does, but the depth does not compare to an existing body of games. SWTOR is just a drab closed world and doesn't even feel like an MMO. As for Diablo 3 - well, you can only play the same campaign so many times. The problem is that development costs have gone up and this puts some hamper on implementing the features so many players ask for.
It's a different time, people don't want to be paying for incomplete games. I disagree wtih your answer to your own. The only time that a game should progress to the next stage of development is when it's ready.
More than 1% of gamers modded prior to 2004 I'd wager.
My entire time playing games like the Sims 1 and any Unreal game was with hundreds of other players who at least tweeked things.
My mother used MSPaint to add tags to her mechs in MechWarrior 3 and 4.
I think game devs didn't mind as much then as they do now. Sims progress from 2 to 3 shows this as well.
But my point is for MMORPGs to be something more than flash in a pan borefests they need to incorporate the community adding to the game.
You do realize that 1% of The Sims 1 players is 63,000 players (not "hundreds") right?
Also unless you were really digging into Unreal modding it, simply changing the settings doesn't make you a modder. Unless we're gonna pretend most Halo players mod Halo, and choosing Huge world size in Civilization made you a modder, in which case the term loses all useful meaning.
I mean I personally modded games, but I went on to become a game tester and later designer, so I'm not the typical gamer when it comes to that stuff.
I'm pretty sure you're a net liar, but that's cool.
My Unreal modding went to creating levels, changing physics on weapons, and making a Bender skin because I wanted people to kiss my shiny metal ass while I was playing.
But, unlike you, I do feel that most people who even loaded up a skin to change, that big flat map that everyone got wrong the first few times while skinning, is indeed modding. If you're changing the game from it's original design to be more customized to what you want. Even if it's adding -w to the end of a launch code.
Still, I never associated with more than a few hundred people in these communities at a time that I know of. I was speaking for myself.
I'm rather certain more than 63,000 Sims 1 players modified their game. Plus that's just one game from that time.
Comments
Oldschool gamers were just as impatient. You didn't wait a month for a content patch to make Civ2 or Half-Life fun. You didn't have minutes of travel time in Lemmings or Sim City. You didn't sit around waiting for units to heal in Mechwarrior 2 or Star Control 2.
The only differences are (a) if you visit a game's forums you hear about people quitting (whereas you were ignorant of it happening in early gaming) and (b) MMORPGs can sometimes involve more downtime (which wasn't necessary in early gaming, and usually also isn't necessary for MMORPGs to be fun.)
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
Yes, Patience is no longer a virtue in this society. The culture stresses faster, stronger, brighter, bigger- in a word, a disconnection with reality. This reflects itself in gaming as in any other social/techincal avenue.
MMOs should be living worlds.
If they're charging to tell a story and you finish that story then people will get done with the game and move on.
MMORPGs that want lasting appeal need to focus on being a world, a dangerous world, a world where players want to strive and achieve in without the need for text boxes telling them they did something good.
I don't blame the MMORPG player. I blame the lazy MMORPG developers for cutting corners.
a yo ho ho
No.
We old school gamers made our own content, shared our mods with others, extended the games on our terms.
a yo ho ho
I can be very patient with a flawed game, but I lack game patience when it comes to progress.
Progression is a key element in every RPG, and if my characters get to a point where they can play for days or weeks without making progress, I lose tolerance with the game very quickly.
In modern games I find this very common at endgame, where you play for weeks and get no upgrades at all. It's why I often find the leveling up more enjoyable; you get regular and constant progress.
Well first, yes, they are. But that doesn't have anything to do with why people are bailing on these games. They're leaving these games because they aren't well made.
SWTOR and TSW were both designed as singleplayer games with almost no MM components. So, they're played like singleplayer games, which people usually burn through in a few weeks.
Their entire gameplay hinges on doing quests, with nothing else to really distract the player. That gets old fast.
Older MMOs, while being less directed, and slower in many regards, have a plethora of options, and a lot of social oriented, player generated content, which is what keeps people playing. Not quests and "content".
Ah, well, we're heading for the Standard Sandbox thread after all.
Well, at least was better than another hackneyed DamnKids thread.
Self-pity imprisons us in the walls of our own self-absorption. The whole world shrinks down to the size of our problem, and the more we dwell on it, the smaller we are and the larger the problem seems to grow.
Having choices and social elements doesn't make a game a sandbox, it makes it an MMO.
Um, look around. We're the same humans. Do you see most modern gamers making mods? No? Then why would you believe most veteran gamers made mods?
The modding community has always been a tiny less-than-1% fraction (probably much lower than 1% actually.)
So even if you personally made mods for older games, you can't possibly believe a significant portion of the overall playerbases did that back in the day -- or that a significant portion of the games were even capable of that.
Not trying to badmouth early gamers or anything, but let's be realistic about this shit :P
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
You're talking in terms of human generations, most others are referring technology generations.
Still, the mmorpg genre isn't old enough to see any real trends or patterns yet.
There are certain queer times and occasions in this strange mixed affair we call life when a man takes this whole universe for a vast practical joke, though the wit thereof he but dimly discerns, and more than suspects that the joke is at nobody's expense but his own.
-- Herman Melville
Because different types of people played back then.
Didn't the last technological generation die with the Pentiums? The lines only get more blurry and the time estimates more indistinct after that. Dual-cores? Quads? 32-bit? 64-bit?
I guess you could go with the DirectX versions, but we haven't really seen that much difference between 9 and 11.
"Generations" for the purposes of this thread, is anyone I can identify with a group younger than I.
Entitling me to sneer at the behavior (and blame the degeneration of society upon) the entire MMO generation, cause we played better games before you guys arrived dammit! All you MMO players are only ruining games in general, everything's gone completely downhill since Pong and Breakout!
[Ed. it would be generally pointless to do so, however]
Self-pity imprisons us in the walls of our own self-absorption. The whole world shrinks down to the size of our problem, and the more we dwell on it, the smaller we are and the larger the problem seems to grow.
The people who are patient probably don't rush out to play an MMO at launch - and are still patiently waiting in their current MMO of choice.
( of course, my question would be whether your assertion that there are an abnormal number of people leaving has any merit; if it doesn't then the rest of this discussion is really moot )
Are you implying more than 1% of gamers modded games before 2000? Because that's completely ridiculous.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
Hoards of people leaving Secret World ? ... Not the version I am playing, every time I log in the servers ar full.
Maybe post some evidence of your " Hoards " claim ..
More than 1% of gamers modded prior to 2004 I'd wager.
My entire time playing games like the Sims 1 and any Unreal game was with hundreds of other players who at least tweeked things.
My mother used MSPaint to add tags to her mechs in MechWarrior 3 and 4.
I think game devs didn't mind as much then as they do now. Sims progress from 2 to 3 shows this as well.
But my point is for MMORPGs to be something more than flash in a pan borefests they need to incorporate the community adding to the game.
a yo ho ho
Players and people in general are products of their environments. We've moved to a point of being able to get any information or entertainment we need at the touch of a button instantly. I really don't blame them for being so impatient, it's all they've ever known.
I dare say that if i were a product of todays society, I'd be impatient as well. I guess I'm just lucky i grew up at a time when cable TV was still new and not everyone had it. My imagination was all i needed.
If anything, modern gamers lack imagination to turn what they consider boring into something fun.
Well, I've launched (twelve?) MMOs at last count, because launch day is a lot of fun. Missed quite a few too, life happens.
But then I don't sweat small costs, or expect flawless perfection on day one.
"MMO of choice"? I've been fighting that one since at least the EQ days; never expected a single title to do it all for me forever.
Self-pity imprisons us in the walls of our own self-absorption. The whole world shrinks down to the size of our problem, and the more we dwell on it, the smaller we are and the larger the problem seems to grow.
Where is this thread or article about hoardes of people quitting? I can't find anything that says that....
Well, dunno about that, but I can tell you not many people would believe the Amiga 500 Twist ever happened...heh. My best man coudln't believe it, the first time he saw it.
(Amiga 500 processors were socketed (stunning 1.7mHz!!!), and due to heat expansion sometimes worked themselves out of the socket. You could "fix" the problem fairly quickly, by picking up the entire unit and twisting it slightly between your hands.)
Self-pity imprisons us in the walls of our own self-absorption. The whole world shrinks down to the size of our problem, and the more we dwell on it, the smaller we are and the larger the problem seems to grow.
You do realize that 1% of The Sims 1 players is 63,000 players (not "hundreds") right?
Also unless you were really digging into Unreal modding it, simply changing the settings doesn't make you a modder. Unless we're gonna pretend most Halo players mod Halo, and choosing Huge world size in Civilization made you a modder, in which case the term loses all useful meaning.
I mean I personally modded games, but I went on to become a game tester and later designer, so I'm not the typical gamer when it comes to that stuff.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
A generation earlier (there's that damn word again), everyone still grokked DOS, at least. I don't think a claim that a lot of early games were heavily modded is an unreasonable one.
I'd never try to guess a number though...heh.
Self-pity imprisons us in the walls of our own self-absorption. The whole world shrinks down to the size of our problem, and the more we dwell on it, the smaller we are and the larger the problem seems to grow.
People need to be aware that most games will have some hiccups on release. Part of the problem is the expectation of the genre - people want a living world. Many players are not patient in fulfilling these expectations and will leave ship at the first sign of delay. The flip side is that these developers push out games too soon or with one trick ponies. Take your example of Rift. It's a good game, at what it does, but the depth does not compare to an existing body of games. SWTOR is just a drab closed world and doesn't even feel like an MMO. As for Diablo 3 - well, you can only play the same campaign so many times. The problem is that development costs have gone up and this puts some hamper on implementing the features so many players ask for.
It's a different time, people don't want to be paying for incomplete games. I disagree wtih your answer to your own. The only time that a game should progress to the next stage of development is when it's ready.
ADHD
I'm pretty sure you're a net liar, but that's cool.
My Unreal modding went to creating levels, changing physics on weapons, and making a Bender skin because I wanted people to kiss my shiny metal ass while I was playing.
But, unlike you, I do feel that most people who even loaded up a skin to change, that big flat map that everyone got wrong the first few times while skinning, is indeed modding. If you're changing the game from it's original design to be more customized to what you want. Even if it's adding -w to the end of a launch code.
Still, I never associated with more than a few hundred people in these communities at a time that I know of. I was speaking for myself.
I'm rather certain more than 63,000 Sims 1 players modified their game. Plus that's just one game from that time.
a yo ho ho