Avoiding the hamster wheel

Amathe

While I wait for something good to come out, I have been playing WoW.

One thing I have noticed is how rote my playtime has become. Log on. Check my followers and get their rewards. Send followers on new missions. Swing by auction house. Run daily quests. Run a dungeon or a low level raid. Log off.

Same stuff, every time. Like a carousel.  

I suppose some of that could be blamed on me for my own choices. 

But when I played EQ, I never once felt that way. When I logged on, my focus was on hooking up with friends, or failing that joining someone else's group. I went wherever the action was that I could get in on.

As Pantheon is developed - especially future expansions - I expect more and more features will be added. But more features can be bad, as you get stuck trying to keep up with all that stuff and feeling like you are on the hamster wheel.  

Kyleran

Goals are good,  but I suspect Pantheon will just be a different flavor of the hamster wheel.

Tiamat64

I hate it when an MMORPG has added so many daily quests that by the time you're done doing your daily quests (which you're practically obligated to do compared to other things because their reward for the effort is typically much higher than the non-dailies. Otherwise there wouldn't be a need to limit them to daily in the first place), you have no time to do anything else.

A lot of MMORPGs I played over the years I ended up quitting because they gradually kept adding more and more daily quests (or various things to be done daily) to the point where it started to feel like a job to attend to all of them within that game.

Sovrath

Amathe said:

Same stuff, every time. Like a carousel.  

I suppose some of that could be blamed on me for my own choices.

um "yeah".

I can't say that World of Warcraft was ever my bag but I certainly decided not to play it that way when I did play it.

You can make choices you know, you can say no to the things you don't want.

You indicate that you didn't do that in Everquest but it seems that, given what you did in Everquest, you could still find friends to hang with in World of Warcraft.

If you are in a hamster wheel, whether it's gaming or "life" you can choose to get off it.

Otherwise you are pissing away your time.

There is no guarantee that Pantheon is going to fix what ails you if you find yourself in the same spot. There is no guarantee you are going to "find friends" any more than there is a guarantee in World of Warcraft.

So go out and find a group to be a part of or do something else, it sounds to me like you are wasting your time.

Mendel

Mankind may have gone down an evolutionary dead-end when we decided to domesticate hamsters.  We did it to ourselves, and there's every indication that we will do it again.  But that's a topic for another day.

Everything becomes routine.  Pantheon will too, even if it pushes out a game that will become adored by all.  Doing the same thing over and over causes humans to become bored.  We want to do and see new things, different things.  The problem is, games take a long time to develop.  I'm bored silly by Civilization, by old-school CRPGs, X-COM (both the classic and new versions), even MMORPGs like EQ1 and LotRO.  All wonderful games, but I can't sit down and play any of them for prolonged periods of time like I once did.

The time it takes to develop a new system in a game makes updates few and far between.  This inherent delay allows the humans that play the game to 'burn out' on the systems, we become bored.  The only way to counter that without fundamentally changing the nature of the human mind is to reduce the game development speed to almost nothing, or emulate this improved speed by automating the development itself.  Games haven't attempted to incorporate systems to create new content dynamically, much less haven't explored an automated method to generate new gaming systems or interfaces.  Academic studies haven't had overwhelming success with creative works -- music, art and writing.  What few advances the academic projects have made, games haven't begun to attempt to adapt these techniques into their games.

So, people get tired of games because that 'newness' wears off, and it takes too long (and too much effort and money) to develop something new.  Then there's the whole "new = risk" mentality that is natural for businesses.  It's a vicious cycle and I don't see it changing in my lifetime.

delete5230

Amathe said:

While I wait for something good to come out, I have been playing WoW.

One thing I have noticed is how rote my playtime has become. Log on. Check my followers and get their rewards. Send followers on new missions. Swing by auction house. Run daily quests. Run a dungeon or a low level raid. Log off.

Same stuff, every time. Like a carousel.  

I suppose some of that could be blamed on me for my own choices. 

But when I played EQ, I never once felt that way. When I logged on, my focus was on hooking up with friends, or failing that joining someone else's group. I went wherever the action was that I could get in on.

As Pantheon is developed - especially future expansions - I expect more and more features will be added. But more features can be bad, as you get stuck trying to keep up with all that stuff and feeling like you are on the hamster wheel.  

Retail only because it's an abomination of what WoW once was.  If they kept the path of Vanilla it would be like your looking for.

Vanilla servers are just like you spoke of EQ2...... Only problem Vanilla is old and it does take a toll on you as the years pass.  However it you haven't been playing the Vanilla, you can still re-coop the feeling

svann

A game needs to be designed so that it is hard to choose what you want to do.  If the best choice is always too clear then it becomes a routine. 

And just as where to camp becomes routine, you can say the same for combat design.  A good game needs combat abilities that are designed so that the best play is watching the action and deciding which ability to use next.  If the abilities are designed so there is always the same best choice (1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and 1 and ..) then its boring.  Thats not so easy to design though, especially doing for all classes.

Nightbringe1

Amathe said:

While I wait for something good to come out, I have been playing WoW.

One thing I have noticed is how rote my playtime has become. Log on. Check my followers and get their rewards. Send followers on new missions. Swing by auction house. Run daily quests. Run a dungeon or a low level raid. Log off.

Same stuff, every time. Like a carousel.  

I suppose some of that could be blamed on me for my own choices. 

But when I played EQ, I never once felt that way. When I logged on, my focus was on hooking up with friends, or failing that joining someone else's group. I went wherever the action was that I could get in on.

As Pantheon is developed - especially future expansions - I expect more and more features will be added. But more features can be bad, as you get stuck trying to keep up with all that stuff and feeling like you are on the hamster wheel.  

It's not the games that have changed in this aspect so much as the gamers.

Wizardry

Well it all depends on type and how content is delivered.
if the trend is like crappy Wow or even FFXIV to just aim for the BEST LOOT dungeon raiding,then might as well burn the game now,it is not worth playing.

I need to see more focus on the characters and the world but i highly doubt this team can afford the WORLD depth i want to see.However there is a ton of room top improve what earlier games started instead of copying the same formula of BEST LOOT wins thanks for playing 10 years.

So at this point in game development ..2017,i expect a lot,i KNOW what devs are capable of doing ,i also realize a devs lack of money.However lack of money does not concern me,if a game is not good enough,i am not playing it ,simple as that.
I already have old school go to games, i am not buying some new skin,this games has to be both creative and improve tweak the best ideas mmorpg's have to offer.

BTW i am happy to see that the OP does at least understand how shallow his gaming choice really is but to continue supporting Blizzard's weak game design abilities is wrong,it sends a bad message to game developers if we keep supporting bad game design.Seriously this old school and modern kind of stuff was ok for a first time idea,you know owe have to try and see stuff first before deciding on improvements but at this stage NOBODY is improving anything ,aside from just graphics.

Amathe

Wizardry said:

BTW i am happy to see that the OP does at least understand how shallow his gaming choice really is but to continue supporting Blizzard's weak game design abilities is wrong,it sends a bad message to game developers if we keep supporting bad game design.Seriously this old school and modern kind of stuff was ok for a first time idea,you know owe have to try and see stuff first before deciding on improvements but at this stage NOBODY is improving anything ,aside from just graphics.

If anyone cared what I thought or what games I play, there would still be City of Heroes and a real EQ2. 

Albatroes

Dailies are the end game in most mmorpgs these days it seems. Raids pretty much allow you to hit a point faster, but as long as you do your dailies, you'll hit the same point as a hardcore raider eventually. All thanks to this "no player left behind" act that devs have seem to adopted in order to capture a wider audience. The problem is there's no real progression if everyone can hit the exact same point or a minor difference with the difference in time progressed only being a few months.

delete5230

Lets be realistic here. 

Everyone expects end game to last forever.  Maybe a good solution will be found someday, but for now we have no real answer. Their are limits. 

- Would you use your microwave to cook a meatloaf from raw ?
- Would you enter your family SUV in a Nascar race ?
- Would you cut your lawn with a chain saw ? 

For now the only good real answer is a LARGE mmo with SLOW leveling and re-playability.  This is a thing of the past, we don't get this anymore, but it's the only solution.

- No ! ...... A 3 week's of content expansion WILL NOT CUT IT..... ever !


VR and Pantheon have their hands full.....Let them work on a large game.