I laughed a lot at your post. Not insultingly really but it was a most excellent laugh.
MMO gamers don't play anymore - they "race through it" - to "have" and "be there", not explore and adventure.
Challenging? To do that you can't have "published info on every encounter". You can't have "overpowered players farming others in PvP" nor "better stuff" and "higher levels" (easing all other aspects of the game). etc...
Challenges are from not being able to predict and not being able to out gear your opposition and that is *NOT* how MMO gamers operate be that in PvE or PvP.
Why the hell do you think you have gold and item shops for these games available everywhere? Look at the "logic" of "risks vs rewards" -- they don't want to adventure and be challenged, they want to have and be rewarded with things to make it much easier to play and obtaining the levels and items is "grind time".
If you want challenges and open worlds to play in, try Oblivion, Fallout, The Witcher - standalone. For PvP style coflicts try Starcraft or Civ - that ilk for competition. Going with games that have 'better weapons" and 'higher levels" for how you compete and such -- that doesn't work for challenges - that becomes fodder and farmers and farmers don't need better skills, just "better stuff" when they can start encounters much more powerful than their opposition.
MMO's haven't been balanced for combat... *EVER* because they based it upon the PvE gaming model Dungeons & Dragons which had levleing up, which granted more power to your chars. D&D was built upon groups of friends doing things together - not soloists "grinding out levels".
That means "grind time" > skill and if you can't "grind time" to get ahead, check the local gold & power-leveling services -- which now are "adjusted" in other ways so your wallet is for "winning".
Again, it's not about playing - it's about winning and this is what is killing MMO's these days.
Everything is about winning by having - levels & stuff. They become boring and non-challenging when you have "won" and if you haven't "won" yet, "you suck". Nothing to do with adventures and exploration - everything to do with "rewards" of a pixel variety.
I see it as depressing that we have reached a point where the audience is so fractured and "gone" that we have pen and paper purists telling people how to play a computer game.
There will be always guides, it depends on the content if the guide destroys it or not, good content is good content even with a guide.
Obtaining the gear (or skills) to outgear the content can also be challenging, it is more funny if you consider that the same people arguing for "unpredictability" as a challenge sometimes (but maybe not in this case) argue against rng.
Farming is not only solo and not only negative, because it temporarily removes the "win" aspect, replacing it with "being as efficient as possible", which can do wonders in the community area if done properly.
But with the winning you are right.
Flame on!
Naw - no flame but, again, a good smile.
I've been playing video games for a long time. (old M59 player and I go back farther with other "non-internet" games but that's far enough IMO) Oh and I've been programming computers longer than I've been playing games on them. One of those first "pen & paper" changes was where we wrote all those dice randomizers into programs to handle it for us. I also haven't played a pen & paper game for decades.
Over the years these MMO's have shown just how weak they are at building communities - which was a cornerstone of playing both table-top models and pen & paper games. If you have a friend that joins the game but who doesn't have matching times to play that you do, they won't be able to "catch up" and game with you.
The roots to the tabletop games were based upon people working with others who arranged to be around at the same time for *ALL* their progression - that is no longer the case with computer games. Yet the advancement model is still used all the time and this model could use some revamping - even if it's along the lines of the current 'chase the carrot' gearing up.
It's a different environment than those old games.
Those games didn't have independent advancement. As such, what happens in these computer games is that players advance at different paces and, at some point, you get to choose whether to stop advancing or dump your "friends" and keep progressing by finding others to hang with - not necessarily "better people" just other players, often with some you'd prefer not hanging around outside of "progression".
That sucks.
----------
As I mentioned I have a history with computers and the technologies used in these games is fascinating. It's about at the point where it can do things that would have been impossible to envision even a couple years ago.
A brief simple idea, with huge amounts of complexity behind it:
Instead of "leveling up" and "gearing up" - how about the chance to become part of the lore of a world and both physically, as well as within the recorded history of the world - actuallying being able to be recorded as changing it with your character/group?
Save a city and they record your deeds. Discover a new place and help found a city there... That kind of stuff vs "levels" and "gear". Gear which is only good until the next expansion - levels that the cap is raised every now and again.
Instead, you actually change the world you are playing in - really change it. And where you can have a friend or family join you almost instantly upon their joining the game "in the thick of things" vs spending days or weeks trying to help them catch up and such.
The technologies to do this currently exist but haven't been stretched in these directions.
It's not something that most look at. The current paradigm of "carrot on a stick' is so heavily ingrained in the industry that looking at changing it is not something that most think of.
Yet having players able to have their characters written into the history of a game. Having them able to actually change the face of a world that will still be noticed years afterwards? ...
I played EQ and at one point I had a huge reputation on my server for being exceptional at what I did.
I played WoW and when TBC shipped, I was one of the top 3 most viewed profiles on the north american server's due to some of what I did in that game.
I played Rift for a bit and was in the top 5 PvP players when they first published their listings in that game.
All ancient history and meaningless. All the stuff I got, all the levels and ranks I earned -- nothing but personal memories about it and no marks showing in those worlds. There may be a handful of folks that might recall some of the stuff I did if I brought it all up to try and remind them but none of it means anything with respect to how long I played and what I did back then.
If a game world came out where the players actually could change the world itself, leaving signs of their having been in it - that would be different in ways that might offer alternatives to "grinding levels" and such.
Even games like EVE online only leave "community" markers of what those players have done online. New people joining have to be told of things that happened, it's not part of the "game lore" and there are no signs those chars and groups ever existed once they are gone.
The ability to do this exists and would be quite different. You wouldn't "grind for rep" nor "grind for levels" nor any of that. You'd play the game and what you did would change it in ways others would see and such changes could be very lasting - for years or even the life of the game.
A bit different type of motivation. Changing a game world so everyone could see the changes you helped bring about.
Think that might be a motivation beyond "Got the White Dragon Scale from Vox!" or "got the Eye of Sulfuras from Ragnaros!" or any other now worthless piece of "ubah rare" junk that someone got many, many years ago that nobody cares about these days?
I've been playing video games for a long time. (old M59 player and I go back farther with other "non-internet" games but that's far enough IMO) Oh and I've been programming computers longer than I've been playing games on them. One of those first "pen & paper" changes was where we wrote all those dice randomizers into programs to handle it for us. I also haven't played a pen & paper game for decades.
Over the years these MMO's have shown just how weak they are at building communities - which was a cornerstone of playing both table-top models and pen & paper games. If you have a friend that joins the game but who doesn't have matching times to play that you do, they won't be able to "catch up" and game with you.
The roots to the tabletop games were based upon people working with others who arranged to be around at the same time for *ALL* their progression - that is no longer the case with computer games. Yet the advancement model is still used all the time and this model could use some revamping - even if it's along the lines of the current 'chase the carrot' gearing up.
It's a different environment than those old games.
Those games didn't have independent advancement. As such, what happens in these computer games is that players advance at different paces and, at some point, you get to choose whether to stop advancing or dump your "friends" and keep progressing by finding others to hang with - not necessarily "better people" just other players, often with some you'd prefer not hanging around outside of "progression".
That sucks.
----------
As I mentioned I have a history with computers and the technologies used in these games is fascinating. It's about at the point where it can do things that would have been impossible to envision even a couple years ago.
A brief simple idea, with huge amounts of complexity behind it:
Instead of "leveling up" and "gearing up" - how about the chance to become part of the lore of a world and both physically, as well as within the recorded history of the world - actuallying being able to be recorded as changing it with your character/group?
Save a city and they record your deeds. Discover a new place and help found a city there... That kind of stuff vs "levels" and "gear". Gear which is only good until the next expansion - levels that the cap is raised every now and again.
Instead, you actually change the world you are playing in - really change it. And where you can have a friend or family join you almost instantly upon their joining the game "in the thick of things" vs spending days or weeks trying to help them catch up and such.
The technologies to do this currently exist but haven't been stretched in these directions.
It's not something that most look at. The current paradigm of "carrot on a stick' is so heavily ingrained in the industry that looking at changing it is not something that most think of.
Yet having players able to have their characters written into the history of a game. Having them able to actually change the face of a world that will still be noticed years afterwards? ...
I played EQ and at one point I had a huge reputation on my server for being exceptional at what I did.
I played WoW and when TBC shipped, I was one of the top 3 most viewed profiles on the north american server's due to some of what I did in that game.
I played Rift for a bit and was in the top 5 PvP players when they first published their listings in that game.
All ancient history and meaningless. All the stuff I got, all the levels and ranks I earned -- nothing but personal memories about it and no marks showing in those worlds. There may be a handful of folks that might recall some of the stuff I did if I brought it all up to try and remind them but none of it means anything with respect to how long I played and what I did back then.
If a game world came out where the players actually could change the world itself, leaving signs of their having been in it - that would be different in ways that might offer alternatives to "grinding levels" and such.
Even games like EVE online only leave "community" markers of what those players have done online. New people joining have to be told of things that happened, it's not part of the "game lore" and there are no signs those chars and groups ever existed once they are gone.
The ability to do this exists and would be quite different. You wouldn't "grind for rep" nor "grind for levels" nor any of that. You'd play the game and what you did would change it in ways others would see and such changes could be very lasting - for years or even the life of the game.
A bit different type of motivation. Changing a game world so everyone could see the changes you helped bring about.
Think that might be a motivation beyond "Got the White Dragon Scale from Vox!" or "got the Eye of Sulfuras from Ragnaros!" or any other now worthless piece of "ubah rare" junk that someone got many, many years ago that nobody cares about these days?
You seem to long for some technical revolution, but you yourself are stuck. Stuck in the concept that the online community is you, your neighbor and his brother, stuck in the concept that if you dont do a thing at the same time, you and your friends are not really working together, stuck in taking the shallow and simplistic concept of modern mmos as the standard, thinking that it was always like this, probably because you were always at the top, while nowadays everyone has your passing experience in the games.
Mmorpgs were not weak in building communities, you were, probably charging towards old naxx instead of helping a clannie mine dark iron (mandatory jab at the evil elitist )
Communities are not built around an achievment, but around the effort towards it, whatever the goal might be.
Meh. I just remember this major difference between Ultima Online and games today.
Ultima Online was about adventuring. Grabbing some people and wandering off to go do this thing or that thing today. Yes some people spend hours on hours grinding skills in a house somwhere to build their pvp character. The vast majority just played the game.
Modern MMO's are about grinding to the top as fast as possible and aquiring shinies along the way. It's all about the UBER gear. Everyone has to have this item or that to compete. Every looks the same. Everyone does everything the same. Lets all min/max our way to maximum effectiveness. If you don't have XX build and XX items then you are worthless.
This attitude seems to dominate among MMO's these days. I think the last MMO that which did not have this emphasis very strongly was Fallen Earth. I remember some class contention but very little and I don't remember much this class was mandatory and that class sucked. Fallen Earth was just fun to PLAY. It wasn't a min/max grind and crafting was pretty dang fun.
I also enjoyed playing Wurm, EVE, and Darkfall. Those were also games where I could simply PLAY the game and immerse myself into whatever I was doing. I wasn't spending hours grinding away endlessly to achieve maximum effectiveness. I played the game, enjoyed what I was doing, and advanced as I played.
These days it's all about advancement. People are not even content locusts because ultimately they don't care about the content these days. Players these days race to the top as fast as they can and then get bored because there is nothing else to do and they don't understand immersion or sandbox content.
I don't fault the developers. They create a product that people buy. I blame the gamers who allow themselves to follow this ultracompetative mindset. People don't care about the storyline anymore, they don't care about crafting, they don't care about adventure. Time and time again they rush into grinding to the top so they can participate in whatever crappy version of PVP the developers are hocking off on the masses.
What happens? The ultracompetitors as one person once put to me "scream, throw the chess peices around, poop on the game board, and strut around declaring that they've won the game". Then they get bored and quit. Subscription numbers drop and leave behind the rest of us. The developers sink so much money into catering to the people who just quit, that they can't afford to run the game and then it dies.
I think if a developer came along and designed a modest game for the casual or long term player it may not bring as much money in, but it would probably last longer and be more stable in terms of number of players.
If you look at games like Darkfall, Ultima Online, Shadowbane, Wurm, Salem, Haven and Hearth,EVE, you would probably find the same community playing them all. In nearly every one of those games, I've found clans or individuals who follow all those games and end up in the next incernation developed along those lines.
Originally posted by Aelious One that has a "massive" amount of people around in the same space? I thought the shared space was for one group but I may be wrong.
No, it's just a virtual world. As I said, the aspect of being shared is very limited, and there's no persistence. It's definitely not an MMORPG. It might be an MMO, depending on your point of view or how the idea of an MMO has been presented to you.
** edit ** I'm not even sure Blizzard classifies the game as an MMO. It's a multiplayer action RPG.
Classification is just a label.
It is classified as an online ARPG, but it shares a lot of players with MMORPGs like WOW, and its play style is very similar to the wait-in-city-for-dungeon-pop.
At least it's correctly labeled and sharing a RMT auction house doesn't count lol. Does it really matter? No but in the sake of arguing, which is what seems to happen when this comes up , the amount of "massive" is how many avatars can be at one place at one time. Not a virtual auction house or chat room. If that answer is four then I'm sorry, that isn't massive IMO which is based on my understanding of the term.
It is classified as an online ARPG, but it shares a lot of players with MMORPGs like WOW, and its play style is very similar to the wait-in-city-for-dungeon-pop.
Classification helps us fine tune the search for the entertainment that suits our tastes. The labels are there for good reason.
And my god "wait-in-city-for-dungeon-pop"? What an awful concept for a genre capable of so much more. So wasteful and so shameful. Genre killer on the loose.
"Mr. Rothstein, your people never will understand... the way it works out here. You're all just our guests. But you act like you're at home. Let me tell you something, partner. You ain't home. But that's where we're gonna send you if it harelips the governor." - Pat Webb
You seem to long for some technical revolution, but you yourself are stuck. Stuck in the concept that the online community is you, your neighbor and his brother, stuck in the concept that if you dont do a thing at the same time, you and your friends are not really working together, stuck in taking the shallow and simplistic concept of modern mmos as the standard, thinking that it was always like this, probably because you were always at the top, while nowadays everyone has your passing experience in the games.
Mmorpgs were not weak in building communities, you were, probably charging towards old naxx instead of helping a clannie mine dark iron (mandatory jab at the evil elitist )
Communities are not built around an achievment, but around the effort towards it, whatever the goal might be.
Effort in the broadest sense of the word.
Flame on!
Naw - you seem to miss a bit of what I'm saying is all and I go ... ??? at some of what you say there.
Effort towards goals, without succeeding = spinning your wheels. Both are part of it. "Milestones" style in long term efforts. Yet what prevents groups from remaining cohesive is all the "advancement" that goes on as this or that person can or cannot be in the game as much as someone else -- time "in-game" pushing you beyond what your friends can keep up with.
No, I was not always at the top and not there for long in most cases. It takes a great deal of time to stay "up there" and that is a sporadic deal for most. Yet critcizing something with a view that hasn't seen it from "on high" is taken differently and, incase you didn't notice in my post, What I bring up is elimination of a great deal of that "on high" attitude - by pointing at the flaws of it.
As for the technologies - they exist. There is no "revolutionary advancements" needed. They just haven't been implemented in a way to enable what I described. Some of the technologies aren't that old but all of what I described is possible to do these days.
Think about it this way - you have stand-alone games with different "models of progression" and various ways they work that combine progression in different ways.
One such model is like The Witcher -- choose a path and the world changes but it still has the progression model in it of "stuff" and "levels". Yet the story in the game is of importance as you move through it.
A different type of "progression" can be seen in a game like Spec Ops: The Line. Equipment is there for all from the start and you may find you'll use "starting equipment" at the end of the story. There are no levels, no XP, etc. The focus is going through the story to the end. (not the nicest story but an example of lack of gear & levels while still having a "game world" you "progress though".)
--------
Now let's look at what I describe.
No gearing up being of improtance. No leveling up being of importance. Everything doable within minutes of joining the game.
Does that sound like your typical MMO elitist attitude?
What I suggest is a change in focus and removal of things thta prevent one from joining with friends to do things at the same point in the game when you have different amounts of time you can spend in the game.
A game world that doesn't really have a story - it's one where the story is created by you but not in some "personal only" format. One that actually is etched into the game in ways that everyone in that world can see.
E-peen style brag rights for those into that? As a player's story builds and expands, the in-game history would show it and it would be recorded in the game world.
A change from the current MMO "persistant world = static world" to "persistant and ever changing" but the changes being due to the players actions that also actually change the game - like some standalone games only changing/maintaining it for everyone.
Think of it this way - each major fight would be like "waking the sleeper" or "opening the gates of AQ" - individuals and groups and entire server populations working at events and such but things in the game world actually changing as these happen.
Yet not "fixed" style but where these changable areas and such, are all based upon the players doing it and scale from the small 'clear out the bandits' near a town, or on the roads between towns, around to massive efforts but where it is recorded into "the game lore". Again - not "static" style but that quest/event happening 1 time - then other such quests & events occurring "elsewhere".
Very different approach but one that has been hinted at by some MMO's recently yet they all fall back to this older "elitist" model that doesn't encourage the "comfort level" teamwork that this model would allow for.
Here are the points that pisses me off about the modern day mmo´s :
1. Everything is centralized around levels. Why? Why do we need a figure to tell us how good we are ingame. Why are we restricted to killing the beasts that are around our figure (level). Personally i want to find out the hard way. Darkfalls goblins where some of my favorite little bastardos. Just walking out thinking this will "AS USUAL" be a walk in the park. BAM. Why does the game need to warn me that x creature is dangerous. I want to look at it and get the sense. Some might deem this hardcore... well it is isnt really. Its just challenging.
2. Why do every game have to be MASSIVE. I know they are called MMORPG´s. But producers cant seem to make Worlds of them anyhow?... so why keep failing. I would rather have a living breathing world of a 1/4 size of the games being made right now and with the fewer BUT committed playerbase. One trend i love though is the dynamic events. Keep that for the love of god. It makes our virtual worlds so much more alive but please dont get stuck in "Rift" mode. Noone has developed this concept any further yet.
3. Classes. This is just another dumb or lazy feature implemented as standard. Why are we not allowed ourselves to design how our magician or paladin works? Why is the initiative to invest in the character taken away from the player? There are a set skill tree (and/or perks) to choose from.... again restrictive.
4. Skills. Not much to get mad about here BUT.... why in the world do every class need skills that can counter ANY situation. I am sick of this. Even Darkfall have gone down this route with Unholy Wars. Why do you need a panic button in the event that you fail to play your character right. Why is it that players cannot be just.... punished for their mistakes?
5. Gear... oh my god. Why the fixation on stats....stats and stats. It is not even necessary. Let the crafter and his process determine the damage output or quality of the weapon (including the mats used). At last some producers have come to their senses and now allows us to play with different weapon types disregarding our class (GW2 and TESO). I know there are perfect builds but some of us really dont care much of them. That is what i loved about TES for so many years. I got to play exactly the character i wanted to play.
(Edit) 5. Fast travel. Why make a world when you can instantly just jump to any location without travel or exploration.
I agree with the OP and many others on here. I was not around for the great sandboxes sadly. My first experience was WOW and i have been playing every single (nearly) box title since. However they are all just clones and once the initial shine wares off... nothing is left.
I think the only true MMO worlds I personally played was Ultima Online and SWG. And maybe Anarchy Online, but never did play that one too much...wasn't into sci-fi games back then.
Everquest, Asheron's Call...other older MMOs...felt more like games.
UO and SWG especially felt like worlds. For one thing that helped a lot...I could be an average joe. In both, I could spend 100% time crafting, socializing or/and trading...I wasn't a hero out to save the day and I wasn't going around 1 hitting everything. Or I could dance and make music at the catina in SWG. I never once had to fight in SWG if I didn't want to.
My Skyrim, Fallout 4, Starbound and WoW + other game mods at MODDB:
Naw - you seem to miss a bit of what I'm saying is all and I go ... ??? at some of what you say there.
Effort towards goals, without succeeding = spinning your wheels. Both are part of it. "Milestones" style in long term efforts. Yet what prevents groups from remaining cohesive is all the "advancement" that goes on as this or that person can or cannot be in the game as much as someone else -- time "in-game" pushing you beyond what your friends can keep up with.
No, I was not always at the top and not there for long in most cases. It takes a great deal of time to stay "up there" and that is a sporadic deal for most. Yet critcizing something with a view that hasn't seen it from "on high" is taken differently and, incase you didn't notice in my post, What I bring up is elimination of a great deal of that "on high" attitude - by pointing at the flaws of it.
As for the technologies - they exist. There is no "revolutionary advancements" needed. They just haven't been implemented in a way to enable what I described. Some of the technologies aren't that old but all of what I described is possible to do these days.
Think about it this way - you have stand-alone games with different "models of progression" and various ways they work that combine progression in different ways.
One such model is like The Witcher -- choose a path and the world changes but it still has the progression model in it of "stuff" and "levels". Yet the story in the game is of importance as you move through it.
A different type of "progression" can be seen in a game like Spec Ops: The Line. Equipment is there for all from the start and you may find you'll use "starting equipment" at the end of the story. There are no levels, no XP, etc. The focus is going through the story to the end. (not the nicest story but an example of lack of gear & levels while still having a "game world" you "progress though".)
--------
Now let's look at what I describe.
No gearing up being of improtance. No leveling up being of importance. Everything doable within minutes of joining the game.
Does that sound like your typical MMO elitist attitude?
What I suggest is a change in focus and removal of things thta prevent one from joining with friends to do things at the same point in the game when you have different amounts of time you can spend in the game.
A game world that doesn't really have a story - it's one where the story is created by you but not in some "personal only" format. One that actually is etched into the game in ways that everyone in that world can see.
E-peen style brag rights for those into that? As a player's story builds and expands, the in-game history would show it and it would be recorded in the game world.
A change from the current MMO "persistant world = static world" to "persistant and ever changing" but the changes being due to the players actions that also actually change the game - like some standalone games only changing/maintaining it for everyone.
Think of it this way - each major fight would be like "waking the sleeper" or "opening the gates of AQ" - individuals and groups and entire server populations working at events and such but things in the game world actually changing as these happen.
Yet not "fixed" style but where these changable areas and such, are all based upon the players doing it and scale from the small 'clear out the bandits' near a town, or on the roads between towns, around to massive efforts but where it is recorded into "the game lore". Again - not "static" style but that quest/event happening 1 time - then other such quests & events occurring "elsewhere".
Very different approach but one that has been hinted at by some MMO's recently yet they all fall back to this older "elitist" model that doesn't encourage the "comfort level" teamwork that this model would allow for.
A) eltism, effort and leveling
I have brought up elitism only because you have chosen to argue from the pov of someone who has done it all and says it is not worth the effort, like the fun on the journey is worthless.
You have quite correctly determined that peoples skill and determination varies, and your answer is to remove any hurdles or things that may differentiate you from them, missing the obvious choice on your part to adapt to their speed.
Which was my problem with your idea, that you long for "playing with friends", but are not prepared to do anything for it, as if the whole "group play" idea is ok only if it does not disrupt your style and your personal goals.
In other words, is not helping a 13year old with a quest a worthy goal? Is not boosting your friends so that they can join up with you a achievment? Is it just "spinning your wheels" if you dont gain anything from it?
And if it is, is the whole "group play" thing really worth it?
dynamic content and world
In general i dont disagree with it, what we may have an argument is if the system can offer a good experience (not exp ) for everyone, if every major event is like opening the gates, what with people that join after that happens? And if they will have a new event like this too often, wont the game be chaotic while predictable and thus everything will feel meaningless, coming back to the problem you expressed at the beginning?
In general i dont disagree with it, what we may have an argument is if the system can offer a good experience (not exp ) for everyone, if every major event is like opening the gates, what with people that join after that happens? And if they will have a new event like this too often, wont the game be chaotic while predictable and thus everything will feel meaningless, coming back to the problem you expressed at the beginning?
Flame on!
Exactly. But why does this dynamic content have to be centered around "Events". Well we all know why we are thinking this way but who says it has to be this way?
Why cant it just be randomly accuring "events" like a bandit attack on your travels or a risk of getting jumped while in wild and making a camp? Events so far are centered around huge things and yes they bring some sense of life into it but they are soooo predictable and always play the same.
What i would like to see is the PVE content that make me feel vulnarable and for me to keep my wits about me at all times. The way Darkfall makes you feel. It is so intense. Not that Darkfall is perfect (Far from it).
I have brought up elitism only because you have chosen to argue from the pov of someone who has done it all and says it is not worth the effort, like the fun on the journey is worthless.
You have quite correctly determined that peoples skill and determination varies, and your answer is to remove any hurdles or things that may differentiate you from them, missing the obvious choice on your part to adapt to their speed.
Which was my problem with your idea, that you long for "playing with friends", but are not prepared to do anything for it, as if the whole "group play" idea is ok only if it does not disrupt your style and your personal goals.
In other words, is not helping a 13year old with a quest a worthy goal? Is not boosting your friends so that they can join up with you a achievment? Is it just "spinning your wheels" if you dont gain anything from it?
And if it is, is the whole "group play" thing really worth it?
dynamic content and world
In general i dont disagree with it, what we may have an argument is if the system can offer a good experience (not exp ) for everyone, if every major event is like opening the gates, what with people that join after that happens? And if they will have a new event like this too often, wont the game be chaotic while predictable and thus everything will feel meaningless, coming back to the problem you expressed at the beginning?
Flame on!
You call leveling and gearing up "elitism" - yet I see it as "feedback" - providing a sense of progression to one and all.
Only when it is placed in as "the metric" for "winning" (and how the hell you 'win' in a persistent world is still beyond me) do problems really show. Yet the design of these game worlds are persistent and literally stagnant.
When things don't change, all you have for a sense of progress in a world is what you gain - levels and equipment. As such, any type of "story" in them moves way the hell down the list vs getting those levels and that gear. "hurry up, this is boring. What? ANOTHER 10 pigs needed? ... Oh welll, it's the fastest way to get to max level right now..."
The idea is to shift the paradigm over to "story mode" - but not in a stagnant persistent world. In a world that actually changes but records your contributions to the change.
Not just "make a difference" but more "make it different" - where what you did changes the play for others, making a story as it goes.
Think about the mass events thing a bit.
Tons of little events, that record and change things. Some few major events -- like that AQ gate opening, which took server populations *WEEKS* to accomplish -- but where such events didn't just happen but recorded participation in it and reflected the participation as it happened.
RP in MMO's really has no "value" beyond a personal satisfaction and many "RP" players spend more time sitting in a chat channel talking about the game-world vs doing anything in it..
The quests and stories are not important being as every char you ever create goes through the same "grind" process to "get there". What if that changed from "being there" to the journey of getting there where you put a mark on the world by doing?
Remove the "stuff" motivation and change it over to a "story" motivation where the char you create is written into the history and shows as a contributor to how this world got to where it's at.
The feedback being the story showing what you did as you succeeded and failed in the world. A story anyone could read and you could show off. Pride in accomplishment style stuff that lasts vs temporary that fades away.
Originally posted by Eleazaros Originally posted by BanaghranI have brought up elitism only because you have chosen to argue from the pov of someone who has done it all and says it is not worth the effort, like the fun on the journey is worthless.You have quite correctly determined that peoples skill and determination varies, and your answer is to remove any hurdles or things that may differentiate you from them, missing the obvious choice on your part to adapt to their speed.Which was my problem with your idea, that you long for "playing with friends", but are not prepared to do anything for it, as if the whole "group play" idea is ok only if it does not disrupt your style and your personal goals.In other words, is not helping a 13year old with a quest a worthy goal? Is not boosting your friends so that they can join up with you a achievment? Is it just "spinning your wheels" if you dont gain anything from it?And if it is, is the whole "group play" thing really worth it? dynamic content and worldIn general i dont disagree with it, what we may have an argument is if the system can offer a good experience (not exp ) for everyone, if every major event is like opening the gates, what with people that join after that happens? And if they will have a new event like this too often, wont the game be chaotic while predictable and thus everything will feel meaningless, coming back to the problem you expressed at the beginning?Flame on!
You call leveling and gearing up "elitism" - yet I see it as "feedback" - providing a sense of progression to one and all.
Only when it is placed in as "the metric" for "winning" (and how the hell you 'win' in a persistent world is still beyond me) do problems really show. Yet the design of these game worlds are persistent and literally stagnant.
<snip!>
The feedback loop is what the developers intended. The elitism is what people did with it.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
You call leveling and gearing up "elitism" - yet I see it as "feedback" - providing a sense of progression to one and all.
Only when it is placed in as "the metric" for "winning" (and how the hell you 'win' in a persistent world is still beyond me) do problems really show. Yet the design of these game worlds are persistent and literally stagnant.
When things don't change, all you have for a sense of progress in a world is what you gain - levels and equipment. As such, any type of "story" in them moves way the hell down the list vs getting those levels and that gear. "hurry up, this is boring. What? ANOTHER 10 pigs needed? ... Oh welll, it's the fastest way to get to max level right now..."
The idea is to shift the paradigm over to "story mode" - but not in a stagnant persistent world. In a world that actually changes but records your contributions to the change.
Not just "make a difference" but more "make it different" - where what you did changes the play for others, making a story as it goes.
Think about the mass events thing a bit.
Tons of little events, that record and change things. Some few major events -- like that AQ gate opening, which took server populations *WEEKS* to accomplish -- but where such events didn't just happen but recorded participation in it and reflected the participation as it happened.
RP in MMO's really has no "value" beyond a personal satisfaction and many "RP" players spend more time sitting in a chat channel talking about the game-world vs doing anything in it..
The quests and stories are not important being as every char you ever create goes through the same "grind" process to "get there". What if that changed from "being there" to the journey of getting there where you put a mark on the world by doing?
Remove the "stuff" motivation and change it over to a "story" motivation where the char you create is written into the history and shows as a contributor to how this world got to where it's at.
The feedback being the story showing what you did as you succeeded and failed in the world. A story anyone could read and you could show off. Pride in accomplishment style stuff that lasts vs temporary that fades away.
I call it elitism only if you value it more than your time with your friends, which you seem to do, from what you write.
You always have the choice to ignore the metric, yet you choose not to and you are unwilling to "suffer" the consequences, leaving your friends behind and having nothing to do.
Why is it so important that some npc remembers that you have saved it, more than a player remembering that you have helped him ?
These are very basic problems and questions, without solving them even your system will devolve into you doing different events than your friends, just because yours is too hard for them, or because you advanced the story more.
Side note, one of your main arguments was that you want a change because you cannot play with with friends, yet now you are suggesting events like opening gates, which was very distributed, grinding for mats and quest items was not achieved in groups that had to be the same level and geared the same...
Originally posted by Aelious At least it's correctly labeled and sharing a RMT auction house doesn't count lol. Does it really matter? No but in the sake of arguing, which is what seems to happen when this comes up , the amount of "massive" is how many avatars can be at one place at one time. Not a virtual auction house or chat room. If that answer is four then I'm sorry, that isn't massive IMO which is based on my understanding of the term.
If that is the case, may MMO end games are not massive. Look at WOW. End game consists of arena/BG pvp. 5-man dungeon. 10/25 man raids, oh .. and solo dailies. Even during leveling, most are doing 5 man dungeons.
And in your definition, none of these is massive.
In fact, NONE of the pve MMO gameplay is massive .. except may be world boss .. which is not that popular and quite rare.
Tell me, in the perspective of being "massive", what is the difference between a 4 man key run in Diablo 3, and a 5-man heroic dungeon run in WOW (or any themepark MMOs)?
Originally posted by Aelious At least it's correctly labeled and sharing a RMT auction house doesn't count lol. Does it really matter? No but in the sake of arguing, which is what seems to happen when this comes up , the amount of "massive" is how many avatars can be at one place at one time. Not a virtual auction house or chat room. If that answer is four then I'm sorry, that isn't massive IMO which is based on my understanding of the term.
If that is the case, may MMO end games are not massive. Look at WOW. End game consists of arena/BG pvp. 5-man dungeon. 10/25 man raids, oh .. and solo dailies. Even during leveling, most are doing 5 man dungeons.
And in your definition, none of these is massive.
In fact, NONE of the pve MMO gameplay is massive .. except may be world boss .. which is not that popular and quite rare.
Tell me, in the perspective of being "massive", what is the difference between a 4 man key run in Diablo 3, and a 5-man heroic dungeon run in WOW (or any themepark MMOs)?
This is the point where we have a disconnect usually.
You start correctly with pointing out that wow went into the area of single digits from being massive.
Then you jump to the conclusion that it is the right thing and that all the mmorpgs are or should be that way (with the usual jab at some content you dont favor and thus think it is not popular).
While SWG and UO were more like worlds then games like WOW, i think its the community that kills the illusion of a real world.
Prior to WOW community was important... no cross realm, no name change, no faction change... you character was an investment and it was ether an obsession or a hobby. In the old days your "level" was only a faction for your progresion the real fun was being emmerced in a community and building a name for yourself. Your name was on the line so most of the asberger like behavor that is the norm in MMO's was kept at the minium.
In SWG you knew the big PVP players by name, and if you were one of them you gained both respect and hatered... war and conflict fueled by actual emotions of the players themselves not by same lame point system. It made loging in everyday a new and unique experiance... not basicly nameless soliders fighting a emotionless battel for points and purples that wow has become.
I dont bame wow or themeparks for this... wow followed the direction its players wanted and unfortunalty like everything that goes mainstream the things that made MMO's great died pandering to the bland masses.
MMO's are dead to me... everytime i try to login to one and see crap like "LOLZ noob look at your gear score and achevements... you sux fag!" it makes me weep for the old days where such people were shunned or hunted down.
While SWG and UO were more like worlds then games like WOW, i think its the community that kills the illusion of a real world.
Prior to WOW community was important... no cross realm, no name change, no faction change... you character was an investment and it was ether an obsession or a hobby. In the old days your "level" was only a faction for your progresion the real fun was being emmerced in a community and building a name for yourself. Your name was on the line so most of the asberger like behavor that is the norm in MMO's was kept at the minium.
In SWG you knew the big PVP players by name, and if you were one of them you gained both respect and hatered... war and conflict fueled by actual emotions of the players themselves not by same lame point system. It made loging in everyday a new and unique experiance... not basicly nameless soliders fighting a emotionless battel for points and purples that wow has become.
I dont bame wow or themeparks for this... wow followed the direction its players wanted and unfortunalty like everything that goes mainstream the things that made MMO's great died pandering to the bland masses.
MMO's are dead to me... everytime i try to login to one and see crap like "LOLZ noob look at your gear score and achevements... you sux fag!" it makes me weep for the old days where such people were shunned or hunted down.
I got to play a little SWG at then end of its life but i never saw people talk like that in that game... i really didnt. I hate that shit as well. Good point. But could that not be fixed with ENFORCED Rp servers and no world chat? I am of that oppinion.
I also played in those times and think most of you are looking at them through rose coloured glasses. There were just as many (percentage wise not absolutely obviously) people looking to race to the end as there were today. Powerleveling was very common. There were still people talking crap about people at the Bazaar (in EQ anyway). Whether it was about the journey or what to do at the end was always a debate and people were talking about it back then as well.
There were name changes. People were jerks just as much back then as today. It is a myth that your name was important. People were jerks and yet they still got invited to groups and had great loot. Very few people had black lists, only some individuals. Very few people recognized more than a couple dozen people on their server. Most people in SWG in my opinion did not know more than a couple dozen people and had no idea who the big names on ther server were. Names meant just as little than as they do now.
People were trash talking each other and calling each noobs way back in 2000. This is not new at all.
Just because you don't like it doesn't mean it is bad.
Taken from another thread, more relevant to this one.
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I was laying in bed last night trying to fall asleep thinking about this very issue. We need to come up with a new acronym for the contemporary "MMO" because more often than not both of the M's do not belong.
Games are going more and more towards soloability. Why the hell do I want to play a solo game online? Instances were the worst thing to happen to MMO's in their short history. People want to go play by themselves, why are they playing an MMO in the first place where one of the main selling points is interacting with other people? I think the state of things in present day online gaming is a sad reflection on where our society is headed. Xenophobia, anthropophobia, extreme cynicism and narcissism seem to be par for the course. Hopefully there is a solution, but who knows. There are some games on the horizon that may breath new life into the stagnating MMO industry (Star Citizen and EQNext come to mind) but nobody has any idea if they will actually do what they say they will or not.
My hope is that the MMO industry takes a nosedive straight into the dirt and over the course of a few years sheds 85% of the dead weight / parasites that have turned it into what it is today. I think something shining and new would come out the other end leading to another golden age of innovation ('97-'04).
I also played in those times and think most of you are looking at them through rose coloured glasses. There were just as many (percentage wise not absolutely obviously) people looking to race to the end as there were today. Powerleveling was very common. There were still people talking crap about people at the Bazaar (in EQ anyway). Whether it was about the journey or what to do at the end was always a debate and people were talking about it back then as well.
There were name changes. People were jerks just as much back then as today. It is a myth that your name was important. People were jerks and yet they still got invited to groups and had great loot. Very few people had black lists, only some individuals. Very few people recognized more than a couple dozen people on their server. Most people in SWG in my opinion did not know more than a couple dozen people and had no idea who the big names on ther server were. Names meant just as little than as they do now.
People were trash talking each other and calling each noobs way back in 2000. This is not new at all.
The difference is small, that is why we have so many discussions about it, it is not in the area of forcing people to behave one way or the other, but encouraging people to behave one or the other.
There will be always certain individuals that can be jerks while getting groups because they are good at what they do, but is it a reason to make the life easier for all jerks?
There are people on this planet that can and have robbed secure banks, yet you dont see banks abandoning security systems because of them, lying out cash in the open, do you?
And the reality is not as grim as you would want to have it (coming back to my first sentence), i have seen people kicked out of pugs just because they were known troublemakers even in wotlk
We do like to interact with people which is why we play MMO's, I don't want to group most of the time.
When I play I want to relax, I don't want to depend on someone else and I don't want them to depend on me. However I do want to interact.
I do want to group most of the time. There are a lot of people that miss this and would like to have a new game to play that works like this.
We don't have to agree on this. In fact, it's fine to have different opinions and in a perfect world we would both have great games to choose from.
The issue right now is that most all new games coming out are being built on a solo to level cap (quickly) platform. The genre is heavily swayed in that direction. You have your pick of AAA games, and more on the horizon. This is your golden age.
Originally posted by Aelious At least it's correctly labeled and sharing a RMT auction house doesn't count lol. Does it really matter? No but in the sake of arguing, which is what seems to happen when this comes up , the amount of "massive" is how many avatars can be at one place at one time. Not a virtual auction house or chat room. If that answer is four then I'm sorry, that isn't massive IMO which is based on my understanding of the term.
If that is the case, may MMO end games are not massive. Look at WOW. End game consists of arena/BG pvp. 5-man dungeon. 10/25 man raids, oh .. and solo dailies. Even during leveling, most are doing 5 man dungeons.
And in your definition, none of these is massive.
In fact, NONE of the pve MMO gameplay is massive .. except may be world boss .. which is not that popular and quite rare.
Tell me, in the perspective of being "massive", what is the difference between a 4 man key run in Diablo 3, and a 5-man heroic dungeon run in WOW (or any themepark MMOs)?
This is the point where we have a disconnect usually.
You start correctly with pointing out that wow went into the area of single digits from being massive.
Then you jump to the conclusion that it is the right thing and that all the mmorpgs are or should be that way (with the usual jab at some content you dont favor and thus think it is not popular).
Which is not so clear and surely not true.
Flame on!
Uh, where the heck did i say that? All i pointed out is that much of the MMO gameplay is not massive, and that world boss (only one of the many massive gameplay style) is not popular. I never say anything what "should" be done. I do have my preferences, don't get me wrong .. but that is certainly is not what "should" decide the genre, unlike some other people who think their preferences are "better" than others.
ANd btw, it is certainly not just WOW. DDO is not massive. DCUO "mission" gameplay is not massive. LOTRO online dungeon grouping is not massive.
We do like to interact with people which is why we play MMO's, I don't want to group most of the time.
When I play I want to relax, I don't want to depend on someone else and I don't want them to depend on me. However I do want to interact.
I do want to group most of the time. There are a lot of people that miss this and would like to have a new game to play that works like this.
We don't have to agree on this. In fact, it's fine to have different opinions and in a perfect world we would both have great games to choose from.
The issue right now is that most all new games coming out are being built on a solo to level cap (quickly) platform. The genre is heavily swayed in that direction. You have your pick of AAA games, and more on the horizon. This is your golden age.
Enjoy it
I am. But at the same time, how is it not the golden age of grouping? You go into WOW, or any of the themepark MMOs, hit a button, and you will be automatically in a group in a few min.
Don't tell me that is not grouping, or that is not "interactions" with people.
Comments
Naw - no flame but, again, a good smile.
I've been playing video games for a long time. (old M59 player and I go back farther with other "non-internet" games but that's far enough IMO) Oh and I've been programming computers longer than I've been playing games on them. One of those first "pen & paper" changes was where we wrote all those dice randomizers into programs to handle it for us. I also haven't played a pen & paper game for decades.
Over the years these MMO's have shown just how weak they are at building communities - which was a cornerstone of playing both table-top models and pen & paper games. If you have a friend that joins the game but who doesn't have matching times to play that you do, they won't be able to "catch up" and game with you.
The roots to the tabletop games were based upon people working with others who arranged to be around at the same time for *ALL* their progression - that is no longer the case with computer games. Yet the advancement model is still used all the time and this model could use some revamping - even if it's along the lines of the current 'chase the carrot' gearing up.
It's a different environment than those old games.
Those games didn't have independent advancement. As such, what happens in these computer games is that players advance at different paces and, at some point, you get to choose whether to stop advancing or dump your "friends" and keep progressing by finding others to hang with - not necessarily "better people" just other players, often with some you'd prefer not hanging around outside of "progression".
That sucks.
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As I mentioned I have a history with computers and the technologies used in these games is fascinating. It's about at the point where it can do things that would have been impossible to envision even a couple years ago.
A brief simple idea, with huge amounts of complexity behind it:
Instead of "leveling up" and "gearing up" - how about the chance to become part of the lore of a world and both physically, as well as within the recorded history of the world - actuallying being able to be recorded as changing it with your character/group?
Save a city and they record your deeds. Discover a new place and help found a city there... That kind of stuff vs "levels" and "gear". Gear which is only good until the next expansion - levels that the cap is raised every now and again.
Instead, you actually change the world you are playing in - really change it. And where you can have a friend or family join you almost instantly upon their joining the game "in the thick of things" vs spending days or weeks trying to help them catch up and such.
The technologies to do this currently exist but haven't been stretched in these directions.
It's not something that most look at. The current paradigm of "carrot on a stick' is so heavily ingrained in the industry that looking at changing it is not something that most think of.
Yet having players able to have their characters written into the history of a game. Having them able to actually change the face of a world that will still be noticed years afterwards? ...
I played EQ and at one point I had a huge reputation on my server for being exceptional at what I did.
I played WoW and when TBC shipped, I was one of the top 3 most viewed profiles on the north american server's due to some of what I did in that game.
I played Rift for a bit and was in the top 5 PvP players when they first published their listings in that game.
All ancient history and meaningless. All the stuff I got, all the levels and ranks I earned -- nothing but personal memories about it and no marks showing in those worlds. There may be a handful of folks that might recall some of the stuff I did if I brought it all up to try and remind them but none of it means anything with respect to how long I played and what I did back then.
If a game world came out where the players actually could change the world itself, leaving signs of their having been in it - that would be different in ways that might offer alternatives to "grinding levels" and such.
Even games like EVE online only leave "community" markers of what those players have done online. New people joining have to be told of things that happened, it's not part of the "game lore" and there are no signs those chars and groups ever existed once they are gone.
The ability to do this exists and would be quite different. You wouldn't "grind for rep" nor "grind for levels" nor any of that. You'd play the game and what you did would change it in ways others would see and such changes could be very lasting - for years or even the life of the game.
A bit different type of motivation. Changing a game world so everyone could see the changes you helped bring about.
Think that might be a motivation beyond "Got the White Dragon Scale from Vox!" or "got the Eye of Sulfuras from Ragnaros!" or any other now worthless piece of "ubah rare" junk that someone got many, many years ago that nobody cares about these days?
You seem to long for some technical revolution, but you yourself are stuck. Stuck in the concept that the online community is you, your neighbor and his brother, stuck in the concept that if you dont do a thing at the same time, you and your friends are not really working together, stuck in taking the shallow and simplistic concept of modern mmos as the standard, thinking that it was always like this, probably because you were always at the top, while nowadays everyone has your passing experience in the games.
Mmorpgs were not weak in building communities, you were, probably charging towards old naxx instead of helping a clannie mine dark iron (mandatory jab at the evil elitist
)
Communities are not built around an achievment, but around the effort towards it, whatever the goal might be.
Effort in the broadest sense of the word.
Flame on!
Meh. I just remember this major difference between Ultima Online and games today.
Ultima Online was about adventuring. Grabbing some people and wandering off to go do this thing or that thing today. Yes some people spend hours on hours grinding skills in a house somwhere to build their pvp character. The vast majority just played the game.
Modern MMO's are about grinding to the top as fast as possible and aquiring shinies along the way. It's all about the UBER gear. Everyone has to have this item or that to compete. Every looks the same. Everyone does everything the same. Lets all min/max our way to maximum effectiveness. If you don't have XX build and XX items then you are worthless.
This attitude seems to dominate among MMO's these days. I think the last MMO that which did not have this emphasis very strongly was Fallen Earth. I remember some class contention but very little and I don't remember much this class was mandatory and that class sucked. Fallen Earth was just fun to PLAY. It wasn't a min/max grind and crafting was pretty dang fun.
I also enjoyed playing Wurm, EVE, and Darkfall. Those were also games where I could simply PLAY the game and immerse myself into whatever I was doing. I wasn't spending hours grinding away endlessly to achieve maximum effectiveness. I played the game, enjoyed what I was doing, and advanced as I played.
These days it's all about advancement. People are not even content locusts because ultimately they don't care about the content these days. Players these days race to the top as fast as they can and then get bored because there is nothing else to do and they don't understand immersion or sandbox content.
I don't fault the developers. They create a product that people buy. I blame the gamers who allow themselves to follow this ultracompetative mindset. People don't care about the storyline anymore, they don't care about crafting, they don't care about adventure. Time and time again they rush into grinding to the top so they can participate in whatever crappy version of PVP the developers are hocking off on the masses.
What happens? The ultracompetitors as one person once put to me "scream, throw the chess peices around, poop on the game board, and strut around declaring that they've won the game". Then they get bored and quit. Subscription numbers drop and leave behind the rest of us. The developers sink so much money into catering to the people who just quit, that they can't afford to run the game and then it dies.
I think if a developer came along and designed a modest game for the casual or long term player it may not bring as much money in, but it would probably last longer and be more stable in terms of number of players.
If you look at games like Darkfall, Ultima Online, Shadowbane, Wurm, Salem, Haven and Hearth,EVE, you would probably find the same community playing them all. In nearly every one of those games, I've found clans or individuals who follow all those games and end up in the next incernation developed along those lines.
Classification is just a label.
It is classified as an online ARPG, but it shares a lot of players with MMORPGs like WOW, and its play style is very similar to the wait-in-city-for-dungeon-pop.
Classification helps us fine tune the search for the entertainment that suits our tastes. The labels are there for good reason.
And my god "wait-in-city-for-dungeon-pop"? What an awful concept for a genre capable of so much more. So wasteful and so shameful. Genre killer on the loose.
"Mr. Rothstein, your people never will understand... the way it works out here. You're all just our guests. But you act like you're at home. Let me tell you something, partner. You ain't home. But that's where we're gonna send you if it harelips the governor." - Pat Webb
Naw - you seem to miss a bit of what I'm saying is all and I go ... ??? at some of what you say there.
Effort towards goals, without succeeding = spinning your wheels. Both are part of it. "Milestones" style in long term efforts. Yet what prevents groups from remaining cohesive is all the "advancement" that goes on as this or that person can or cannot be in the game as much as someone else -- time "in-game" pushing you beyond what your friends can keep up with.
No, I was not always at the top and not there for long in most cases. It takes a great deal of time to stay "up there" and that is a sporadic deal for most. Yet critcizing something with a view that hasn't seen it from "on high" is taken differently and, incase you didn't notice in my post, What I bring up is elimination of a great deal of that "on high" attitude - by pointing at the flaws of it.
As for the technologies - they exist. There is no "revolutionary advancements" needed. They just haven't been implemented in a way to enable what I described. Some of the technologies aren't that old but all of what I described is possible to do these days.
Think about it this way - you have stand-alone games with different "models of progression" and various ways they work that combine progression in different ways.
One such model is like The Witcher -- choose a path and the world changes but it still has the progression model in it of "stuff" and "levels". Yet the story in the game is of importance as you move through it.
A different type of "progression" can be seen in a game like Spec Ops: The Line. Equipment is there for all from the start and you may find you'll use "starting equipment" at the end of the story. There are no levels, no XP, etc. The focus is going through the story to the end. (not the nicest story but an example of lack of gear & levels while still having a "game world" you "progress though".)
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Now let's look at what I describe.
No gearing up being of improtance. No leveling up being of importance. Everything doable within minutes of joining the game.
Does that sound like your typical MMO elitist attitude?
What I suggest is a change in focus and removal of things thta prevent one from joining with friends to do things at the same point in the game when you have different amounts of time you can spend in the game.
A game world that doesn't really have a story - it's one where the story is created by you but not in some "personal only" format. One that actually is etched into the game in ways that everyone in that world can see.
E-peen style brag rights for those into that? As a player's story builds and expands, the in-game history would show it and it would be recorded in the game world.
A change from the current MMO "persistant world = static world" to "persistant and ever changing" but the changes being due to the players actions that also actually change the game - like some standalone games only changing/maintaining it for everyone.
Think of it this way - each major fight would be like "waking the sleeper" or "opening the gates of AQ" - individuals and groups and entire server populations working at events and such but things in the game world actually changing as these happen.
Yet not "fixed" style but where these changable areas and such, are all based upon the players doing it and scale from the small 'clear out the bandits' near a town, or on the roads between towns, around to massive efforts but where it is recorded into "the game lore". Again - not "static" style but that quest/event happening 1 time - then other such quests & events occurring "elsewhere".
Very different approach but one that has been hinted at by some MMO's recently yet they all fall back to this older "elitist" model that doesn't encourage the "comfort level" teamwork that this model would allow for.
Here are the points that pisses me off about the modern day mmo´s :
1. Everything is centralized around levels. Why? Why do we need a figure to tell us how good we are ingame. Why are we restricted to killing the beasts that are around our figure (level). Personally i want to find out the hard way. Darkfalls goblins where some of my favorite little bastardos. Just walking out thinking this will "AS USUAL" be a walk in the park. BAM. Why does the game need to warn me that x creature is dangerous. I want to look at it and get the sense. Some might deem this hardcore... well it is isnt really. Its just challenging.
2. Why do every game have to be MASSIVE. I know they are called MMORPG´s. But producers cant seem to make Worlds of them anyhow?... so why keep failing. I would rather have a living breathing world of a 1/4 size of the games being made right now and with the fewer BUT committed playerbase. One trend i love though is the dynamic events. Keep that for the love of god. It makes our virtual worlds so much more alive but please dont get stuck in "Rift" mode. Noone has developed this concept any further yet.
3. Classes. This is just another dumb or lazy feature implemented as standard. Why are we not allowed ourselves to design how our magician or paladin works? Why is the initiative to invest in the character taken away from the player? There are a set skill tree (and/or perks) to choose from.... again restrictive.
4. Skills. Not much to get mad about here BUT.... why in the world do every class need skills that can counter ANY situation. I am sick of this. Even Darkfall have gone down this route with Unholy Wars. Why do you need a panic button in the event that you fail to play your character right. Why is it that players cannot be just.... punished for their mistakes?
5. Gear... oh my god. Why the fixation on stats....stats and stats. It is not even necessary. Let the crafter and his process determine the damage output or quality of the weapon (including the mats used). At last some producers have come to their senses and now allows us to play with different weapon types disregarding our class (GW2 and TESO). I know there are perfect builds but some of us really dont care much of them. That is what i loved about TES for so many years. I got to play exactly the character i wanted to play.
(Edit) 5. Fast travel. Why make a world when you can instantly just jump to any location without travel or exploration.
I agree with the OP and many others on here. I was not around for the great sandboxes sadly. My first experience was WOW and i have been playing every single (nearly) box title since. However they are all just clones and once the initial shine wares off... nothing is left.
I think the only true MMO worlds I personally played was Ultima Online and SWG. And maybe Anarchy Online, but never did play that one too much...wasn't into sci-fi games back then.
Everquest, Asheron's Call...other older MMOs...felt more like games.
UO and SWG especially felt like worlds. For one thing that helped a lot...I could be an average joe. In both, I could spend 100% time crafting, socializing or/and trading...I wasn't a hero out to save the day and I wasn't going around 1 hitting everything. Or I could dance and make music at the catina in SWG. I never once had to fight in SWG if I didn't want to.
My Skyrim, Fallout 4, Starbound and WoW + other game mods at MODDB:
https://www.moddb.com/mods/skyrim-anime-overhaul
A) eltism, effort and leveling
I have brought up elitism only because you have chosen to argue from the pov of someone who has done it all and says it is not worth the effort, like the fun on the journey is worthless.
You have quite correctly determined that peoples skill and determination varies, and your answer is to remove any hurdles or things that may differentiate you from them, missing the obvious choice on your part to adapt to their speed.
Which was my problem with your idea, that you long for "playing with friends", but are not prepared to do anything for it, as if the whole "group play" idea is ok only if it does not disrupt your style and your personal goals.
In other words, is not helping a 13year old with a quest a worthy goal? Is not boosting your friends so that they can join up with you a achievment? Is it just "spinning your wheels" if you dont gain anything from it?
And if it is, is the whole "group play" thing really worth it?
In general i dont disagree with it, what we may have an argument is if the system can offer a good experience (not exp
) for everyone, if every major event is like opening the gates, what with people that join after that happens? And if they will have a new event like this too often, wont the game be chaotic while predictable and thus everything will feel meaningless, coming back to the problem you expressed at the beginning?
Flame on!
Exactly. But why does this dynamic content have to be centered around "Events". Well we all know why we are thinking this way but who says it has to be this way?
Why cant it just be randomly accuring "events" like a bandit attack on your travels or a risk of getting jumped while in wild and making a camp? Events so far are centered around huge things and yes they bring some sense of life into it but they are soooo predictable and always play the same.
What i would like to see is the PVE content that make me feel vulnarable and for me to keep my wits about me at all times. The way Darkfall makes you feel. It is so intense. Not that Darkfall is perfect (Far from it).
You call leveling and gearing up "elitism" - yet I see it as "feedback" - providing a sense of progression to one and all.
Only when it is placed in as "the metric" for "winning" (and how the hell you 'win' in a persistent world is still beyond me) do problems really show. Yet the design of these game worlds are persistent and literally stagnant.
When things don't change, all you have for a sense of progress in a world is what you gain - levels and equipment. As such, any type of "story" in them moves way the hell down the list vs getting those levels and that gear. "hurry up, this is boring. What? ANOTHER 10 pigs needed? ... Oh welll, it's the fastest way to get to max level right now..."
The idea is to shift the paradigm over to "story mode" - but not in a stagnant persistent world. In a world that actually changes but records your contributions to the change.
Not just "make a difference" but more "make it different" - where what you did changes the play for others, making a story as it goes.
Think about the mass events thing a bit.
Tons of little events, that record and change things. Some few major events -- like that AQ gate opening, which took server populations *WEEKS* to accomplish -- but where such events didn't just happen but recorded participation in it and reflected the participation as it happened.
RP in MMO's really has no "value" beyond a personal satisfaction and many "RP" players spend more time sitting in a chat channel talking about the game-world vs doing anything in it..
The quests and stories are not important being as every char you ever create goes through the same "grind" process to "get there". What if that changed from "being there" to the journey of getting there where you put a mark on the world by doing?
Remove the "stuff" motivation and change it over to a "story" motivation where the char you create is written into the history and shows as a contributor to how this world got to where it's at.
The feedback being the story showing what you did as you succeeded and failed in the world. A story anyone could read and you could show off. Pride in accomplishment style stuff that lasts vs temporary that fades away.
Only when it is placed in as "the metric" for "winning" (and how the hell you 'win' in a persistent world is still beyond me) do problems really show. Yet the design of these game worlds are persistent and literally stagnant.
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The feedback loop is what the developers intended. The elitism is what people did with it.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
I call it elitism only if you value it more than your time with your friends, which you seem to do, from what you write.
You always have the choice to ignore the metric, yet you choose not to and you are unwilling to "suffer" the consequences, leaving your friends behind and having nothing to do.
Why is it so important that some npc remembers that you have saved it, more than a player remembering that you have helped him ?
These are very basic problems and questions, without solving them even your system will devolve into you doing different events than your friends, just because yours is too hard for them, or because you advanced the story more.
Side note, one of your main arguments was that you want a change because you cannot play with with friends, yet now you are suggesting events like opening gates, which was very distributed, grinding for mats and quest items was not achieved in groups that had to be the same level and geared the same...
Flame on!
If that is the case, may MMO end games are not massive. Look at WOW. End game consists of arena/BG pvp. 5-man dungeon. 10/25 man raids, oh .. and solo dailies. Even during leveling, most are doing 5 man dungeons.
And in your definition, none of these is massive.
In fact, NONE of the pve MMO gameplay is massive .. except may be world boss .. which is not that popular and quite rare.
Tell me, in the perspective of being "massive", what is the difference between a 4 man key run in Diablo 3, and a 5-man heroic dungeon run in WOW (or any themepark MMOs)?
This is the point where we have a disconnect usually.
You start correctly with pointing out that wow went into the area of single digits from being massive.
Then you jump to the conclusion that it is the right thing and that all the mmorpgs are or should be that way (with the usual jab at some content you dont favor and thus think it is not popular).
Which is not so clear and surely not true.
Flame on!
While SWG and UO were more like worlds then games like WOW, i think its the community that kills the illusion of a real world.
Prior to WOW community was important... no cross realm, no name change, no faction change... you character was an investment and it was ether an obsession or a hobby. In the old days your "level" was only a faction for your progresion the real fun was being emmerced in a community and building a name for yourself. Your name was on the line so most of the asberger like behavor that is the norm in MMO's was kept at the minium.
In SWG you knew the big PVP players by name, and if you were one of them you gained both respect and hatered... war and conflict fueled by actual emotions of the players themselves not by same lame point system. It made loging in everyday a new and unique experiance... not basicly nameless soliders fighting a emotionless battel for points and purples that wow has become.
I dont bame wow or themeparks for this... wow followed the direction its players wanted and unfortunalty like everything that goes mainstream the things that made MMO's great died pandering to the bland masses.
MMO's are dead to me... everytime i try to login to one and see crap like "LOLZ noob look at your gear score and achevements... you sux fag!" it makes me weep for the old days where such people were shunned or hunted down.
I got to play a little SWG at then end of its life but i never saw people talk like that in that game... i really didnt. I hate that shit as well. Good point. But could that not be fixed with ENFORCED Rp servers and no world chat? I am of that oppinion.
I also played in those times and think most of you are looking at them through rose coloured glasses. There were just as many (percentage wise not absolutely obviously) people looking to race to the end as there were today. Powerleveling was very common. There were still people talking crap about people at the Bazaar (in EQ anyway). Whether it was about the journey or what to do at the end was always a debate and people were talking about it back then as well.
There were name changes. People were jerks just as much back then as today. It is a myth that your name was important. People were jerks and yet they still got invited to groups and had great loot. Very few people had black lists, only some individuals. Very few people recognized more than a couple dozen people on their server. Most people in SWG in my opinion did not know more than a couple dozen people and had no idea who the big names on ther server were. Names meant just as little than as they do now.
People were trash talking each other and calling each noobs way back in 2000. This is not new at all.
Taken from another thread, more relevant to this one.
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I was laying in bed last night trying to fall asleep thinking about this very issue. We need to come up with a new acronym for the contemporary "MMO" because more often than not both of the M's do not belong.
Games are going more and more towards soloability. Why the hell do I want to play a solo game online? Instances were the worst thing to happen to MMO's in their short history. People want to go play by themselves, why are they playing an MMO in the first place where one of the main selling points is interacting with other people? I think the state of things in present day online gaming is a sad reflection on where our society is headed. Xenophobia, anthropophobia, extreme cynicism and narcissism seem to be par for the course. Hopefully there is a solution, but who knows. There are some games on the horizon that may breath new life into the stagnating MMO industry (Star Citizen and EQNext come to mind) but nobody has any idea if they will actually do what they say they will or not.
My hope is that the MMO industry takes a nosedive straight into the dirt and over the course of a few years sheds 85% of the dead weight / parasites that have turned it into what it is today. I think something shining and new would come out the other end leading to another golden age of innovation ('97-'04).
We do like to interact with people which is why we play MMO's, I don't want to group most of the time.
When I play I want to relax, I don't want to depend on someone else and I don't want them to depend on me. However I do want to interact.
The difference is small, that is why we have so many discussions about it, it is not in the area of forcing people to behave one way or the other, but encouraging people to behave one or the other.
There will be always certain individuals that can be jerks while getting groups because they are good at what they do, but is it a reason to make the life easier for all jerks?
There are people on this planet that can and have robbed secure banks, yet you dont see banks abandoning security systems because of them, lying out cash in the open, do you?
And the reality is not as grim as you would want to have it (coming back to my first sentence), i have seen people kicked out of pugs just because they were known troublemakers even in wotlk
Flame on!
I do want to group most of the time. There are a lot of people that miss this and would like to have a new game to play that works like this.
We don't have to agree on this. In fact, it's fine to have different opinions and in a perfect world we would both have great games to choose from.
The issue right now is that most all new games coming out are being built on a solo to level cap (quickly) platform. The genre is heavily swayed in that direction. You have your pick of AAA games, and more on the horizon. This is your golden age.
Enjoy it
Uh, where the heck did i say that? All i pointed out is that much of the MMO gameplay is not massive, and that world boss (only one of the many massive gameplay style) is not popular. I never say anything what "should" be done. I do have my preferences, don't get me wrong .. but that is certainly is not what "should" decide the genre, unlike some other people who think their preferences are "better" than others.
ANd btw, it is certainly not just WOW. DDO is not massive. DCUO "mission" gameplay is not massive. LOTRO online dungeon grouping is not massive.
I am. But at the same time, how is it not the golden age of grouping? You go into WOW, or any of the themepark MMOs, hit a button, and you will be automatically in a group in a few min.
Don't tell me that is not grouping, or that is not "interactions" with people.