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MMO's - Too Fast or Too Slow?
Mordeath
Member Posts: 131
Another topic of discussion I had with a buddy was the speed at which you level or progress in the game. Too slow and its too grindy, too easy and its for noobs. I am more of the school that as long as there is content I am OK with things being quick to move through but I hate it when I see no progress. Any thoughts on this?
Comments
why is too slow for noobs? I dont consider anyone with a remarkable higher resilience towards grinding until going blind "pro" at anything. he is just doing the same basic brainless, easy-as-fuck action as everyone else, just for more hours a day
i think he said too fast is for noobs not to slow
The answer is not cut and dry. When a game is new players want the experience of growth and exploring the content to last. They want a deep well paced progression along side their friends that dosn't end in a month and forces them to raid the same 2 dungeons over and over till all 178 guild members get their full gear sets. (ok so that's an exageration but you get the ideas).
Likewise, once the majority of the game's server has played for over a year they're at the end-game and now new players suddenly see the road ahead as a long empty trail where they feel the constant need to rush and pressure from their friends to reach max level to catch up with them. That rift can be a huge reason MMO's loose new players after a year out the gate.
So whats the solution? No one knows. Right now the acceptable one is to make the journey short to make the game approachable by new players down the line and backload the game with end-game content and battlegrounds to keep people busy but not actually make the rift between them and their newbie friends huge.
Unfortunatly this also trivializes their end-game achievements as their newbie friend is just a month away from getting the same gear or what-not. It's a double bladed sword.
Arioc Murkwood
Environment Artist
Sad but true.
Yeah, I guess what brought this about is that we were talking about CO and wondering if the game would have been better or better received if they hadnt clamped down on the progression from beta to release like they did. We were not in beta but from the discussions we observed it seemed like people liked the beta and bought into it but they changed it upon launch, alienating people. So does a slower progression, like Fallen Earth, feel more challenging or would say Fallen Earth be more fun if you leveled up in half the time?
To me it isn't a question of speed, but rather a question of how much I enjoy what I am doing.
Things only feel slow when I am not enjoying the tasks required to advance which just makes the experience of playing nothing more than a grind. When things are to easy and lack challenge it feels to fast.
Much of this I feel is the result of gameplay based on gaining levels as a means for advancement.
The big problem with MMO's is not how long it takes you to get from 1-[MAX]. It is how difficult it is to get to that location. I do not mean difficult in that it's going to take 6 months play time 1-shotting Lesser Dragons of Lameness because thats as gay as mac commercials. I mean each time I go to fight something I want it to be difficult to kill.
The original EQ was fun because it was difficult. If you were stupid and used the same spell over and over again to kill a creature, you would have to sit 10 or 15 minutes to get your mana back. I can only think of one other game (FFXI) I have played where it was reliant on using your brain to kill something (bring on the flame... "You definitely haven't tried my game and because I'm playing it, it is obviously difficult" .... Thats bullshit, stop trying to boost your ego because you are max level.) That being said, EQ was very reliant on it's population. If there had never been people for me to group with I would never have played the game.
I don't want any of that Lord of the Rings Froto wandering through the forest jazz. I mean some serious Gandolf jumping off a cliff with a fire demon thingy jazz.
The problem I have with your thoughts on this is progression as a whole.
Leveling is not a grind if you are having fun doing what it is you are doing regardless of how fast or slow you are doing it.
Be it flying a ship in combat or runing around hack n slashing mounds and mounds of rats. If it is fun and you are enjoying it, there is no grind.
If your WHOLE CONCEPT on why you want to play a game is the END GAME you will be sorely disapointed in ANY game design regardless of speed.
Why? Cause END GAME is just that. END of the Game. Nothing more to do. Nothing more to accomplish. What are you doing now? Prancing around showing off your armor? What? Fighting some named MOB with 40 people of the same level to kill? You have reached the end of the game. An MMO should not have an END GAME.
THe ENDGAME should be the BEGINNING of the Expansion pak!!!
Say hello, To the things you've left behind. They are more a part of your life now that you can't touch them.
time needed for lvling is ok i think.
games are to easy they need to change it. and i dont mean by making a mob just hit harded = is better cus then you will just spend most of the time healing up
mmos need some strategy like having a mob hit the ground and making a massive earthquake arround him that will do alot of damage but when you jump it will miss you.
having a mob shoot an enourmous ball of fire at you but when you double click a it will miss you. (and this must go at high speed many games (also many single-player games for example gta if you do a side jump it takes 5 seconds before it finishes isnt fun)
The length of time it takes to level up is irrelevant. If its FUN for most people, its well designed. Proper speed of advancement is usually connected to milestones and repetition. If you go too long without hitting any sort of milestone like a new spell/ability, most people will get bored. Thats the GRIND!! Finding the right balance of handing out those milestones separates the great games from the lousy ones.
CO definitely flubbed that. Changing the progression rate without tweaking quest content was a critical failure on their part. Any game where it feels like the progression curve is totally screwed up (like CO where I found myself having to do quests progressively higher above my current level) I will typically drop pretty fast. CO had the double-whammy of a pretty broken (while leveling at least) advancement system that made combat repetitive and bland.
It's all about pacing (as Arioc noted.) As long as players experience new content (abilities/quests/types of combat/etc) at a rate which (a) isn't overwhelming and (b) isn't tediously slow, then they'll be happy. The sweet spot is between those two extremes.
FE I'm only a couple days into the trial, and I haven't even leveled up yet. But this hasn't been a problem because I effectively have "10 WOW levels" worth of abilities, plus a mount. That's a lot of content. Although admittedly it errs a bit on "overwhelming" side of things since you get many of these abilities right from the start (but the rate at which you're actually introduced to each ability in tutorials is perfectly fine, so this is only a tiny flub.)
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
It's only a grind when it's boring.
I have seen many times in WoW and in other MMOs, players complaining in the chat how bored they are.
Then why the fuck don't they log out and do something that isn't boring for a change?
I don't mind a slow pace to the leveling but it should be fun.
All those memories will be lost in time, like tears in the rain.
When I complain about an MMO being 'too slow', it primarily has to do with how easily I can predict things in the game. I also usually have complaint to the pacing of combat, and the function of stats in combat.
If some one is getting hit with a sword, they should be losing life like they're getting hit with a sword.
"But the health bar is representative of their ability to dodge/endure the strikes, or are otherwise nonfatal!"
Then stop making the animations so the player acts like they're getting hit every time! Stop making it look like they're equally grieving each strike with a colorful flourish and shrugging off the consequences of that strike! Even good fighters don't take that long to kill one another. The only people who take that long to succeed in a battle are the incompetent ones.
Problem is that the game genre gets too easily diluted with games that I find myself intrigued by only so long as it takes me to figure out how easy and/or predictable(and as consequence, easy) it is. I can't enjoy a game that I can shut my brain off and still eat other player for lunch in.
I just as well can't enjoy a game that solely exists around the premise of fast paced surgically precise mayhem of subtlety and subterfuge. Sure it's great for the pop in and challenge, but then I'm always left wondering why my character has to be an ugly bastard and why exactly my character is doing such a thing in the first place.
At that point, I have to be capable of taking a step back in the game and allowed to properly observe, interact with the environment and AI, explore the game world, customize my character, and corroborate with a larger community in furthering goals that would bring depth and meaning to what it is I'm doing in that game.
So in short -too slow and too sparse-.
"The knowledge of the theory of logic has no tendency whatever to make men good reasoners." - Thomas B. Macaulay
"The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge." - Daniel J. Boorstin
Most recent games I've tried are too hectic for my tastes. I like that in EQ1 I had plenty of time to talk in the middle on combat without being forced to use Vent/Teamspeak. I didn't have to press buttons as fast as they popped up. It probably comes down to how much of a 'game' you want your MMO to be as opposed to it being a social construct. I generally play MMOs to meet new people and keep up with friends that have moved away, so I prefer things a little more relaxed. It also makes higher level PUGs less assholish if they can't just rush the entire dungeon.
I like games that have slower progession but have content to keep you occupied. Games like FFXI, which has a sort of slow leveling speed but being able to level every job, or EQ2 where it has main levels and AA levels are what I like. Fast games like WoW makes it seem like the rewards you get mean nothing, and it's not worthwhile.
Playing - EVE, Wurm
Retired - Final Fantasy XI, Anarchy Online, Mabinogi
Waiting - ArcheAge, Salem
I know most people like fast combat, lots of action and stuff. I'm the opposite. I like slow combat, slow and hard. in fact i'd love a system where you would fight an npc for about 5-10 minutes and it would be a hard, tactical fight. And it would give significantly more exp. I don't like the asian mmo influence of killing every mob in a few hits.
I'm also not against the slow leveling - if it is not boring. I love where you have lots of content, lots of places with lots of mob types which drops different loot to choose from. Then leveling could be slow, but interesting. And you could change the spot, look for a quite place to level solo, or the opposite - a spot that has lots of players and is easy to find a group at.
So i like quality, not quantity. And i like slow pace.
Combat should be fast, but not lightning speeds. WoW combat is fine. But I want my progression to matter and take my time like it does in LOTRO. Also, alternate progression mechanics need to become the norm IMO.
Slow combat like EQ1 needs to be buried 6 feet under forever. Matter of fact, EQ1 is a prime example of a game with a ton of content that you'll never see because it takes forever to kill one stinking mob.
I also agree with this, although I like WoW's combat feel and speed, maybe not the leveling speed so much, but definitely the combat mechanics.
I like for progression to be slow. But I want to enjoy the journey.
EQ1, EQ2, SWG, SWTOR, GW, GW2 CoH, CoV, FFXI, WoW, CO, War,TSW and a slew of free trials and beta tests
Er....there's a reason for the term 'Asian Grinder'
Because that's what you just described. To note too, the longer a fight is designed to be, the less inherently tactical it is, because it's inherently less of a threat to the player. The only 'tactics' that can result is the repeated use of combat powers in distinctly linear ways.
It's rather the point of fast paced combat to stress an individual player's ability to think tactically, because it's a framework that presses more threat on their life and is much more easily coupled with combat systems that can have differing results associated with it's use under differing condition.
Sure you can use a system like that in a slow paced game, but what results is an overly complicated system where the results will almost never show.
"The knowledge of the theory of logic has no tendency whatever to make men good reasoners." - Thomas B. Macaulay
"The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge." - Daniel J. Boorstin