I took a chance on Minecraft recently, and was pleasantly surprised that the sense of journey was rekindled in me. Endless exploration really, and building nearly anything you might imagine.
This and Skyrim, but I still find myself gravitating toward Minecraft more.
Personally, I would love to see a game that incoporates more aspects of old style pen and paper games. To be sure, it would have to be a radically different design. There were tons of skills in PnP games that cannot be used in current MMOs. One of those was map making. I would love to see a game where exploration could be rewarded both by the experience and by giving new knowledge a value in game. How cool would it be to explore a previously unknown area and then sell maps to other players?
Bill Murphy about SWTOR: "...and a whole “planet” is easily navigated in minutes...".
I haven't noticed that. Likely Bill played through the first couple of planets only as when you get to Tatooine and further the landscapes are very large and it takes time to travel from one objective to the other even on your hoverbike. The true thing is: I DON'T WANT TO SPEND LOTS OF TIME TRAVELING ON MY HOVERBIKE! I DON'T WANT TO SEARCH FOR OBJECTIVES! I though everybody know that and hated WoW back when it was less user-friendly and required people to spend their precious time searching for objectives and running ruther than actually playing and enjoying the game. I love all the fast-travel and convenience features and I believe that the best approach to the travek is the one from the DC Universe online: you are given a very fast travel speed nearly from the start of the game so you can actually explore the world, not constantly plan, how to save time effectivly moving between objectives. So - no, we haven't lost our sense of journey: we want it to be quick and fast and we hate developers who try to cover the lack of content by long bring journeys.
I think there are a number of reasons games are going this way.
1. Combat is crap
This is the main reason I think. Basically fighting mobs is boring and formulaic and offers no satisfaction whatsoever. As a result players do not want to actively fight mobs unless they're gonna get something out of it since the fight itself requires no skill or tactics at all.
2. Quests are crap
Little or no planning and thought is required in many games to complete quests. The player just wanders into the zone, auto-targets the mobs and mashes a few macro buttons FTW. As a result, players just want to complete quests as quickly as possible because there's no sense of satisfaction from completing a quest.
3. Loot & levels are all-important
I think many players play MMOs now to earn status-related achievements more than any other factor. By this I mean things like having certain kit and achieving a certain level. Even if no-one else cares, players are self-congratulatory on achieving level X not because it took skill or it was fun but simply because they had the staying power to repeatedly do something really boring to get there. The journey to get there - and this is crucial - is now just an irritating obstacle, a test of determination. Sure it's all set in a pretty little game world but even that's cosmetically shallow in many cases.
And why are games being built as skill-free lumps of junk? Egalitarian game design: the art of creating a game where a hopeless gamer can stand toe-to-toe with a skilled gamer because only time = success in the game.
Aryas
Playing: Ableton Live 8 ~ ragequitcancelsubdeletegamesmashcomputerkillself ~
I loved having to ride the boat. Not because riding the boat was fun but because not dieing to whatever creature was made all the more thrilling by avoiding the huge time it would take to get back to my corpse. I like picking fights with mobs that there is the real liklihood its going to be a nail biter. Assuming I didnt bind close by and I didnt always play a caster. It also meant that when I chose to go to a place, I was investing in that choice. Yes it was artificial and maybe there could be something to do during that time besides sit. I played EQ and it isnt because it was new that I enjoyed it. I hate when games put in a teleport function, I want to earn my right to be in a place by having travelled there. Yes, put in the teleport and Ill use it because everyone else is. I still dont like it. I dont like the quest icons on my map and in some cases I could turn them off. I loved getting lost in the forest runnign to Kelethin and the danger of possibly running in to something along the way and not having the location of my corpse should I happen to die. Its not that I liked having to get my corpse or the long run or boat ride, its that sense of thrill of having just 1 HP left fighting some mob and knowing just what it is that I avoided. In WoW, so what, if I die I just float right back to my corpse in a matter of a minute and Im back at it. There is no real challenge to it. The same was true recently with Rift. It was just too easy, even soloing was easy. I loved Vanguard but for some lack of content early on and some screwed up dungeon levels and glitches. They do have teleports but mostly as hubs that you have to branch out from. There is still ots of exploring. Its a huge world that if you want to run from one place to another right out of the gate you could. Well, before they did the newbie zone silliness. I love taking an XP hit too when I die for the same reason. There should be a cost and it shouldnt simply be cured by some coin at a temple. PoK took the heart out of EQ for me.
My first trip to Qeynos took a half elf bard friend of mine to guide me there and once I was there because it was such a journey from Freeport I was bound to stay and explore a bit. If all I had to do was port from one city to the next I would never see all of the world. I would miss out on experiencing places at the proper level. I wouldnt run through the gorge and risk getting charmed by an eye and beat my friends to death.
Completely agree with this. Old Forest back at LOTRO's launch is the epitome of how this type of content should be done. So sad they changed it, even if it does make progressing my levels and storylines faster.
Actually, Old Forest in closed beta. There were several iterations. Steiffel told me that the guy who created the old forest was an old school gamer. He was then told that most people don't enjoy getting lost, the danger, etc. so he made different versions until the current one came to be. Honestly I don't even see how the current version can be considered a forest.
I wonder if people know that there used to be trolls on the road on the way to Rivendell. The game used to be more dangerous. I really miss it.
Yep. And it wasn't overtop the dangerous like some people call for these days when talking about making things hard, it was realistic and doable and didn't completely make the game impossible just had to find alternative ways to do things if one wanted to still solo.
Great post, Bill! I also really agree with you and the quoted guys above about the early days of LOTRO. That is a perfect example of what exploration and danger meant. It was, just the right amount of not knowing where anything is and danger to create tension, not frustration.
Now, LOTRO has become a slideshow, or a museum tour.
I usually prefer fast travel simply because most games don't reward you for exploring. There might be a big chunk of empty map, but slogging through usually yields little of interest. You'll get the standard pollution of mob spawns to fill the empty space, but not much more.
I'm an explorer type. I live off the beaten path. Most of the time though, there's just nothing cool and interesting to find out there. So then I fast travel. What's the point of hoofing it across the landscape when you won't see anything even mildly extraordinary? There's just nothing out there but more mob spawns -- essentially time sinks masquerading as content.
Skyrim was great in that there was almost always something weird and wonderful to stumble across. But that game is rare indeed, in how well it catered to players like myself. Most other games just aren't worth the bother.
I can totally relate, I played rubies of eventIde, asherons call, and Everquest. My fondest mmo was Asherons Call. The grandeur of these mmo's where foremost the exploration. I remember in AC going on a 2 hour journey with half a dozen guildies to get my hollow sword. The world of AC is so vast and nothing on your map is marked so we had a set of coordinates and that was it. We went through rivers, over waterfalls, valleys filled with treacherous monsters I had never seen. Climbed mountains. All the while fighting for our lives. Finally we reached a dungeon at our cordinates. Inside we epically battled our way through hordes of giants and traps. At the end of our dungeon we were matched with a giant chief and his minions, about half of us survived the onslaught to loot the prized ore and forge our hollow weapons. There we no markers, no maps, no quest givers to many of the quests or rare items. 90% of these items were stumbled upon by explorers ors whispers from friends. What bill Murphy is trying to bring to vision has to be experienced to truly be able to value. And what he's trying to help our new generation of mmo players see and experience is becoming lost. Imagination. Developers used to create mmo's in a way they captured you into a vast world were you became your character. And your imagination took over writing your own story whilst you explored an unknown world with your friends. But sadly as Bill points out developers are looking for a fast buck and a streamlined "easy" game. Shame.
Comments
I took a chance on Minecraft recently, and was pleasantly surprised that the sense of journey was rekindled in me. Endless exploration really, and building nearly anything you might imagine.
This and Skyrim, but I still find myself gravitating toward Minecraft more.
Personally, I would love to see a game that incoporates more aspects of old style pen and paper games. To be sure, it would have to be a radically different design. There were tons of skills in PnP games that cannot be used in current MMOs. One of those was map making. I would love to see a game where exploration could be rewarded both by the experience and by giving new knowledge a value in game. How cool would it be to explore a previously unknown area and then sell maps to other players?
Bill Murphy about SWTOR: "...and a whole “planet” is easily navigated in minutes...".
I haven't noticed that. Likely Bill played through the first couple of planets only as when you get to Tatooine and further the landscapes are very large and it takes time to travel from one objective to the other even on your hoverbike. The true thing is: I DON'T WANT TO SPEND LOTS OF TIME TRAVELING ON MY HOVERBIKE! I DON'T WANT TO SEARCH FOR OBJECTIVES! I though everybody know that and hated WoW back when it was less user-friendly and required people to spend their precious time searching for objectives and running ruther than actually playing and enjoying the game. I love all the fast-travel and convenience features and I believe that the best approach to the travek is the one from the DC Universe online: you are given a very fast travel speed nearly from the start of the game so you can actually explore the world, not constantly plan, how to save time effectivly moving between objectives. So - no, we haven't lost our sense of journey: we want it to be quick and fast and we hate developers who try to cover the lack of content by long bring journeys.
I think there are a number of reasons games are going this way.
1. Combat is crap
This is the main reason I think. Basically fighting mobs is boring and formulaic and offers no satisfaction whatsoever. As a result players do not want to actively fight mobs unless they're gonna get something out of it since the fight itself requires no skill or tactics at all.
2. Quests are crap
Little or no planning and thought is required in many games to complete quests. The player just wanders into the zone, auto-targets the mobs and mashes a few macro buttons FTW. As a result, players just want to complete quests as quickly as possible because there's no sense of satisfaction from completing a quest.
3. Loot & levels are all-important
I think many players play MMOs now to earn status-related achievements more than any other factor. By this I mean things like having certain kit and achieving a certain level. Even if no-one else cares, players are self-congratulatory on achieving level X not because it took skill or it was fun but simply because they had the staying power to repeatedly do something really boring to get there. The journey to get there - and this is crucial - is now just an irritating obstacle, a test of determination. Sure it's all set in a pretty little game world but even that's cosmetically shallow in many cases.
And why are games being built as skill-free lumps of junk? Egalitarian game design: the art of creating a game where a hopeless gamer can stand toe-to-toe with a skilled gamer because only time = success in the game.
Aryas
Playing: Ableton Live 8
~ ragequitcancelsubdeletegamesmashcomputerkillself ~
I loved having to ride the boat. Not because riding the boat was fun but because not dieing to whatever creature was made all the more thrilling by avoiding the huge time it would take to get back to my corpse. I like picking fights with mobs that there is the real liklihood its going to be a nail biter. Assuming I didnt bind close by and I didnt always play a caster. It also meant that when I chose to go to a place, I was investing in that choice. Yes it was artificial and maybe there could be something to do during that time besides sit. I played EQ and it isnt because it was new that I enjoyed it. I hate when games put in a teleport function, I want to earn my right to be in a place by having travelled there. Yes, put in the teleport and Ill use it because everyone else is. I still dont like it. I dont like the quest icons on my map and in some cases I could turn them off. I loved getting lost in the forest runnign to Kelethin and the danger of possibly running in to something along the way and not having the location of my corpse should I happen to die. Its not that I liked having to get my corpse or the long run or boat ride, its that sense of thrill of having just 1 HP left fighting some mob and knowing just what it is that I avoided. In WoW, so what, if I die I just float right back to my corpse in a matter of a minute and Im back at it. There is no real challenge to it. The same was true recently with Rift. It was just too easy, even soloing was easy. I loved Vanguard but for some lack of content early on and some screwed up dungeon levels and glitches. They do have teleports but mostly as hubs that you have to branch out from. There is still ots of exploring. Its a huge world that if you want to run from one place to another right out of the gate you could. Well, before they did the newbie zone silliness. I love taking an XP hit too when I die for the same reason. There should be a cost and it shouldnt simply be cured by some coin at a temple. PoK took the heart out of EQ for me.
My first trip to Qeynos took a half elf bard friend of mine to guide me there and once I was there because it was such a journey from Freeport I was bound to stay and explore a bit. If all I had to do was port from one city to the next I would never see all of the world. I would miss out on experiencing places at the proper level. I wouldnt run through the gorge and risk getting charmed by an eye and beat my friends to death.
Great post, Bill! I also really agree with you and the quoted guys above about the early days of LOTRO. That is a perfect example of what exploration and danger meant. It was, just the right amount of not knowing where anything is and danger to create tension, not frustration.
Now, LOTRO has become a slideshow, or a museum tour.
I usually prefer fast travel simply because most games don't reward you for exploring. There might be a big chunk of empty map, but slogging through usually yields little of interest. You'll get the standard pollution of mob spawns to fill the empty space, but not much more.
I'm an explorer type. I live off the beaten path. Most of the time though, there's just nothing cool and interesting to find out there. So then I fast travel. What's the point of hoofing it across the landscape when you won't see anything even mildly extraordinary? There's just nothing out there but more mob spawns -- essentially time sinks masquerading as content.
Skyrim was great in that there was almost always something weird and wonderful to stumble across. But that game is rare indeed, in how well it catered to players like myself. Most other games just aren't worth the bother.