Really nice article. It touches on a lot of issues I try to convey here as well. Easy you say? Trying to convince an experienced mmo player to judge something based on it's merit rather than their experience is like trying to get a NASCAR driver to understand that even though driving on the expressway is far less "thrilling" that what they are normally accustomed to, it doesn't make it any less deserving of their respect nor should they believe their "experiences" automatically make them better drivers than everyone else driving under the same conditions. You never know who's behind the wheel of another car...could be the person that's use to driving on the autobahn.
The new players are to blame for the woes of MMOs, its practically a study in society in general.
Everything has to be fast, easy, and convenient in order to cater to the now societal norm.
One day when theyre tearing down the last library, Ill cry for all of the kids who prefer the easier route of downloading books instead of actually visiting the library and enjoying the small nuances of actual books.
Your absolutely right. Who would want fast, easy, and conveniet as a way to relax. I'm all for slow, hard, and cumbersome when it comes to my gaming. Damn the societal norms.
Just wondering how many nights you spend darning wool by candlelight while playing the harpsicord before visiting the outhouse? None? What do you know, societal norms do change. Just like games. Just like people.
BTW, the nuace of books, or records are wonderful things. But it's the ideas behind them that propel them through the ages, not the medium they're written on.
Just wondering how many nights you spend darning wool by candlelight while playing the harpsicord before visiting the outhouse? None? What do you know, societal norms do change. Just like games. Just like people.
I do, and I usually do all of this right before sitting down on my 486 for a rousing session of EQMAC. Don't judge me.
I would like to point out that I was one of the players of those early MMOs. Yes, I remember 6 hour corpse runs.
I also remember that those were a LOT more fun in hindsight than they were at 2AM when you knew you had to get up for work in 4 hours. At the time, they were just tiring and tedious. Afterward -- they're food for shared memories.
Nonetheless. People who say "Oh it was 1000% better then" are being just as blind as the people who say the same about MMOs now. MMOs weren't perfect back then and they're not perfect now, and frustration is not a good basis on which to build a game, except for a certain slice of the gaming class.
Ironically, it's a slice of the gaming class that's male, of a certain age, of a certain personality type, and that absolutely cannot ever be reasoned with. I don't even try anymore.
But don't tell me I didn't play your HardMOde games. I did. And I *still* have the opinions I have. Shocking.
The OP makes some good points.....could have OSI / EA done some things better with Ultima Online.....absolutely!
The big issue here to me is the audience, and what's considered "fun". What traditional MMORPG gamers found to be "fun" then and what current MMORPG gamers find to be "fun" now are very different. To say that a lot of fond memories of old games is purely rose color glasses driven is a mistake and ignores the huge shift in MMORPG gaming over in the last 5-6 years.
For example, picking cotton from the cotton field to spin in a loom found in a tailor shop, to weave into bolts of cloth that can be cut into cloth sheets to be used to craft a shirt might sound like 30 mintues of your life you'll never get back to a typical (action oriented) MMORPG gamer in today's market........but something immersing and deep to a traditional (fantasy oriented) MMORPG gamer in the traditional market.
"Simplifying" that process by just making monsters drop level appropriate grades of cloth that can be directly crafted into a shirt might be an "improvement" for certian people......but not for all.
Also, some of these "improvements" carry unintentional consequences that done in the spirit of improving game play and reducing down time.....but fly in the face of immersion and a fantasy role playing aspect.
WOW's new dungeon finder is probably one of their best improvements over the years......but being able to instantly port to some dungeon you've never seen in game before and then instantly port back to where you were after your finshed effects the community at large and how they view others. Easier to flake off on a group knowing that you'll just get automagically put into another in 5 mintues.......instead of having to wait another 30 to manually put another one together and have everyoned move out to the dungeon location.
So yes.....there is a lot of nostalgic thought driving the yearning for the way things "used" to be, but not all of what some new MMORPG gamers might call difficult for the sake of being difficult is viewed the same among all MMORPG gamers (specifially the fantasy driven traditional types)
Back in my day we walked FIFTEEN zones, uphill, in the lag, against the rotation of Norrath, to camp a single runty gnoll spawn for a rusty dagger and a ration of bread AND WE LIKED IT DAMN IT!
I agree that, for the most part, this article does describe the whining complaints of most MMO-complainers; however, for my own part, I have to respectfully disagree. I found that (and again, I say this as it relates to only me) this article completely misses the point.
I don't believe that "hard" in an MMORPG simply must mean buggy or undocumented/unexplained elements (or even difficulty for difficulty's sake). I simply think MMO games should require more RPG-involvement. I don't want mystic trails, on top of map way-points, on top of mini-map arrows, on top of an on-screen quest summaries with directions . . . all supplied automatically on my screen because the game calculated that [this] quest was the closest one to my current location. I want to have to read what the NPC is saying and have to derive the location(s) of my objective(s) from the NPCs words or from what I've learned of the area by exploring or by talking with other NPCs. By not requiring ("require" is the key term here) players to read the game's lore to continue, the game can simply be played with no less of a struggle than that which is presented in a game of paint by numbers. The manual process I described also leads a player into immersion.
Games change, I agree, but they don't always change to provide a better experience. Changes that make it easier for people to understand a game and it's elements are great, but changes that make a game so simple that players can traverse it on virtual rails . . . well, that's not really what I call an improvement. In a game, you can either walk someone through each and every movement or you can simply be more clear with your instructions and requests up front. I'm reminded of the popular parable, "Give a man a fish and he will eat that once, but teach him to fish and he will eat always." My point isn't that changes are bad or that they always make a game easier, just that many of the recent changes to many games have been done to make a game more simple just for the sake of making the game easier in-and-of itself; perhaps appealing to a different crowd of whiners that you can post about in another article.
For example, in Vanguard: SoH they removed the Kill-on-sight (KoS) settings for NPCs in all major towns because people were being killed, however, factions and reputation are a big part of that game (Diplomacy is its own adventuring sphere). So, instead of removing the KoS feature, I would have merely supplied the populace with a few faction-related quest-giver NPCs or casual, informational NPCs along the road to these major towns to front any issues related to KoS NPCs. That way the game's hardcore attributes are preserved and everyone knows in advance why they just got ganked by the Captain of the Guard in Ahgram (which reminds me, I owe him one).
Anwyays, the argument that "us" veteran MMOers want a game to be hard just because we struggled is not the case for me. I simply believe we deserve more of a challenge than figuring out how to beat the new raid boss. Give me an in-game journal that I can type in and NPCs that I have to listen to in order to embark on a new quest and I'll be happy. Then the game's tutorial quests don't need to spend so much time talking about all of the various map and mini-map overlays and quest journal auto-tracking functions, etc. just to get a new player going. Gear, Lore and Glory; done.
Remember the game Myst? Most of its allure was in having no clue what was going on around you. A lot of the fun I had in that game was not attributed to actually figuring things out but in first discovering how things worked BEFORE they could be figured out . . . or maybe it was learning what COULD be discovered in the first place, lol. The game's success wasn't based on garnering a new set of shoulder-pads, the game didn't even have gear. Myst's success was based solely in the fun of exploration with very little need to explain how to move around and interact with the environment. Which reminds me of another parable, "The fun of life is found the journey, not the destination." Games appear to be about supplying as many cheap destinations as possible, but why not start focusing on a few good journeys? Oh well . . . I guess there are those who want as much as possible with little struggle and those who want only those few things that come with spending the time and effort necessary to garner or create them in the first place. Quality vs. Quantity, the ever-long struggle.
The point is, not all MMO's need to be developed or changed to attract children or lazy/ignorant adults and not everyone is complaining about a game receiving an improvement (though the definition of "improvement" changes from gamer to gamer). Just give "us" something we can sink our teeth into and we'll be happy to 'shut up'. If I want to be put on rails, I'll buy a train ticket (or re-sub my WoW account . . . oh yes I did).
Originally posted by testmyluck Back in my day we walked FIFTEEN zones, uphill, in the lag, against the rotation of Norrath, to camp a single runty gnoll spawn for a rusty dagger and a ration of bread AND WE LIKED IT DAMN IT!
Originally posted by severius "If you dont like it, dont play the damn thing." You know what your easy mode has provided? A game that plays itself. A game where you can run an entire guild worth of characters, and have no more than one or two actual human beings in said guild . . . if you actually tried to approach your trash of an article with some semblance of intelligence rather than with the attitude of "we won, accept it or fuck off" then you wouldn't have an article.
/bump
Severius, you are SO going to get a forum warning . . . I've certainly gotten my share for a lot less. Either way, do me a favor, stick around, lol.
I'm not so sure I'd be as mean directly to the author of this article in general. Hate the sin not the sinner (as hard as it is, I know). I'd probably just stick to attacking her mistaken point of view. You can get into plenty of trouble doing just that, trust me.
WOW's new dungeon finder is probably one of their best improvements over the years...
if that was a good improvement,well me thinks improved dungeon finder will be even better,roleplaying wise.
what could it be?
press 1 button ,and you will be in raid,no need to kill anyone,instant boss loot and exp.
thiiiii-iiings can only get better.
me thinks it was worst improvement roleplaying wise,but very good improvement wow-wise.
If you read my whole post, I point out that whats "good" for one sub section of the current MMO playerbase isn't exactly "good" for another.
For action oriented players (which is now probably the majority in the MMORPG player base), spending 10 minutes to fly from your current questing spot to a dungeon......only to have the group fall apart after you got there, THEN spending another 10 to get back to where you were questing was a TERRIBLE experience. For players less interested in the fantasy immersion aspect of MMO gaming, and more interested in what they are able to acomplish while logged in........the dungeon finder was one of WOW's greatist improvements.
HOWEVER, for those of us that ARE intersted in the fantasy simulator aspect, the immersion and the community....there were absolutely negative consequences to allowing players to automagically get grouped and ported to dungeons in areas of the world they never even explored before.
Different strokes for different folks.....and main streaming of MMORPGs (thanks to Blizzard) has pulled in a substantial player base under the big ole MMO tent that has a very different opinion on what is "fun" than the original settlers of the MMORPG genere.
Originally posted by RajCaj If you read my whole post, I point out that whats "good" for one sub section of the current MMO playerbase isn't exactly "good" for another.
For action oriented players (which is now probably the majority in the MMORPG player base), spending 10 minutes to fly from your current questing spot to a dungeon......only to have the group fall apart after you got there, THEN spending another 10 to get back to where you were questing was a TERRIBLE experience. For players less interested in the fantasy immersion aspect of MMO gaming, and more interested in what they are able to acomplish while logged in........the dungeon finder was one of WOW's greatist improvements.
HOWEVER, for those of us that ARE intersted in the fantasy simulator aspect, the immersion and the community....there were absolutely negative consequences to allowing players to automagically get grouped and ported to dungeons in areas of the world they never even explored before.
Different strokes for different folks.....and main streaming of MMORPGs (thanks to Blizzard) has pulled in a substantial player base under the big ole MMO tent that has a very different opinion on what is "fun" than the original settlers of the MMORPG genere.
I concur, for the "gratify me immediately, where's my pacifier" crowd, it's one of the best enhancements to make an easy game even easier for those who want their MMO's to play themselves. I think you're right, and most WoW players will love it, though I'm not sure they love it as much as they just love everything WoW. WoW players are like Mac fanboys/girls. Everything they do, though it's ages old and not technically up-to-date, is ground-breaking, lol. It would be entertaining if it wasn't so annoying. Not to mention the destruction of the genre they're facilitating, but I digress.
Something I dislike about MMOs is the definition of easy and hard. In a game of dice rolls, it's much more difficult to make something truly challenging. Granted, I rarely play a game through to true end game raiding and what not, but I rarely see anything interesting or really 'challenging' (by single player console gaming standards).
By challenging, I really mean having some strategy more than just having the right classes with the right gear and builds. Console games have it easier in this respect as each battle can have some different feel and the environment can play a large role in the way the battle ensues. However, the vast majority of my experience in MMOs is that the strategy consists of the right balance of classes, all doing their set job, and nothing more. More often than not, the job of each class is something that anyone could master if they spent a day trying.
To this extent, I agree with the article. Hard mode was nothing more than a more tedious game. Now it is a less tedious game to play, and easier for new subs to get into the game. Challenging, however, is rarely part of the games.
Comments
Your absolutely right. Who would want fast, easy, and conveniet as a way to relax. I'm all for slow, hard, and cumbersome when it comes to my gaming. Damn the societal norms.
Just wondering how many nights you spend darning wool by candlelight while playing the harpsicord before visiting the outhouse? None? What do you know, societal norms do change. Just like games. Just like people.
BTW, the nuace of books, or records are wonderful things. But it's the ideas behind them that propel them through the ages, not the medium they're written on.
I do, and I usually do all of this right before sitting down on my 486 for a rousing session of EQMAC. Don't judge me.
I would like to point out that I was one of the players of those early MMOs. Yes, I remember 6 hour corpse runs.
I also remember that those were a LOT more fun in hindsight than they were at 2AM when you knew you had to get up for work in 4 hours. At the time, they were just tiring and tedious. Afterward -- they're food for shared memories.
Nonetheless. People who say "Oh it was 1000% better then" are being just as blind as the people who say the same about MMOs now. MMOs weren't perfect back then and they're not perfect now, and frustration is not a good basis on which to build a game, except for a certain slice of the gaming class.
Ironically, it's a slice of the gaming class that's male, of a certain age, of a certain personality type, and that absolutely cannot ever be reasoned with. I don't even try anymore.
But don't tell me I didn't play your HardMOde games. I did. And I *still* have the opinions I have. Shocking.
The OP makes some good points.....could have OSI / EA done some things better with Ultima Online.....absolutely!
The big issue here to me is the audience, and what's considered "fun". What traditional MMORPG gamers found to be "fun" then and what current MMORPG gamers find to be "fun" now are very different. To say that a lot of fond memories of old games is purely rose color glasses driven is a mistake and ignores the huge shift in MMORPG gaming over in the last 5-6 years.
For example, picking cotton from the cotton field to spin in a loom found in a tailor shop, to weave into bolts of cloth that can be cut into cloth sheets to be used to craft a shirt might sound like 30 mintues of your life you'll never get back to a typical (action oriented) MMORPG gamer in today's market........but something immersing and deep to a traditional (fantasy oriented) MMORPG gamer in the traditional market.
"Simplifying" that process by just making monsters drop level appropriate grades of cloth that can be directly crafted into a shirt might be an "improvement" for certian people......but not for all.
Also, some of these "improvements" carry unintentional consequences that done in the spirit of improving game play and reducing down time.....but fly in the face of immersion and a fantasy role playing aspect.
WOW's new dungeon finder is probably one of their best improvements over the years......but being able to instantly port to some dungeon you've never seen in game before and then instantly port back to where you were after your finshed effects the community at large and how they view others. Easier to flake off on a group knowing that you'll just get automagically put into another in 5 mintues.......instead of having to wait another 30 to manually put another one together and have everyoned move out to the dungeon location.
So yes.....there is a lot of nostalgic thought driving the yearning for the way things "used" to be, but not all of what some new MMORPG gamers might call difficult for the sake of being difficult is viewed the same among all MMORPG gamers (specifially the fantasy driven traditional types)
Back in my day we walked FIFTEEN zones, uphill, in the lag, against the rotation of Norrath, to camp a single runty gnoll spawn for a rusty dagger and a ration of bread AND WE LIKED IT DAMN IT!
if that was a good improvement,well me thinks improved dungeon finder will be even better,roleplaying wise.
what could it be?
press 1 button ,and you will be in raid,no need to kill anyone,instant boss loot and exp.
thiiiii-iiings can only get better.
me thinks it was worst improvement roleplaying wise,but very good improvement wow-wise.
Generation P
I agree that, for the most part, this article does describe the whining complaints of most MMO-complainers; however, for my own part, I have to respectfully disagree. I found that (and again, I say this as it relates to only me) this article completely misses the point.
I don't believe that "hard" in an MMORPG simply must mean buggy or undocumented/unexplained elements (or even difficulty for difficulty's sake). I simply think MMO games should require more RPG-involvement. I don't want mystic trails, on top of map way-points, on top of mini-map arrows, on top of an on-screen quest summaries with directions . . . all supplied automatically on my screen because the game calculated that [this] quest was the closest one to my current location. I want to have to read what the NPC is saying and have to derive the location(s) of my objective(s) from the NPCs words or from what I've learned of the area by exploring or by talking with other NPCs. By not requiring ("require" is the key term here) players to read the game's lore to continue, the game can simply be played with no less of a struggle than that which is presented in a game of paint by numbers. The manual process I described also leads a player into immersion.
Games change, I agree, but they don't always change to provide a better experience. Changes that make it easier for people to understand a game and it's elements are great, but changes that make a game so simple that players can traverse it on virtual rails . . . well, that's not really what I call an improvement. In a game, you can either walk someone through each and every movement or you can simply be more clear with your instructions and requests up front. I'm reminded of the popular parable, "Give a man a fish and he will eat that once, but teach him to fish and he will eat always." My point isn't that changes are bad or that they always make a game easier, just that many of the recent changes to many games have been done to make a game more simple just for the sake of making the game easier in-and-of itself; perhaps appealing to a different crowd of whiners that you can post about in another article.
For example, in Vanguard: SoH they removed the Kill-on-sight (KoS) settings for NPCs in all major towns because people were being killed, however, factions and reputation are a big part of that game (Diplomacy is its own adventuring sphere). So, instead of removing the KoS feature, I would have merely supplied the populace with a few faction-related quest-giver NPCs or casual, informational NPCs along the road to these major towns to front any issues related to KoS NPCs. That way the game's hardcore attributes are preserved and everyone knows in advance why they just got ganked by the Captain of the Guard in Ahgram (which reminds me, I owe him one).
Anwyays, the argument that "us" veteran MMOers want a game to be hard just because we struggled is not the case for me. I simply believe we deserve more of a challenge than figuring out how to beat the new raid boss. Give me an in-game journal that I can type in and NPCs that I have to listen to in order to embark on a new quest and I'll be happy. Then the game's tutorial quests don't need to spend so much time talking about all of the various map and mini-map overlays and quest journal auto-tracking functions, etc. just to get a new player going. Gear, Lore and Glory; done.
Remember the game Myst? Most of its allure was in having no clue what was going on around you. A lot of the fun I had in that game was not attributed to actually figuring things out but in first discovering how things worked BEFORE they could be figured out . . . or maybe it was learning what COULD be discovered in the first place, lol. The game's success wasn't based on garnering a new set of shoulder-pads, the game didn't even have gear. Myst's success was based solely in the fun of exploration with very little need to explain how to move around and interact with the environment. Which reminds me of another parable, "The fun of life is found the journey, not the destination." Games appear to be about supplying as many cheap destinations as possible, but why not start focusing on a few good journeys? Oh well . . . I guess there are those who want as much as possible with little struggle and those who want only those few things that come with spending the time and effort necessary to garner or create them in the first place. Quality vs. Quantity, the ever-long struggle.
The point is, not all MMO's need to be developed or changed to attract children or lazy/ignorant adults and not everyone is complaining about a game receiving an improvement (though the definition of "improvement" changes from gamer to gamer). Just give "us" something we can sink our teeth into and we'll be happy to 'shut up'. If I want to be put on rails, I'll buy a train ticket (or re-sub my WoW account . . . oh yes I did).
WIN!
/bump
Severius, you are SO going to get a forum warning . . . I've certainly gotten my share for a lot less. Either way, do me a favor, stick around, lol.
I'm not so sure I'd be as mean directly to the author of this article in general. Hate the sin not the sinner (as hard as it is, I know). I'd probably just stick to attacking her mistaken point of view. You can get into plenty of trouble doing just that, trust me.
If you read my whole post, I point out that whats "good" for one sub section of the current MMO playerbase isn't exactly "good" for another.
For action oriented players (which is now probably the majority in the MMORPG player base), spending 10 minutes to fly from your current questing spot to a dungeon......only to have the group fall apart after you got there, THEN spending another 10 to get back to where you were questing was a TERRIBLE experience. For players less interested in the fantasy immersion aspect of MMO gaming, and more interested in what they are able to acomplish while logged in........the dungeon finder was one of WOW's greatist improvements.
HOWEVER, for those of us that ARE intersted in the fantasy simulator aspect, the immersion and the community....there were absolutely negative consequences to allowing players to automagically get grouped and ported to dungeons in areas of the world they never even explored before.
Different strokes for different folks.....and main streaming of MMORPGs (thanks to Blizzard) has pulled in a substantial player base under the big ole MMO tent that has a very different opinion on what is "fun" than the original settlers of the MMORPG genere.
I concur, for the "gratify me immediately, where's my pacifier" crowd, it's one of the best enhancements to make an easy game even easier for those who want their MMO's to play themselves. I think you're right, and most WoW players will love it, though I'm not sure they love it as much as they just love everything WoW. WoW players are like Mac fanboys/girls. Everything they do, though it's ages old and not technically up-to-date, is ground-breaking, lol. It would be entertaining if it wasn't so annoying. Not to mention the destruction of the genre they're facilitating, but I digress.
Something I dislike about MMOs is the definition of easy and hard. In a game of dice rolls, it's much more difficult to make something truly challenging. Granted, I rarely play a game through to true end game raiding and what not, but I rarely see anything interesting or really 'challenging' (by single player console gaming standards).
By challenging, I really mean having some strategy more than just having the right classes with the right gear and builds. Console games have it easier in this respect as each battle can have some different feel and the environment can play a large role in the way the battle ensues. However, the vast majority of my experience in MMOs is that the strategy consists of the right balance of classes, all doing their set job, and nothing more. More often than not, the job of each class is something that anyone could master if they spent a day trying.
To this extent, I agree with the article. Hard mode was nothing more than a more tedious game. Now it is a less tedious game to play, and easier for new subs to get into the game. Challenging, however, is rarely part of the games.