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MMO is too complex?
NextGenMMO
Member Posts: 8
I have been thinking about this for a while, especially when paying attention to what experienced MMO players want in their next great MMO game. The only problem I run into is the fact that the experienced MMO population is ready for a new more complex and advanced MMO, but what about the newer MMO players, say the generation that started playing Rift or STWOR as their very first MMO game? I wanted to see what your opinion on this is and what do you think too complex or too advanced means to you and what could it be to the newer generation players?
Personally I think that EVE politics and economy could already be too advanced for a lot of players out there, what do think?
Also, I myself started playing MMO games in 2004, so I am not as experienced as most of you here. I've been playing other multiplayer and single players games for a long time and have tons of experience in gaming in general.
So, would you say that MMO games that were created in 1996 were advanced for the players back then? Are the new MMO games more advanced than the ones released back in 1996? At what point do players think the game is just too much of a hassle to figure out? Is it the content or is it how player friendly the content is? Was there an MMO game in the past that failed strictly because of complexity?
Any ideas are appreciated!
Comments
I think EvE and SWG and ATITD and Ultima were more complex than games today.
I think EvE falls down because most people can't deal with cuttthroat capitalist gameplay and the high sec gameplay isn't interesting enough alone compared to WoW or Rift.
I think a PvE only sandbox with more cooperative play like ATITD but with combat and more fantasy elements would succeed better.
My first MMO was SWG (At Launch). I never had a problem.
If people can't play due to a game being too complex, then they need go and grind some school.
Even in these more 'complex' games there is room to the same things in less 'complex' mmos. I think it comes down to two things. One, some people just like a different play game play mechanics. Some people are content just killing mobs or running quests, others prefer other activities. Two, people who have been playing MMO's for a while just want something new. You see the same thing in other genres. COD or Halo are hugely popular games, but a lot of people in the FPS community wont play it because it really hasn't added anything new. They have been playing these games for a while and are looking for more challenge/new mechanics/new things to learn and accomplish in game. Whatever it may be to make the gaming experience something more than the last game they played.
Sent me an email if you want me to mail you some pizza rolls.
There is a million MMOS for dummies out there. Who cares if someone cant grasp concepts in a video game. It's not hard if you actually try.
The problem with making a game too complex is that it's really hard to get into it. In Uncharted Waters Online, it took me about an hour to figure out how to use consumables in land battles--and success in land battles is far more heavily dependent on use of consumables than in most other MMORPGs. In A Tale in the Desert, I probably spent longer than that trying to find flax seeds. Things that are trivial once you know how to do them can be very, very frustrating if you're new to the game and can't figure out what to do. So the really complex games probably lose a lot of players who would have liked the game just because they get confused and quit early on.
Or to take another example, I've tried playing Europa Universalis 3, and just couldn't get into the game. And this is after I thought Europa Universalis 2 was one of the best games ever made. EU3 is fairly similar, and looks better on paper. And I'll probably like the game, eventually. But when the nature of the game is that you're thrown right into the fire and have to understand a bunch of things all at once just to get started, it's hard to get started.
Now, most MMORPGs can and do start you off gently. Players are more likely to get annoyed that it's taking so long to level than overwhelmed by having too many new skills to learn at once. Both ATITD and UWO have made some major changes to try to ease players into the game better--most notably, putting new players in chat channels where they can ask questions, but also the newbie island in ATITD and schools in UWO. But they're still hard to pick up and understand, and probably lose a large fraction of their players simply because people get stuck on something and quit.
There is fallout if content become too complex to figure out, what is needed is not only tutorials but fun gameplay where you learn at the same time.
I very rarely make full use of all the abilities my characters have - at some point, I just settle into a playstyle that's fun then go out and see what I can do with it. That doesn't mean I want less complexity (in general, more is better), just that I want to be able to play without feeling obliged to be aware of all possible complexities all the time.
The only game I've played where the complexity actually drove me off was Master of Orion III - but the reason wasn't the number of options but rather the futility of trying to use the complexity constructively - it never felt that anything I did turned out better than the default option, nor did any amount of planning seem to change the outcome of an encounter. The closest Eve comes to that feeling of futility is the first scan of the market looking for manufacturing opporuntities and discovering that most items sell at or below the value of their raw materials.
These are some very interesting points.
What I am getting out of this, which also confirms what I've been thinking about the complexity of the game, that what makes the game unatractive is not the Complex/Expanded options the game offers, but the complexity of finding out how to apply/get into them.
For example:
1. Complex and not used friendly - You're in the game for the first time and you somehow you discovered there is a lot of skill tress and very expanded/advanced crafting system in the game, but you are getting frustrated because there is not a very good explanation of how to gain certain skill or craft certain item and even after a struggle of figuring that out, there is another difficulty in applying certain skill or item to your character.
2. Complex and user friendly - You're in the game for the first time and you have a decent tutorial that briefly explains how skill trees and the very expanded/advanced crafting system works. Even though the content is really complex and expanded, you as a played know the interface and insturction fairly well in order to get into applying both to your character and learn more about each as you progess.
Does this make sense? Do you agree?
Older MMO games tossed you to the wolves in terms of tutorials (if there even was one). Now that might not be newbie friendly but it actually led to people understanding the basic mechanics alot better than someone who just coasts along & really doesn't know their character's potential..
For instance today's MMO player's heads would explode if they tried to fully understand the Gear/Implant System in Anarchy Online & the whole method of how to use it to equip insanely powerful gear....
Lots of math, number crunching, planning etc. Can make your head spin even if you understand it..
I think the problem is that the complexity is coming to the wrong spots.
Too often complexity is tossed into areas where it doesn't help, and left out of areas where it does.
Things that benefit from complexity are things that are "easy to do" so to speak. FF11 had fishing. All you had to do to fish was click on the fish button. Behind that though, various things affected it. Day of week, phase of moon, salt water vs fresh water, fishing rod, bait, etc. In the end though all you had to do was click fish. This is the epitome of what makes a good system. Easy to learn, hard to master.
On the other side of that is the un-needed difficulty of things like alternate advancement trees. Often you are making decisions that aren't very clear cut, require extensive research, and often "hurt you" for making bad decisions. You have to be a solid math monkey in order to figure out whats good decisions and what is not. IMO bad complexity.
Eve really ISN'T a complex game, in and of itself. There has been a major complexity emerge from it, but the game itself is simple. And even with its meta-complexity, you are not punished for not knowing it. You aren't forced to make decisions that you have to later undo simply because you chose poorly.
So long, and thanks for all the fish!
Yes I do agree, mmorpg's that want to cater for a wide range of play-styles need to entice players into doing many other things apart from PVP or killing bosses, those that do it successfully allow players to become what they want without too much interference from others or complexities that make them feel it's too hard.
BTW I love EU III. Although like all paradox games like it, it needs about 5 years of expansions/patches before the game is really better than its predecessor after 5 years of expansions.
Anyway to the point I want to make. I think MMOs really need two layers of gameplay. They need things that you can jump in and out of, that don't need a lot of preparation/thinking to do. Then on top of that have the more complicated, long term oriented, gameplay. So even new players can jump in and play and pick up other aspects at their own pace.
Sent me an email if you want me to mail you some pizza rolls.
A smart article once wrote about genre death that genres inherently trend towards more complexity in order to chase the tastes of the genre veterans -- until new players face an insurmountable barrier to entry and the genre resultingly dies out.
That was the case with RTSes for a while, but MMORPGs don't really appear to be repeating that mistake.
As for early MMORPGs, they certainly hid behind an unnecessary amount of hassle and useless complexity, and the games which shaved off those unnecessary features performed considerably better. The main issue now is the need for some substantial core gameplay twists.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
How can anyone say mmo games are complex? After doing it a few times its like ridding a bike. SWG was complex, but after a week it was easy as hell. Crafting, pvp, grinding, and so much more was just more fun and exciting being somewhat complex.
These games today a mentaly challanged person can win.
I dont understand why so many people want to pay 15/month for an easy console style rpg game on the pc? Wouldnt it be cheaper just stick to the consoles instead of trying to dumb down an entire gaming industry just so you can feel better about not catching on?
I for on am so tired of these easy games. Id like to use my brain, id like to use strategy, id like to actualy use some skill. Not have everything ahnded to me, told where to go, and how to do something all the time. TOR for example- get quest, told where to go, quest automaticaly on map, easy to finish quest, can solo heroics. Something wrong with this picture? What happened to exploration? What happened to figuring things out? What happened to the thrill of solving a difficult quest or puzzle? Not a bash directly at TOR, most mmo's are like this now.
I mean you cant realy dumb mmo's down any more. Think they are at rock bottom as it is. Time to go old school, get our childrens brains working, and to learn how to problem solve. Nothing wrong with adding real life issues into a game to help our children and some grown ups (that need it) to help them adjust better in life, learn to adapt, and think.
Player creativity has gone down hill with these new aged mmo's. Communities use to do all kinds of social things, put together events, and do things well together. Thats missing also. So instead of doing this themselves, newer and some older gamers want the companies to make things so players can make their own content lol. I think some people missed the point there.
We need better games, these games are a joke on so many levels.
But hey, if you like the dumbed down things, easy mode, cant handle some challange, have unstable issues, then power to you. I wont spend another dime on these brainless games anymore. Had enough with TOR.
Sorry if i offended anyone, but take a step back, clear your mind, think openly, and look at the difference. The truth will set you free.
Some games have complexity that is easier to break apart. For example, compare a Civilization game to a Europa Universalis game. In Civilization, you start the game with very few options, and add more pieces as you go along. In Europa Universalis, you start with everything at once. That's not a blunder of game design, either, as it's the nature of the game that you can't simply build it up one component at a time.
In EU2, there are a lot of different game mechanics to understand. Even if you understand every single one of them perfectly in isolation, that doesn't explain how they all interact together, so you'll still be lost. You kind of have to go get your civilization wiped out a few times and diagnose what went wrong to figure out what you're supposed to do.
There's also the issue that open-ended games tend to confuse people. One issue in ATITD was that a lot of players do some initial stuff, and then say, what am I supposed to do now? But much of the point of the game is that there isn't some particular activity that you're supposed to do next. There are a lot of things that you can do, and you pick and choose which ones you want to do.
All right, wise guy. Here's what you need to do. Go download Uncharted Waters Online and play it. Don't read any guides to the game first. Also, skip the schools, as that's a tutorial to teach you how to play. See how far you get. There's a decent chance that you'll give up on the game as impossible before you even kill anything other than yourself.
Wait what's this uncharted waters thing. I am interested.
I think we have a disconnect here. I am not for the no learning curve complexity kind of game. Throwing players into a world without preparing them with how to operate in it is not acceptable anymore. At least the core game must be intuitive and give players resources to learn it fast.
Sent me an email if you want me to mail you some pizza rolls.
LOL been playing UWO since beta so has my wife. Telling me a woman can handle the game better than you?
I agree with you on this.
I'd say older games were harder, definately more punishing. But I think the difficulty was an extention of longer grinds, and requiring groups for a larger chunk of the games than current ones. Crafting is much more simplified in new games, while the crafting rewards suck more too, so <.<
Super complex games are really rare, so I think by extension of there being a niche market for it, those games tend to not be super popular, but they also don't just die off really fast either. at least numbers wise complex games tend to survive. But there's been a good handful that aim for super complex and fail on the development side, which made it never really catch on with people. Xyson seems to be working it's way into this later catagory. Too much ambition, not enough man power, time, and money.
If you want to try UWO, then check this thread:
http://www.mmorpg.com/gamelist.cfm/game/555/view/forums/thread/332238/page/1
Yes, it's long. But it's necessary. Koei makes things complicated for the sake of making them complicated. Or at least it sure seems that way sometimes. Also, they don't believe in following whatever conventions the rest of the industry does.
Let's suppose that you want to refill vigor in UWO. You can think of this as being analogous to refilling mana in some other games. Vigor does not regenerate on its own, but you have to do something to refill it.
One way to refill vigor is by eating food. The cooking skill (basically a crafting profession) can make a variety of foods that you can consume, and uses various trade goods to make them. Some of the items that can be cooked can also be purchased from clerks in the major cities, as each clerk has a list of seven or eight items that he sells, and they're different from one town to the next. If a clerk sells something, he'll also buy it, and it changes his inventory globally. That is, if a clerk had 20 of something in stock, and some other player sells him 50, then he'll now have 70. Meanwhile, his inventory slowly refills as time passes.
Some of the trade goods used in cooking can be bought from certain ports. Some have to be gathered at landing points using the collection or procurement skills. Fish are caught with the fishing skill, and the storage skill can sometimes change one trade good into another. Some of the trade goods used in cooking can be obtained in more than one way.
Different foods restore different amounts of vigor. Some foods also reduce your fatigue. Some will also cure scurvy, in addition to restoring some vigor. Any food consumable stacks up to 200 in your inventory. If you have a stack in inventory, you can also have a stack in your captain's bag, which can have stacks of two consumables at the start, plus one for each aide that you have, so you could have up to 400 of a given type of food, but at the expense of taking two inventory slots. You can't otherwise have multiple stacks of the same food in inventory.
You can have multiple types of food, but they won't stack with each other, and inventory slots are precious. Food consumables can also stack up to 999 (rather than 200) in your bank vault, and also in your quarters. But inventory slots in both of those are also precious, as there's a lot of stuff you'd like to store. Also, you can remove items from your bank vault at any port for free, or from your quarters if you pay a large fee. And removing it from your quarters may reduce the durability on furniture that you placed in your quarters to expand your storage capacity, so you'd rather not do that if you don't have to.
Got all that? Oh, by the way, food consumables can be expensive, so you don't want to use them more than you have to, unless you're leveling cooking yourself and trying to get rid of them. They're really only for refilling vigor when you're away from town. Some people will burn through consumables pretty quickly. I prefer to go lighter on skill usage away from town, so that I usually don't need to use consumables to refill vigor.
Except that sometimes you need to use food to cure malnutrition, or else your sailors' loyalty will drop. Or you could just ignore malnutrition and let your sailors' loyalty drop. And sometimes you need to cure scurvy, so that your sailors don't die. You can also cure scurvy with lime juice, but that takes an inventory slot as well, and doesn't provide the added benefit of foods that cure scurvy. Or you can cure scurvy with the pathology skill, but that takes a skill slot, and those are really precious. It doesn't level past rank 1, though, so you can easily drop it and pick it up later.
And sometimes you'll really need to reduce your fatigue. If you hit 100 fatigue at sea, your sailors will start dying pretty fast. There are some non-food consumables that can also reduce fatigue, but they don't reduce it very much.
And then if you're in town, all of that doesn't matter. Because food consumables are too expensive to use in town. Instead, you want to go to the local tavern to buy food locally. The barkeep will sell a variety of drinks and a variety of foods. You can eat some of either one by itself, but if you use both at once, it doubles your vigor recovery from the meal. As in, a 10 drink plus a 30 food means 80 vigor recovery. So if you're trying to replenish vigor quickly, you want to both eat and drink at once.
But when you eat food from a barkeep, there's a small chance that you'll be full as a result, and thus unable to eat any more food. This will wear off after a random amount of time. Alternatively, you can make it wear off immediately if you set back out to sea. But it takes a while to run to the harbor and then back to the bar, so that's a pain.
Also, some of the drinks are alcoholic and some not. If you drink one that is alcoholic, then there's a chance that you'll be drunk as a result, and thus unable to consume another alcoholic drink. Being drunk does not wear off with time, but it does wear off if you set sail. Muslim areas don't have alcoholic drinks because it's against their religion. Instead, they have "hookah", which will make you sick instead of drunk. But it has about the same effect.
Every bar has non-alcoholic drinks as well. If you're drunk or sick and drink a non-alcoholic drink, there's a chance that you'll become sober as a result, and thus able to drink alcohol again immediately. Non-alcoholic drinks barely restore any vigor, so their real purpose is either to try to become sober, or to double the vigor bonus from eating food.
Also, a port has several foods and several drinks. They have different prices, and refill different amounts of vigor. And the menu varies from one port to the next. Prices are far more expensive in ports that were added in expansions than in ports that were in the game at launch.
Every port also has a "merchant" and a "seafarer" that you can drink with. This also has a chance of making you drunk, and you can't drink with them if you're already drunk. If you do drink with them, it increases the number of sailors you can hire in that port. You can only hire sailors once in a port before sailing to another port, so if you want to hire a bunch at once, it helps to drink with them first.
Also, there's a "sober" consumable that will immediately make you sober, and "stomach medicine" that will immediately make you no longer full. These are created by the handicrafts profession. Crafting the sober and stomach medicine consumables can get expensive, so the only real reason to do that is if you're trying to level handicrafts. So some of them do get created. But there are probably cheaper ways to level handicrafts, so not very many get created. And again, you don't want to carry them around for too long, as inventory slots are precious.
Major cities also have a named waitress in the tavern. If the waitress likes you, she'll let you turn in quests to her. This is a big deal, as you can only have one quest at a time, and you have to either turn it in in the city you got it from, or else turn it in at a waitress willing to accept it. And sometimes where you complete a quest is very far from where you acquired it, so you don't want to have to spend half an hour sailing just to turn in the stupid quest.
You can drink with the waitress, but she won't drink with you if you're drunk. This costs you double the price of the first drink on the menu, since you have to buy one for yourself and one for her. It also has a chance of making you drunk or sick, except in Jakarta, where they don't serve alcoholic drinks. Drinking with a waitress restores a flat 20 vigor, regardless of the drink.
Anyway, if you drink with the waitress, it will give you the chance to drink with her again, which has a small chance of making her like you a little more. It will also let you give her a gift, which basically means, any gear that she can equip. (Waitresses won't accept gear that is male-only, and the two male waiters in the game won't accept gear that is female-only.) Giving a waitress a gift will also make her like you more, and how much depends greatly on the value of the gift (loosely, how much a vendor would pay if it were at full durability). If the waitress already likes you a lot, that decreases the value of future gifts, too. You can also report adventuring discoveries to a waitress to make her like you, but that means forgoing the reward if you reported the discovery to a noble.
Anyway, the more a waitress likes you, the higher difficulty of quests she'll let you turn in. But how much she likes you decreases as time passes. There's also a "persuasion" skill that will greatly increase the effects of drinking with the waitress, giving her gifts, or reporting discoveries to her. You can increase your rank in persuasion by doing things that make waitresses like you more, and that increases the effect of the skill. However, once again, skill slots are very precious.
You can gauge to some degree how much a waitress likes you from what she says when she drinks with you. Her messages change as she likes you more. If she likes you more than any other player in the game, she'll let you stay over at her house, and that instantly restores all of your vigor.
But in order to get persuasion, you have to get wining and dining up to rank 3. Wining and dining is another skill that restores vigor. It consumes alcoholic trade goods at sea to basically throw a party for your sailors. This restores some vigor and reduces fatigue. However, it also costs vigor to use, so you need to level it some before it will restore more than it costs. At high enough ranks, this can be cheaper than food consumables, but it also uses up cargo hold space to carry the trade goods around. Any alcoholic trade good will work, but beer is by far the cheapest to buy.
However, wining and dining also has the drawback that it has a chance of causing your crew to become disordered. If you get into a melee battle while disordered, your crew will perform very poorly. Basically, if you don't retreat, you'll lose, and quickly. But that doesn't matter if you don't get attacked. The game doesn't allow you to use wining and dining at all while in combat.
Meanwhile, once you reach level 20 or so, the barkeep will also give you the option to buy a "course meal". This will let you refill a lot more vigor at once, without the risk of having to stop because you got drunk, sick, or full. But a course meal also costs dozens of times as much as a normal meal, making it a lot more expensive.
Also, if you eat and drink at the same time from the barkeep, and don't get drunk, sick, or full as a result, he'll give you some information. If you have a quest and need to talk to someone in that town, he'll tell you who to talk to. If otherwise, he may tell you price information on a particular good, or which pirate has the most notoriety, or that some adventurer made some big discovery, or a variety of other things. Sometimes he'll tell you that some particular player threw out some particular good in the town you're in, and you might be able to find it if you use the search skill in the right spot.
But other than the quest information, he won't tell you anything if the meal makes you drunk, sick, or full. He also won't give you any information if you don't both eat and drink at the same time, unless you drink only and were already full.
There are probably some important details that I'm forgetting, too. But basically, that's how you refill vigor in Uncharted Waters Online. Complicated, no? Here's the thing: the entire game is like that. Koei throws in all sorts of things just to make it more complicated.
MMORPGs now are not anywhere near being complex anymore. They're as streamlined and simple as a toothpick. To a great fault, IMO.
Super-simple crafting with practically no variation in the end product at all. Some make such a pathetic attempt at crafting that they're really just a "Check In The Box" for a feature.
Less and less chances for players to affect the game world.
Less and less things to do in the game.
Simply put, MMORPGs today follow the model of having no clue what to do outside of combat.
Then there's the simple fact that modern MMORPGs have as a genre, forsaken the multiplayer / group dynamics, all in favor of simple, straight forward, excessive single-player friendliness.
How can even one consider today's MMORPGs as "complex" when they oversimply, strip down features, let you do less in the game, and cater to the single-player crowd more and more?
"I have only two out of my company and 20 out of some other company. We need support, but it is almost suicide to try to get it here as we are swept by machine gun fire and a constant barrage is on us. I have no one on my left and only a few on my right. I will hold." (First Lieutenant Clifton B. Cates, US Marine Corps, Soissons, 19 July 1918)
I sure hope you're not complaining that UWO is dumbed down.
The perfect post! Well said Warmaker.
I use to play uncharted waters 1+2 on snes (i think it was). I liked that series. I saw this i jumped on it just out of princple. Though i dont play f2p games with cash shops i do make some exceptions.