The two problems I have with MMO's today are there is no real challenge anymore and to do anything you need to pump huge amounts of cash into the game.
Give me an old MMO where you had to work for your gear and could get anything in game without putting it in a cash shop or behind a pay-wall and I am happy. Today's F2P MMO's are mostly rushed out the door garbage games with the soul purpose of being a cash grab.
Lineage 1 and 2, EQ1, UO, Vanillia WoW... those were true MMO's to me as they were challenging. Today the MMO market is flooded with so many different online games to choose from it's difficult to find anything decent. Back in the "glory days" there are a limited amount of MMO's to choose from, not like today.
ok enough of the joking around,this is a serious discussion here
Man oh man was it tough back then.......
Back in the old days gamer's had jobs and lives,we had to work 8 days a week shoveling coal with broken shovel to keep our houses warm in the winter.
We had to configure our computer to actually boot up the games,then call NASA to rocket in the coordinates and codes.That would have all been fine but i had to shovel 10 feet of snow just to get to my PC,...i live in Canada ..eh !
When we wanted to group we had to send out homing pigeons to our friends house and our dad would make us mow the lawn first....in the middle of the winter no less.
Ya times were tough back then,kids have no idea how easy they have it now.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
ok enough of the joking around,this is a serious discussion here
Man oh man was it tough back then.......
Back in the old days gamer's had jobs and lives,we had to work 8 days a week shoveling coal with broken shovel to keep our houses warm in the winter.
We had to configure our computer to actually boot up the games,then call NASA to rocket in the coordinates and codes.That would have all been fine but i had to shovel 10 feet of snow just to get to my PC,...i live in Canada ..eh !
When we wanted to group we had to send out homing pigeons to our friends house and our dad would make us mow the lawn first....in the middle of the winter no less.
Ya times were tough back then,kids have no idea how easy they have it now.
That is a major generalization of something you have no clue about. Kids do have it easy these days, when kids cant even take out the trash on there own that is an issue. GG your coment doesnt even relate to gaming, and sadly the games have been dumbed down, it doesnt need to be super hardcore though get over yourself and stop pretending to know things you know nothing about.
That is a major generalization of something you have no clue about. Kids do have it easy these days, when kids cant even take out the trash on there own that is an issue. GG your coment doesnt even relate to gaming, and sadly the games have been dumbed down, it doesnt need to be super hardcore though get over yourself and stop pretending to know things you know nothing about.
I'm going to hand you my giant Gold Medallion of Taking Things Too Literally.
(Ironically, the medallion is only awarded figuratively. Took quite a few angry emails demanding my missing medallion to learn that.)
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
Early MMO's like EQ, L1 as well as L2.. were designed in a way to keep the player chasing a dragon that got ever farther away with every mistake. That was by design to keep people playing as long as the studio could. This was replaced by gear grinding in the days of early WOW. Trading one dragon for another essentially. This is why I've always preferred the sandbox approach (namely SWG), which kept you playing as long as you had an imagination to create or organize something new, a much better motivator IMO. It still had that long ever increasing grind to Jedi for folks who needed to chase the dragon.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
Originally posted by Abuz0r It's just things you don't do, or even need to do know that every game is super easy mode now. Everybody wins and everybody gets a prize!
That is true (even if your first post are a bit too much) but the thing is that this goes for almost every computer game out there today. MMOs like Meridian and EQ was way harder than modern games but for me that started out on C-64 the games back then were still far easier then what I was used to. The difference there was how time consuming they were, not how hard.
Games have gotten easier and easier and that have lead to people playing worse. In fact people like me who used to playing harder games play far worse today then when I was a kid, just try something really old and you see.
The thing is that people didn't actually had that much problems with games being hard either, all games were hard so people learned how to play them. And I am pretty sure that games will get harder again, trends tend to change and PC gaming are losing players to mobile games now, and most of those players are the type that started playing around the year 2000 or.
A good way to see how the games have changed in difficulty since the mid 90s is to try all 3 Diablo games at the easiest difficulty (or the hardest). you have to raise D3 quite a lot to get it like the easiest difficulty of the first one.
The thing is that people didn't actually had that much problems with games being hard either, all games were hard so people learned how to play them. And I am pretty sure that games will get harder again, trends tend to change and PC gaming are losing players to mobile games now
Most of the "hard" in early 80s games was just purely bad coding. That's not coming back, the wild wild west of game cartridge coding that created so many "hard" games. Hard (in this case) being a euphemism for "extraordinarily user un-friendly."
Game producers no longer try to pass off Bugs as Features. (mostly)
MMO's were a bit harder back then because a majority of the players were into the more hardcore RPG games like baldurs gate and Ultima and things like that. They didn't mind playing a game that was a bit harder, or even preferred it. Now a days they want to cater to the larger audience to make more profit so they have to have the game easy enough for anyone to play, not just the hardcore players like before. But not all of the aspects of the prior MMORPG's were better, I remember how annoyed I was when I had to run for hours between towns in Lineage 2, because there was no way to get anywhere other than running. Or in WoW not being able to pull more than one mob at a time was cool, but I remember how bad ganking was when the game first came out, and how long the runs to your body were, and half the time it wasn't even preventable because people were abusing things like being on a roof where guards couldn't get to it and ranging you down. Or waiting for the NPC's to respawn because the other faction was camping your turn ins. In general it was fun back then, but if you relive it now it's not nearly as fun as you remember.
Just like the OP..people keep giving examples of tedious time sinks and calling them hard.
Nothing hard about tedium , and or, time sinks other than staying awake.
I would rather have tedious time sinks than the fast food bullshit we have had over the last 12 years. The last mmo that gave us the type of mmo gaming you dispise was Vanguard.
Bugs or not it was the last true classic mmo and I for one hope that Brad and Co will actually pull Patheaon off.
If time sinks make a game "harder", then I'll create the hardest game of all by making people load it from floppy disks.
I imagine that type of early MMORPG player considers Progress Quest the hardest game ever. It lasts forever, so it must be basically impossible, right?
Meanwhile the rest of us understand that the skill requirement of a game is what determines whether it's hard or not.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
If time sinks make a game "harder", then I'll create the hardest game of all by making people load it from floppy disks.
I imagine that type of early MMORPG player considers Progress Quest the hardest game ever. It lasts forever, so it must be basically impossible, right?
Meanwhile the rest of us understand that the skill requirement of a game is what determines whether it's hard or not.
I believe we had this discussion at one point, but it was determined that skill is only important with large quantities of time and penalties in place. If you can restart at almost the same point with no penalty you will just keep repeating it until you win. You might even make the same mistakes over and over, but just get lucky.
On the flip side if you end up losing when there is a system in place that penalizes you then you have to be skilled enough to complete said task well x percentage of the time.
In one system you just have to execute well 10% of the time and in the other you have to execute well 95% of the time. If you don't you will not progress in the game.
I wouldn't say grinding for long periods of time takes skill except it does to an extent. Generally the more you do something the more tired the body gets. If you can continue to execute the same thing over and over again optimally for a long period of time then puts you above the person that starts to make mistakes over time.
If time sinks make a game "harder", then I'll create the hardest game of all by making people load it from floppy disks.
I imagine that type of early MMORPG player considers Progress Quest the hardest game ever. It lasts forever, so it must be basically impossible, right?
Meanwhile the rest of us understand that the skill requirement of a game is what determines whether it's hard or not.
I believe we had this discussion at one point, but it was determined that skill is only important with large quantities of time and penalties in place. If you can restart at almost the same point with no penalty you will just keep repeating it until you win. You might even make the same mistakes over and over, but just get lucky.
On the flip side if you end up losing when there is a system in place that penalizes you then you have to be skilled enough to complete said task well x percentage of the time.
In one system you just have to execute well 10% of the time and in the other you have to execute well 95% of the time. If you don't you will not progress in the game.
I wouldn't say grinding for long periods of time takes skill except it does to an extent. Generally the more you do something the more tired the body gets. If you can continue to execute the same thing over and over again optimally for a long period of time then puts you above the person that starts to make mistakes over time.
"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
Originally posted by Blueliner I don't recall that at all and i been doing MMOs since OU started, they were harder than now, but not THAT hard.
Oh, and the time sinks were there purely to keep players paying their monthly rent.
If if players where not paying to pay how the hell would they pay for Developers that are $80K a year, or a System Engineer that is $70K a year or pay for a server they bought? There is a REASON for a subscription, ITS TO PAY FOR PEOPLE TO WORK AND SYSTEMS TO RUN. However there are people like you that bitch you need to pay a dime to play a game that requires people to work so they can feed their Families. And dont give me non of that bullshit that F2P is better because its not. F2P is purely Profit vs P2P they focused on having a good game and a good player base.
many of you are creeping off topic so i'll return this serious thread to it's glory !!
Back in the glory days,gaming was an adventure,it was fun but boy was it tough.It was so tough we had to craft for 9 days a week to play for one or risk running out of arrows after 5 minutes.
It was so tough group members would die just getting to our camp,reraise them then fight short handed.Recovering player wants xp,sits close by....bomb toss ROFLMAO DEAD again !!
Finally get whole group back up and running,pull a mob to the camp,then cries of ...UH OH...puller is like what's the matter?
Replies ...well umm that train of crabs behind you is a little more than our group can handle,like 15 more than we can handle LMAO.So puller is like ok i'll just die...good idea lol.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
Originally posted by Blueliner I don't recall that at all and i been doing MMOs since OU started, they were harder than now, but not THAT hard.
Oh, and the time sinks were there purely to keep players paying their monthly rent.
If if players where not paying to pay how the hell would they pay for Developers that are $80K a year, or a System Engineer that is $70K a year or pay for a server they bought? There is a REASON for a subscription, ITS TO PAY FOR PEOPLE TO WORK AND SYSTEMS TO RUN. However there are people like you that bitch you need to pay a dime to play a game that requires people to work so they can feed their Families. And dont give me non of that bullshit that F2P is better because its not. F2P is purely Profit vs P2P they focused on having a good game and a good player base.
You might want to reconsider that last statement.
F2P is about generating enough revenue and players to keep a game operating. And that includes paying salaries. As evidenced by the number of AAA games that were forced to change from sub.
I will grant you that some F2P games can take RMT's to an extreme level, but you cannot lump all F2P games or all sub games for that matter, into one convenient category. That is your opinion,but it is also just wrong.
FFA Nonconsentual Full Loot PvP ...You know you want it!!
Originally posted by Blueliner I don't recall that at all and i been doing MMOs since OU started, they were harder than now, but not THAT hard.
Oh, and the time sinks were there purely to keep players paying their monthly rent.
If if players where not paying to pay how the hell would they pay for Developers that are $80K a year, or a System Engineer that is $70K a year or pay for a server they bought? There is a REASON for a subscription, ITS TO PAY FOR PEOPLE TO WORK AND SYSTEMS TO RUN. However there are people like you that bitch you need to pay a dime to play a game that requires people to work so they can feed their Families. And dont give me non of that bullshit that F2P is better because its not. F2P is purely Profit vs P2P they focused on having a good game and a good player base.
I don't think he was saying people shouldn't get paid for their work. He was stating that the reason for the long leveling time and time sinks was to spread everything out so people would keep paying. It's a bit naive to think that the leveling pace wasn't at least partially driven by retention and revenue requirements.
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein "Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
Originally posted by ReallyNow10 Early EQ never bored me. I might have not favored its graphics or crappy U.I., but it never bored me.
Exactly. People talk about grinds and boredom, but clearly they weren't playing EQ back then. It was challenging, and everything was contested so just because you wanted to camp X mob, you might have to wait a few hours/days before you got your chance at it. When you or a friend actually acquired that desired item, it was almost euphoric. Then entered the social dynamic, where if you were good at chatting people up and making yourself helpful to others, you would succeed even faster.
Comments
The two problems I have with MMO's today are there is no real challenge anymore and to do anything you need to pump huge amounts of cash into the game.
Give me an old MMO where you had to work for your gear and could get anything in game without putting it in a cash shop or behind a pay-wall and I am happy. Today's F2P MMO's are mostly rushed out the door garbage games with the soul purpose of being a cash grab.
Lineage 1 and 2, EQ1, UO, Vanillia WoW... those were true MMO's to me as they were challenging. Today the MMO market is flooded with so many different online games to choose from it's difficult to find anything decent. Back in the "glory days" there are a limited amount of MMO's to choose from, not like today.
ok enough of the joking around,this is a serious discussion here
Man oh man was it tough back then.......
Back in the old days gamer's had jobs and lives,we had to work 8 days a week shoveling coal with broken shovel to keep our houses warm in the winter.
We had to configure our computer to actually boot up the games,then call NASA to rocket in the coordinates and codes.That would have all been fine but i had to shovel 10 feet of snow just to get to my PC,...i live in Canada ..eh !
When we wanted to group we had to send out homing pigeons to our friends house and our dad would make us mow the lawn first....in the middle of the winter no less.
Ya times were tough back then,kids have no idea how easy they have it now.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
That is a major generalization of something you have no clue about. Kids do have it easy these days, when kids cant even take out the trash on there own that is an issue. GG your coment doesnt even relate to gaming, and sadly the games have been dumbed down, it doesnt need to be super hardcore though get over yourself and stop pretending to know things you know nothing about.
I'm going to hand you my giant Gold Medallion of Taking Things Too Literally.
(Ironically, the medallion is only awarded figuratively. Took quite a few angry emails demanding my missing medallion to learn that.)
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
That is true (even if your first post are a bit too much) but the thing is that this goes for almost every computer game out there today. MMOs like Meridian and EQ was way harder than modern games but for me that started out on C-64 the games back then were still far easier then what I was used to. The difference there was how time consuming they were, not how hard.
Games have gotten easier and easier and that have lead to people playing worse. In fact people like me who used to playing harder games play far worse today then when I was a kid, just try something really old and you see.
The thing is that people didn't actually had that much problems with games being hard either, all games were hard so people learned how to play them. And I am pretty sure that games will get harder again, trends tend to change and PC gaming are losing players to mobile games now, and most of those players are the type that started playing around the year 2000 or.
A good way to see how the games have changed in difficulty since the mid 90s is to try all 3 Diablo games at the easiest difficulty (or the hardest). you have to raise D3 quite a lot to get it like the easiest difficulty of the first one.
Most of the "hard" in early 80s games was just purely bad coding. That's not coming back, the wild wild west of game cartridge coding that created so many "hard" games. Hard (in this case) being a euphemism for "extraordinarily user un-friendly."
Game producers no longer try to pass off Bugs as Features. (mostly)
Lineage was like that. No exaggeration. A death at level 49+ could take a couple weeks or longer to recover from. You could delevel.
Lots of good designs in those early games. Lots of bad ideas.
The same thing happened in EQ.I would rather have tedious time sinks than the fast food bullshit we have had over the last 12 years. The last mmo that gave us the type of mmo gaming you dispise was Vanguard.
Bugs or not it was the last true classic mmo and I for one hope that Brad and Co will actually pull Patheaon off.
If time sinks make a game "harder", then I'll create the hardest game of all by making people load it from floppy disks.
I imagine that type of early MMORPG player considers Progress Quest the hardest game ever. It lasts forever, so it must be basically impossible, right?
Meanwhile the rest of us understand that the skill requirement of a game is what determines whether it's hard or not.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
I miss games like that. To me that's a real game . Ruthless no mercy PvP is where it's at in my opinion.
I believe we had this discussion at one point, but it was determined that skill is only important with large quantities of time and penalties in place. If you can restart at almost the same point with no penalty you will just keep repeating it until you win. You might even make the same mistakes over and over, but just get lucky.
On the flip side if you end up losing when there is a system in place that penalizes you then you have to be skilled enough to complete said task well x percentage of the time.
In one system you just have to execute well 10% of the time and in the other you have to execute well 95% of the time. If you don't you will not progress in the game.
I wouldn't say grinding for long periods of time takes skill except it does to an extent. Generally the more you do something the more tired the body gets. If you can continue to execute the same thing over and over again optimally for a long period of time then puts you above the person that starts to make mistakes over time.
But apparently it's not where the money is at. So MMO developers who want to have any reasonable profits look elsewhere for their designs.
If you are holding out for the perfect game, the only game you play will be the waiting one.
"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
If if players where not paying to pay how the hell would they pay for Developers that are $80K a year, or a System Engineer that is $70K a year or pay for a server they bought? There is a REASON for a subscription, ITS TO PAY FOR PEOPLE TO WORK AND SYSTEMS TO RUN. However there are people like you that bitch you need to pay a dime to play a game that requires people to work so they can feed their Families. And dont give me non of that bullshit that F2P is better because its not. F2P is purely Profit vs P2P they focused on having a good game and a good player base.
many of you are creeping off topic so i'll return this serious thread to it's glory !!
Back in the glory days,gaming was an adventure,it was fun but boy was it tough.It was so tough we had to craft for 9 days a week to play for one or risk running out of arrows after 5 minutes.
It was so tough group members would die just getting to our camp,reraise them then fight short handed.Recovering player wants xp,sits close by....bomb toss ROFLMAO DEAD again !!
Finally get whole group back up and running,pull a mob to the camp,then cries of ...UH OH...puller is like what's the matter?
Replies ...well umm that train of crabs behind you is a little more than our group can handle,like 15 more than we can handle LMAO.So puller is like ok i'll just die...good idea lol.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
You might want to reconsider that last statement.
F2P is about generating enough revenue and players to keep a game operating. And that includes paying salaries. As evidenced by the number of AAA games that were forced to change from sub.
I will grant you that some F2P games can take RMT's to an extreme level, but you cannot lump all F2P games or all sub games for that matter, into one convenient category. That is your opinion,but it is also just wrong.
FFA Nonconsentual Full Loot PvP ...You know you want it!!
This isn't a signature, you just think it is.
I don't think he was saying people shouldn't get paid for their work. He was stating that the reason for the long leveling time and time sinks was to spread everything out so people would keep paying. It's a bit naive to think that the leveling pace wasn't at least partially driven by retention and revenue requirements.
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein
"Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
year 2025,
A player who started playin' mmo from 2015, makes a thread on mmorpg forum:
remember the glory days back in year 2015,
1) you need to play 2 hours to reach mav level instead of all chars auto max fr the start.
2) you have to grind instance to get loots, instead of buying all from cash shop.
3)your toon dies and have to respawn
4) you have to auto path your way instead of insta teleport
5)best of all, there are world chat, where once in a while someone will chat and get 100 troll responses.
everything is relative.
Exactly. People talk about grinds and boredom, but clearly they weren't playing EQ back then. It was challenging, and everything was contested so just because you wanted to camp X mob, you might have to wait a few hours/days before you got your chance at it. When you or a friend actually acquired that desired item, it was almost euphoric. Then entered the social dynamic, where if you were good at chatting people up and making yourself helpful to others, you would succeed even faster.