Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Quick Links
Why is Combat Almost Always 90% or More of MMORPG Content?
cantankerousmage
Member UncommonPosts: 992
Aren't humans capable of doing other things besides killing each other (or monsters or demi-humans or robots or whatever)? Isn't killing normally the last resort in any given situation for most reasonable human beings? Just saying.
EDIT (5/3/2017) - Here's a list of what I've accomplished in MMORPGs:
2009 - level 55/55 knight/warrior in Runes of Magic (first mmorpg to which I devoted myself)
2010-2011 - level 60 paladin in World of Warcraft (I was too bored to continue)
2015 - level 50 warrior in WoW (I was too bored to continue)
2013-2014 - level 95/95 paladin/weaponsmith and level 95/95 troubadour/I forget which craft. Level 50 something berserker. Had level 95s in most crafts also. (First mmorg to which I subscribed)
2014-2017 (on and off) 9 multiple level 70 characters in Neverwinter (I got 4 of them to level 70 through mostly just invoking and leadership). 3 I invoked from 60 to 70. Only played all the way through Elemental Evil with 2. My rogue went back and did it after he was 2.5 IL for the boons. level 70 3.6k IL Guardian Fighter, over 4k if you count his legendary Black Dragon Ioun Stone Augment companion. 2.5 IL Trickster Rogue. I only spent around $170-180 on that pile of trash game.
I've tried or sampled many other mmorpgs, but none of them were fun enough for me to devote myself to them.
So, I think I've killed enough in mmorpgs. I want to be able to do something else most of the time (or at least some of the time). But not just as some distracting side activity placed there to try to delude me into believing I'm actually playing a role-playing game.
Or think about this way. What sort of role-playing games and activities did we enjoy or at least participate in as children?
Playing House/Doing Chores (Inside or Outside)/Helping w/Cooking/Feeding the Pet - Peasants/Food and Raw Material Gatherers/Producers
Doing Crafts - Tradesmen
Playing with Blocks/Lincoln Logs/Legos - Builders (Architects and Engineers)
Taking Things Apart and (Hopefully) Putting Them Back Together - Fixers (Repairers and Mechanics)
Playing Monopoly - Bankers/Investors
Wandering around the Neighborhood/Playing Hide-and-Seek - Explorers/Survivalists
Operating Lemonade Stands - Merchants
Music Lessons/Dance Lessons/Choir/Plays - Entertainers
Riding Bicycles and Go-carts - Pilots/Drivers
Playing Cops and Robbers/Voluntary Physical Exercise - Soldiers
Going to Church/Temple/Some Sort of Religious Service - Priests
Playing Operation, Putting Bandages on Booboos - Doctor/Physician
Going to School/Learning Academics - Scholars (Historians, Mages or Scientists/Inventors)
Telling Other People What to Do - Rulers/Nobility
Getting in Trouble - Criminals
Putting Up Posters or Stickers on Walls - Decorators
Doodling, Coloring with Crayons - Artists
EDIT (5/3/2017) - Here's a list of what I've accomplished in MMORPGs:
2009 - level 55/55 knight/warrior in Runes of Magic (first mmorpg to which I devoted myself)
2010-2011 - level 60 paladin in World of Warcraft (I was too bored to continue)
2015 - level 50 warrior in WoW (I was too bored to continue)
2013-2014 - level 95/95 paladin/weaponsmith and level 95/95 troubadour/I forget which craft. Level 50 something berserker. Had level 95s in most crafts also. (First mmorg to which I subscribed)
2014-2017 (on and off) 9 multiple level 70 characters in Neverwinter (I got 4 of them to level 70 through mostly just invoking and leadership). 3 I invoked from 60 to 70. Only played all the way through Elemental Evil with 2. My rogue went back and did it after he was 2.5 IL for the boons. level 70 3.6k IL Guardian Fighter, over 4k if you count his legendary Black Dragon Ioun Stone Augment companion. 2.5 IL Trickster Rogue. I only spent around $170-180 on that pile of trash game.
I've tried or sampled many other mmorpgs, but none of them were fun enough for me to devote myself to them.
So, I think I've killed enough in mmorpgs. I want to be able to do something else most of the time (or at least some of the time). But not just as some distracting side activity placed there to try to delude me into believing I'm actually playing a role-playing game.
Or think about this way. What sort of role-playing games and activities did we enjoy or at least participate in as children?
Playing House/Doing Chores (Inside or Outside)/Helping w/Cooking/Feeding the Pet - Peasants/Food and Raw Material Gatherers/Producers
Doing Crafts - Tradesmen
Playing with Blocks/Lincoln Logs/Legos - Builders (Architects and Engineers)
Taking Things Apart and (Hopefully) Putting Them Back Together - Fixers (Repairers and Mechanics)
Playing Monopoly - Bankers/Investors
Wandering around the Neighborhood/Playing Hide-and-Seek - Explorers/Survivalists
Operating Lemonade Stands - Merchants
Music Lessons/Dance Lessons/Choir/Plays - Entertainers
Riding Bicycles and Go-carts - Pilots/Drivers
Playing Cops and Robbers/Voluntary Physical Exercise - Soldiers
Going to Church/Temple/Some Sort of Religious Service - Priests
Playing Operation, Putting Bandages on Booboos - Doctor/Physician
Going to School/Learning Academics - Scholars (Historians, Mages or Scientists/Inventors)
Telling Other People What to Do - Rulers/Nobility
Getting in Trouble - Criminals
Putting Up Posters or Stickers on Walls - Decorators
Doodling, Coloring with Crayons - Artists
Post edited by cantankerousmage on
Comments
"This is life! We suffer and slave and expire. That's it!" -Bernard Black (Dylan Moran)
In Runescape there were "Skill pures" who made a point of getting super high in crafting skills without ever raising themselves above the lowest combat level.
In Wurm the majority of combat is simple survival combat. You get attacked by a bear and have to fend it off. You go out hunting deer because you need meat and hides. Combat isn't any more of a focus than it is for a homesteader in the wild (Though admittedly the density of hostile creatures is WAY higher.) The more intentional forms of combat are purely optional and many players rarely if ever participate in them.
Second Life. Enough said. XD
In EVE there is mining, exploration, trading etc. People who choose these professions tend to actively avoid combat as much as possible. The danger of combat might provide a thrill but there again they are simply trying to survive as they accomplish another objective.
I definitely do prefer games where combat is not the focus for everyone all the time. As much as I enjoy combat people who opt out of it in order to take part in a more peaceful life give more of a feel of a living breathing world.
Other games of this ilk I've really enjoyed: WURM, EVE and Fallen Earth.
Joined - July 2004
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
That's because of a failure of MMOs to produce compelling ones that aren't.
The success of Minecraft did not come from it being a superior combat title. Harvest Moon, Sims, Sim City etc. are also all non-combat series that did exceptionally well.
With a vast amount of genres and concepts that haven't taken off in the MMO sphere it isn't so much because there is no market for them or they aren't viable concept for them.
It essentially all boils down to this:
Q: Why aren't there so few people playing MMOs that aren't WoW Clones?
A: Because there are so few MMOs that aren't WoW clones.
If games that are different don't exist, people won't play them... because they don't exist. Simple as that.
MMO investors are apparently cowards and people struggle to make anything good without investors. That doesn't mean the market doesn't exist.
So by your "logic" if it is unsuccessful, it can only be because it isn't compelling enough. That could be magical thinking.
Epic Music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vAigCvelkhQ&list=PLo9FRw1AkDuQLEz7Gvvaz3ideB2NpFtT1
https://archive.org/details/softwarelibrary_msdos?&sort=-downloads&page=1
Kyleran: "Now there's the real trick, learning to accept and enjoy a game for what it offers rather than pass on what might be a great playing experience because it lacks a few features you prefer."
John Henry Newman: "A man would do nothing if he waited until he could do it so well that no one could find fault."
FreddyNoNose: "A good game needs no defense; a bad game has no defense." "Easily digested content is just as easily forgotten."
LacedOpium: "So the question that begs to be asked is, if you are not interested in the game mechanics that define the MMORPG genre, then why are you playing an MMORPG?"
If MMORPGs contained a greater number of interesting peaceful options and ways to progress a character without having to be a Bloodthirsty Murder Hamster, they would probably attract more customers.
At least I use logic.
Yes... any time MMOs are not successful it's probably because they are not compelling enough. Either that or it's a failure on the part of their marketing strategy. Those are pretty much the two reasons an MMO would fail.
However more to the point I think you were attempting to convey, pretty much the only concept for MMOs thats been attempted by anyone with actual money and a professional design team in the last 10 years has been the WoW model rehashed over and over and over and over.
That's not to say every model can work. That's to say pointing out there isn't a successful game based off that model is not evidence it can't succeed. Unless that model is WoW, it probably hasn't even been attempted.
I've been thinking about trying BDO, however if it's level and gear based progression, I don't think I would be interested.
For what it's worth, as a new player you can get to lvl 50 in about 10 hours of grinding mobs, then do whatever.
Joined - July 2004
I might check it out just for the heck of it. I've basically quit the only MMORPG I was still playing when I started posting here. One that I've quit a few times before, but I think this time is most likely the last time. Unless they significantly improve the game with upcoming expansions.
Lets see your Battle Stations /r/battlestations
Battle Station
Are you saying it's human nature to want to spend most of their time killing things?
거북이는 목을 내밀 때 안 움직입니다
The second game I ever got max level in was Everquest 2. The crafting in that game was more interesting than in the other games I've played. It isn't horrible to have a system that requires skill to craft. Fable II has some mini-games that you play in order to level up crafting skills also. I didn't finish Fable II though. I got bored of it after a few days.
There have been some good games that weren't mostly about combat. For example, Uncharted Waters Online. If it had been hugely successful, we'd have seen other MMORPGs make exploration and trading into major game mechanics. But so long as most MMORPG players won't play games that aren't mostly combat, that's what most games will be.
Entertainers worked because their play style was deeply tied to combat (healing/buffing). Most things in SWG served as some type of support role for combat, as is the case with most non combat distractions in MMOs. The only real exception in SWG was housing related crafting.
Until there are viable game systems to represent other avenues of play well, this will likely be the case. Without combat most of these passive professions would have no purpose.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
The big argument against something like a system to resolve debates is that automating a legal debate, for instance, takes away from the role-playing elements. That is true, at least as long as role-playing is at least acting-based. We don't mime fighting moves to resolve physical conflict, why do we hang onto the idea that we can't abstract verbal arguments into a closed resolution system? Removing the acting from role-playing would allow a developer to automate playing a trick on the goblin guarding a door, sending it on a wild goose chase as opposed to simply fighting it. The DM in a face to face game would have no trouble with this solution, and could award XP for things other than fighting the goblin guard.
My idea has been that we either change role-playing to remove the player's communication abilities from the character, or to develop the AI or other mechanisms to allow resolve non-physical conflicts. No one has tried, because D&D didn't do it, and trying costs a lot of money. I think that the original reliance on the human DM is holding the genre of automated RPGs back.
Logic, my dear, merely enables one to be wrong with great authority.
You can do all of that in ESO.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
Sure I didn't mean to imply otherwise. It was just an example.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson