Now a days it is all about the selfish race to end game,then rinse and repeat instancing dungeons,there is no real game,no community just an end goal to attain loot and it is sad ,even more so that it is the type of design being supported,i call it the anti mmorpg design.
If players are enjoying it, what is the problem? Sad for you, fun for many. You realize no one needs to like what you like, right?
I think the problem is neither in the developers nor the players. The real problem in my opinion is that the magic of online gaming is done. One of my BEST friends, who was my groomsman in my wedding. I met in a game called Astonia 2. He was 13 going on 14 and I was 17. I would often go out of my way to help low level players and new players complete quests and retrieve their bodies, for no reward to myself. And he needed help in a dungeon getting his body back. We still stay in contact, and play games to this day. He was recently in my state and we met up halfway between and we spent an evening together.
I can't name a single person I have met online in the past 6 years who would even come CLOSE to that. Heck I don't think I actually know the NAME of anyone I've played with besides hearing real life friends talk to each other in a raid voice chat. Is it because I'm now antisocial? no. Is it because I don't play games online anymore? No. Is it because I never have to group up anymore? Again, no.
The reason in my opinion is that meeting someone online used to bring about a feeling of connection. You were talking to a real person who enjoyed the same thing you did. You could each work together and make meaningful progress toward a goal you both shared. Like getting along with your coworkers in a small office where you rely on each other to get through the day. Gaming was the epitome of this for a lot of people. It made you feel like you weren't alone, you would honestly log into these games and the FIRST thing you would do is look to see which of your friends were on. And they were real friends. You would not see someone log on for a week or even a month and be WORRIED about them.
So what has changed? The dynamics of playing online hasn't changed. You still need to work with people at times to get through content. Or even in games that are 100% coop/competitive. What has changed is the world, the real world. I know that may sound kind of cheesey but I can't think of a better way to describe it. I'm sitting here on this forum that I rarely visit anymore because of this very topic. My old friend and I are trying to find something to play together while waiting on fortnite patches.
I've tried jumping into our old games we used to play and it's just not there anymore. The game is the same i loved but why can I not play it now? The answer is simple, and the reason why this has become as it has.
The Over saturation of online communication and interaction.
Right now we are in a place where I can pick up my phone and instantly have 30 conversations. Scroll through a page and see what everyone I know is doing every day. I can hop into games and see hundreds or thousands of people run by. I can see the chat flow up non stop in every open chat channel. Everything has been made so convenient and easy, and well FUNCTIONAL that it's just ON all the time. Heck even for this site I can google "GAMENAME Reddit" and get a page discussing any game on the planet. So why would i feel bound to a community like this for example. I group with 50 different people a day every single day in WoW, how do i make that ONE person be memorable? I joined a guild and I get along with everyone there, but there are 100 other guilds out there I'll get along with just as well. And maybe the next one will fit my play schedule or style better. Heck I could drop 25$ and move to another server where I no longer can even play with my old friends.
Hey that person i ran 30 dungeons with hasn't logged in 3 months, no need to keep him on my friend list anymore.
I don't remember who this person on my skype was... I know we met in a game but what was his name? All well we haven't talked in awhile.
It's sad. There is literally nothing we can do about this problem. Right now our social interactions aren't tied to the online game we play. Or the forum we visit for our hobby. It's wherever the google page takes us, or whoevers in a queue at the same time.
Is it the games fault they added matchmaking? No thats what we all wanted. "Man i can't find a group today and XX isn't logged in... I wish I could just play with random people until XX gets on." So they added in matchmaking. Now it's "this Queue is taking awhile, I wonder if anyone in the guild/area would join so I can get in faster." Do I want to go back to being forced to wait for people to log in and not play? No I don't have time for that, that was the worst part of the game even back then. How many hours have we wasted in these older games, sitting around in towns or areas just WAITING for that one person to log in or finding someone who was free to come.
The idea behind MMO's is something that pretty much everyone wants. If you ask someone who loves skyrim. "how would you like to play an open world game where you could explore the world like you do in skyrim, but it be filled with other players." Almost everyone always says "Heck Yeah!"
But with the lost magic of online communities. And the fact that at any given moment, there are hundreds of games out there that can offer you the "rush" that your looking for at any given time. I just don't see this problem ever going away. The ONLY way I see this changing would be a situation where there was a true MMO set in virtual reality that included speech and real first person gameplay.
But my first mmo was Lineage 1 and it was full of a different type of asshattery. An open pvp world where hunting would only allow you to break even and death meant you lost an entire day's work. Begging people to stop attacking you would make them kill you harder -- and it wasn't about memeing -- they just wanted to make your day worse. And this was like 18 years ago.
People have always been inherently evil in online video game culture. It's just that now there IS an internet culture which just so happens to be obnoxiously immature.
The times I have helped people do UBRS in WoW Vanilla, to help them with the Molten Core key chain quest. Dungeons weren't a real gear check. You needed a tank, a healer and maybe one CC, sap or sheep, and you were good to go. But content gated behind a quest chain is an outrage these days. Especially non soloable questchains.
Having tried WoW Legion, Rift, ESO and GW2, I feel like playing a piano concert while moving away out of red zones caused by over the top boss mechanics with the risk of being kicked when my DPS is not high enough or fail to dodge 2 times in a row. What happened to specialized roles, staying alive and having fun? Nowadays it's all about dps, finishing as fast as possible and skipping trash mobs as much as possible....
The times I have helped people do UBRS in WoW Vanilla, to help them with the Molten Core key chain quest. Dungeons weren't a real gear check. You needed a tank, a healer and maybe one CC, sap or sheep, and you were good to go. But content gated behind a quest chain is an outrage these days. Especially non soloable questchains.
Having tried WoW Legion, Rift, ESO and GW2, I feel like playing a piano concert while moving away out of red zones caused by over the top boss mechanics with the risk of being kicked when my DPS is not high enough or fail to dodge 2 times in a row. What happened to specialized roles, staying alive and having fun? Nowadays it's all about dps, finishing as fast as possible and skipping trash mobs as much as possible....
Maximizing damage while doing mechanics sounds fun to me.
I was watching Conan Exiles streamers and they were all working on doing the same thing all by themselves. They would run past each other in the game world and not interact, there was no need to because every player has access to everything.
What sad times MMOs are going through when the only reason players interact with each other is because they want to socialize. How does that reflect irl?...thats a separate topic though.
As players total freedom and choice sounds amazing, but the reality is in order for an MMO to be challenging and fun, players have to be restricted, forcing them to make tough decisions on how their character will progress. Maybe you can train with w/e weapon you want, raising skill in each of the weapon categories, but if you want to learn the top tier abilities of that weapon, you have to lock yourself in that weapon tree, becoming a master swordsman, bowman, dagger wielder...w/e.
If you want to be the best potion maker, then you cant be the best blacksmith. These kinds of choices used to force players to find one another. Instead now, with this survival sandbox trend, and everyone can be anything attitude, it's no surprise that grouping means less and less.
They mix in , break the contract from inside and make the community collapse then when the host dying , they move , jump to another host , like virus
what contract?
You know, if players want to solo and not interact with anyone, you won't even know they exist. So how would someone who don't exist to you change anything in the community?
Sure, they will not be part of the community, but no one is obligated to join a community just to play a game.
Comments
Not that you need a "community" to play games. I play games for fun, not for "the community".
I can't name a single person I have met online in the past 6 years who would even come CLOSE to that. Heck I don't think I actually know the NAME of anyone I've played with besides hearing real life friends talk to each other in a raid voice chat. Is it because I'm now antisocial? no. Is it because I don't play games online anymore? No. Is it because I never have to group up anymore? Again, no.
The reason in my opinion is that meeting someone online used to bring about a feeling of connection. You were talking to a real person who enjoyed the same thing you did. You could each work together and make meaningful progress toward a goal you both shared. Like getting along with your coworkers in a small office where you rely on each other to get through the day. Gaming was the epitome of this for a lot of people. It made you feel like you weren't alone, you would honestly log into these games and the FIRST thing you would do is look to see which of your friends were on. And they were real friends. You would not see someone log on for a week or even a month and be WORRIED about them.
So what has changed? The dynamics of playing online hasn't changed. You still need to work with people at times to get through content. Or even in games that are 100% coop/competitive. What has changed is the world, the real world. I know that may sound kind of cheesey but I can't think of a better way to describe it. I'm sitting here on this forum that I rarely visit anymore because of this very topic. My old friend and I are trying to find something to play together while waiting on fortnite patches.
I've tried jumping into our old games we used to play and it's just not there anymore. The game is the same i loved but why can I not play it now? The answer is simple, and the reason why this has become as it has.
The Over saturation of online communication and interaction.
Right now we are in a place where I can pick up my phone and instantly have 30 conversations. Scroll through a page and see what everyone I know is doing every day. I can hop into games and see hundreds or thousands of people run by. I can see the chat flow up non stop in every open chat channel. Everything has been made so convenient and easy, and well FUNCTIONAL that it's just ON all the time. Heck even for this site I can google "GAMENAME Reddit" and get a page discussing any game on the planet. So why would i feel bound to a community like this for example. I group with 50 different people a day every single day in WoW, how do i make that ONE person be memorable? I joined a guild and I get along with everyone there, but there are 100 other guilds out there I'll get along with just as well. And maybe the next one will fit my play schedule or style better. Heck I could drop 25$ and move to another server where I no longer can even play with my old friends.
Hey that person i ran 30 dungeons with hasn't logged in 3 months, no need to keep him on my friend list anymore.
I don't remember who this person on my skype was... I know we met in a game but what was his name? All well we haven't talked in awhile.
It's sad. There is literally nothing we can do about this problem. Right now our social interactions aren't tied to the online game we play. Or the forum we visit for our hobby. It's wherever the google page takes us, or whoevers in a queue at the same time.
Is it the games fault they added matchmaking? No thats what we all wanted. "Man i can't find a group today and XX isn't logged in... I wish I could just play with random people until XX gets on." So they added in matchmaking. Now it's "this Queue is taking awhile, I wonder if anyone in the guild/area would join so I can get in faster." Do I want to go back to being forced to wait for people to log in and not play? No I don't have time for that, that was the worst part of the game even back then. How many hours have we wasted in these older games, sitting around in towns or areas just WAITING for that one person to log in or finding someone who was free to come.
The idea behind MMO's is something that pretty much everyone wants. If you ask someone who loves skyrim. "how would you like to play an open world game where you could explore the world like you do in skyrim, but it be filled with other players." Almost everyone always says "Heck Yeah!"
But with the lost magic of online communities. And the fact that at any given moment, there are hundreds of games out there that can offer you the "rush" that your looking for at any given time. I just don't see this problem ever going away. The ONLY way I see this changing would be a situation where there was a true MMO set in virtual reality that included speech and real first person gameplay.
An open pvp world where hunting would only allow you to break even and death meant you lost an entire day's work.
Begging people to stop attacking you would make them kill you harder -- and it wasn't about memeing -- they just wanted to make your day worse.
And this was like 18 years ago.
People have always been inherently evil in online video game culture. It's just that now there IS an internet culture which just so happens to be obnoxiously immature.
http://twitch.tv/woetothevanquished
The times I have helped people do UBRS in WoW Vanilla, to help them with the Molten Core key chain quest. Dungeons weren't a real gear check. You needed a tank, a healer and maybe one CC, sap or sheep, and you were good to go. But content gated behind a quest chain is an outrage these days. Especially non soloable questchains.
Having tried WoW Legion, Rift, ESO and GW2, I feel like playing a piano concert while moving away out of red zones caused by over the top boss mechanics with the risk of being kicked when my DPS is not high enough or fail to dodge 2 times in a row. What happened to specialized roles, staying alive and having fun? Nowadays it's all about dps, finishing as fast as possible and skipping trash mobs as much as possible....
What sad times MMOs are going through when the only reason players interact with each other is because they want to socialize. How does that reflect irl?...thats a separate topic though.
As players total freedom and choice sounds amazing, but the reality is in order for an MMO to be challenging and fun, players have to be restricted, forcing them to make tough decisions on how their character will progress. Maybe you can train with w/e weapon you want, raising skill in each of the weapon categories, but if you want to learn the top tier abilities of that weapon, you have to lock yourself in that weapon tree, becoming a master swordsman, bowman, dagger wielder...w/e.
If you want to be the best potion maker, then you cant be the best blacksmith. These kinds of choices used to force players to find one another. Instead now, with this survival sandbox trend, and everyone can be anything attitude, it's no surprise that grouping means less and less.
You know, if players want to solo and not interact with anyone, you won't even know they exist. So how would someone who don't exist to you change anything in the community?
Sure, they will not be part of the community, but no one is obligated to join a community just to play a game.