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Do we really need old school?
Maurgrim
Member RarePosts: 1,325
It has been so many talks about old school this old school that how good it was back then compare to today.
I guess It was for you back then, It might have been your first MMO or second one you fell in love with, you really enjoyed it all due to it was new and strange, you played your game for many years during your teens.
Fast forward today.
You write fondly how It were better in the old days, how community were formed and you really loath today's gaming industry because they are like fast food, you really can't find your game, you know that feeling you had in your room when you were 14, you try every MMOs that comes out yet that feeling don't come.
You start your crusade on gaming sites that you want MMOs to go back to old school just like when you started out when you got the first kiss of gaming, how "hard" it was how "elite" it was, not like young punks today, they don't know shit how it was in the old days.
Of course it were better in the old days, it were your first or second MMO, you have fond memories back then how much fun you had how much fun you had in groups because groups were needed, and most important thing you had time to play them.
Yes I had fun times in UO althou only played for a month due to had a crappy work and low salary, and yes I loved EQ for a year, took a break and started beta test ww2online and enjoyed it but got stuck in EVE Online in 03 to 07 and did skipped WoW to play EQ2.
I don't miss the old days, not at all, I find some of the new games really great, do I miss the old times in EQ? HELL NO, they sucked ass they were fun BACK THEN not now.
Fond memories yes, you wont get the same feeling even if a MMO gets released with every feature you wanted, It's still not the same thing.
I guess It was for you back then, It might have been your first MMO or second one you fell in love with, you really enjoyed it all due to it was new and strange, you played your game for many years during your teens.
Fast forward today.
You write fondly how It were better in the old days, how community were formed and you really loath today's gaming industry because they are like fast food, you really can't find your game, you know that feeling you had in your room when you were 14, you try every MMOs that comes out yet that feeling don't come.
You start your crusade on gaming sites that you want MMOs to go back to old school just like when you started out when you got the first kiss of gaming, how "hard" it was how "elite" it was, not like young punks today, they don't know shit how it was in the old days.
Of course it were better in the old days, it were your first or second MMO, you have fond memories back then how much fun you had how much fun you had in groups because groups were needed, and most important thing you had time to play them.
Yes I had fun times in UO althou only played for a month due to had a crappy work and low salary, and yes I loved EQ for a year, took a break and started beta test ww2online and enjoyed it but got stuck in EVE Online in 03 to 07 and did skipped WoW to play EQ2.
I don't miss the old days, not at all, I find some of the new games really great, do I miss the old times in EQ? HELL NO, they sucked ass they were fun BACK THEN not now.
Fond memories yes, you wont get the same feeling even if a MMO gets released with every feature you wanted, It's still not the same thing.
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Comments
"We all do the best we can based on life experience, point of view, and our ability to believe in ourselves." - Naropa "We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are." SR Covey
Today most games are very similar, they have the same mechanics & gameplay, the same difficulty and the same endgame.
So, yes. I think we need that part of oldschool. What we don't need is to replace the current games with games based on EQ or UO.
What made games like UO, EQ, M59, Lineage, DaoC, AO, AC, SWG and so on so great was that they each offered something unique to the players, copying those games miss the point of what made them so good.
I fear that the days of loads of unique MMOs is gone though, a few of the crowdfunded games are trying but almost all newer games and games in development is just too similar and are aiming for the exact same playerbase.
Production values are up, new ideas are down today. That said, I can still enjoy some of the newer games of course but I miss the variation.
I want no part in it.
Every time I try old games like EQ - I just can't. I don't think slapping better graphics on top of the same gameplay is going to change that one bit.
The none action games have at the same time generally dumbed down themselves so much that there is little need for tactics until you reach the endgame and I am not so sure that is smart.
Trinity and similar mechanics tend to be slower and therefor allow the player to think and plan better but without the need to do just that it is rather pointless. I think they went to far to simplify things and lost a lot of what was fun in their combat.
Both types can be fun if done right and both can be popular (early Wow was still a huge success for instance). The difference is that action combat actually is evolving while the more tactical version is devolving.
People have lost a lot of interest in tactical combat ( I am not using the trinity word because there are other possibilities even if it is the usual one) but I think that is the devs fault, not that the broad masses can't like it.
And no matter what combat system you uses the important factor is how fun it is since you spend a lot of time in combat when you play most MMOs. Just copying and simplify older systems don't cut it anymore and havn't done it for years,
What does that leave the game with then.
It was better when hardcore leveling would take 3/4 mths and casuals would take 8+ months. Its never the end that is the target its the journey to get there and sadly that has been lost.
Gnerally good games...umm Diablo and all the clones are god awful games,there is nto a shred of quality game design in any of them.The premise and the end result is also very weak for gaming>>>>>>Attain a build that allows you to mindlessly one shot everything...umm yeah BRILLIANT design right there,i would quit gaming if that was all it offered.
Yes i do agree that people have lost interest in tactical,,go figure,having to use the brain would be a terrible thing for people to have to use.
I had a player complain to me in a fps because i was playing tactical,so i asked wtf do you want me to to,just run out in the open and we spam each other?
So i seriously question the mentality of a large majority of gamer and expect devs to keep catering to these people if it is what makes them money.
Another example of just BAD gamer's is the obvious push to cash shops,that SHOULD be an auto red flag to NOT support that developer,yet here we are,cash shops making millions.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
If the endgame were far more fun and most of the content were there the current leveling speed would make more sense.
Games are still build for slow leveling content wise, game devs need to pick one thing or the other and actually focus the game on the places people will spend most time in. If you want a small portion of the game for endgame then you need to make leveling far slower.
I do think that the games being new had a large impact on the fun. Things are always more fun when they are at that experimental stage and few truly understand what they are all about.
i personally stopped playing WoW somewhere in Wotlk after about 3 solid years of playing. the game was aging, and had totally lost its soul. everything was easy and rehashed. in an effort to please everyone they had removed all the uniqueness of each class. they all had everything, and ended up playing the same. everyone was just sitting in cities queing up for stuff. the world was empty. the gear thread mill was more obvious than ever. it ended up feeling like a lobby game, where you didn't even have to interact with players anymore. completely removed the sense of adventure.
i for one am looking forward to a graphically updated Vanilla server. no idea how long i will last playing it, but i will definitely try it. this is pretty much the only thing that will get me to try WoW again...... well besides a brand new graphically remastered WoW 2.0.
i have yet to find a "new" (as in made in the last 5 years) game that can hold my interest for more than a month or 2. they all look the same. play the same. have the same crappy quests. boring dungeons. similar combat style. uninteresting classes. cash shops. lame endgame. same generic single player, with the option to be social, gameplay..... yawn.
Also IMO, the worst gaming has to offer, usually comes from people in their Twenties. These Twenty something people should be excluded from gaming so they can get good paying jobs and save up money so they can afford to pay for games. If you truly look around, you will come to realize that most of the world Play 4 Free gamers are in their Twenties. And they are the root cause of poor gaming today.
Call me the "Old Get Off My Lawn Guy", make fun of me any way you can. But guess who else agrees with me? All the Devs making games today. Twenty somethings are the new hot topic in the biz. They used to be the most sought after demographic. Now they are becoming the least likely to have and spend money. The lesson learned? Following the opinions, wants, or desires of people in their Twenties is a sure fire way to crash & burn your game.
Boy: Why can't I talk to Him?
Mom: We don't talk to Priests.
As if it could exist, without being payed for.
F2P means you get what you paid for. Pay nothing, get nothing.
Even telemarketers wouldn't think that.
It costs money to play. Therefore P2W.
I think people are trying to catch the novelty feeling which they link to old school that is when they felt it. I am not convinced old school is amazing, just a new idea at the time.
Cryomatrix
You can see my sci-fi/WW2 book recommendations.
The entire market follows each other,so just like cash shops have been pushed onto us,they feed us the exact same crap figuring we have to play something.
So then we get some crying for old school,some telling us the new age is great when really some are longing for good game design while others don't think much about it and just jump into anything popular.I am sure the latter have hundreds of bought game recently and only time to play a few,so yeah they just buy anything like compulsive spenders.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
Trying to recapture the "old school" buzz is a fools errand if people think it can be done with just old mechanics. You'd also need to turn back the clock by 20 years to do it.
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?”
― CD PROJEKT RED
I think it is important to differentiate between old school mechanics and old school design philosophies.
The mechanics sucked. Lets be honest about it, mechanics in the era of emerging MMOs were generally pretty terrible. My first mmo was swg and combat was a joke. Setting aside the horrendous balance issue, combat was a case of just setting up a couple of macros and then guiding your character about. When farming XP, I'd generally just run up to a nest and then initiate an AoE macro, wait 5 minutes, then move to the next nest. That was pretty much 95% of my PvE combat. Crafting was the same - setup a macro then just make sure you click the right materials during the 2 second gap you left yourself. Sit there for an hour doing only that....
But, the feeling was so different! Back then, the developers were building massively-multiplayer games. They were continually experimenting with ways to bring masses of people together in a virtual world. Each game tried this in their own way, be it player cities, player economies, world pvp, world bosses, open dungeons, social classes or whatever else. Being experiments, not all were successful, but it felt like the genre as a whole was moving towards ever better ways for 1000s of people to live and play together in a virtual environment.
Then WoW happened.
The monumental success of WoW pretty much put an end to that experimentation - why experiment when you can copy a winning formula? The problem was, WoW was not focused on being massively multiplayer. WoW is part of the progression of single-player and coop RPGs and stuck to many of the design paradigms that worked in single player, or worked in coop, but that sadly don't work well in a massively-multiplayer environment.
So, when I ask for a return to the old school, it is not a return to the mechanics that I'm after. We've learnt so much that copying old school mechanics would be a massive mistake. But, I do want the developers to take a step back and reexamine their underlying approach to building an MMO. Is this relentless drive towards 15 minute play sessions really a good thing? Is the focus on solo play a good thing? How can we reinstate that old school feeling of real progress, community, realm pride, server pride and whatever else without sacrificing the advances we've made to gameplay and accessibility?
In Vanilla WoW, two people actually had to go somewhere if you wanted to do something.
I remember heading out to Scarlet Monastery and just hanging out at the summoning stone, waiting for others to do the same and you would party up from there.
There are changes being made to MMOs these days, but they are all in regards to making things more convenient and finding different ways to generate more money. For the most part, the days of making a game at least in part because it's what you love and what you want others to experience are gone. Now games are made in a very mechanical way by polling statistics and trying to find the mathematically best way to do things that will generate the most income.
grind , yup , we still have grind nowadays , and treadmill too pretty much worst combination than just pure grind
Then the graphic complaint about old game being old ... graphic
Maybe i difference since my first game is pure grind (aka PVE) with no PK (aka sucked PVP) and only have castle siege (limited PVP)
Of course there are many thing that i want the game to change , i don't mind that i stay at low level , but i don't want to be blocked out of contents because my level is low cause i have less time to play than other .
I don't want to be block out from party because my class / job is build for solo or not suit for large scale party , i want all classes , jobs have parts and roles in party play .
I don't want my friends and I can't joint party together because party is full
That's why i found most so call MMORPG suck , they limited and cut parts the community .
I remember many time friends invite me but i can't join cause those limited .
I want to see again when players sharing time and things with other , have fun and not being punish by friendly with other players .
That's why i can't accept the concept of WOW aka modern MMORPG
People say grind, but their is plenty of grind in modern mmos, try to get 8k gear in Archeage without the mighty credit card, playing for free (I did do sub, but it gets expensive, and I make good gold and can do f2p, while still grinding the gold)...You don't just grind your guy, you grind multiple accounts (in EU and NA)....I had much more fun grinding a single guy in pve camps say in EQ, then I do grinding 5-6 accounts in two regions. Yeah, you get more people in these f2p cash shop games, but the companies get so greedy, they ruin the game anyway. I avoided f2p/cash shop forever, and wasn't playing mmorpgs, and I broke down and it is exactly what I figured it would turn into. They may say it isn't p2w, but these companies can't help themselves usually and it turns into that.
Cool story bro.
If you don't want old school don't play old school. Tired of people like you telling me what I should and should not like when it comes to MMOs. I like the old school experience, so what? Who are you to tell me what I want? That it is all "nostalgia". Seriously, I don't care if you don't want it, why should you care if I do?