There is no such thing as wrong genre as far as MMORPG go.
I think this is your basic problem. You want something other than MMORPGs, but labeled as such.
Tell me what are the requirements for a MMORPG?
Well, a Massively Multiplayer game which is Online would be a good start, yes? Even the massively part can be different for different players. Generally, though, the capability to have 100's or 1000's of players simultaneously online is a good start.
The RPG portion can get a little tricky, though. One basic fundamental of roleplaying games is progression. Another basic tenet for me is playing the role of someone else, not "AlBQuirky in another land." This is why I refuse to call MMOs with action combat, where MY twitch skills count, not my characters actual skills, an RPG. Action adventure? That fits here. Others will disagree
As to raid gear, the topic, it's neither here nor there. Yet you said:
There is no such thing as wrong genre as far as MMORPG go.
Basically, MMORPG defines a genre, just like puzzle games and platformers do. If you call a game an MMORPG, players expect certain features in the game. That expectation is the whole purpose of genres.
MMO is an umbrella term which then separates into RPG, FPS, ARPG, and so on. Would you also say, "There is no such thing as wrong genre as far as Autobiographical books go?"
When does an MMORPG stop being an MMORPG?
Which why I say there is no wrong genre because the setting can demand anything. I see nothing in what you say that a MMORPG must have raiding. Imply that not wanting the best gear being locked behind raids.
It is always easy to say someone should play something else. Like saying you want pure roleplaying you should play PnP. Maybe dice rolling is too twitchy though.
MMORPG to me is about the role you play in the world with other players. It is hybrid of RPG and online gaming. Doesn't have to be quite like a typical single player. But people are very dogmatic in their ideals.
Watch your "absolutes", then. "NO WRONG GENRE" is an absolute statement. If there is ONE thing to be expected from that genre, then it is not absolute, as you claimed. Your last paragraph lists 2 requirements for your own expectations.
My "complaint" was your use of an absolute statement.
PS Forgot to clarify, I'm not really against your idea. I just wonder why all these different activities need their own "best gear" in the first place.
- Al
Personally the only modern MMORPG trend that annoys me is the idea that MMOs need to be designed in a way to attract people who don't actually like MMOs. Which to me makes about as much sense as someone trying to figure out a way to get vegetarians to eat at their steakhouse. - FARGIN_WAR
If there is a sufficient differentiation between rewards I agree with you, I just don't see that happening, what would be the best PvE gear and perhaps more importantly what would be the best PvP gear? Really PVP and PvE should be kept separate but they often are not. If you can get gear comparable to raid gear in any solo way, raid will die. But then players who don't like to group do seem to want that.
Unless you're including churned out titles, there's not many MMO's in general.
Even as much of a dull grind the core progression track of Black Desert is, people forget that game has a rather broad housing, crafting, and community/economy systems that offer alternative play tracks for example.
I do not see this same "majority" you are making such clams about, unless again you are trying to include the cheap churn titles. The problem is that these alternative tracks are neglected, which is the crux of so much of this conversation. They are there, but when they are ignored for the sake of making raids and mini-raids into the only endgame track, then all those other components no longer have sufficient meaning to players and they will begin to leave until it's only the small community of diehards with their endgame niche left.
And I do not mistake anything here. Your own comments shows how you continue to ignore things. Either by a willful choice of refusing the logic, or by simply not being able to understand something that's been bluntly stated.
Point in case. Raids have not been able to retain players. The MMOs that have focused raids as their only end-game content have all bled users. Many titles that have tried to encapsulate the raid experience by itself have similarly floundered out by virtue of never having enough users to sustain them.
This is again an example of where you are ignoring things. Because you make a statement that in order to be made, has to assume that giving greater depth to other elements of the game to offer other choices for play in end-game somehow is to the detriment of raids. Like that solo questing comment of yours.
Why do you think solo questing would be to the detriment of raids? Because your path of least resistance argument, that ignores that a single player focused experience can retain a high challenge ceiling?
Which is ironic since the solution is something you touch upon following in your comment on crafting, yet you forget it again right after when you try your path of least resistance argument again. You assume that solo questing would be fundamentally less time or effort intensive than raids, which is a false assumption by itself, and then stack that with the blatant act of ignoring the thing that's been brought up multiple times, that different types of end game progression can have different reward tracks that benefit those specific tracks. IE, solo quest chains offers gear that is tailored to progressing through the next stage of the chain, and raid rewards are more unique to gearing for specific elements of the raids (like unique abilities or counters to specific elements present in the raid used as a way to unlock the path to the next raid tier).
So I can see that you are ignoring things. Quite brazenly even. Whether you are doing it consciously or not is the only unknown.
Limnic I agreed with your first two paragraphs and some subsequent
ideas but you do seem to have a problem that when people somehow don’t agree
with you; it is because they don’t see the problem, don’t get the issue or don’t
see the logic. The idea that the state of my mind is the only unknown here verges
on the fascicle. You need to realise that caricaturing my position does you no
favours.
I was including all MMOs when I said the majority, most are cheap turn titles.
You are right raids have not been able to retain players, but
what I said was they are about the only thing retaining players, nothing MMORPG’s
have done to retain players has worked in the modern MMO era. Back when MMOs
began raiding did a much better job of retaining players, but in these days of butterflies
nothing works. The fact that raid only MMOs don’t do well (what games are you
thinking of here?) does not surprise me, I would never advocate raids as a
stand alone.
I don't see all these alterative tracks you talk of. What
seems to be on the table is a few good ideas hardly any of which we have seen
implemented, primarily making solo questing as good as raids for top level
gear. Now if this pans out like Vermillion says above I can see some
attraction, but when it comes to MMO gaming rewards you must never "cross
the streams".
In other words rewards for different types of game play must have different
rewards, or players will pick the easiest way to obtain them and leave harder game
play alone. Just one example of this in SWTOR they had a battlezone like area
where players could meet and do PvP for PvP rewards. It was quite popular until
they bought in instanced scenarios, the battle area died out very quickly. That’s
why raid rewards need to be better than anything else, but they need not be
better in all areas, just sufficient to set them apart from other top level
game play. Now you mention the idea that solo gear is for just for soloing and
would not be usable for raids, if it was also no good for PvP that’s going in
the right direction. But a small group top level event should give better rewards
than solo and the raid group should give the best in overall terms. Why? Because
it is more difficult, handling groups always is, your idea of just making these
solo quests very difficult just does not cut it when compared to the planning
and coordination of a group in a raid.
I think what you are doing is seeing MMOs have a problem
with top level and then you blame it all on raids. Well there are a lot of MMOs
without raids out there, how are they doing?
There is no irony in the fact I gave a solution with the
crafting quests, what that means is I see the problem; it does not as you
amazingly deuce that I do not see the problem, topsy-turvy logic! But I do see
issues where you do not, don’t cross the streams and maybe top level questing
would work, but do we have any real examples of it doing so. ESO was mentioned,
how do those top level quests fit in?
The problem at the heart of your top level soloing ideas, is
that more solo questing is unlikely to retain players as that’s what they did to get
to that point. More of the same won’t do, indeed most leave way before then,
questing not being good enough to hold on to them. Dailies are an example (a loose one) of
top level questing, I don’t mind them but I don’t see them as being good enough
to keep people playing. This is where what has said about challenges at all
levels may help, it need not necessarily be tougher questing, but something other
than straight quests may be needed, that’s why the crafting idea might add some vim.
Unfortunately while you're capable of long posts, you aren't capable of breaking away from repeating the same mistakes you keep making.
I don't care if you agree with me, I care about how you keep taking a portion of information, then suddenly changing and redefining things in a manner that is not said in order to spit out lines of thought that fail to connect any dots.
Every time you do examples it highlights this. Like your SWTOR example. You make a comment about it's PvP and battlezone for PvP rewards, but fail to connect the points that the example you are using is of a system supplanting the previous one instead of being alternate to.
That is a terrible example as a consequence because it fails to relate to the subject. You have to assume that raid rewards have to better out of some false assumption about the nature of the gear for these rewards leaning into the BiS problem and then consequently being sought only for path of least resistance.
And that immediately shows exactly how you keep ignoring things. Because we can go right back to literally the first post in the thread, as was mentioned multiple times, to observe the suggestion that each respective activity have rewards that relate to that track instead of there being an outright BiS. IE, raid gear would be best for raiding while quest gear would be best for progression of quest tracks, etc.
This is again exemplified by your crafting commentary, and yes indeed the irony exists in there when you can acknowledge the idea that crafting rewards could have bonuses and perks that are unique to them and benefits it directly without supplanting anything you'd get from another progression track because the perk is applicable to that specific track.
In other words, it is exactly representative of how you don't see the problem in your argument, because you can perceive the issue in one situation, then suddenly lose sight of it the moment you observe any other part that exists within the same scope.
The problem with your argument against top level soloing, is that consuming new narrative content and quest chains is one of the few recurring elements that actually brings back players. Major expansions and story content updates have driven purchases and players seeking to resub to the likes of WoW, SWtoR, LotRO, etc. The addition of new unique classes, zones to explore, all that breadth of content to consume.
And then when they consume it, and all that's left is "raids", they leave again because they stopped being catered to again. Because raids are not what most players are interested in, and no matter how much you suggest tweaking them about, they will not affect the broad scope of player retention that does not give a damn about them. In other words, progression in end game tracks outside raids really in the first place is the only thing you have for expanding player retention.
Don't go making up straw men to suit your needs. The problem was put forth for you already multiple times. The fact that there's not much to do other than raid and endgame is a symptom, not once have I blamed raids specifically for anything. I do believe I have actually TOLD YOU MULTIPLE TIMES the issue as I perceive it is that the scope of most MMOs tends to get neglected and consequently only a narrow band of viable continued gameplay is left at "end-game" for people to continue with. If the different activities and elements of the game that players had enjoyed up to the point of capping out their experience in that track suddenly dries, up, they no longer have reason to stay in the game. Hence, when all that's left for players that want other activities to do is raid, then they have no reason to stay in the game.
Indeed, more of the same won't do. That's why raids are so terrible. Because they are fundamentally more of the same, and in such a narrow band that almost no one cares for it.
To which given your question about MMOs focused on raids and your end claim about how few have raids, I have to counter with the question of what MMOs you're thinking of, as I cannot honestly recall a single MMO since the early 2000s that didn't lazily lean on that crutch. I would literally be going down almost the entire list of games on this site.
Topsy turvy logic indeed. If you cannot follow any of this, can you at least restate clearly what your perceived problem is by itself to be addressed, since as of right now it seems mostly you cling to the path of least resistance argument without ever addressing the repeated point of "collecting gear for one track in the game does not equate to having the best gear for another track", meaning raiding remains relevant to raiders just as much as ever, but other players would also have a more meaningful track for their own user experience.
There is an obvious solution that FFXI figured out years ago.
Make your top-tier items crafted recipes where the drops required come from raids.
This provides options for obtaining said gear, all of which are equally rigorous, albeit in different ways.
Personally I think no gear should EVER drop directly from enemies. They should always drop materials that you can use to either craft the gear, have someone craft it for you, or you sell the item to buy something else instead. Much more flexible system.
There is an obvious solution that FFXI figured out years ago.
Make your top-tier items crafted recipes where the drops required come from raids.
This provides options for obtaining said gear, all of which are equally rigorous, albeit in different ways.
Personally I think no gear should EVER drop directly from enemies. They should always drop materials that you can use to either craft the gear, have someone craft it for you, or you sell the item to buy something else instead. Much more flexible system.
That was actually suggested previously, and is a concept I'm personally somewhat fond of as it brings raids back from it's weird isolation towards other more community focused elements of a game and returns relevance to otherwise neglected parts of a game such as the crafting system.
If there is a sufficient differentiation between rewards I agree with you, I just don't see that happening, what would be the best PvE gear and perhaps more importantly what would be the best PvP gear? Really PVP and PvE should be kept separate but they often are not. If you can get gear comparable to raid gear in any solo way, raid will die. But then players who don't like to group do seem to want that.
If raiding will die from lack of best rewards than maybe there is something wrong the whole thing. Every other aspect of the game is supposed to make it on it's own merit. At least it is honest.
I am not sure how much of a savior raiding is to grouping. It is small repetitive bit content. I think having a lot more long CoOp quest would be helpful. Maybe a long quest instances that is broken into check points.
Right now I can only dabble in themeparks. Quest are generally boring making progression boring. End game raids and dailies are boring and annoying. I have a hard time getting my son or friends to play them. Sad shjt for real.
Unfortunately while you're capable of long posts, you aren't capable of breaking away from repeating the same mistakes you keep making.
I don't care if you agree with me, I care about how you keep taking a portion of information, then suddenly changing and redefining things in a manner that is not said in order to spit out lines of thought that fail to connect any dots.
Every time you do examples it highlights this. Like your SWTOR example. You make a comment about it's PvP and battlezone for PvP rewards, but fail to connect the points that the example you are using is of a system supplanting the previous one instead of being alternate to.
That is a terrible example as a consequence because it fails to relate to the subject. You have to assume that raid rewards have to better out of some false assumption about the nature of the gear for these rewards leaning into the BiS problem and then consequently being sought only for path of least resistance.
And that immediately shows exactly how you keep ignoring things. Because we can go right back to literally the first post in the thread, as was mentioned multiple times, to observe the suggestion that each respective activity have rewards that relate to that track instead of there being an outright BiS. IE, raid gear would be best for raiding while quest gear would be best for progression of quest tracks, etc.
This is again exemplified by your crafting commentary, and yes indeed the irony exists in there when you can acknowledge the idea that crafting rewards could have bonuses and perks that are unique to them and benefits it directly without supplanting anything you'd get from another progression track because the perk is applicable to that specific track.
In other words, it is exactly representative of how you don't see the problem in your argument, because you can perceive the issue in one situation, then suddenly lose sight of it the moment you observe any other part that exists within the same scope.
The problem with your argument against top level soloing, is that consuming new narrative content and quest chains is one of the few recurring elements that actually brings back players. Major expansions and story content updates have driven purchases and players seeking to resub to the likes of WoW, SWtoR, LotRO, etc. The addition of new unique classes, zones to explore, all that breadth of content to consume.
And then when they consume it, and all that's left is "raids", they leave again because they stopped being catered to again. Because raids are not what most players are interested in, and no matter how much you suggest tweaking them about, they will not affect the broad scope of player retention that does not give a damn about them. In other words, progression in end game tracks outside raids really in the first place is the only thing you have for expanding player retention.
Don't go making up straw men to suit your needs. The problem was put forth for you already multiple times. The fact that there's not much to do other than raid and endgame is a symptom, not once have I blamed raids specifically for anything. I do believe I have actually TOLD YOU MULTIPLE TIMES the issue as I perceive it is that the scope of most MMOs tends to get neglected and consequently only a narrow band of viable continued gameplay is left at "end-game" for people to continue with. If the different activities and elements of the game that players had enjoyed up to the point of capping out their experience in that track suddenly dries, up, they no longer have reason to stay in the game. Hence, when all that's left for players that want other activities to do is raid, then they have no reason to stay in the game.
Indeed, more of the same won't do. That's why raids are so terrible. Because they are fundamentally more of the same, and in such a narrow band that almost no one cares for it.
To which given your question about MMOs focused on raids and your end claim about how few have raids, I have to counter with the question of what MMOs you're thinking of, as I cannot honestly recall a single MMO since the early 2000s that didn't lazily lean on that crutch. I would literally be going down almost the entire list of games on this site.
Topsy turvy logic indeed. If you cannot follow any of this, can you at least restate clearly what your perceived problem is by itself to be addressed, since as of right now it seems mostly you cling to the path of least resistance argument without ever addressing the repeated point of "collecting gear for one track in the game does not equate to having the best gear for another track", meaning raiding remains relevant to raiders just as much as ever, but other players would also have a more meaningful track for their own user experience.
To some up my concerns in a nutshell we have been here before many times. And what seemed to be a genuine look for new ideas at top level, turned out to be 'lets scrap raids'. It has often come before from those who do not like grouping and like the idea of achieving everything for as little effort as possible. Now that may not be you but once again the ideas start to push in that direction. Maybe you could track different lines of gear, but the fact you see no potential issues with raiding with your unproven system strikes me as ill thought out. Unless players such as yourself can point to where their alternatives have been shown to work lets stick to what we know works, raids. That's why I asked about those top level solo quests in ESO, lets see something no matter how loosely it is based on what you said and how well is it doing.
Allow me to have the luxury of a second paragraph just to say you are rather good at long posts yourself.
So your first concern is artificial, since scrapping raids has not been the suggestion in this thread outside of perhaps one-offs from a couple people, and not from anyone trying to actively converse including Ver.
Also have some dispute with your community jab, as we can argue the case that raiding as it tends to exist is not conducive to social gaming, since it's highly structured and often stressful content for those involved, and when it is all instanced and nothing players involved in raids does is able to bleed out to affect the broader community, it instead creates a division between the niche of raiders versus the rest of the player base. Ironically, the crux of where much of the gripes about elitism or ill perceptions of people wanting other elements of the game to be relevant, because it's a clique at war with it's own game's community.
Which is to point that from outside that clique, the perception is that things that add relevance to other aspects of the game serves to broaden the community interaction within it. The antithetical claim to what you've made. This antithetical also has some logical merit in my opinion, as you have to consider, if a system does not actively touch other systems within a game, it cannot further social goals beyond itself. Crafting, world events, even simple exploration has more social components than being squirreled away in an instanced environment collecting loot you can't or won't share. Hell, you could even include elements in the single player quest track that was brought up which could see the player turning to some other part of the community temporarily to solve that part of the quest.
As long as something like raiding exists in a isolated microcosm, it is not a social hub for the game. It's at best a clique.
And ESO actually has demonstration some close viability regarding what's been discussed actually. Their zone item sets and bonuses have comparative value and some sets like the Night Mother's is used alongside dungeon and vet/trial gear. This includes too how crafted sets are also often components of player builds for even endgame. It's an active example already of how collecting gear from different tracks in the game. It's not an unproven system as you claim.
The only unique value there was extending the distinction between gear obtained from different parts of the game so that they have more uniquely defined use-cases applicable to those specific segments of the game world. A suggestion made specifically to emphasize the creation of value in doing things like running raids specifically for ranking raid gear up, as that'd be the best way to prepare yourself for increased tiers within that portion of the game. Meanwhile, doing zone exploration and quest activities or what not would unlock gear that would grant specific unique bonuses/traits to benefit progression into new parts of the zone or next stage of a quest chain.
This was explained to you previously, yet again making me bring up the point of you having been ignoring things this whole time. As adamantly as you want to claim otherwise, it seems likely to be a form of confirmation bias given blindness to things that would sit outside your interpretation of it all.
At least when the guy above told us we shouldn't bother debating with the raid-only crowd he gave an opinion relevant to the dialogue instead of a random personal attack.
I don't attack your comments and I don't sit there randomly loling posts, though I have noticed you do have a passive aggressive tendency to do that given I can check my profile stats. Should we hop in there and tally up how often it's just you smashing that lol button for no reason?
You really need to get over whatever this grudge is you're holding onto.
At least when the guy above told us we shouldn't bother debating with the raid-only crowd he gave an opinion relevant to the dialogue instead of a random personal attack.
I don't attack your comments and I don't sit there randomly loling posts, though I have noticed you do have a passive aggressive tendency to do that given I can check my profile stats. Should we hop in there and tally up how often it's just you smashing that lol button for no reason?
You really need to get over whatever this grudge is you're holding onto.
People who can't put together more than a sentence in response aren't exactly the brightest people on the planet. Any good explanation/defense of a topic will include plenty of detail/justification. It sounds like pretty classic projection. "I'm dumb as a sack of rocks so I'm going to insult the person presenting a well thought-out and explained argument because I can't be bothered to read anything longer than a meme or article headline".
I think it boils down to this. If only a small percentage like to raid why is raiding the only thing to do so the end game? Why is raiding the only way to get good gear so the end game?
Having the only means of progressing being the thing that most people don't want to do sounds weird to me.
Only 1% may beat that hardest raid content but who cares about that if only 10% even want to try.
Just because you don't like it doesn't mean it is bad.
I think it boils down to this. If only a small percentage like to raid why is raiding the only thing to do so the end game? Why is raiding the only way to get good gear so the end game?
Having the only means of progressing being the thing that most people don't want to do sounds weird to me.
Only 1% may beat that hardest raid content but who cares about that if only 10% even want to try.
Exactly, It's an old mindset that doesn't really make any sense. Providing multiple paths of progression would be a sign of evolution for the genre.
The attempted comparison to real life and "only the elite should get this" mentality is a hard fallacy considering we're talking about a video game which is inherently about having fun/enjoyment.
Also, I don't think anyone would want to be just outright given these things for no effort, but there is a desire to do something new/different instead of the same old thing we've been doing since the late 80's.
The fact that a game even has an 'end game' is weird to me.
But that's as much a technical challenge as anything, isn't it? End game isn't so much a dev goal as a practical necessity.
At some point, the journey reaches a termination point. If you include endless progression, you either have to keep churning out endless content, or you have to scale existing content (and repeat it over and over), which begins to make the endless progression seem rather superfluous.
Devs can't create quality content at a fast enough rate to make any gaming experience "endless" without extreme repetition or unreasonable amounts of personnel needed to keep a flow of GM-created content going. The repetitive content at the end becomes the "endgame."
I think it boils down to this. If only a small percentage like to raid why is raiding the only thing to do so the end game? Why is raiding the only way to get good gear so the end game?
Having the only means of progressing being the thing that most people don't want to do sounds weird to me.
Only 1% may beat that hardest raid content but who cares about that if only 10% even want to try.
Another issue is that raiding has not really progressed since it was created. The idea that 'The Game You Are Playing" Has now reached Part 2 was always a weird thing for me personally. The fact that a game even has an 'end game' is weird to me.
I am all for new ideas VengeSunsoar, I see that if its cracked we could have much better retention in MMOs, but I am not seeing any magic bullets.
I take Blue Turtle's point about raids not evolving, but how much have MMORPG's evolved? Where they have it is in the wrong direction, too easy, too solo, too small. But yes, raids need something new just like every other aspect does.
The ESO example (the one that I am supposed to have read before but just saw above) is interesting. But I think the solo and raid gear may be too similar, Limnic is clearly a solo enthusiast, would like to hear what a raider thinks about this system. My concern would be that if the solo questing gear is too close to the raid gear players will start to ask 'why bother to raid'? Not saying you are lying Limnic, but I would like to hear the raider side of the argument as well.
But the answer to "why should raid be the best activity" is not just its the hardest, it is the social activity which again seems to be lost on some of our posters. I would suggest that maybe some posters have raided in the wrong sort of guild for them? I have always been in guilds where community and roleplaying are put before elite nonsense. Maybe that's why they think this is all about being elite? Presuming they even play in a guild that is. Raids are a social event, relaxed and when I think sometimes there were teenagers who should not of been playing according to the games rules, it was a family rated event.
Perhaps that's what is at the bottom of this, if you see raids as stressful events and have no other experience of good grouping then it is no wonder you seek an alterative. This is not the first time I have suggested as a solution to various issues players in MMOs have, find a good guild and the problem is sorted.
Raiders should get the best materials. Crafters can craft the best gear with these materials, the better the materials the better the product. These products can be tailored towards any specialisation or situation, raider gear, crafter gear, explorer gear, fire resistance gear etc. etc. Explorers find the best crafting recipes and maps for dungeons/raids so raiders can raid and crafters can craft(dynamic placement of dungeons and raids is still a dream of mine). Explorers need protection from raiders and gear from crafters though.
And no gear drops besides the most basic stuff. Combined with item degradation and you get some interesting interdependence going on.
/Cheers, Lahnmir
'the only way he could nail it any better is if he used a cross.'
Kyleran on yours sincerely
'But there are many. You can play them entirely solo, and even offline. Also, you are wrong by default.'
Ikcin in response to yours sincerely debating whether or not single-player offline MMOs exist...
'This does not apply just to ED but SC or any other game. What they will get is Rebirth/X4, likely prettier but equally underwhelming and pointless.
It is incredibly difficult to design some meaningfull leg content that would fit a space ship game - simply because it is not a leg game.
It is just huge resource waste....'
Gdemami absolutely not being an armchair developer
The fact that a game even has an 'end game' is weird to me.
But that's as much a technical challenge as anything, isn't it? End game isn't so much a dev goal as a practical necessity.
At some point, the journey reaches a termination point. If you include endless progression, you either have to keep churning out endless content, or you have to scale existing content (and repeat it over and over), which begins to make the endless progression seem rather superfluous.
Devs can't create quality content at a fast enough rate to make any gaming experience "endless" without extreme repetition or unreasonable amounts of personnel needed to keep a flow of GM-created content going. The repetitive content at the end becomes the "endgame."
Which is why I think at that point of the game the power for creation should be handed to the players. Ala NWN
From what I remember of the brief amount of time I spent in NW (not NWN) where they did just that, there was a lot of user made content whose sole purpose was to exploit for XP and profit.
User made content is not a bad idea but you need some serious vetting process to keep it honest.
"Social media gives legions of idiots the right to speak when they once only spoke at a bar after a glass of wine, without harming the community ... but now they have the same right to speak as a Nobel Prize winner. It's the invasion of the idiots”
― Umberto Eco
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?” ― CD PROJEKT RED
I am all for new ideas VengeSunsoar, I see that if its cracked we could have much better retention in MMOs, but I am not seeing any magic bullets.
I take Blue Turtle's point about raids not evolving, but how much have MMORPG's evolved? Where they have it is in the wrong direction, too easy, too solo, too small. But yes, raids need something new just like every other aspect does.
The ESO example (the one that I am supposed to have read before but just saw above) is interesting. But I think the solo and raid gear may be too similar, Limnic is clearly a solo enthusiast, would like to hear what a raider thinks about this system. My concern would be that if the solo questing gear is too close to the raid gear players will start to ask 'why bother to raid'? Not saying you are lying Limnic, but I would like to hear the raider side of the argument as well.
But the answer to "why should raid be the best activity" is not just its the hardest, it is the social activity which again seems to be lost on some of our posters. I would suggest that maybe some posters have raided in the wrong sort of guild for them? I have always been in guilds where community and roleplaying are put before elite nonsense. Maybe that's why they think this is all about being elite? Presuming they even play in a guild that is. Raids are a social event, relaxed and when I think sometimes there were teenagers who should not of been playing according to the games rules, it was a family rated event.
Perhaps that's what is at the bottom of this, if you see raids as stressful events and have no other experience of good grouping then it is no wonder you seek an alterative. This is not the first time I have suggested as a solution to various issues players in MMOs have, find a good guild and the problem is sorted.
Actually I only play MMOs as a multiplayer experience (I have a specific preference for playing support/healer roles). If I don't have other people to regularly group with I will instead generally pug it or look for some guilds to help out. It's a challenge to find an MMO I would consider fun to solo in, and I consequently don't bother because I can always pick up a single player game that's dedicated to delivering a quality experience around that if I'm in the mood for such. MMOs are about community and collaborative user experiences to me.
I'm not big on raiding, but also not against it. I simply find it as a self-contained experience walled off from the rest of the game to not contribute back to the overall scope of most any MMOs experience. It's it's own activity and community, a weird little microcosm instead of being integrated in a manner the bulk of the game's community can interact with or benefit from. It's only a social activity to that small group of people you are raiding with and fails to connect at all to the larger community of the game.
That's where the problem kind of crops up in my eyes, if the "community" of a game suddenly shrinks down to only a handful of people, it invalidates the point of being an MMO to me. I have to be able to reach beyond that small scope of users to participate in the broader ecosystem. And consequently, that game should have a broader ecosystem.
And I would point to the article I linked you earlier that discusses the stress around raiding that has high tier-raiders discussing how it affects them.
Not to contradict myself, but I personally raid solely for "community" as well. I have never been a gung-ho raider and while I do enjoy a challenge, I tend to play PvP or just hard single player games if I want such. On the few occasions I am grinding for gear, it's dominantly for cosmetic purposes as I enjoy collecting things. Consequently, the only reason I ever raid on any kind of regular basis is because there are people I want to play the game with, not because I enjoy raiding itself. But as I just stated in this post, if the people I raid with are the only people I play with, then it defeats the purpose of being an MMO for me because the community has suddenly shrunk down to something that'd fit on a generic lobby shooter.
The fact that a game even has an 'end game' is weird to me.
But that's as much a technical challenge as anything, isn't it? End game isn't so much a dev goal as a practical necessity.
At some point, the journey reaches a termination point. If you include endless progression, you either have to keep churning out endless content, or you have to scale existing content (and repeat it over and over), which begins to make the endless progression seem rather superfluous.
Devs can't create quality content at a fast enough rate to make any gaming experience "endless" without extreme repetition or unreasonable amounts of personnel needed to keep a flow of GM-created content going. The repetitive content at the end becomes the "endgame."
Which is why I think at that point of the game the power for creation should be handed to the players. Ala NWN
From what I remember of the brief amount of time I spent in NW (not NWN) where they did just that, there was a lot of user made content whose sole purpose was to exploit for XP and profit.
User made content is not a bad idea but you need some serious vetting process to keep it honest.
This was my thought as well. Turning control of the game experience over to players in that way rarely goes without some kind of exploitation/griefing.
The fact that a game even has an 'end game' is weird to me.
But that's as much a technical challenge as anything, isn't it? End game isn't so much a dev goal as a practical necessity.
At some point, the journey reaches a termination point. If you include endless progression, you either have to keep churning out endless content, or you have to scale existing content (and repeat it over and over), which begins to make the endless progression seem rather superfluous.
Devs can't create quality content at a fast enough rate to make any gaming experience "endless" without extreme repetition or unreasonable amounts of personnel needed to keep a flow of GM-created content going. The repetitive content at the end becomes the "endgame."
Truly, having endless content is not necessary. Instead, I would suggest ideas similar to FFXI where you had merits to gain once you hit max level that unlocked little extra bits of progression, and things like relic weapons which were both extreme long-term goals.
I've been playing CoH lately and I can already see the extreme long-term goal of getting your personal perfect set of enhancements for another example. Also, getting all of the badges that grant bonuses.
When FFXI released new content it never invalidated the prior expansion, it built on it. This is a design philosophy that is TOTALLY lost on games like WoW and FFXIV. ESO and GW2 do a better job, with ESO being the best in that regard.
ESO honestly has the single best progression/endgame of any game in the last 10 years. I have issues with other aspects which is why I don't actively play/sub.....but that is certainly not one of them. You know what the key is? Long-term goals/progression. The champion point system is great, and the lack of level-cap increases means when new gear sets come out they are about flexibility/building on the foundation not invalidating it.
Well I think we all generally agree that there are several other things that can be obtained at end game.
E.g gear, AA, recipes, maybe temp skills.
So how do we get them?
No matter what we do it will be repeating content because that's what end game means. You've run out of content. So far there is raids, repeatable quests, camping, non raid dungeon crawls, generated quests (coh missions)... Hmm that it?
Most of that is great for AA but isn't really on par to the difficulty of raids for getting that really great something. What would a really difficult on par with raid creating thing look like?
Maybe something like in Istaria where building aT6 dragon grand hall requires about 6 million units.
In that game all you get is the hall but what if that gave a special machine that gave bonuses to the great you crafted or let you get special ore?
What would you do for the others?
Just because you don't like it doesn't mean it is bad.
Comments
My "complaint" was your use of an absolute statement.
PS Forgot to clarify, I'm not really against your idea. I just wonder why all these different activities need their own "best gear" in the first place.
- Al
Personally the only modern MMORPG trend that annoys me is the idea that MMOs need to be designed in a way to attract people who don't actually like MMOs. Which to me makes about as much sense as someone trying to figure out a way to get vegetarians to eat at their steakhouse.- FARGIN_WAR
Limnic I agreed with your first two paragraphs and some subsequent ideas but you do seem to have a problem that when people somehow don’t agree with you; it is because they don’t see the problem, don’t get the issue or don’t see the logic. The idea that the state of my mind is the only unknown here verges on the fascicle. You need to realise that caricaturing my position does you no favours.
I was including all MMOs when I said the majority, most are cheap turn titles.
You are right raids have not been able to retain players, but what I said was they are about the only thing retaining players, nothing MMORPG’s have done to retain players has worked in the modern MMO era. Back when MMOs began raiding did a much better job of retaining players, but in these days of butterflies nothing works. The fact that raid only MMOs don’t do well (what games are you thinking of here?) does not surprise me, I would never advocate raids as a stand alone.
I don't see all these alterative tracks you talk of. What seems to be on the table is a few good ideas hardly any of which we have seen implemented, primarily making solo questing as good as raids for top level gear. Now if this pans out like Vermillion says above I can see some attraction, but when it comes to MMO gaming rewards you must never "cross the streams".
In other words rewards for different types of game play must have different rewards, or players will pick the easiest way to obtain them and leave harder game play alone. Just one example of this in SWTOR they had a battlezone like area where players could meet and do PvP for PvP rewards. It was quite popular until they bought in instanced scenarios, the battle area died out very quickly. That’s why raid rewards need to be better than anything else, but they need not be better in all areas, just sufficient to set them apart from other top level game play. Now you mention the idea that solo gear is for just for soloing and would not be usable for raids, if it was also no good for PvP that’s going in the right direction. But a small group top level event should give better rewards than solo and the raid group should give the best in overall terms. Why? Because it is more difficult, handling groups always is, your idea of just making these solo quests very difficult just does not cut it when compared to the planning and coordination of a group in a raid.
I think what you are doing is seeing MMOs have a problem with top level and then you blame it all on raids. Well there are a lot of MMOs without raids out there, how are they doing?
There is no irony in the fact I gave a solution with the crafting quests, what that means is I see the problem; it does not as you amazingly deuce that I do not see the problem, topsy-turvy logic! But I do see issues where you do not, don’t cross the streams and maybe top level questing would work, but do we have any real examples of it doing so. ESO was mentioned, how do those top level quests fit in?
The problem at the heart of your top level soloing ideas, is that more solo questing is unlikely to retain players as that’s what they did to get to that point. More of the same won’t do, indeed most leave way before then, questing not being good enough to hold on to them. Dailies are an example (a loose one) of top level questing, I don’t mind them but I don’t see them as being good enough to keep people playing. This is where what has said about challenges at all levels may help, it need not necessarily be tougher questing, but something other than straight quests may be needed, that’s why the crafting idea might add some vim.
I don't care if you agree with me, I care about how you keep taking a portion of information, then suddenly changing and redefining things in a manner that is not said in order to spit out lines of thought that fail to connect any dots.
Every time you do examples it highlights this. Like your SWTOR example. You make a comment about it's PvP and battlezone for PvP rewards, but fail to connect the points that the example you are using is of a system supplanting the previous one instead of being alternate to.
That is a terrible example as a consequence because it fails to relate to the subject. You have to assume that raid rewards have to better out of some false assumption about the nature of the gear for these rewards leaning into the BiS problem and then consequently being sought only for path of least resistance.
And that immediately shows exactly how you keep ignoring things. Because we can go right back to literally the first post in the thread, as was mentioned multiple times, to observe the suggestion that each respective activity have rewards that relate to that track instead of there being an outright BiS. IE, raid gear would be best for raiding while quest gear would be best for progression of quest tracks, etc.
This is again exemplified by your crafting commentary, and yes indeed the irony exists in there when you can acknowledge the idea that crafting rewards could have bonuses and perks that are unique to them and benefits it directly without supplanting anything you'd get from another progression track because the perk is applicable to that specific track.
In other words, it is exactly representative of how you don't see the problem in your argument, because you can perceive the issue in one situation, then suddenly lose sight of it the moment you observe any other part that exists within the same scope.
The problem with your argument against top level soloing, is that consuming new narrative content and quest chains is one of the few recurring elements that actually brings back players. Major expansions and story content updates have driven purchases and players seeking to resub to the likes of WoW, SWtoR, LotRO, etc. The addition of new unique classes, zones to explore, all that breadth of content to consume.
And then when they consume it, and all that's left is "raids", they leave again because they stopped being catered to again. Because raids are not what most players are interested in, and no matter how much you suggest tweaking them about, they will not affect the broad scope of player retention that does not give a damn about them. In other words, progression in end game tracks outside raids really in the first place is the only thing you have for expanding player retention.
Don't go making up straw men to suit your needs. The problem was put forth for you already multiple times. The fact that there's not much to do other than raid and endgame is a symptom, not once have I blamed raids specifically for anything. I do believe I have actually TOLD YOU MULTIPLE TIMES the issue as I perceive it is that the scope of most MMOs tends to get neglected and consequently only a narrow band of viable continued gameplay is left at "end-game" for people to continue with. If the different activities and elements of the game that players had enjoyed up to the point of capping out their experience in that track suddenly dries, up, they no longer have reason to stay in the game. Hence, when all that's left for players that want other activities to do is raid, then they have no reason to stay in the game.
Indeed, more of the same won't do. That's why raids are so terrible. Because they are fundamentally more of the same, and in such a narrow band that almost no one cares for it.
To which given your question about MMOs focused on raids and your end claim about how few have raids, I have to counter with the question of what MMOs you're thinking of, as I cannot honestly recall a single MMO since the early 2000s that didn't lazily lean on that crutch. I would literally be going down almost the entire list of games on this site.
Topsy turvy logic indeed. If you cannot follow any of this, can you at least restate clearly what your perceived problem is by itself to be addressed, since as of right now it seems mostly you cling to the path of least resistance argument without ever addressing the repeated point of "collecting gear for one track in the game does not equate to having the best gear for another track", meaning raiding remains relevant to raiders just as much as ever, but other players would also have a more meaningful track for their own user experience.
Make your top-tier items crafted recipes where the drops required come from raids.
This provides options for obtaining said gear, all of which are equally rigorous, albeit in different ways.
Personally I think no gear should EVER drop directly from enemies. They should always drop materials that you can use to either craft the gear, have someone craft it for you, or you sell the item to buy something else instead. Much more flexible system.
I am not sure how much of a savior raiding is to grouping. It is small repetitive bit content. I think having a lot more long CoOp quest would be helpful. Maybe a long quest instances that is broken into check points.
Right now I can only dabble in themeparks. Quest are generally boring making progression boring. End game raids and dailies are boring and annoying. I have a hard time getting my son or friends to play them. Sad shjt for real.
Allow me to have the luxury of a second paragraph just to say you are rather good at long posts yourself.
Also have some dispute with your community jab, as we can argue the case that raiding as it tends to exist is not conducive to social gaming, since it's highly structured and often stressful content for those involved, and when it is all instanced and nothing players involved in raids does is able to bleed out to affect the broader community, it instead creates a division between the niche of raiders versus the rest of the player base. Ironically, the crux of where much of the gripes about elitism or ill perceptions of people wanting other elements of the game to be relevant, because it's a clique at war with it's own game's community.
Which is to point that from outside that clique, the perception is that things that add relevance to other aspects of the game serves to broaden the community interaction within it. The antithetical claim to what you've made. This antithetical also has some logical merit in my opinion, as you have to consider, if a system does not actively touch other systems within a game, it cannot further social goals beyond itself. Crafting, world events, even simple exploration has more social components than being squirreled away in an instanced environment collecting loot you can't or won't share. Hell, you could even include elements in the single player quest track that was brought up which could see the player turning to some other part of the community temporarily to solve that part of the quest.
As long as something like raiding exists in a isolated microcosm, it is not a social hub for the game. It's at best a clique.
And ESO actually has demonstration some close viability regarding what's been discussed actually. Their zone item sets and bonuses have comparative value and some sets like the Night Mother's is used alongside dungeon and vet/trial gear. This includes too how crafted sets are also often components of player builds for even endgame. It's an active example already of how collecting gear from different tracks in the game. It's not an unproven system as you claim.
The only unique value there was extending the distinction between gear obtained from different parts of the game so that they have more uniquely defined use-cases applicable to those specific segments of the game world. A suggestion made specifically to emphasize the creation of value in doing things like running raids specifically for ranking raid gear up, as that'd be the best way to prepare yourself for increased tiers within that portion of the game. Meanwhile, doing zone exploration and quest activities or what not would unlock gear that would grant specific unique bonuses/traits to benefit progression into new parts of the zone or next stage of a quest chain.
This was explained to you previously, yet again making me bring up the point of you having been ignoring things this whole time. As adamantly as you want to claim otherwise, it seems likely to be a form of confirmation bias given blindness to things that would sit outside your interpretation of it all.
거북이는 목을 내밀 때 안 움직입니다
At least when the guy above told us we shouldn't bother debating with the raid-only crowd he gave an opinion relevant to the dialogue instead of a random personal attack.
I don't attack your comments and I don't sit there randomly loling posts, though I have noticed you do have a passive aggressive tendency to do that given I can check my profile stats. Should we hop in there and tally up how often it's just you smashing that lol button for no reason?
You really need to get over whatever this grudge is you're holding onto.
Having the only means of progressing being the thing that most people don't want to do sounds weird to me.
Only 1% may beat that hardest raid content but who cares about that if only 10% even want to try.
The attempted comparison to real life and "only the elite should get this" mentality is a hard fallacy considering we're talking about a video game which is inherently about having fun/enjoyment.
Also, I don't think anyone would want to be just outright given these things for no effort, but there is a desire to do something new/different instead of the same old thing we've been doing since the late 80's.
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At some point, the journey reaches a termination point. If you include endless progression, you either have to keep churning out endless content, or you have to scale existing content (and repeat it over and over), which begins to make the endless progression seem rather superfluous.
Devs can't create quality content at a fast enough rate to make any gaming experience "endless" without extreme repetition or unreasonable amounts of personnel needed to keep a flow of GM-created content going. The repetitive content at the end becomes the "endgame."
I take Blue Turtle's point about raids not evolving, but how much have MMORPG's evolved? Where they have it is in the wrong direction, too easy, too solo, too small. But yes, raids need something new just like every other aspect does.
The ESO example (the one that I am supposed to have read before but just saw above) is interesting. But I think the solo and raid gear may be too similar, Limnic is clearly a solo enthusiast, would like to hear what a raider thinks about this system. My concern would be that if the solo questing gear is too close to the raid gear players will start to ask 'why bother to raid'? Not saying you are lying Limnic, but I would like to hear the raider side of the argument as well.
But the answer to "why should raid be the best activity" is not just its the hardest, it is the social activity which again seems to be lost on some of our posters. I would suggest that maybe some posters have raided in the wrong sort of guild for them? I have always been in guilds where community and roleplaying are put before elite nonsense. Maybe that's why they think this is all about being elite? Presuming they even play in a guild that is. Raids are a social event, relaxed and when I think sometimes there were teenagers who should not of been playing according to the games rules, it was a family rated event.
Perhaps that's what is at the bottom of this, if you see raids as stressful events and have no other experience of good grouping then it is no wonder you seek an alterative. This is not the first time I have suggested as a solution to various issues players in MMOs have, find a good guild and the problem is sorted.
Crafters can craft the best gear with these materials, the better the materials the better the product. These products can be tailored towards any specialisation or situation, raider gear, crafter gear, explorer gear, fire resistance gear etc. etc.
Explorers find the best crafting recipes and maps for dungeons/raids so raiders can raid and crafters can craft(dynamic placement of dungeons and raids is still a dream of mine). Explorers need protection from raiders and gear from crafters though.
And no gear drops besides the most basic stuff. Combined with item degradation and you get some interesting interdependence going on.
/Cheers,
Lahnmir
Kyleran on yours sincerely
'But there are many. You can play them entirely solo, and even offline. Also, you are wrong by default.'
Ikcin in response to yours sincerely debating whether or not single-player offline MMOs exist...
'This does not apply just to ED but SC or any other game. What they will get is Rebirth/X4, likely prettier but equally underwhelming and pointless.
It is incredibly difficult to design some meaningfull leg content that would fit a space ship game - simply because it is not a leg game.
It is just huge resource waste....'
Gdemami absolutely not being an armchair developer
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User made content is not a bad idea but you need some serious vetting process to keep it honest.
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?”
― CD PROJEKT RED
I'm not big on raiding, but also not against it. I simply find it as a self-contained experience walled off from the rest of the game to not contribute back to the overall scope of most any MMOs experience. It's it's own activity and community, a weird little microcosm instead of being integrated in a manner the bulk of the game's community can interact with or benefit from. It's only a social activity to that small group of people you are raiding with and fails to connect at all to the larger community of the game.
That's where the problem kind of crops up in my eyes, if the "community" of a game suddenly shrinks down to only a handful of people, it invalidates the point of being an MMO to me. I have to be able to reach beyond that small scope of users to participate in the broader ecosystem. And consequently, that game should have a broader ecosystem.
And I would point to the article I linked you earlier that discusses the stress around raiding that has high tier-raiders discussing how it affects them.
Not to contradict myself, but I personally raid solely for "community" as well. I have never been a gung-ho raider and while I do enjoy a challenge, I tend to play PvP or just hard single player games if I want such. On the few occasions I am grinding for gear, it's dominantly for cosmetic purposes as I enjoy collecting things. Consequently, the only reason I ever raid on any kind of regular basis is because there are people I want to play the game with, not because I enjoy raiding itself. But as I just stated in this post, if the people I raid with are the only people I play with, then it defeats the purpose of being an MMO for me because the community has suddenly shrunk down to something that'd fit on a generic lobby shooter.
So please don't make assumptions.
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I've been playing CoH lately and I can already see the extreme long-term goal of getting your personal perfect set of enhancements for another example. Also, getting all of the badges that grant bonuses.
When FFXI released new content it never invalidated the prior expansion, it built on it. This is a design philosophy that is TOTALLY lost on games like WoW and FFXIV. ESO and GW2 do a better job, with ESO being the best in that regard.
ESO honestly has the single best progression/endgame of any game in the last 10 years. I have issues with other aspects which is why I don't actively play/sub.....but that is certainly not one of them. You know what the key is? Long-term goals/progression. The champion point system is great, and the lack of level-cap increases means when new gear sets come out they are about flexibility/building on the foundation not invalidating it.
E.g gear, AA, recipes, maybe temp skills.
So how do we get them?
No matter what we do it will be repeating content because that's what end game means. You've run out of content. So far there is raids, repeatable quests, camping, non raid dungeon crawls, generated quests (coh missions)... Hmm that it?
Most of that is great for AA but isn't really on par to the difficulty of raids for getting that really great something. What would a really difficult on par with raid creating thing look like?
Maybe something like in Istaria where building aT6 dragon grand hall requires about 6 million units.
In that game all you get is the hall but what if that gave a special machine that gave bonuses to the great you crafted or let you get special ore?
What would you do for the others?