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Why is it all a numbers game now?
UknownAspect
Member Posts: 277
I enjoy playing mmos for the game they provide. The lore, the class mechanics, and the world. Why have the majority of gamers turned this all into a numbers game. Who's the best tank? Who has the best dps? Who has the best heals?
I don't care about that at all and it seems that todays gamer cares about nothing but that. Ffs, this rips all the joy out of the game and I hate playing with these kids.
What's in store for mmos if the only thing that matters is numbers numbers numbers.
I don't care about that at all and it seems that todays gamer cares about nothing but that. Ffs, this rips all the joy out of the game and I hate playing with these kids.
What's in store for mmos if the only thing that matters is numbers numbers numbers.
MMOs played: Horizons, Auto Assault, Ryzom, EVE, WAR, WoW, EQ2, LotRO, GW, DAoC, Aion, Requiem, Atlantica, DDO, Allods, Earth Eternal, Fallen Earth, Rift
Willing to try anything new
Comments
To an extent, it's always been about numbers, since these games work based on numbers.
I was playing with min-maxers in AD&D all the way back in the early 80's. It's never going to change.
Hell hath no fury like an MMORPG player scorned.
I agree for the most part. I don't think they are ALL kids persay. Its understandable in high end "pro" raiding but yeah I hear your point that it gets a little stupid sometimes. It's almost impossible to roleplay or even feel like your character might be somewhat of an original build. I responded to this post because I think your point is the main reason I am so hooked on Xsyon at the moment. I pre-ordered Rift and was into it a few days... then realized that already people are demanding certain builds, even for the first thru third instance.. Everyone wants to be the flavor of the month and the few that resist are outcasted lol..
Its because of the way RPGs work, they demand optimization in their mechanics, the players are just playing the way the mechanics make them.
I mean you have games that are very stat driven and not very player driven so the way you build your character is more than personal preference but of paramount importance. Then you have combat mechanics where you largely use the same strategy (tank and spank) all the time, which means you have specific roles needed to do this strategy. Combined you have a game where there is one way to play (soloing and PvP are more flexible), three or four specific roles needed to play that way and a strong focus on stats meaning you will have a couple of best builds to do those roles so you can more effectively do the one strategy that you apply to everything with little variation.
RPG mechanics demand an obssesion with numbers to do well.
All men think they're fascinating. In my case, it's justified
I think it's about older culture vs. newer culture. Back in the day, we grew up with stories. Whether it was books, or comic books, or radio (when I was very young there was a station that still played The Shadow, and Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy started out as a radio program), or TV, it was all stories.
Not anymore, these days. It's all competition, everywhere you turn. I don't believe many in the younger generations read books much anymore. Some do, but not many, I believe. And TV doesn't have much in the way of stories anymore, with shows like Survivor, American Idol, The Biggest Loser, and the like dominating prime time. The kids are growing up with, "I'm better than you. I beat you. I'm the best!"
Naturally that is carrying over into games.
Playing | GW2
Wanting | Pantheon
Watching | Crowfall
Retired | WAR, Cabal, MO, CO, SHK, WoW, FFXIV: ARR
MMOs played: Horizons, Auto Assault, Ryzom, EVE, WAR, WoW, EQ2, LotRO, GW, DAoC, Aion, Requiem, Atlantica, DDO, Allods, Earth Eternal, Fallen Earth, Rift
Willing to try anything new
Stuff
MMOs are driven by getting stuff, the people that get help you get the most stuff are the most valuable to you. Other people may do a fine job but the ones that help you get the most stuff the fastest are always better. When you make the game all about rewards you will see this corporate mentality more often.
All men think they're fascinating. In my case, it's justified
There is some benefit to developers in creating games that are stat driven and allowing players to see how much damage each ability does and whether build A or build B does more damage/healing/etc. Perhaps it attracts more people or people expect it to be there, even if they aren't going to use it to the Nth degree. It kind of follows naturally that at some point all those optimized builds need to be used somewhere that isn't PvP, so your encounters, at least at the top end get tuned with the idea that players do X dps and healers can heal X dps, etc.
I think it would be pretty awesome to have a game with the customization and builds, but without knowing exactly how much damage you're doing. You have to have some indicators, but maybe just not actual numbers or logs. Perhaps your performance would be much more in the choices you made...for instance the bosses have particular weaknesses that you have to exploit instead of being able to do X dps. I'm not sure how much of a draw that kind of game would have though.
Would WoW work without the in depth logging and real time damage monitors?
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
No. Optimizing numbers are fun. That is why ADULT gamers are theorycrafting, and writing sophiscated software (like simcraft and rawr .. which involvces stochastic modeling & optimization) to get better numbers.
If you don't like the number game, don't play it. There are plenty who do.
No. Optimizing numbers are fun. That is why ADULT gamers are theorycrafting, and writing sophiscated software (like simcraft and rawr .. which involvces stochastic modeling & optimization) to get better numbers.
If you don't like the number game, don't play it. There are plenty who do.
That has nothing to do with "ADULT". I know a few teenie boppers that could model rings around most "ADULTS", including me...and I happen to work as a performance analyst modeling numbers and trends.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
Young men in competition with each other will always find a way to compare their success with others. Current MMOs are all about advancement (which attracts young men) and are rife with numbers. That combination makes an ideal environment for young men to compare their numbers with others to see how they're doing in the competitive environment.
If you want to try to get away from the numbers, remove levels and experience points, then make the success of a player in combat dependent on his own skills. Once you've done that, players will focus on how much money they have, how many NPCs they control, where they are on the duel ladder, etc. Young men will make the comparisons no matter how the game is structured. The best you can do is to create an environment where this instinct to compare success doesn't dominate the game environment.
And I wonder why it's so simple numbers game, why no one has made game like AO again, where there is much deeper and complex network of numbers and items...
It is all numbers now because people have the attention span of flys. People in general are shallow self absorbed oxygen thieves who only seek contact with others that can benefit themselves. The days of people playing like you did in AD&D with characters who might not have had the best stats but you learned to make that character work are gone. Playing a toon without the best stats and gear requires too much of work for the modern gamer.
Every game has min-maxers. Games are a competiton for some.People that play a game to be the best requires they find the fastest route to victory or domination. me i like to just chill and take my time.
The reason it's about numbers is because it's about balancing encounters for difficulty.
If an encounter is balanced around a bunch of non-optimized people attempting it, then optimized people completely obliterate the encounter. It becomes way too easy and holds nobody's interest.
And as things progress, as toons get more and more powerful, small differences are magnified. In the extreme example, suppose you have a tank that mitigates 90% of damage compared to a tank that mitigates 95% of damage. The one that only mitigates 90% is taking double the damage of the 95% tank. The same holds true all over though. The better your DPS, the shorter the encounter is, which reduces the burden on your healers' mana supply. The healers themselves better be optimized for you to have lasted that long in the encounter in the first place.
Whatever it is you're doing, there's a mathematical best way to do it. There's an ideal talent tree setup, ideal gemming, best gear, best enchantments, best ability rotation. Even if all these things are only 1% increases here and there, they still can add up to a huge bonus when combined.
And this is getting slightly off topic, but it extends past the theorycrafting and into perfect play as well. If you can do 10000 DPS, then sloppy movement around the encounter costs the raid 10000 damage every second you're out of position. If you're not mashing buttons or queuing up your next ability, the human reaction time can kill your DPS as well. 200ms reaction time is really significant when talking about damage per second.
If it didn't matter, nobody would care and everybody could play what they wanted. But the difference between a great player and a mediocre one really is night and day. That's why numbers matter.
"Gamers will no longer buy the argument that every MMO requires a subscription fee to offset server and bandwidth costs. It's not true you know it, and they know it." -Jeff Strain, co-founder of ArenaNet, 2007
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
Part of it is human nature, the other part is the nature of the games themselves.
MMOs are based on D&D and it was the P&P RPG most based on numbers and it have always been filled with twinks. If you made a MMO based on Runequest things would be different even if some people still would be as usual.
Hopefully will WoDO be different, it is at least in P&P.
If you want to avoid min-maxing, you run tabletop RPGs with a group of like-minded gamers. (Even the much-criticized D&D 4th Ed. is going to be w
As for videogame RPGs you can either view it as they've alwasy been about numbers and progression (it's sort of the point of these types of games: offsetting the need for playerskill by having numbers matter instead) --or-- you can view it as "RPing used to happen in videogame RPGs" in which case the counter-argument is "It still does."
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
It just depends on what you want. If you want to be the best in something like DPS or PvP or whatever, you have to do the numbercrunching to find the most effective tactics. If you play in a more lenient guild or just for yourself, you can choose to cast a fireball because you think it fits to your character, not caring if you'd do 20% more DPS if you'd cast a lightning bolt instead.
Let's play Fallen Earth (blind, 300 episodes)
Let's play Guild Wars 2 (blind, 45 episodes)
BTW, you guys know that it is NOT possible not turning it into a number games, right?
Since every game is moderated by computer code, it is always possible to backward engineer the rules, and analyze them with math.
Not possible? Or not possible in diku?
See you in the dream..
The Fires from heaven, now as cold as ice. A rapid ascension tolls a heavy price.
Perhaps it's not possible to completely eliminate numbers, but it IS possible to mitigate their importance. Many old stand-alone RPGs were VERY story driven. Stats and playing numbers was important, but it was very subtle and drawn out. There were obviously skills and items that were better than another, but again it was after a substantial period of time till you gain a much better skill/item or the differance was so small, it didn't matter.
Now RPGs, especially in MMOs, are "gain 2 levels, MUST buy much better weapon, get this skill and this skill because that skill sucks and no one will ever use it, do this and that... gain 2 levels, do it all over again." MMOs have become more methodical and bare-bones, more objective. Unlike RPGs in the old days that hid this through story and drawing it out over hours of play time and possibly 10 or so levels. And by that, I don't mean in terms of "X time" because MMOs make you spend 10 hours to get 2 levels THEN upgrade. RPGs use to make you gain 10 levels over 10 hours then MAYBE you might find a better weapon. Unless you do some hard puzzle/mini-boss. I remember using one weapon for 20 levels across 3 bosses on some RPGs, just because it was good and I made it work. Weapons use to stretch itself across stats, but not so much any more... again, more objective and made for optimization, not custimization or skill to make something work.
My problems with today's MMOs: 1. No REAL story, it's hard to find a MMO with a strong story-driven core.
2. The game progresses VERY slowly. I don't want to grind for 5 hours just so I can level and gain 2 new quests or one story related dungeon... before grinding for another 6-10 hours. If game-developers can't make leveling story-progressed or the story moves too quickly for the levels, they're doing something wrong.
3. Too much emphasis on "builds" and "equipment." If a skill is useless and no one will use it, then why is it in the game? Game-developers need to balance skills to not be vastly superior to one another and force a set, optimal build. I want to personally figure out what MIGHT be better, skill A or skill B, and make that skill work for me. Not be forced "oh B is 100x worse because it does 10x less damage and never has a chance to proc."
4. Classes. Classes are fun, but the archtypes are getting old, fast. It's the EXACT same classes with the EXACT same skills. And don't give me "there are 3 archtypes in a party" because that is crap. Yes there will always be a tank, a healer and a DPS. But there are MANY ways to do that, not who can mitigate the most damage or do the most damage. Why not have an avoidance tank? Why not a tank who just out rights controls the enemy's movement? Why does the tank ALWAYS have to be a Knight or Warrior with massive armor. Where's the battle-mage who can kick ass with a sword? Where's the fun, goofy classes like the Calculator from FFT? Classes that only work when you have the SKILL to make it work, not because you have a set build. Where's the new flavor? I'm tired of the same 4 classes getting reskinned and the same 10 skills renamed.
Perhaps it's not possible to completely eliminate numbers, but it IS possible to mitigate their importance. Many old stand-alone RPGs were VERY story driven. Stats and playing numbers was important, but it was very subtle and drawn out. There were obviously skills and items that were better than another, but again it was after a substantial period of time till you gain a much better skill/item or the differance was so small, it didn't matter.
Now RPGs, especially in MMOs, are "gain 2 levels, MUST buy much better weapon, get this skill and this skill because that skill sucks and no one will ever use it, do this and that... gain 2 levels, do it all over again." MMOs have become more methodical and bare-bones, more objective. Unlike RPGs in the old days that hid this through story and drawing it out over hours of play time and possibly 10 or so levels.
My problems with today's MMOs: 1. No REAL story, it's hard to find a MMO with a strong story-driven core.
2. The game progresses VERY slowly. I don't want to grind for 5 hours just so I can level and gain 2 new quests or one story related dungeon... before grinding for another 6-10 hours. If game-developers can't make leveling story-progressed or the story moves too quickly for the levels, they're doing something wrong.
3. Too much emphasis on "builds" and "equipment." If a skill is useless and no one will use it, then why is it in the game? Game-developers need to balance skills to not be vastly superior to one another and force a set, optimal build. I want to personally figure out what MIGHT be better, skill A or skill B, and make that skill work for me. Not be forced "oh B is 100x worse because it does 10x less damage and never has a chance to proc."
4. Classes. Classes are fun, but the archtypes are getting old, fast. It's the EXACT same classes with the EXACT same skills. And don't give me "there are 3 archtypes in a party" because that is crap. Yes there will always be a tank, a healer and a DPS. But there are MANY ways to do that, not who can mitigate the most damage or do the most damage. Why not have an avoidance tank? Why not a tank who just out rights controls the enemy's movement? Why does the tank ALWAYS have to be a Knight or Warrior with massive armor. Where's the battle-mage who can kick ass with a sword? Where's the fun, goofy classes like the Calculator from FFT? Classes that only work when you have the SKILL to make it work, not because you have a set build. Where's the new flavor? I'm tired of the same 4 classes getting reskinned and the same 10 skills renamed.
Perhaps it's not possible to completely eliminate numbers, but it IS possible to mitigate their importance. Many old stand-alone RPGs were VERY story driven. Stats and playing numbers was important, but it was very subtle and drawn out. There were obviously skills and items that were better than another, but again it was after a substantial period of time till you gain a much better skill/item or the differance was so small, it didn't matter.
Now RPGs, especially in MMOs, are "gain 2 levels, MUST buy much better weapon, get this skill and this skill because that skill sucks and no one will ever use it, do this and that... gain 2 levels, do it all over again." MMOs have become more methodical and bare-bones, more objective. Unlike RPGs in the old days that hid this through story and drawing it out over hours of play time and possibly 10 or so levels.
My problems with today's MMOs: 1. No REAL story, it's hard to find a MMO with a strong story-driven core.
2. The game progresses VERY slowly. I don't want to grind for 5 hours just so I can level and gain 2 new quests or one story related dungeon... before grinding for another 6-10 hours. If game-developers can't make leveling story-progressed or the story moves too quickly for the levels, they're doing something wrong.
3. Too much emphasis on "builds" and "equipment." If a skill is useless and no one will use it, then why is it in the game? Game-developers need to balance skills to not be vastly superior to one another and force a set, optimal build. I want to personally figure out what MIGHT be better, skill A or skill B, and make that skill work for me. Not be forced "oh B is 100x worse because it does 10x less damage and never has a chance to proc."
4. Classes. Classes are fun, but the archtypes are getting old, fast. It's the EXACT same classes with the EXACT same skills. And don't give me "there are 3 archtypes in a party" because that is crap. Yes there will always be a tank, a healer and a DPS. But there are MANY ways to do that, not who can mitigate the most damage or do the most damage. Why not have an avoidance tank? Why not a tank who just out rights controls the enemy's movement? Why does the tank ALWAYS have to be a Knight or Warrior with massive armor. Where's the battle-mage who can kick ass with a sword? Where's the fun, goofy classes like the Calculator from FFT? Classes that only work when you have the SKILL to make it work, not because you have a set build. Where's the new flavor? I'm tired of the same 4 classes getting reskinned and the same 10 skills renamed.
Perhaps it's not possible to completely eliminate numbers, but it IS possible to mitigate their importance. Many old stand-alone RPGs were VERY story driven. Stats and playing numbers was important, but it was very subtle and drawn out. There were obviously skills and items that were better than another, but again it was after a substantial period of time till you gain a much better skill/item or the differance was so small, it didn't matter.
Now RPGs, especially in MMOs, are "gain 2 levels, MUST buy much better weapon, get this skill and this skill because that skill sucks and no one will ever use it, do this and that... gain 2 levels, do it all over again." MMOs have become more methodical and bare-bones, more objective. Unlike RPGs in the old days that hid this through story and drawing it out over hours of play time and possibly 10 or so levels.
My problems with today's MMOs: 1. No REAL story, it's hard to find a MMO with a strong story-driven core.
2. The game progresses VERY slowly. I don't want to grind for 5 hours just so I can level and gain 2 new quests or one story related dungeon... before grinding for another 6-10 hours. If game-developers can't make leveling story-progressed or the story moves too quickly for the levels, they're doing something wrong.
3. Too much emphasis on "builds" and "equipment." If a skill is useless and no one will use it, then why is it in the game? Game-developers need to balance skills to not be vastly superior to one another and force a set, optimal build. I want to personally figure out what MIGHT be better, skill A or skill B, and make that skill work for me. Not be forced "oh B is 100x worse because it does 10x less damage and never has a chance to proc."
4. Classes. Classes are fun, but the archtypes are getting old, fast. It's the EXACT same classes with the EXACT same skills. And don't give me "there are 3 archtypes in a party" because that is crap. Yes there will always be a tank, a healer and a DPS. But there are MANY ways to do that, not who can mitigate the most damage or do the most damage. Why not have an avoidance tank? Why not a tank who just out rights controls the enemy's movement? Why does the tank ALWAYS have to be a Knight or Warrior with massive armor. Where's the battle-mage who can kick ass with a sword? Where's the fun, goofy classes like the Calculator from FFT? Classes that only work when you have the SKILL to make it work, not because you have a set build. Where's the new flavor? I'm tired of the same 4 classes getting reskinned and the same 10 skills renamed.
There are still a lot of gamers out there who don't give a rats ass about numbers and just want to have fun. Elite dungeons go a long way to making it a numbers game but I tend to steer clear of those anyway.
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Generation P