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Rose Tinted Glasses: Fact, Fiction, Or Fabulous Facial Accessory?
Cuathon
Member Posts: 2,211
Turns out its all three.
Rose tinted glasses is a popular derogatory term used to attack those of us who enjoyed older style MMOs or the rare and often not shut down MMO with special mechanics, generally those involved in base building, open world pvp, or crazy complex economics.
If you have ever made a thread or post about your love for SWG, UO, DAOC, or Shadowbane chances are you have been hit with the accustation fo wearing rose tinted glasses. Its happened to me quite a bit, and sad to say its not true, I wish I had them, they are tres populare with the ladies.
The thrust of this accusation is that you only like those games because you played them first and thus you assign the value of of novelty to the games mechanics instead of your own newfound wonder. It couldn't possibly be because personally you liked being a merhcant or a crafter or a researcher. It can't be that you like the intensity of perma death or only slightly less serious risks from death. It doesn't matter if you played EQ in 1998, WoW in late 2004, and only got into DAOC or UO in 2005. That kind of thing never happens in the vision of people without fabulous eyewear.
Now obviously most of us don't believe that rose tinted glasses can explain our desire for the more experimental pre WoW age of MMOs. Are we right? Turns out the answer is not a simple yes or no. Assuming that there is no significant other difference between two games, rose colored glasses can have a powerful effect. Why? Been there, done that, and no long term emotional investment.
When the somewhat misnamed WoW clones hit release ,many players will flock to the game only to burn out in a couple months and head back to WoW. Yes, ironically WoW players are the primary group of gamers who we can be sure are afflicted with pink world views. Why is this? Because games like SWTOR and WAR are close enough to WoW that you have had the vast majority of their experience already playing WoW. And in WoW you have that novelty bonus and you have also been playing it for years, investing much of your emotional capital there.
Why does this not apply to UO, or Shadowbane, or EvE and other more unique games? Because the amount of powered possessed by the nostalgia phenomenon is not significant enough to overcome feature based differences. Games like EvE and Shadowbane simply aren't made anymore. SWG has no spiritual successor, aside from The Repopulation which isn't really out yet. 3 faction DAOC pvp and realm warfare doesn't exist. Modern games do not put significant class differences into each faction.
When was the last time a game focused as much on crafting as EvE or SWG came out? Compare that to how many games with extensive solo content, end game raid focus, and multiple arena based PvP maps have been made post WoW. Quite a bit of difference no?
Rose tinted glasses have power, but its not the overwhelming force argued for by new school gamers. It can only make decisions between games that are nearly identical.
The reason many people are upset about the state of MMOs is because the glorious variance of yesteryear has gone by the wayside. Just try and convince a serious company to make something that is highly deviant from the WoW model. Are they identical to WoW? No. But its close enough.
Economic gameplay has been relegated to indie games like Wurm and ATITD and to older games maintained by companies who aren't run by greedy men with MBAs like EvE. And god forbid you want an EvE style game but don't like spaceships, or you don't want to play a game that resets every year like ATITD.
I do have some nostalgia for my Tibia years as my first MMO, but not enough that I would play it over games that are in the genres of MMO that I prefer such as economic games and base builders. I enjoyed my years with friends in Guild Wars as my first AAA quality graphics MMO but I don't want to go back to instanced gameplay with boring crafting and only 8 skills. Yet by the argument of rose tinted glasses I should want to play Guild Wars way more than I want to play SWG or ATITD or Wurm.
What do you guys think? I know which posters I really want to weigh in, but I'll take the rest of you guys too 
Comments
That has absolutely nothing to do with what I posted. I was not arguing that certain games should be made. I was discussing the claim that people who like certain games only like them because it was the first MMO they played, hence the title being rose tinted glasses. Please exercise some reading comprehension next time.
Say your dream is a daoc cause it holds fond memories. But frankly you would probably be bored with a doac release version with updated graphic. Most likely for ine of two reasons 1) missing current game tech or 2) not enough people would be playing. Thus leads me to believe people really do not like the old game as much as the espouse just the idea if it.
I had fun with those EQ 1 servers that only released content from the first game/expansion, until they got up to like crazy "can solo everything and anything" expansions like now a days.
Opinion of the original EQ didn't change at all.
Same for trying out those private UO servers, hell the made it better with more options/classes.
Playing crap like GW2 where you're max level in an instant with almost zero effort and are supposed to just play pvp forever and ever since there's no end game or anything else to do in the game makes me hate current ones more and more..
I love an idea, but I generally never find much satisfaction with the actual results.
Does anyone else besides me feel this way towards anything?
It's like how I love the concept behind a certain video game franchise (no names), but I'm generally disappointed by the actual execution of the concept, especially in the story department, or just indifferent to it at best.
OP. Give it two to four more years. These people whose first MMo was WoW or a post WoW MMO will eventaully figure all this stuff out. It just takes them longer to get a real understanding of the MMOs we play. It took some of us an hour to see how shallow Guild Wars 2 is. It took the rest of them a few months. The only thing they'll never know is how fulfilling older MMOs were. Communities in general and being social and making friends were required in MMOs. Now they're all single player and force feed you instance rewards making them meaningless. The days where you'd speed months getting to level 30 or 40 in a game with a max level of 80 or 100 seem to be long gone. We have nothing but business men controling these MMOs rather than gamers. Even with GW2's flaws, I tried for a total of nearly 6 hours over the course of two weeks to chat with people to form a party. Not a single person wanted to form a team. GW2 possibly has the most anti social community I've ever seen.
I really really hope this industry dies soon. Then all these companies can make their facebook games and 5 dollar apps and their single player fanbase can go with them. Then maybe there will be room for games that are actually made to be the best they can be instead of just playable "rat and light switch" games. Current game devs aren't going to fix this mess because most MMO players are used to these mediocre games and can't even begin to imagine what a good MMO is like. Hell, even with a mediocre MMO, all you need is a decent community. A decent community comes about when the game requires you to work together or even work together against other groups of people. If the game is one big cakewalk, everyone will just walk it alone because we're all sheep playing the game devs silly game.
/nonsense rant
Good thing that has nothing to do with my thread then huh? Whether or not certain kinds of MMOs should be made has nothing to do with my topic. We are talking about why people WANT certain MMOs. My argument being that it is not rose tinted glasses that are the main reason.
I've used the term 'Rose Tinted Glasses' on here from time to time but I usually reserve it for a certain type of fanatical devotion to a subject. When I use it is usually when the flaws of a game have not only been mentioned by myself and others but proof of said flaws have been also presented in a factual maner. If even in the face of actual factual evidence a person still chooses not to believe that said game has these flaws or tries to dismiss them as something totally nonrelated then I pull out the rose tinted glasses comment and will usually stop discussing with them at this point as it becomes painfully obvious that to continue would be pointless. I don't have to use it often but I do when it's one of these special little snowflakes that I described above.
Bren
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"I'll bite. Yeah, rose tinted glasses do play a role. Feel free to find some puppies after you're done reading
It'd be interesting if a survey was held or would be held if people thought their first year(s) of MMO gaming were their best, no matter when they started. And if the first MMO they really enjoyed, was still on the first or second spot of best MMO gameplay experience of all their MMO gaming life. I expect the percentage that answers those questions with yes, based on the accounts of MMO gamers on various forums, will be far higher than a simple 'that 1st game was a better one' would account for. Ofc, it remains guesswork since there is no such survey.
There are research projects however that determined that for most people, their music taste gets 'anchored' in their first formative years of engaged music listening, in their teens up till early '20s. The music trends that manage to steal their hearts in that period of time'll remain their bias and most favored, what comes later doesn't touch us that intensely anymore. Of course, there'll always be exceptions but those were the patterns that those reports laid bare.
Personally, I'm guessing it's kinda like with sex: the intensity and excitement peak that each sex encounter delivers in those first years or those first times that you experience something new is higher on average than later years when you've done it a 100-200+ times. Sure, sex'll always be fun no matter when. But man, those first sex partners, or the sex in those first months with your current partner...
So yeah, I'm guessing nostalgia and rose tinted glasses do play a role, in how some regard their first year(s) of MMO gaming with later on, how much will differ from one person to the next.There's also the automatic filtering. Some blogs and articles talked about it, how there have been gamers that tried MMO's with UO and EQ, got turned off by the mechanics, left MMO's behind them, only to step in it again and got really excited about them when WoW appeared. Those that liked the mechanics of the UO/EQ type of MMO's stuck around, those that didn't left or got what they were looking for when WoW came around.
That's how I see it. Feel free to disagree
The 'rose tinted glasses' or 'first love syndrome' is btw not something that only affects 1st generation MMO gamers (one gamer more than another), it ofc by its very nature also affects those many millions who started playing MMO's since WoW and for whom WoW was their first MMO. Your first real love, whether it's music, a relationship or an MMO, people'll be inclined psychologically to always be more mellow towards it due to the newness and heightened intensity of impressions that newfound pleasures often leave.
I disagree with the statement that diversity isn't improving - I'm assuming btw that people're talking about the top/AAA segment of MMO's, bc there has always been quite some diversity in the lower-than-AAA budget MMO scene. But if you look at the top segment, you'll see themepark MMO's that aren't 'WoW clones' (ofc, I fully realise that for themepark dislikers ALL themepark MMO's will ALWAYS be 'WoW clones') with lots of differing mechanics, you have a number of MMOFPS type games that'll enter the scene, and you even have themepark/sandbox hybrids and sandbox MMO's to be expected in the top segment within the next 1-3 years. That's more diversity in MMO types and feature mechanics than we've seen in the past 6 years and more.
It's true that MMO gamers who crave certain MMO mechanics have had little choice of those the past years, when those AAA sandbox and hybrid MMO's arrive we'll see how many of those there actually are and if those MMO's with the mechanics they've been craving for will really bring them what they're looking for. After all, a themepark fan won't also automatically love any AAA themepark MMO, and sometimes they love an MMO but the community isn't there to make them really have fun in it, making them return to a former MMO like WoW which as a game they might maybe like less than that new MMO, but that's where their friends are. I expect that that behavior won't be that different when it comes to the sandbox MMO scene. Maybe there'll be people who'll be chasing eternally after that sensation and feeling they experienced when they first started playing MMO's, forever be disappointed no matter what mechanics and features an MMO will bring to the table.But we'll see.
There is a bunch of stuff entering the scene NOW. But for almost a decade we haven't had anything. Its true that we had some AA stuff like LOTRO that isn't a WoW clone, but its still the same STYLE. Towns isn't a DF CLONE but its the same KIND of game. I would say genre but some people interpret that as being much broader than I do.
So while WAR and RIFT and SWTOR aren't clones in the way Yeti Town is a clone of Triple Town, they subscribe to the same philosophy of design. Casual, mostly single player, with a focus on endgame PVE raids and instanced PVP and with all factions have functionally identical classes.
Essentially, themeparks. Its true that people opposed to themeparks think of all of them as WoW clones. But what they really mean by WoW clones IS themeparks. So ignore the WoW clone part and just read it as themepark.
The other problem is that the rides in all themeparks do tend to be the same rides with new skins. None of the games have significantly different raid mechanics for instance.
MMOFPS games are not WoW clones. But they also aren't RPGs. Hence the different name. So you could say that we have some innovation in the MMO space, but not in the MMORPG space. And this is not mmofps.com is it?
The thing about the older games was that DAOC functioned significantly differently than EQ or SWG. That's what people want back. Not even necessarily the specific mechanics of a game. And yet they are still under the MMORPG umbrella.
GW was more of a diablo style game and D3 and GW1 aren't really massively multiplayer so much as coop lobbies.
The distinction between the main gameplay of Shadowbane, EvE, SWG, DAOC and EQ was much, much larger than the distinction between WAR, SWTOR, RIFT, WOW, etc.
Now we can't be sure about the games of the future really either. GW2 was disappointing, I'm so glad I didn't get on the hype train for that. Tera was similarly meh. TSW at least had some real differences in game style with skill wheels and weapons and with lore quests, although I would say it wasn't a big enough change for me, most of the rides are pretty much the same.
ArcheAge would be fabulous if we had a release date and I'm somewhat excited for the Repopulation. But the latter is an ATITD/WURM level indie game so it may or may not have some problems like DF and MO had. Its true that indie wise we had some nice games with DF/MO/WURM/ATITD coming out. And I played the latter 2 of those quite a bit.
But DF and MO suffered hard from their devs being too hobbyist imo. At least EvE hasn't sold out like DAOC and SWG did because of stupid suits.
This isn't really on the thread topic of rose colored glasses though.
And you aren't really arguing the thing I am arguing against in my post as I said in the other thread. Your argument is less reductive than the one I have learned to despise.
Another thing that many forget: a lot of the current features were implemented as solutions for issues, irritations and downright complaints that 1st generation MMO gamers had with that first batch of pre-WoW MMO's. Those may not have been the best solutions possible, as the many complaints here about these 'themepark' features attest to, but taking those away doesn't automatically make an MMO so much better. Take quests or quest based leveling away, and you think people'll be jumping for joy when they discover they need to mob grind to level again? Make solo leveling nigh impossible and reintroduce enforced grouping, and how many do you think'll stay when people have experienced a number of times they were doing nothing but waiting for 1 hr or more before they could find a group to level or do anything?As for the points in your new post. An MMOFPS is an MMORPG of the MMOFPS type, nobody thought Planetside any less an MMORPG than a CoH when they both came out. Maybe it was because of that larger diversity that people were more accepting back then of an MMOFPS also being an MMORPG, where as these days MMO's are being questioned and segmented in all kinds of subtypes.
I agree with that there was more diversity in those early years, everyone was experimenting still with that new genre that MMO was. But I'd say that after years, that diversity sees a return in the top segment, with a TSW and GW2 being very different themepark inspired MMO's than WoW, LotrO and SWTOR were, and with MMO's like Firefall, ArcheAge, Planetside 2, Defiance, Neverwinter and World of Darkness joining the bunch. EQ wasn't btw the only MMO that saw a lot of its players leave when EQ2 and WoW launched, as good as all other MMO's including SWG did too. Probably bc most MMO gamers didn't think 'oh, I've been playing this kind of MMO, so I only like this or that type of MMO' but were more like, 'that EQ2 or WoW sounds like fun, I want to give one of them a try!' And a number of those 1st generation MMO gamers stayed in EQ2 and WoW, regardless whether they played a non-sandbox MMO or sandbox MMO before. I think only if those other MMO's have arrived on the scene, we'll find out how much it has been a lacking of MMO's with those particular mechanics have been missing on the scene, and how much has been a nostalgic longing of some to a time when they enjoyed MMO gaming the most for various reasons of which not all of it can be caught purely in mechanics and features.It's the opposite.
Those games of yesterday that people wax nostalgic about really were that good. Has there ever been a MMO with as good a crafting/resource system of SWG? Nope. The only games close to that was Horizons, which is long dead, and EVE which is another old timer game.
Has any game come close to original EQ in terms of difficulty or community. Nope. That game, along with UO, put the genre on the map.
I feel bad for the players who got into MMOs around 5 years ago and whose first game was WOW or one of the WOW clones. You missed out on three of four incredible games. People who played UO or SWG or original EQ way back when or even Asheron's Call will tell you that none of the games today are even in the same ballpark as those games.
It's not rose colored glasses, those games were great. They started this genre. I don't even blame WOW. That was a great game when it was released as well. The only peoblem was that game companies put money ahead of creativity, which is their right, but they ended up taking this genre down a path that is now content with churning out WOW clones, or TOR flop-fests, or Guilw Wars 2 games for casual players.
Many people are arguing for RTG as the number one reason for old gamers disliking current MMOs. You may not, but its a constant refrain and not only in MMOs.
I like mob grinding, in WoW I would just sit and grind the same area over and over for mobs that drop cloth materials. Of course I quit, but not because of the grinding, I ground various things for months in ATITD to pick up mats. I quit because their economic and industrial game play is shit.
I dislike quests most of the time because a lot of quests just made you run all over the damn map to get that much faster exp. Which is why they invented fast travel, because quests were a fucking terrible idea.
Grinding mobs keeps you all in one spot so the grind is more obvious. If you use fast travel, most of questing is still running around chasing a fucking arrow. I am not trying out for the god damn steeple chase for fucks sake. If you took away the remaining running you would find that quest grinding is just as dumb as mob grinding.
In fact aren't most quests about grinding mobs? Kill 10x right? So quest grinding isn't just similar to mob grinding it IS mob grinding.
What's the other option? Fedex? That is just spending all your time running back and forth.
How many people blabbing this mob grinding shit even played EQ? Most of them are WoW players as their first game. They just don't realize that their vaunted quest grinding is in most cases literally the same activity as mob grinding.
If you played EQ and WoW you should know better than to think that quest grinding is different from mob grinding.
The ideal solution to remove the feeling of grind is to add new activities. That's what made economic and diplomatic and exploration game play so great. If you had each activity as fleshed out as combat you would have enough diversity to avoid the grindy feeling.
RTG is just a convenient go to argument for people who can't do real analysis. I'm and atheist and thusly a skeptic. This shit isn't gonna fly with me.
There were some real improvements in WoW. Mainly interface and ease of use as well as non isometric and other graphics improvements.
But the gameplay like quests and raids was just trying to hide the mob grinding under a thin film of bullshit.
This is also the trick with PvP. If a boss acts like a human its cheating and random and unfair. If a human acts like a human its not random and unfair, its being human.
I have to sit through boring boss and mob behavior because some people are too stupid to understand that human gameplay is random in the same way as a more complex rand% behavior tree in AI.
Ever seen anyone whine that a PvP was too hard? They do that with boss fights all the time. Because modern gamers are trained to expect PVE to be easy, and so they whine when its not.
Do these opinions make me elitist? Only in the same way as knowing that I am superior to 99% of Americans in math or reading comprehension does.
If you can be fooled by the story derived skin over mob grinding called quests, more power to you, I'm jealous. I can't sit around extolling the superiority of quests because I already know its a lie.
Of course questing can be another grind. Grind is when a repetitive activity becomes boring. Mob killing based leveling was exhilarating and fun for many the first 1000 hrs of gameplay. But after 3000-5000 hrs of playing MMO's? The fun for many became less and less, it became a grind. Posts and comments on forums and ingame enough that gave that indication. A fatigue settled in. The same with quest based leveling, at first it was embraced as a refreshing change from the mob grind, exhilarating in how it made leveling more interesting. But sure, after 3000-5000 hours of doing it like that, fatigue of it'll make it less and less fun for many too, and makes it into a grind.
Personally, I like the long travel times, death penalty, harsh difficulty, and so on. But I can also see how a number of those features and mechanics as seen in those early MMO's will be a deterrance for both newer MMO gamers as well as 1st generation MMO gamers. So no, I don't think RTG is insignificant, it plays a role. Of course will more variation in ingame activities and more depth to them make an MMO more interesting, but I apply that to both 1st generation MMO features as well as WoW generation MMO features. imo a healthy mix of both would be best. Next to that, I think a number of MMO veterans underestimate the fatigue or weariness against even 1st generation features or general MMO mechanics that they have - but we'll see how these forums'll be when the first AAA sandbox MMO or hybrid MMO appears, after the first couple of months after its launch.Well I think that a big problem is people expect new games to be too popular. An MMO should target an audience of 1 million tops, and if more people decide to play, great. But otherwise it will just make everyone unhappy because one game isn't meant to please so many people. That is the real problem with WoW regardless of everything else, it fucked up the expectations of publishers and the MBAs that control them.
Its highly likely that if your MMO budget is over 75 million that you done fucked up son.
Look at other genres as well, it's same process.
When I first started with computer games, it was awesome to try the 1st platform, shoot 'em up, beat 'em up, sports game, rpg etc...
These were innovations and expansions in what computer games were delivering. Some genres have not really pushed that much. I remember Super Mario 64 as pivotal in the platform genre as a sea change of what could be done as well as 2D. So that was an example of a genre at that point doing amazing things. Conversely, I think beat 'em ups have not radically improved since I 1st saw Street Fighter II in an arcade. Anyone mention a killer beat 'em that pushes that genre since that one? Odd as you would think so many non-weapon martial arts would make really sophisticated beat 'em ups for players to learn serious depth of gameplay from... but it has not happened as far as I know.
The result for me is AAA games usually have flash graphics but same old genres with no new interest for me. Except I take the example of Fifa - these sport game improves year in year out. But also seem to be infinitely playable in which ever version you play. Why is that? Well from experience, what I find is that games are similar to other activities in that you learn how to play them that may be somewhat hard work but it's actually really fun/rewarding that stays with you, unlike eg being happy when you eat a meal, it just makes you happy at that time. So games which test you in new ways, namely give you new experiences... those imo are more interesting and why indie are more to my tastes these days. So there is rose-tinted for 1st genres experienced, but it is NOT rose-tinted if those genres have developed and are continuing to develop in ways that provide new experiences.
So as OP says, all the above apply. Agree.
http://www.gdcvault.com/play/1014633/Classic-Game-Postmortem
i always played single player games that can collect different things and star wars games.
so i tried some sci-fi only MMOs (global agenda, SWG, SWTOR, tabula rassa) guess what is my favorite
SWG cuz had star wars felling and can collect millions of items for decoration purpose