Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Quick Links
Doing Your Homework Before New Content - PvE
Anslem
Member CommonPosts: 215
So supposedly I'm you "average" gamer: mid-30s with full time job. I play WoW.
Two days or so ago I finally was "geared" enough to enter a particular dungeon which was new to me.
People couldn't believe that myself and a couple of others had queued up before reading about and watching videos of the encounter. All sorts of craziness ensued with AoE galore. When the healing meters were posted and two folks got chewed out (one for overhealing and one for under) and then the vote to kick some warlock -- I'd had enough.
Researching "endgame."
Is this the norm of all AAA games these days? Watching an encounter on YouTube, memorizing you rotation, spamming it and then rinse and repeat? Figuring what gems/enchants you need from a guide?
Maybe this is the expectation of the game and it's just not a right fit for me anymore (totally plausible, and totally ok). I have 0 desire to be so competitive in PVE that I have to research beforehand and like playing the game for the fact that it is a game.
Sure I used Thotbot back the early days of WoW but it seems like everything in the game is spelled out for players now. No trial and error any more or actually talking in-game to a higher level player for help.
tl;dr - I want to play a different MMO without the expectation of my reading guides galore. I get no one wants to wipe but the go-go-go of the WoW LFR superhighway isn't meshing with my mojo. No RP.
Played: Ultima Online - DaoC - WoW -
Comments
Assuming you queued with LFR:
TLDR: you queued with randoms, most of them are shit but will try and emulate people who are actually successful in in raids by being "elitist" despite being trash themselves, moral of the story is if you're playing with random shitlords in this day and age of cross-server bullshit, hey, guess what, you're not going to have a good time. Stop trying to play the game "alone together" and join a fucking guild that will talk you through encounters as you do them.
RIFT was a *crushing* disappointment; a shallow, loveless, generic MMO the likes of which hasn't been seen in a P2P format since, well, forever.
Eagerly awaiting: World of Darkness, ArcheAge.
I find fault with both of you. The people that complained are rude and elitist, but you and your group are selfish.
I always, always find out what type of group I am getting into before the run starts. I never want to hold people back or slip into a group of veterans just to be carried to the completion. If they are looking for a high performance run from veterans that have done the run numerous times, I will leave if I don't meet that qualification.
People like you basically just want to be carried through runs rather than taking the effort to learn how to carry your own. "Nah, I don't need to look at the guides. You guys already know how to do it, so I'll just follow you to the end."
Ok I understand. To the guides I go.
Played: Ultima Online - DaoC - WoW -
I don't enjoy the "watch youtube first" culture. I would much rather figure it all out on the fly or be the trailblazer. It's why the best time in mmorpgs is at launch or at the beginning of an xpac. No one knows whats going on and it all needs figured out. Even your "hardcore" types who are so "good" at their normal mmorpg struggle.
For example,
I was watching Towelliee on twitch playing Wildstar- he is an epically geared raider in WoW top notch guild farming heroic Garrosh. He plays video games for a living literally. At any rate when he was playing Wildstar and taken out of his element he looked like a lost puppy.
There was a lot of wiping and how do I do this, how do I do that..... Instead of using the elements and what the game was giving him he just simply asked how do this or that.
I said in chat, "why don't you all just slow it down a little bit, look around, think about what's happening, and ask npc's for some clues instead of blindly running around?" He read my comment on the stream, accused me of being mean, banned me permanently from chat and then proceeded to search for an npc to talk to for some clues.
I just rolled my eyes, because it's not only in gaming that people expect you to figure everything out for them.
I'm your mid 30's wow player as well. I can't get into the pve for the reasons you mentioned and for the ones mentioned in this article.
I think you will find this article interesting on pcgamer. It's about us really.
http://www.pcgamer.com/2014/02/19/losing-it-why-bad-players-keep-trying-with-good-games/
Putting this all together though and I have to be careful due to NDA but, Wildstar has pve content that I might actually be able to enjoy. I will talk about it once they fully lift the NDA I am sure of it.
I quote Bill Murphy - Don't let a bad pug get you down.
But yeah seriously I get you, its the reason I quite wow because you can't learn anything as you progress, you have to research everything before and that takes the fun out of it.
It's like the first you do a raid/dungeos and it already feels like a grind because you researched it so much.
Said to say that it's usually the same in every mmo, today I play GW2 and it's easier to learn stuff as you just go because content is usually easier and you in huge zerges on world bosses, and on the difficult bosses there are usually commanders that screams out what to do and you can spot them on the minimap and just run beside them and do what they do.
How ever when you play dungeons in GW2 it's the same as in wow almost worse sometimes, the plus side is that when you look for a group in the LFG tool you can write freely about how you want to do the dungeon for example : LFG noob playing story dungeon first time, and this will ofcourse keep the guys who just runs through the dungeons away and you usually get e good group.
This doesn't mean that I recommend the game to you as an alternetive to wow cause they are very different from one another, but me and about a million other players love so.
And everybody hates it on the forums so thats always a good sign since everybody always beats hard on the games they don't like but are doing well.
// Beelze
The WoW community..... what did you expect ?
Fine, we'll compromise. I'll get my way & you'll find a way to be okay with that.
My "homework" will alway's be experiancing it myself. The "homework" as in guide's would to me make my gaming experiance pretty boring. But I tend to group with like minded people and if I notice not much around I'll make sure I know my class and it's abiltiy's before I even attempted to group.
Sure in the past I have used things like SWGCraft to find those resources I just couldn't find even though I had spend lots of time searching.
Apart from that for me it would feel when using a guide as a form of cheating and eliminates any form of challenge to new encounters.
Sure I love the challenge, of course I want to be the "best" but I do want that pure because I have played/experianced with some trail/error myself and not because I read some guide.
If it's a raid, then yes, you should do some research before blindly jumping in.
If it's just a dungeon or something, then no. I find it ridiculous that some people expect everyone to look up everything; it ruins the fun of discovery.
My SWTOR referral link for those wanting to give the game a try. (Newbies get a welcome package while returning players get a few account upgrades to help with their preferred status.)
https://www.ashesofcreation.com/ref/Callaron/
Look for a casual guild one which focuses on the "fun" aspect as opposed to the so called "hardcore" guilds which believe fun is unnecessary and everything is based on the numbers ie, being quicket, first better etc than everyone else.
With a like minded guild group things should be more relaxed. When joining a pickup group ask before joining what the intention is they will normally tell you if its a by the numbers or casual. Likewise when forming a group ask for casual players and see what happens.
Basically the current culture has both groups in pretty equal numbers major problem is the "hardcore" group are more vocal and a heck of a lot ruder. (please note this is a generalisation but one made from observation a casual player is usually a lot more relaxed about the whole thing the "hardcore" player generally hates anything that smacks of time wasting. That said having a mellow hardcore member in the party (they do exist honest) will greatly enhance your experience as they will often take a back seat and let you explore to your hearts content but at boss mobs give you some vital information to make the fight more enjoyable.
So to stop this ramble find like minded people group with them remember them guild them or join their guild and have fun YOUR way.
Isn't blindly jumping in what makes it fun in the first place?
I agree with the OP. To me, once I've seen a guide to completing something, all the soul goes out of it. Now it's just a paint by the numbers chore to be completed. I'm looking to experience the game, not read or watch videos about it.
I sympathize with the experienced people who are in a rush to get it done fast, but you can't assume that everyone in a public game feels that way, especially if you never bother to ask your fellow players. Assuming everyone you get matched with has spoiled the event for themselves beforehand is just stupid.
Yes,join a raid guild and you will learn how much worse is the real thing, pugs have nothing on the elitism and drama queens from most raid guilds. I bet that a lot of the vocal trolls in lfr are part of guilds,raiding guilds,upset they don't have the "efficiency" of organized runs.
There were some good players which took their time in explaining the dungeon mechanics to people before fights but that all went away when mmorpgs started to be popular and instead of small server communities you have dungeon queue and megaservers.
About OP problem - I don't care for raids, even during molten core times I found them boring. If the encounter mechanics needs for a person to read on internet or watch youtube instead of playing the game then the sooner raids end in the mmo museum, together with mob grinding, the better.
This is the problem with static themepark content in the age of information. To solve the problem and return to the good old days when you went into a dungeon not knowing what to expect, and everyone was cool with that, we have to either A. Go back to before walkthrough sites/youtube, or B. MMOs need to implement dynamic content/provide tools for players to run the world themselves --both evident in Eve Online (where most PvE encounters are randomized, as are quests, and the PvP conflicts change and evolve so often that there's always something different.) It's impossible to keep up to date walkthroughs when content changes by the hour, thus people go back to enjoying the experience of immersing themselves in something totally new and unseen and you can go, "Hey, no one else has been in this exact situation, we're the first!" instead of, "Oh hey, three million other people have done this exact same thing."
Played: UO, EQ, WoW, DDO, SWG, AO, CoH, EvE, TR, AoC, GW, GA, Aion, Allods, lots more
Relatively Recently (Re)Played: HL2 (all), Halo (PC, all), Batman:AA; AC, ME, BS, DA, FO3, DS, Doom (all), LFD1&2, KOTOR, Portal 1&2, Blink, Elder Scrolls (all), lots more
Now Playing: None
Hope: None
I don't mind jumping into an exploratory group or a casual group on my first run through or just to have fun from time to time.
However, people that want to jump into an experienced group and get carried through irk me. It is all about being social and talking. I always ask what type of group I am getting into before I join it. If they have gear requirements or skill/experience requirements, I like to be aware of them because I am not a freeloader that wants to be carried.
and i thought MMORPGs are about playing with others? If you don't like how others expect you to play, may be you should just play solo-MMORPGs .. which are abundantly available anyway.
I play MMOs for the fantasy rather than the sport. I find that group content is usually played with the opposite mentality in mind.
Why does that have to be the answer? @Anslem that is the problem, people shouldn't need guides to do every encounter.
Sometimes the fun is learning it yourself. I do not find that a group who is new to an instance. If your using any kind of LFG tool then everyone takes that chance in pairing up with randoms that have different play styles. It should be a simple hey we are new here and going to roll it as it comes is that cool? If they say yeah then everything is all good, otherwise people should just leave and try again with new people.
Yeh, not really sure how he concluded with that from my post. The gist of my post is learning how to communicate instead of silently hoping a group will carry you through. If you haven't done it before, let the group know and verify that it isn't a problem. If it is a problem then drop and let them find somebody that is a better fit.
This is a whole different story than your "I'll just coast through" scenario you set up. Like you, though, I will find out what kind of group it is. More and more often, groups consist of "Know the dungeon!" types, rather than the "Let's explore and figure this out ourselves, together." types that the majority of groups used to be like.
Do you see the difference?
- 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