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Narrow minded people who want open ended mmorpgs. is this part of the problem?
Foomerang
Member UncommonPosts: 5,628
The more i read people's laundry list of required features, the less I'm inclined to believe it's what they actually want.
There are a lot of closed minded ideals floating around here. Long lists of why every game out right now doesn't work for them. People want open ended gameplay. Freedom. Lateral progression. Virtual worlds. Most mmos have multiple ways to play them, but they are never good enough for whatever reason. Entire games are dismissed over a temporary state.
I don't know. It seems like an impossible task. I play a lot of games. I try to have an open mind and I tend to enjoy my time spent gaming.
How do you expect to even spot an open ended game let alone enjoy it, when your approach is flatly closed minded?
I feel like this is a climate that is stifling the community here.
Comments
The only thing stifling the community is people who go around claiming that because X feature isn't popular, it doesn't belong in MMORPGs. News flash, there are 100s of thousands of mmorpg gamers from the past (perhaps millions) that can't stomach modern mmos. Just because what they like about games isn't capable of vying for WoW numbers, doesn't mean it shouldn't exist.
The best thing we could hope for is the mmorpg moving to a more niche format. Casual mmorpgs are scarcely making enough to cover their costs, while good games tailored to a niche audience can be created for 10% of what modern games with mass appeal are costing.
Its time for a change, and just because casual players want more casual mmos to hop back and forth too, shouldn't be cause for criticizing what other people would like to see in an mmorpg.
Squeaky wheel gets the grease kinda thing? I guess it's possible a large portion of the players who really enjoy soloing/duoing on rails, quest hub to quest hub, only play mmos for the occasional timesink and just don't bother to communicate on forums. I suppose it just as possible many contributors who have a neurotic need to see their words in print or simply have their voices heard contribute the most to conversations yet might never invest in a product.
I don't know how to answer or solve that.
I suppose the next question is, "who is asking?". Is it just a layperson interested in the future of the genre? Is it a dev looking for an edge? Is it an investor looking for inside information? How does the information being presented, the opinions vs facts, affect you?
Don't answer that, or at least before you do...
Consider we are already part of a relatively small demographic. Take people who speak english, people with computers, people who like video games, people who like online games specifically, well, right there you have a group of people to which any answer could be "hmm, first world problems". Further contain it to those who are interested in communicating about the topic, those who come to this site in particular, now, those who have been elated with past products, those who have been burned by past products, those who would like something different or unique in future products, and maybe a few other factors I can't imagine off the top of my head, and you get the consensus we're seeing.
There are differing opinions and some blow my mind. You will come to find a general consensus, though, of this group of people and it probably looks alot like what is described in the op. Is it inherently "right"? Well, no, but at least we can, for the most part, take it as honest. It seems to honestly be the majority contention of those "around here", this narrow-minded view is what should/will be incorporated into upcoming mmos.
Is that a problem? Well, it's better than polling residents at 500 retirement homes, most of which don't know what a mmo is. It's better than trying to draw a consensus in a football stadium or at a baseball game. It's better than taking polls at shopping malls. People familiar with a topic may be prone to narrow-mindedness, but that narrow-mindedness is honest in and of itself. I don't think it's a problem, but it's a factor that needs to be considered for relevancy.
The only close mindedness i can see are people that do not acknowledge the shortcomings of current generation MMORPG's and how the whole Genre devolved from it's roots: Tabletop RPG's with complex character statistics, hundreds of perks, abilities and spells down to the current 4 stats and 5 abilities.
This is the main reason these games are not successful and created an environment of MMO nomads.
Shallow, that is what all these games are and we all know it.
There is not one type of mmo community here anymore. There is a spectrum of players of all ages and genre types. There are old school 40+ players like myself who started playing mmorpgs in the 90s and there are younger players who have no experience outside of the more modern style mmos which have taken an entirely different development direction ... of course that development is going through many changes as well.
This site also covers MOBAs, single player RPG and mmos spawned from single players games far more rich in story telling which is the opposite of open world type mmos concentrating on community development. There is a spectrum of players here all with different tastes even if all sharing a common interest in mmos. I would not expect one opinion of what an mmo is supposed to be to be shared with even a small handful of followers of this genre. It has become a fact that the singular genre we once could all fit into has diverged into sub-genres because the term "mmo" has become a far broader term.
One must accept what mmos have become. They are now being developed to target specific audiences from multiple genre sources across large age groups. It is pointless to debate a singular direction for development. The current direction mmo development is taking with large companies abandoning the genre and indie projects starting effectively through "voting" with crowd funding proves this. Variety was missing and variety in development direction is required for today's broad spectrum mmo audience.
You stay sassy!
Genre stagnation is the culprit. Veteran gamers are just looking for a new experience, an evolution that has been promised, but so far has not delivered. Anyone who has played a MMORPG in the last ten years has essentially played them all.Someone will eventually put something out that is a game changer. It is just taking much longer than most people expected.
Statements like "Cartoon graphics= no sale" are short sighted in my opinion. I'm willing to at least try a game out before passing judgement, but I won't be getting on board with anymore "WOW style" MMO's because I already have enough time in on that sort of game. I know now that I don't want to play that style anymore so I wait for a game I do like.
I seldom trash games or complain much about features, well besides cash shops. I hate those. Not much I can do about it though besides pretend they are not there as much as possible. I mostly try to be optimistic. I hope a great new MMORPG comes along and knocks me off my feet. I'm not going to hold my breath though.
( Note to self-Don't say anything bad about Drizzt.)
An acerbic sense of humor is NOT allowed here.
To be clear, are you saying Everquest was a devolution from ADnD?
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein
"Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
SWTOR had super bloat of abilites and it failed.
In other words, yes, MMOs were devolution of tabletop RPGs, essentially taking RPG out while leaving just bloat of statistics.
Modern MMOs actually try to catch up from that devolution.
Not at all. I find the problem is it's just too difficult.
Most game studio failed to make simple themepark mmorpg.
Making a good open world mmropg is probably not as easy as people sees.
I love to solo in MMO's but saying that I also love grouping. The big problem I have with grouping and I think a lot of others do too is how we are told how we have to run the instances. For example in SWTOR people will group with us but we are told we can't listen to the story and have to hit spacebar so we get thru it a lot faster. In WoW if you do one thing wrong no one tells the person what he did nope they are just booted from group. WoW does have the worse community of any other game, granted there are good people but more jerks than good.
So the way I see it the people that love to group the most are exactly the one's causing the problems with groups. IMHO!
Star Citizen – The Extinction Level Event
4/13/15 > ELE has been updated look for 16-04-13.
http://www.dereksmart.org/2016/04/star-citizen-the-ele/
Enjoy and know the truth always comes to light!
I love your posts man. Straight through the BS to the heart of the matter.
Foomerang, I remember clearly Scott Hartsman saying that gamers say they want one thing but their play time and more importantly their wallets say another. If I remember right it was in an interview here on mmorpg where Bill (and maybe Rob?) were talking to him about leaving Trion and the latest Sim City release. I've heard other veteran developers say the same thing (maybe Koster, Georgeson, etc), but I can't remember specifically.
The problem is loud people see and hear a few other loud people, tens or hundreds, and project that to mean there are hundreds of thousands or millions that want the same thing. Even if there were those people haven't shown themselves to be financially dedicated enough to warrant consideration. In short, if they were truly to show the industry the money then they would people make games for them. This is happening, to an extent, with Shroud, CU, and some other retro style attempts at targeting niche demographics.
Another problem for these people seems to be the existence of other games they don't enjoy actually existing. It's that weird competitive syndrome that humans have that if what you like and enjoy exists, it threatens what I like and enjoy. I think these people reason that if what you like and enjoy (modern mmos) didn't exist then the only obvious choice for developers would be to backtrack and make first gen games or laundry list games like they envision or remember them. Maybe they don't remember all the complaints back then about grind, and loot rarity being carrot on the stick, never ending class imbalance in pvp, and so forth. Things changed for a reason.
As per usual, we are in full agreement. I am really interested in seeing all these kick starter MMOs finally launch for many of the reasons you just mentioned.
I'm not sure how you can say modern MMOs actually try to catch up from the devolution from PnP RPGs when every PnP game I played growing up, and I remember original D&D, had something just about every MMO launched after WoW has not... A soul. Part of that was you were playing with friends and you, now get this point, actually communicated with other real life human beings!
Modern MMOs do not require comms at all because grouping isn't required much anymore. Hell, the last two guilds I joined barely talked unless it was killing time while crafting or whining about how a groupie or guiltiest got them killed. Now, we did that playing D&D, James Bond, Road Hogs, Palladium, the real Rift, etc., but we could all see the die rolls so it wasn't normally due to someone else's idioc game play.
Modern MMOs aren't trying to capture what was lost when WoW opened the genre to casual players at all. They are trying to capitalize on it but hyping garbage games and using the profit to move on to the next. Why? Because people are inherently gullible, fickle, and are generally stupid. If we weren't, then there wouldn't be "modern" MMOs that are solo, caual, F2P, grouping optional, FPS look alike in a MMOesc setting. We would have games that were challenging, thought provoking, complex, had actual communities of real players vice whining arse spoiled punks that will only play for a month or so then move on to the next flavor of the month POS MMO pretending to be AAA.
the best time I ever had playing an RPG was not on a computer. About 100 to 120 of us rented the biggest convention hall in a local hotel from a Friday at noon until the following Monday morning. We had about 10 or 15 GMs running different parts of our epic raid. I didn't leave the entire time. Most would catch cat naps while others ran side quests needed to complete the weekend. It was a real raid and was a fantastic time. No game since EQ has really come close to that, and casuals will never allow the genre to go back to that. The casual players that flooded the genre with WoW and some extent EQ2 have destroyed the genre and will never stand for games such as EQ ever again.
A huge part of the problem is actually player diversity. No longer are only like minded people playing MMORPG's. Now we have a dozen different types of players all expected different things and disagreeing with each other on what constitutes a good game.
We'll have a great open ended MMORPG when the players can agree on what that actually means.
No, not at all. Everquest was an evolution of MUD's. I specifically said current generation.
I was referring to the devolution over the last decade. The Post WoW area so to speak (incl WoW of cause).
Same here. Shroud, Camelot Unchained and several others will be really good gauges of both the money and the audience that these types of games can expect. No matter what the results, it will provide history and concrete numbers for future developers.
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein
"Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
That's why original table top RPG's where so good. You had choices and it worked for all types of players. There was a class for everyone or a build and play style that fit their needs. Now we have one play style and a hand full of classes.
Take FFXIV for example: Black Mage reduced to a 4 skill rotation Fire Mage with unlimited MP. What a load of crap. Essentially just another DPS. No need to call it Black Mage. The game does not even ahve elemental bonus/resitances. that's how dumbed down it is.
If i want to be an Ice Mage, let me be one, don't tell me how to play your game. Give me choices.
+1
Some great points in the posts.
Yeah, quite similar to the people who demand innovation. And I suggest to them indie games, and they say "But those aren't MMORPGs" which is essentially saying, "But those are different!"
Innovation is different.
People are very poor at expressing what they really want. Their statements tend to be much more extreme and black-and-white than their true feelings.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
Well back in the 70s I was a dnd player and learning to code. We wanted a computer dnd game. As things moved forward, we started seeing games like Mazewar/wizardry which gave more than simple text. Muds added multiplayer. We started moving towards 3d gaming. Those who loved both wanted a living dnd computer game. It was only a matter of time until mmorpgs came about and I say as someone who has been around, Hell yes pen and paper dnd was the original motivator.
Epic Music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vAigCvelkhQ&list=PLo9FRw1AkDuQLEz7Gvvaz3ideB2NpFtT1
https://archive.org/details/softwarelibrary_msdos?&sort=-downloads&page=1
Kyleran: "Now there's the real trick, learning to accept and enjoy a game for what it offers rather than pass on what might be a great playing experience because it lacks a few features you prefer."
John Henry Newman: "A man would do nothing if he waited until he could do it so well that no one could find fault."
FreddyNoNose: "A good game needs no defense; a bad game has no defense." "Easily digested content is just as easily forgotten."
LacedOpium: "So the question that begs to be asked is, if you are not interested in the game mechanics that define the MMORPG genre, then why are you playing an MMORPG?"
I wouldn't stay swtor was bloated with abilities and certainly not super bloated. You kids want only enough skills for your console games.
Epic Music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vAigCvelkhQ&list=PLo9FRw1AkDuQLEz7Gvvaz3ideB2NpFtT1
https://archive.org/details/softwarelibrary_msdos?&sort=-downloads&page=1
Kyleran: "Now there's the real trick, learning to accept and enjoy a game for what it offers rather than pass on what might be a great playing experience because it lacks a few features you prefer."
John Henry Newman: "A man would do nothing if he waited until he could do it so well that no one could find fault."
FreddyNoNose: "A good game needs no defense; a bad game has no defense." "Easily digested content is just as easily forgotten."
LacedOpium: "So the question that begs to be asked is, if you are not interested in the game mechanics that define the MMORPG genre, then why are you playing an MMORPG?"