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The simplifying of MMOs..
Varny
Member Posts: 765
I remember back in the day, games used to be very complex and especially on the PC. You'd have mega complex games such as MechWarrior and Flight Sims where you had to be a pilot to know how to fly the plane. MMOs too were more complex and built in such a way where exploration, felt like you were actually exploring the world. MMOs were getting bigger and better and doing more and more things. I really thought as time went on that they would keep getting bigger and better. However this isn't the case anymore because they've actually become smaller and more like Single Player games. Even Bioware talked about how the MMO experience should be a Single Player game with an Online option that you can play with your friends. This wasn't the case back in 2004 and before that where the focus was on the world and playing together.
I'm sick of it for one because they aren't MMOs anymore, just coop or online games. No different from a COD where you have the Single player and then the coop option and then the online group based stuff. The only thing that seems to separate a COD from an MMO today is, in a COD you have a 2D server browser and in the MMO you have a 3D home hub where you enter a game. If Diablo got released today, like Guild Wars, people would call it an MMO........ it isn't.
An MMO is meant to be MASSIVE and I'm sorry Champions and all the other new MMOs but 100 people to a zone is not massive. There needs to be a persistent world where in theory you can have 1000 people in the zone and all share the same space. An EVE Online or a Everquest or Star Wars Galaxies does this, even Planetside did it in 2003 as an FPS. Yet for some reason as technology has gotten better, they've stopped being Massive.
The funny thing is as they've stopped being massive, they use the excuse that it is to make a better experience, you couldn't have with hundreds of other people beside you. They say it's to make the environment more details and reduce lag. However none of this has happened, the gameplay is still the same as it was before, only more alone. So now you get a subpar single player experience.... Global Agenda is an example of a tired and dated shooter where the battles are actually smaller than most online shooters today. It doesn't play as good as a Counter Strike, Battlefield or COD...... so why bother?
Character creation was becoming such a powerful tool. Star Wars Galaxies took character creation to a whole other level and not only that but it let you customize your character more than any other game to date. From the complex profession system to the crafting to the player housing and cities and being able to decorate your house seamlessly in the world. No other MMO has touched on what that game did and did it in 2003. All that happened was after WoW everyone decided to copy that game and you got horrible games like Warhammer Online which has barely any.
The other thing that has gone is the big open exploration of the seamless worlds. Now it's loading screen every 30 seconds and sent in your own instances all the time. Instead of feeling like worlds, they feel like a series of levels. Whats worse is they've become very linear worlds and that is why new players can't get into the games because everyone is higher level and not populating them old zones anymore.
In Star Wars Galaxies or EVE Online the worlds aren't seamless and they didn't have levels so people were doing the content at different times. All the content was populated full veterans doing it as the same time as noobs. I mean it could be a veteran who has decided to do that quest to get a badge or a noob character who has stumbled upon the quest straight away. They'll come together and the new player will be helped out by the veteran and might end up joining a guild. All that has gone now because instead with the linear worlds and level system, new players can expect to grind on their own until they get to 80 or whatever.
Maps and quest helpers are another reason why exploration has gone. Now the maps display everything to you and you have icons telling you where to go for your quest. So you could turn them off and work it out for yourself but that doesn't get rid of the problem them systems have caused. Back in the day without all the helpers, fewer people did the quests and that made the rewards and the experience more unique and special to you. Now it's like everyone has killed Hogger and everyone has done every quest. No one has their own story anymore and you can't stumble upon lore or quests no one has done anymore. In Star Wars Galaxies, when they released the stats, only 150 people did this certain quest and it made me feel like my character was special for being one of the few to do it.
With the whole quest grinding system, Wow made popular, all the quests feel like a grind. When I played Star Wars Galaxies, all the quests were just done for fun and to get a badge and to experience the lore. I know Star Wars Galaxies had very little content and needed a lot more. However the main mechanics were so spot on, it was just a shame they were made to look bad by developers who had no idea what direction to take the game. We were all saying more content and they were just giving us movie tie in expansions, Jedi patches and the CU and NGE lol.
My final point is PVP because it has become this Battleground grind that again WoW made popular. However I preferred WoW when the PVP was open world only and felt massive. You'd have hundreds of people getting together and city raiding or fighting at Tauren mill or the Crossroads. You had a sense of community that you don't get with the current game and you had that sense of massive. All WoW needed was for you to be able to take over the points in contested territory and that could unlock quests and give rewards. Instead they moved everyone out of the world and it's dead now.
I could go on and on about the dumbing down of the MMO genre. Crafting is another thing that hit an all time high with SWG and was such a great community feature. Selling your stuff at your own vendors in your home or making guild malls. Building up relationships with people who sold the quest quality goods. It just added such an extra element to the game that even if you weren't a crafter, it was fun for everyone with the player economy. Now you have basic crafting that is pointless as all the best stuff is looted and it's an NPC economy for the most part.
This is why I'll never get into MMOs again because games are being more and more streamlined or "dumbed down" and you see it in a lot of genres. So many games that were complex on the PC have since been made console franchises and are shadows of their former self. It's sad because as they become less deep and complex, my hobby is slowly fading away. Microsoft don't care about PC gaming, they just do everything for the 360 now too so I bet in the future we'll see PC gaming becoming ever more irrelevant. Maybe Apple will release Mac games for Itunes and everyone will jump ship from windows? lol.
Comments
Wow nice huge wall of text.
All I have to say is yes MMO's have become dummed down. You see it happening in LOTRO day by day. That game has become so solo friendly its not even funny. The only time you need to group in LOTRO is for turtle or for armor runs. Give turbine the chance and they will fix that as well withthe skirmish system.
Games have become about the instant gratification for the me crowd. Got to have that I win button now on top of everything, and in order to do that they have become shallow, lacking in content and fixed to where ti only taks a few weeks to get to max level.
Stop blaming consoles for being at fault here.
I think there is a distinction that needs to be made between leveling speed/rate of rewards/conveniences, on the one hand, and a game being less intellectually challenging on the other.
Back in the day, there was definitely content in the games that was pretty hard to figure out. But then some really good player would figure it out, and it would then get posted on a website somewhere. From that point forward people just looked it up and painted by numbers.
I would like to see more challenging content, especially where it involves needing to understand the game lore to solve mysteries. It's fun having that and trying to be the first one to solve it. But realistically, giving a player, let's say, a quest journal and an in game map is not so very different then the same player looking the quest and a map for it up on a website (which is what they will do if you take those features away).
EQ1, EQ2, SWG, SWTOR, GW, GW2 CoH, CoV, FFXI, WoW, CO, War,TSW and a slew of free trials and beta tests
If you don't like the dumbed down MMOG's then don't play them. Instead, support the better games with your wallet. Play FE or Eve instead of the latest over-hyped mass market clone. The options are there. All you need to do is exercise them.
The only thing that bothers me is how quickly and easily people buy into the hype, fall for the marketing, and mindlessly follow the crowd into whatever is next like good little consumers.
I can only agree with the OP.
If I was to design a MMORPG I would steal my ideas from old SWG, Ryzom and EvE and maybe even make it more complicated. After all, most people are in an MMORPG for the long run.
I would not steal ideas from WoW...I guess my game wouldn't be much of a commercial success... =P
I like the way MMOs are going. What did the old ones have: Spawn camping? No instances = competing with others for mob/boss stealing? Eighty-plus people in a group creating massive lag? Open-world PVP with no chance to opt-out?
I don't consider those good things.
Ask yourself this: if EVE is such a fantastic game, why doesn't it have the subscriber numbers Wow does? I suppose you'll tell us that anyone who doesn't like what you like in games is a dumb gamer.
I'm sick of this lamenting of the great old days of MMO's which in actuality had lots of pain in the ass factors but we tolerated them cause there were so few MMOs to choose from. Games have evolved, and they have done so for the better.
Dumbed down is an inflamatory term, rather it should be said MMORPG's were simplified to appeal to the more casual gamer, who outnumbers us "purists" by a factor of 100 to 1.
I don't like it either, but its not going to change for reasons I posted in another thread on this topic earlier this am.
Support your favorite Indy developer or go back to the older games. The big houses won't be making the game you want any time soon.
"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
Dont blame mmo for evolving, instead look into yourself. Why cant you accept what have happen?
Because a lot of us still cling to that first love feeling, yet we will not go back to that first mmo, and we will not play a mmo that's a clone of what we have play before.
So what does it leave us with?
Nothing.
We will never find that mmo that we hope to find again, never...
RIP Orc Choppa
MMOs have always been dumb. If you think you're doing something smart by killing a thousand idiot AI mobs to level up by taking turns bashing each other over the head then you're just fooling yourself. The main change that's happened is that instead of killing 1000 you may only need to kill 100. Basically, what you call dumbing down is actually making the games accessible for people with jobs, social lives, responsibilities, etc. In other words, people who can't afford to spend 8 hours a day every day playing a game where they take turns bashing dumb AI monsters in the head.
That's not a wall of text, its a BOOK.
I want deep games. The problem is that the better new MMORPGs aren't shallow, merely different. Is 80% of everything still crap? Absolutely! And in the last few years we've mostly seen that 80%, but it doesn't mean all games have been crap or that there aren't redeeming qualities in a lot of the releases.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
wrong
look into real paper and pen RPGs and accept what have happened and what is happening.
spaceship is filled with wow aion war whatever and its destination is planet Legolandia.
Generation P
First of all to the OP.....
I am not sure what games you have seen as complex,but flight sim is not a MMORPG,so it does not even count.
Pretty sad,but i can actually point out the closest thing i have sen as skillful in any MMORPG.
The closest thing to challenging or skillful was performing a SATA/WS combined with another player to perform a Renkai,then having all remaining players capable of ,performing a MB.This is why FFXI combat system is miles above all other non thinking combat designs,but even so it is not extra hard or masterful to perform after you have done it a few times.
It is however near impossible to pull off with players that do not understand the system or design of each player.Instead of creating MORE designs like this ,games are moving closer to solo everything.Solo your battles,solo your weapon skills,solo pvp,no large battles do not change anything ,it is just a large number of solo players still.
What are quests?done solo,zero thinking,any thinking is just looked up on the net for answers.Quests offer ridiculous rewards for doing literally nothing.
What is the basic game design?speed level then pvp end game,how much thought does that take?None,we can't dumb down these MMORPG's any further they are at the ultimate low right now.Worst part of all is there are tons of players supporting this terrible design and claiming it as great,so we need a better player base for MMORPG's if we are going to get developers to make us better games that allow for not just thinking,but imagine this>>>thinking within a group ...WHOA that could be tough for many to grasp,hence why many prefer dumb down versions of RPG's.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
first of all mmo's did get simplified with wow, but some things were done really right. now i dont like wow, have played it for 3 years off and on at different times and the reason i dont like it is because the raids take up to much of my time and if you dont raid in wow there is no point in playing it imo.
but in the old mmos, some things were brutal. ac, uo i know both had open pvp and corpse looting, that is brutal to alot of players including me, i liked the fear factor that it had about dying in pvp but sometimes it would be brutal. i also remember grinding for 10 hours a day and didnt even gain a level, that was brutal. insanely long corpse runs, brutal. eq had so many bad flaws but being mainly a pve game, you can blame eq on the success of wow, wow is just a revamped eq done without all the endless waiting and spawn camping. i mean having to camp a spawn with your whole guild for up to a week nonstop to get a epic quest line done, that was stupid.
we can blame ourselves and most of those games for the success of wow, we bought wow when it came out because as most gamers get older, we get married and have kids and have less time to play games so we find other games that dont take up as much time and we can spend the time we have in game actually doing something worthwhile not just mindlessly grinding or geting ready to grind expfor levels.
Imo the MMO market is saturated atm , and the impact of WoW is still too present leaving less room for visionary ideas and new approaches . Investors/Companies sadly only see numbers and with WoW being the King of the Hill dont excpect anything "out of the box" or "kicking ass" released in the near future.
Give it some time , till the next company drops the MMO-Mega Bomb.... leaving the land devastated for all other companies
@Wizardry ....i loved the Wizardy series xD
Dumb down is accurate for most I'd say. If many can't be honest about it, then the decline is sure to continue, and those defending the slide in usual property and characteristics that contributes to very good entertaining mmorpg, are as absent in intelligence as well. Dumb -adjective, lacking some usual property, characteristic, etc. Dumb down - verb phrase, Informal. to make or become less intellectual, simpler, or less sophisticated.
Since UO (pre trammel), EQ, EVE, Asherons Call, SWG (pre CU), LotRO, and WoW, mmorpgs have gotten progressively less seriously interested in being great, or progressively better at their previous competition, and floundered on being mediocre. Lineage and Aion are exceptions I think. But the the most recent Star Trek Online does fit the poster-child for the continued dumbing down of mmorpgs.
So, as the most recent example, as with Star Trek Online, which isn't even a mmorpg, though it's advertised as such, do I think it's dumb:
-- to play exclusively in instanced lobby systems? Yes. In this most recent, self proclaimed mmorpg, Space is space-less. Each map is nothing more than a confining shoe-box, a small space of nothing to interact with, like a generic fps map.
-- to not be able to explore space, the final frontier? Yes. There is no game-play freedom of exploration. No exploration to other planets or discovery; again, your confined to your shoe-box instance. There's nothing dynamically to do in this game that would be reminiscent of Star Trek.
-- to not have an away team capability, when it exists in the IP and game-engine, preventing me from interacting with a planet on an instanced map? Yes. There is no "away-team" capability to freely explore its surface. Its nothing more than a static inactive marble that you bounce off of in your confined instance.
-- to not have freedom of space movement with a Z axis? Yes. Space flight is confining and lacks freedom. There's a limited z-axis that prevents looping or gaining weapons locks on ships that are above or below, yet in front of you in many cases. It just adds to the unnecessary maneuvering of your ship.
-- for space to be life-less? Yes. Space is life-less, other than the instance nodes that you bump into to enter for a ship pve encounter, or to wait in a long line of trying to perform pvp with other players; its esentially a single-player lobby system game that your paying $15 a month for. If you see an opposing faction player on a system map, there is absolutely no engagement.
-- to have an inordinate lack of pve or pvp dynamic, meaningful game-play content? Yes. Content is sorely lacking to the point where very very early on in this game, the 'instanced' pve quests are nothing more than similar repeatable maps and mobs of previous quests done; the static nature of pve and its' redundancy is astounding.
-- for space and ground combat to be so limiting in game-play nurishment? Yes. Space and ground game-play combat has the most limiting, redundant, Quake 3rd-person shooter type feel of any game in the mmorpg market; its shallow. Ground and Space pvp combat amounts to a frag-fest of limited players and non-tactical or strategic importance in any respect to story or game-play in this faction vs. faction environment.
-- for a faction vs. faction environment to be so disenfranchised? Yes. Like a 3rd-person or first-person shooter, the player-vs-player stuff is without any game-play contributory value, other than winning a small confining map, it amounts to run, gun, die, or run,gun, win, limp, die. But your rewarded as much for being a loser as a winner; no mmoprg game-play distinction. I havent found the game-play nutrition in this yet.
-- for you to be rewarded for dieing as much as you are for surviving a game-play engagement? Yes. There is no reasonable complimentary opposite to winning. You win in space and on ground, you get a battery or such (a weak reward), you lose on space or on ground, you miraculously reappear next to the fight to battle like a button mashing mindless drone without consequences again. Lack of consequences to death has turned this title into a series of suicide runs for the same exact reward I get for battling tactically and strategically. The grossly equivalent rewards for those that die often is enough to leave this game.
The lack of any penalty for being a suicide player is astounding. So, as a Klingon that must rely on pvp matches to level, when these suicide players enter a match just to roll into klingons without putting up any fight, but just to died repeatedly and quickly to get the match over so they can rinse and repeat, thats considered good game-design and fauir play at my game-play expense?
There are several things missing, underwelming and poorly implemented in STO, and this has got to rank at the top of the list. . .they, those that die purposely and repeatedly without consequence, advance their own rush for experience at others game-play and immersion expense are exasperating a real problem; they are rewarded handsomely for being losers; figuratively and literally by Cryptic.
-- to be so anti Massively Multi-player and community cooperative? Yes. The community (massively multiplayer) element of this mmorpg is very fragmented (as opposed to expanded and cooperative) due to the great number of single-player feel instances. Community feels fragmented to one of those several small instanced zones that does nothing to encourage the feel of massively multiplayer entertainment, nor does it encourage any type of community feel.
-- to have absolutely no community-driven game-play resourcing, crafting, merchandising or economy? Yes. No alternative industry, aka, no resource gathering towards community crafting, enterprise, or merchandising elements for the federation or klingons. Would be nice if this mmorpg staple were available to players, rather than being non-existent since it's an mmorpg staple.
There'sso much more, but this is enough to demonstrate the dumbing down phenomena.
You high or something? There's been way more original MMOs than there ever has before. Maybe you're too young to remember that even back in the day most MMO copied off each other. Today, we have: Eve Online, Global Agenda, Darkfall, Mortal Online, Pirates of the Burning Sea, Fallen Earth, and many more. However, you ignore the fact that original ideas aren't good enough. You really can't blame WoW if MMO developers can't make their games fun.
Like many things, MMOs were initially played by smart people. Smart people make up a fairly small percentage of the general population. Most people have 'average' intelligence. That's why it's called average. There are more dumb people than smart people.
When MMOs became popular, companies naturally had to make them easier for the masses to enjoy, as they needed to make a profit because it is so expensive to produce a good MMO.
Just be happy you were among those who played MMOs before they became dumb like the masses.
It is never coming back......
DING!DING! GIVE THAT MAN A KEWPIE DOLL!
and wrong,
I supported for example Anarchy Online for many years,and know what,@nal dirge lollers came and took control,now go to AObulletin and check those forums its full of @nal dirge lollers screaming how that game needs epics and its too complicated for them and needs polishing ,easymodes,fastleveling and whatever ,and know what? devs are listening and making those changes,everywhere.
last time I heard theres like 20million @nal dirge loller role playing gamers.
thats pretty scary.
Generation P
HAHAHAHAHAHA! Oh wait...you're serious. MMOs are the dumbest genre you can play. If you want smart, play an RTS. MMOs mainly attracted people who wanted to achieve things for doing menial tasks. That's not to say that's a bad thing, but to say that there was this mythical demographic of players who were required to bash the heads of dumb monsters with more intelligence back in the day is pretty pathetic in its self-indulgence.
Let me give you an example here, OP:
Do most people prefer a good game of football over a good game of chess?
I know my answer, both as a player and spectator. However, there are still millions of people that would choose the other alternative, chess. Unfortunately, chess does not draw the big money franchise sponsors and popular support football does, and this is why most people will never know a thing about chess, even though most chess players still know what a touchdown is.
Support for easily accessible and 'generally appealing' forms of entertainment is nearly universal. While some 'chess purists' will denounce football and refuse from playing or watching it in any form, most chess players I know still watched the super bowl.
I dont think mmos are being dumbed down. I just think that they are not catering to the basement dwellers anymore. They are now for the people who want to have fun online without having pricks ruin their playing time and without having to wait 7 days for some stupid boss to spawn.
So there.
If you stand VERY still, and close your eyes, after a minute you can actually FEEL the universe revolving around PvP.
On a positive note at least we have Eve Online and Fallen Earth.
B-b-b-b-but WoW makes it impossible for anyone to create MMOs that are unique. Right?
some stupid boss to spawn...
yes,right there.
Generation P