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What makes current MMOG gameplay so dull and boring
xKingdomx
Member UncommonPosts: 1,541
I think I have found the definitive answer to this. 
INTERFACE
MMOG focus majority portion of the combat or any type of interaction, on the reliance on interface. Lets see how much interface is used in a normal MMOG gameplay.
COMBAT - the absurd amount of hotkeys on a screen, do we really need 15 skills that performs almost the same thing with different damage values and attack animation? Then the idea of potion and buffs and blah blah blah that you will need to put in the hotkey bar to be successful in combat. When you are in combat, you usually aren't looking at the characer combat, but looking at the hotkey bar seeing if the skills are off cooldown, developers rely too much on interface to make combat to work. Combat isn't really that fun when all you do is look at a few bars at the bottom of your screen (or whatever you put them, I usually put them on the right side of my character, like the chain skills in Aion, so at least I'm looking close to the action) Also the damage number popping up next to the target, yes you can usually turn that off, but what is the point of this feature?
TARGETTING - sure the world in created in a 3D plane, but we select target via a 2D planefield. We move the mouse in the XY plane. This isn't a huge problem, since you do look into the action, but the problem is that interface that traditional targetting generates, the target portrait. We often are caught at looking at the target's health bar than the actual taget itself.
ADDON - a few game, notable WoW and Runes of Magic, have a heavy reliable of addons to make gameplay easier/bearable. Threatmeter, buffbars, healbot, etc etc etc, there are loads more, I only played the free trial of WoW and I have already heard of most of these addons, its simply depressing to know that developers do not have the compacity to create a reliable design or interface that players can use without the need of addons. (Note addons are different to mods in singeplayer games, addon design are much more limited in nature)
Quest log/General UI - wanted to condense few of the elements into one, in general UI, we have the chatbox, inventory, popup UI, some of them are very necessary to a game, but some are just plain redundant, or should I say, bad quest design. In MMORPG we are often handling multiple quest at once, redundant quests or side quest as most players like to call them, serves absolute no purpose in the game design, but are simply put there so that the game developers can consider that as 'content'. One thing in Dragon Age 2 that actually did well is the quest design, a lot of the secondary quest actually leads into the main quests or companion quest, so at least they serve a storytelling purpose, but kill 10 wolves so you can make a belt? No thanks, I don't mind killing 10 wolves, but the reason is so absurd I should just kill you instead - oh wait, I can't.
How much WoW could a WoWhater hate, if a WoWhater could hate WoW?
As much WoW as a WoWhater would, if a WoWhater could hate WoW.
Comments
I would argue it's the dull gameplay where your playing like a robot, doing fetch quests until endgame to get any fun at which point there's no progression unless you put in a big amount of hours. I do like your hotkey argument, many people in wow used to have their entire screen just filled with mods because the hotkeys is all they look at when fighting instead of the actual fight.
My opinions:
1. Combat. Its acceptable first cause the hotkeys are usually debuffs or buffs. Then after a expansion, the UI is filled with more and more hotkeys. Its so annoying that im just quiting the game after it happens. But lol, many players do enjoy having CTRL+1, CTRL+2, CTRL+3, SHIFT+1 add infinity hotkeys if you take a look at the raiders. Sorry but its just crap, i loved Guild Wars playstyle, limited skills on tree, no qq, gtfo and quest with a group now.
2. For me its like Pokemon, i do actually look at the target, the warnings and the life bar itself.
3. Addons are needed but i hate them anyway. I hate having dpsmeter, treathmeter, UI messed crap all over the screen. I would just enjoy it if there was a small treath number next to the boss name. I dont know what i should say about DPS meters. I should like it but i hate it. "Dude hey look they are doing better DPS than you wtf" "DUDE i had to use debuffs to make them damage it!" "I dont care/kick" god damnit do i hate dps meter. The leaders often have no clue.
4. Quite funny, when WoW didnt have questhelper, most MMOs didnt have it. The day WoW added questhelper in game, many MMOs did the same. Lol?
Yawn
Kingdom's point is valid since it is the interface that defines how the mechanics operate. Think of the UI has the tools you need to control/play the game. The problem is that EQ2 and WoW really did pollute the UI design concepts in gaming to the point that I doubt we'll ever see it go away. It's weird too, because other games do a better job of integrating the UI with the mechanics. Fallout 3 and New Vegas come to mind for hacking and lockpicking.
Well UI could get changed but that is not 'root' of a problem imho.
My opinion why current MMORPG's are dull and boring:
1. No activities beside combat.
2. Way too fast levelling.
3. Only solo things to do before hitting max level. No alternative line of quests and activities for groups.
4. Lack of reason to leave city after hitting max level. That is because you can teleport to instances from everywhere and because there is no reason to leave city ( only combat in instances to do).
5. Many players had all of the above for loong years in WoW and other games and they are offered exactly same thing in new productions.
6. Raids are hard and everything else way too easy.
7. Quest too simple. They have to be more complex. Quest tracker making it too obvious. Make quest tracker HELP not doing all 'thinking' for player by showing EXACT location where to go and do.
With so limited things to do no wonder it get's boring fast. It is obvious , yet we still get same thing over and over. Rift additions are actually nothing special it gets repetetive fast becasue it is just pure repetetive combat again.
There are many other things but I want to keep this post simple and not very long so I will stop now.
Edit: sorry edited a bit , added one point
This!
"Torquemada... do not implore him for compassion. Torquemada... do not beg him for forgiveness. Torquemada... do not ask him for mercy. Let's face it, you can't Torquemada anything!"
MWO Music Video - What does the Mech say: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FF6HYNqCDLI
Johnny Cash - The Man Comes Around: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y0x2iwK0BKM
The OP makes some points but misses the mark I think.
Lets look at them and find out!
COMBAT - Too many hot keys!
This is not really true. NWN1/2, BG1/2, Dragon Age1/2 all has heaps of hot keys but they are all considered fun games.
TARGETTING - Focuses on the portrait
Again, NWN1/2, BG1/2, Dragon Age1/2 all havea similar targetting mechanic but is fine. Heck, any game that is about 'fighting' has this. Street Fighter, Freespace, COD etc.
ADDON - Too many addons
Not really applicable since if the vanilla gameplay is fine this shouldn't be needed.
Quest log/General UI
Quest quality is something that is lacking in MMOs but I recall playing IceWind Dale which was little more than 'Go here and KILL EVERYTHING' throughout the entire game and had fun doing it.
The gameplay to MMOs are similar to your standard RPG.
Go here -> Talk to NPC -> Do 123.
But I had heaps of fun in NWN, IWD, DA:O/2 but not WoW.
Why?
Because I gave a damn about something on my computer screen and wanted to know what happened next. Story.
Gdemami -
Informing people about your thoughts and impressions is not a review, it's a blog.
Fuck hotkeys, seriously.
The last thing i want to do when playing a game is emulating a piano session, why can't we have fluid action instead of this tired old semi-turnbased nonsense. We're not living in the 90's anymore people.
Ideally we should have a hudless interface where everything relevant is integrated in the gameworld somehow.
So a UI where there is no button?
Hmm..
Black and White?
Or....Kinect? o_O
Gdemami -
Informing people about your thoughts and impressions is not a review, it's a blog.
Black & White is a good example, although that's a god-simulator.
Think along the lines of Bioshock, CoC: Dark Corners of the Earth, Dead Space and Arx Fatalis. HUDs like those or near at the very least is what we'd ideally end at.
Mind you, a few hotkeys to make your life easier is acceptable, but when your base gameplay depends on cycling through the same damn 15 hotkeys over and over just for one simple fight something is wrong.
Healthbars are easy to integrate into the 3D scene, and i really think games should do this instead of having them on the 2D interface (if we need healthbars at all). In FPS games like Quake you don't know the health of the enemy and I actually think that would work in a MMO too.
Thats exactly his point, that there are so many addons that are considered necessary because the vanilla UI just isn't good enough.
How much WoW could a WoWhater hate, if a WoWhater could hate WoW?
As much WoW as a WoWhater would, if a WoWhater could hate WoW.
The players.
"Come and have a look at what you could have won."
Post deleted.
Yawn
Well I'm just gonna delete mine too :P
How much WoW could a WoWhater hate, if a WoWhater could hate WoW?
As much WoW as a WoWhater would, if a WoWhater could hate WoW.
I changed the text abit, i was kinda bashy. I regret that ofc. I dont want to jump on other players.
EDIT: I deleted my post.
The high level npcs in cities is the biggest r* gank ever done to the PvP players. I do miss the flood of QQ post by pve players whining about pvpers standing outside raid portals.
I thought Blizzard would just tell them to roll a PvE server but man i was wrong.
I do remember back in my server only ONE guild PvEd. They were extremely hated and mocked by every PvP players around. The PvP players did everything to make the PvE guild not procceed.
I wish you could erase what i wrote. I didnt mean to blame the PvErs who rolled PvE servers to PvE. Its not their fault. Its the PvErs on PvP servers total fault the world is left behind now. Sorry but its true.
Rofl oh do i miss the old good MMO days. I swear, IF you tried to fish at Barrens as alliance.. oh man.. if you dared doing that.. there would be a war zone after five minutes.
Go on, enjoy the dull world of PvE. Enjoy fishing in horde places as a alliance player. I can tell you that you might get killed. Lol no, not by PvP players but by the guards Blizzard added to prevent PvPing in PvP servers.
You might ask yourself: Whats the most fun?
Being immortal and feeling no pain with superpowers:
Going ten miles without anything happening. You can only kill boars.
Or: Going to an area filled with danger. With other immortals like you doing anything to blow you up. You fly up to the sky, load up, and fall down like a comet blowing everything up, fly up again where the other players are due to the impact and Matrix kicking them fivehundred times a second.
Thats it. The world is dead cause of no player activity. Because of no danger.
Yawn
Maps are the problem, lol!
Personally, i hate games with crappy maps now a days, but way way way back, when i first played Asheroon's Call, there was no map. I had no idea how big the world was, what was out there, how far the next town was.
I'll never forget that first time i ventured out to explore and made it to the next town, and then mistakenly bound there. All the mobs where then way to high. Everytime i tried to backt to my starting village i died and dropped more armor. Before I knew it, i was naked and begging for an escort as night settled in. I'll never forget that escorted run back ... best hour or so of gamming in my life. I can't remember if we had a rador back then, but nasty scary mobs kept crawling out of everywhere, and i was only 1 or 2 hits from dead. My escort would try to engage and just kept screaming at me to not stop... run run run!!!!
I think my heart reate must of been 180!
maybe it's only because it was my first mmorpg, or because i was only 20 ish at the time... but man! that was some funness
I also use to enjoy the social aspect of SWG (pre nge of course
). Setting up a camp in the middle of nowhere would draw passing travels to come watch the dansers around the campfire... those were the days... 
My first experience of Barrens in WoW: A big savanna with raptors and camps. I was like WTF? I thought the whole game would stay like that.
In my opinions, its not the map design, its the world that is fit for PvE players. Its the world with no danger at all. Its the world where there are no real enemies.
Yawn
Dude, you hate PvE players and how they singlehandedly (Not the developers of course) destroyed your precious e-bullying.
Now give it a rest, it's getting old.
I deleted my post and wrote :
"I wish you could erase what i wrote. I didnt mean to blame the PvErs who rolled PvE servers to PvE. Its not their fault. Its the PvErs on PvP servers total fault the world is left behind now. Sorry but its true." in case you missed that.
As in this case, only moments when players attack me is the moments i stay alert and let my PvP spirit take over.
PvE players in PvP servers deserves to get "e-bullied" for not taking part of PvP server, sorry.
And its sadly because of the PvE players in PvP servers guards where added everywhere. I have nothing, absolutely nothing against PvE players playing on PvE servers.
I just want to point it out:
PvE servers back in WoW were boring for me atleast. The world didnt have any spirit, no danger at all, no heartpumping moments.
PvP servers was a "slaughterhouse." Tried to drink and eat in a PvP server a time ago? Forget it.
Take a look at WoW now. Is the PvP servers active worlds with lots of danger or is the world dull and "boring"? I was born as a PvPer, others as a PvEr. You might enjoy doing world events with npcs but i do love to ruin for other players by pvping.
I am going to give it a rest now anyway.
(Again i do not hate other players. But i wrote my post way too fast, i am again sorry for it and as respect i deleted it.)
Yawn
what makes current mmogs gameplay so dull an boring?
1) combat:
we have two major styles of combat: point/click or aim/swing. but both are nearly identical when it comes to involve the skills in a combat. press 1, 2, 3, 4 -> enemy dead. as far as i know (i played a lot of games but not all) we only had one other combat concept; the 'tbs-system' of atlantica online. the tbs-system (don't confound it with the standard combat system of atlantica) is round based and much more open for a tactical approach in a fight. it seams to be a step back in progess, but if you think it over, you can do such a lot of things with a advanced tbs-system and its closer to the original d&d concept. well, lets not forget: one of the basic-idea of mmorpgs was to visualize the spirit of d&d and all other p&p games.
2) ingame economy and crafting:
every little toad can drop an epic two-handed sword, after 50 times going into the same dungeon with a group, slaying these little toads, you might have the best epic gear. todays crafting in the standard themepark is an alibi and you maybe only need them to brew potions, cook some buff-food or craft a bigger bagpack. smiths, tailors, fletchers are ... well, mostly unneeded. there are so many approaches possible to make crafting valuable, interesting and needed. and you do not need a fully new concept, just look into istaria (formerly know as horizons) or swg in early stages. it don't have to be eve online to build up a fully player based economy.
3) quests and story:
predictable. take all quests from the npcs located in a village or small settlement, slay and collect everything you could in the nearby area. after all 'pings' are done. do it again until someone of the npcs send you to the next settlement (quest-hub). and the worst thing: story doesn't matter anymore. why should developers spend money on employees who write content when 95% of all players don't even read what the npc are telling them?
4) pvp:
if i want to play a battleground-based-pvp-game i choose counter-strike, starcraft, warcraft III, dota or - to stay with more newer games - league of legends, loco or bloodline champions. battlegrounds in mmorpgs, waste of time and displaced. i'm not a friend of ffa pvp either, mostly it comes to "who has the better pc and/or hand/eye coordination". pvp should be more challenging, not in one-vs-one combat, more with the question what kind of goals can be archived and what kind of tactic i can choose. one-vs-one, zerg-vs-zerg ... sorry to say, but nothing more than kindergarten. and, to be honest, the community changed so much that the majority of pvp-players are people with serious mental problems. a quick view onto their chat-behavior is proof enough. during the times of daoc, uo or ac the community was more maturely with a huge social perception. they treated other players like real persons not like shit.
all in all i can say is that we need more creativity and innovation in upcoming mmogs, but against the common opinion it isn't neccessary to build up a complete new gamemechanic or new features, we can take a look around and we may wil find some very good ideas wow (and following themepark games) didn't copied and bored the hell out of us with them. it further takes only a company with the guts to risk some money. well, how likely is that?
AD1. Who told you I am AGAINST combat. I know mmorpg need combat and I want it as well. Really always someone write answer like this...
I meant that mmorpg's need something to do IN ADDITION to combat when you are tired of fighting and want to do something else for some time.
AD2. Well make quests better and make levelling longer. No other option.
Well apart of getting rid of levelling at alll and switching to skill system based advancement.
AD3. Don't understand your answer tbh.
What mmorpg's need is to have enough solo quests for soloers to solo while have group quests and activities ADDITIONALY which offers better rewards and more xp ,so those who do group don't lag behind and don't spend more time (you need time to find people to group)
AD4. Well yea. No reason to pvp in world , no reason to pve in world, no reason to go gather resources, no reason to explore , no open world housing, etc sad. Well people get bored and they pay the price (low retention rate ,people leaving new mmos quickly ,etc)
AD5. Well I am mostly PvEr but I never QQ if I get killed in PvP server. Imho developers lets say Blizzard for simplicity ,just should not care about qq in pvp servers. Just say = you don't like it go to pve server.
Alternatively create PvP Lite and PvP Hard servers with diffrent set rules?
Anyway don't ask me I am PvPing occasionally but I never did qq about getting killed on pvp server.
AD6. Of course it is just tactic and win. What I mean that in some games (there is not only WoW there you know) ONLY hard thing is a game are Raids and even Raids are easy sometimes.
Everything else like quests , open dungeons, solo instnaces, random mobs, most intances are TOO EASY.
I don't say make them ultra hard no , but atm they are so easy that you can level to max level and don't die once.
It is ridiculous. Game too easy= boring.
AD7. Well definately not all PvE wanted this. I did not want this.
1. Sorry about that. I deleted my post anyway.
2. Agreed.
3. I agree but WoW had ring of blood which was popular as a PvP "zone" back in the days. When PvP servers turned into PvE servers noone bothered doing that versions ring of blood anyway oddly enough.
Maybe its a good idea to force group questing to active other quests so you can level easier?
4. PvPers enjoyed PvPing in the world for a long time at my server atleast but now its dead since WOTLK. Reason why BC PvP existed? Cause a honor kill there awarded like hundred times more than a BG honor kill. I used to get much more honor by pvping in Nagrand. Then everything went downwards.
5. Agreed. But sadly that didnt happen. There were so many pve players that wanted to erase pvp from pvp servers. More and more guards everywhere. The PvP ended at that Blood Elf island at the end of BC. The last time pvers had a nightmare.
6. Yes, the reason i picked WoW sadly is because its the only game i actually raided a bit in.
7. This is the reason i deleted my post anyway. Im again sorry about that Pve player<3.
Yawn
To me its is just seeing the same things again and again.
Introduction and Tutorial - essntial? yes, always want to make someone feel comfortable with the layout. Why can't designers create a demo starter area - use it as a beta/ early head start event and then later to be used as a free trial, then let the veteran players be able to skip it? Why must some game insist you play through how to use the WASD and how to target something???
Unlock skills instead of buying them - It is a lot more fun to discover new animations and abilities instead of levelling up- going to a vendor and "purchase them".
Stationary bosses - "chipping at an iceberg with a pick" - the majority of boring boss encounters simply involve the tedious- non heroic- task of whittling down a bosses enormous life bar. The boss may release a periodic unblockable, "I need elbow room" skill which knocks everyone back for a moment, but otherwise its unrewarding. A boss that moves, runs, flies has to be chased down, maybe harass a party to the point where I am yelling at my computer "Oh you are SO DEAD!" Maybe a Boss that ganks the party as soon as it seems to be safe - gives a taunt like "Go home before you get killed you noobs. Maybe a Boss "takes your best weapon and then the game has a timer for you to get it back, and if you don't get it in time you unlock an elaborate mission to find it. A Boss that literally blinds a party member and the screen goes fuzzy. A boss that runs away from a fight and randomly appears somewhere else in the dungeon or even while the party is outside. Anything but standing there and swiping at the tank every 10 seconds.
It's bigger then the OP said.
The main point is that people demand something new and fresh BUT with the exact same features they loved in their 1st MMOs, developers try to emulate what people demand and in the end they come out with a game that the exact same people that demand x or y feature will call "randomgame clone!"
It's as much a developer problem as a consumer problem.
The developers have to somehow try to break away from the consumer requests and demands and the consumers have to be open minded and willing to really try a game without any previous preconceptions.
Either way, i don't think any of this is happening, even Arena.net with GW2 has made alot of slight changes to please gamers and simplify the experience (NPCs were added to the game that tell you where some events are happening, this was not supposed to be in game) and they were the company trying to innovate.
Ugh, please no actual blindness blindness, DDO had that at launch and it did not wear off on it's own "What's that one of the low-level casters cast blindness on you on your way back from a party-breakup? Better hope there's a wizard nearby cause your screen is black now lol"
You try and explain where you are when your screen is pitch-black, that nonsense needs to stay away.