Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Quick Links
MMO's just aint what they used to be....
Alasti
Member UncommonPosts: 287
Unfortunately the genre of MMO's have been dumbed down so much to please the masses that people who loved the original MMO's (not discussing MUD's right now) like UO or EQ1 etc. will probably not like any of the current games out there.
What I think games lack now is a world where exploration is a huge part of the game. Exploration involves wanting to see new things, encounter new things, and being afraid of what might be around the corner. I have not been afraid of dying in a game since the beginning of EQ1 and Ultima Online. In EQ1, you left all your stuff on your body and you had 1 week to either get it back or lose it forever...death in a dungeon became a whole new quest ("Get my body back"). Similarly in UO, when you died, your stuff remained on your corpse and anyone could come by and take your stuff (heck, even the monster who killed you took something and you had to kill him to get it back). Again, a whole new quest was just created - "GET MY CORPSE BACK." What I'm trying to say is something is missing with all these games that has taken the excitement out of playing.
I don't want this to become solely a "death penalty" discussion, as I am not even sure that is what made the old games "fun", but something sure is missing, and the fact that when i die, in pretty much ANY other current game, I don't even flinch, much less panic and need to round-up my friends for a "Search for and recover Alasti's Corpse quest."
Some super-wealthy programmer (who also feels the way I do and isn't making the game to maximize profits) needs to create a game that is NOT catered to the masses and focuses on what makes games fun, even if that doesn't make as much money as it might otherwise bring in. I for one would pay $50/month for a game where this was the case (or maybe even more).
I know this is a pipe-dream, but one can always hope.
Comments
That made me lulz hard. Such fun times.
Risk. Modern games are just too safe. You know going almost anywhere that you'll win, and usually win easily. When you cannot lose, then winning just isn't the same.
Problem is that people in general don't like losing. When one can always win then they can advance, get strong, and carry around a bunch of shiny gear. Hooray, I'm level capped and have a whole bunch of cute mini-pets, just like everyone else.
I'll say it again and again until I'm blue in the face.
One night, I fell asleep for about five minutes in WoW BG's because they were so boring.
A day later, I quit.
So, if I understand you right.....You want someone other than yourself, to fork over all the cash and time to make YOU a great game, as defined by you for no profits?
I completely agree ActionMMORPG. People don't realize that the opportunity of failure directly correlates to the glory of success. If there is little or no risk, the glory is minimal to non-existant.
No... well...yes, but that was not my point at all. All I was saying is I understand that what I am asking for IS a pipe-dream because every sane programmer will want to maximize profits. The only way I can realistically see someone creating the game I'm talking about is if someone is so wealthy they aren't making the game for profit (which again...to make myself clear...I know is a pipe-dream)
I completely understand and agree that risk and reward are gone from MMOS. Thats only because the genra is too popular now. There is no more money in that gamestyle because the Masses like games that are easy mode where they win all the time.
The mmo minority are pre WoW clond eaa, the Majority are post WoW clone era.
The way mmo's were: Community, Exploration, Character Development, Conquest.
The way mmo's are now : Cut-Scenes,Cut-Scenes, solo Questing, Cut-Scenes...
www.CeaselessGuild.com
If you want exploration to be a big part of the game, then why aren't you playing Uncharted Waters Online?
Death penalties that are excessively severe get annoying, especially when you die without doing anything wrong (e.g., due to lag).
The problem with paying $50/month for a game highly suited to your tastes is that it won't be highly suited to the tastes of very many other people, and certainly not enough to support the game even at $50/month.
"I am not even sure that is what made the old games "fun", but something sure is missing"
What made them fun was that things that are old and mundane to you now were new and exciting then. If a game is really exciting when you first play it, you still eventually get tired of it and quit. If you play another game that is a lot like the first game, then you're most of the way to being tired of the second game the day you start it. If you had played the second game before the first, you'd have enjoyed the second game a lot more and for a lot longer. You've changed more than the games you play have changed.
well,theres some hope ,more and more people hates Wow,and that is not a bad thing.
Let's internet
The problem is that too many people set their treshold for success so low and thus are unable to challenge themselves.
I fail all the time in MMORPGs even though I rarely die. That's because I set my goals to be just a bit farther than my last success. If I kill a mob, next time when I fight the same mob my goal is to beat it without losing so much health or I try to kill two of them at the same time. This way I get to treat everything I do in the game as a challenge and don't have to follow arbitrary rules on what should be challenging and what shouldn't.
Death penalties are designed to railroad the players into following a certain path in the game and to discourage players from attempting things that are too challenging.
I just made the big mistake of going back to WoW after two years, BIG MISTAKE !
What I got was a pure lobby game. Everyone was either in Stormwind or a Dungeon EVERYONE !....I used the "Who " panel often to do searches of all levels to see where the people were at, sure enough Stormwind or Dungeons.
I kid you not....I did Deadmines, Wailing Caverns, Rangefire Chasm and Shadowfang Keep all in one hour. ONE HOUR 4 DUNGEONS. When done I was 4 levels higher and had to run around in lower level areas with no one else in any zone to get my harvesting equivalent to my level.
Dungeons for my level 78 were no better.....They turned it into a super fast leveling lobby game !!!
They killed my EQ2 by turning it F2P
They killed my D&D Online by making it F2P
I would give LOTRO a good chance ( only played the bata ) but they made it F2P.
I have no were else to go but maybe back to Vanguard ( very hardcore but low population ) or wait for The Secret World coming out in April !!!
I'm getting that same vibe these days too, been thinking this over the last few years since , the last mmo's I really enjoyed. Aoc and Warham; swtor has dissapointed me, so far.
"What I think games lack now is a world where exploration is a huge part of the game. Exploration involves wanting to see new things, encounter new things, and being afraid of what might be around the corner. "
So with you there!
The problem is that mmo's are not advancing much gameplay wise at all, I see plenty of progress on payments and cash shops etc. (maybe take this as a hint of the financing issues) but not much in terms of different things mmo's are offering. feels like we've been getting served the same basic model for the last x number of years because it's still making cash...
I guess this is also largely to do with the risk involved with mmo's. You need a serious dev team, often proven or some way of proving you're worth investing 15 mil into; but people only invest on the promise of returns - games are fairly high risk, if a new studio is making your game there's another gamble due to lack of experience, it might all come together or you might lose all of your cash on the gamble. The investors want to cash in asap, the devs want to make a sweet game but also to please the investors and meet there milestones in time. High pressure. A mmo can sink an entire studio though too, hell if its a major publisher title any flop can sink an entire studio. Err so we made back like 20k on your 15 mil and used like 17 mil of your 15....soz.
Anyway to the point, I think that's why something is 'lacking these days' it's lackluster and lacking not because it's missing anything it's just not doing anything new and kinda failing to replicate that novelty and charm of the old games. It takes a lot of dev time and programming to reach wows level of content also, thats a tough measuring stick for any newcomers.
I know what you mean though with the fun exploring and delving into those things. I don't think any 'modern' mmo's have really encouraged that exploration aspect like they did in the older ones. And it's a shame as thats been one of my favourite tihngs from mmos and even older single player stuff. That may be a graphics/cost/scale thing in moderns days. Everything is so ultra optimised and cropped into tight controlled poly environments.
I want more exploration focused mmo's, love that feeling of this cool massive new world to take your time exploring and immersing into. Then i actually like not being spoon fedim not sure if it was an age thing or just a discovery of mmo's thing, but I think in general they were much more open set, less linear traps and zoned instances everywhere... I miss that scale where mmo's felt like these colossal vast and amazingly expansive worlds. I remember Single player experiences were dwarfeeddd.
And haha, ahh the brutalness of full loot drop rules. Just remember having these weird fever dreams about getting ganked and dropping all my best shit right outside my respawn zone but being unable to reach my corpse in time... nuuuuuu!. Also oh, if you get dced trying to get back to your shit your items will disappear from the gameworld; hey - we figure you must not want your gear if you're having internet troubles?
Info and data collection websites have ruined the exploration part, I think. Even EQ and UO had fansites, but we were still crawling out of the dial-up dark ages, so information, while still readily avaliable, took a lot longer to gather and read about.
Without severely removing components such as maps, tool-tips, and stuff, you're going to have a hard time getting exploration back to what it used to be.
Fan wikis will slowly crop up and one will take hold. Players will start dumping all of their knowledge into one spot and the game will end up like what we have today; people ping ponging from each "best" spot to another. Info will naturally spread through the multiple forms of communication players use now for games (Steam, Xfire, game-wide chat systems, voice chat, etc.). The issue lies on the user's end now, because you're willingly removing the veil of mystique that made a lot of olders games so enjoyable on the exploration front.
If we stop using all of these external tools avaliable to us, stop reading global chat channels, and get back to just enjoying the game (almost roleplaying, to an extent), you'd find a lot of what we did have is still there (it's just hidden), but it's not something the developers can readily fix. That's why developers are rolling with the punches and just making games that best suit the can't-figure-quest-out-just-look-it-up syndrome.
Nothing wrong with this picture. Lobby game is great .. you get in fast, play fast and get out fast. None of this flying to the SAME dungeon again and again.
Sure, the leveling is fast ... but that is a whole different issue than lobby games.
And turning F2P is a big plus for me .. now i can play some DDO which i previous don't want to .. and LOTRO .. and STO ...
So i guess one man's loss is another man's gain.
THere are games out there that do this. The problem is that none of them are AAA producers, and you people dont want to support them to grow the community. If you want to complain fine, but if you want to do something about it go subscribe to someone trying to do something new or interesting. (i.e. Mortal online)
I really dont see any developer making an mmo like they used to be, now they are just money machines, f2p, cash shops, p2w, and while players bow down to this type of gameplay developers will continue to turn out drivel. The days of EQ1, UO, FFXI are long gone, effort, community, and the journey, is to much for the young players, they have the want it now attitude and its that attitude that has destroyed the mmo's we long for.
If SV actually showed some promise, then they'd be worth supporting. They haven't showed anything more than what some inexperienced hobby developer could do given the same tools.
I'm all for supporting indies, or rather, indies that know what they're doing. Take minecraft for example. Bought it, would buy expansions, sequals, etc because the developer has shown he can produce a product of not only innovation, but acceptable quality.
Oh, and I also forgot, PRICE. Indie games for indie prices, who thought of such a brilliant idea.
Looking at how amazing add-ons people make for single player games with good building toolks, like Oblivion, Skyrim and Neverwinter Nights, I do not see why MMOs could not be build as a collaborative effort. Naturally you would need some kind of peer review process for the additions, but practically anyone could create content from items to quests, to new countries and cities. Player driven content creation naturally needs a review system unless it very well defined and restricted.
"The person who experiences greatness must have a feeling for the myth he is in."
Yes, expecting a semi quality product is not reasonable. Considering SVs main programmer is mainly an unreal scripter, I'd say a hobby developer could do more.
Whether making one type of game is harder or not, people without the required expertise to make such a game have no business trying to market their product.
STO is allready doing this stuff me thinks.
Let's internet
Don't get mad a t me because you chose a shit example. I bet you would be bashing on Wurm and Notch made that too. Or do you think Wurm is a good MMO? If you think an indie team is going to be able to make a game with polish like WoW that sounds like a personal problem. Even WoW and TOR were loaded with bugs at launch.
Really it is a lack of empty space. And if you have a shinys system like Rift or EQ2 you can really encouarge people to just run 15 minutes in some direction and just be in the middle of nowhere. There doesnt even have to be any questors -- just areas where people rarely are that collect shinys and some monsters to kill... Maybe some different kinds of monsters that might have different drops than the run of the mill ones people have quests for.
What did it was things like the planes of power clickies.
Since then pretty much everything has had a method of fast travel.
When it takes an HOUR to go from one level 24 hunting option to another level 24 hunting option and it means spending some time where the monsters are level 35 and you are running for your life -- then you have what the games have lost.
When you can just hit a button and enter a dungeon from the other side of the world, you lose it completely.
One valuable method of making a dungeon tougher // worthy of decent drops is putting it way out in the middle of absolutely nowhere where it takes you 20 minutes to get there and 20 minutes to get BACK there if you die.
Who's mad? I think you're mad. I won't really call Wurm great, but Wurm is better than MO, probably has a bigger player base too. Who said anyting about AAA polish? Some developers can't debug. Unfortunately, that's a required skill for professional development. MO is way past launch.
I quit SWTOR and resubbed Vanguard Saga of Heroes.
It had been 18 months since I played vanguard and it was great seeing my old level 50 sorcerer sitting there waiting for me.
Now I had a beast of a computer with a 2560x1440 monitor and a GTX 590.I maxed out all the settings and was happy with what I saw.
I went to some really low level mobs to get used to all my skills again and today I headed off to lvl 50 -55 area.
I had forgot all about the countering and mirroring of incoming spells. It was tough and challenging to react so fast to them. Total contrast to SWTOR and yeah I died several times and had to race back looking for my tombstone and you know what I loved it.I was finally really enjoying the fact each time I went for a 4 dotter I could die if I didn't get a crit or two.It felt rewarding overcoming a tough mob.
I just need to find a new guild to join now.
Maybe going free to play could really resurrect this gem of a game.
The population is low but looking at the forums there seems to be more and more people joining everyday.
If people want an old style hardcore MMO then it's here waiting to be explored.
I really don't like the new starter island they have.I much prefer the old racial area's like Martok for example.If you start at the starter island with a toon then I think alts can then choose starter island or racial area start.My pick is the racial area's.
Otherwise guys we have to hope EQ Next will be hardcore ....
If you want PvE you're out of luck, PvE to MMO Developers means easy-mode now. If you want a PvP game with serious penalities that make the game more interesting then I suggest you jump on board the Darkfall community, perhaps support Darkfall 2.0. Maybe even Archeage, though I'm not sure how that game will go.
Sennheiser
Assist
Thage