Xandyr Posted January 10, 2012 Share Posted January 10, 2012 WARNING! This is NOT a BW/EA slam session, nor is it directly related to SWTOR, but MMO's in general. Is it just me, or have MMO's taken a turn for the idiotic in the last 10yrs? My example will be SWG (as most here know or have experience with it). That MMO was innovative, HUGE for it's time, with a complex crafting, combat, and community system that rivaled ANY MMO since it's CU disaster. I remember a time when community was NEEDED, and it made for many fond memories of friendships built and objectives being completed. Since it's time, MMO's have seem to have gotten smaller, with less quality options for things to do, people to meet, and places to explore. Gone seem to be the days of immense areas with vast places to explore, build, and create the feeling of a world inside a world. Gone as well seem to be the days of a community that relys on one another to maintain a well rounded game experience. What happened to the times when we needed one another? The best example I can give is in this game, SWTOR. I was passing through an area, and I happened to see someone ask about the best way to kill a boss. Now I am not "mister nice guy" all the time, and I like my solo play as much as the next person. But when I hear that, and send that person a tell asking where they are and offering to help, the last reply I expect is "no thanks". Why is it that now gamers are so enammered with doing everythign by themselves, without help from another. Isn't it obvious that these games should be fostering a community atmosphere? Please feel free to comment or discuss but PLEASE do not flame (BW/EA I am sure, while included in the message behind this post, are doing their best with what they have started). I wouls very much like to see more necessity to commune with fellow gamers in order to completely enjoy all there is to offer in a game. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dezzi Posted January 10, 2012 Share Posted January 10, 2012 Appealing to the lowest common denominator makes more money for investors. That's the most basic explanation for the trend you describe. There are more people who like the kind of games that WoW and TOR and fewer who like the game that SWG was. And since the name of the game has become more about making money than spurring innovation, they target the largest audience. As an alternative, a developer could come along and make a game specifically to appeal to their niche audience--investing only the money they need to appeal to this group. Games like TOR have to be expensive in order to be broad (yet shallow) enough to draw in more players. Niche games, like SWG, only have to appeal to their target. Make sense? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hautaaja Posted January 10, 2012 Share Posted January 10, 2012 Well the biggest MMO of them all is a theme park and other companies want to use their formula to make a successful MMO of their own. Someone just needs to make a successful sandbox again and all of a sudden there'll be a lot more variety in the MMO market. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheHirogen Posted January 10, 2012 Share Posted January 10, 2012 (edited) SWG can't be compared to SWTOR, SWG was great, it had it all, this game is a subpar singleplayer grind game with multiplayer features and a ton of problems. Star wars galaxies was an actual MMO, a world acommunity a galaxy! and it offered something to everyone. WoW is better and heck, most MMO's are even better than this garbage. Edited January 10, 2012 by TheHirogen Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kirjava Posted January 10, 2012 Share Posted January 10, 2012 (edited) I suggest rolling an RP server. Lots of people want to group up on Lord Adraas. Edited January 10, 2012 by Kirjava Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
KennethHoover Posted January 10, 2012 Share Posted January 10, 2012 Welcome to capitalism. Catering to the lowest common denominator is the key to financial success in our system. Just look at the history of television. My Mother the Car was not an outlier. Upstairs, Downstairs is the outlier. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Skizzik Posted January 10, 2012 Share Posted January 10, 2012 SWG can't be compared to SWTOR, SWG was great, it had it all, this game is a subpar singleplayer grind game with multiplayer features and a ton of problems. Star wars galaxies was an actual MMO, a world acommunity a galaxy! and it offered something to everyone. WoW is better and heck, most MMO's are even better than this garbage. While I agree that SWG was much more of an MMO than this game is, the combat in that game was garbage. I wish they had gotten it right from the get go. That game would still be going strong today if they had. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Twaggy Posted January 10, 2012 Share Posted January 10, 2012 Appealing to a niche group is very difficult as Monolith found out when they made The Matrix Online, though it last a long time it's population was very low indeed. However because of this it also had the greatest community of friends I've ever been involved in, to this day most of us still socialise with each other on a daily basis. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Eliezer Posted January 10, 2012 Share Posted January 10, 2012 WARNING! This is NOT a BW/EA slam session, nor is it directly related to SWTOR, but MMO's in general. Is it just me, or have MMO's taken a turn for the idiotic in the last 10yrs? My example will be SWG (as most here know or have experience with it). That MMO was innovative, HUGE for it's time, with a complex crafting, combat, and community system that rivaled ANY MMO since it's CU disaster. I remember a time when community was NEEDED, and it made for many fond memories of friendships built and objectives being completed. Since it's time, MMO's have seem to have gotten smaller, with less quality options for things to do, people to meet, and places to explore. Gone seem to be the days of immense areas with vast places to explore, build, and create the feeling of a world inside a world. Gone as well seem to be the days of a community that relys on one another to maintain a well rounded game experience. What happened to the times when we needed one another? The best example I can give is in this game, SWTOR. I was passing through an area, and I happened to see someone ask about the best way to kill a boss. Now I am not "mister nice guy" all the time, and I like my solo play as much as the next person. But when I hear that, and send that person a tell asking where they are and offering to help, the last reply I expect is "no thanks". Why is it that now gamers are so enammered with doing everythign by themselves, without help from another. Isn't it obvious that these games should be fostering a community atmosphere? Please feel free to comment or discuss but PLEASE do not flame (BW/EA I am sure, while included in the message behind this post, are doing their best with what they have started). I wouls very much like to see more necessity to commune with fellow gamers in order to completely enjoy all there is to offer in a game. You are trying to compare a Themepark MMO (WoW, SWTOR, etc) with a Sandbox MMO (SWG, Eve Online, etc). The two systems have radically different design values and goals. Because of the huge success of WoW, developers have more or less adopted the Themepark model as the default. Sandbox games, which are very cool in their own right, tend to be smaller, niche games. I have also noted that games over the years have moved away from models that require player cooperation to those that are more and more "solo friendly." But I think that speaks more to the way our society is moving and how our game play reflects that than it does about MMOs. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Xandyr Posted January 10, 2012 Author Share Posted January 10, 2012 Oh it makes perfect sense from a dev standpoint, I am just not sure I understand it from the gaming aspect. While I agree there might be a niche that wants to do nothing but button mashing through the endgame, I don't want to believe that the gaming community as a whole doesn't long for SWG type games with all that depth, improved of course to maintain todays gfx and storyline standards. It seems to be more of a "this is what they gave, so this is what I must be happy with" attitude from gamers rather then the outlook of "if you want us to play your game, it should be MORE then the last/current game we play, or why leave?". I guess what baffles me is how dumbed down MMO's have gotten. It feels like the MMO genre as a whole started off in a mansion, and downsized to a trailer. Even (hate to mention it) WoW, while being a good MMO to pass the time, had many useless aspects to it that not only did nothing to create a need for community, but in fact fostered just the opposite. For 20mil less, just about any developer could have made twice this game, and brought in twice the members if there was a NEED to have a community that was helpful, and engaged in playing it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jswizzle Posted January 10, 2012 Share Posted January 10, 2012 Because people learned there lessons from the huge games like EQ 1. Those massive content games were sucking people's lives away. Trust me I was there, it isn't right to play a game for 5 hours and barely accomplish anything. Original EQ is more streamlined now. Even I have a level 94 Bard. MMOs have evolved the right way. Games should be fun and I should be able to accomplish something in 1 hour of time. Lots of casual gamers out there, we simply wont play games that take forever to do something. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Elyons Posted January 10, 2012 Share Posted January 10, 2012 WARNING! This is NOT a BW/EA slam session, nor is it directly related to SWTOR, but MMO's in general. Is it just me, or have MMO's taken a turn for the idiotic in the last 10yrs? My example will be SWG (as most here know or have experience with it). That MMO was innovative, HUGE for it's time, with a complex crafting, combat, and community system that rivaled ANY MMO since it's CU disaster. I remember a time when community was NEEDED, and it made for many fond memories of friendships built and objectives being completed. Since it's time, MMO's have seem to have gotten smaller, with less quality options for things to do, people to meet, and places to explore. Gone seem to be the days of immense areas with vast places to explore, build, and create the feeling of a world inside a world. Gone as well seem to be the days of a community that relys on one another to maintain a well rounded game experience. What happened to the times when we needed one another? The best example I can give is in this game, SWTOR. I was passing through an area, and I happened to see someone ask about the best way to kill a boss. Now I am not "mister nice guy" all the time, and I like my solo play as much as the next person. But when I hear that, and send that person a tell asking where they are and offering to help, the last reply I expect is "no thanks". Why is it that now gamers are so enammered with doing everythign by themselves, without help from another. Isn't it obvious that these games should be fostering a community atmosphere? Please feel free to comment or discuss but PLEASE do not flame (BW/EA I am sure, while included in the message behind this post, are doing their best with what they have started). I wouls very much like to see more necessity to commune with fellow gamers in order to completely enjoy all there is to offer in a game. I find the community (at least the Republic side) to be quite good in this MMO. I run by players and buff them and I receive a buff back. I come in to kill a miniboss in a solo area and find it's been taken, but after its defeated the player who just got his prize waits patiently for the boss to respawn and allows me to attack it just so he can help me kill the elite. Sometimes Il even see a player help another out by splitting his repair bill with him. The in game community is very friendly and always willing to help one another - now I just wish I could say the same about the forum community Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Xandyr Posted January 10, 2012 Author Share Posted January 10, 2012 I have also noted that games over the years have moved away from models that require player cooperation to those that are more and more "solo friendly." But I think that speaks more to the way our society is moving and how our game play reflects that than it does about MMOs. This right here is exactly where I guess I am with this whole post. Gamers in general seem to WANT the community atmosphere that should go along with playing an MMO, however sandbox or themepark, good combat or bad, good crafting or bad, it is still missing from most MMO's now, and seems to be only getting worse. I mean you can't get much further from a MMO community then a game that is described as a "single player game, played with other people" lol I am hoping for a day when it gets better, not worse. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jannickj Posted January 10, 2012 Share Posted January 10, 2012 never tried swg... sorry. [dont reply] Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hautaaja Posted January 10, 2012 Share Posted January 10, 2012 (edited) Because people learned there lessons from the huge games like EQ 1. Those massive content games were sucking people's lives away. Trust me I was there, it isn't right to play a game for 5 hours and barely accomplish anything. Original EQ is more streamlined now. Even I have a level 94 Bard. MMOs have evolved the right way. Games should be fun and I should be able to accomplish something in 1 hour of time. Lots of casual gamers out there, we simply wont play games that take forever to do something. And this is the reality devs have to face, even if they have a passion to make a certain kind of game they are still in it to make money and have to cater to the largest possible audience. Even WoW started as a hardcore game compared to how it is now, playing it from pre-release betas and watching it get more and more dumbed down over the years made me very sad. But that's business. Edited January 10, 2012 by Hautaaja Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gregorstar Posted January 10, 2012 Share Posted January 10, 2012 (edited) I'll repeat what a previous poster has: Roll on an RP server. Trask Ulgo already has events running eg they had a slave auction a few days ago on Empire and whilst I didn't attend, it sounded like great fun. Folk might say that there is no sandbox element in a themepark mmo, but games are what you make of them, and the same goes for communities. If you're a solo carebear, or only want to do operations, roll on a PVE server. If you like PVP, then roll on a PVP server. If you want community and something else to occupy your gaming time other than gaming, roll on an RP server. Edit: Saw another post where the OP was complaining of no PVP in Illum, but he was on a PVE server...well what do you expect? Edited January 10, 2012 by Gregorstar Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Irishbrewed Posted January 10, 2012 Share Posted January 10, 2012 Give me a pvp queue and I'm in....different strokes I guess. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FarVision Posted January 10, 2012 Share Posted January 10, 2012 (edited) Appealing to the lowest common denominator makes more money for investors. That's the most basic explanation for the trend you describe. There are more people who like the kind of games that WoW and TOR and fewer who like the game that SWG was. And since the name of the game has become more about making money than spurring innovation, they target the largest audience. As an alternative, a developer could come along and make a game specifically to appeal to their niche audience--investing only the money they need to appeal to this group. Games like TOR have to be expensive in order to be broad (yet shallow) enough to draw in more players. Niche games, like SWG, only have to appeal to their target. Make sense? Yep. Remember that Egyptian style freeplay MMO where you built things like farm and wells. Got points for helping each other out? How's that doing these days? Guild Wars 2 will do awesome. Modern Warfare Shooty Mc Shooterville will do awesome. Diablo 3 will do awesome. Smart games where you have to think an work together? Good luck with that! Edited January 10, 2012 by FarVision Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tovenar Posted January 10, 2012 Share Posted January 10, 2012 I generally roll between groups and single player gaming as I see fit. Constantly being in a group of 4 is well....boring. Everything becomes so easy that I lose interest. I group up when help is needed, sort of like in real life. I think you have had a few bad experiences and are generalizing. I don't ask for help to do the dishes. Does that make me a poor team player? I don't think so. However I do tend to team up when I play sports. Because you know, 1 vs. 12 is impossible. This game is full of challenges that can be overcome solo, and others that require group play. That's what appeals to me about it so much. If this all sounds like garbage to you, well that's ok to, you can be upset, and I get to continue being part of the loser players to enjoy the game Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Xandyr Posted January 10, 2012 Author Share Posted January 10, 2012 Because people learned there lessons from the huge games like EQ 1. Those massive content games were sucking people's lives away. Trust me I was there, it isn't right to play a game for 5 hours and barely accomplish anything. Original EQ is more streamlined now. Even I have a level 94 Bard. MMOs have evolved the right way. Games should be fun and I should be able to accomplish something in 1 hour of time. Lots of casual gamers out there, we simply wont play games that take forever to do something. And I agree with you. There are many who don't want to have to play for half a day to get something accomplished. I however can't imagine that with all the brainpower floating around (not to mention $$) there isn't a happy medium that can encompass both the need for quick accomplishment, and the feeling of being in a world that has purpose and meaning to those that DO want to slowly build what they would consider an empire. I remember, again in SWG, there were times when I only had an hour to play, and thought "dang this is going to take forever" and I just threw batches of items in a factory and went on with my day......but I also remember that in 2 days, I had enough do go around, sell fantastic items to all those that needed/wanted them, and felt accomplished in the fact that I created a part of the market. This type of feeling has been eliminated in almost EVERY MMO now, simply because any drop is as good or better then anything anyone can create....which forces you "run dungeons" rather then have the option to never run anything, and still have the things you want. It seems the focus has gotten on the "quick fix" and lost the meaning behind an MMO, which to me is a community of like minds gathering to enjoy a game together. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gregorstar Posted January 10, 2012 Share Posted January 10, 2012 ''because any drop is as good or better then anything anyone can create'' agree with you on this - kneecapping the market before it's even got off the ground. But to be fair it would only take minor fixes to correct a lot of issues with the community feel of the game, like a tweak to the GTN to make it useable. I do hear that Biochem is doing very well since that is one market where craft>vendor/drop. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Qishari Posted January 10, 2012 Share Posted January 10, 2012 Hello all, We ask that threads on the General Discussion are on-topic discussions of Star Wars™: The Old Republic™. With this in mind, we're going to go ahead and close the thread for being off-topic. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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