Why are we still in the "Kill 10 rats" era of MMOs?

[Maniigoldo]

I will never understand how people are so excited about all this korea / china MMOs. If you want REALLY good graphics with a really cool setting, combat system and gore => Age of Conan.

 

I mean hey, you can hit multiple targets at once with all abilitys as your weapon swings, you have actuall characters blocking each other with collision etc. Still loving the game and it sadly has a lot of stuff I miss in SWTOR.

 

i played the korean version till 58

played the eu beta

 

the game is ok..its not a korean grindfest thats for sure...look at aion and L1-L2 now these are korean grindfests in all their glory

 

but this korean mmo break this,its a very good mmo with epic pvp and dungeons

but the problem of that game its still the "kill x this kill x that"

 

but anw i mention tera cause the guy says none mmo's cant be awesome looking

and sry but as for the combat system tera is the best so far....AoC doesnt come close..artisticly and combat mechanics either

Edited April 19, 2012 by Maniigoldo

[kevlarto]

Thats how mmo's roll, and have since the start of the genre, maybe one day some one will step outside the curent model and give us something new to do, but until then I don't expect new mmo's to stray far from the money making proven model even if it is getting old and tired to allot of players.

[Butcheress]

To be frank, I am one of those old-schoolers who hates the current sandbox approach in modern games. Most of them are just incompetent writers who can't conjure a viable plot and organize characters.

 

And i do like BW's approach in their games, be it KOTOR, DA, ME or this one.

 

Of course this is just my 2 cent.

This highlights the reason why we don't see a drift to "revolutionary" formats.

 

Some gamers are looking for a cutting-edge experience, and with the release of each new mmo, they hope to see a leap forward in how these things operate. They expect dynamic new features, but dynamic new features can be a double-edged sword. If you make the game too "open world" (Mortal Online), you alienate literally millions of potential subscribers who don't want to just get dropped in a world with no rules or clear objectives and repeatedly outpaced or slaughtered by other players who have enough experience in the game to know what they're doing.

 

Similarly, with EVE, the top complaint among new players is that there is no way they will ever be able to catch up to veteran players, and therefore they are at a massive disadvantage in most situations. They realize that the players who make the most money do so through social engineering experiments, and it's a turnoff for them.

 

Your average mmo player wants to log in, get a little boost from the "instant gratification" provided by straight-forward quests and PvP objectives, enjoy themselves, and log out. They don't want to fear for their lives or go out of their way to employ special mechanics in order to develop a sandbox world. Instead, they just want a warm fuzzy feeling, and the "conventional mmo" serves that up.

[Ishkur]

i played the korean version till 58

played the eu beta

 

the game is ok..its not a korean grindfest thats for sure...look at aion and L1-L2 now these are korean grindfests in all their glory

 

but this korean mmo break this,its a very good mmo with epic pvp and dungeons

but the problem of that game its still the "kill x this kill x that"

 

but anw i mention tera cause the guy says none mmo's cant be awesome looking

and sry but as for the combat system tera is the best so far....AoC doesnt come close..artisticly and combat mechanics either

 

How is TERA different from any other "press that button to do that single target / cone / aoe skill" mechanic? Seriously I want to know.

 

Age of Conan is different at all in my eyes cause you have to press multiple buttons for one skill to work (combo system) and your abilitys are bound to the range of your weapon (dagger < polearm). So you can easily hit 4 enemys with every polearm attack IF you position right. Also you will have trouble in crowded places cause models really block you and you cant just clip thorugh everything.

[nadokaoh]

go play secondlife no levels and you can do anything well almost anything

[Maniigoldo]

/agree

 

anyone remember Aion? "Look at those awesome graphics!" "This is going to be the WoW killer"

 

*giggle*

 

y well aion was only good looking but it was a grindfest

tera is not a grindfest,just because its made in korea doesnt mean that its auto a grindfest game....

 

the exp gain is like swtor if not higher

no RNG

 

its an ok mmo but its still the "kill X'"

and also nobody saying that tera is a wow killer only the fangirls say it so

Edited April 19, 2012 by Maniigoldo

[Blistrich]

That is incorrect, well partially as it is a top complaint but only from the MTV Gimme Noaw generation. You can only train a skill to level five. Once you've trained that skill to level five, you have "caught up". You will not have the same amount of skill point as someone who has started playing before you, but that doesn't matter as both of you can only train racial (i.e. Gallente) Frigate to level five. The older player who has more skill points may have another racial (i.e. Minimatar/Amarr/Caldari) Frigate five, but that is irrelevant as you can only fly one ship at a time.

 

The problem for most people is that they are spoon fed their MMO, and cannot adapt to an environment like EVE.

I see what you're saying, and I'm on board with that.

 

The issue I was more focused on was how new EVE players see the process of getting into a capital ship, such as a carrier or dreadnaught, as a dauntingly long process, and until they train all the necessary skills, its a part of the game they are closed off from. Probably for years. They also don't know, for example, who Guiding Hand Social Club are... or why you should never accept an invitation to join Goonswarm (for a small fee and everything you own)... or why they can't make any money selling T1 items... or how to make money in a wormhole.

 

The game is so sandbox and so open and so full of stuff to do, and at the same time there are people in it who have made billions and control massive empires... who did almost nothing other than befriend, organize, and manipulate other people. This can be either intimidating, pointless or downright stupid in the eyes of someone who has just loaded up the game and is orbiting an asteroid in a noob ship.

 

SWTOR, on the other hand, says "Hey guys... you remember this, right? Alright then, have fun!"

[thornka]

I'm very upset that people just go "Thats how MMOs are deal with it."

 

Attitudes like that are why the MMO industry is so flipping stagnant right now.

 

Where would gaming be if no one decided to try new things?

[JHoltJHolt]

*cough* so anyway to continue..

 

Why do we still have levels? UO and SWG(pre update), Eve to name a few proved that this wasn't needed.

Many MANY roleplaying games operate completely separate from levels. Popular ones even such as World of Darkness, Warhammer....

 

And when we bring up levels, and the grind of endgame, WHY oh god WHY does ever MMO have to be a giant epeen gear grind wankfest at endgame? Seriously? Why is it about the gear and not the player skill or strategy?

 

TBC..

 

I miss 1997 and UO. Everyone had standard **** armor, you lost everything when you died, unless you had friends to loot for you.

 

If you had magic weapons, they were rare, and they could be looted. PKers everywhere, had to form militia groups and hire players to guard you so you could mine the ore to work on your smithing. Lol. good times... Dial up though... uggg

 

And you gained skill points depending on what you did: If I chopped wood, i gained in lumberjacking. If i made armor, i gained in smithing. If i used a sword, i gained in swordsman.

[Maniigoldo]

I miss 1997 and UO. Everyone had standard **** armor, you lost everything when you died, unless you had friends to loot for you.

 

If you had magic weapons, they were rare, and they could be looted. PKers everywhere, had to form militia groups and hire players to guard you so you could mine the ore to work on your smithing. Lol. good times... Dial up though... uggg

 

And you gained skill points depending on what you did: If I chopped wood, i gained in lumberjacking. If i made armor, i gained in smithing. If i used a sword, i gained in swordsman.

 

well i guess that world of darkness might bring that appeal of yours again..since i heard that it wil have perma death

[Sirsri]

*cough* so anyway to continue..

 

Why do we still have levels? UO and SWG(pre update), Eve to name a few proved that this wasn't needed.

Many MANY roleplaying games operate completely separate from levels. Popular ones even such as World of Darkness, Warhammer....

 

And when we bring up levels, and the grind of endgame, WHY oh god WHY does ever MMO have to be a giant epeen gear grind wankfest at endgame? Seriously? Why is it about the gear and not the player skill or strategy?

 

TBC..

 

 

Leveling is the tutorial for the game. If done quickly leveling to 50 can be done in as little as 60 or 70 hours (which is shorter than getting to 50 in skyrim I might note, and less time than it took to get through the burning crusade content, even when wotlk was out). If you pace yourself it's 100-120 hours. More than that and you deliberately chose to not progress your character.

 

The thing is, you can't just hand people 45 or 50 buttons and say 'ok go to it'. The leveling in SWTOR does an unnecessarily bad job of teaching you how to use the abilities it gives you. But that's what it's there for. You'd be happier about it if they actually did what they should have done, and had your mentor/trainer/master convey information about how you should be playing the game. They don't, so the system seems as pointless and shallow as it is everywhere else. Because it is. They deliberately chose not to reinvent the wheel, but then haven't moved the genre forward at all in that area.

 

I'm not sure why you think the game is 'about gear and not about skill or strategy'. Getting gear is about skill, or at least, your ability to execute a strategy you saw in a video somewhere. But how well you can execute your 'rotation' (priority queue) is skill. You may not like the skills it requires, I certainly don't think being able to tell when your raze proc is up is a good skill, but well, it is skill. Don't stand in _______ is pretty much standard MMO fare. As is tank swap, per-emptively heal, move to ______ dps _____. As much as *most* of the playerbase is probably from WoW or similar that doesn't apply to everyone, and you can't assume everyone has done hardmode ragnaros and is used to dodging multiple giant balls of doom while healing, dpsing tanking, not standing in fire etc.

 

Believe it or not it's pretty hard to come up with problems (fights, encounters whatever you want to call them ) that can't have a handful of optimized solutions spit out, at which point you're always better to follow one of those than to try and come up with your own strategy. If they had real broad decisions, say letting you take 4 healers 2 tanks 2 dps, rather than 2 tanks 2 heals 4 dps you could have encounters play out very differently depending on who showed up, but that could also trivialize encounters with certain group comps.

[elvavwiel]

Couldn't we do better? Shooters have evolved from run down (relatively) flat corridor A to room B shoot guys on the way to epic movie quality story with physics mechanics and vehicles, branching nonlinear gameplay etc etc.

 

Hahahaha. Ah yes shooters in the past 10 years have changed so much.

 

You can have RPGs that require skill and not just numbers and hitting a skill rotation. Look at Fallout, look at Skyrim,

 

Ok its official, you and me clearly have different versions of all these games.

Edited April 19, 2012 by elvavwiel

[Rakashan]

I'm very upset that people just go "Thats how MMOs are deal with it."

 

Attitudes like that are why the MMO industry is so flipping stagnant right now.

 

Where would gaming be if no one decided to try new things?

 

Ok, so here's your chance. Be creative. Come up with a task for your players to accomplish. It can't involve killing, collecting or delivering anything. Float some ideas. And make sure to stop and think about what you propose and verify that it's not just set dressing on one of those three concepts when you strip it down to the core.

 

That's only half the coin, of course, because people have brought up the "what about using non-experience-based character development" question. That actually has zero bearing on how you write your story because when you go that route you don't actually need to invite anyone to participate in the story (see EQ before Sony took over). Crafting systems in *most* MMOs are an excellent example of this kind of mechanic.

 

As regards story, you run into a toss-up. By closing off portions of a storyline based on prior choices you do a couple of things. Sure, you piss off compulsive completionists (granted a small portion of the audience and maybe not a big issue). More importantly though, you create a massive amount of overhead for your development staff. Instead of making 5000 quests, now they have to come up with 10,000 in order to provide the same length of play-through because half of the content will not be available to a player based on choices he or she has made. In a market where games are rushed to market and people complain about lack of content this is generally not viewed as acceptible. Don't get me wrong, as a player I would love to see it, but imagine the complaints they'd have if the content were even more limited than it is now because of this design decision.

 

So yeah. It's great to push the bounds of the genre by asking what you can and cannot ask a player to do for a quest or a story but then push that around a bit and see what it really works out to. There are a number of fairly obvious reasons why a game like this looks so familiar.

[Gorgor]

Now look what BW did with the Rhakghoul plague. There is a 4th iteration thread asking for it's removal (that's means BW re-created the thread 3 times); which started day 1 of the event. And what are they complaining about - "I don't want to be effected by it. I want to Opt-out." people complain they want something dynamic, then when they are given something dynamic, they complain that it's dynamic. A developer can't win.

 

This sort of stupid whining has been going on for as long as there are MMOs. A long time ago in old UO the city of Trinsic was invaded by undead and held for a week or more. Whiners were pleading for it end IMMEDIATELY and were begging to be put on some sort of special status so the undead would ignore them and they could go about their business as normal. The whiners were ignored by the devs, much as the plague whiners are being ignored now.

 

split seervers so whiners can play on their static servers and let the rest of us get on wih an exciting experience whee Darth Kickbutt invades the space station with 20 chamions in tow and we lose control, vendors and trainers are killed defending, and it takes us a week or two to take it back.

Edited April 19, 2012 by Gorgor

[Karkais]

So, i was kinda thinking today about MMO's in general, and I have to wonder, with the advancement of other genre why is it that a AAA critically acclaimed MMO like SWTOR resort to the same old boring "Kill X number of enemies" Or "Click/collect X number of items"?

 

Because its the most complicated job an average player can manage to accomplish.

 

ps. Also because MMO gameplay is meant to waste your time without making it look like it.

Edited April 19, 2012 by Karkais

[Elwacko]

*cough* so anyway to continue..

 

WHY oh god WHY does ever MMO have to be a giant epeen gear grind wankfest at endgame? Seriously? Why is it about the gear and not the player skill or strategy?

 

TBC..

 

you want a FPS then, that's what you are describing. there are plenty with exactly what you are looking for.

[Jederix]

Except Guild Wars 2.

 

No, even Guild Wars 2. The only thing GW2 is going to "crush" is the hopes and dreams of it's diehard fanbois when it fails to live up to their lofty expectations.

 

Not sure how that game is going to function; most of the less desirable posters on this forum seem to be going there, along with the egocentric PvP crowd. When you put a bunch of self-important narcissists (which most PvPers seem to be) together in the same game, it seems a recipe for disaster to me. I can only imagine what their forums (if they have any) are going to be like.

 

Probably make our forums look like a hippie convention of love and peace.

[Blistrich]

No, even Guild Wars 2. The only thing GW2 is going to "crush" is the hopes and dreams of it's diehard fanbois when it fails to live up to their lofty expectations.

This man understands how the galaxy works.

[Jederix]

To be fair, those thread's proliferation are dominated by 4-5 people that are so outraged and offended by the 10 second inconvenience of the event, or the 10-15 minutes they would have needed to take to research the event to find easiest way to avoid it that they have spent 3+ days on the forums rehashing their victimization and being accosted by the game.

 

This sounds like every complaint thread on this forum; hijacked by 4-5 people who run the post count up, then use that same post count to say that "most people want what I want, look at how many times this thread has been running" while they completely disregard the fact that they and a few people like them, are responsible for most of the posts.

[Arkerus]

I would like to see an MMO where you are simply awarded "points" every time you level.

 

You can use those points to build your character in a number of ways. I know thats similar to "leveling" but it allows the user to be a little more creative.

[ComeAndSee]

Really? The earlier MMOs were straight grinds. Kill 1,000 of these mobs to gain a level. Repeat until you're max level. The thing is -- it was fun, for a while.

 

MMOs have evolved steadily into the quest system. Early WoW questing was crude and was borderline no real difference from grinding because there was a lack of quests and flow. I remember bouncing around different zones around the world multiple times just to gain one level. It improved greatly over the expansions and eventually started getting dumbed down with stuff such as QuestHelper and the objectives not being so spread out.

 

What's different with SWTOR is they took a cinematic approach to it and a lot of the grinding quests were optional bonus quests. Also, having mobs always come in packs of 3 helped keep you entertained. The last was a small change, but every fight was always different.

Edited April 19, 2012 by ComeAndSee

[Blistrich]

Really? The earlier MMOs were straight grinds. Kill 1,000 of these mobs to gain a level. Repeat until you're max level.

I totally agree. MMOs, for the most part, are trying to depart from the grinding process.

 

DAoC was an absolute straight grind. I don't even remember ever picking up quests - you just formed a group, went to an area where the right mobs spawned, and killed them over and over and over and over until you leveled. FFXI was exactly the same way - form a camp... kill endlessly... repeat until your freakin' eyes fall out.

 

Thinking back, games like WoW and SWTOR are actually major leaps forward. When I started playing WoW, the idea of questing to level was absolutely foreign to me. It seemed strange. I mean... how could it be that I was leveling from experience gained for completing objectives and not butchering 5,000,000 Weeweres or whatever?

Edited April 19, 2012 by Blistrich

[rhirne]

Well, and when something has been proven to work... if it ain't broke don't fix it.

 

I remember in DCUO the devs were at first saying how they wanted to get rid of the "Trinity" in the MMO. They ended up having to incorporate it back into the game design because it just had to be there. There are just some aspects you can't get rid of. And to be innovative, what do you let suffer?

 

OK, they get rid of levels.. no more levels in an MMO. What does that level process get replaced with? Questing for all your abilities / powers or figure out how to unlock them somehow? Now your grinding for abilities instead of levels - what's the difference? Or do they just hand them all to you and say "Now go play!" The point of leveling is (in theory) to learn how to play the game, and learn how to play your character while keeping you occupied to keep comming back for more. In fact, the first 10 levels alone are usually reserved for a quick guide for newbies.

 

 

You say FPS's have evolved, but have they really? Think back to "Castle Wolfenstein" (showing my age here ). Consider what you did in that game. Now how much different is it from today's FPS's? When you think about it, they are VERY similar. Have graphics improved.. yeah. Have they added new features.. yeah. But has the underlying gameplay really changed... Nope not really. You still have objectives, you still have levels, you still have unlocks the higher you level. Underneath, modern FPS's are just like Wolfenstein, only prettier looking.

 

You can't change the core of how something works. You can add new features, better graphics, etc.. but the core gameplay just can't be changed. And SWTOR did do something innovative.. they added VO to ALL NPC's and PC's. No other MMO has that. Times have changed.

 

Those of us who started with the first MMO's long for those days, but many no longer have the same time to commit as we did before. We enjoy a challenge and some puzzle solving and don't mind some effort to get it. Today, everyone wants everything NOW and handed to them without much effort. On top of that, people hype stuff up in their minds so much (sometimes the developer helps) that it will never meet their expectation.

 

A developer says "We are considering adding in XYZ into the game" all the sudden players take it as "OMG LOOK WHAT THEY ARE ADDING!!!! WOOOHOOO." Then when it doesn't happen, it goes into a QQ fest, when in reality the developer only said they were "CONSIDERING" adding XYZ.

[ComeAndSee]

I totally agree. MMOs, for the most part, are trying to depart from the grinding process.

 

DAoC was an absolute straight grind. I don't even remember ever picking up quests - you just formed a group, went to an area where the right mobs spawned, and killed them over and over and over and over until you leveled. FFXI was exactly the same way - form a camp... kill endlessly... repeat until your freakin' eyes fall out.

 

Thinking back, games like WoW and SWTOR are actually major leaps forward. When I started playing WoW, the idea of questing to level was absolutely foreign to me. It seemed strange. I mean... how could it be that I was leveling from experience gained for completing objectives and not butchering 5,000,000 Weeweres or whatever?

 

I forgot to mention Instances and PvP.

 

Grinding had a horrible tendency to cause people to become burnt out. Having options such as being able to jump into some PvP matches to burn off some steam and earn experience was a great idea. Instances -- in order to gain gear and experience -- also helped with the leveling flow.

[Tewnam]

I totally agree. MMOs, for the most part, are trying to depart from the grinding process.

 

DAoC was an absolute straight grind. I don't even remember ever picking up quests - you just formed a group, went to an area where the right mobs spawned, and killed them over and over and over and over until you leveled. FFXI was exactly the same way - form a camp... kill endlessly... repeat until your freakin' eyes fall out.

 

Thinking back, games like WoW and SWTOR are actually major leaps forward. When I started playing WoW, the idea of questing to level was absolutely foreign to me. It seemed strange. I mean... how could it be that I was leveling from experience gained for completing objectives and not butchering 5,000,000 Weeweres or whatever?

 

I think WoW took the questing note from mission terminals in SWG. Those didn't give experience, but they gave you a static camp of enemies to go kill to improve your combat skills and were pretty much the standard means of leveling combat skills. Those missions were very generic NPC "bounties" that were assigned from a mission terminal. WoW simply took that idea to the next stage, providing a bit of story along with them and disassociating them from terminals.

 

DAoC did have quests, but they were few and far between and could not be used as the primary means of leveling, at least not until Catacombs.