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Decline Why do MMOs suck so much?

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Codex Year of the Donut
My biggest issue is that I can't just decide to check out of life for a few days and play MMOs anymore because they're all centered around daily bullshit. There's 1-2 hours of content a day then you're "done"
 

Mark Richard

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In an effort to ensure each player has a sufficient number of other people to interact with, they're often shepherded from one activity to the next by an arbitrary server schedule (baited with some kind of bonus, like double points in the PvP Arena for one hour). I was going to make a trite comparison to a day job, but on reflection it sounds more like a retirement home. First Bingo, then Arts and Crafts, and after that comes checkers.
 
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Gerrard

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In an effort to ensure each player has a sufficient number of other people to interact with, they're often shepherded from one activity to the next by an arbitrary server schedule (baited with some kind of bonus, like double points in the PvP Arena for one hour). I was going to make a trite comparison to a day job, but on reflection it sounds more like a retirement home. First Bingo, then Arts and Crafts, and after that comes checkers.
There's absolutely nothing wrong with that. Without providing some incentives for people to play different parts of the game you're rendering 90+% of the game's content dead weight you wasted money creating, as people will quickly find out what is the most time effective thing to do, and do only that.
 

Jimmious

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Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
WoW killed MMOs . Grinding became a second nature for the genre and therefore made all these games boring as fuck
 

whydoibother

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WoW killed MMOs . Grinding became a second nature for the genre and therefore made all these games boring as fuck
But MMPRPGs were MORE grindy before WoW. If anything, WoW killed grind, made the MMORPGs much faster paced, much more reliant on micro stories and quests than on mob kills, and thus killed the treadmill psychological mindfuck that killing 500 goblins and getting the goblinslayer axe gave you.
 

Jimmious

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Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
WoW killed MMOs . Grinding became a second nature for the genre and therefore made all these games boring as fuck
But MMPRPGs were MORE grindy before WoW. If anything, WoW killed grind, made the MMORPGs much faster paced, much more reliant on micro stories and quests than on mob kills, and thus killed the treadmill psychological mindfuck that killing 500 goblins and getting the goblinslayer axe gave you.
Maybe the grind was not the right thing to point out. I guess the whole focus was changed. I remember Ultima Online with its almost complete freedom, that was the way I wanted MMOs to go. WoW made the whole thing into a series of quests and raids in order to get better items.
I played WoW until about level 55 when it came out but never felt i was part of the world. UO was completely different in that aspect
 

whydoibother

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Maybe the grind was not the right thing to point out. I guess the whole focus was changed. I remember Ultima Online with its almost complete freedom, that was the way I wanted MMOs to go. WoW made the whole thing into a series of quests and raids in order to get better items.
I played WoW until about level 55 when it came out but never felt i was part of the world. UO was completely different in that aspect

Maybe you are thinking of access to information. Before WoW blew up and became ridiculously popular, and it became profitable to run websites that datamined and optimized everything, there was much more exploration in MMORPGs. Everywhere around you people were doing suboptimal shit, and so were you, and nobody was thinking much about experience per hour, except the very top guys. Downtime wasn't downtime, it was time to look at your inventory and build and think about what you are going to do.
So the problem isn't MMORPGs, its that we've become very good at them, so they aren't interesting anymore. Too much third party support, and too productive communities, automates the whole experience, and all new content is solved before a normal player can explore it at their own pace.
 

Mark Richard

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In an effort to ensure each player has a sufficient number of other people to interact with, they're often shepherded from one activity to the next by an arbitrary server schedule (baited with some kind of bonus, like double points in the PvP Arena for one hour). I was going to make a trite comparison to a day job, but on reflection it sounds more like a retirement home. First Bingo, then Arts and Crafts, and after that comes checkers.
There's absolutely nothing wrong with that. Without providing some incentives for people to play different parts of the game you're rendering 90+% of the game's content dead weight you wasted money creating, as people will quickly find out what is the most time effective thing to do, and do only that.
That's the upside, but it also leaves the impression that activities are overly regimented, forcing participation in events you don't find enjoyable or weren't in the mood for. I understand the fun of the many outweighs the fun of the one, but this prioritisation is almost militant in its application. Players need to feel like they have the freedom to organise something on their own terms rather than the server's.
 

Norfleet

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If you still think MMOs are leading you by the nose, that's because you're still a bluepiller that is still blindly accepting premise is what is offered to you and what you're told to do. In every such game I've played, I've always gone off the rails at some point. The catch is that it's even less fun to do this, which is fine for me because I HATE FUN. It has been said that, given time, players will optimize the fun out of the game. That's me. That's what I do. Some people play for FUN. I play to streamline production processes and identify redundant assets for termination.
 

Aildrik

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IMHO, what you have really seen with MMOs is the move from the first gen sandbox/community driven games like UO to the scriped, 'theme park' experience like WoW. When UO (and even EQ) hit the market, there was still a sizable portion of the population that wasn't even really online. It was still the dial-up era. With a bigger audience over the coming years, I think MMOs made a move to go more mainstream and capture more of the market.

Sadly, it seems you really can't do that without sacrificing what made the earlier MMOs unique which was you in essence relied on other players to create the entertainment. Whether it was PKs in UO, or anti-PKs, or being a craftsman, it was all about player interaction, and that is what built communities. But, it is a sword that cuts both ways. I mean really, I loved UO and was totally sucked into the game when it launched. That said, there was no way a more casual player with an hour to play was going to put up with stepping out of town and getting ganked by PKs. Same with EQ and losing all your shit in Befallen.

The bean counters stepped in and what you end up with is what we have today, which is really what I term the single player MMO. You can see all content, do basically everything there is to do without talking to and just as importantly, get hassled by another player, ever.
 
Unwanted

Micormic

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They're designed to be addictive, not fun.


They're designed to appeal to the lowest common denominator, basement dwelling nerds with no social life. Some normal people play them too but it's mostly mouth breathers.



The only mmo I ever played for any substantial amount of time was runescape, and that was when I was like 13.
 

J_C

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MMO's suck because they have to be designed with a level of grinding. Proper MMO-s hold the player's attention for hundreds or even thousands of hours. But it is almost impossible to create so many different levels, enemies and quests, so that you always find new things along that 1000 hours. The only option is to implement grinding into the design, so you have to replay quests and kill enemies all the time, to get new gear and level up your character. And it makes the game soooo boring. A good story, or well implemented social element are the only things which make this grinding bearable, but if someone is not looking for those (I for example don't want other players around me, fuck you, I want to experience the story, not going through the same raid for the 10th time), then MMOs are games with terrible mechanics.
 

whydoibother

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MMO's suck because they have to be designed with a level of grinding. Proper MMO-s hold the player's attention for hundreds or even thousands of hours. But it is almost impossible to create so many different levels, enemies and quests, so that you always find new things along that 1000 hours. The only option is to implement grinding into the design, so you have to replay quests and kill enemies all the time, to get new gear and level up your character. And it makes the game soooo boring. A good story, or well implemented social element are the only things which make this grinding bearable, but if someone is not looking for those (I for example don't want other players around me, fuck you, I want to experience the story, not going through the same raid for the 10th time), then MMOs are games with terrible mechanics.

You are misusing "grinding", like most people. Is playing Counter Strike or DOTA2 grinding? Is playing poker or pool grinding? Its the same thing every time, for tens of thousands of hours!!
Its only a grind if its something you do braindead, without liking it, for the reward at the end. If the gameplay loop itself is compelling, or the rewards come frequently, its not really grinding in the original way the term was used for video games.
For example, in the most popular MMORPG in the west World of Warcraft, you don't "grind" to get from level 1 to 20, you do quests. These are compelling, and you do them because you want to. It may be grinding on your second or third go through them, on alternative characters. Then grinding concerns are legit.
 

J_C

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Project: Eternity Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag. Pathfinder: Wrath
MMO's suck because they have to be designed with a level of grinding. Proper MMO-s hold the player's attention for hundreds or even thousands of hours. But it is almost impossible to create so many different levels, enemies and quests, so that you always find new things along that 1000 hours. The only option is to implement grinding into the design, so you have to replay quests and kill enemies all the time, to get new gear and level up your character. And it makes the game soooo boring. A good story, or well implemented social element are the only things which make this grinding bearable, but if someone is not looking for those (I for example don't want other players around me, fuck you, I want to experience the story, not going through the same raid for the 10th time), then MMOs are games with terrible mechanics.

You are misusing "grinding", like most people. Is playing Counter Strike or DOTA2 grinding? Is playing poker or pool grinding? Its the same thing every time, for tens of thousands of hours!!
Its only a grind if its something you do braindead, without liking it, for the reward at the end. If the gameplay loop itself is compelling, or the rewards come frequently, its not really grinding in the original way the term was used for video games.
For example, in the most popular MMORPG in the west World of Warcraft, you don't "grind" to get from level 1 to 20, you do quests. These are compelling, and you do them because you want to. It may be grinding on your second or third go through them, on alternative characters. Then grinding concerns are legit.
There are quests until a point, but there are not enough unique quests, and you have to start repeating them after a while, if you want to have a chance with high level content and getting the coolest gear. In a single player RPG, you do every quest once, reaching the end of the game and there is a difficulty curve designed for that. In my experience in MMOs you can't reach every content by playing it as a single player RPG, playing every quest once. You have to start repeating/grinding sooner or later.
 

whydoibother

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There are quests until a point, but there are not enough unique quests, and you have to start repeating them after a while, if you want to have a chance with high level content and getting the coolest gear. In a single player RPG, you do every quest once, reaching the end of the game and there is a difficulty curve designed for that. In my experience in MMOs you can't reach every content by playing it as a single player RPG, playing every quest once. You have to start repeating/grinding sooner or later.

But repeating content doesn't equal grinding. Thus my Counter Strike example, for one. If the gameplay loop is compelling, you aren't grinding, you are playing.
 

J_C

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There are quests until a point, but there are not enough unique quests, and you have to start repeating them after a while, if you want to have a chance with high level content and getting the coolest gear. In a single player RPG, you do every quest once, reaching the end of the game and there is a difficulty curve designed for that. In my experience in MMOs you can't reach every content by playing it as a single player RPG, playing every quest once. You have to start repeating/grinding sooner or later.

But repeating content doesn't equal grinding. Thus my Counter Strike example, for one. If the gameplay loop is compelling, you aren't grinding, you are playing.
You have a point, it really depends on the person enjoying the gameplay loop or not. Then it's probably just me not enjoying it. :)
 

ADL

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Content-driven themeparks killed the genre. Everquest was an acceptable downgrade since it still kept the community together and there were some minor sandbox elements in there but anything beyond that was straight up decline. Content-driven themepark content is fine but it's a fundamentally flawed concept for a live service game where players can complete content 100000x faster than it can be created so there needs to be more beyond that. The ideal MMO would be half content-driven themepark (with genuinely interesting content) half community-driven sandbox with alternating quarterly updates focused on the two.

Star Wars Galaxies almost had it right but then they went off the rails with the infamous New Game Enhancement update and abandoned a lot of the work in progress sandbox overhaul systems that would later make their way into Crowfall.
 
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The problem with MMOs is the same as with the rest of gaming, but with greater amplitude. The development companies are now run by or report to business people who have no interest or understanding of games. They look at it as a purely business/market research endeavor. WoW made money, so any MMO they make must be like WoW. Without having a nuanced understanding of the underlying phenomena, they keep producing clone crap like ESO, Terra, Rift, etc ad nauseum. Then, that crap predictably flops, and again, without any real understanding of the issues involved, the suits jump to the conclusion that the genre is dead, and move on to Battle Royales and MOBAs.

The genre, on the other hand, is actually not just alive, but could explode in a way that would dwarf WoW, if only someone would come along and create something that would tap into its potential.

Back in the day, MMO designers saw that potential, and were on the way to tapping into it with games like UO and SWG. If you read interviews decades ago with Raph Koster, it's really fascinating stuff, as they were thinking about integrating social systems, and providing mechanics to enable the players to produce content. By comparison, modern MMO design discussions are just dull shallow crap along the lines of maximizing microtransactions, providing easier access to casuals, and so on.

Now, as Eve Online has shown, the actual potential of MMOs is in the dynamic unscripted interactions between MMO players. Player politics, player run economies, players assasinations and machinations, and just regular unscripted interactions. All a great MMO has to do is to create a sandbox in which these things are possible, provide mechanisms to support and encourage them, provide interesting gameplay on the base level (unlike Eve) and also provide mechanisms to handle various well known issues with this type of games. For instance, we know by this point that griefing is a serious problem in these games. So you need some mechanism that imposes a cost on attacking others, that actually works.
 

ADL

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Did Crowfall even release yet?
First full campaign test is taking place now. Soft launch mid 2019 (no more wipes) but the features I was referring to are in. The crafting system is insane.

Sent from my VS995 using Tapatalk
 

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