Do the genre suck now or is it the players?

[Norfleet]

This is one of the most devious things I've ever read and I love it!

The best part was how it interacted with the crime system. Because the ownership of the explosive device was given only when you drop it or it detonates, *I* received no penalty for blowing up a player in this way, while the guy had two choices: he could throw the live explosive away after failing to disarm it without managing to kill himself by failing, thus being flagged as a criminal for throwing live explosives in town, in which case I'd run him down and kill him (no penalty because he was a criminal), and because he was a criminal, I could loot his corpse without penalty...or he could get blown up, in which case he'd be flagged as a criminal for being an Aloha Snackbar, and I'd loot his corpse without penalty.

And this is why Killers hate fucking with Explorers, and Killer-Explorers are the worst.

 

[DarKPenguiN]

Ever since WoW came out and became extremely popular I've had a theory. The first MMORPG that a person plays will be their biggest love and no other MMO afterwards will fully satisfy them. My first MMORPG was Everquest. The first time I played it was in 2002 and the last time I played it was 2019. I've played every major release between those years and a handful of obscure ones as well. No other MMORPG has been able to take hold of me like that. My record for longest time in an MMO other than EQ is the 6 months I spent leading a guild in Shadowbane.

Surely not every single MMORPG released since 2001 is garbage? It has to be me, right?

MMORPGs have pretty much always been garbage-

That said, the playerbase was filled predominately with tabletop nerds who enjoyed complexity, group composition and had an actual attention span... The genre has been invaded by the mainstream and as a result the entire 'feel' of the games changed as well- Not to mention ca$h $hops.

Everquest was great because of the people- Older MMOs were made where you could excel at a class, get a reputation (for good or ill) and they had actual communities. They werent necessarily end game gear grinds.

I remember imagining where the genre would evolve to once technology had advanced- I had no idea it would all turn to shit.

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

MMOS are like free-cheap hookers. Blow your load, add a notch and move on. I guess some brothels get a bit more business.

 

[Drakron]

Everquest was great because of the people- Older MMOs were made where you could excel at a class, get a reputation (for good or ill) and they had actual communities. They werent necessarily end game gear grinds.

They were, dont lie now ... EQ had notorious grinds and people accepted then because it was "the end game".

A lot of stuff remains from old MMOs, the mythical "endgame" is one and EQ was basic quests, the game that really broke that mold was WOW but it was already heavily set by the Warcraft games so it could do that, MMOs simply could not easily establish such lore and often that lore was completely ignored by the players that simply were on the gearing treadmill, WOW is included on that.

Also I have to point out the grind of those MMO ended up going in a very stupid direction, FF XI had a boss that took 18 hours to kill and many MMO (pre-WOW model) were going down the same path, the whole "actual communities" is simply the chat, things are different now simply now because on those old days the chat was about it but then come all those private chat servers that guilds started to use that leads to today were people have Discord or other VoIP systems because ... the old MMO created bosses you need a guild and coordination to kill and the game chat wasnt suitable for then and thus they created the 3rd party segregation that exists today, if anything EQ is directly responsible for the death of game communities as it make people use those systems and not their chat system, even if to be fair EQ didnt exactly did on purpose outside creating gameplay that required the use of such tools.

The "genre" evolution into what is today is caused by what those old MMOs did, they pushed for harder bosses and more grind with WOW not being revolutionary but evolutionary with pre-WOW MMO simply going into other more extreme areas as WOW was a typical Blizzard product of the that time, blaming "mainstream" is retarded as L2 had a much bigger playerbase that EQ and took some time before WOW catched up to L2 numbers, the system is what is today because costs. I dont like the current model because is fucking predatory and designed to annoy the crap out of you until you pay however this is current year in gaming were you can sell that BS is most AAA releases, we used to have cheat codes and now we have to pay for cheats ... fuck, we have to pay for mods with a cut going into the publisher.

 

[Black]

Good genre makes good players, like UObros. Bad genre makes bad players, like wowfags.

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

18 hours to kill a boss? Jesus fuck the what!?!?

 

[DarKPenguiN]

Everquest was great because of the people- Older MMOs were made where you could excel at a class, get a reputation (for good or ill) and they had actual communities. They werent necessarily end game gear grinds.

They were, dont lie now ... EQ had notorious grinds and people accepted then because it was "the end game".

A lot of stuff remains from old MMOs, the mythical "endgame" is one and EQ was basic quests, the game that really broke that mold was WOW but it was already heavily set by the Warcraft games so it could do that, MMOs simply could not easily establish such lore and often that lore was completely ignored by the players that simply were on the gearing treadmill, WOW is included on that.

Also I have to point out the grind of those MMO ended up going in a very stupid direction, FF XI had a boss that took 18 hours to kill and many MMO (pre-WOW model) were going down the same path, the whole "actual communities" is simply the chat, things are different now simply now because on those old days the chat was about it but then come all those private chat servers that guilds started to use that leads to today were people have Discord or other VoIP systems because ... the old MMO created bosses you need a guild and coordination to kill and the game chat wasnt suitable for then and thus they created the 3rd party segregation that exists today, if anything EQ is directly responsible for the death of game communities as it make people use those systems and not their chat system, even if to be fair EQ didnt exactly did on purpose outside creating gameplay that required the use of such tools.

The "genre" evolution into what is today is caused by what those old MMOs did, they pushed for harder bosses and more grind with WOW not being revolutionary but evolutionary with pre-WOW MMO simply going into other more extreme areas as WOW was a typical Blizzard product of the that time, blaming "mainstream" is retarded as L2 had a much bigger playerbase that EQ and took some time before WOW catched up to L2 numbers, the system is what is today because costs. I dont like the current model because is fucking predatory and designed to annoy the crap out of you until you pay however this is current year in gaming were you can sell that BS is most AAA releases, we used to have cheat codes and now we have to pay for cheats ... fuck, we have to pay for mods with a cut going into the publisher.

...How...Dare...You.



I'd say more but I'm shaking with anger.

 

[Norfleet]

Maybe I'm weird but I feel like this doesn't apply to me even though I'm definitely in the killer camp. I really need a fleshed out world and good pve to feel satisfied. Darkfall Online is a great example. It seems like they got almost everything right as far as pvp goes but the world felt incredibly dead and I was so bored I never could progress far enough to do pvp. Shadowbane did a lot better but even it was shit on the pve side and I only made it about 6 months into the game

If you care that much about the PvE, you've probably got a secondary Achiever mode that you like scratched.

Me, my secondary MO is the Explorer. I like to discover new and interesting secrets about the game. And then weaponize them, because I'm still a Killer. If the game just had killing, and well-made PvE, but there was nothing to discover about it, perhaps because the meta had become locked in or the game is overly mechanistic, I'd be bored in the same way you wouldn't find a purely murder-based game to be fulfilling. To really interest me, the game has to have secrets. Weaponizable secrets. Ones that I can use to crush my enemies. Or at least take all of their money in the auction house.

 

[Drakron]

18 hours to kill a boss? Jesus fuck the what!?!?

https://finalfantasy.fandom.com/wiki/Pandemonium_Warden
Also there is this ...
https://finalfantasy.fandom.com/wiki/Absolute_Virtue

 

[Norfleet]

18 hours to kill a boss? Jesus fuck the what!?!?

The games of old were not designed for those with short attention spans, weak bladders, or lives.

 

[Drakron]

Well they nerfed it because of the backlash and as you can see with Absolute Trolling they werent above designing a unbeatable boss (since they nerfed every single "wrong" way to beat it), FF XI had a reputation for those bosses and some older MMO also had pretty long boss fights but not like over 2 hours continued battle.
FF XII also had a long one with Yiazmat but thats single player and not as long, FF XI takes the cake with the longest ones apparently.
(I never fought Yiazmat because I accidentally beat the game and lost the desire to try the secret dungeon)

 

[Not.AI]

Do we even need boss battles?

In the sense of hour long grinds?

Remember you could take down the toughest "boss" in Deus Ex (the original) in a couple ways all one hit - all the "bosses" were still basically "of the same type" as general characters. Not-special-as-in-survives-falling-into-the-sun-because-named-characters. Now there was a game...

If say "Timmy" whacks the big turtle over the head with a big hammer, is should go down in one hit. "Cus he hit it on the head."

Doesn't matter if the turtle is called "Ancient Dragon Vinod" rather than just "big turtle" like the common enemies.

Question is - can that work in an MMORPG?

Related: Didn't the devs of S.T.A.L.K.E.R. make an MMO of some kind? Is this kind of thing in it? Dunno.

 

[Norfleet]

Do we even need boss battles?

No, but it does mean your alternative just grinding trash mobs forever.

Remember you could take down the toughest "boss" in Deus Ex (the original) in a couple ways all one hit - all the "bosses" were still basically "of the same type" as general characters. Not-special-as-in-survives-falling-into-the-sun-because-named-characters. Now there was a game...

It was also single player, which means every player would defeat that boss, once, and get the resulting rewards, once. Put that in a multiplayer environment and that all goes out the window. If that boss drops anything of value, and a player can trivially farm that boss by one-shotting it through chicanery, if that player can protect his trade secret, then he will become ridiculously rich. If the method is easily discovered and reproduced by the public, then that item is no longer of any value.

Question is - can that work in an MMORPG?

It cannot. In an MMO environment, a boss that you can potshot in this way is no longer a boss, but just some weak trash mob that now drops loot which will soon be worthless if this method gets out.