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Decline Why do MMOs suck so much?

Frusciante

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Arguably the MMORPG is the most declined genre of all (maybe jointly with the RTS). I have been hooked by two MMOs in the past: Star Wars Galaxies for the open world sandbox experience and Guild Wars 1 for the teamplay potential and good use of instancing.

Instead of progressing, MMO developers seemed to have just tried to make a bunch of reskinned WoWs, not improving on two of the main selling points of MMOs for me: (online) open world exploration/adventuring and teamplay potential.

My main frustration though with all of these MMOs is that the gameplay absolutely sucks and has not progressed at all in the last 15-20 years. When I'm used to Dark Souls or Dragon's Dogma why would I ever settle to play WoW/ESO/GW2 for hundreds of hours?

For me a big open world, sandbox MMO with the combat of Dark Souls or Dragon's Dogma would be absolutely amazing. Is it that this type of game would have no audience or something? I get that MMOs are huge investment and that risk adverse companies prefer to play it safe. But on the other hand, people seem to be abandoning this genre now for other genres for lack of any proper options.
 

Norfleet

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1494773921-20170514.png
 

Beastro

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That doesn't apply to mmos until the early 2000s, even with the heavy grind in some like Everquest.

Even EQ dumped you into a world and left you largely to your own initiative to find your way. It's the reason why grinding even existed, as it was the only realistic way of gaining exp given the lack of quests giving it out.

And that's why MMOs suck now. Originally the pull was being dumped in a world, figuring out how things work in it and then making your own adventures with others as you dicked around. Keep in mind the late 90s was an era when even the concept of raiding wasn't well understood by many MMOs makers, let alone their games communities. Tanking, Complete Heal chains, Feign Death pull, all of those were roles players developed to succeed against raid targets that the devs never imagined, and originally tried to prevent because they though players would literally zerg rush and spam heal until raid targets died.

The death of MMOs came witha sort of standardized consumerism, especially when it came to "content". No one got into UO, EQ or other games to play the "content" the game offered. You played and went along as it came with little direction, even with "spoiler sites" helping you out. Now you play MMOs wanting to get to max level, want to know the exp rate, want to know how loot is, if it's a WoW-clone theme park of quest grinding, what the late game is? Everybody has too much of an idea of what an MMO is and focusing on going through all those moves that the old RPG-friendly cultures that old MMOs produced can't grow and thrive now.

IMO, the problem from all of that is that devs want to produce a reliable path for customers to play through and players have come to expect it. You go back to the old ways it means creating an open area for emergent gameplay to dominante but who knows if the players will make use of that freedom to make the game succeed?

In the case of UO and EQ, they did, but their playerbase went in with a mind to what RPGs once were before that. Now if you make one players come in with a mindset built by the past 16-18 years.

Edit: Keep in mind too the appeal of early MMORPGs wasn't just playing yet another RPG, but also blending together RPG gameplay with something akin to a "real", immersive tabletop experience where you meet up and go dungeoneering with a pack of other dudes you may or may not know in a on-going world.
 
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Norfleet

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That doesn't apply to mmos until the early 2000s, even with the heavy grind in some like Everquest.
Haha, no, MMOs were always about grinding, even before they were called MMOs. You must not remember all the grinding involved on MUDs, where you would repeatedly slaughter the same respawning monsters over and over to level up so you could slaughter more, slightly different monsters. Or the hours spent doing the equivalent of cow-punching to level up your skills. Very few modern, non-Asian MMOs still expect players to reach level cap by grinding mobs. In the early days of MUDs and MMOs, grinding was literally the only thing in the game outside of PKing. We didn't even have "PvP" back then, it was just straight up PKing.
 

Damned Registrations

Furry Weeaboo Nazi Nihilist
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He didn't say they didn't have grind, he said they weren't 'workified'. Which is true. I didn't sit in a safe zone in EQ and grind skeletons until it was safe to progress. I took some weird quest that was way over my head with no idea what the reward would be that required me to travel through areas I couldn't survive a fight in. I was wandering through a dark forest and a mountain pass with patrolling enemies and if I died all my gear was going to stay on my corpse unless I could reach it while naked. It didn't feel like work, it felt like an adventure. Later MMOs had nothing like that. You take a magic taxi to your destination because people didn't want to walk anywhere or pay another player to teleport them. Even when I was grinding stuff, it felt different. Being camped out in a mostly safe room in the bottom of a goblin lair while the rogue or ranger snuck out to find a small group or isolated enemy to pull so we could ambush it when it followed him back to us is a way different feeling than plowing through a WoW dungeon killing everything as you see it without slowing down. There was a real sense of tension and danger; fucking up badly could kill us all and have serious consequences. We didn't loot everything because we had to carry that loot back out and it made you slower if you went overweight, so we kept the valuable steel weapons and left the lesser loot behind. You had to go to a bank to exchange copper for silver, so we left copper behind too because it was too heavy for it's value. I was a mage so I could conjure food and drink to slowly regen our health and mana between fights, but without me we'd have needed to worry about supplies as well. If we stayed in one spot and murdered a hundred goblins it's because it felt satisfying to be part of a team that was a well oiled machine, not because we felt like it was the only way to get xp and loot.
 

Gerrard

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My main frustration though with all of these MMOs is that the gameplay absolutely sucks and has not progressed at all in the last 15-20 years. When I'm used to Dark Souls or Dragon's Dogma why would I ever settle to play WoW/ESO/GW2 for hundreds of hours?

Because DUDE WHY CAN'T I MOVE WHILE I'M SWINGING THIS GIANT SWORD THIS SUCKS
People WoWfags are retarded.

Tera was the only MMO with good combat and it all declined into generic tank'n'spank holy trinity gear treadmill garbage with cash shop costumes being "content".
Shit, even fucking Monster Hunter World has a fight where you need a tank and a healer.
 
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Norfleet

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He didn't say they didn't have grind, he said they weren't 'workified'.
I don't think you've been playing these games right. All things are workified. If you're grinding like some kind of small-scale peon, you're never going to get anywhere in these games. It's about who can turn out armies of characters to farm mountains of loot.

We didn't loot everything because we had to carry that loot back out and it made you slower if you went overweight, so we kept the valuable steel weapons and left the lesser loot behind. You had to go to a bank to exchange copper for silver, so we left copper behind too because it was too heavy for it's value. I was a mage so I could conjure food and drink to slowly regen our health and mana between fights, but without me we'd have needed to worry about supplies as well. If we stayed in one spot and murdered a hundred goblins it's because it felt satisfying to be part of a team that was a well oiled machine, not because we felt like it was the only way to get xp and loot.
You...have a very strange way of going about it. I stripped entire maps bare using a team of dedicated porters that were there to carry my loot. You fixate strangely on what "you" were. This is not how you grind anything. This is some small-scale funtard peon thing, not how to properly run an assembly line.
 
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because mmos are the "problem of multiplaying" to the extreme. among the famous voices, i think carmack said it first (and only): "the future will be in multiplayer games, because you don't need to create lots of content for them. you throw an arena at people and they'll entertain themselves. and the numbers of players at once must grow, because the more at once the more people are to blame if things go wrong, instead of learning how to play" (not word for word, mind you, but this was the message in a nutshell).
mmos are just huuuuuuuge arenas with huuuuuuge sinks between people entertaining themselves.
also there's the "progress quest degeneracy": looks like as we humans just LOVE to pump up those rookie numbers, it fascinates us to no end even if it means that when at the beginning we were flailing a 10 against a 100 and at the end we are flailing a 100 against a 1000.
it's our flawed nature, can't be helped.
 
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Damned Registrations

Furry Weeaboo Nazi Nihilist
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He didn't say they didn't have grind, he said they weren't 'workified'.
I don't think you've been playing these games right. All things are workified. If you're grinding like some kind of small-scale peon, you're never going to get anywhere in these games. It's about who can turn out armies of characters to farm mountains of loot.

We didn't loot everything because we had to carry that loot back out and it made you slower if you went overweight, so we kept the valuable steel weapons and left the lesser loot behind. You had to go to a bank to exchange copper for silver, so we left copper behind too because it was too heavy for it's value. I was a mage so I could conjure food and drink to slowly regen our health and mana between fights, but without me we'd have needed to worry about supplies as well. If we stayed in one spot and murdered a hundred goblins it's because it felt satisfying to be part of a team that was a well oiled machine, not because we felt like it was the only way to get xp and loot.
You...have a very strange way of going about it. I stripped entire maps bare using a team of dedicated porters that were there to carry my loot. You fixate strangely on what "you" were. This is not how you grind anything. This is some small-scale funtard peon thing, not how to properly run an assembly line.
What you're describing doesn't even make sense. Enemies in EQ that gave xp were not something you could clear a map of on your own. A white or yellow mob was something you'd need to recover from for several minutes after fighting 1v1 for most classes, and even classes that could solo effectively only did so in very narrow circumstances. Nobody was waltzing through a dungeon of enemies that gave xp solo. Even greens weren't something you could handle more than maybe a dozen of in a row under the best of circumstances. What do you even mean by 'team of dedicated porters'? Mules? They'd be too weak to survive there alone. And if you're talking about farming low level shit, nobody did that because you could just pay noobs to farm your bone chips or whatever for you.
 

Jacob

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Grab the Codex by the pussy
So after reading this thread, with some of my personal experience mixed in, here's my rough idea of a good MMORPG in 2018:

1. Classic tactical real-time gameplay
2. Huge dungeons designed to be fought as a team that might not even be finished in one run, especially if you come with the minimum req level. Every single enemy encountered should be interesting. When defeated, you and your party should receive an appropriate amount of exp, so there wouldn't be complains of grinding. Just compare it to party-based CRPGs. The encounters in CRPGs are made to be fought as a group of appropriately leveled party. This balance is what MMOs should translate to a multiplayer game where each player only control one character. But increase the scale, since MMOs are supposed to contain hundreds of hours of gameplay (Or the dev wouldn't profit)
3. Classes that are different from each other and have a functional role in party composition.
4. Honestly, minimize quests. On single player, complex quests are fun, but on MMOs they'd degrade into you following your friend who have finished the quest blindly, which in turn did the quest by following his friend's advice blindly.
5. Make it light on spec.
6. Make a good platform for party-making.
 

Norfleet

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What you're describing doesn't even make sense. Enemies in EQ that gave xp were not something you could clear a map of on your own. A white or yellow mob was something you'd need to recover from for several minutes after fighting 1v1 for most classes, and even classes that could solo effectively only did so in very narrow circumstances.
You clearly don't understand how to actually play these games. You think in terms of "1", "Solo", "Classes". You think so small. You list all of these obstacles that afflict those who have only one character, but don't see the obvious solution: HAVE MORE THAN ONE CHARACTER. WE ARE LEGION.
 

Norfleet

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3. Classes that are different from each other and have a functional role in party composition.
I actually disagree with this point: I hold that classes are basically an atavism. The main flaw with classes are that they, generally permanently, lock players into a specific playstyle that they will, realistically, know absolutely nothing about at the time they chose it, since far too many games demand you choose one at the very beginning, before you have the slightest idea what it involves or what any of it means. That's not to say that players cannot have specialized roles that fulfill a similar function. Single characters really shouldn't necessarily do everything at once, but I don't think rigidly locking people into something before they have any idea what they're in for, with no way to ever change it, is the right answer.
 
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it matters little, whatever the system, single class or multiple classes, they'll find the way to make it frustrating to explore more paths, thus forcing to pay and pay and pay and pay. damn, i want back guild wars and tabula rasa.
 

Beastro

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Very few modern, non-Asian MMOs still expect players to reach level cap by grinding mobs. In the early days of MUDs and MMOs, grinding was literally the only thing in the game outside of PKing. We didn't even have "PvP" back then, it was just straight up PKing.

That was the interesting thing with Rallos Zek, if not Vallon and Tallon Zek. At first the PvP was naarchy, but enough people played as Anti-pks that a semblence of order was established akin to the Wild West. You could travel around and do stuff but there was always that element of danger lurking around with PKs sneaking about that could range from waking up and keeping an eye out when some /OOCed seeing a known Pk in zone to panick as a group of the would come by making a sweep for anyone to kil.

That's what I found interesting about those EQ PvP servers in that the player base created their own order until it died out as the "content" fixation and raiding slowly killed Anti-Pks, then finally the PKs themselves.

After that a mix fucked with things when Sullon Zek was finally released, which began and remained a collection of nasty pieces of shits trying to run each other off the server that became the set pattern for EQ PK, then EQ servers period afterwards. By the time it released the game was too well known so people were rushing to the end game before everyone else and not enjoying the leveling and the servers rules didn't help either by both limiting attacking your own alignment as well as killing anyone of opposing ones regardless of level.
 

Beastro

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I stripped entire maps bare using a team of dedicated porters that were there to carry my loot. You fixate strangely on what "you" were. This is not how you grind anything. This is some small-scale funtard peon thing, not how to properly run an assembly line.

So you boxed?

The vast majority didn't in Classic, nor did they have a set idea of what to do everyday beyond shoot the shit getting some exp in whatever group they could do, which typically invovled the eternal problem of the whiney ass in the group saying another place is better and we should go there that itself usually resulted in some fun, if only looking back on the CR that way with the distance of time.

What DR did was how everyone I knew handled things. The only stand out was my brother with his necro and his obsession with efficiency that made up buy/save up fine steel daggers so his pets could duel wield before that was fixed to let them without holding two weapons. He'd load up on FS daggers and head out to his camp stop killing shit, then waddle back overweight full of the best things to sell he looted to do it over again.
 

Beastro

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What you're describing doesn't even make sense. Enemies in EQ that gave xp were not something you could clear a map of on your own. A white or yellow mob was something you'd need to recover from for several minutes after fighting 1v1 for most classes, and even classes that could solo effectively only did so in very narrow circumstances.
You clearly don't understand how to actually play these games. You think in terms of "1", "Solo", "Classes". You think so small. You list all of these obstacles that afflict those who have only one character, but don't see the obvious solution: HAVE MORE THAN ONE CHARACTER. WE ARE LEGION.

The only one back in the day that boxed like that was Sam Deathwalker.

https://encyclopediadramatica.rs/Sam_DeathWalker

....is that you, Sam?
 

Pika-Cthulhu

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my opinion is that everything goes to shit when you start catering to kids

Nah, Hotdogs, Hamburgers and Cake are when things get amazing! Then you throw up, and eat again!!! HOORAY, just dont let Jimmy on the bouncing castle, he cant handle his ice cream
 

Norfleet

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my opinion is that everything goes to shit when you start catering to kids
Damn straight, DAMN KIDS, GET OFF MY LAWN. Besides, kids don't actually have any money, unless they're stealing it from their parents, and this is just a headache for everyone involved. They should just be straight up banned. No kids allowed.
 

Scruffy

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Codex 2012 Torment: Tides of Numenera Codex USB, 2014
my opinion is that everything goes to shit when you start catering to kids
Damn straight, DAMN KIDS, GET OFF MY LAWN. Besides, kids don't actually have any money, unless they're stealing it from their parents, and this is just a headache for everyone involved. They should just be straight up banned. No kids allowed.
I unironically agree
 

typical user

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Why MMOs are shit?

I guess it is mostly because of microscopic budget and studios made of handful of people from third world countries (or China). All other gists come from that one fact.
 

InD_ImaginE

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Pathfinder: Wrath
I remember when I had to save money for Ragnarok Online subscription and just grind and have a lot of fun with my school friends.

Besides the changing MMO gameplay, MMORPG was designed as a social experience. When I played RO its about leveling toons together because high level Dungeon are too hard for most classes to go solo. Then you chill together in Prontera with friends or guildies. Then you have War of Emporium (guild vs guild) where I literally had online strategy meeting in-game. I became friends with some strangers I meet online.

These days MMO is about gear level, knowing skill rotation, farming raid, waiting for new content, and when game is dead, finding new gae to do the same. Of all the flak mobile gaming is getting, honestly modern MMO is pretty much the same shit with prettier package.
 

Sabotin

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I feel the biggest thing is that the social aspect moved from away from MMOs. Now you got Facebook etc. where you're always online and interacting with people, so that part isn't that much of a draw anymore.

Another is all the structured content. I'm older now so it might be nostalgia, but I still feel that that 1-2h daily stuff now is more of a chore than 6h farming with friends used to be... Freedom to do whatever was another big draw that was lost. Even some sp games have more of an open world feel now...

And before you even get there there's usually a sort of "story" campaing to bring you from start to max lv. in which you're essentially playing alone with a background of assholes and retards. Then everyone gets used to it and it becomes the norm for the future, which makes you quit in a few weeks.
 

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