Decline Why do MMOs suck so much?

[Father Foreskin]

Mmos suck because the majority of people who play them suck. The gamers can be divided into 2 categories.

1. Life-long losers who believe they have finally found a way to be something of importance. These are usually lured in with pay to win mechanics. Star Citizen and Shroud of the Avatar are the best examples that lure these twats in. You dont even need a game, just let them larp commanders and barons on reddit.

2. Piss-bottling neckbeards. These folks have no skills, no money, no sexual prospects. What they do have is time. So its all for the horde. These people are brought in by grind. WoW is the crown jewel here.

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

Played an NCSoft game in August; seems like you level up every mob you kill. Really lame leading you through like a guided tour.

 

[TheImplodingVoice]

Mmos suck because the majority of people who play them suck. The gamers can be divided into 2 categories.

1. Life-long losers who believe they have finally found a way to be something of importance. These are usually lured in with pay to win mechanics. Star Citizen and Shroud of the Avatar are the best examples that lure these twats in. You dont even need a game, just let them larp commanders and barons on reddit.

2. Piss-bottling neckbeards. These folks have no skills, no money, no sexual prospects. What they do have is time. So its all for the horde. These people are brought in by grind. WoW is the crown jewel here.

 

[Norfleet]

Well, I'm not either of those groups, I'm some other flavor of crazy. There should probably a #3, "insane people", because there's a lot of us who are in it because they are insane for various reasons. I, for instance, am attracted to grind mechanics because retirement is REALLY, REALLY HARD on a workaholic, and this fills that niche.

 

[Father Foreskin]

Yeah i said majority, ive had some non-dysfunctional friends who played wow during its peak.

 

[notkonoyo]

Also to take in mind that techniques to attract players and keep them playing discovered back in UO/EQ were consecutively mastered in WoW/L2/etc and new titles had nothing more to give apart the new settings. Moreover, the same tricks were used in newer types of MMOs later, which led to spread out playerbase. No MMO in the last decade was developed to be the GOAT, only titles designed for a narrower groups of players that prefer only a certain mechanic through which the game would be later advertised (which is itself another problem).

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

I’m cheap sob when it comes to online games. No WOWz for me which leaves the free games..... lord have mercy on my gaming soul.

 

[Poseidon00]

MMOs suck because they're not the same kind of RPGs as single player RPGs, not even close. That would be ok, but the MMO cash train often destroys the single player RPG series that they leech off of. Yes, i'm still salty about no KOTOR 3.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

MMOs suck because they're not the same kind of RPGs as single player RPGs, not even close. That would be ok, but the MMO cash train often destroys the single player RPG series that they leech off of. Yes, i'm still salty about no KOTOR 3.

Nothing is stopping MMOs from being like single player RPGs. Many of the newer ones even have very involved singleplayer questlines.

Played an NCSoft game in August; seems like you level up every mob you kill. Really lame leading you through like a guided tour.

Old Lineage 2 was one of the most grindy MMOs to ever exist. A single death would cost you days, possibly weeks of progress(AKA 2-3% of your level at higher levels)

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

There was this stupid delivery quest and kill some shit quests you could do 101 times each. You get a big fat nada for doing that. Wasted a few days doing that. I eventually got bored. Played a dude who only gathered and crafted but never fought (if he could avoid it as some story elements required conbat). Seems you have to be x level to get to certain crafting tiers. Gay. Skills in that sense and combat levels should be different. Meh! It wasn’t as stupid as say Angels ONLINE. That game you could just program your character on auto and let them grind on their own all day or until the server severed by dc.

Wtf is with me playing angel games?

 

[Interstellar]

Old Lineage 2 was one of the most grindy MMOs to ever exist. A single death would cost you days, possibly weeks of progress(AKA 2-3% of your level at higher levels)

Yeah, and that is the most loved thing in Lineage. HARDCORE. How it is easier of course even Lineage Classic, but still.

 

[Poseidon00]

Nothing is stopping MMOs from being like single player RPGs. Many of the newer ones even have very involved singleplayer questlines.

Shut up nerd

 

[Generic-Giant-Spider]

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.

The problem is that so many MMOs don't tackle the potential that is so easy to see: the classes. Yes, they will create classes and boast customization but a lot of that customization will forever relate to combat situations and not enough into things that actually makes your class stand out and do something else.

Take the Rogue for example, this is the one MMORPG class that has been thoroughly raped of everything interesting so they can be the designated damage bot and occasional crowd controller. Calling them a Rogue is actually goofy because so much of what makes a Rogue is often ignored or barely explored. If you ask me, the Rogue has always been a big asset for any party in campaigns because of their utility. Being able to scout ahead and warn of dangerous hazards, disarm traps, open locked doors to take shortcuts, use their thieves cant to avoid encounters with potentially hostile pirates and cutthroats, all sorts of shit. But instead they're demoted to being the class that uses daggers and stabs stuff and maybe stuns something. Boring. A class that was built around being a great problem solver is now reduced to a Fighter with a few gimmicks.

You could do this with many classes. A Ranger being a stellar pathfinder that can see statistics on many creatures and would know what sort of wildlife exists around him, a Cleric that can provide insight to an evil cult's forbidden deity and what you can expect from them, a Mage that is so well-versed in esoteric knowledge they are able to translate glyphs and solve puzzles to advance in a dungeon and so on.

Instead all you have are classes being particle effects and the only thing that matters is where they place on a damage/healing meter. The entire direction of the MMORPG needs to go into adventuring, not purple item acquisition.

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

^^^^^Exactly.

Sometimes they chuck ranged on them to be some sort of artillery class. Where’s the climbing, the stealing (esp the pilfering), traps/locks, etc?

 

[Helton]

Have you guys played Dungeons and Dragons Online? It isn't perfect but I think they got what you're complaining about right. Rogues are rogues.

 

[Dawkinsfan69]

Instead all you have are classes being particle effects and the only thing that matters is where they place on a damage/healing meter. The entire direction of the MMORPG needs to go into adventuring, not purple item acquisition.

Yup this sucks and it's pretty much what happened in every mmo. WoW has like 20 dps specs and they all have the same exact ability set with different names and animations. I'm not a mage, I'm dpstemplate applied to spec#12. Same with healing/tanking

Then on top of that, ability rotations are so simple and the skill ceiling is so low that every other player is just as good as you and you're literally a replaceable cog. There's no being good in these games, there's only "how many hours did you spend with your nose to the grindstone to get +1 item upgrades"

 

[Generic-Giant-Spider]

Have you guys played Dungeons and Dragons Online? It isn't perfect but I think they got what you're complaining about right. Rogues are rogues.

I have not, actually. I see it's F2P so give it to me raw: is it playable or do you need to actually buy stuff to get anywhere?

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

Ha! Pretty true. I do like the scenery in some games and doing shit outside the box. Finding errors and places you shouldn’t be able to go is cool too.

 

[Helton]

Have you guys played Dungeons and Dragons Online? It isn't perfect but I think they got what you're complaining about right. Rogues are rogues.

I have not, actually. I see it's F2P so give it to me raw: is it playable or do you need to actually buy stuff to get anywhere?

I think you can play it for free for a while. I forget the details but you can unlock quest packs with currency earned in game and those quest packs will help you get more currency etc... But classes and races will be locked at first (and for a long time) along with initially the aforementioned quest packs. When I played it seriously I just sprang for the monthly fee, I think it was worth it. You could definitely get a feel for the game without paying a cent though, consider it an extended demo.

 

[PorkyThePaladin]

This stuff is related. Originally, MMOs were supposed to be dynamic and deep worlds (UO, SWG, Eve), but WoW turned them into dumbed down themepark rides. Since your themepark doesn't really have any depth or simulation elements, the easiest way to implement it is by having every class just be a damage dealer. If you for example, wanted to make rogues to be actual thieves, you would need to introduce actual stealth gameplay, which makes things more complicated and expensive, so obviously themepark people don't want to do this.

But in a deep sandbox, you have incentive to have different systems anyway, since they provide the content instead of developers. So as long as you have them, there is no reason for different classes NOT to play around with them. Stealth systems, diplomacy systems, non combat magic, etc, each can provide toys to play around with.

 

[Drakron]

Being able to scout ahead and warn of dangerous hazards, disarm traps, open locked doors to take shortcuts, use their thieves cant to avoid encounters with potentially hostile pirates and cutthroats, all sorts of shit. But instead they're demoted to being the class that uses daggers and stabs stuff and maybe stuns something.

This was not to being demoted but rather dungeon design were combat is everything, classes are simply reduced to their combat roles and of course that is what a Rogue is on a combat situation.

Its akin to the devolution of Star Wars Galaxies were classes that were basically crafting and support classes were simply wiped with a few exceptions to merge then but this is also a problem with the average MMO player and I dont mean the casual one, I mean the shitheads that jump from MMO to MMO in the hopes they became "teh choosen 1" until they do land on some MMO were for some reason they became part of the 1% ultra geared end game that will then bitch and moan about anything that threatens their "teh choosen 1" status and if they do lose that status, they will just repeat the cycle, those people only care about the meta and of course that means combat, since game developers are already adverse to overall complicated systems they dont have a real grasp on how they affect the gameworld and some game developers REALLY have a aversion of people "not playing as intended" they end up only going for the easier to understand and control system, that being combat ... tell a game developer you want a way to bypass half the dungeon combat encounters and chances are he will either faint from shock or try to choke you because the dungeon was "carefully" designed to provide that amount of "challenge" to the players and non-combat outside crafting tends to be "not engaging enough" to be considered.

In a way this is caused by UO and earlier non-MUD MMOs that shown the problems with such systems but its easier to remove and just work with what they can control that maintain systems that can lead to players to "play the game wrong", something that must not be allowed.

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

Did y’all watch that Richard Garriott video on how the ecology of UO was ruined by players? Rather neat he had an ecosystem where plants grew, herbivores ate the plants then the carnivores ate the herbivores and I guess monsters ate anything. Ah, Grindy hoarding players ruining everything in his ULTIMA Eden.

 

[Micormic]

Because they're designed to be addictive, not fun.


For people who don't live in their basement they're boring and a waste of time.

 

[Dawkinsfan69]

WoW is pretty fun for like 10-30 hours whenever a new xpac or big patch comes out.. Exploring new areas, running new dungeons and raids for the first few times, playing around with new features. I remember one night I had a lot of fun drinking with friends and running the new island expeditions etc..

But that's where the fun ends. Once I get to the point where I've experienced the new stuff and had fun with it I drop the game. I think some people have a problem where they get stuck in the skinner box. The devs actually design the games to be fun, but with MMOs there's a section of the community that literally expects to grind the game like it's a full time job forever... So they need to come up with infinite progression systems and things like RNG on top of RNG to try and keep that group satisfied.

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

I think that’s been admitted to; the formula to addict consumers for that rush. Wasn’t named Ever-crack for nothing.