How are people addicted to MMORPGs?

[racofer]

I played WoW for 3 weeks back in 2006 and got tired of it when I realized how repetitive it is. It felt like having to work a job whenever I came home from school

It's so weird that a german, of all people, would complain about that.

 

[quaesta]

I can't seem to get addicted to them no matter what. I played WoW for 2 weeks and I barely got through the first week before dropping it. I am trying to get back into Lost Ark and it just seems like work. I can get into Path of Exile fairly easily, but dear God MMORPGs just seem really boring.

is it just me?

If you have no friends it's boring. MMOs are all about finding people to hang out in, they're for socializing and working together for a goal, not grinding. You can grind in Pokemon, but you can't grind with your buddies in Pokemon.

 

[zangomango]

I can't seem to get addicted to them no matter what. I played WoW for 2 weeks and I barely got through the first week before dropping it. I am trying to get back into Lost Ark and it just seems like work. I can get into Path of Exile fairly easily, but dear God MMORPGs just seem really boring.

is it just me?

If you have no friends it's boring. MMOs are all about finding people to hang out in, they're for socializing and working together for a goal, not grinding. You can grind in Pokemon, but you can't grind with your buddies in Pokemon.

My impression of (modern) MMOs is that most people play them solo, doing their own thing, while hanging out with other players on Discord who are also playing solo, doing their own thing.

I haven't been able to confirm this because modern MMO leveling is so boring and lonely that it makes me quit before I get to the social parts.

 

[Cromwell]

My impression of (modern) MMOs is that most people play them solo, doing their own thing, while hanging out with other players on Discord who are also playing solo, doing their own thing.

hence why they are all shit now

 

[Val the Moofia Boss]

I can't seem to get addicted to them no matter what. I played WoW for 2 weeks and I barely got through the first week before dropping it. I am trying to get back into Lost Ark and it just seems like work. I can get into Path of Exile fairly easily, but dear God MMORPGs just seem really boring.

is it just me?

If you have no friends it's boring. MMOs are all about finding people to hang out in, they're for socializing and working together for a goal, not grinding. You can grind in Pokemon, but you can't grind with your buddies in Pokemon.

My impression of (modern) MMOs is that most people play them solo, doing their own thing, while hanging out with other players on Discord who are also playing solo, doing their own thing.

I haven't been able to confirm this because modern MMO leveling is so boring and lonely that it makes me quit before I get to the social parts.

A lot of people play MMOs as if they are singleplayer RPGs because they might like the setting or the aesthetics, but there are no singleplayer RPGs that appeal to them in the same way. The last big budget fantasy RPG was... what? The Witcher 3 in 2015? And that wasn't a colorful high fantasy RPG. The last big budget high fantasy RPG was Kingdoms of Amalur, over a decade ago. Otherwise, you're only option is to either play low production value indie stuff, or to play an MMO.

 

[Great Deceiver]

I can't seem to get addicted to them no matter what. I played WoW for 2 weeks and I barely got through the first week before dropping it. I am trying to get back into Lost Ark and it just seems like work. I can get into Path of Exile fairly easily, but dear God MMORPGs just seem really boring.

is it just me?

If you have no friends it's boring. MMOs are all about finding people to hang out in, they're for socializing and working together for a goal, not grinding. You can grind in Pokemon, but you can't grind with your buddies in Pokemon.

My impression of (modern) MMOs is that most people play them solo, doing their own thing, while hanging out with other players on Discord who are also playing solo, doing their own thing.

I haven't been able to confirm this because modern MMO leveling is so boring and lonely that it makes me quit before I get to the social parts.

A lot of people play MMOs as if they are singleplayer RPGs because they might like the setting or the aesthetics

LOTRO /thread

 

[rusty_shackleford]

What's wrong with playing them like singleplayer games? The appeal is the persistent, shared world not necessarily playing with other people.

 

[Dadd]

The appeal is to gather all of your friends in one sweaty room and do inane shit while eating junk food the whole weekend. The game itself only needs to fulfill perfunctory requirements.

 

[zangomango]

What's wrong with playing them like singleplayer games?

Single-player friendly design can hinder things for people who like to play them as multiplayer games.

The appeal is the persistent, shared world not necessarily playing with other people.

The shared world is an important part, but getting to interact and play with others is necessary for me. At least until these games play better than subpar single-player games.

I'd definitely play a King of the Hill MMO even solo though.

 

[Cromwell]

The appeal is the persistent, shared world not necessarily playing with other people.

if you dont force people to play together from time to time it will move further and further into the single player experience and only interact with others through the chat system.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

The appeal is the persistent, shared world not necessarily playing with other people.

if you dont force people to play together from time to time it will move further and further into the single player experience and only interact with others through the chat system.

Efficiency & economy alone are enough of reasons to encourage people to interact with each other.

 

[JarlFrank]

I can't seem to get addicted to them no matter what. I played WoW for 2 weeks and I barely got through the first week before dropping it. I am trying to get back into Lost Ark and it just seems like work. I can get into Path of Exile fairly easily, but dear God MMORPGs just seem really boring.

is it just me?

If you have no friends it's boring. MMOs are all about finding people to hang out in, they're for socializing and working together for a goal, not grinding. You can grind in Pokemon, but you can't grind with your buddies in Pokemon.

If you want to play with your friends why don't you play a game that isn't a boring grind?

Serious question, I have more fun playing ARMA 3 sandbox with my friends regularly than I would have if we were playing an MMO.

 

[gurugeorge]

What's wrong with playing them like singleplayer games? The appeal is the persistent, shared world not necessarily playing with other people.

From the developers' point of view, it seems like a lot of effort (to create the shared persistent world) for not much return, if everyone's playing in that shared persistent world just to have a sense of "background hum" of other people being in the game, and not actually interacting with each other.

I mean it does work to make the world feel more alive, to have other people running around in it. They behave differently to NPCs, and peripheral awareness of that does make the world feel more real. But is it worth creating a whole game just to capture that feeling?

 

[Cromwell]

If you want to play with your friends why don't you play a game that isn't a boring grind?

the fun is finding people in the game itself, if the game encourages that.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

What's wrong with playing them like singleplayer games? The appeal is the persistent, shared world not necessarily playing with other people.

From the developers' point of view, it seems like a lot of effort (to create the shared persistent world) for not much return, if everyone's playing in that shared persistent world just to have a sense of "background hum" of other people being in the game, and not actually interacting with each other.

I mean it does work to make the world feel more alive, to have other people running around in it. They behave differently to NPCs, and peripheral awareness of that does make the world feel more real. But is it worth creating a whole game just to capture that feeling?

Well, it's an apt description of games like SWToR which despite being a short-term disaster have been extremely profitable in the long run.
And games like Warframe also fit somewhere on this scale, which have also been very profitable.

 

[gurugeorge]

If you want to play with your friends why don't you play a game that isn't a boring grind?

the fun is finding people in the game itself, if the game encourages that.

Yes, the peak experience is making friends while wandering around pretending to be whatever ("hail fellow, well met" type of thing ) and then gradually building a group of simpatico people.

It really was a wonderful experience back in the day. But MMOs just gradually stopped facilitating that quintessential experience, mainly by focusing more on catering to endgame players, making the gameplay easy enough to solo, etc.

 

[zangomango]

If you want to play with your friends why don't you play a game that isn't a boring grind?

the fun is finding people in the game itself, if the game encourages that.

"Serendipitous interaction." I hardly know of any MMOs that do that though, made in the past fifteen years. Maybe it's better to look for that in other genres?

 

[Mangoose]

I can't seem to get addicted to them no matter what. I played WoW for 2 weeks and I barely got through the first week before dropping it. I am trying to get back into Lost Ark and it just seems like work. I can get into Path of Exile fairly easily, but dear God MMORPGs just seem really boring.

is it just me?

According to Richard Bartle - in 1996 so this was in the context of MUDs - this depends on type of player. He categorized these 4, and you might have seen this before:

Essentially, these four personalies have different goals, and it's hard as hell to implement quality mechanics and quality content for each.

From Bartle's scholarly paper, he noticed four types of player personalities:

Players give themselves game-related goals, and vigorously set out to achieve them. This usually means accumulating and disposing of large quantities of high-value treasure, or cutting a swathe through hordes of mobiles (ie. monsters built in to the virtual world).

Players try to find out as much as they can about the virtual world. Although initially this means mapping its topology (ie. exploring the MUD's breadth), later it advances to experimentation with its physics (ie. exploring the MUD's depth).

Players use the game's communicative facilities, and apply the role-playing that these engender, as a context in which to converse (and otherwise interact) with their fellow players.

Players use the tools provided by the game to cause distress to (or, in rare circumstances, to help) other players. Where permitted, this usually involves acquiring some weapon and applying it enthusiastically to the persona of another player in the game world.

Making sure that a game doesn't veer off in the wrong direction and lose players can be difficult; administrators need to maintain a balanced relationship between the different types of player, so as to guarantee their MUD's "feel". Note that I am not advocating any particular form of equalibrium: it is up to the game administrators themseles to decide what atmosphere they want their MUD to have, and thus define the point at which it is "balanced" (although the effort required to maintain this desired state could be substantial).

And there's much more to read - those are just an initial survey

https://mud.co.uk/richard/hcds.htm

Here's a quiz: https://matthewbarr.co.uk/bartle/
[/QUOTE]

 

[rusty_shackleford]

explorer masterrace

 

[Mortmal]

If you want to play with your friends why don't you play a game that isn't a boring grind?

the fun is finding people in the game itself, if the game encourages that.

Most successful mmo dont encourage that. In eso or FF14 you hardly have to interact with people . The best exemple is eso you are never forced to interact with anyone at all to finish the storylines. They are pretty much like solo rpg with an online DRM.

 

[Cromwell]

67/60/53/20 social explorer killer achiever

 

[Theodora]

Having friends that play whatever MMO with you goes a long way. Maybe stating the obvious, but you see friend groups continue to play all sorts of games together for much, much longer than you would ever likely see the composite individuals do if they were playing with only their own company.

If you want to play with your friends why don't you play a game that isn't a boring grind?

Eh, I think people like the idea of working towards long-term goals together -- which is always going to be a bit grindy in an MMO, due to the sheer amount of unique content that would be needed otherwise. Some ways devs can work against the grind being a bore are include making the repeated content as interesting (internally variable?) as possible, and/or make the potential rewards legitimately desireable to players. The latter especially works if you manage to create something like a decent player-owned housing system, or otherwise give players the capacity to make their own social experiences together. (Free MMOs especially are a testimony to how often people play these games just for an excuse to be social, though few actually make a coherent experience.) Don't need to love roleplaying to see the interest it ultimately retains in people, assuming the tools for it are provided.

Another option is making cooperative content high-complexity and thus asking a lot of focus, making the social element the most meaningful, while leaving the rest of the grind as something you can do in the background of other activities, or while listening to an audiobook. OSRS has a lot of things you can idly do on your phone while sitting down to watch a film, for example, while people do raids with their friend groups.

 

[zangomango]

67/60/53/20 social explorer killer achiever

That's roughly what I got as well. Wouldn't a game with a main focus on social exploration be awesome?

 

[Mangoose]

Well the thing is, a true Killer wants an experience like Ultima Online. In fact, the Killer is the obstacle to the other types because he's the only one who wants to kill them for the art of killing. This is different from trying to achieve a killcount or fighting them in order to get loot.

And all four want interesting gameplay and game mechanics because they we want to enjoy the game lol. Thus there is conflict on the time/effort spent on which content and which mechanics. WoW, for example, was not that fun in PVP because at that point they hadn't designed mechanics with the goal of PVP.

But Warhammer Online had mechanics that had both PVE and PVP effects. On the other hand, Warhammer fucked up because they worked on PVE and PVP content equally... And most people just wanted to PVP whereas very little people did PVE. That means that they wasted their time on PVE, which could've instead be spent on PVP.

This is an example of not being able to please everyone. Generalization sacrifices specialism whereas specialism leads to nichedom. And specialism is exactly what people want. So it's an issue of (1) balance and (2) knowing your fucking target audience.

This is literally why I can't get into GW2. It has a variety of content types but there is a lack of content for each type.

 

[Mangoose]

explorer masterrace

Literally me; and by exploring I mean trying to find exploits or doing shit that I'm not allowed to do.