MMORPGs are so boring
I totally agree, mmorpgs become boring fast. I spent a year playing one such game, dransik and got bored of it. Nothing ever changed, even with new updates. The biggest thing they ever did was change to 2d isometric graphics. Then they went ptp. As if I was going to pay for it. 3 years I hung around and it never changed the game play, as far as I know, its still the same. And now the creater has left, after selling the game to some company.
All the old beta testers like me just whined and complained that the new version sucked, the community sucks, they wish it was the same as it used to be. But I think that it wasnt the fact that the game changed its graphics and went bigger that made it suck, but the fact that it became repetitive and boring, kill things, lvl up, buy stuff.
To make a game interesting, you need a degree of variety.
All the old beta testers like me just whined and complained that the new version sucked, the community sucks, they wish it was the same as it used to be. But I think that it wasnt the fact that the game changed its graphics and went bigger that made it suck, but the fact that it became repetitive and boring, kill things, lvl up, buy stuff.
To make a game interesting, you need a degree of variety.
Why did I play everquest? Why did I sit there half the time meditating/looking for a group/selling something/insert boring thing here? Because it was the only way to build my character so that I could go on a raids with some friends and kill huge dragons. Yeah, eq is pretty bad. But I have to say, I had some exremely fun experiences there. 95% of the time I was bored or frustrated, but the 5% of the time that we were raiding and killing massive dragons or just exploring was so much fun. Looking forward to that was the only thing keeping me going.
So, that's why it is boring yet people still play. They are waiting for the few times where levelling pays off! It is a fun and rewarding experience. I wouldn't have the same feeling if I was able to pop in there and kill the same dragon. I just wouldn't be as rewarding.
MMORPG's do have a very long way to go. But I still find that they can be fun.
So, that's why it is boring yet people still play. They are waiting for the few times where levelling pays off! It is a fun and rewarding experience. I wouldn't have the same feeling if I was able to pop in there and kill the same dragon. I just wouldn't be as rewarding.
MMORPG's do have a very long way to go. But I still find that they can be fun.
Quote:Original post by Amadeus
I work my way up to mid - high levels in order to obtain an item, only to find people that have already collected 12 of them. A quest that is supposed to be detrimental to the fate of my people, changes nothing, and everyone has access to be able to complete it.
I agree that this isn't very satisfactory, but do you have a solution? Either you make it so only 1 person can do that quest - which isn't practical in terms of the number of quests you'd need - or you make the quests so inconsequential that it doesn't matter who completes them - which tends to reduce the fun value. It's not an easy balance.
Quote:The whole fact there they even have "levels", not to mention limits on those "levels", is limiting (skill based systems with emphasis on usage or a cross there of seems more appealing).
There are several benefits to a level system... easier game balancing, tangible targets for players to aim for, arbitrary limitations on resources which again give players a target, etc.
Quote:There are no game centric enforcements of internal laws of ethics, religion, race relations etc., even basic ideas like stealing, treachery, hatred, persecution, heroism, patriotism, etc. are usually non existant and people complain about negative actions which means no theft or backstabbing (things any roleplayer should have no problem with).
Yet when theft and backstabbing is allowed, it happens on such a scale that it's almost impossible to do anything else. Online worlds tend towards one extreme or the other because people see no value in living an average life online.
Quote:There's no particular interaction with the overall story or plot, or any real enforcement of a characters purpose in the world.
That's because writing a story for 1000 people is pretty hard, especially when you don't know which of those people are going to live up to the story, which of those people are treat the game like a treadmill, and which of those people are just going to hassle others for the fun of it.
Quote:There's no real way to distinguish yourself from everyone else; everyone knows your name (its usually floating above your head :P), people can tell by looking at you your current status in the world (there's no way to wear a dingy cloak over say your Armor of Darkness to give an unassuming appearance), and there are no real interfaces for displaying any sort of intended personality traits, etc.
Hopefully this sort of thing will follow when graphics capabilities (in terms of content creation as much as anything else) catches up. I like online text games because they often represent all these things.
Quote:If I want to heal a pathetically weak opponent to keep it alive while I practice a skill, I should be able to do so. And anyone happening to be doing battle when I feel a little mischievious, should know how to run should I decide to empower something they are fighting (lol).
The problem is, when you allow this, almost everybody does it. See early incarnations of Ultima Online.
Quote:Actually take some of the standard rpg building blocks, mixed with combat stylings of say - Dynasty Warriors, Prince of Persia, Ninja Gaiden, etc.
Real-time combat is not very practical when you have 0.1 seconds of latency.
On the whole I tend to agree that MMORPGs lack something, but it's not that developers haven't identified this; it's that it's very hard to fix.
The RVR stuff was the most fun part of DAOC. Standing in a castle and seeing 20 Mids come running towards you is pretty damn cool.
I just couldnt stand the grind to get up to high levels for the endgame. It is totally stupid, sorry Mythic. Another issue is the stat-heaviness of the game. A 42nd level character facing a 40th level will win 90+% of the time. Ridiculous. Three 20 level chars should be able to kill a 30th level character, but they don't have a chance in hell. Because of this when you get to the 40+ level battleground, you really need to be 45+ to make a difference.
I have high hopes for Guild Wars. It actually sounds almost too good to be true.
I just couldnt stand the grind to get up to high levels for the endgame. It is totally stupid, sorry Mythic. Another issue is the stat-heaviness of the game. A 42nd level character facing a 40th level will win 90+% of the time. Ridiculous. Three 20 level chars should be able to kill a 30th level character, but they don't have a chance in hell. Because of this when you get to the 40+ level battleground, you really need to be 45+ to make a difference.
I have high hopes for Guild Wars. It actually sounds almost too good to be true.
I don't think that the concern is real-time combat, but skill-based combat. In MMOs, combat is usually a hybrid click-fest and stat contest. Smash-smash-heal-smash-smash-heal etc. I think the reason people want a real-time fast-action MMO is because they want the combat to be more skill-intensive. However, there are other forms of skill-based combat that is less time-intensive. Notice the increasing popularity of card-based strategy gaming as a combat system - it mixes both inventory-gathering and some better strategic elements in gameplay. Alternately, RTS games often hold up very well at high latency (although they require more throughput than an FPS does) - so games focussed on commanding teams are a good approach to adding skill to high latency games. Vehicle combat games such as Armored Core and Independance War have assisted-targetting systems that remove the burden of hyper-accurate aiming from the player - applying this to an MMO would allow more stat-based combat as well as lightening the pains of being an HPB.
I think an interesting approach would be the one I described in my game above - making the goal into one of dominion over territory and players instead of levelling equipment hunting. In that case, a super-good player is not one who has maxed out all his stats, but someone who controls a large area of territory with a legion of other players bound to him by game-enforced contracts. Physically, he is not much stronger than other players, but many other players are bound to him (say, if he dies then they automagically die, or something similar).
I think an interesting approach would be the one I described in my game above - making the goal into one of dominion over territory and players instead of levelling equipment hunting. In that case, a super-good player is not one who has maxed out all his stats, but someone who controls a large area of territory with a legion of other players bound to him by game-enforced contracts. Physically, he is not much stronger than other players, but many other players are bound to him (say, if he dies then they automagically die, or something similar).
Why the heck do they need quests at all?
Cant we just dump a bunch of players in a world and let them do what ever they please.
Make them naked, and in need of shelter.
Make the weather turn on them, set loose the wild animals. See what they do :)
If you made the world interactive, where you could build shelter, find the right things to eat, survive. Societies would naturaly form. Ethics would arise out of need, etc.
Just make a massive world, and let the players figure this world out. Like playing with building blocks when you were a kid, building blocks are inherently simple, but stir a little imagination into the mix and they are awsome! Same thing you could do in a MMORPG.
Cant we just dump a bunch of players in a world and let them do what ever they please.
Make them naked, and in need of shelter.
Make the weather turn on them, set loose the wild animals. See what they do :)
If you made the world interactive, where you could build shelter, find the right things to eat, survive. Societies would naturaly form. Ethics would arise out of need, etc.
Just make a massive world, and let the players figure this world out. Like playing with building blocks when you were a kid, building blocks are inherently simple, but stir a little imagination into the mix and they are awsome! Same thing you could do in a MMORPG.
Psyjay: The idea in your post is interesting. Hope someone post some negative feedback though.
Several trends in MMO world:
1) Consistency - The world never changes
2) Non-interactive - What you do never changes the world
3) Low-level world economy - The way powers are balanced is primitive
I think there are two (good or bad) principles behind the design that made the worlds this way, which are equality and stability. Equality in the sense that the designer wants the players have equal opportunity to experience the designed situations, or the designed story line. And stability in the sense that the designer wants to avoid any player from being able to have an influential control of the world that gets into the way of another player's experience.
Several trends in MMO world:
1) Consistency - The world never changes
2) Non-interactive - What you do never changes the world
3) Low-level world economy - The way powers are balanced is primitive
I think there are two (good or bad) principles behind the design that made the worlds this way, which are equality and stability. Equality in the sense that the designer wants the players have equal opportunity to experience the designed situations, or the designed story line. And stability in the sense that the designer wants to avoid any player from being able to have an influential control of the world that gets into the way of another player's experience.
Estok,
I agree whole heartedly.
I think designers should abandon the concept of quests, leveling, monsters, etc. Make a persistent world that the players actually have a chance of shapeing. If players go around robbing and steeling, other players would have to band against them, maybe found towns, make a militia. So then you have a conflict of powers already.
I allways thought a good place to set this would be on another planet where some hughe world-ship crashes and a bunch of earthlings are stranded. You would play one of the earthlings. Anyway, the point of the game is to survive, at first no one knows whats eddible, how to survive the weather, etc.
But as time goes by people figure it out. Maybe have some sort of alien temple thats like this gigantic puzzle box, that players are constantly trying to solve. But once it's solved thats it! Whoever claims the glory is known thrughout the anals of the game world :)
hehehhe... ok now Im getting imaginative.
In the world when you die, you can make a new character which comes out of the crashed ship. Tons of people in there are still in cryo-stasis.
FAQs, Logs, Histories, Guides, would be written on what has already been discoverd. This frees up designers from comeing up with trite, arbitrary plots, instead they can add new details to the world to interact with, new plant types, new critters, maybe AI races, boats, who knows, the sky is the limit.
I dunno about you, but I would play a game like that!
P.S. Why did you want someone to post negative feedback on me? What did I do to you?
I agree whole heartedly.
I think designers should abandon the concept of quests, leveling, monsters, etc. Make a persistent world that the players actually have a chance of shapeing. If players go around robbing and steeling, other players would have to band against them, maybe found towns, make a militia. So then you have a conflict of powers already.
I allways thought a good place to set this would be on another planet where some hughe world-ship crashes and a bunch of earthlings are stranded. You would play one of the earthlings. Anyway, the point of the game is to survive, at first no one knows whats eddible, how to survive the weather, etc.
But as time goes by people figure it out. Maybe have some sort of alien temple thats like this gigantic puzzle box, that players are constantly trying to solve. But once it's solved thats it! Whoever claims the glory is known thrughout the anals of the game world :)
hehehhe... ok now Im getting imaginative.
In the world when you die, you can make a new character which comes out of the crashed ship. Tons of people in there are still in cryo-stasis.
FAQs, Logs, Histories, Guides, would be written on what has already been discoverd. This frees up designers from comeing up with trite, arbitrary plots, instead they can add new details to the world to interact with, new plant types, new critters, maybe AI races, boats, who knows, the sky is the limit.
I dunno about you, but I would play a game like that!
P.S. Why did you want someone to post negative feedback on me? What did I do to you?
Psyjax,
I wanted some negative feedback because I think we share the same idea. So I want to read some other views on the topic.
Several thoughts:
1) How does a new player fit in in the world and don't feel left out?
2) Is there a victory condition? Does the server need to reset?
3) What kind of problems need to be solved? What kind of cooperations among players are needed?
4) A game based on discovery is a no go. Because you can never add content fast enough to keep up.
5) Isn't an MMORTS doing exactly this? With focused objective and game rules?
[Edited by - Estok on July 9, 2004 2:47:16 PM]
I wanted some negative feedback because I think we share the same idea. So I want to read some other views on the topic.
Several thoughts:
1) How does a new player fit in in the world and don't feel left out?
2) Is there a victory condition? Does the server need to reset?
3) What kind of problems need to be solved? What kind of cooperations among players are needed?
4) A game based on discovery is a no go. Because you can never add content fast enough to keep up.
5) Isn't an MMORTS doing exactly this? With focused objective and game rules?
[Edited by - Estok on July 9, 2004 2:47:16 PM]
This topic is closed to new replies.
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