So bored with the seemingly new age games and drone-ing through yet another weekend of an fps to mmo tie, i went to the forums again, and happily i saw a blog based on the best and worst launches, and the first on the best launch (or second) was guild wars, so i check the game list, even though i knew it's standing, just to see where it was again.
Now i was a GW beta phanboii, i played day and night, bought bonus slots for characters and played each roll to it's fullest, debuffing with my migrane mesmer, spending every hour attempting to get elite skills, or even (back in the day) grinding hydra's by w/e rock lol, and it was great, but going back i was dissapointed... now for factions i went back and i played through on both a ritualist and an assassin. subbing monks on both like i always did for w/e reason, and it was fun, faction grinding beleive it or not is fun, 40 second runs to a spot and 300 gold, ez change. but it got repedetive so i took a small break, small enough to wait for Night Fall. NF was an amazing expansion, the starter area was so big i hit 20 before i got off the island, i had the "best" armor quality within a few hours and was wrecking the place with my dervish/paragon mix, didnt feel like leveling through the long story 2x, and i beat it with ease, getting my crazy primeval armor and then working through it on all my other toons, which was a blast btw but i couldnt help but wonder...
GW is a pvp based game, everything in the game is supposed to circled around a pvp, but it's a seamed game.... It hadnt bothered me until i had dominated each class and completed every quest and mission in every story on almost every class, but when i looked at it thoroughly, wt****, it's seamed. I cant do open pvp, i started GW when i was like 14 or 15.. now im 17 and it's almost like... going back to tony hawk 1 after playing smash bro's melee for wii, it just doesnt work... you grow past it right? but it was SUCH a fun game and i wish i could get that sensation back... after i realised this i tried all my old games ALL of them, i whipped out my diablo 1, let down... I spanked a big chunk of Diablo 2 ANNNND expansion... let down... I akwardly clicked through 2 minutes of runescape.. letdown, what a bummer.. i wish there were more endless games, games that grow with players no matter what... I'm waiting for an MMO like fable... Oblivion is supposidly an MMO but it's not -.- i'm looking for a WORLD, not a month long game.. or even a year long, im looking for a game i can play for a week, get into a coma, come out of the coma, recover my memmory and be like "whoa this game STILL pwns"
I dont know about you.. but yea, that's just how i feel
User Comments
Interesting issue my friend. I think I may have the same affliction...though to a more limited degree. You see, I can still break out some of my old games and really enjoy them. Legend of Mana, for instance, I can STILL play and love.
As to what limit i speak of...I mean my burn out is now globally tied into MMORPGS. I cannot go back....I just can't. My first time through EQOA...was amazing. Loved it. To see it now gives me a migraine just thinking about it. WoW is another...I absolutely love that game. I can't even be bothered to level ONCE in the 20's now...and it doesn't even take an hour. THATS how bad this is.
But it gets worse....that feeling now follows me to every MMO I play. I can't do more than play the initial levels on them now. I, too, long for something great from this genre. Something new, fresh, fun, DIFFERENT. But...I think....that MMO's cannot deliver this. I have my reasons too.
Smash Brothers, as you mentioned, is quite fun. More to the point, it sates a specific gaming "need". Beating up your friends and NPC's with characters you love (or love to hate). It will always fill that need. FPS games, like Halo, another good example. Always good, because they always sate that "need" to skillfully headshot things.
MMO's need to sate has always been a world in which to explore and exist away from the real world with many other people. The trouble is...the worlds are less new now. Everything is so overdone...so similar. The mystery of the world unmasked, flesh flayed open leaving the barren, dry bone visible and unprotected by immersion. They are un-inventive, boring....grinds. I cannot approach them as a babe unto a new world. I have seen their mechanics, understand them...and have long since learned the tools to maximize them and reach the prize at the end.
There is no prize. My character is meaningless....another serial-number string of codes which are just like everyone else. A hunt for better items to the end of simply being better at the process which was used to attain them. PvP servers nothing, PvE servers nothing. There is no dragon to slay....just a repeating dragon clone which everyone has slain. There is no prestige, no glory, no world. Nothing but a cart ride to the end of the tunnel....all set in stone and wrought with nothing but time-sinks to carry you there.
wow, Gishgeron, i think i have the same affliction as you. That is just how i feel. There is just nothing fresh and exciting about the current MMOs today IMO. Sure, there might be variants of a system that an MMO might use but that doesn't cut it with me...
This limit started with the first MMO i played, Final Fantasy 11. For me, i thought that it was the best game in the world. Sure, it has things that are hard to get used to (like the controls and whatnot) and it has a huge grind, but that didn't matter to me. I still played it. Why you ask? Because of the story, the immersion, whatever you want to call it. The feeling i got from just getting a full set of armor was the best for example. Just thinking about all the great times i had in there is amazing; All my friends i partied with, the missions/quests, whatever. The only reason i left it was because it was a huge timesink.
After that, i went on to try MANY other games. First was WoW. Yeah, it was a pretty sweet game yes but it was missing something for me. While i advanced in that game, i had that feeling behind me somewhere. Its just that WoW couldn't deliever what FFXI had for me. Do you get what im trying to say? Its just that FFXI grew on me.
After WoW was a couple of other games like Lunia, Flyff, and some others (mostly free), but i didn't find what i was looking in them either. I might lvl in them up to like 20 or so before i quit.
Now i wait...just wait...hopefully an MMO will come where i can get the "FFXI like" sensation again.
You'll NEVER get the same feeling you had with your first mmo.
I started playing mmos in 1997 with Ultima Online and I'v never had the same feeling in another game...I'v had alot of fun in other games...but bot that WOHA!! feeling... :(
I started with Ultima Online as well, I have to say though, I still remember the first time I played WoW beta, now that was memorable. The Durotar music still envokes a little feeling in me these days.
Gishgeron: "MMO's need to sate has always been a world in which to explore and exist away from the real world with many other people. The trouble is...the worlds are less new now. Everything is so overdone...so similar. The mystery of the world unmasked, flesh flayed open leaving the barren, dry bone visible and unprotected by immersion. They are un-inventive, boring....grinds. I cannot approach them as a babe unto a new world. I have seen their mechanics, understand them...and have long since learned the tools to maximize them and reach the prize at the end. "
Well said, Gish. I'll observe that current games do not provide content and systems that encourage players to interact in varied ways. Interactions are structured. In EverQuest structured interactions were forced on players. In World of Warcraft structured interactions are available to players. I'd like to see a game where the interactions aren't structured. That would permit a player to change the way they play a game as their preferences change over time.
I know that the most fun I've ever had in a game was because of the unexpected interactions that I had with other players. There was a chemistry between us that we all enjoyed. Perhaps if games spent a little more time trying to figure out how to bring like-minded people together, players would be having more fun by orders of magnitude.
Maybe we'd continue to see the games as a place to explore. Not to explore the game so much as our interactions with each other.
I'd be happy with a virtual setting that has 100 people who share my niche version of what's fun. Having 100 people that I enjoy playing with beats - hands down - the knowledge that I'm in a fully-simulated world populated by 10,000 people who seem to have the primary hobby of insulting each other.
There are two possible reasons you feel this way:
The way you approach a game is up to you. You cannot expect the game to be entertaining if you rely on metagame knowledge and experience to "win" rather than allow yourself to play it as it's presented.
Hexx:
The fundamental problem with what you suggest is that these games actually encourage you to analyze them this deeply. The entire premise behind structured PvE content demands you understand the ins and outs of the games mechanics in order to overcome statistical odds.
Because of this structure, anyone PLAYING more than a couple MMO's has already dissected this mechanic down to its core foundation. What this translates into is a cross dissection of ALL MMORPG's because they all use the very same set of mathematics and mob-player interaction. Its not that we over-analyze, its that the games create a situation that requires such and they all use the SAME BLOODY SYSTEM.
Except one, actually. D&D online does not follow the same path as other MMORPGS in that regard. The reason we do not take to that game is because it is not a massive and open world. It is unique...but far too controlled, confined.
It is not up to us to force ourselves to ignore everything we have seen and done in the hopes of approaching a game with "new eyes". It is the responsibility of the devs to create games which ARE new, which ARE fresh, and to surprise us by breaking all the things we thought we knew and giving us a true digital world to exist in and influence. I find it rather ludicrous to assume that it is the fault of all of the many players who feel as I do that we cannot enjoy these games anymore.
After all, how many FPS games could you enjoy if they all LITERALLY used Halo as its system with a couple re-skins? I mean, same weapons, same physics, same story, same path, same everything? Because that is what is occuring in THIS genre right now. They are ALL the same. The few that break the mold are so poorly funded that they cannot come close to polishing their ideals in such a way as to make it marketable.
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