How about this for a simple risk vs. reward syetem: You want to play on easy mode, you can. You want to play on hard mode - you get better loot or more xp. Remember Diablo Hardcore mode?

How about this for a simple risk vs. reward syetem: You want to play on easy mode, you can. You want to play on hard mode - you get better loot or more xp. Remember Diablo Hardcore mode?

Most games already do this (at least 2 I know of directly: CoH/V and Guild Wars).  It punishes casual players: players who have neither the time nor inclination to spend endless hours raiding, crafting, or doing missions. 

This is where - I believe - most of the MMO community falls: under the category  "casual".  Many of us have families and kids with full-time jobs and/or school.  For instance, Arenanet added uber hard mode missions in elite areas at the end of Nightfall.  They've since had to take the edge off these areas, in part, because very few people - many of them what I would call "good gamers" were even bothering to go there.  And, in part, because those who were going there were spending upwards of 4 or 5 hours on a specific raid!  One guy even admitted his team of "uber players" took 9 hours to get through one of these missions!

Where Guild Wars doesn't punish casual players is that while the "skins" of these "elite" items are different, they are spec'd the same as any max damage sword, shield, staff or bow you can get in non-elite areas of the game.  Hard mode in GW does reward with more loot, but qualitatively speaking, it's exactly the same as normal mode loot.

Furthermore, hard mode vs. normal mode creates a system of the "haves" vs. the "have nots".  Besides punishing casual players for not having the time or wanting to be "l337-speak geeks" it rewards players who do with loot (in other games) that makes these "l337" players better in virtually every way!  And then turns them loose on people who can't defend themselves??? 

Hey, I've got a great game idea!  Let's produce an "uberl337" PK game called "club the baby fur seals!" (which is EXACTLY what "l33t" players would do to casual players if given half a chance.)  Sound fun to you???

Come to think of it, I'm kinda' starting to tire of the whole "combat MMO" in general.  An online game like Sim City might be a lot more fun, if done right. 

'I’ll be merciful now and end my little rant. Take this chance and bash out an equally harsh retort on the forums. Keep fighting the good fight and I shall rejoin you in seven days. Farewell!'

From the original article.

The MMOWTF articles have been thin and this article is no different. The author isn't meeting his 'charter' as someone put it. He's begging for folks to come and fight the good fight to maintain the ever more precarious hold on his authorship position.

I'm not saying that some of his points aren't valid but generally speaking (as is the article in all of it's MMO-world defining wisdom) they are old, tired and re-hashed. 'Craptastic' ideas which have hit the floor and are being saved under a '5 Second Rule' versus being placed in the round receptacle of choice.

I loved the article, personally. What I love more is the discussion going on here. We've got people who are insisting this is just flame-bait meant to get everyone up in arms shouting, "RABBLE RABBLE RABBLE!" (South Park Style)

Likewise, we've got people who insist they've heard this a million times and replied with snarky commentary about how the author should make his own MMO instead of whining. Lemme just point out how retarded you are for thinking that's a superior counter-argument to a f***ing editorial. This site is dedicated to information about MMORPGs and the industry around them, making a few suggestions and pointing out the flaws is part of the Journalists' job here.

Oh, then we've got the insecure MMO players who suddenly feel a need to justify the countless hours they've spent on a game. Nice try, but seriously, it's escapism, if it makes you happy or if it made you forget the troubles tomorrow may bring then it's not a bad thing, even if it's a subpar game.

Everyone else who agreed, well, you should have. It's not sacreligious to dare ask for a better game or even think of the possibilities that could be. All games have flaws, both in gameplay mechanics and community player-interaction, so don't feel like you've become some sort of untouchable for saying, "Hey, the quest system for WoW sucks. They could do so much more with it."

Originally posted by Serling

And lastly since you mentioned hobbies, you are aware that some hobbies are more demanding or costly than others and they need the same dedication/time/investment  if you are into them? MMO's keep true to that at least as a hobbyist activity. The more you spend as far as time/money on it the best things you can get.

The REALLY BIG problem comparing hobbies to playing an MMO is that whatever you produce through your hobby, you get to keep.  It's yours.

The MMO and everything in it - on the other hand - belongs to the company that produces it, so while you may spend hundreds of dollars and hundreds of hours - as I once did - leveling a toon to 50 in CoH, the developers are (and were) completely free to come in and crap all over the time and money I spent on (what I thought) was MY toon.  (CoH was my first MMO experience, and it soured me forever on pay-to-play games).

In that sense, hobbies are a lot more rewarding than MMOs, and can be as costly or cheap, time-consuming and/or as challenging as YOU want to make them.

if MMO's become as simplistic as TV, movies and what not why bother a) Keep an up to date PC b) Paying for a connection c) paying monthly fees when all the above are faster/cheaper/easier accesible?

Many, if not most people, use their computers for things other than playing games. That alone is worth the price of keeping them current. 

Not really, a person that has a family and doesn't play games doesn't buy the top tier PC with every thing there is on it. If he only uses the PC to make texts or surf a bit the internet when he has time then he spends his major part of his "hobby" budget elsewhere.

Many, if not most people, use their internet connection for things other than playing MMOs.  That alone is worth the price of keeping an IP. 

MMOs represent a small fraction of the entertainment industry (I'd contend a small fraction of the gaming community) and MMO players - as a group - represent an infinitesimally small fraction of computer users overall.

Was there a statistic about that, that I missed? MMO's and MMO players are not a small part of the of the entairtment community. As for the part of the "computer users", well it may be that someone because he uses Word and Excel to make spreadsheets for his groceries can be a "computer user" that doesn't mean though that he is a possible candidate to make a MMO based on what he does.

The poster to whom you were referring is quite right: if MMO companies want MMOs to have more mass-market appeal, they need to give people a reason to stop watching TV and movies, doing MYspace and crosswords.  Until they do, MMO developers will continue to make the same mistakes that keep MMOs niche products, and their customers feeling like "gamer-geeks" for playing them.

Thing is the MMO companies don't have to do anything really. TV and movies are a  passive form of entairtment. If the persons that are in to those prefer passive forms of entairtment  they won't prefer an MMO which requires a more active, so to speak, approach. Mass market appeal is a tricky concept since usually you have to be aware of the demographic you are going to apply a game.

4

I remember a time when text games were awesome and tons of people were into them. As technology advances so does our taste. Risk or reward. I love people to go pking and bring expensive stuff only ot lose them to me someone who has devised a less expensive way to pk but more effecent. The challage for me is straticgy.  Bruth force is great but when you combain the two it great.

I for one hate moos they are so repetitive like grinding but once you used up all your turns and what now you can't do anymore.

I truely love a game that will put my name up on the screen as a top player. When i think about it AOA the game i look forward to has a horrible story line but i like it because i can supress other players brutely and strategicly.

Risk vs Reward: I see your point, no permadeath MMO so far although more and more ppl are interested in one

- Emergent Systems: We have it in Guildwars

- Player Driven Content: We have this in Shadowbane

and I mentioned freetoplay games. i could assume that among pay2play are more that have two of the above features

Anyway, I agree that 95% MMO, including most popular, are for dumb people. I myself play some of free2play MMO just to PK those annoying nolife losers without balls. Am I mad?

I agree, butI disagree that this is a PvP vs Everyone else as some people have commented. In some MMOs some people like to take the role ofthe people who fill out the rest of the world, not as by standers, but those who specialize in manufacturing, or resoucing, or running a ingame busness like a form of ingame PvE (I guess you could say its Player vs Economy instead of enviroment in this case).

They play games they know there is a riskof being pkd or robbed, and tend to hole up in the safer locations, but they would like to do even more than the current games allow, going from a sandbox economy to a full fledged, minimally GM manged system where players supply nearly all equipment and items ingame and that there be some qualitative way to rate them and take credit for their design and manufacture.

These people don't want esay games they just might not enjoy the kill, die, kill, die, die, die, kill, kill, kill, and die of many PVP only or hightly PvP centric games.

Originally posted by heerobya

Perhaps I am the only one who sees the trolling nature of this piece?

That the OP is in essence mocking a good 90% of the MMORPG player base in order to get a "rise" out of the 10% of MMORPG gamers that enjoy the "hardcore" game model?

By the way all 10% of those "hardcore" gamers seem to be found on MMORPG.com so I guess the OP is just spinning his writing for his intended audience.

I guess mission accomplished then.

Objectivity and unbiased review has become subjective and biased staff writing. Awesome.

I think the correct term would be "Perhaps I am the only one who creates the illusion of what isn't there in this piece?"

You are the only one, because no one else wants to see something that isn't there.

No.
Just No.

No to what you said before.
No to what you are saying.
No to what you will say.
No to what you are thinking.

Objectivity? Unbiased review? Subjective? SUBJECTIVE? These are words of someone who wants to sound intelligent........... i.e. A Psuedo-Intellectual

Sorry to be so cynical, but your posts really annoyed me.
Few things annoy me more than pessimistic views on something that would otherwise be a fine piece.

I'm not sure that I would go so far as some of these thread responses have but I'll say this.  The VAST magority of the mmo subscriber world is comprised of Carebears.  Perhaps 20 percent at the very most are those who would be described as hardcore.

Hello Vangaurd fanbois unite...I thought this discussion would have ended when the idiots who said VSoH would kill WoW and unite everyone under the banner of better gaming...please what a load of crap.  It was crap then, it's still crap now.

When the flamers tell me I'm wrong...guess what, it will still be crap then.

One simple rules applies to games.  Have fun.  If you have fun it doesn't bloody matter how hard or challenging or monotonous the game is to those who do not enjoy it.   If you find it fun then bingo it succeeds.

Making a game the appeals to the hardcore mindset fails.  It has always failed, and it will continue to fail.  The games that have come out over the last 2 years are proof of this.  The games coming out show this also to be true.  Most of them are copying much of what has PROVEN itself to work simply because the MONEY determines where the games are going, not the loudest opinions of the gaming elitists.

I'm a carebear and my brother and sister carebears outnumber all of you by a stupidly rediculous factor.  Keep playing your Archlord and Vanguard games and we'll enjoy our WoW and War and AoC games.

We can meet and shoot each other in Halo 3 when we're not grinding.  And when I get bored I'll mindlessly enjoy some DR and walk through town showing off my uber axe of bloodthirsty l337ness.

Originally posted by Regeta

 

Originally posted by heerobya

Perhaps I am the only one who sees the trolling nature of this piece?

That the OP is in essence mocking a good 90% of the MMORPG player base in order to get a "rise" out of the 10% of MMORPG gamers that enjoy the "hardcore" game model?

By the way all 10% of those "hardcore" gamers seem to be found on MMORPG.com so I guess the OP is just spinning his writing for his intended audience.

I guess mission accomplished then.

Objectivity and unbiased review has become subjective and biased staff writing. Awesome.

I think the correct term would be "Perhaps I am the only one who creates the illusion of what isn't there in this piece?"

 

You are the only one, because no one else wants to see something that isn't there.

No.
Just No.

No to what you said before.
No to what you are saying.
No to what you will say.
No to what you are thinking.

Objectivity? Unbiased review? Subjective? SUBJECTIVE? These are words of someone who wants to sound intelligent........... i.e. A Pseudo-Intellectual

 

Sorry to be so cynical, but your posts really annoyed me.
Few things annoy me more than pessimistic views on something that would otherwise be a fine piece.

You're funny. That's all I'm going to see. Don't want to get a ban....

If you can't see the obvious bias of this piece toward the "uber" gamer or the "hardcore" then.. well... you're funny.

I really like the comparison between sheep / cattle being led toward the slaughter and players of MMORPGs like WoW.

I find that offensive. I've been playing MMOs since Pre-Trammel UO, and I like the fact that MMOs are trying to remove pointless time sinks and the griefing/ganking and other immature player behavior that was abundant back in those days.

But, like I said to the forum moderators, this piece was written to cater to a certain audience. The kind of audience that is all too prevalent on this website. And that's fine, what journalist/entertainer doesn't "spin" their work to fit the audience?

However, by creating such an article, I feel that the OP (staff writer) is purposefully "egging on" the WoW/care-bear crowd into a conflict with the "hardcore" crowd on this site. Which, by it's definition, is trolling. But, I've already argued this enough.

Enjoy the "debate."

Before you mock me, think.

Originally posted by heerobya

 If you can't see the obvious bias of this piece toward the "uber" gamer or the "hardcore" then.. well... you're funny.

I really like the comparison between sheep / cattle being led toward the slaughter and players of MMORPGs like WoW.

I find that offensive. I've been playing MMOs since Pre-Trammel UO, and I like the fact that MMOs are trying to remove pointless time sinks and the griefing/ganking and other immature player behavior that was abundant back in those days.

But, like I said to the forum moderators, this piece was written to cater to a certain audience. The kind of audience that is all too prevalent on this website. And that's fine, what journalist/entertainer doesn't "spin" their work to fit the audience?

However, by creating such an article, I feel that the OP (staff writer) is purposefully "egging on" the WoW/care-bear crowd into a conflict with the "hardcore" crowd on this site. Which, by it's definition, is trolling. But, I've already argued this enough.

Enjoy the "debate."

Before you mock me, think.

You went so far as to take that article as a personal attack on you and your kind, by the writer and so called majority MMORPG.com members.

If there was any logic in this discussion, older, expirienced players should be the first to point out the flaws and ideas how to solve them, but no, all we hear from you is how it didn't, can't and won't never ever ever work...

Why do I always get a feeling that carebears that post here are like paladins in WoW, run into a whole crowd of people dueling infront of Orgrimar, banzai and stuff, then buble and HS out of there!?

My e-mail keep sending me back here to read this thread, alot of the posts here are by far more interesting and better written than the op's artical.

Im pretty much with Heerobya's pov, the only way to not take some offence on the whole thing is to stick your tounge firmly in your cheek, like I said before its not the worst thing iv read here but it reads poorly, like it's been rushed, I suspect its a personal thing the op has wanted to get off his/her chest.

Only thing I took from the artical is extremes, no one wants a game where you pick up a full set of uber armour on each kill or lvl up on each swing but at the other extreme no one wants perma death or deleveled to -1 by the first npc you see out of the tutorial, we all want something in the middle, the fact that the the artical says im a minless cow if I think otherwise is ....... well its just trolling :)

so my last word in this thread guys is not, goodbye and have fun, it's ...

MMMMOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!11!!!

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Originally posted by streea
I thought I'd bring up that your concept of Risk vs Reward and being able to really leave a mark on the world are great ideas... and nothing more than great ideas. Throw people into the mix and anyone would quickly realize why games don't utilize these features.
For Risk v Reward, when you're playing all alone against the AI, if you mess up and die, it's your fault (unless the game sucks, but then it's still your fault for buying/playing it). In MMOs, to take down the big bosses, if even one person, say, gets an emergency phone call in the middle of a raid, everyone dies/fails/etc. This is true if one person makes a bad pull, griefs a group, etc etc. The Risk vs Reward concept is ultimately compromised by the fact that you have to work with others and everyone has real life stuff going on.
And I'm not going to even go into the MMOs that are no longer bringing in new players because all of the hardcore older players have nothing better to do than camp newbies as they first log in, or the player 40 levels above another who ganks someone just to steal their stuff and spit on their bodies.
Having meaningful interactions with an MMO world falls prey to the same thing: stupid people act even stupider in MMOs where there are no "real" concequences. Would you really want to enter an MMO and learn that the city you're in, since it's being controled by someone else, is Yousuck City (but add vulgarity).
That's why most games don't utilize these two functions... and I'm glad for it. I steer clear of games that really punish people for things like death. There's nothing fun about being punished for deciding to play a game that another idiot also wants to play.

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Amen to that, why are these concepts so hard for the so called "PvPers" to grasp? It's not that many of us don't want some form of PvP, we do. But we also know better and you illustrate the point very well when describing the griefers and gankers who honestl have absolutely NO life.

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Originally posted by lorenzo111
Great topic had me crying in my car reading it. Carebears are the people who messed up my beloved SWG. A year and a half of grinding just so some ten year old can be a Jedi day one complete garbage.
 
Lead all the lambs to the slaughter!!!!!!!!!!!!
Play WOW instead!!!

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