Originally posted by nariusseldon

Originally posted by Hrimnir

Originally posted by Quirhid

Like Theocritus said, more experienced, not smarter. And no, old MMOs weren't timeconsuming "in a good way" - far from it. Infact, they were timeconsuming the worst possible way: through extensive grind and timesinks which made people spend more time and hence pay more money in subscription fees.

Todays market is smarter than to fall for that trap. Well, most people are anyway.

Old MMOs didn't have instructions and walkthroughs on sites because no one really gave a fuck back then. MMOs were a niché market as a whole.

Thus proving my long standing point that modern MMO players aren't actually MMO players.  And no, we didnt "fall for any trap"  We were fully aware of the length of the stick vs the carrot, we just actually enjoyed that aspect of the genre.

What kind of hair splitting double talk is that?

If a player plays a MMO, he is a MMO player. He may like different aspects of it than you. And taste certainly changes over time. But you don't have the claim of what "mmo players" are.

Just like movie goers. Are people who like super hero movies not "movie goers" just because they like something that is not available in the 50s?

 

Um...sorry but EQ absolutely had walk throughs and sites for such things mainly provided by the players, not 3rd party companies. Actually a few....they weren't just so overused and abundant as they are now. Such posts make it hard for me to believe some people have played them and just speak as though they did....while really knowing very little to nothing about them.

I will agree we aren't getting too smart for them, just more experienced.  The more experience you get with it, the quicker you can fall into the next one comfortably with little trouble. Of course though this can also be chalked up to most of them being the same thing in a different wrapper too, with little innovation of new ideas and features to have to learn....IMO of course.

I can understand where the op is coming from. In a way having the information and the strategies all map for you can take away from the game experience overall.

As for me when I start a new game that I know nothing about I do like to research and get some heads up on which direction suits my own play style. Most of the time a guide is not good enough to get me to the level I want. And at times the guide is out of date and I do have to adapt my game to my resources or how others are able to roll my current config over so easily.

The great game creators know when to take the game up a notch and release a new expansion.

Originally posted by Icewhite

Originally posted by kadepsyson

It is said children are our future.  I see today's children, and I have no hope.

That's nice.  You are the children I see.

Sorry, you're the third young person I've seen (so far) today pullng the "damn younger generation yarrr!" thing.

The sheer irony only cheers a person up the first couple of times.

When I was a boy in Yorkshire, we used to have to get up in the morning 2 hours before we went to bed, walk 50 miles to work even in blizzards (which happened every day). We lived in a rolled up newspaper in the middle of the road and when we got home from our child-labours our father would kill us, have us buried in cesspit and dance on our graves singing halleluyah...

... and we STILL had to get up the next day for work...

But tell that to the freeloading 'self-entitled yoof' of today... and they don't beleive ya!

Originally posted by SoulSurfer

Originally posted by oubers

 

I raise you a cat!

ok

Originally posted by Banaghran

 

You are talking about few % "choices", you are like the ej types obsessing with 0.5% dps difference from a head socket.

And on top of it, you think this means variability.

This is what i respectfully disagree with.

If you would be able to spawn any item, how many gear pieces would be different between the wizz builds?

And push nuke watch mana was your argument, i just mentioned it as a example what you are missing imo from the past just as you overstate the present.

Flame on!

:)

Well, you can go onto D3build (or something like taht) and check. There is quite a bit of variety of builds people are using. In fact, Blizz has published a stat once (long time ago, so i don't have the cite, that the biggest build is less than 2% of the population.

Once again, you have no clue about the game if you say 0.5% dps. A good CM build and a good archon build, the DPS difference (sheet DPS, not actual output) is more like 100%.

Furthermore, in terms of actual gear pieces difference (assuming you can get any legendary), the CM build would have a different BIS want/off-hand/helm .. and ring & legs. So at least 5, if not more. And more importantly you are stacking different stats. You don't think it is different to max attack speed, instead of DPS?

And that is just TWO builds. There are more. Oh one more example. If you do a zero dog build in WD, the head, 2 rings, off-hand and amulet has to be a certain set to reduce CD. So that is 5 items different than most other builds.

May be you want to discuss a game you know better?

How about STO? Shall we discuss teh difference between all phaser build vs all canon build?

Nope, not really. I think the problem is in alarge part in saturation. Back in 'ye old days' you had only a handful of prominent MMOs, each catering to very different niche of people, each offering very different playstyle. The communities were much smaller and thus tighter, you didn't have all that many big sites commenting on every detail of the industry, etc. 

These days? You get a new MMO release every month, more less, with most of them being clones of eachother (mainly the ton of licensed asian MMOs where the only difference is slight change in setting for most of the time), and very little variety, hence the market itself feels rather stagnant despite constant stream of new titles. 

It's the same with singleplayer games really. The way the whole industry works now is that you can't really make whole lot of games that will last you for months because next week a new title will be out and everyone will go try it out. Just look at release schedule for March - Tomb Raider, SimCity, Bioshock, Heart of the Swarm, all big titles cramped into single month.

Add to that the fact that the games are being made more player firendly, which doesnt have to mean dumbed down. You don't need to grind for days just to level up, the death penalties in majority of games are minimal if at all, everything is being made more accessible. That in turn leads to the overall move away froms ubscription model, because MMOs are no longer game syou are expected to play every day for several hour just to make any progress at all. They've became something that you can just turn on, play for a bit, then log off and return in a week or when new content gets pushed out. 

While it sure can annoy the mor e"hardcore" crowd, in the big picture it's actually better for the majority that is less competitive and just wants to get their enjoynment from the title. Eventuallys oemone will make a more niche title that will satisfy those people, probably through a kickstarter or other similar way of funding (like Pathfinder might turn out), but for now it will be mostly games created for wider audience from the bigger player son the market. It's just more reasonable from their standpoint. 

Originally posted by fat_taddler

I watched an interesting video the other day regarding this topic (see link below).   I think it may explain to some extent why MMO's seem to feel "dumbed down"  to many players these days or why so many games only keep us engaged for a month or two at best.

A lot of what made the older MMO's so much more immersive and time consuming (in a good way) was the fact that most of us had no idea what we were doing.  This in and of itself was a huge part of the fun and contributed greatly to the social aspects of games.

These days, players can simply go to a website and within minutes they can see the most optimized way to play any class.

Couple this with Youtube videos on boss strats, money making techniques, etc and you've basically taken a large portion of the challenge out of any MMO.   

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H1nl27rS-kM

This is true, but not in the ways that some people in this thread seem to be thinking. It's really a combination of several things that has caused this effect.

• When MMOs were newer to us we didn't fully understand the mechanics and concepts so we were less adept at predicting, pre-empting and outwitting the game's systems. As such they kept us interested for longer as the game remained a mystery for longer.
• Games have dumbed down their systems. As much as many people would like to argue otherwise this IS true. For the most part this is actually the result of them directly integrating the wikis/databases into the game (such as WoW's questhelper). Quests/boss encounters are generally shorter and easier too. We rarely see epic quests of the length seen in older MMOs and we rarely see game-wide mystery style quests that require a community effort to solve. Game worlds are smaller and less complex and there are rarely any open world areas that require groups to explore.
• Online databases and wikis have become more prevalent and better updated. The problem here is also compounded by how easy it is to complete content. It used to take quite a while before a quest or encounter was added to an online database because of how long it took for people to actually do it the first time. Fewer people completing content meant smaller and less regular updates on the databases which in turn held back the pace of both.
• Betas! I haven't seen anyone mention this one yet. Whenever ANY MMO releases now everyone that took part in the beta has a buttload of stuff ready to upload to the wiki as soon as the NDA drops. This is a HUGE problem in my opinion. Whenever a WoW expansion launches now pretty much everything is on the wiki/database websites the second that beta NDA lifts.

Originally posted by nariusseldon

Well, you can go onto D3build (or something like taht) and check. There is quite a bit of variety of builds people are using. In fact, Blizz has published a stat once (long time ago, so i don't have the cite, that the biggest build is less than 2% of the population.

Once again, you have no clue about the game if you say 0.5% dps. A good CM build and a good archon build, the DPS difference (sheet DPS, not actual output) is more like 100%.

Furthermore, in terms of actual gear pieces difference (assuming you can get any legendary), the CM build would have a different BIS want/off-hand/helm .. and ring & legs. So at least 5, if not more. And more importantly you are stacking different stats. You don't think it is different to max attack speed, instead of DPS?

And that is just TWO builds. There are more. Oh one more example. If you do a zero dog build in WD, the head, 2 rings, off-hand and amulet has to be a certain set to reduce CD. So that is 5 items different than most other builds.

May be you want to discuss a game you know better?

How about STO? Shall we discuss teh difference between all phaser build vs all canon build?

The 2% was extensively talked about, and it is laughable to assume that blizz does not take a build with just one random rune different (say resist on energy armor instead of 35%) as a different build.

So does not the wd increase its dps? Or the cm wizz? Using the same stats as everyone else? Do you really find 2-5 items (that still have to preferably feature the other stats) enough variability?

And ofcourse the only point that was remotely on topic got lost in the process...

Flame on!

:)

Originally posted by Banaghran

 

The 2% was extensively talked about, and it is laughable to assume that blizz does not take a build with just one random rune different (say resist on energy armor instead of 35%) as a different build.

So does not the wd increase its dps? Or the cm wizz? Using the same stats as everyone else? Do you really find 2-5 items (that still have to preferably feature the other stats) enough variability?

And ofcourse the only point that was remotely on topic got lost in the process...

Flame on!

:)

 

The CM wizz point is to use frost nova to permanent lock-up the mobs. So to do that efficient, you need to max crit and attack speed. In fact, much of the guide as you to ignore DPS. Plus, sheet DPS is not true dps because different skills have different multiplers and the way that CM wiz works, you can get a high multiplier. The point is .. it is NOT using the same stat the same way as everyone else. In fact read the forums, it is not uncommon to sacrifice DPS for some other crucical stat. THere is a debate about how important life-steal is (personally i use none of it, but have a weapon with it for switching in some situation) in archon build.

And there are 13 slots for a character. 5 out of 13 is HUGE. Plus, those are just BIS. We are talking about different stat priority in ALL OF THEM. The same item with attack speed and crit chance will be valued highly by some build, and not at all by some other.

I think this is right on topic. It shows the depth of combat systems in modern games.

Originally posted by fat_taddler

I watched an interesting video the other day regarding this topic (see link below).   I think it may explain to some extent why MMO's seem to feel "dumbed down"  to many players these days or why so many games only keep us engaged for a month or two at best.

A lot of what made the older MMO's so much more immersive and time consuming (in a good way) was the fact that most of us had no idea what we were doing.  This in and of itself was a huge part of the fun and contributed greatly to the social aspects of games.

These days, players can simply go to a website and within minutes they can see the most optimized way to play any class.

Couple this with Youtube videos on boss strats, money making techniques, etc and you've basically taken a large portion of the challenge out of any MMO.   

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H1nl27rS-kM

I disagree.

We didn't become "smarter" actually, we became stupider.

MMORPGs are dumbed down and that's a fact which I can remind some of you and inform everyone else who's MMORPG experience doesn't exceed 8-9 years.

MMORPGs now hand-hold you all the way through quest-hubs with mini-maps, arrows, exclamation marks on NPCs indicating quests, neon-signs pointing at where you should go. God forbid the player needs to actually play the game. If this is not dumbing down a genre, I don't know what is.

Take the faction system of EverQuest and take the Reputation system of WoW; that's a very clear indication of dumbing down a "feature". Now check the recent games, no "Faction" system whatsoever.

In older games every NPC was targetable, killable (sometimes the consequences are harsh) but you do get the option to make that town hate your guts or love you. Where's this in the recent games? Now everything is rigidly established and you can do nothing about it.

Older MMORPGs had more player-to-player interaction (does anyone even dares to disagree with this? seriously guys?) now 99% of your time in MMORPGs solo-questing, using AH and even in GROUPS sometimes you don't even interact with other players.

These are just a few examples, facts, on how MMORPGs were dumbed down. We didn't become smarter actually most players are so stupid they would quit the MMORPG genre if it goes back to the original track that it was.

MMORPGs now are not the same genre of UO, EQ, AC and SWG. They are totally DIFFERENT game genre. Too different actually, and different doesn't necessary mean "better" or "worse" it's just... different, fair? I think it's fair. What I want is THAT MMORPG and not the ones being released recently. I know exactly what I want. Just give me these hundreds of features that are no longer available in the market.

Hardly. But there is a limit to how long time you can do the exact same thing over and over.

Computer game genres needs to change now and then if they want to keep selling their games. Even FPS games have gone a long way from "Doom" to the current games and MMOs needs to change as well.

Just making things easier to attract more people worked in 2005 but not in 2013.

Originally posted by Loke666

Hardly. But there is a limit to how long time you can do the exact same thing over and over.

Computer game genres needs to change now and then if they want to keep selling their games. Even FPS games have gone a long way from "Doom" to the current games and MMOs needs to change as well.

Just making things easier to attract more people worked in 2005 but not in 2013.

I'm just grateful some developers never "yeild" to that notion. Take Sid Meiers for instance, Civilization 3 could have went Real Time Strategy with all the hype (trillions of people play RTS, lots of money) but he didn't change the CORE of what Civilization was, Turn Based.

I am grateful for that, if Turn Based Strategy games just suddenly disappear from the market and they were substituded with Real Time Strategy games I would be sad. I do enjoy RTS and I do enjoy TBS too, each one scratches an itch. Same goes to Elder Scroll (First Person View, Open World) if they release ES in 3rd person with Linear Story-Line progress then that would be a sad thing.

Vareity is the key word here. I LONG for a game that combines the features of EverQuest, I can list you these features just do 80% of them! (First Person View, no hand holding, group oriented, big dungeons, no instancing or very limited instanceing..etc). I don't want WoWish games to be completely destroyed! Why would I want that? if people like them then sure! but I also want ONE, just ONE new game like EverQuest (or close to it .... or expands on it)

Having turn based and RTS games gives us both types of gameplay. One is not better then the other, the gaming industry is stronger because it is using more types of gameplay in its games.

But the development of MMO's has been about removing all features apart from levelling. There is less depth of play and only one template to make MMO's from. We are not getting smarter, MMO's are becoming more linear, more two dimensional. If you only have to level, do not need to group and have a arrow over you head pointing the way it's hardly feature rich gameplay is it?

IMO, same problem one more time: old days MMO were unique and NEW.

Now they sells us almost same stuff with new name and getting upset when nobody like it or leave 1 month later.

I need not that long to find out new game XXX is pale copy of WoW, EQ, UO with few own features (these few I'll discover for some time then go back to play old polished game of same kind).

I guess I'm dumb to buy over and over same stuff... Thanks devs for never let me forget old games. =XD

I went through several phases that held the same opinions of almost everyone who posted in this thread. The answer should be easy though, some are smarter than others therefore some will be TOO - smart or experienced or both and then some. That's just reality right? Not all gamers have the same level of intelligence or experience.

For some, playing modern MMO's has become tedious. <Searching brain for metaphor> like playing tic tac toe. At some point you master the game and it is no longer a question of being challenged but more of a torture / grind scenario.

There's a Hawkwind song called 'Mindless in Utopia'.

That's what MMOs have become;

Easy access, no gating, rapid advancement, 'everyone a leet', P2W, bubblegum and popcorn, no adults required sweet, sweet candyfloss drivel which gives people a three month sugar rush then makes them sick.

The very few exceptions are either incredibly niche or badly managed to the point of disbelief.

WoW is just the low res wallpaper to the MMO computer screen on which these games run...

...alas...

To hack and slash another metaphor;

Recent MMO's are the Damien Hursts of the day to the Leonardo's of yesteryear.

We could see with the early Da Vinci's the future of MMO's - not realised fully yet, but very promising - like the real artists first visions of tanks, helicopters, planes and submarines.

But the Damien's of today ignored the foundations laid and stared pinning butterflies to walls and pumping sharks full of wax.

They then hyped themselves to get money.

Many modern MMOs are just like modern art - piles of colourful, mass appeal steaming **** which the proffessional critics think are innovative and genre defining, and all the other words which they use when they don't know what to say about them.

too smart?

"no LFR...can't make group".

"no hub marked on map - can't quest."

"open-world pvp. can't gather."

No. we're too dumb to function.

Originally posted by fat_taddler

I watched an interesting video the other day regarding this topic (see link below).   I think it may explain to some extent why MMO's seem to feel "dumbed down"  to many players these days or why so many games only keep us engaged for a month or two at best.

A lot of what made the older MMO's so much more immersive and time consuming (in a good way) was the fact that most of us had no idea what we were doing.  This in and of itself was a huge part of the fun and contributed greatly to the social aspects of games.

These days, players can simply go to a website and within minutes they can see the most optimized way to play any class.

Couple this with Youtube videos on boss strats, money making techniques, etc and you've basically taken a large portion of the challenge out of any MMO.   

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H1nl27rS-kM

No, I don't agree.

Take EQ for example. It might not have had guides for the first little bit of its existance, but by 2001 there were already plenty of guides and databases for this, that, and the other thing. It was still time consuming, but not for the reasons you mention.

It was the way it was organized : it had a lot of downtime. The mobs had lots of hps with respect to how much damage players could dish out. So each fight took longer than fights do nowadays. You had to meditate between fights.

Then there was setting up your hotbar with spells (no you could not just pop in and out the little icon that lets you cast your spell, you had to sit down and memorize it, which took time), getting from point A to point B because there was no easy travel, learning craft, getting your corpse back if you died, getting groups together, etc.

In DAoC, it took a long time to get from one part of the frontier to the other in the RvR zone, even if you knew the lay of the land. If you died and needed to be teleported, I think you had to wait for something like 20 minutes sometimes to be teleported back.

Games were slower and required a lot of grouping, regardless of there being guides, cookie cutter specs, etc.