Originally posted by VengeSunsoar

Originally posted by wordiz

Originally posted by aWRAY

Are the players to blame for blowing through the content too quickly? Or is it the developers fault for making the games too easy?

Or maybe, just maybe, the MMO genre as a whole hasn't blossomed into its full potential yet.

The devs are the ones responsible. They rushed out some half finished games over the last few years and pissed off the players and community. It's a vicious cycle at this point because players are hesitant to invest time and money into new MMO's and afterwards will murder them in the forums if they're let down. This is making it extremely difficult to get proper financing behind new MMO projects, which leads to more crappy games, which leads to more pissed off, sceptical players...and it goes and goes.

I'd like to think the genre hasn't reached it's full potential, but judging that earlier MMOs were more advanced than most modern ones; I don't think it's the case.

Hmm I don't actually think so. I think most of the MMO releases in the past 5-6 years have had more content at release than really any of the original MMO's and most of the ones preceding them.

I also don't believe that the old MMO's were more advanced. A couple games had more features but not most of them. Most of them IMO have less features than current ones.

I just think the mindset of the community as a whole has changed. There is just a much greater percentage of people looking for fast paced content and end-game type play while the ones that want to do things slower are either fading out or being drowned out.

.

Debatable, the way we define content nowadays takes only the sheer numbers into account, how many dungeons, how many raids, how many quests, how many craftables, but in reality it is not even half the content timewise or impactwise of older mmos, most of the quests are one-time, most of the dungeons are unimaginative and forgettable, most craftables useless, just to not endanger the "endgame balance", whatever that is, we have no confirmed sightings so far :)

Only the outside game worlds are unarguably smaller, wow, l2 even rs feature huge worlds.

As for advanced, they were certainly technically inferior (even if we might get into a argument over the overuse of gcd recently), but they are inferiors in, due to lack of words on my part, the "social" part, which might be due to the newer games being more streamlined, we cannot forget that one of the strongest drives to both group up AND leave the game is the sense of victory (or lack of) over the game system as a whole, which recently d3 devs parodied as "we want players breaking the system", and there are much more ways to break a imperfect and/or less constrictive system.

As for the mindset of the community, depends once again on definitions (and maybe i will just repeat the same thing you were saying), the new generation overall is not that different to the older ones, we just have less "nerdy" people playing mainstream mmos these days, but more of the arcade and console guys, which does not mean they dont exist, just visit some kind of free server of a older mmo and you will predominantly see teens having similar experiences, failures and successes as we had back in the day, thousands of them, not 40+ year old nostalgic people.

They are just not the target group these days, making games for the angry german kid is much easier :)

Flame on!

:)

Originally posted by Kyleran

Originally posted by funyahns
 They won't make games this way for long.  Why bother spending all that money on building the game and systems just to be abandoned.  Pretty soon you will just get a room where you can purchase crafts and wait in que for a dungeon without anything else to do. because the design of empty space is a waste

 

We have these sorts of MMOs already, they are called MOBAs and appeal to a large population players. (not that I understand the appeal)

Here is a question for you.... we have had defined genres for so many years now.

Multiplayer pretty much covered 8+ players, maybe ended around 64, perhaps a bit higher (all at the same time)

Co-op, that is 2-4 players (all at the same time).

Massive, which used to mean hundreds of characters (all at the same time).

But now massive means 10 players?

So what do I use to describe hundreds of players now that MMO stands for 2 to infinity?

Originally posted by aWRAY

 

I see your point. But a big portion of "content" in past MMO's was the rep/gear grind. After players got vocal about how long the grind was, the devs did away with most of it. That significantly reduced the longetivity of the game 

My point is, there is yet to be an MMO with the longetivity of Vanilla WoW without the grind. The idea of an online virtual world was way ahead of its time.

It boils down to this .. creating a locale with appropriate graphics is expensive. Creating mob animation is expensive. So players are asked to repeat. And too much repetition will make ANYTHING boring.

So true longetivity is a pipe dream. A better way is to plan to have a much shorter life span (say a few month), and then move onto the next game.

There are only so many MMO players in the world.

If people stick with an MMO for years, that means less MMO comes out and less people to make MMOs.

I rather people rotate / churn through more MMOs.

Like I said, majority of players treat MMOs like an entertainment product / single player game where they only play for >6 months. Game makers are realizing that and making adjustments to that behaviour.

Originally posted by Loktofeit

In either of the above two options, the offering could be anything from static modules to user-generated content to an option interface where you check off exactly what you want. Let's see... I want medium difficulty, tundra setting, four player, melee oriented, swarm rooms, hard boss.

*click* *click**click* *click* *click* *click*

Generating world environment...

Creating scenario and script...

Your party is entering the campaign.

So a 8-year-old CoH purely random instance, but placed in an outdoor setting?

Sure it's doable.  Make it scale, and turn the level cap into a "high score" rating and you've generated a perpetual game.

Eventually people are going to start to grouse over the lack of new abilities, of course.  And your basic 20 boss abilities (scalable or no) won't be terribly interesting forever.

But yes, for the type of player impressed by the biggest numbers, should do the trick.

Originally posted by jpnz

There are only so many MMO players in the world.

If people stick with an MMO for years, that means less MMO comes out and less people to make MMOs.

I rather people rotate / churn through more MMOs.

Like I said, majority of players treat MMOs like an entertainment product / single player game where they only play for >6 months. Game makers are realizing that and making adjustments to that behaviour.

     That sure seems to be the case anymore..  Not sure of the reasoning why players only stay for 6 mo.   I played EQ and WoW for years, but gave up on both when their product turned into tier grind..  The last 2 major titles that I left were Rift and SWTOR..I didn't last past 4 months before I was bored to death.. End game in both those titles was "the end"..  I think the silent majority are people like me.. We enjoy the journey until you have to make the choice of "cancel" or treadmill..  The average linear themepark seems to run out of content between 3-6 months..

Originally posted by Rydeson

The average linear themepark seems to run out of content between 3-6 months..

Well, content consumption is enormously variable.  WoW survives with a massive player base clinging on through periods of intense boredom until the next major patch/expansion delivers some new content.

But the essential problem, first expressed well before 1997, remains unanswered:

What do we do to keep capped and bored players entertained and paying a sub for a while longer?

Players continue demanding a solution based on the original answers.  But the locust effect?  One of the two answers (Raiding)  is inadequate alone.  The other answer (PvP) isn't for everyone.  And they've always let player uninterested in either slip through the cracks.

Waiting on a third answer.  Still.  Solutions based on the original two answers? Well, the traditional themepark idea seems to be pretty well exhausted of possibility.  

Sandboxes are the marketing tagline du jour currently; we'll see how well that survives a few releases.  If not, looks like cell phone apps instead of mmos.

     I always talked about MMO getting away from the linear storyline game..  That just leads to one thing, and one thing only.. End game treadmill burnout.. Some are more tollerant of that than others.. I have advocated that devs think about making a game more of a spider web, then a train ride..  The way I view it, each starting city would be the center of their web.. Games like EQ1 would have 12+ spider webs all inacting with each other.. Each connection giving you paths upon paths to take to develop your character..  I'm also dead set against zone progression that makes old zones obsolete as you level.. You're basically burning bridges.. lol

     I want games that evolve and characters that evolve over time.. Let the worlds be dynamic and ever changing.. From what I understand Defiance is thinking of something down this path, tied in with the TV show.. but we'll see..

Regarding the OP, I concur. Finally, we might get some perma-death action.

P.S. - MMORPG.com, more RipperX videos, please. That guy is too much great.

This thread is not really about content locust. Those are the players we all know who play 16 hours a day and reach the level cap a week after release.

What you're actually discussing is the different modern trend of game hopping. Something that was unknown back in the days when the choices were just UO, EQ and  AC. People like to look at those first MMOs through rosé colored glasses and attribute magical qualities to the content... A type of grindy content few would tolerate today. You think games had more variety and less repetitive end-game content back then? That's not the way I remember it. 

The main reason players didn't game-hop as much back then is obvious: there wasn't anything new to hop to. So we stuck around with the same people for a long time and made better friends and/or enemies. IMHO, continuing with a game because you have a lot of friends or rivals there is a much more powerful reason to stick with it than the content itself.

A lot of us who played those early games miss the stable communities we had there but the majority of current players never experienced it. They have always played in a time when we have literally hundreds of MMOS to choose from and where short-term communities with guilds that fall appart in a month or two are the norm. There is threa after thread here blaming the new games for this when the main reason we all game hop more now is that our friends are scattered all over the place.

Just look at the website for most large guilds these days. You'll see subsections for the 6 or 7 MMOs the guild members currently play. 10 years ago that just wasn't the case.  One guild... One MMO. 

So stop asking for MMOs that give you 2 years worth of content instead of 3 month's... You're going to leave in 3 months anyway when the next new shiny MMO is released and your friends go there.

Originally posted by Iselin

Just look at the website for most large guilds these days. You'll see subsections for the 6 or 7 MMOs the guild members currently play. 10 years ago that just wasn't the case.  One guild... One MMO. 

 

So stop asking for MMOs that give you 2 years worth of content instead of 3 month's... You're going to leave in 3 months anyway when the next new shiny MMO is released and your friends go there.

Exactly. I think it is small thinking to restrict oneself to one game or one world. I don't see a problem playing with the same friends cross servers, and cross game. That, in fact, expand the community you can interact with, and it is a great thing in my view.

Originally posted by Iselin

/snip

A lot of us who played those early games miss the stable communities we had there but the majority of current players never experienced it. 

/snip

This sentence is the crux of your post and that is blatently false.

More people than ever in human-history are now part of communities.

Facebook, Twitter, SomethingAwful, Youtube, Reddit are just some of the big communities right now.

I come from SA and I've played games with that community for years now.

Just because a community didn't start from a game doesn't mean they don't play that game together.

This thread is about discussing that 'yes, players will churn through games within 6months compared to years from back in my day. Are you one of them and do you like this trend?' 

I am one of the players that leave MMOs within 6months and I think this trend is good for players. players experience more content and more game dev make money.

Originally posted by jpnz

Originally posted by Iselin

/snip

A lot of us who played those early games miss the stable communities we had there but the majority of current players never experienced it. 

/snip

This sentence is the crux of your post and that is blatently false.

More people than ever in human-history are now part of communities.

Facebook, Twitter, SomethingAwful, Youtube, Reddit are just some of the big communities right now.

I come from SA and I've played games with that community for years now.

Just because a community didn't start from a game doesn't mean they don't play that game together.

 

This thread is about discussing that 'yes, players will churn through games within 6months compared to years from back in my day. Are you one of them and do you like this trend?' 

I am one of the players that leave MMOs within 6months and I think this trend is good for players. players experience more content and more game dev make money.

Plus, no one says you cannot have a stable community hopping games. Just join a guild who play many games. It is MORE conducive to a good community when you are not restricted to one game.

Originally posted by jpnz

Originally posted by Iselin

/snip

A lot of us who played those early games miss the stable communities we had there but the majority of current players never experienced it. 

/snip

This sentence is the crux of your post and that is blatently false.

More people than ever in human-history are now part of communities.

Facebook, Twitter, SomethingAwful, Youtube, Reddit are just some of the big communities right now.

I come from SA and I've played games with that community for years now.

Just because a community didn't start from a game doesn't mean they don't play that game together.

 

This thread is about discussing that 'yes, players will churn through games within 6months compared to years from back in my day. Are you one of them and do you like this trend?' 

I am one of the players that leave MMOs within 6months and I think this trend is good for players. players experience more content and more game dev make money.

Lol. I guess you had to be there. IM, FB, Twitter etc... are different beasts altogether... we had telephones back in those days too...and we even used them for talking!

The communities I'm talking about were self-contained within a specific MMO and available only there. They had a life of their own and only made sense in that context. We made plans there... such as all the pre-invasion preparations we made in DAoC... scheduled meetings at certain times...as when we executed the raid into the enemy's territory and went after their keeps as we had planned... and played together for hours sometimes when we had a tough fight on our hands.

And then when we came back the next day, the same people were there as the previous day... this went on for months. You get to know people a bit better doing that... and knowing these people better created another reason for sticking around. THAT was the point of my post.

You're using the word "community" in all its fractured and hyper-casual modern context. It has nothing to do with the MMO comunities of the past.

As to what do I prefer? Well I play games for 3-month time frames these days just like everyone else (although I do POP into WOW every couple of years or so...cumulatively I probably have 5+ years there.) I get a lot of enjoymet out of learning new systems--especially when they're a better way of doing things...and I make a lot of aquaintances there. But nothing like those old MMO communities.

I'm an MMO gypsy just like the rest of you, but that doesn't stop me from hoping that the next release will be so much better than all the other ones that people will stay there long enough to set-down roots... but then I'm not optimistic that's ever  going to happen again. But in my mind there's no question that it was a far better way to play MMOs.

Originally posted by Iselin

The communities I'm talking about were self-contained within a specific MMO and available only there. They had a life of their own and only made sense in that context. We made plans there... such as all the pre-invasion preparations we made in DAoC... scheduled meetings at certain times...as when we executed the raid into the enemy's territory and went after their keeps as we had planned... and played together for hours sometimes when we had a tough fight on our hands.

That is very limiting. Why settle for a community that is constraint by a single game (and server) when you can have a larger community across many games and server?

I thought you LIKE interacting with more people.

Originally posted by Icewhite

 

But the essential problem, first expressed well before 1997, remains unanswered:

What do we do to keep capped and bored players entertained and paying a sub for a while longer?

Players continue demanding a solution based on the original answers.  But the locust effect?  One of the two answers (Raiding)  is inadequate alone.  The other answer (PvP) isn't for everyone.  And they've always let player uninterested in either slip through the cracks.

Waiting on a third answer.  Still. 

The third answer came in 2001 with EQ's Shadow of Luclin.  And the solution boils down to this:  don't let the players ever get capped.  Outside of a very small minority, the AA system ensured people were always working on permanent character progression

Originally posted by nariusseldon

Originally posted by Iselin

The communities I'm talking about were self-contained within a specific MMO and available only there. They had a life of their own and only made sense in that context. We made plans there... such as all the pre-invasion preparations we made in DAoC... scheduled meetings at certain times...as when we executed the raid into the enemy's territory and went after their keeps as we had planned... and played together for hours sometimes when we had a tough fight on our hands.

That is very limiting. Why settle for a community that is constraint by a single game (and server) when you can have a larger community across many games and server?

I thought you LIKE interacting with more people.

Because that's part of creating a virtual life in a virtual world? ... we are both talking about MMORPGs here aren't we?

You're really reaching here bud.

Originally posted by Iselin

Because that's part of creating a virtual life in a virtual world? ... we are both talking about MMORPGs here aren't we?

You're really reaching here bud.

You're description rather more resembled insularity than community... but we've heard that thread a few million times before.

Grass was actually greener.  About a decade before DAoC...