Originally posted by bcbully
No just to smart for lazy design.

You mean "too smart".

(snerk, sorry)

In Russia...MMO's are too smart for you!!

Oh wait...maybe they are...dunno...

There was a time when people didn't care how much SWAG your YOLO HASHTAG had.

You ever see the movie "Idiocracy"?  It was supposed to be a comedy, but will become a documentary.

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

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.

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 good.  You are the children I see.

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

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

Sure, I'm younger than you.  Does this mean I cannot be frustrated with what I see?

I sat at dinner a few weeks ago in a restaurant with my family.  I overheard a conversation between two girls younger than I am.  They were at the time claiming that a millisecond was the smallest unit of time, and that there were 60 of them in one second.  I must have heard them use the word "like" over one hundred times during dinner, and they left well before we did.

I won a statewide spelling bee.  In German.  Now it seems that those younger than I am not only cannot spell their own language's words, but leave out or replace letters.

I feel like I'm in the minority for still reading books.  The physical books that don't have to be powered off during airplane takeoff.  At least some people pay to download their text file versions.

It just does not bode well to me for kids to spout gibberish and other youths find them more acceptable for doing that.  It seems that the worse this gets, the worse it will get.

So yes, I'm younger than you.  I also can see what is happening today.  I hope you don't discredit my observations as being childlike imaginings though.

Originally posted by kadepsyson

Sure, I'm younger than you.  Does this mean I cannot be frustrated with what I see?

It means you're too young to pull the Old Phart card.

If you want to blame Those Damn Kids even younger than you, go nuts.

It just might be more productive to blame the developers for catering to the money, before blaming the money.

Particularly when you were (probably) a part of the "kids" we were all grumping about 15 years back. And 8 years back. And every day since.

And I'm part of the "damnkids" my grandpa was grumping about 45 years back. And he was part of the "damnkids" his grandpa grumped about. (I've got quotes going back to at least 300 BC)

Originally posted by Torgrim
Checkout older games from late 80s to 2000 and compare them to games after 2000 to 2012 and you can clearly see the games have gone from difficult and challenging to fast food industry with little brain activity needed to be able to play.

As soon as I read what you wrote I thought of Angry Birds.

Originally posted by Icewhite

Originally posted by kadepsyson

Sure, I'm younger than you.  Does this mean I cannot be frustrated with what I see?

It means you're too young to pull the Old Phart card.

If you want to blame Those Damn Kids even younger than you, go nuts.

It just might be more productive to blame the developers for catering to the money, before blaming the money.

Particularly when you were (probably) a part of the "kids" we were all grumping about 15 years back.

And I'm part of the "damnkids" my grandpa was grumping about 45 years back. And he was part of the "damnkids" his grandpa grumped about. (I've got quotes going back to at least 300 BC)

That sounds like a pattern to me :)

I'm really not interested in blaming developers or parents or kids or teachers.  Instead I encourage those I see in my daily life to be more curious and inquisitive.  Instead of telling my high school aged neighbor kid to youtube it, I talked with him about physics and helped encourage his interest.

In any event, with MMOs, and games in general, I hope for more quality options spread across genre and platform.

Play  'The Secret World'

you'll feel dumb reaaaaal quick.

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

Players going to websites or you tube to see strats or optimisation of classes doesnt make a player a good or great player, players have always had some form of help from outside sources on how to beat games for as long as I can remember.

Problem with most MMO's from my point of view, is that content is to easily accomplished and the journey is virtually non existent.  I personally prefer a hard sandbox pve game, but from the threads I have seen on forums like this and others, it seems most players want everything handed to them or freely available through a cash shop, which is realy a very sad state of affairs for the gaming industry to be in.

The way the industry is heading games will become pretty pointless to play, those that are fortunate to be in a position to buy what they want from cash shops will end up driving those players away that are not in a position to dip their hand in their pocket to keep up with those that can.  Games will end up becoming the rich kids territory.

Originally posted by Icewhite

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.

Nothing to do with smarts. Everything to do associating warm fuzzy emotion with distant and fading memory.

""It's what you focus on," says Lyubomirsky. "Do you focus on how positive it was then, or that it's over now?" People who see each good experience as permanently enriching are more likely to get a mood boost. But a person who mainly focuses on the contrast between past and present damns every good experience with the attitude that nothing in the future can ever live up to it." (http://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/200605/nostalgia-sweet-remembrance)

Is that not descriptive of the daily nostalgia-wallow alternating with doom prophecy hoedown on this message board?

Or the way my grandpa used to talk about "the war"?

That's right. That is how human memory works. We remember the good, forget the bad. I've revisited a couple of old games to give them another chance, and yeah, it didn't take me too long to remember why I quit those games.

More people need to do that. They need to revisit old games just to get a reality check that many things really sucked back then. Old school MMOs were awful then, and they are awful now. But thats just me...

Originally posted by Quirhid

Originally posted by Icewhite

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.

Nothing to do with smarts. Everything to do associating warm fuzzy emotion with distant and fading memory.

""It's what you focus on," says Lyubomirsky. "Do you focus on how positive it was then, or that it's over now?" People who see each good experience as permanently enriching are more likely to get a mood boost. But a person who mainly focuses on the contrast between past and present damns every good experience with the attitude that nothing in the future can ever live up to it." (http://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/200605/nostalgia-sweet-remembrance)

Is that not descriptive of the daily nostalgia-wallow alternating with doom prophecy hoedown on this message board?

Or the way my grandpa used to talk about "the war"?

That's right. That is how human memory works. We remember the good, forget the bad. I've revisited a couple of old games to give them another chance, and yeah, it didn't take me too long to remember why I quit those games.

More people need to do that. They need to revisit old games just to get a reality check that many things really sucked back then. Old school MMOs were awful then, and they are awful now. But thats just me...

Yeah, you're probably right.  Hold on while I revisit City of Heroes to give it another chance.

Originally posted by dumpcat
To me it seems like I already understand a game from day one now. I have played so many MMOs that I feel like a vet immediately when I play a new one. Every once in a while there will be something new to learn, but once that's done, it's the same old rinse/repeat routine.

You are wise. The skills from previous games always have made the learning curves in similar-newer games much more shallow slopes.

I listen to people complain about difficulty raising funds in (whatever) game, and really? Is this why goldsellers always turned a buck, this many people are just so bad at the rudimentary skills involved in mmo wealth generation? "Grinding" for gold works for anybody?

I haven't had much issue "raising funds" since ...did I ever? Which, in turn, tends to make much of the rest of the game(s) trivial by extension. And of course the "learning to learn" skills--I may not know where to go, exactly, to find the answer to my gameplay question, but I do know where to go to start looking.

Interesting reading:

http://www.psychologyofgames.com/2010/11/why-we-get-nostalgic-about-good-old-games/

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/greaseless/201107/the-good-old-days-were-awful

Personally myself I think it is because we were different.  When you are young (teens/20's) you are more naive (despite what you think), less experienced (the two go hand in hand), more energetic and more passionate about well everything.  This alone creates the perfect scenarios for your best fun/good times...

As you get older you experience more, become less naive and therefore more jaded, bit more cynical.  Therefore you are more critical, likely don't have same passion because you are a bit more jaded (or more experienced if you prefer).

It will be impossible to do that again.

For me the old games came right at that time.  I honestly do not beleive they were any better, had more depth, more features (for the most part) than most of today's games.  However I was different.

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.

Damn you young people, always trying to too two be smart ;-)

Originally posted by Avison

That has nothing with us being to smart for mmos. The mystery and exprimentation of mmos was killed by us being 'too smart'. We designed these huge databases of information that help you make the most informed and usually best decisions possible. Too smart for our own good I'd say.

Without old players becomming loremasters to help the new the community never really solidifies like a real community would. Since you don't need anything from anyone else you never form proper relationships.

I'd argue designing an mmo that naturally opposes being able to be out in wiki form somehow would be the next step. Some kind of system or dynamic content system.

This is very relevant. It's not just about databases of information existing now that didn't exist back then. It's also about how game designers must keep the existance of these databases in mind while designing their game. You cannot design a 2013 MMO the same way you would design a 1996 text MUD. You must keep in mind that the average player will have at most 1 degree of separation between themselves and a wiki with in-depth information on every aspect of the game. (Either they themselves will frequently use the wiki, or they will speak directly to someone else who does.)

It's hard to put mystery and experimentation into a game for an audience like that. When someone finds out how to make a wikiproof MMO that people want to play, they'll have an phenomenally successful game on their hands.