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the420kid

Greetings all;

First off I am not telling you how to feel this is my opinion based solely on my own experiences. I'm 33 and been gaming my entire live, my online experience dates back to BBS's and Muds right through every big release to date.

What does my title mean? Well basically mmorpgs were a fantastic genre back before they truly became massive multiplayers, back when it was a niche group of players.

Why was less more? Well back before games became so massive you were by no means just an anonymous player ripping through content, think of it more like a small town. Everyone knew everyone at least in the upper tiers of players and you were held accountable for your actions in game via other players in the world. This fact alone made online gaming a completely different experience than it is today.

Before I rant to much about community size id like to point out 1 huge problem with every game now a days, dumbed down. That about sums up a huge problem games face today. We want to sell and appeal to the largest crowd and make the largest profits possible and none can even fault a company for this attitude but sadly the majority of players are total newbs. This sad reality has made game designers make there games more and more user friendly and easy to cater to its ever growing audience of mostly terrible players, players who have never really faced any struggle in game.

There is content which was amazing that isn't even remotely possible in current games just due to pure size / player base.

Player housing / player classes / player environmental control.. None of these are even viable today. How could you have player housing for 11 million users each possible wanting multiple houses? You just cant.

Has anyone ever played nexus kingdom of the winds? Well I have and let me tell you something about this old skoo 2d scroller. you pick your class, you work your butt off and level farm etc.. At a certain point if you wish to advance your class you had a few options. There was one class that was achieved by an NPC quest line was very easy and common advanced class to see however the rest of the classes were actually player run. There were players in charge of houses, these houses required players to apply and then actually attend classes / meetings with them all in RP, duel in the arenas show your skills all while staying RP'ing like you are your char to eventually weeks in get invited to that player house and learn all new secret skills only available to those who are in those houses / classes.. 100% player run advancement!! Can any of you even consider something like this in a game with a million players? Feel like ninja looting, pking randomly, being a tool in any way? Well good luck to you in a small community getting new classes or not being camped regularly..

Ever heard of an old game named Underlight? Well get this, in that game the FACTIONS that people expect in most games now a days were player controlled houses. I believe the name of the house I apped and joined was house of dol or something along those lines, but basically once I was high enough level I had to app this house. I had to stay on the low ground and spend time in there house area talking to people dueling them chatting having fun and eventually I got in. There were strict rules such as don't come up the stairs that's house territory, break that rule well you just got pkd and likely failed your application enjoy being faction less or try apping another house.. Once in the house in there ranks I farmed for them worked with them and helped initiate new members, I was even consider the houses champion for 1v1 melee sword duels which I would be called on for to defend the house in competition all the time. Every Wednesday the GMS would take control of powerful monsters and attack the player faction houses to drain there soul they had farmed. We had a set plan in place, we forced the fight into a room of our choosing with both exits closed by portal wards. Our best selected 10 fights on the ground (I was among them) to fight hand to hand vs the powerful GM creatures while 100 more players were on the high ground casting protective and healing magic on us melee while casters also nuked down from there range position. It was truly epic, but I ask you could you do that with a million players?

The sad reality is the entire genre MMORPG has gotten far to easy and far to popular, most of my greatest memories are not even viable to exist again. Don't get me wrong I have played and enjoyed many new mmos like WoW and all its siblings but when I think back to my best memories from WoW what comes to mind is things like 5 maning with my friends having hilarious chats on vent laughing and having a great time, but how many memories do I have of something difficult that I accomplished? Not many if any..

Diablo 3 a beckon in the dark or a slap in the face to vets like me? This cant 100% be answered yet as game lacks viewable content but there are some newb friendly changes already made to the game that made me shed a single tear.
-MSLE doesn't exist
multi shot lightning enchanted aka 1 shot most players if badly geared, the sheer threat of an MSLE in hardcore mode forced you to slow down and read every enchanted mobs enchantments before you simply hack and slashed.
- no char building just leveling
No stat assignments, no skill assignments. Infinite re picking of your skills combined with auto giving out stats basically means you need 1 barb 1 demon hunter etc etc Long gone are the days of actually trying something realizing it wasn't the best then remaking. Long gone are the days of pondering and then coming to mind hey I am going to put 20 points in charged bolt see how that goes.. OMG its OP lols... You no longer build chars and make mistakes as you learn you just level and then copy your skill setup / run setup based on good players who you will likely just armory to see fully there gear / skills / runes and possible there turn ons and turn offs nothing is a secret online :P
-No more pking or turning hostile
Ya it sucks to die in PvP to a PK especially on hardcore but come on this is a game where you can create a private room or fill an entire room with just 4 players avoiding a PK isn't tough. The sheer sound of someone turning hostile towards you on hardcore made your heart beat faster it will be hugely missed imo. I don't want to go to long on d3 as its a hot topic :P

Ever attacked someone you really shouldn't have? Now a days every fact of a players char is visible for all to see. What level are you what is your build what class everything. I can remember a ton of examples for this but heres one from SWG which isn't even that old. I can remember one time on my master TKA (first master TKA on server at the time) I was in the cantina working off huge battle fatigue, and by working I mean working I was dancing as I had subd in dance / doc to take care of my own issues on site where ever that may be, I hate to rely on others.. Anyways I was dancing away my battle fatigue in my dancing outfit when these other guys were chatting and dueling. The one guy thought he was just the best like ever, which I found amusing so I said hey I will duel you for cash if you want. Him and his friends found this hilarious to consider dueling a dancer as if that was all I was capable of so he agreed. I slaped my gear set on used knockdown then my highest abilities which these guys had never even seen before and about 3 shot him in 2 seconds. To say the least it was very funny for everyone in the cantina and I made some nice cash, this kind of mystery can not exist anymore as people like to see all know all..

In conclusion MMo's will just never be the same for old school players like me I think its best to stick with RTS / FPS for competitive play as there still is some skill based play out there with these genres. I will still continue to check out new mmos and i cant wait to play some d3 but we can never go back to what we used to have when gaming was a nerds pleasure not the cool thing to do with your spare time.





TL DR don't blame you I didn't even re-read it basically qq qq qq games suck now compared to 20 years ago :P

Skyrax

I agree with you to a certain degree...
I found myself enjoying games with freedom (FFA, kill anyone you wish, makes friends with whoever you wish). Truth was, though, as the market got larger, this hardcore style of play (which wasn't really hardcore in some cases... just different) didn't attract enough people to be profitable :/ I saw this in every FFA game I played that eventually got shut down.
And now, I can't find one new game that is what I'm looking for, that has that freedom of play with player control. I'm kind of glad to have found someone that feels the same way and know that I'm not the only one.

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Karkelo

I quit reading after the dumbed down remark and skimmed through the rest, because that remark struck me as ignorant. Things aren't REALLY dumbed down, developers just learned from past mistakes. I'll use WoW as an example (as it IS the prime example for this, seeing as most people that gripe about these things came straight out of WoW previously.) Vanilla wasn't hard because it had difficult encounters, it was hard because it had difficult mechanics that were just plain bad. As things became more mainstream, massive amounts of knowledge became publicly available, such as guides and strategies for fights/leveling/etc. I've met/personally know some of the hardcore vanilla raiders that were in the top guilds once upon a time, and most of them will unanimously agree Blizzard were improving the game as time went by rather than putting handicaps on everything. Sure, they made it more accessible, but where is the problem in that? There isn't one, other than player backlash (although you could start up the gripe about dungeon finder, which I will partly agree too - that helped ruin the community feeling of servers), which I will get to in a bit.

Ulduar was one of the most difficult instances, ICC kept the hard difficulty of that and from what I've heard, Cataclysm is giving plenty of hard times to the players raiding the content. Back to my comment on player backlash. The amount of knowledge available thanks to the userbase has crippled the skills of a lot of people. Used to, you'd learn things by trial and error. Now, people just follow a cookie-cutter formula, ignore everything about it and just spam what they think looks cool. Is this a fault of the developers? Completely. Wait, did I just contradict myself? No, I didn't. The reason why it is their fault is that they created a game loved by many people, loved enough to create a large wealth of knowledge. With every bit of knowledge, there is someone there sleeping through "class" and failing on their "exams". The user base is at fault for this, but with every good thing comes a bad effect somewhere down the line.

Sorry for the rant, it just irks me when people pull this "slap in the face" bullshit when it has nothing to do with the game and everything to do with the community, aside from that "they changed things to suit the mass appeal more rather than the way I originally played it which was obviously better!".

the420kid

sorry dude but if you found anything about wow difficult you are exactly apart of the large group of newbs I was refering to. Not a single aspect in WoW at any point through vanila /bc / wrath / cata has the game ever been difficult. You can die as many times as you want no corpse walks in raids, no penalties for anything in game, unlimited respecing, free epics for taking part in PvP not necessarily doing well, dung difficulty so low that you can 2 man farm or just join a random group of 5 from LFG and never fail regardless of how bad your group is, you can reach max level with 3 days play time, your guaranteed arena points for taking part in arena, your given free valor points for raid tier gear from random 5 mans.. and I could go on..

Basicaly wow makes sure everyone and there grandmothers can be succesful in WoW regardless of there skill level. There is nothing difficult about a game when ever single person in the entire WORLD can easily get to max level and get the greatist gear. Hardmodes are hard? The only part that is hard in the word hard mode is the fact you need to organize and run a large guild of 30+ loot hungry animals at the very least, while managing who is raiding who gets loot and easing all the drama generaly caused by said loot.. Thats the only difficult part of WoW and it isnt about the game its about the social and ligistic aspects to running a large raiding guild.

If a game is hard not everyone can be at the top simple as that, with wow you all get to the top its just about how fast you get there but regardless EVERYONE gets there and you will never face any real challenge on the way there. Im surprised of all the games you would pick WoW to argue with when personaly I find it a leader among the new nation of easy theme park games mass marketed to every child ont he planet, there are definetly harder mmos out there than WoW.

Fact is nothing will change if anything it will get worse and I know this but I can still come here and ***** about it cause this is the internets what else is there to do :P

zhad

Even though I might not be as old as you, aswell as into gaming, I can sort of understand how appealing small communities are.

The first "real" MMORPG I played was Ragnarok Online, since I didn't have any money for the monthly subscription I had no choice but to try my luck on private servers.
There I found a really nice bunch of people, people you would at some point refer to as internet friends.
You would know most of the guys that PvP and with time learn their behaviour and tactics and hopefully beat them. It's also nice how people respect you if you're good in PvP. On MMORPGs with thousands if not millions of players, being "good" isn't enough. You have to be the BEST or atleast top10 to be respected.



Now about the games and their userfriendlyness/easy mode:

I don't think that userfriendlyness is a bad thing, if its the UI part only.
If userfriendlyness involves the fully automatic stat points distribution, then please, remove it. I'd like to have more freedom over my character.
I guess I always mix "beginnerfriendly" and "userfriendly".

For the difficulty of games... let me say this: If I want a challenge, I go PvP.

Raiyne

There is a difference between being user-friendly/well designed, to being dumbed down.

I think a lot of what developers are focusing on is more on reducing the barrier to fun. Having to remake your character and grind just to try out a new build is not fun. Guild Wars realised this, and with their rich system of classes and skills capitalised on that, to allow fun, varied experimentation in terms of combat and player interaction. Guild Wars 2 hopes to expand on that, in a more constant MMORPG setting, we'll see how it works out.

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Verranicus

If you need to be part of a niche group to enjoy something, chances are you didn't enjoy it that much in the first place. Don't like a game? Don't play it. If you like it you'll like it regardless of how many other people play.

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the420kid

I agree with you and I do look forward to trying guild wars 2 but honestly I do feel as though games have been dumbed down harsh term or not, and I dont mean that only stupid people play them or anything insulting towards anyone. Even console games have gone the same direction.. Do you play any single player console games? Sometimes I do and honestly I cant even remember the last game I rented / bought for my console that was a single player game where I actualy died once. All the console RPGS I play are so easy compared to what they used to be. Go check out ff13 then check out some old rpgs like dragon warrior, shining force or any other RPG from 15 yrs + ago and I bet you will find it harder. The new oblivion release coming soon might bring some difficulty but its hard to say, hopefully skyrim or however it is spelled can deliver.

I dont think you really comprehended what I was saying no offense but I dont want to be apart of a small community, I love the fact there is millions of players playing the same games that I do. I dislike the fact some of the ghreatist parts in older mmos just cant be created or utalized in a game with a million players it was only viable with a small community. I think its awsome how large gaming is getting, I always drink my morning coffee while watching GSL VODS I love how the scene is growing and how many ppl play games, dont get me wrong. I just want some exciting difficulty in a game.

What I really want is a game where 3/4 of the population who play it cant even get half way through the content due to difficulty, sadly people get frustrated an then stop subbing so you will never see a difficult mmo ever again. Just more cotton candy theme park mmos where the masses can dominate.

Pwet

I reckon it's still possible to find a game with a "small town feel". I remember a few years back I had started playing a fairly crappy MUD. There were so little new players that I was basically "the new guy in town" and I was the only player that had started seriously playing the game in the last few weeks. It was pretty funny the other players had been there for so long everyone was hardcore role-playing their character. Very immersive. Unfortunately the game was super confusing and I eventually quit. I forgot the name of the game, probably doesn't exist anymore.

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Deimos

I agree with OP.

the same goes for console games.

remember when "multiplayer" meant a bunch of friends in the same room with a multi-tap?

nowadays people wont go near a console game unless its got leveling and pointless achievements.

sigh.

and dont even get me started on downloadable content that costs money.

$10 for some new maps? wtf? do people not realise modders create an infinite amount of content for FREE? cod2 zombies was one of the best mods ever.... these days you have to PAY for zombie mods. yeah.... hallelujah!.

fking gaming these days man... pfft.

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