MMOs and you

[Sleepy Sol]

Hey!

Listen!

Also, for your amusement, people on the FFXIV Forums are legit freaking the hell out that the Second Coil has recieved some nerfs [http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/threads/204637-So-Second-Coil-has-been-destroyed].

Most of it amounts to "filthy casual's plaguing our gaem" and its a delight to see.

Yeah, I'm surprised people are so upset when it's content that's 7 months old at this point. It's not like either of them are really very DF-able either. My experience with DFing T6 and T7 yesterday was uh...questionable. But at least we cleared T7?

Frankly, after dealing with the original T7 for months, I'm quite happy it's been nerfed. It was a frustrating slog before that was still partially RNG dependent. Which totally makes sense for endgame raids, y'know.

Gotta let people who weren't able to experience it before for whatever reason in somehow.

 

[happyninja42]

Eh, I go through phases with MMO's. I've played them off and on for decades, my earliest experience being Ultima Online, followed by EQ, and so on up the MMO evolutionary chain. I find them fun for the most part, but the repetition of actions without any tangible effect on the world around me makes me tire of them really fast. Since it's a persistent world, where they have to allow everyone to have the same content experience, there isn't anything unique about any of your characters. You all just repeat the same actions over and over.

A good example, the game ArcheAge. In the tutorial/opening hours of the game, you come up to a particular stone along the path that the story quest sends you. There is a young woman standing by the stone...apparently because she just likes standing by rocks next to a path. She bubbles and giggles at you while talking ( I really don't understand why, other than she's an anime inspired female character and thus...you know..bubbly), and she tells you to touch the stone. You do so, and a brand burns on your hand, marking you as The Special Snowflake of Legend, Not Seen in Centuries. That's fine and all....eeeeexcept for one little problem.....

The rock is surrounded by about 3 dozen other players, all getting the same speech as you about being Super Special Snowflake.

Thus, the cool factor of this "revelation" is instantly diluted by the fact that everybody's doing the same story, with the same stuff, and there really isn't anything dynamic going on. It's everyone playing the same character in a well read script, without any real impact on what's going on.

Now some games lessen this problem by allowing player controlled/run content, but it's very minimal in my experience, and doesn't impact anything outside of those specific zones where this behavior is allowed.

So when I'm playing a game like that, or any of the MMO's really, my interest starts to tank dramatically as I feel the repetition and grind of it. Which is usually when I stop playing.

But that's one reason why I like the FTP model, because I can easily stop playing some game when I get bored with it, without any worry that I'm wasting money or not. It was fun for a bit, and then it was put aside.

 

[The White Hunter]

Hey!

Listen!

Also, for your amusement, people on the FFXIV Forums are legit freaking the hell out that the Second Coil has recieved some nerfs [http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/threads/204637-So-Second-Coil-has-been-destroyed].

Most of it amounts to "filthy casual's plaguing our gaem" and its a delight to see.

Yeah, I'm surprised people are so upset when it's content that's 7 months old at this point. It's not like either of them are really very DF-able either. My experience with DFing T6 and T7 yesterday was uh...questionable. But at least we cleared T7?

Frankly, after dealing with the original T7 for months, I'm quite happy it's been nerfed. It was a frustrating slog before that was still partially RNG dependent. Which totally makes sense for endgame raids, y'know.

Gotta let people who weren't able to experience it before for whatever reason in somehow.

DF Titan Extreme. It is literally the most amusing thing you can do in the game. Que as tank, proceed to watch everyone fail horribly.

 

[Sleepy Sol]

DF Titan Extreme. It is literally the most amusing thing you can do in the game. Que as tank, proceed to watch everyone fail horribly.

I don't think I ever will.

I vowed to myself after clearing it once that I would never do Titan EX again. Shit was traumatizing.

Every other EX fight is fine, though. Sort of. Thornmarch EX comes pretty close to Titan EX in terms of "fuck this shit."

 

[The White Hunter]

DF Titan Extreme. It is literally the most amusing thing you can do in the game. Que as tank, proceed to watch everyone fail horribly.

I don't think I ever will.

I vowed to myself after clearing it once that I would never do Titan EX again. Shit was traumatizing.

Every other EX fight is fine, though. Sort of. Thornmarch EX comes pretty close to Titan EX in terms of "fuck this shit."

Titan Extreme is fun, I have no need for anything related to running it thus never bother.

Thornmarch extreme is fucking easy man, it's easier than it's HM O_O.

 

[Atmos Duality]

I tried a fair few of them from 2004-2009 and decided they all had one thing in common: The experience was overwhelmingly boring shit punctuated by very brief moments of fun.

A more, I dunno, "thoughtful" analysis would describe MMOs as decent games boiled down to grind and numerical shin-kicking then arranged to look more complex/deep than they actually are.

I regret nearly every hour I spent on MMOs, and abjectly refuse to play them going forward...despite the gaming world doing its utmost to wrangle social pressure against me (the only games my friends play now are MMOs or F2P "MMO-likes" [my term, not formal; describes games like LoL and WoT])

 

[Sleepy Sol]

DF Titan Extreme. It is literally the most amusing thing you can do in the game. Que as tank, proceed to watch everyone fail horribly.

I don't think I ever will.

I vowed to myself after clearing it once that I would never do Titan EX again. Shit was traumatizing.

Every other EX fight is fine, though. Sort of. Thornmarch EX comes pretty close to Titan EX in terms of "fuck this shit."

Titan Extreme is fun, I have no need for anything related to running it thus never bother.

Thornmarch extreme is fucking easy man, it's easier than it's HM O_O.

Maybe it's just my personal experience with my group talking there. I play Dragoon so I'm typically not the cause of wipes. Sometimes the tanks in my group have a difficult time adapting to certain situations and the entire group has to wait until they nail it. At times this can take a while, and that leads to frustration.

I don't really remember much about at this point. But I don't think I want to. ;_;

 

[Tuesday Night Fever]

I play MMOs, but honestly... I'm not sure if I like them when compared to other genres. They're a great timesink, and they're dirt cheap compared to frequently buying brand new games which I tend to go through rather quickly. They're also a pretty decent place to meet people and hang out with friends, so they've got that going for them, and it's probably my #1 reason for playing.

The MMOs I've played are...

Spoiler

1. City of Heroes / City of Villains - This was my first MMO. A friend convinced me to play it a little bit before Enhancement Diversification went live. Overall I had a blast with this game, and it had hands-down the best character creator ever implemented in a game (probably even still to this day). If the game were still running, I'd still be playing it. I very much miss my Claws/Regen Scrapper, my Assault Rifle/Dark Miasma Corruptor, and my Energy Melee/Willpower Brute.

2. World of WarCraft - I started playing this game at its time of launch, and got really into it for a while. I've taken a few breaks from it, but I've still played it pretty consistently. I'm not really a hardcore raider anymore, though. The last time I would have described myself as such would have been during the Firelands raid in Cataclysm. These days I play it pretty casually.

3. Champions Online - I had high hopes for this game, because I thought it was going to be a graphically improved City of Heroes. Turns out that it was just crap. Oddly enough it was a game that was actually a lot more fun during the beta than after launch, because post-launch they were CONSTANTLY nerfing abilities into the ground, typically just to pander to the tiny yet loud PvP community. By the time they were done with their nerfing the game hardly felt like a super hero game anymore, because the enemies that you used to be able to wade through armies of could now kick your ass without a second though. When your nerf cycle makes it so bad that a supposed super hero can be taken down in a matter of seconds by a street punk firing a pair of Glocks "gangsta" style... yeah, something's seriously messed up. The character creator was a bit of an odd duck too. In some ways it was better than City of Heroes, like letting you use more colors per costume piece, but in other ways it was significantly worse. It would frequently restrict what costume pieces you could use based on other choices, and often they would have no interference (like a certain hat barring you from using a certain chest piece or pair of boots). It also scaled costume pieces oddly based on your character's body type, so if you tried to use a body type different from one of the defaults it would stretch and warp the costume piece to fit the new shape rather than just scaling it up or down.

4. Rift - I actually liked this game quite a bit. I played a Saboteur at launch, and shifted to a Chloromancer later. The Chloromancer was the only class I hit max level with though, because while I liked the game quite a bit, I quickly began to miss World of WarCraft because of how damn similar they were. I don't recall the game doing anything particularly bad or poorly... it just didn't do enough to make it feel distinct from World of WarCraft to warrant keeping an active account in it.

5. Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn - A friend of mine talked me into playing this a while back when it went on sale on Amazon. I played for my first free month, and haven't bothered to play it since. I pretty much immediately uninstalled the game the moment my first month ran out. This game... ugh. This game was, to me, aggressively boring. It had relatively pretty graphics, I guess... but other than that it did nothing to draw me in.

6. Star Wars: The Old Republic - I played this for a few months at launch, and mostly liked it. It was pretty boring to play solo, but really shined when played with a group. I played with two friends from my World of WarCraft guild, one a Light-aligned Jedi Knight tank the other a Light-aligned Jedi Consular healer. To troll them, I played a Dark-aligned Trooper ranged DPS. It made dialogue hilarious, because my friends would be all goody-two-shoes seeking diplomacy, then I'd get a lucky dice roll in the middle of the conversation and actually get shit done (IE: typically murder; lots and lots of murder) while the characters they were roleplaying presumably /facepalm and wonder why they hang out with this jerk. So yeah, we had a lot of laughs. I also really enjoyed the rail-shooter space missions. It just didn't have a whole lot of content at max level, so we got bored of it pretty quick and moved on.

7. Guild Wars 2 - I mostly enjoyed my time with this game. It was relatively pretty, the music was decent, the gameplay was pretty solid and didn't seem to have too many bugs. The jumping puzzles were a lot of fun, especially the holiday event ones. In fact, the events as a whole were a lot of fun and pretty common. That said, the questing is pretty boring and grind-tastic (even worse than games like World of WarCraft that at least TRY to break up the grind from time to time). I still log in from time to time for holiday events, mostly just to do the jumping puzzles, but that's about it. Unfortunately it's one of those MMOs where, to me anyway, getting to max level kind felt like I'd beaten the game and there wasn't much left to do.

8. The Secret World - I bought this for like $5 during a Steam sale last year, and I still play it from time to time. It feels a lot like Guild Wars 2 to me, in a mostly good way, but with a setting that I find more entertaining. I generally enjoy the writing, particularly the after-action reports from my snarky Illuminati handler whenever I complete a quest. I'm not sure if the game really has a whole lot of longevity, but I've been enjoying it so far while playing it super casually.

 

[Scarim Coral]

I'm pretty much a hardcore fan of Guild Wars and to a lesser extent Guild Wars 2. Granted these days it pretty much a chore to played GW 2 which I will admit I had become addicted to it in bad way because of their achivement system (you get points for daily rewards like killing enemies or gather material which all accumulate a big reward).

My initial reason for playing an MMO is that I liked the idea of doing stuff together or taking on a big event that no single person can be done alone (also no I don't have many people to do multiplayer with so I'm resort with online strangers).

 

[The White Hunter]

DF Titan Extreme. It is literally the most amusing thing you can do in the game. Que as tank, proceed to watch everyone fail horribly.

I don't think I ever will.

I vowed to myself after clearing it once that I would never do Titan EX again. Shit was traumatizing.

Every other EX fight is fine, though. Sort of. Thornmarch EX comes pretty close to Titan EX in terms of "fuck this shit."

Titan Extreme is fun, I have no need for anything related to running it thus never bother.

Thornmarch extreme is fucking easy man, it's easier than it's HM O_O.

Maybe it's just my personal experience with my group talking there. I play Dragoon so I'm typically not the cause of wipes. Sometimes the tanks in my group have a difficult time adapting to certain situations and the entire group has to wait until they nail it. At times this can take a while, and that leads to frustration.

I don't really remember much about at this point. But I don't think I want to. ;_;

I am our backup tank and am an beast. Our MT is an utter monster though. Does utterly suicidal pulls in everything, day one, comes out unscathed.

 

[Aramis Night]

Been playing MMO's since 2002. My list is expansive and I have beta tested almost as many is I have played. My favorites have been Guild Wars, Guild Wars 2, Path of Exile(more of an ARPG), Marvel Heroes(also an ARPG),Dungeon Runners, Aion, City of Heroes/Villains, Asheron's Call 2, Rift, Vindictus, Warhammer Online. Not all perfect games, but I was able to enjoy them to some degree. I have played many others but didn't get the same level of enjoyment out of them. I'm hoping I'm not forgetting any good ones but I probably am. I have been sticking with ARPG's lately since they aren't as demanding of my time, but if I had a group of friends willing, I would probably dive right into full MMO's again.

Currently I'm enjoying wasting time on Marvel Heroes online. Its a F2P ARPG(like the diablo series) with a very optional item shop that isn't required to invest in to enjoy the game. They don't content lock behind a pay wall or keep features away from a free player. I would recommend it if your a diablo or marvel fan. Just don't expect an incredibly deep MMO experience from it.

 

[The Madman]

Playing Warlords of Draenor right now and really enjoying myself. This is some of the best content Blizzard has put out for WOW since Wrath of the Lich King, no questions about it. Shadowmoon Valley might very well be one of my favourite zones in the game now, it's just so damned beautiful and the quests were a blast to play as well.

Other than WOW however I don't really play MMO's, although not for lack of trying. Guild Wars and GW2 failed to hold my interest for longer than a week or so. The Old Republic was a colossal disappointment in nearly every regard. I don't have nearly the dedication to get into EVE beyond some of the earliest stuff, same story with Planetside 2, and I've tried various smaller MMO as well whose names escape me but none ever lasted very long.

I think maybe it's because I tend to play MMO's pretty casually and WOW is really the only MMO out there I've tried that accommodates that sort of lazy playstyle.

 

[Broderick]

Well I first started playing Runescape back when it was still in it's younger days. It was fun, if a bit obtuse and clunky.

I remember watching an episode of cheat back when G4Techtv was a thing. It was an episode all about WoW, I thought "well, this looks really cool, I might have to get this!". So, I eventually got the game and played the hell out of it. Had to stop playing vanilla for personal reasons, but I started back up a little after Burning Crusade launched. From then on, I played the game till the first major patch of Pandaria. I love the hell out of the game and it's lore, but I am unsure if I will continue playing.

I played Rift for a short time, but it just seemed like a "poor man's WoW" to me. I also played a couple smaller MMOs, but none really captured me.

Playing EVE Online was interesting for a while, but I did not like the fact that there was so much waiting involved when it comes to leveling skills. Got a bit boring after a while, but maybe that was just because I mostly mined stuff. The combat was a little to clunky for my tastes.

I also played Guild Wars 2 for a while. I thought it was fun, but I never really got to end game and got burned out after a little while. I am unsure why, because there is a lot of cool stuff to find(I really like the jumping puzzles and secret areas!).

The last MMO I started was Wildstar. I loved the hell out of the Beta, so I figured I would buy the final product. I played it for about a month or two, loving almost every moment. Unfortunately I had money problems, so I had to stop playing. I am hoping to play again here soon; it is a game that really deserves a player base. You can just tell that the creators put their heart and soul into the game. Unfortunately, the devs have come on hard times lately, im guessing due to the game not being as successful as they would like(from what I hear, their working conditions weren't exactly optimal either). There is a lot of fun things to find and do in the game, I am really hoping it gets more attention soon.

 

[The White Hunter]

Yeah, I'm surprised people are so upset when it's content that's 7 months old at this point. It's not like either of them are really very DF-able either. My experience with DFing T6 and T7 yesterday was uh...questionable. But at least we cleared T7?

Frankly, after dealing with the original T7 for months, I'm quite happy it's been nerfed. It was a frustrating slog before that was still partially RNG dependent. Which totally makes sense for endgame raids, y'know.

Gotta let people who weren't able to experience it before for whatever reason in somehow.

I wouldn't duty find them anyway, DF'ing the Binding Coil is like herding cats, can't imagine Second Coil being any different in that respect.

I enjoy playing the game, I want to be able to progress through content like the coils and EX primals, but lacking a proper static makes this difficult and to be honest, from the list of changes, the Second Coil will still be difficult, but there will be more margin for error and one mistake won't cost an entire raid.

Its mostly just skilled players with proper statics lashing out that they can't sell coil runs anymore, Savage Coil and Final Coil at present, remain entirely untouched, as are most EX Primals, so its not like they have no content to enjoy.

"Stack in 4's on her sides for fireballs"

"whats a fireball"

Cataclysmic facepalms were had. Or healers without swiftcast.

 

[SweetShark]

In general, for every kind of multiplayer videogame I play, I mostly stop play them after 5-10 hours.
Reason? Well, I like to play many kind of games and I can't commit all my free time in one game.
For that reason also the only MMO I played is Path of Exile. Hell, I don't think it is a pure MMO either....because I was playing all the time alone without any problem.

 

[Trinket to Ride]

I've dabbled in a few. I just got of a two week SWTOR binge. I never stick with them very long though.

I can't stand the repetitiveness, and the communities are usually made up of screaming 14-year-olds trying to see who can be the edgiest and smug neckbeards who always tell you you're playing wrong and treat you like a drooling idiot if you ask any questions.

 

[MerlinCross]

For that reason also the only MMO I played is Path of Exile. Hell, I don't think it is a pure MMO either....because I was playing all the time alone without any problem.

Playing alone in that game is actually better, unless they patch the net code. On topic, I've played 2 MMOs and one of them wasn't really traditional.

First one was Dungeon Fighter Online. Pretty fun, it was more beat'em up than MMO and the combat was just fun to me. But that closed down(WILL BE BACK IN MARCH WOO). I'd still be playing that from time to time if it was still around.

Then it was last year I think it was, I picked up Guild Wars 2. I really liked that game, after settling into a class I liked. My favorite part was running around the world, seeing what events they made, what was in this cave, you know just basically going open world on it. But then, I took a break from it and ran into a problem the next time I tried getting into the game. There was no one in most the zones. The numbers had been crunched and the most optimal reward boss cycle had been found, leading to the majority of players doing this route. I would walk into some zones and there would be NO ONE there. And the events that were made for the zone, several were made to not be done with 1 character.

What happened with GW2 makes me hesitant to play other MMOs. What's the point of playing something with a large mass of other players and enjoying a massive world, when all the actual action takes place in a very small section of the game?

 

[Sigmund Av Volsung]

Most MMOs? I do not enjoy. I find the combat to be boring, and the general gameplay to be incredibly tedious. The stories are often static, and my own input on events is so insignificant that I might as well not bother.

The only MMO that I truly enjoyed was Guild Wars 2, because it addressed the above needs. Combat was varied enough, across all classes(you can swap out weapons for a different tactical approach, and the general feel of conflict was meatier, which I liked) and you could just trek across the map, seeing the sights, and level up that way, if you don't feel like grinding. Even when it came to doing quests, the sheer variety of tasks on offer made every 'questing zone' feel unique and interesting. The story is also enthralling because it has actual voice acting, branching paths, and a personal element to it.

Also the art-style and the graphics are magnificent. Eventually though, I stopped playing the game, because the inevitable realisation of "I'm just doing the same thing over and over again, aren't I?" came. Unlike most MMOs however, it took an entire month and a half for that to set in, which is the longest I've ever spent with a game in that genre.

 

[Lilani]

My first MMO was Final Fantasy XI: Online back in like 2004. I enjoyed it, played for about 7 years before quitting due to moving somewhere with inadequate Internet to play an MMO. But in the meantime I got to know many people which I still know today. I tried WoW at some point during those years, but I found it to be much more simplistic than FFXI and ass ugly by comparison.

I fell out of MMOs for a few years during college, but now I'm out of college and I got straight into FFXIV last year and haven't gone back since. I'm on Excalibur, a difficult feat since it's a legacy server (a server that existed during the first launch of the game), but I wanted to get back with my FFXI friends who had already made characters there so I spent nearly half a night trying to make a character before I finally got through.

FFXIV is essentially a spiritual sequel to FFXI, and really feels that way. It took the kept most of the best elements of FFXI and got rid of a lot of the bullshit. FFXI had great aesthetics and graphics for the time, great characters and stories, and a detailed world to explore. But the battle system had a learning curve like a brick wall at times, leveling was a pain, and a lot of mechanics and battles were just BS. FFXIV has got a great aesthetic, great graphics, fun stories and characters, details galore, AND the battle and leveling systems are dynamic and fun. Some who have also played FFXI argue it's a bit too easy, and due to that you lose the camaraderie that comes with taking on a REAAALLY hard fight. But honestly the most epic things that happen in MMOs are based on pure luck--having the right group doing the right things at the right time. With FFXI, it was really hard to get that lightning to strike more than once, and if you weren't winning huge you were losing huge. With FFXIV, a lot of that luck and waiting is taken away with the way parties are formed up. And you still get those epic groups sometimes, but the difference is in the meantime every group you have that isn't epic is usually at least adequate and gets you through it.

 

[The White Hunter]

but the difference is in the meantime every group you have that isn't epic is usually at least adequate and gets you through it.

Or so laughably bad that it's fun in it's own way. For example; every time a tank lets a Summoner like me tear something like Titan off him and it wipes the party by flipping the table, is utterly hilarious stuff.

I'd argue that FFXIV does have some legitimately difficult stuff though, the co-ordination and reflex needed for a lot of Extreme primals and some of the coil fights is pretty severe stuff. Titan Extreme, for example, is not easy, it is intense, unforgiving and savage, once you know it the fight is second nature, because thats the only way you beat it.