Pointless Click Combat

[Caliostro]

Pointless Click Combat

A few years ago I was hopelessly looking for THE good MMO. I was somewhat new to the whole MMO thing and was extremely excited at the possibility of finding a game that could bring together both a high number of players, a "permanent" world that would always just be there, and swords, guns, crowbars and others assorted potentially deadly weapons.

Oh I tried plenty of MMOs. Games like Exteel and SCO/AirRivals stood out as the ones with the most potential... But ultimately it's all the same... It's all shallow, pointless, empty... Soulless... Every MMO boiled down to "Go there, click x monsters Y. Level up. Move up, click x monsters Z. Repeat Ad Nauseam.". Even PvP boiled down to "Biggest guy wins". It wasn't rewarding...

There wasn't a point to it. I didn't feel skilled when I killed someone, I felt lame, cause all we did was spam attacks at each other, and the one with the most in-game hours grinding for levels and gear won... So winning ultimately made me the looser. There weren't even style points, all you do is spam shit at each other, smash the same handful of buttons with your best spells. I didn't get the same feeling from counter strike, SWAT 4 or other online games, like I just beat my opponent, I was better, quicker, more precise, made a better assessment of the situation, used the scenario better... No, I played for longer... And that was all. I didn't get to watch this brilliant story unfold before my eyes, almost like an interactive movie. No, in fact to that world I might as well not even exist. It was all for it's own sake.

I even tried comparing it to Chess, which I do enjoy playing sometimes (although I'm terrible at it), but it's not even the same. In chess both players start with exactly the same resources, and the one that manages them better wins.

In these games it was all about the guy that spent the most time in the game clicking shit... Just clicking stuff... There was no effective way to avoid or defend your opponent's attacks and try to hit your own. The match was decided from the start by who wasted the highest amount of time doing the dullest shit imaginable.

And then I felt more stupid, I had actually spent time playing games with no story, terrible and obnoxiously repetitive gameplay, and pretty bellow average graphics in many cases(considering "real" games).

But hey, at the time the choices were somewhat limited, and we live and learn... What confuses me though, is that people are still playing these games, and completely hooked... Why? What is there to these games? This is something I never understood...

Which laboriously brings me to the question at hand: Why do you play MMORPGs? What is it to them? Honestly, I just can't see it... As a psychology student with a big interest in the human psyche I want to believe there's more to this than just lack of real social interaction... I can see why people like almost anything, even stuff I don't like, even doing stupid stuff like in MTV's jackass, but this... This eludes me entirely... People run away from their jobs when they get home because they're boring, unstimulating and repetitive, so they pay 5 - 15 bucks a month, camp out on their PC eating nachos, go to their second job, dress a fake skin, and go to "work" clicking on shit mindlessly for 5 hours while pretending to befriend people they never met.

That said: I don't hate people who enjoy MMOs, I just don't understand them...

...And I'm left wondering, why?

So if you enjoy these games, why? Or better, how? What do you get from them? And if you could change something in MMOs in general, something to make them better, what would it be?

 

[opium of the people]

i used to love runescape when i was in secondary school, it was the rivalry between me and my friends that drive it: we grinded to out-rank each other. For that i was willing to put up with the retarded excuse for a combat system. However as soon as my friends stopped playing it, i did to, i guess we had all kinda "grown out of it". We moved on to better more intense online games like CS and now COD4

 

[EzraPound]

So if you enjoy these games, why? Or better, how? What do you get from them? And if you could change something in MMOs in general, something to make them better, what would it be?

More skill-based fighting would be a good start, like you mentioned, and a partitioning of landscapes so everywhere didn't look like a ridiculous hub.

 

[More Fun To Compute]

I have played 3 MMOs fairly enough to comment. I'm not playing one right now.

1. Asheron's Call. This was my first one and I enjoyed exploring the world, mechanics, meeting people and killing things. In the end I quit because it took too much time to do anything.

2. Anarchy Online. I liked this one because it was a lot of fun to explore and the RPG system was satisfyingly overcomplicated. I didn't mind the grind as much by this time and broadband made it easier to play as I played Asheron's call on dial up. I didn't make top level or buy any expansions.

3. Guild Wars. This was probably my favourite. A fun and not as time consuming experience to play up until max level. The PvP, that playable from the start, was also fun but there was a massive commitment difference between smaller group PvP and the more organised guild based PvP that I didn't want to make. I would play another game like this.

 

[Not Good]

I never got RPG's either. Going back to the days of FFVII I could never really get into it like so many others have. To me, I just saw games like that to be a butt load of tl;dr and fanservice. While RPG's and MMORPG's have many similarities, MMORPG's appeal I presume is the level of interaction with the enviroment and the characters that one enjoys. I won't touch it myself because it ain't my kind of game.

 

[Ace of Spades]

I played Runescape when I was in Middle School, and stopped playing because one of my friends simply had a higher tolerance for boredom than me, so I was no longer on the top of the ranks. The name Runescape is a warning in and of itself, telling players right from the start: Run, escape!

 

[comandertrey]

i used to play runescape with some of my friends in middle school. then, one after another, they just left until only a few remained. i dont know why we played, we just didn't have anything better to do.

 

[PedroSteckecilo]

You mean like Diablo 2?

 

[mrfishyfish]

RPGs can keep me entertained as long as the combat is interesting enough for you to tolerate grinding and/or the story is interesting enough that you want to keep playing, if only to see the end.

 

[D_987]

Your right (OP) which is why WoW is at least slightly diffrent (to the really bad combat systems in MMO's like Runscape) because you have SOME control.

Although I've never played it, wasn't Tabula Rasa (whatever) a FPS MMORPG?

 

[jamesworkshop]

Runescape was good and had a lot of scope and the quests were more like point and click adventure games like combining poison and fish food to kill some phiranas in a fountain to reach a quest piece. By the same logic minesweeper is a bad game since you only ever click.
Guildwars is currently the only MMO I play, the abilty to eternaly customise everything is great and there is next to no grind in the game as Equipment never breaks and has soo few options, sure you can spend the time to get elite armour but its no better than the basic armour from steel.
The best part is its a skill based system so you can easily obtain hundreds of skills but only ever get to pick 8 at a time, hell you can create a PVP character from scratch and start at max level.

 

[Amnestic]

I like grinding.

Anything else I could say in response to your dislike for MMOs has already been said, multiple times in multiple threads.

 

[Caliostro]

RPGs can keep me entertained as long as the combat is interesting enough for you to tolerate grinding and/or the story is interesting enough that you want to keep playing, if only to see the end.

And this is where they fall flat for me. Not only because the combat isn't interesting enough, but because I fail to find a coherent story to see through to the end :/

Your right (OP) which is why WoW is at least slightly diffrent (to the really bad combat systems in MMO's like Runscape) because you have SOME control.

Although I've never played it, wasn't Tabula Rasa (whatever) a FPS MMORPG?

You're not the first person I hear say this, and I don't get it... I admit I barely spent any time to "examine" it... Honestly I run from WoW like the plague. But looking at gameplay videos(like this one for instances [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EuCcKOO2EJY&feature=related]), how is this any different from your average mmo? It's basically trading blows/potions till one falls dead.

And yeah, Tabula Rasa was more like a pseudo-FPS MMORPG. Look for some gameplay footage to see what I mean.

 

[Phantom2595]

You mean like Diablo 2?

Diablo 2 was actually fun. Maybe it was because of all the spells and stuff , hell , now I want to go back and play Diablo.(Maybe I'll do a review here.)

 

[PedroSteckecilo]

You mean like Diablo 2?

Diablo 2 was actually fun. Maybe it was because of all the spells and stuff , hell , now I want to go back and play Diablo.(Maybe I'll do a review here.)

And yet all I remember is click click click click click and then 2 hours later I remember why I find Diablo 2 boring.

 

[Amnestic]

I like grinding.

Ahem.

A vulgar dance where people rub their body parts against each other. Usually to rap or techno.

Yeah, I get what you mean, grinding rocks.

You know what I meant Richard. Don't be silly.

 

[Caliostro]

I like grinding.

Ahem.

A vulgar dance where people rub their body parts against each other. Usually to rap or techno.

Yeah, I get what you mean, grinding rocks.

Maybe that's how grinding originally started. Some guy was just talking to his friend, a computer tech in a gaming company, and some nerd game designer was nearby and overheard how awesome grinding was... and that was born.

 

[Amnestic]

nerd

Kind of a pointless remark to make on an internet gaming forum, don't you think?

 

[goodman528]

I don't hate people who enjoy MMOs, I just don't understand them...

...And I'm left wondering, why?

You have 600+ posts on a forum called "The Escapist" and you are asking why people play MMOs? I find that ironic. They play it for exactly the same reason why I'm writing this post now, and why you go on "the escapist": to get away from real life. I think people who play MMOs feel an inability to do things they want to do in real life, and in a MMO they feel the opposite, the MMO world offers them the freedom to be whoever they say they are and do whatever they want to do. Most people only play MMO because their friends play it too, which then leaves me with the question isn't it more fun to interact in the real world than in the virtual world? I guess there just isn't that much to do in real life, if you go back a few years all the kids did was hang around street corners, that's hardly better than MMO.

For example, I sometimes play on a GTA game for hours just doing the taxi mission; then I realise, why don't I just go outside and cycle around (can't afford a car)? Real life has much more intuitive gameplay, brilliant graphics, and totally original storylines. For reasons unknown to me, I feel I can do the former, but I feel the inability to do the latter. Though if you think about it, driving a taxi around in GTA without trashing it for a few hours with a keyboard, is a lot harder than cycling around in real life.

I've never played a MMO, and rarely play RPGs, because the leveling system takes all the skill out of gameplay.

 

[whyarecarrots]

3. Guild Wars. This was probably my favourite. A fun and not as time consuming experience to play up until max level. The PvP, that playable from the start, was also fun but there was a massive commitment difference between smaller group PvP and the more organised guild based PvP that I didn't want to make. I would play another game like this.

Agreed; I played Guild Wars for several years and loved it; the storyline based nature of the game meant that there was plenty to do without grinding, and the quests seemed to have more to them than 'kill x of z for y', and the limited number of skills you could equip at any one time forced you to think about good builds and skill combos to use, and be able to use the skills at the right time; a lot more to do than click on x (and hammer 1 button as in WoW...)

It also looked very good for an MMO, and was free to play after the initial purchase.

Admittedly I did end up running out of things to do after a while, mostly because I wasn't in a great guild (I was, but it then fell apart after it tried to start a subsidiary guild...), but only after a couple of years, and I am quite tempted to have a go again, but only if my friends restarted too.

Recommended.

Oh, and I do agree that combat should be more than just 1 click, but with a MMORPG, a hack and slash thing like Oblivion is hard to implement, so skill chaining and combos is probably the best way to go in my opinion.