The Deal with MMORPG's

[raichu845]

Now before I start this post I want everyone to keep in mind that I am a huge MMORPG fan (in fact I have FFXIV open while typing this)

Now I recently got a character to max level on WoW and Final Fantasy XIV. Got decent gear and everything but there was one thing that kept nagging me at the back of my mind. It was a subconscious feeling to put down the game due to the fact that at the end of the day it is a grindfest from start to finish. There is little to no story to follow, maybe some context here and there but thats all you get. You start the game by leveling a load of levels unlocking different armor and dungeons and then you get to endgame where you grind every day and every week when instances are open and bosses are lootable and once you get the best gear you don't put the game down until the newer patch/expansion comes out and then come back to the game but start another grind on a fresh character. Now this is something that I can not answer myself, I know the reasoning behind it but I do not know why I keep playing MMORPG's and consider them to be some of my favourite games.

Keep in mind this could also be aimed towards any game where instanced areas/dungeons are farmed such as Diablo/Borderlands etc...

 

[Novaova]

It's a Skinner Box. The game doles out little tasks and you get little rewards for accomplishing them. It's like a slow but steady drip in the pleasure center of your brain. The only way off is to recognize what's happening and either decide that you're okay with this, or to play games that reward you in other ways.



Edit: a word

 

[Roxian]

For me WoW was my first MMORPG and even to this day I still love the game, even though I no longer play it except when a new expansion is released. There is a lot of grinding I can agree on that but I loved doing the quest and finding out more of the lore, I'm a sucker for story haha.

 

[Rob Robson]

Unfortunately many of us lifetime MMO gamers keep faith in the 'genre' because of the potential of a truly remarkable game. However, what developers are given funds for and what we really want are really far apart.

The closest I've been to MMO heaven was The Secret World. It is the only game to bring a quality story and character writing to the MMO space, (no SW:ToR did not do this) but it had other lacking aspects, mostly PvP wasn't good enough for me. I still play it though.

Allods Online was also amazing, for the 6-8 months of its existence when it wasn't pay-to-win, it had an awesome sense of discovery well past even it's "endgame" and the PvP was amazing. Left on principle when it became pay-to-win, even if I was a heavy cash shopper before that point, and took my 200-player guild with me.

After all this you learn to become cynical with new MMOs, and you can recognise the rehashed failures before they even come out. Wildstar, Elder Scrolls Online and Everquest Next are all going to be more of the same dribble.

The only upcoming MMOs I have any sort of faith in are Star Citizen and World of Darkness.

 

[sanquin]

I was fine with that model for years, and leveled several characters to max indifferent expansions in wow. I also played a few other mmo's. If you REALLY want to know what a grind fest is, try Ragnarok Online. There are barely even any quests in that game. Just killing and killing and more killing monsters.

Now I don't really want such an mmorpg any more though. And it seems like a lot of people agree with me, considering how much of a playerbase new mmo's seem to retain. That's why I hope Everquest Next will be as awesome as I hope it to be, and am not that hyped up for Elder Scrolls Online. ESO Looks like it will be a mostly standard grinding mmo, while everquest has things to add and to grinding and different things to do, like full sandbox building on your claimed piece of land.

 

[Talvrae]

The closest I've been to MMO heaven was The Secret World. It is the only game to bring a quality story and character writing to the MMO space, (no SW:ToR did not do this) but it had other lacking aspects, mostly PvP wasn't good enough for me. I still play it though.

Well i consider SW:tOR to have had a pretty good fun story and it was a nice innovation for the genre (in my opinion at least)... Secret world also brought story up too... But yeah so far story and character is the weak spot of MMO... and i also have hopes for World of Darkness, if it ever come out... how long ago was it annonced? and tere is barely a video out there who are more tech demo than anything

 

[MeChaNiZ3D]

I sort of get than from Warframe, which I've been playing alot recently. At the end of the day it is probably never going to have much of a story or goal, and the only reason to keep playing is to play differently with other frames and weapons. But the customisability, co-op and constant updating give me room to enjoy the game (and I do).

But the same can be said of just about any game, right through from Candy Crush - which is basically only a grind, designed to frustrate players into microtransactions - to Monster Hunter, where you basically fight monsters to get their stuff and make better gear to fight bigger monsters to get their stuff and make better gear, etc. - and to Dark Souls, where you enjoy a wonderfully crafted, challenging experience and make your build whatever you like and in the case of the insane, make about 4 seperate accounts to enjoy the game again. At the end of the day, you have achieved nothing. You move on to another game. The save is there, but you'll never load it again. The problem I think a lot of MMORPGs have is that the motivation for progressing is to be the most powerful and have the best equipment, and once you reach that level, you realise how tedious the gameplay actually was, whereas with other games, the gameplay tends to have been a much better waste of your time.

I think this is partially why I hated ME3 so much - just one time, there was the pretense that what you did in a game would matter in the future. Really matter, the time wouldn't just evaporate and leave only memories. And then they fucked it up. Turns out your time didn't matter. You played the games and just like every other, they didn't mean a thing. Instead of receiving a branched, unique, reflective, individual ending based on your personal choices, you get to choose between the same fucking three that everyone else does.

Bit off-topic, but that's that. I agree, the gameplay is often repetitive and more geared towards keeping you rolling along than actually satisfying you. But nothing means anything in the end. At least with MMORPGs they take a while longer to die.

Captcha: "I think so". Thank you Captcha.

 

[Ratty]

"Oh brave warrior! Thank heavens you're here! Go kill 12 gerbils and report back to me!"
"Oh brave warrior! Thank heavens you're here! Go kill 8 wolves and report back to me!"
"Oh brave warrior! Thank heavens you're here! Go kill 26 troglodytes and report back to me!"
"Oh brave warrior! Thank heavens you're here..."

Never found the gameplay rewarding myself, and I'm the kind of guy who can enjoy spacing out while grinding up levels in an old school jRPG. The difference being when I grind in a single-player RPG it feels like it's building to something. Another part of the story or a boss I can go fight, not just more grinding.

PS- http://www.cracked.com/article_18461_5-creepy-ways-video-games-are-trying-to-get-you-addicted.html

 

[Illesdan]

The only upcoming MMOs I have any sort of faith in are Star Citizen and World of Darkness.

I hope you are a patient man, my friend, because the World of Darkness MMO is looking at a 2015 launch date. Even then, I'm very skeptical, I'm thinking at best it will be ready for closed beta by then.

OT: I've played and beta-tested many MMO's over the years, and, sadly, I think the one biggest gripe I have about all of the current ones is that they just suck. Everyone ran off and copy/pasted WoW to death and now there is no imagination or ingenuity behind any of the current MMO's out there. Or, when someone does try to be different, they end up doing this...

I recently (yesterday) tried to go back to 'Lineage II' after being gone off it for 6-7 years. I updated, installed, tried for half an hour to figure out why I couldn't log into it (it kept saying it was my password that was wrong, but guess what?) after changing my password, I brilliantly concluded 'Waaaaiiiit, what if it's my USERNAME that is wrong?' Turns out this picky little turd doesn't want a username at all; it wants your email address to log in.

Could. Have. Said. Something. Sooner.

But, wait; it gets better. So, I finally get in to create a character! I notice that there is a new race ('Improvement!')
and set about to make one. But, I get curious about how the females now look (and, as per usual with LII; there is very little in the realm of customization.) So I click over to the females, and, well, at least they're wearing a couple more strips of cloth than the last time I saw them. The Dark Elf females were my favorite; always looked like they came straight from a night at the local S&M club. And, back to making my character. I made a mistake in character creation, and now I can't get rid of this larger-than-life window that blocks out 98% of the creation screen. I tried everything for over an hour to get rid of it; then said fuck it and moved on. Out of what I could do, I made a random character and set about to play through. I had forgotten that the controls were terrible in the past, and, if anything, it's downright unplayable now. The controls absolutely have killed this game for me. I'm uninstalling it later.

 

[WildFire15]

I tend to role play in MMOs as I always find the creation and interaction of characters more interesting then the game itself. City of Heroes, the game that got me into MMOs and still stands as the best one I've played, had fantastic story as well as millions of character options (and never truly penalised a 'bad build') and encouraged multiple characters. I ended up with about 57 characters when the game was shut down, about 15 of which were at the max level of 50 (though I only had 1 character who had all the end game 'Incarnate' powers and levels as grinding for them more then once doesn't appeal) and I would have happily kept playing it if it had stayed.

 

[Mike Fang]

There's no denying that the "kill/gather x number of y" quests are far, far too prevalent in MMO's. That, I think is where the Skinner Box truly comes from, because they require little to no skill and have little to no narrative impact to a story. One could make the argument such quests are needed because players need things to do in order to earn rewards and get experience. However, I'd argue that such things could happen WITHOUT the skinner box quests simply by what you have to go through to complete larger, story-based quests. Suppose, for example, there's a quest to kill the leader of a gang of bandits that have been robbing travelers. Your average MMO quest will have you first kill a hand full of the man's cannon fodder minions, then kill another hand full of his slightly tougher henchmen, then culminate with you having to fight your way through his camp/fort/etc. until you get to the leader himself/herself and take them down. Personally, I'd say skip the first two grind quests because let's face it; to get to the guy, you're going to have to fight your way through them anyway, why keep running back to a quest giver to update them on your progress? Some MMOs with a more intuitive system will have those "tiered quest" systems where you automatically get the next step in a quest chain out in the field. This is a bit better, but the number of enemies you have to take out often seems arbitrary. I'd say just tell us what the ultimate goal is and let the players figure out how they want to approach it.

Now I'll admit there can be a couple problems with this model; if someone just came through and killed off a bunch of enemies between you and your goal, then that's going to suck out a lot of the XP and loot you could have gotten along the way. I can't really think of any way to guarantee enemies will be there; if there's too fast a respawn time, then getting to the goal will be impossible. It may just be that a certain amount of meta-gaming (insofar as waiting for enemies to respawn to provide a proper challenge) is inevitable with anything that's not instance-based.

The other issue is that some classes, namely ones with stealth abilities, would be able to bypass many of the challenges. This is true, but I would argue that they would do so at their own peril. By not engaging any other enemies, they cost themselves XP and may find themselves outclassed later, with only themselves to blame for taking the easy way out. Now, some may feel that's punishing a player for trying to play their class the way they think one should be played, which may be true. So I'd suggest coming up with more class-based challenges that would reward XP. For example, a thief could, instead of killing a bunch of enemies on their way to a goal, pick their pockets and get XP that way.

I readily admit there's not going to be a perfect solution to creating an MMO that does everything right, because people want different things out of games. However, I think there could stand to be a few more MMOs designed to appeal to the gamers who like to roleplay and who like a story.

 

[Michael Legault]

I played ffxi for about six years back in the day, and I always looked at it like a very elaborate chat program where you get to kill monsters. That game was hard as hell before they systematically nerfed every boss fight, being able to say you had 'sea' access was something to be damn proud of before they removed all the level caps for the missions. I wish I had taken the time to get email addresses from people I played with as I'm sure I would've enjoyed playing other online games with many. The damn game was my only social life while I played it lol

 

[raichu845]

I must say though, everyone has brought up amazing points and now I will reply with some thoughts on the question instead of simply leaving the random rant. I have played countless MMORPG's. From the grindiest grindfests this side of grindtown to the less grindy more story based ones that take forever to get to endgame.

I started MMORPG's from the days of Runescape and Flyff, now while they were both 2 completely different games I will admit that they were still massive farm/grind for hours upon hours kind of games. Runescape had a bit more goal, good system with unlocking. Flyff kept me wondering if it got better which is why I played the game. Now I presume everyone knows how Runescape works with different things/professions to level up, but who does not know anything about Flyff, it was a game with little to no quests where all you had to do was kill monsters. The quests themselves never really gave you much and they required you to run around kill monsters hoping that you will get the quest item which has 10% drop rate... then do it for 9 more drops. Now I loved Flyff, back in 2005 it was amazing. Full 3D surroundings, nice looking monsters and it hit me right in the soft spot due to the Korean RPG style. Back to the point, Flyff has a level cap of a 150, I managed to level up to 92 which is when I simply gave up and started playing Guild Wars. Now this granted me 2 job changes one after 15, the other after 60. I recently learned that you need level 130 to achieve it and people genuinely did farm as much to get there. The point I am trying to get through here is that the game was still the same, it offered no tactics or anything, simply killing which leads us to the aforementioned and rightly pointed out Skinner Box. Now I went off on a rant about this because Flyff was the game that made me realize this point back when I was just 10 years old but I never put it into words.

However I need to point out that without said Box the end-game of certain MMORPG's falls flat on its (excuse the word) ass which is shown by Guild Wars 2. Now I love Guild Wars and I still do the Daily Quests and such. However it becomes a chore to get an item that you either pay for with real money or spend weeks upon months (such as the Legendary weapons that require huge amounts of time and determination). The dungeons are few with the only dungeons done everyday are Fractals, which get boring after a while once you get good gear. Now don't get me wrong once I got some good gear I went straight to World Vs World and had hours of fun, and the PvP is genuinely some of the best I've ever seen. But the PvE content is a disaster once you finish the storyline, get dungeon armor and 100% World Completion. The only thing that keeps me going back to it is the Living World storyline that they update frequently but I'd hardly say it is something I tend to grind out unless there is some sort of collectible involved.

What I'm trying to say from this thesis that I posted is that at the end of the day, as far as it pains me to say it, if the MMORPG does not put you in a Skinner Box it does not work as well, yet if it does and you become aware of it you start thinking too hard about it. It's like being in a relationship, you're loyal to it yet you still acknowledge the fact that things are repetitive, sometimes you cheat on it behind it's back and go play another genre of gaming but you realize that you miss it and go crawling back to it.

 

[Mylinkay Asdara]

Now before I start this post I want everyone to keep in mind that I am a huge MMORPG fan (in fact I have FFXIV open while typing this)

Now I recently got a character to max level on WoW and Final Fantasy XIV. Got decent gear and everything but there was one thing that kept nagging me at the back of my mind. It was a subconscious feeling to put down the game due to the fact that at the end of the day it is a grindfest from start to finish. There is little to no story to follow, maybe some context here and there but thats all you get. You start the game by leveling a load of levels unlocking different armor and dungeons and then you get to endgame where you grind every day and every week when instances are open and bosses are lootable and once you get the best gear you don't put the game down until the newer patch/expansion comes out and then come back to the game but start another grind on a fresh character. Now this is something that I can not answer myself, I know the reasoning behind it but I do not know why I keep playing MMORPG's and consider them to be some of my favourite games.

Keep in mind this could also be aimed towards any game where instanced areas/dungeons are farmed such as Diablo/Borderlands etc...

I always went back for the people. I had a nice little community I was a part of - leading actually, after a few months - in FFXI and we really enjoyed our online hang-out time doing whatever. Leveling wasn't the priority for us, it was what we did while we were hanging out - or not, sometimes we just sat around the towns and talked or explored or crafted or whatever. It probably helped that we were an RP shell - we had our own in house story and on nights we felt like it we'd be "in character" in the group chat, which was kind of like having a real life "table top" night every so often without all the fuss and hassle of dice and a table and proximity.

I realize that's not typical, but that's my best answer / suggestion to your feelings: find a different priority than the gear collection the game offers you - there's plenty of other stuff in those games to do and if you find like minded folks to go off the beaten path with you can enjoy years of gameplay without feeling like you're trapped by the "getting gear to get better gear to get better gear" syndrome.

Actually - I only quit because I had to prioritize the higher homework time for University, and now that that's done, my old crew is getting back together in FFXIV and I can't wait to join them again in a new world. Heck, we even met up in real life a few times (a wedding, a gaming convention, always as a group, nothing creepy or "Rank 11" for those of you who know what that means lol)

 

[CannibalCorpses]

I've lost a number of friends to the cancer of the game world and despite constant pressure to join them i easilly found ways to decline...item based rpgs are always shit and lack any real challenge. Even when offered a free 10 year pass for WoW i found no reason to accept. Any idea why? I'll tell you...because i refuse to play games that are designed to be addictive so that i constantly part with my cash without engaging my brain. The model is fantastic for the developers and terrible for the players. Your entire game boils down to get a new piece of equipment and then repeat everything you already do again...and again...and again...and again...sounds like fantastic fun

 

[Mylinkay Asdara]

I guess - as an addition to my previous comment - what I'm saying is you decide what to make out of the game. My people and I weren't just sitting on our hands hanging out. We had Rank 10 in all 3 nations individually (we swapped to each other's to do them all together), we had Sea access when it was new, we beat the inside of the Teleport Crystals (the names escape me, it's been awhile) before they got nerfed. We killed the gods a few dozen times a month by the end of my play-time with them. We had multiple max level jobs per person. Each of us had a 100 crafting in at least 1 area. And oh yes, plenty of gear and to spare and then some gear we passed on just because someone else nearby was way more into the status boasting thing than we would be. The thing is we did it on our terms, at the pace we set for ourselves, in agreement to move forward always. We helped each other, we hung back in levels for each other. We waited for one another to be around to go level rather than going out with strangers all the time for expediency.

These weren't people I knew and signed up to play with, they were people I met in the game for the first time. If you take the time to embrace the Multiplayer (read: social) aspect of these games you can really change how you look at them. I know - not typical, most people don't bother, you might get embarrassed if you suggested it to some strangers behind sprites but all you have to lose is the grind. /shrug. Just a suggestion.

 

[raichu845]

I guess - as an addition to my previous comment - what I'm saying is you decide what to make out of the game. My people and I weren't just sitting on our hands hanging out. We had Rank 10 in all 3 nations individually (we swapped to each other's to do them all together), we had Sea access when it was new, we beat the inside of the Teleport Crystals (the names escape me, it's been awhile) before they got nerfed. We killed the gods a few dozen times a month by the end of my play-time with them. We had multiple max level jobs per person. Each of us had a 100 crafting in at least 1 area. And oh yes, plenty of gear and to spare and then some gear we passed on just because someone else nearby was way more into the status boasting thing than we would be. The thing is we did it on our terms, at the pace we set for ourselves, in agreement to move forward always. We helped each other, we hung back in levels for each other. We waited for one another to be around to go level rather than going out with strangers all the time for expediency.

These weren't people I knew and signed up to play with, they were people I met in the game for the first time. If you take the time to embrace the Multiplayer (read: social) aspect of these games you can really change how you look at them. I know - not typical, most people don't bother, you might get embarrassed if you suggested it to some strangers behind sprites but all you have to lose is the grind. /shrug. Just a suggestion.

First of all I want to say that typical or not the answer is still a pretty valid opinion (and pretty much a fact). I agree with both comments, and trust me I do because I start accepting Free Companies and Guild invites until I find one with nice people that keep me company during the game, which is something that I found to be nice in Guild Wars 2 (I ended up talking on guild chat more than anything). I also didn't mind grinding to a fresh level 80 character on it with my friends (we had a constant 3-4 man party when we played and used voice chat via Mumble) but still I believe that the core game is full of menial tasks which just leads to better gear. The people help make it fun and/or bearable. I understand it because I made 2 friends from WoW who I deeply care for even though they live far away and I used to have some fun fooling about on dungeons and raids and such with them.

 

[KingsGambit_v1legacy]

I quite enjoy the sweet spot in MMOs from the point at which one can start shaping their character up to the endgame. It's particularly fun playing with friends, being part of a team and shaping our characters to complement the others. The tutorial/noobie area is fine the first time to learn the ropes and mechanics, but unnecessary thereafter. I realise that removing hours of gameplay is anathema to an MMO dev, but it would go a long way to encourage creating new characters.

And as for the endgame, it is all grind. Rinse, repeat ad nausea. At that point, our individual journey is over with everything conquerable having been conquered. Time to start anew and experience a new journey, charting a different course this time. The MMO that has enough content to allow for a different levelling experience, especially if they offer an element of roleplay to go alongside it, is onto a winner.

 

[Auron225]

The only thing I see that appeal to me in MMORPGs now is the theory of the community experience. Basically, if I joined a guild of some kind with other real people and went adventuring with those people then I'd find it lots of fun. That was what drew me to Runescape years ago but only because I was already friends IRL with the people I played with... I did meet a few lovely people but most of those I met didn't have much of a vocabulary beyond lol, nub, pwn and fag. I guess I'd only need to meet a few nice people who, like me, just wanted to have fun and didn't care much for maxing out or anything.

One non-community thing I did like about Runescape was the quests though. They were a lot more imaginative than "Kill 18 goblins and report back". Each quest actually had a story at the heart of it - even if some of the individual stories weren't completely original. For instance; freeing a civilization of people from being kept like cattle for vampires was a lotta fun