Post by Barnaby Cuthbert on Sept 13, 2009 17:58:11 GMT -8
I started writing this as a respons to Mike's post about Aion, but became pretty sure that Jenn, who had clearly worked hard on it probably didn't want to hear about how I think that most MMORPGs aren't fit to wipe my @ss with.
So here is my rant, take it or leave it.
As pretty as Aion looks, I dislike most MMOs. The content might be grand, but MMO content is so spaced out that it loses most interesting narrative qualities very quickly in a mass of fetch-quests and 'collect 10 bugbear skins' garbage, sad to say.
Prior to an MMO, if I ever purchased or rented any video game that took hours and hours to raise a level or farm gold or gain an item, I'd have put the game down and considered it a poorly-made, badly-paced game, and I'd have told all my friends what a shitty game it was. Most video gamers have played a game that plugged along at a good pace and then hit a spot that took forever to grind out enough levels/coins to get to the next section of the game. How frustrating was that? Even really good games sometimes have sections where pacing just blows. Fighting Ogres right after you get the Ship in the original Final Fantasy anyone? A glaringly flawed area in an otherwise awesome game where you were forced to stop all story progression for something like ten hours while you fought the same eight bit monsters over and over and over until you had gained enough levels to survive more than a minute in the marsh cave. Somehow these obvious flaws are not only purposefully built in to MMORPGs, but have been embraced by the masses, and I find that really confusing. Why do people put up with that?
To each his own I suppose? I guess I don't play video games for the same reasons as die-hard MMO players? I like sitting down, playing a few levels, being entertained, advancing through a game and gaining new tricks, powers, progressing the story at a reasonable pace and eventually beating the game and walking away. If the game was pretty enjoyable, I'll probably buy the sequel or other add-ons for it.
I would happily play an MMO that offered some chance at independence, that contained a well-developed single player mode, or made soloing something less than an obnoxious, pointless grind. Most single player, non-MMO 'regular' RPGs nowadays automatically scale the difficulty of encounters to the level of the character, and that would make a solo fighter far more fun to play in an MMO. But the game developers know that standing on a hillside/in town waiting for everyone to log in for three hours is three hours that the entire party is not able to advance, and three more hours of $ in their pocket. The ability to level at the same speed or even just slightly less quickly while soloing than in a party setting would be a vastly superior experience to current offerings. I don't enjoy the idea of reorganizing my life around a raid where hours of my time are at the mercy of the lowest lagging Pentium II because that's the only way to advance at an appropriate level at a reasonable speed. It is also a little disgusting that it's so hard to gain funds in a game that whole cottage industries have sprung up in other countries that sell gold on Ebay, or having no choice but to log-in at the same time each day because it's the only way to guarantee that I can get a tank and a healer in my group.
Content? It's hardly the problem with MMORPGs, it's getting to the content through all of the things designed to draw it out to the nth degree to get your monthly subscription $ that is the hinderance. There *might* be some good story in some MMO's somewhere, but when? How? Every 200 hours you get a tidbit of story that leads you on another 50 bugbear skin huts and 50 fetchquests against different scenery?
Even D&D, which is essentially the father of the MMO has more evenly spaced storytelling elements than most MMO's I've played. At least in D&D the GM can read the players and adapt the game to the style of the people in it a little. Most MMO's don't even bother to try, focusing on how to draw the game out to ridiculous levels of increase to extend subscriptions. Cheating is so rampant, that if you don't mod your account with at least special huds and counters, you can't even hope to compete against other players. In fact the entire culture is an us-vs them mentality when it comes to stat-busting and exploits - it's not like it's a rare component of the game-play experience, guilds full of normal players actively share exploitive applications to break the game in ways that benefit their characters. It's like the US Senate for gamers. At times the best way to gain 'status' in a guild is to find the best hack or exploit, regardless of what it might do to the architecture of the game over-all. It engenders cheating because it's so ball-bustingly hard to *do* anything, and players have *so much* time sitting around grinding to think of ways to get ahead. It's stupid.
But the biggest problem is always pacing. Go to a movie that isn't interesting or exciting for long stretches and you think it's a shitty movie right? Of course! Yet still MMO's make things that should take hours, take weeks, and things that should take weeks, months. Why do they get away with it?
Simple, because you (and sometimes me) buy their games.
So here is my rant, take it or leave it.
As pretty as Aion looks, I dislike most MMOs. The content might be grand, but MMO content is so spaced out that it loses most interesting narrative qualities very quickly in a mass of fetch-quests and 'collect 10 bugbear skins' garbage, sad to say.
Prior to an MMO, if I ever purchased or rented any video game that took hours and hours to raise a level or farm gold or gain an item, I'd have put the game down and considered it a poorly-made, badly-paced game, and I'd have told all my friends what a shitty game it was. Most video gamers have played a game that plugged along at a good pace and then hit a spot that took forever to grind out enough levels/coins to get to the next section of the game. How frustrating was that? Even really good games sometimes have sections where pacing just blows. Fighting Ogres right after you get the Ship in the original Final Fantasy anyone? A glaringly flawed area in an otherwise awesome game where you were forced to stop all story progression for something like ten hours while you fought the same eight bit monsters over and over and over until you had gained enough levels to survive more than a minute in the marsh cave. Somehow these obvious flaws are not only purposefully built in to MMORPGs, but have been embraced by the masses, and I find that really confusing. Why do people put up with that?
To each his own I suppose? I guess I don't play video games for the same reasons as die-hard MMO players? I like sitting down, playing a few levels, being entertained, advancing through a game and gaining new tricks, powers, progressing the story at a reasonable pace and eventually beating the game and walking away. If the game was pretty enjoyable, I'll probably buy the sequel or other add-ons for it.
I would happily play an MMO that offered some chance at independence, that contained a well-developed single player mode, or made soloing something less than an obnoxious, pointless grind. Most single player, non-MMO 'regular' RPGs nowadays automatically scale the difficulty of encounters to the level of the character, and that would make a solo fighter far more fun to play in an MMO. But the game developers know that standing on a hillside/in town waiting for everyone to log in for three hours is three hours that the entire party is not able to advance, and three more hours of $ in their pocket. The ability to level at the same speed or even just slightly less quickly while soloing than in a party setting would be a vastly superior experience to current offerings. I don't enjoy the idea of reorganizing my life around a raid where hours of my time are at the mercy of the lowest lagging Pentium II because that's the only way to advance at an appropriate level at a reasonable speed. It is also a little disgusting that it's so hard to gain funds in a game that whole cottage industries have sprung up in other countries that sell gold on Ebay, or having no choice but to log-in at the same time each day because it's the only way to guarantee that I can get a tank and a healer in my group.
Content? It's hardly the problem with MMORPGs, it's getting to the content through all of the things designed to draw it out to the nth degree to get your monthly subscription $ that is the hinderance. There *might* be some good story in some MMO's somewhere, but when? How? Every 200 hours you get a tidbit of story that leads you on another 50 bugbear skin huts and 50 fetchquests against different scenery?
Even D&D, which is essentially the father of the MMO has more evenly spaced storytelling elements than most MMO's I've played. At least in D&D the GM can read the players and adapt the game to the style of the people in it a little. Most MMO's don't even bother to try, focusing on how to draw the game out to ridiculous levels of increase to extend subscriptions. Cheating is so rampant, that if you don't mod your account with at least special huds and counters, you can't even hope to compete against other players. In fact the entire culture is an us-vs them mentality when it comes to stat-busting and exploits - it's not like it's a rare component of the game-play experience, guilds full of normal players actively share exploitive applications to break the game in ways that benefit their characters. It's like the US Senate for gamers. At times the best way to gain 'status' in a guild is to find the best hack or exploit, regardless of what it might do to the architecture of the game over-all. It engenders cheating because it's so ball-bustingly hard to *do* anything, and players have *so much* time sitting around grinding to think of ways to get ahead. It's stupid.
But the biggest problem is always pacing. Go to a movie that isn't interesting or exciting for long stretches and you think it's a shitty movie right? Of course! Yet still MMO's make things that should take hours, take weeks, and things that should take weeks, months. Why do they get away with it?
Simple, because you (and sometimes me) buy their games.