Gamespy: Have we simply outgrown the mmorpg?Follow

I think the article is more about current MMO mechanics not being able to cope with the super accessability of information on the internet... not that we've outgrown MMOs, no need to sensasionalize the issue.

I do agree with the article. People shouting for help, and me or some one else offering it is how we meet new people in MMOs. MMOs will get twitchier and twitchier gameplay wise as people get impatient with slow mechanics, which doesn't lend towards causual conversation. As to the direction things should go? Meh, I guess if some one could make an EVE like in a different (ie more popular) setting they'd cash in. EVE is engaging yet slow enough for conversation, and all but requires voice chat during corp v corp engagements. I guess built in voice chat might allow games like XIV to have more dynamic fights... but alot of people don't want to "talk" to other people while playing MMOs. It's a slippery slope.

I didn't really get into EQ, but I'm almost certain XI was regarded as having a great community because of the relentless grind.



This is one of the things I don't really understand about MMO gamers. It's more personal for me to hear a voice than to read someone's name in a chat log. You hear a familiar voice and respond with something like "Hey Sarah, how's it going? A bunch of us were going to head over to [insert event here], wanna come along?". Just like the players talking to themselves in the vid Montsegurnephcreep posted as they were typing, why not just press a button and hear a voice?

It's the way technology has progressed, yet many seem so reluctant to embrace it. I guess I can see people being self conscious about their voice or the fabled Onyxia 'Handle it!' rage on occasion, but for the most part voice chat works exponentially better than trying to type when a mob is eating your face.




Edited, Jun 17th 2012 5:54pm by FilthMcNasty

^^ i think is totally backwards, every time a MMO trys something new and different, it's the same old people from the XI era that say: "Back in my day, you had to camp 9 years to reach cap and be good at the game, now you have it easy, with you skill requiring fights and your quests"

Unlike FFXIV you have played FFXI for more than a few weeks, right?

Alright, why are you almost certain that the FFXI's endless grind made its community so great? I could easily argue that endless grinding bores people and makes them leave a game. So why didn't they? Couldn't it be that the FFXI community was great because:

- it was the first MMO of the franchise
- that it was introduced in a time when them MO genre was relatively new to a lot of players
- played a game designed to collaborate in order to achieve things, which they did since
- many of those players came from Generation X instead of Generation X-Box, the latter being a different type of player?

Don't you think that this combination of factors are more important than your zillionth stab towards SE, the endless grinding? There was a lot of grinding involved, but if it was only that then we wouldn't have so many people who can share a lot of great, funny stories about what they saw of what happened to them in FFXI, or how stupid they were or how they were able to win a certain Burning Circle fight after a series of defeats, or would we?

I'm just going to copy some of the writers comments to show what I took from the piece & what I agree on.

This very column started out as a reflection on the eight things that every good MMORPG must have for success. I agonized over the topic (and for much longer than I know my editor preferred), but I found too many holes in everything I thought of. An open, explorable world? TERA, Lord of the Rings Online, and even Gods & Heroes: Rome Rising have that in some form or another. A fulfilling story? Star Wars: The Old Republic had that in spades, but six months later the limited appeal of adding engrossing storylines on the standard MMORPG experience seems all too apparent. The pieces, it seems, are usually in place; developers just exhibit varying degrees of competence when getting them to work together. But even when they do a decent job, as in Rift, the MMO itself rarely succeeds in snaring new souls like they used to.

At this point, I'm convinced this lack of fulfillment springs from generational differences rather than the design of the games themselves. I'm not saying that younger players can't enjoy or even love MMORPGs, but I do believe the modern gaming world lacks the precise conditions that famously made us slaves to the WoW/EverQuest model in the last decade.

Many contemporary MMORPGs fail or stumble precisely because they try to recapture this world in a gaming environment that no longer supports it. The word of the day is "accessibility" not "cooperation," and that shift threatens the overused EverQuest/World of Warcraft template no matter how well the combat works or how "dynamic" the world is. Turning back the clock is a pretty dream, but it'd never work today. Wikis, related guides, and especially "accessible" raiding modes like WoW's raid finder have removed most of the real mystery of exploration and mastering encounters, so a traditional endgame raiding structure can never hold the wide appeal it once did. The very combat model springs from the demands of primitive connectivity. Since high-speed internet is essentially the norm in 2012, there's little reason to maintain the comparatively unfulfilling tab-targeting combat over more action-based interactions like those in TERA and Vindictus.

To remain relevant, MMORPGs need to become something else entirely.Slapping a free-to-play payment plan on existing models only masks the deficiencies of the aging gameplay and lackluster player interaction, and even when communities are fairly strong, many players seem content to play MMORPGs like single-player games. I personally don't see the point. Attempts to cram a single-player experience into an MMORPG (a la SWTOR and TESO) now seem misguided at best, since they reveal the genre's weaknesses once you deprioritize the social elements. MMORPGs should be about meeting, interacting, and achieving challenging goals with other players; anything else is secondary. To recapture something of that spirit of cooperation, what once passed for endgame gameplay needs to be integrated into the actual leveling experience somehow.

Guild Wars 2 is one such game, and even though I'm still not convinced that the combat is as great or innovative as ArenaNet says, or that the quest structure does much more than removing the actual act of speaking to the questgiver, I can tell it's the kind of game I wouldn't mind logging into for a couple of hours every day. Its attempts to remove the player class "trinity" mark a massive step in the right direction as well. The Secret World also has the right idea with its lack of levels, classes, and traditional gear, although I worry it swings too far in the other direction and runs the risk of losing any sense of reward for achieving goals. With the demands of my post-20-something schedule, I like the feeling that I could drop in after a two-month absence and not feel like I've been left behind.

I found myself thinking that controversial casual-minded features such as group finders, short dungeons, and quick rewards are less aimed at younger players than toward us -- the former hardcore crowd who now juggles gameplay time with families and careers. Blizzard's recent campaign to specifically win back players who've quit only confirms this. It's sad, in a way, like Las Vegas concerts with graying disco stars that try to cash in on an older generation's memories of yesteryear.

I can't see younger players ever latching on to single MMORPGs as we did and that lack of permanence proves disastrous for most communities. Again, the conditions just aren't the same. They might enjoy the leveling process to varying degrees, but the choices offered ensure that we usually can't count on meeting up with most of our friends in a single game like we used to. As such, even MMORPGs' ridiculed role as "action-packed chatrooms" no longer holds the same appeal, especially when common non-gaming distractions such as Twitter fulfill related roles.

My comments: I see alot of what this writer is saying making sense. I'm not expecting many new mmos to offer what he seeks in the near future. Did I outgrow the mmorpg? No, I think it outgrowed me. Maybe I need to ponder getting out of the mmo realm, instead of whining about the inevitable future(wanting to go against the grain of the genre lol.

Are you claiming that the sole reason that FFXI had a good community was because of the long grind? What about the other grind heavy MMOs, like Runescape or World of Warcraft?

Arrgh. Arrrrgh. I am unwilling to accept this conclusion. I know that I never felt "left behind" or "outcast from the edgame" in FFXIV, although it took me almost 2 years to reach level 75 back then; also, I doubt that the time spent grinding alone is (wholly) responsible for the better community, although it may have been a contributing ingredient. Another element (that is seriously lacking in FFXIV) was the need for coordination before skillchains and magic bursts were replaced with spamming, and - I hate to admit it - the generally slower pace of camp-based combat, which allowed for between-pull chatter and even some snippets of conversation during fights. Not to mention that FFXI also required you to actually play the game, since powerleveling was in no way as easy as in FFXIV.

What a great assist for my usual rant about how all the "freedom" to play the game solo or in groups or as a tanking whitemage sorcerer thief destroyed the "R" in RPG. Because everyone demands to be "the ultimate badass" who is able to conveniently fill every spot and adapt to all circumstances in the blink of an eye, there is no more need to cooperate, and no more sense of identity. In FFXI, I was "the monk" in my small LS. "The monk" was a dumb Galka with fists of steel, a tender heart, and the predisposition to squish Tarutarus. I was great at beating the crap out of things. I was sh*t at range, and helpless in Balista when bound without a team to back me up. In other words: without my team, I was sh*t. But that was o.k. Because my team was sh*t without me.

That's the problem with you, Mr. "I want FFXIV to succeed so that's why I advice people not to start playing it now", cause you can indeed go on all day long till your opponent will eventually stop posting! In fact, that's how you think you can win a debate.

Hundreds of posts - worth God knows how many hours - about a game you do not even play. It would be funny if it wouldn't be so sad. Seriously.

That grind associated with everything in old school mmos is what made you bond Filth. Is it right or fair to place that tough love on players? No, that's why XI never put a dent in the newer form mmos with more accessibility sub wise. The writer even agrees with that but also says an modern mmo attempting that disservices it's players or won't work.

No game is rocket science & neither was XI. But it did try and make players coordinate tactics. It could have been more developed later on and made good with various enemy characteristics globally.

Opinions vary wildly on this, so I doubt any consensus can be reached easily.

But I do agree, in principle, on what the article is saying. The Internet itself has changed dramatically since the first MMOs appeared. An "exploratory" MMO is next to impossible to pull off in a world where informational tools like wikis, databases, Youtube videos, and forums make it easy to disseminate everything about the MMO without actually playing it and discovering it for yourself. You no longer need a team of devoted hardcore players to work out how to win a boss fight. You just need to watch the Youtube "bragging rights" video of a team of devoted hardcore players winning the boss fight, and grab a random team of people you don't know, but who all know how to mimic the routine.

MMOs no longer emphasize teamwork, but access. No longer is there the permanence of community, but of individuals short on time and attention. That said, it would be impossible to reverse the trend. The environment of exclusively committing to one of few available MMOs no longer exists.

This.

I really wish people would stop looking at the forced cooperation in FFXI through rose-colored glasses and stop pretending it was this incredible era of happiness and playing with friends.

It wasn't.

You camped on top of other people simply because there was nowhere else to go and you'll be damned if you spent the last two hours getting a party ready just so you can disband, so you took that 2K an hour begrudgingly since Dunes/Jungles/Nest/Citadel/etc. were all over populated at the time. You leveled the class that was popular or you sat your ass in Jeuno for a year (or more) because you were "useless" to the populace. People MPKed each other as much as they could get away with, griefed the hell out of others for the pure joy, and treated each other as lesser beings if they didn't farm for months to afford a +1 piece (that barely did anything in the grand scheme of things due to FFXI's screwed up formulae).

You fought with the Japanese when it came to endgame and they gleefully heralded their original claims over us due to server/client lag and would hold that HNM until it was back into their own prime time. You then created bots to combat the behavior and it spiraled into pretty much every other aspect of the game. Didn't know a step on a quest or was behind? Well, you were obviously a moron because no one else on the server ever made such a mistake. That character didn't have the best of gear (but obviously still passable) and just wanted to have fun? To hell with that, weak people shouldn't slow you down with their 0.02 less DPS (oh sorry FFXI players have to have unique terms and phrases for everything, I meant to say "0.02 less damage dealing potential")!

FFXI's community is akin to a teenager with bipolar disorder. There's nothing pretty about it because what good there was is overshadowed by immense nastiness that even the 'kiddies in WoW' would be amazed at seeing. Final Fantasy XI had an average community at best and down-right brutal at worst. FFXI's community still tries to loudly proclaim it was the first with an Auction House (it wasn't, and a blind bidding system isn't an AH anyway). It's full of delusion and spite.

ALL MMOs have utterly average (i.e. terrible) communities because they all have one thing in common: they are comprised of humans. Add humans, get instant disgusting behavior. Deluding yourselves into thinking X game was better overall than Y game is simply lying.

Edited, Jun 18th 2012 3:53pm by Viertel

Edited, Jun 18th 2012 3:55pm by Viertel

^^ Yep. I had all of those experiences.

I also had really great ones, and I think the defining factor is you had one character. Yes, that scumbag bard replied "I'm a moron" (Wow, LOL Pup filter still in place) when I invited them to party. But guess what, I knew who that was, told my ls, they all knew who he was, and after I grabbed another Brd with a better attitude, I still saw the princess Brd LFG after we disbanded.

My point is, I don't think FFXI's community was any better or worse than others, it was just perceived better because you got to know people, good and bad, under 1 name.

Edited, Jun 18th 2012 4:51pm by Louiscool

Hmmm,

Time is an issue these days because I'm older and have more responsibilities and real-life friendships to hold dear, but I got plenty of time to play really.... I still play videogames 2-3 hours daily and that's with everyone happy and me doing the things I'm supposed to do. Outgrown MMO's? Me personally, kinda, but not really. I still have contact with most people I have played with in FFXI and meet them IRL. Yes, Facebook does wonders for me to maintain these friendships, do they evolve into something more than I had in FFXI? No, but it doesn't mean those kind of friendships are any different to me than real life friendships. It really depends on who you are and what you perceive people to be in whatever way you are communicating with them, be that someone you know, someone you play with or someone coming close to a real-life friend.

I can remember fondly the people I played with and who left the game at a certain point or switched servers, I do know their names. What I remember most was to have fun, and to be quite honest, it was the casual loitering/raiding/hardcore grinding and sharing stories with these people that I really enjoyed to do. In fact, I had MORE fun when I wasn't in a hardcore HNM/endgame ls. So to me, it's all about the story/atmosphere/friendly people/gameplay and overall immersion of the game. That is no difference with single-player games. FFXI was my only MMO and yes, there were quite a bit of features and grinding that I didn't like, however, when doing it my ingame friends, everything became a lot more fun to do. I remember teaching Moncus how to kite as a SMN in CoP missions (3-2?) or inviting people to farm Prime avatars and show them how to do it. Heck, I even proclaimed myself Promyvion captain back when it was still the original difficulty and helped out almost with every shout in Aht Uhrghan.... That's how I met new people and made friends with a lot of players who ended up in different hardcore HNM/egls. Finding people to help out wasn't hard either, I just contacted the leaders of those ls and asked if they had people that needed to do the mission or wanted to help out. Yes, reputation was everything to me, because it made the game so much more accessible. In fact, in the end, I did most missions with weird setups, trying to defeat everything with what jobs were available. My best victories were undermanned and odd setups, too bad some players were too elite to try anything. Fun and as much perfection as you can get, that was the spirit! Soon as people knew that, I could almost get anyone to join our team, if you could follow orders, we could get the job done, simple as that.

I would be lying if I would say I don't miss those days, I had loads of fun back then. Thing is, you need an MMO that motivates people to group together and enough people interested to play together, once you lose either or a game doesn't attract much players, you're done for nowadays.
I hope FFXIV 2.0 can at least come close to the experience I had when I started playing FFXI in 2006, it was balanced enough cause of the new Aht Uhrghan add-on and it offered a huge amount of storyline for new players to go through. Even Wings of the Goddess had enough storylines (eventually) to be entertaining, though they copy/pasted maps from the beginner areas. For me, it went downhill when there wasn't enough new content or quests to keep me entertained, raiding wasn't exactly fun. I'll probably play FFXIV 2.0 till I get bored/when I'm done with all storylines and have done most of the quests. I hope that takes a long time till I'm through all that :) And Smn would make my day ^^.

TLDR: I got plenty of time to play, not the amount I used to have, but enough. Friendships and helping out people, which lead to new friendships, plus the reputation that I had (If you're a good enough player, you can join; if you can follow orders when we have weird job setups, newbie or not, you are quite welcome too), made it easy to get help from the best players and the nicest players. That is necessary for me to make a MMO worthwhile to play. That way, I will not outgrow the MMO.



Edited, Jun 19th 2012 1:16am by MonarctheFirst

I think you're misreading me here.

It's not some weird grudge we with a blacklist. We recognized these people. I would say something to my LS like "Great, invited a brd and he said 'LOL Pup' and disbanded" and other LS members would be like "Was it XSqualX??"

Do I care that someone wants to play a specific way? No. But if the community was so great, he would have just replied "Thanks for the offer but i have to pass." Instead he and many others just douched it up.

Filth, I get the idea you were one of the people I'm talking about here...

There was no skill in FFXI or EQ just saying lol

Technically, you may be right; it's just that for most of us, the word "skill" implies something above the level of what is required in primary school.

"Most of us" meaning all 8 people on this forum?

In all my years playing online games, mmo and otherwise, I have come to the conclusion that paying attention is indeed a highly sought skill that is found in the minority of players.

Let me translate this phrase for you:

"XXXX game doesn't take any skill!"

Translation:

"I want to sound like I have so much skill that I consider this game to be beneath my expertise. Does anyone like me?"

It's an overused phrase, and while you may not mean exactly that, that's how most people read it. What game does take skill then? I can argue that NO games take skill, unless you are an EMPLOYED Q/A tester. In my definition of skill, it a trade that you can leverage in a life setting. Finger Dexterity is only a skill if you're a watch maker or a pickpocket.

Tell me of a game that you consider to take "skill" and I'll argue against it. Then everyone will know how cool I am because that game is beneath me.

Grind is fine as long as it's a fun grind. There's a reason I sunk 150 hours into FFX - I enjoyed the tactical nature of the combat, and that encouraged me to grind my way long past the point I could have finished the game. (I came home one day after work to find my husband had grown tired of my grind and was watching the final cutscene without me. I think that was the most furious I've ever been at him, which means we actually have a pretty good relationship overall, come to think of it...)

The group grinding in FFXI was also fun, at least when you had a decent party. The sweet, sweet satisfaction of getting your THF lined up just so and executing a perfect SATA... Yeah. That glorious moment when you hit chain 7 at level 60 for the first time before the mages had to fall down, completely drained of MP. Then, later on, the satisfaction of hitting chain 300 on colibri...

If an MMO can make the grind not just necessary, but enjoyable, then it will find success even in today's saturated market. Unfortunately, very few game developers can hit that sweet spot.

Reminds me of a Cherokee saying,

"Hate wears you down, and does not hurt your enemy. It is like taking poison and wishing your enemy would die."

My great grandmother was Cherokee. (Not that you can tell by looking at me. But defiantly visible in my dad and grandma.)

Guess it's where I get that sensibility from.

Because making money in FFXIV requires skills ? Funny i have a million gil already and i started not more than a week, yes i did struggle for the first 15 levels, but it had nothing to do with skills, it had everything to do with not knowing that certain NPC in the market wards and in the bar sold low level gear for a lower price, unless finding a bargain is a skill, then STFU!! Or are you saying farming sheepskin is a skill ? Really ? Grinding a skill ? Again really ?

Btw: Somebody was showing me earlier today how broken power level is at camp lake with them raptors, i got 11 skins of them, i dint even move an inch or pressed a key, i will make around 120K off that, THAT IS SKILLS BRAH!

Wait... you let somebody explain to you how to make money when you already had a million gil after a week? You are quite something!

As for the other stuff you are writing: I sense that you are very young. Never mind then. Have fun playing in here, but remember: homework comes first, ok?

Edited, Jun 20th 2012 12:47am by MrMissile

I just cant get rid of this rash on my neck. Don't /wrist just yet because your feelings were hurt. I'm sorry you have a grudge for being called out as a troll.

No more food for you troll, you're getting too fat.

Filth...you are not a troll. You do not start threads in order to get a negative response to feed your own self serving ego about your infinite knowledge of all things through and through when it comes to anything related to video games or the industry in general.

I can tell from reading your posts in pretty much every thread started that you would never stoop to something like that.

Please...continue to enlighten us with your wisdom. I know we all love to read your posts.