EverCrack, Part Deux
I recently posted that EQ was going F2P in a few weeks, including some progression servers. Madbuilder asked the following question in the comments, and rather than answer there, I decided to make a new post, as I'd really like to hear input on my response from you fellow EverCrack whores. (If you're not a MMO player, you'll want to stop reading now.)
My understanding is that progression servers start fresh -- no UberLeets. It's patched up to stable pre-Kunark standards, but nothing else... no in-game map, no raid zones, not even an auction house. Just good ol' basic EverCamp.
Perverse though it may sound, I really miss simple things like the player-created auction markets in EC tunnel and Faydark. It seemed to me that it added a sense of vitality and a lived-in feel to the game when you actually had to spend fifteen minutes getting to the "market zones" so you could watch the sale listings on chat and talk to and negotiate with real people to buy stuff. Contrast this with modern MMOs, where everything is streamlined and slick and channelized and very, very easy. It's like the designers go out of their way to insure you don't have to interact with other people in any way -- in a MASSIVELY MULTIPLAYER game(!) Hence the term "themepark" has become common for describing modern MMOs: shut up, get on the ride, scream in delight, move to your left, get on the next ride, scream in delight, move to your left...
Boring.
Yes, after about level 30 in original EQ the severe death penalties and hell levels could be very aggravating, but... hey, it's DEATH, after all. It's kind of a pain, you know. I remember a time early in my EQ career when I ventured solo into Sol-A (yeah, I know), died in a really awkward and hard-to-access place, and ended up losing all my stuff because I couldn't make the corpse run. Pain? Oh yeah. But I learned something: DO NOT go into Sol-A (much less -B) solo. Stupid = Dead. I carped and griped and gnashed my teeth... and then I took my medicine and moved on to reacquiring all my stuff. And I never, ever went solo into Sol-A again.
That's called experience. Not the "colored-bar-filling-up" type experience. Real experience. The kind you don't get in modern MMOs, because you're shrouded in bullet-proof bubble wrap from the first minute you log on. Died? No problem! Just click that button, then click that button, and VOILA! -- It never happened.
Boring.
It seems to me like every modern MMO (pretty much everything after Anarchy Online, in fact) is all reward and no risk. That's great fun if you're twelve, but I really feel that many of us -- especially those who grew up playing pen and paper D&D in the 70s and 80s -- want MMOs to go back to the way they were In The Beginning: an adventure, not a visit to the day spa.
What thinkest thou? Valid point, or am I just burnt out?
Madbuilder: "So will everyone on these new servers be starting out fresh (i.e. no Uber Characters and their years of accumulated loot and rankings)?"
My understanding is that progression servers start fresh -- no UberLeets. It's patched up to stable pre-Kunark standards, but nothing else... no in-game map, no raid zones, not even an auction house. Just good ol' basic EverCamp.
Perverse though it may sound, I really miss simple things like the player-created auction markets in EC tunnel and Faydark. It seemed to me that it added a sense of vitality and a lived-in feel to the game when you actually had to spend fifteen minutes getting to the "market zones" so you could watch the sale listings on chat and talk to and negotiate with real people to buy stuff. Contrast this with modern MMOs, where everything is streamlined and slick and channelized and very, very easy. It's like the designers go out of their way to insure you don't have to interact with other people in any way -- in a MASSIVELY MULTIPLAYER game(!) Hence the term "themepark" has become common for describing modern MMOs: shut up, get on the ride, scream in delight, move to your left, get on the next ride, scream in delight, move to your left...
Boring.
Yes, after about level 30 in original EQ the severe death penalties and hell levels could be very aggravating, but... hey, it's DEATH, after all. It's kind of a pain, you know. I remember a time early in my EQ career when I ventured solo into Sol-A (yeah, I know), died in a really awkward and hard-to-access place, and ended up losing all my stuff because I couldn't make the corpse run. Pain? Oh yeah. But I learned something: DO NOT go into Sol-A (much less -B) solo. Stupid = Dead. I carped and griped and gnashed my teeth... and then I took my medicine and moved on to reacquiring all my stuff. And I never, ever went solo into Sol-A again.
That's called experience. Not the "colored-bar-filling-up" type experience. Real experience. The kind you don't get in modern MMOs, because you're shrouded in bullet-proof bubble wrap from the first minute you log on. Died? No problem! Just click that button, then click that button, and VOILA! -- It never happened.
Boring.
It seems to me like every modern MMO (pretty much everything after Anarchy Online, in fact) is all reward and no risk. That's great fun if you're twelve, but I really feel that many of us -- especially those who grew up playing pen and paper D&D in the 70s and 80s -- want MMOs to go back to the way they were In The Beginning: an adventure, not a visit to the day spa.
What thinkest thou? Valid point, or am I just burnt out?
posted by Jar(egg)head at 10:51
10 Comments:
Unfortunately, I think you can blame arcades for this trend. When those blinking electronic gods to entertainment first came out, they drew young teenage boys by the herds. Coins were spent and many an afternoon and allowance was lost in a dark, smoke filled room (yes remember the cigarette burns on the console where someone left it there a little too long?). But since you had to start at the beginning every time, as little Jar's skill increased, his time on the machine increased because he had to go through all the levels he had already cleared. Before you know it, that Star Wars T-shirt wearing geek was tying up the machine for an hour and had only spent one quarter. the ROI plummeted on the games. How to fix this? Add continuation. For another quarter you could start off right where you died and see the game to the end.
Continuation I think is what killed the whole skill and experience in video games. Its insidiousness spread and infests every game today. The end game of that is the milquetoast games you see today. Kids are able to finish off progression games today in less than a day, instead of having to spend weeks going back over old territory. Do something stupid like charge into a room with 30 bad guys? No problem, just go back to the last save point 2 feet behind you and try again. No skill needed, just keep beating your head against the wall until it collapses. MONGO WIN GAME!
The sad part is that because of this easy continuation, the kids growing up on games today have come to expect easy cartoon interactive video "games" I think this is why the online aspect is taking off. It is the only thing that actually offers a challenge in video games today. Well, that is my 2 cents. Feel free to ridicule or mock my opinion. i feel the need to get out my 6400 and play some space invaders.
I have thought about this a bit since the last post. I just couldn't figure out why someone would want to voluntarily submit themselves to the “experience” of EQ when there are such better alternatives available. To me the value of the “experience” I had in EQ is to give me a greater appreciation of games that are actually, well, FUN.
I appreciate the value of the type of “learning experience” that you describe... in real life. Painful penalties and frustration are incalculably effective teachers, but that doesn’t mean I consider such lessons to be enjoyable or even necessary in most cases. Just the possibility of pain and suffering provides a motivation to think something through before taking action. To me, penalties and frustration are deterrents, not inducements.
I get enough of that in real life. In fact, working in tech support means that I am often the one paying the penalty for someone else’s lack of foresight, analytical ability or even just plain common sense. By the time I get home from work, eat dinner and take care of mundane chores, I want to spend what little downtime I have left actually enjoying myself. I want to play a game that is fun. I do NOT want to spend 15-20 minutes locating and negotiating with some moron over the price of a piece of gear that my character needs to go out and adventure, I want to go out and adventure!
After I stopped playing EQ and tried a few other games (DAoC, CoH, WoW, AOC, etc.), my wife actually pointed out that I seemed much happier while playing these games than I did while playing EQ. After playing EQ, I would often be frustrated and irritable. It is not hard to understand why when a curious impulse or a momentary network disconnection could undo HOURS of hard fought progress. Who wants to go back to a game of multi-hour spawn camping, kill stealing and chain deaths with an interface that fails to perform such basic functions as navigational assistance or quest tracking? Risk can make the rewards seem more worthwhile, but horrific downtime requirements, arbitrary punishments and unhelpful interfaces add nothing to my enjoyment.
EQ is a legend, born out of the age of MUDs when spare time was the one resource players had in abundance (since they were mostly college students). However, to me it always seemed more like a “proof of concept” rather than a game. They successfully turned a multi-player, online role-playing environment into a GRAPHICAL multi-player, online role-playing environment. Neat-o. What they failed to do was make the experience one that was enjoyable overall. It had its moments, but even nostalgia cannot overlook the horrific price of pain and suffering that were paid for those few golden nuggets.
No computer-based role-playing game will ever rival true role-playing games such as D&D. Players of D&D have limitless reaches of imagination at their disposal to deal with an unexpected turns of events. The risks and rewards are ever-mutable elements of the storyline. Computers simply do not have the flexibility to turn a mistake into a grand adventure. Good players can make the game better, but they are unfortunately few and far between.
I have enjoyed playing SWTOR. As a lifelong SW fan, playing the game is like playing a movie. I can certainly understand applying the term “theme park” to describe SWTOR, especially the space combat “roller coasters”, but theme parks are fun, damnit! There is nothing wrong with an experience that is tailored towards enjoyment.
MMORPGs have reached the point where game design has taken a back seat to content development, which is as it should be IMHO. They spent a great deal of time and effort on integrating the various storylines and content into the game. I find myself actually listening to the dialog and even watching unnecessary cut scenes instead of just running around and gathering quests as fast as I can and ignoring the descriptions of what I am actually supposed to be doing and why. I even spend time just wandering around pointlessly, exploring and enjoying the remarkable depth and beauty of the scenery. I am able to immerse myself into the game environment in ways that were simply not possible in the stark, brutal wasteland that was EQ.
Boring? Not to me. All games are really just a way of wasting time in the final analysis anyway. You never achieve anything REAL, so why pay such a heavy price just to make it SEEM more rewarding compared to the alternative? One friend put it this way, “That’s like hitting yourself on the head with a hammer because it feels better when you stop.”
I'm going to have to go somewhere in between on this issue. I can most likely have fun even with the original EQ release. The key to doing that is to play it with a group of mature players who make it look easy to survive when one stupid thing can get everyone killed. The few times we got to play that group we had fun. So the fun part is very important.
The side of the issue for game developers is to make the game challenging but not stupid hard. If I go into a new area with an experienced group of players I expect to survive. If the area design is such that only after getting wiped out 20 times do I start to figure out just how to move through the place I don't like it. If I want to play that kind of game I'll just play Mario Brothers.
The problem with EQ is it didn't just have an experience penalty for death, it also had the time penalty and loss of stuff penalty from time to time. It also had insta-death mobs wandering zones that were normally survivable. This was annoying to say the least.
Part of my wish list for an MMO is a virtual world that's just fun to explore even without fighting. With beautiful artwork in hard to get to places. I think it would be cool to have a mountain climbing skill just to make it a challenge to get to some of that artwork. Saving off screen shots to use as wallpaper or print and frame even. Add in some cool game to play around a virtual camp fire to add to the game immersion and you're starting to get close to the feature set.
In the end I want the game to be fun. Part of the fun is for the game to be challenging so no I don't want super easy. I want scenarios to be survivable the first time through if I play smart. I will most likely load EQ when it goes F2P. But I won't be playing unless a group of friends is in. Most likely the friends on this site.
I would love a way to play D&D with voice chat and a few online tools. I'll be surprised if there is not a program for that purpose out there already. If anyone runs across it, please let me know. In the mean time maybe the IT people here can put our heads together and come up with the set of tools ourselves.
Thoughts?
This is interestingly similar to discussions going on regarding the current state of D&D in the pen-and-paper Role Playing hobby since the introduction of the 4th Ed which I've previously posted about her in the recent past. Complaints by "Old School" players that cut their teeth on 1st and even 2nd Ed that the new game is designed more to to cater to WoW players and a more MMO type game play; favoring Min/Maxer character creation, combat encounter focus, excessive focus on class and game balance. Thus the scramble by WotC to try try to remedy this with 5th Ed.
At the end of the day, a game it about enjoyment. What scratches that itch for some, doesn't for others. Some people's idea of a good time is watching fishing shows, mine is not. What I can say for myself is this....
I played EQ and the MMOs for the same reason I played pen-and-paper RPGs. For the story, for the role-play, for the interactions, for the sense of adventure and the exploration. I'm not a "Power Gamer", I don't play for "phat loot", I don't play as an exercise in penis comparison ("I got to LVL 10000 in x days", "I have a system for an unbeatable configuration of stats and skills", "I have all the quest items ever created and 2 special GM ones that nobody else has"), I don't play to figure out the best strategy to "game the system".
In early EQ, I think most of the people that played (my personal experience) were in the same camp as me. It was a totally new concept and it drew first on people who were or at least more akin to "Old School" role players or MUDers. "Power Gamers" and Min/Maxers didn't exist yet. Lot's of people got wrapped up in the adventure and the exploration and the role-play of characters. I moved to Anarchy Online because at heart I'm more into SciFi than fantasy and find the role-play more natural. But over time more and more people discovered MMOs, it became more "mass market", more of the newer players were focused on "power gaming" aspects, etc. Add to that a decreasing maturity level (and I mean in terms of behavior not physical age) of the average player. I tried DAoC, Ashron's 1 & 2, SWG…all of them seem to be infected with the same problem. As such I dropped out of MMOs because the fun I sought was no longer to be found there. Although I would pop in from time to time to see if things had changed…and they hadn't…at least not for the better.
So basically, I'm a game snob. From just my personal observations, the majority of MMOs now seem populated with players with a bipolar combination of ADD and hyper focused. Their attention locked on hitting the predetermined hunting areas and completed the optimum sequence of quests in the quickest time possible, grinding away levels. Or alternatively the faction that spends all their time engaged in "griefing" or other immature bullshit because the game world is their modern day virtual equivalent of the street corner, where they and their juvenile delinquent friends "hang out" and behave like…well…juvenile delinquents.
So if there is one appealing notion to having an MMO that is a tough road to advance on, and frustratingly stacked with real life challenges and negative consequences for poor choices, it would hopefully keep the population lower, and be a less desirable or hospitable environment for the sort of players I have the least desire to be sharing the virtual world with. Give me an EQ with only 250,000 player like it was in 2000, players that role-play and have to REALLY LOVE the environment to play it, and that would be a big plus in my book. Dealing with cretins is a much bigger buzz kill on my fun than kicking myself for making bad decision and losing my hard earned swag. But that's just me.
Good points, all.
Morlock seems to enjoy the themepark type games, and I can certainly understand his view on the matter, even though I don't share it. SWTOR has a pretty interesting story for each major class, and the voice acting is all quite good. I cannot get past the fact, however, that it is essentially a single player game with online DRM. I'm in a guild of over 400 people, and no one ever wants to group up because they're all too busy power-leveling to the endgame so they can ... group up for raiding. Hrm. But really, who can blame them? The game was designed to cater to the singleplayer experience. All storyline elements can be completed alone, and that will more than get you to the level cap, (in less than a month). I just don't see the point of it being a MMO, and I see absolutely no challenge in it.
Davis makes an interesting observation about continuation. While I'm not a big fan of the "play the same level over and over until you master it" school of game design which came out of the 80s arcades, neither am I particularly enamored of the idea that you can save something every thirty seconds. Again, the challenge is removed. I game for challenge; if I want passive entertainment, I'll flip on the television.
Churt may have hit on the real problem with modern MMOs: "The key to doing that is to play it with a group of mature players who make it look easy to survive when one stupid thing can get everyone killed."
MMOs are best when played with others, (hence the whole "multiplayer" thing in the acronym). Unfortunately, a combination of streamlining for solo play on the one hand and the increasing number of asshats on the other hand makes that increasingly difficult to find.
That last bit segues nicely into a point made by Madbuilder with which I completely agree: "the faction that spends all their time engaged in 'griefing' or other immature bullshit because the game world is their modern day virtual equivalent of the street corner, where they and their juvenile delinquent friends 'hang out' and behave like…well…juvenile delinquents."
That is ultimately what causes PVP gaming worlds to fail. And PVP is by far the most entertaining form of gaming -- it is, in fact, the only form of gaming, if you go with the classical definition of the word. Prior to the mid-20th century, artificial intelligence did not exist. If you were playing a game, you were by definition interacting with another person. (Solitaire doesn't count; that's just mental masturbation.)
My point here is not that single player games suck. I love single player games. SWTOR is a great single player game. So is RIFT. But there is very little of the multiplayer to either of them. EverQuest was designed from the ground up so that you were eventually forced to group in order to accomplish goals. You could set whatever goals you wanted, go wherever you wanted, etc. It was a framework for creation of a world by the people who inhabited it. Contrast this with RIFT and SWTOR: "Start here; do everything we tell you. Ok, now you can go there -- but ONLY there. Do everything we tell you to there, and we'll let you go THERE -- but ONLY after you complete what you're told to do first." Sorry, no sell with me. That's just an interactive novel -- and that's not a bad thing if it's what you're looking for. But don't call it a MMO, because it isn't one, not as the original defined the genre.
I'll wrap up with this: I have played dozens of MMOs since EQ, but I can't recall a single memorable moment from any of them -- you know, that "flash burned" memory thing; an incident you never forget. On the other hand, I have dozens of such memories from EQ. And do you know what every single one of those great memories has in common? They involve interaction with other people.
I think I may need to clarify a bit here. My initial post focused primarily on the penalizing aspects of EQ, which I considered excessive. My point was not to say that I do not enjoy a game that is challenging, but that I do not agree with making a game pointlessly difficult as a way of making the rewards seem more enjoyable by contrast. EQ had massive death penalties vs. very stingy rewards. It had horrific downtime requirements just to recover from combat with level appropriate foes, which slowed down gameplay to such an extent that many players ended up using the time to catch up on their reading in between fights. The interface failed to provide basic functionality for navigation and progress tracking, forcing players to rely on hand written notes or (more commonly) waiting until web resources were published by other players (without which I would have probably thrown the game out the window). They tried to sell these inefficiencies as “features” that made gameplay “more rewarding” when really it made the game tedious while discouraging exploration and curiosity for all but the most “hardcore” of players (a.k.a. those college students/parental basement dwellers with lots of time to waste).
By contrast, most modern MMOs go too far in the other direction. Trash mobs now drop usable gear upgrades and the death penalty is little more than an inconvenience (and sometimes even a faster method of travel). These games not only track your quests but tell you exactly where to go to accomplish missions, which end up feeling something like a treadmill or “theme park ride”. These are elements of single player games that can feel a bit too “dumbed down” to provide any real challenge for seasoned players. While I can appreciate a bit of mindless entertainment, I would like to see SOME challenges in the gameplay. Let players dig through their mission log to figure out where they need to go instead of painting a big flashing arrow on the screen. Put penalties in place to make it more risky to undertake challenging encounters. I thought DAoC handled this well with experience “debt” that could be offset somewhat by visiting your grave, but which did not cause level loss. Now you can respawn on the spot and “continue” arcade-style if you are defeated. Where’s the challenge in that?
My point is that Risk vs. Reward is a ratio that deserves serious consideration when designing a game. It can be out of balance in either direction, largely because as individuals we all have different preferences. MMOs come closest to accommodating players of all types, since they can offer different playing experiences. Solo-oriented storyline content is one aspect of playing, but the end game group oriented content provides another. PvP provides the most challenging experience. Each type of play attracts different types of players, which form into communities within the game. Making the game easy to play attracts new players, but making the game challenging retains them for longer periods of time.
I think we all agree that in the end, it is the PLAYERS that make the game great. Jar points out that the most memorable events involved interaction between players as much as they respond to significant challenges within the game environment. Those are the “golden nuggets” to which I referred and many of those involved playing with people right here on this board. I had several of those moments in EQ and a few in other games and they are the true gems among my gaming experiences.
I agree that risk vs. reward is largely a matter of personal taste. I'll even grant that for most people, EQ was probably balanced a little too far towards the risk side of the equation. But by contrast with modern MMOs, it looks downright balanced. That's because, (with the exception of EVE), risk in modern MMOs is essentially non-existent. You can never lose gear. The XP penalties, if they exist at all, are ridiculously small and more than counterbalanced by very generous "rested" XP gains. Morlock alluded to the giant flashing neon signs that guide you along each and every step of each and every quest, as if you're a toddler in daycare learning to walk by the dots.
I realize there's some "rose-colored glasses" effect going on with me and EQ in this discussion. There were things I disliked about the game, no doubt. But compared with the modern crop of MMOs with their supermodel looks and braindead gameplay, good old EQ looks positively wonderful to me. I don't want to be secured in bubblewrap and given three options from which to pick so I can turn the page. I want a giant world with no restrictions which is dangerous and unexplored and brimming with possibilities. I found that in EQ, and I've not found it again since.
I'm sure there's some level of risk vs reward where Morlock and I could meet up comfortably. I'm equally certain it doesn't exist in any MMO currently released. Mad Builder has high hopes for Secret World, and I'm cautiously optimistic. But RIFT and SWTOR had the same pre-release hype, and I ended up disappointed in both. We'll see soon enough.
One things for sure, if you look at the length of these posts we all apparently enjoy our gaming.
My high hopes for The Secret World are more for what seems to be a very different, engaging and story rich game world that has not been presented before. I can honestly say I am more interested in all the nre tidbits about the game world, the factions and how they interact, the amazing setting and mix of mythologies. I am already kicking around in my head ideas on how i think i will rp my character, heh. Their "no character classes" concept and the "skill wheel" idea sound interesting, but that's all game mechanics stuff to me. At a minimum, even if Secret World is eventually overrun by the same crap that destroy other MMOs...I am at least going the try to get as much enjoyment out of the game world before it is spoiled.
MadBuilder - Illuminati
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