MMORPGS - An Open Discussion

Discussion in 'Gaming' started by autumnrain26, Nov 17, 2015.

  1. So I ran across a video by the Game Theorists not too long ago talking about the death of MMO games, if you wish to see the video I will add it in a spoiler at the end of my rant.. MMO, or Massively-Multiplayer Online games, are game that are well, played online, you don't need a degree in rocket science to figure that out.. Role-Playing Games are games where you play a character and journey through their epic story. Many times you are drawn into the story and feel the anger and sorrows of your character. Emotive to say the least, but are the players actually the cause for the perceived decline?

    So I understand that my opinion may be offensive to some people, and I must stress to apologize now for any offense I give in the period of this discussion.

    So in the United States, RPG games are actually considered back-burner game genres, where sports and violent/wargame genres take center court. I have played a considerable few but those tend to be fringe titles because many mainstream titles do not tend to interest me.. Looking into my Origin and Steam libraries, I seem to actually own several titles that do not interest me at all (I blame Humble Bundle, IndieGala, SteamGifts, and Groupees), games such as Battlefield 3, Medal of Honor, Red Orchestra 2 are just a few games that I have no propensity to even want to really play even though I irrevocably own them.

    No, I do not have a thing against war/fps type games.. I grew up playing Quake and Unreal so I have never been blind to the genre.. What I don't like is the competitiveness of the playbase to the point of being trolls in many instances. I went to a school where League of Legends was extremely popular, however, even though I have played it (Even made it as far as level 15 before boring of it because of other players.. :oops:), the one thing that I hated was walking into the lounge and listening to hours of conversation about one singular 4o minute match, and being constantly berated by other players for using my own methods of playing (Which were rather more effective than what I could find, mind you..) rather than casting a mimic spell on the champions, (ie. using Annie to do minor jungling..)..

    I already can see the rage comments here for me using Annie to jungle.. :p ..But in context, what is the one thing that makes you not want to play a game, even one you play causally anymore..? People, other players, telling you that you play the game wrong. This elitest behavior has unfortunately caused much derision in the gaming community over many years.

    World of Warcraft... yes, I have played it, for only 11 hours though... tends to be blamed in many online games as the source of much of the elitism, basically the idea that you are better than other people because you have the best gear imaginable, and its everyone else fault for a party wipe because they don't or there is not going to be any progress because someone does not know their role.

    I have been playing Final Fantasy 14 for over 2 years now, I started playing when the game was in Closed Beta in May of 2013.. Unfortunately, I did not play 14 during the 1.0 days as I was still much in the same mindset that I was when I wrote an article decrying the fact that FF11 was online and needed so many peripherals and stuff to play initially.. At the time of writing that article many years ago, Final Fantasy was not an online game series, it was an RPG which I can quote myself actually recounting that "Final Fantasy was a closed world RPG that was meant to be played alone in your room, closed off from society.." I was crazy at one time, huh..?

    When I wrote that article, internet access wasn't as readily available as it is now.. I had to listen to a "Skrillex song" that lasted for about 2 minutes, every time I wanted to go online, and back then I was about playing games "instantly" and didn't wish to wait on logins and loading and downloading assets to play a game.

    I did bring up FF14 for a reason though.. Elitism is as much of a problem there as it is in any Online game these days. Just a couple of days ago, while doing one of the dungeons that just came out this last Tuesday, I rolled to obtain some of the new gear, as the stats on the gear were much better than what I had prior. The healer raged at me and the other attacker (DPS), also a caster for competing for the caster gear, claiming that we were overriding the greed system with our need rules just so that we could sell the items to our grand companies and quit healing us. In fact, in the last battle, the lack of heals caused both me and the other attacker to die, and we sat there dead for about 5 minutes waiting on a resurrection, and I sat there watching the healer standing right next to me and the boss going from 60% to 15% over that period of time when finally the healer raised the black mage to limit break and left me dead the entire time.. :confused:

    Of course, the tales of elitism in FF are numerous and not just with this singular incident, most, as I have stated are player-initiated but some cause of this is because of how the games have increasingly become written.. An example is in Final Fantasy, the endgame "currency" changes every other patch or so, one of which is limited by week. The limited currency becomes unlimited when better stuff comes out or the limited currency is changed again.. These limited currencies are what are needed to purchase the most recent endgame gear, which currently is item level 200 that can be upgraded to item level 210. These limited currencies drop in at a small rate at the very end of endgame content (ie. dungeons, raids, trials..). You are limited to 450 per week, although I believe the limiting factor was raised to 900 recently, although I may be wrong about that.. actually, I know I am wrong because I was just looking at it.. Still 450..

    So crafters and gatherers have a similar situation where they must turn in special items to get these currencies, special items which before this recent patch were limited by time in game, for the gatherers anyways.. Crafters still have to make the special items needed.. As such they are also limited by only being able to receive 450/week as well.. So with the time factor involve took hours to cap as you would only get 5-8 scrips per turnin, and were usually hardpressed to get more than 2-3 special items in the 1 ingame hour that the special node was active. Thankfully, the node that I normally gather from for scrips as of the recent patch, now give 15-18 scrips per turnin, and I was able to hit 4 on one node last night netting me 60 scrips which took several hours of work only a few months ago.. :oops:

    An even more rage-inducing factor for crafters and gatherers just happens to be the fact that each class has their own unique class gear which all need another special item to exchange for a special miscellany item in addition to the scrips needed for the tokens to trade for gear.. When I did the math, although I kept messing up while doing it, and the fact that the scrips for gatherers and crafters are separate meaning that they could be done in tandem, with the current restriction, it would take roughly 66 weeks of constant grinding to get every set of crafter/gatherer gear.. :confused: ..that is more than a year.

    Many times elitism involves no-lifing in situations like this get these gearsets to rub it in the faces of the casual players.. I have even heard of elitism taking it far as going into instances and then abandoning parties before the instance even starts because someone doesn't have the right gear or the abandoning party doesn't like the said instance..

    And this elitism can be seen everywhere, even, unfortunately, in Minecraft.. I am not going to point or call out people that I have even see do it here in Empire.. But its an unfortunate aspect of Online gaming these days and one that causes people to leave games.

    If I missed anything, please feel free to add to this discussion, but this is not a thread to call people out, nor is it a place to become uncivil. I am merely trying to provide constructive dialogue, and I ask that people please remain civil as this is a family forum.. :)

  2. Hm. I'm honestly not quite sure what you're getting at here, But I've never played an MMORPG, so that might be kne of the reasons.
    I hope I'll understand more once other people post, because I don't think re-reading your post over and over again will help here.
    autumnrain26 likes this.
  3. Minecraft is a MMO 607. The OP seems to go back and forth between MMO's and MMORPG's. LoL, WoW and similar games are MMO-RPG's. MMO's aren't dying and that video just touches on how it's difficult to start up an MMO anymore because.... well... they are expensive to make. I think a lot of the expense of SWTOR which is really what that video is based on anyways was things that could have easily been slashed. The only reason that game cost that much to make is because they were sure it would return what they invested... man were they wrong. The incredible stupidity surrounding the creation of one game isn't the dethknell for all MMO's though. Even Swtor is still being developed and has quite the budget so the video's point is moot.

    For the elitism. I don't think this is an "MMO" (or mmo-rpg) problem but a society problem. I don't think the elitism itself is a problem but the lack of character building that is included in our society at a young age. Schools don't teach values, both parents work and community centers are a rarity anymore. This isn't a new problem either. A lot of people romanticize the past but look at the movies from the 90's, the 80's the 70's. Go back and watch old family videos, read old newspapers. Elitism, whiny-ness and entitlement aren't anything new.

    The call of duty thing is fast paced, instant gratification type of games. It is not a competitor in the MMO market. The people that play call of duty aren't generally people that would have played mmo's anyways. they are people that probably would have never touched video games if it wasn't for that kind of super easy game where you can just troll all day long and have zero skill. I wouldn't dare even group them in with the same people that play halo, battlefield or destiny. Call of duty is a beast of its own. Think runescape of first person shooters lol.

    The mobile games are still far from being able to compete with titles such as Wow, Swtor or LoL. I have played some fun MMO games on the phone and have lost countless hours to them but they never prevented me from logging my 40+ hours a week in Swtor and now minecraft. The mobile games bring in more revenue though, are more profitable. The demand for those games will die off as people realize that they used to play better games and get bored with the mobile games that have little replay value to speak of. Not to mention the neck pains, head aches and pain in their wrists, hands and fingers. Phones are getting more user friendly but they still are far more limited than a computer.

    Eh, yeah I think that's enough words.

    Edit: oh and well everyone plays mobile games so thats a different audience than those of us that have a permanent screen glow from our monitors.

    Also, ff14, swtor, wow, lol, aeon(is that how its spelled?), diablo they are all pretty much the same when you get down to community and mechanics, just a different flavor of the same game.
    607 and autumnrain26 like this.
  4. lol, I remember playing runescape up until I completed all of the free quests, and then had nothing to do but grind stuff.. xD ..I have played all three of the Gears of War games (This of course does not include Judgement, as I my friend was forced to sell their xbox before it came out).. That game is fun, partially because I know how to effectively troll with the longshot and oneshot. My years of playing Unreal and Quake make it really fun to play sniper in games. Though I think my accuracy with sniper rifles in such games make other players think I am aimbotting.. :oops:

    My friend always talks about playing Gears with me.. He always like to do the chain lancer finisher on enemies up close and personal, but groans whenever I find a longshot because I seemed always be able to headshot ever enemy he charged at before he could reach them.. xD

    That post was kind of all over the place really.. MMO games include more than just Role-Playing Games; there are a plethora of game genres online. I rambled on about the RPGs and stuff because most of my experiences online usually involved RPG games, such as Runescape, Maple Story, Mabinogi, Star Trek Online, Final Fantasy 14 and several others. Although I do sometimes find myself in APB, running around and stealing cars and using my sniper rifle to shoot random NPC characters from rooftops. But to be honest, I do not see why personal gain or competition should play a role in trying to help others succeed, especially in endgame content.. It is easier to do when people can communicate civilly instead cursing and berating players whom do not know what to do, or demanding exuberant payment for a "carry".. :(
    607 and Gawadrolt like this.
  5. LoL is not an MMORPG. It's a MOBA, but in no way is it an MMO, nor an RPG. WoW is however a good example of an MMORPG.
  6. Actually, MOBA and Squad-Type Fighting games that have online components are MMO games.. Any multiplayer game that can have multiple players playing simultaneously are considered MMO games. MMO-RPG are just one subgenre of the MMO genre as a whole. Even browser games like Wartune and World of Tanks are MMO games. MOBA, in and of itself, stands for Multiplayer Online Battle Arena. MMO, Massively Multiplayer Online, are games that are played with other people online.. Saying that MOBA are not MMO basically means that none of the other players that you play with in a MOBA are real people just computer ai and that MOBA are single player games because of that.. Do you consider MOBA to be single player games..?

    If you read the wall of text or watched the video, it does not really state that MMO games are dead, but with many aspects of them changing over time to make what one might consider a MMO to be dead in that aspect, but not dead completely. MMO games evolve over time. In the video from the Game Theorists it was noted that one of the first online games costed a huge wad of cash to play from hour to hour, as internet data usage was rated by minute rather than by month. Some early MMO games also required you to have a specific ISP such as Compuserve to play and still had high connection costs.

    My argument is that in effect, capitalism has turned player greedy and causes elitism to ruin casual gameplay, turning new players away from games because the old guard that are rather stiff about controllable aspects such as gear and concrete player placement complain so badly when someone does something wrong rather than want to help them so that there are more people to play with, rather than playing with the same stiff players. And I mean help for the reason of helping which is how things should be done, as I do in most games that I play (Yes, even Empire, but I keep my humanitarianism here so hush-hush, that very few people know what I help with here.. :p ), rather than extorting players (ie. accepting money for carries, etc..) for financial gain in said games.. :oops:
    607 likes this.
  7. Its obviously an MMO but I agree that it isn't an RPG. I was less than familiar with league of legends but from what I had been told I had chalked it up to another wow. Basically its wow without the leveling process :-P unless you like PVE in games like wow which is just basically memorizing a 50 long set of moves to make.