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4713 Posts
Prologue
I once again felt the need to put thoughts to paper, last time I shared my feelings regarding RTS games and what it means for a game to truly be an RTS. This time I'll tackle another game genre, this one being probably one of the more controversial as of yet.
MMO's are a relatively new game genre, in the sense that, unlike FPS, RTS, RPG and Driver genres, MMO's are little over a decade old. However in this time MMO's have grown and evolved tremendously, looking back at the some of the 2D, browser based descendents its incredible to think how far they have gotten now, bolstering fantastic graphics, full 3D, rich environments full of mystery and wonder, all for you to explore.
However ever since MMOs really took off in 2004 with the release of World of Warcraft, we've started to see a more and more worrisome trend in game developers, that of switching to making MMOs. And we aren't talking about small time devs here, big names such as Bioware, Bethesda, Mythic have tried to make or are in the process of developing MMO's of their own.
In this article I shall do my best to explain why I believe this is a trend we should not only be worried about, but should oppose and resist to some extent, I shall outline what I feel are the flaws of current MMOs and the problem that this push towards more online play is having on the gaming scene at large.
Rise of MMOs
In a way, looking at the trends of how the modern world is evolving, it isn't very hard to see why MMOs have become so popular. An increasing emphasis is being put on instant connectivity, socialization and accessibility.
And MMOs just sort of fit the bill, they have relatively low system requirements, they are generally user friendly, allowing many people to be able to try them out, they are also usually designed to be rated to capture as much of the young demographic as possible.
Networking optimizations and the increasing growth of the internet, largely due to the increase in its accessibility, has made it possible to design games where you can have many, many players play at the same time in one virtual world.
And lastly on the back of all the above MMO's have allowed gamers to do something they couldn't do before, to allow players to feel like they are part of a living breathing world, to partake in adventures of size and scale never before dreamed of.
MMOs do deserve praise for this, a well executed multiplayer game can be a lot of fun, and the more people involved the crazier and more exciting it can get, so MMOs naturally push that even further while also pushing the technical boundaries.
However despite all the fun they can potentially provide in spite of how much they have evolved, MMOs still are left with some really big design flaws that have not aged well. And now I shall go in depth talking about these.
Lack of good stories
This is the one flaw that I, as an older generation gamer, find the most troubling. Storytelling in general, has become a hot subject as of late in gaming, it is getting harder and harder to craft deep, engaging and passionate stories that can capture our minds and our hearts and that can leave a lasting impression on us, still many game developers try.
However, despite all their technical advancements MMOs still suffer from this same one flaw, and I believe, the real root of the problem is, MMOs by design aren't able to have good stories.
Because of the open shared world nature of them, stories in MMOs aren't able to have the depth of real stories or carry with them the same feeling of consequence and they also fail to properly connect the players to the story. In a sense, the very thing that makes MMOs extremely successful for socialization and player versus player makes them extremely bad at storytelling.
So let's take a look at them.
Consequence
You've just spent several hours doing quests in an area in an attempt to help the local town rid themselves of their trouble, you've cleared out their mines of troublemaking monsters, routed bandits from their fields and even saved some innocent people along the way.
So what's the problem? Well, if you where to return to this town several hours later, you'd discover that nothing has actually changed, monsters are still running rampant in the mines, bandits are still pillaging the locals and the people you brought to safety are still in the cages from where you originally saved them. Only difference is now there are other people running around doing the same menial and petty task you had to undertake.
This is also reflected in the most core aspect of most MMOs, the dungeons and raids. In most MMO's, a dungeon is and instanced zone (meaning it is a zone separate from the outside world with very little to no interactions between it and the real world, meant to accommodate a certain sized group), where a small group of people between usually 4 or 5, are trying to advance a story, it usually wading your way through a group of enemies of all shapes and sizes, using a variety of tactics, until you reach one of several bosses, once you slay said boss you advance trough he same process until you finish the dungeon.
A raid is like a dungeon in essence, only on a larger scale, it can accommodate, 8, 10, 16, 25 or up to 40 players. The length of raids is usually much more substantial as well, dungeons usually house between 3 and 5 bosses at most, raids have gone up to 15.
So what's the problem with these? Again, a distinct lack of consequence. Several hours later you can queue up and do the same dungeon again, and the exact same monsters will be there, in the exact same spots, same with the exact same bosses.
Worst still, dungeon and raid bosses are often times powerful and influential figure heads of the MMO world, they are supposed to drive on and advance the story. However apart from one or two small quests related to these dungeons or raids, the story doesn't feel like it has actually advanced, the same old monsters will continue to inhabit the dungeon afterwards and the world will go on in its own version of groundhog day outside of it, oblivious to whatever you have done.
Now MMO creators have tried to spice up the above formulas in some ways in an attempt to add consequence to their stories or break up the monotony and tedium of questing. Ideas and concepts like several questing areas per level range, optional bosses, small cut scenes and cinematic, multi path dungeons and more instanced story zones and dynamic quests, phasing, have all been tried.
However in the end you ultimately realize that, it's all still an illusion, it can be a cleverly crafted illusion, but in the end it is still an illusion, all the MMOs out there are guilty of this, all of their stories just lack consequence. This lack of consequence ties up into the next problem.
Disconnection from the story
The above issues I've raised are not only a problem in their own right, but they also have another adverse consequence, and that is, making you feel alienated from the story. In other games going around and ridding a kingdom of monsters can have a huge impact, the roads become safer, people will recognize you and cheer your name, new towns could rise up, castles could be destroyed, other quests could open up in those areas.
However some go even farther than that, in a lot of newer and more modern games you also have the option to kill certain very important NPCs, often times this can completely change a story, either closing out certain arcs while opening up others. In an MMO you can't do that, because it goes off the premise that everybody needs to be able to experience the content, thus if you kill an important character to live your own story, you close it up for everybody else.
Make no mistake even in other more heavily story driven games, there aren't really an infinity of choices, but there are enough of them, and with enough consequences and tie ins to make you feel truly connected to the world and your character.
Thus because in an MMO your freedom is limited, at least as far as story goes, your character development is also limited. And this is the part that really sucks you out of the game, because your character development is limited, you never properly bond to your character and thus you feel even more disconnected from the story.
And if somehow, you did manage to develop a bond with your character, even if the game provided enough of an illusion for you to feel special, powerful and awesome, that illusion is quickly shattered the very instant you run into another character, that looks nearly identical to you, because he is dressed the same, rides the same mount and brandishes the same title as you.
All the hard work you put into defeating the "Order of the Council of Deep Shadows", all the effort it took to take scraps of their armor and forge it into your own mighty set, all the glory you basked in when the king of the land bestowed you with the title of "Bane of the Council of Deep Shadows", all that is suddenly rendered null and void, because you realize you are just another clone, and then you are left with an empty hollow where once was happiness, satisfaction and maybe pride.
Thus, because you never really connect to the story and your character, or even your companions (if the game allows you to have them) , you do not, and cannot feel like you are playing your own story, and you are right, because you aren't playing your own story at all, you are playing the people's story, the masses story.
The true freedom and consequence of what this open ended world is supposed to offer, is just out of reach. You can't kill the King of the Land of Eternal Light, and become its tyrannical new ruler, except if it's part of everybody's story, thus everybody is king. You can't bust in on another player's dungeon, backstab him and escape with all his hard earned treasure, likewise this player you've just wronged can't go on an epic journey of his own to become even more powerful and exact revenge upon your cowardly hide.
And since all of these issues are inner connected it more then makes sense that it ties up with the last issue of stories in MMO's.
Depth
Crafting enough quests in an MMO to keep people busy until the next expansion is quite a tall order. Thus in this crafting process a lot of characters are made forgettable with no deep story, it's just another one of dozens of farmers in trouble with the local pillagers, another miner troubled by dark monsters, another traveler wronged by bandits.
Because MMO's just have to be able to keep people enthralled for long enough for it to become profitable, then the process of quest making and storytelling is often times streamlined, simplified and, as a consequence loses depth. It's a problem of quantity over quality.
You can't have quality if you need to have this much quantity and you absolutely need to have quantity because the rate at which people go through content is very fast, and at the moment is several orders of magnitude faster than the speed and ease at which devs can create content.
This issue, coupled with the lack of real consequence in stories, the lack of connection to the story world, to the NPCs and ultimately to your own character, just makes stories in MMOs by design, unworkable.
This wouldn't be a huge problem in its own right, it could just mean that MMO developers need to move away from static story driven quests and need to explore other options, either just pure action and player versus player options, truly open world or a brand new, absolutely never done before method of storytelling and content generation.
However, the real issue is that, a lot of the game developers that are trying to move into the MMO business have a very long history of creating great, deep, and involving stories, some of which have such a deep and long lasting impact that people will remember them fondly for years to come, just like good movies, some of us will even occasionally replay an old game, regardless of how dated the game starts to look, that magic that made it great has a timeless quality.
This all leads into the final topic I want to discuss, the last great flaw of MMOs, and of course, in a genre as specialized as this, the consequences of this flaw do spill into why we don't have a good story, but it is also its own separate problem.
MMO's thrive on boring gameplay
This will probably sound counter intuitive to a lot of you. You may ask, how can a game thrive on gameplay elements that are not fun? Well, they do it by bombarding you with design elements that are addictive, some can be fun, some may not be, but all serve the same purpose, to keep you pinned to the game for as long as possible, either by providing an illusion of amusement to keep you from feeling the really boring parts of the game, or by providing work arounds so you can temporarily escape the otherwise boring/tedious gameplay elements.
To understand this I'll need to go off topic a little bit and talk about an experiment that is very relevant to most of today's gaming issues.
Scientists decided to run a small test on lab rats. The rats were separated into two control groups. In one of the cages they installed a device that would dispense small pellets of food whenever the rats would press on a lever. The other group of rats had a similar device put into their cage, but this one was designed to drop food pellets at random intervals of being pressed.
What happened was quite interesting, the rats that had food being dispensed each time they pressed the lever just relaxed and only pressed it when they were hungry. The other group however was pressing the lever to the point it almost became an addiction.
You can probably see where this is going, and even though you may hate to have your thought patterns associated with that of a lowly rodent, truth of the matter is, our brains work the same way.
If you put in even a little bit of time and effort into a game, you become slightly invested and attached to it. A magical sword, while worth nothing in real life, just a set of binary code, is worth a lot to a gamer who put in just the right time or effort to get it, and game devs abuse this fact.
This is why the first few levels of an MMO are always the fastest to go trough and often times the most rewarding. You gain loot quickly, become visibly stronger and gain access to lots of shiny new abilities. Then the experience gradually slows down to the point where the true purpose of the game becomes apparent, it is to keep you trapped in this isolated little universe for long enough that you develop a desire to spend additional money on the game. Either trough a subscription based system, where you must pay monthly installments just to gain access to the game or micro-transaction based systems where you may be tempted to buy booster packs, cool looking armor sets or flashy means of transportation.
The real purpose of MMOs is to make you addicted and keep you hooked for as long as possible for the purpose of milking as much money out of you as possible. A lot of times fun and enjoyment aren't included into this. Often they are just a means to an end.
This issue in particular I absolutely loathe, it sickens me to my core, because it goes against the very thing a game is, or should be.
If you google definition of a game you'll get " an activity that one engages in for amusement." and it is also synonymous with entertainment, divertissement, amusement. Since when has it been ok for an activity, that is supposed to be fun, entertaining, amusing etc, to contain elements that are, repetitive, tedious and boring?
My answer is, it was never ok and it never should be ok. And this is at the core of the design flaw of MMOs, they aren't real games, or, to put it another way, their design willingly contradicts the design of what makes a true game. This flaw is what seeps into the storytelling side of the game as well.
Conclusion
MMOs at their very core are flawed, they aren't designed to entertain, they are designed to enthrall, and this flaw corrupts and perverts the very foundation of what a game is supposed to be, it makes for boring, repetitive, and tedious stories, with limited choices, no consequences and nearly no depth.
MMO's are a blight upon modern gaming, and it is unfortunately growing rapidly.
To a certain extent, I guess it was inevitable, game development isn't getting any easier, and developers feel more and more like they need to guarantee profits. That is understandable, however what isn't is that developers have become increasingly more concerned with making money than with making good games.
Game development is supposed to be about making games that are as fun, as entertaining and as engaging as possible, that could leave as long a lasting impression for as long as possible. But then gaming became corporate, and corporations care about one thing and one thing only, money, the bottom line is money, and only money. make money whatever means, regardless of who or what you need to step on, morals and ethics be damned.
When did we allow the definition of games to go from " an activity that one engages in for amusement." to " manipulate (a situation), typically in a way that is unfair or unscrupulous."?
Each time a new, big game dev, with a history of making story driven games, announces his plans to make a MMO, I grow more and more sad. I think with horror at the days when there will be young people running around, wasting their time harvesting thousands of dragon scales, chopping up hundreds of dragon bones just to make their latest dragon armor in The Elder Scrolls online.
Or the what ifs had World of Warcraft or The Old Republic never been made, how we could have potentially enjoyed a mature, rich, deep and engaging story, unbound by restrictions of keeping parity and order within certain groups of players that inhabit the game worlds.
At The Old Republic I look at in particular because they have had the most drive and focus placed on story. However at the end of the day, if you where to, say remove all the MMO aspects would it be a better game? I can say, beyond a shadow of a doubt, absolutely, it could have been Bioware's crowning achievement, one to be celebrated and enjoyed for years to come.
Instead we got an ok story and another generic, run of the mill MMO, still lacking in true consequence and depth, still leaving you feeling disconnected from the story and still bombarding you with dozens of boring and tedious activities, designed to keep you hooked.
Oh how ironic that would be, for me who has loved games all his life and has tried to make others accept them, to find that he no longer enjoys them and thus move on to other activities.
I was born a gamer at heart, I know that, but at the rate the gaming world is going, I'm not sure what I will die as, because it certainly won't be a gamer.
TLDR: MMO's are flawed at their core, because, by design, they are made to enthrall people in boring and monotone activities. They go against the principle of a game, to provide fun, satisfaction and enjoyment.
Because of this and other reasons MMO's lack good stories, their mutiplayer design disallows the freedom to make good consequential choices, to form bonds with your character or the game world.
Thus MMOs are poor storytelling mediums.
The future of games is in our hands and it is our duty, if we want to continue to have good, story driven games, to make our voices heard. Trough the forums, or even at the game shop, refusing to buy all the repetitive MMO's.
 
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While I understand your perspective and conclusion, I have to disagree with one point. They aren't going to phase out other games. There have always been horrible games that kids waste time on (and honestly any activity is a waste of time). Think of any of the thousand of games for the NES or SNES besides Super Mario games. Most were poorly designed but those few games that were magic is what defined the consoles.
I would say that The Last of Us(PS3 2013) will be remembered as one of the most compelling stories every told through games to date and it is brand new.
MMOs I agree aren't great for story telling, however the technological advancement and elevated social status of games over the last 10 years are very likely setting the stage for the next generation of games. Maybe soon we will see movie theaters have video games played on large screens. I mean the last of us could easily be split in to a trilogy.
Great games will always be few and far between.
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I agree with this, but there will always be demand for other types of games. The nature of MMOs also restricts how many there can be at one time (in the sense that they are all competing to hook the same players on their game).
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4713 Posts
To be honest, I'm glad this is the case and that, there is still enough of a market for other games and a limited one for MMOs to the point where everyone just doesn't try to make one.
I hope that never changes, but it still saddens me deeply whenever a well known dev or a well known single player franchise goes MMO. I hope this all just cools down one day. I'm not saying we shouldn't have MMOs at all, I'm just saying I want there to be other things then MMO, I want story driven games.
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United States12224 Posts
By their nature, MMOs are designed primarily to be social engines. It's fun meeting new people, bringing in existing friends to play with you, and helping each other to improve in the game, and that applies to most any genre. WoW in its later years has, ironically, begun focusing more on intricate solo storylines to try and recreate those moments where you knew you had a lasting impact. Their phasing technology can create different instances of the same section of open world based on how far along you are in your questline. For example, there was one series of quests in Northrend where you had to infiltrate this base, overthrow the leadership, and take it over to use as your own base which became a quest hub. If you had completed this quest series and that area was transformed, anyone who hadn't yet completed that series couldn't see you when you traveled there because they were still stuck in an earlier phase. They've even started tying in full-scale cinematics to the ends of big raids. However, even Blizzard only realized that they needed to invent these kinds of immersive technologies after years of what you described -- events that only feel meaningful for a fleeting moment.
One of the cool things about MMOs is the vanity. It's really easy to show off something you've done. People will talk to you, either to congratulate you or ask you how you got the thing you're brandishing. "Complete the quest chain from here" "Oh cool I didn't realize there were quests out there." That's an element that developers will definitely want to keep.
Another interesting part of MMOs is how the players can develop their own stories. There's drama when the biggest guild dissolves, rumors (whether planted or true) of a guild planning to invade a nearby zone, role playing events. This is the kind of stuff that developers can't control and what makes the genre so unique.
It's true that the gameplay is usually pretty straightforward and simple. The best games find a way to create a skill gap, but that transcends genre as well.
I actually disagree that MMOs are becoming more prevalent. I think that was the case about 4 or 5 years ago where subscription models were more common. Now things seem to be heading more in the free-to-play (microtransaction) direction, in my estimation.
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Good write up, the main big problem is Consequence with MMO's. That's what is killing MMO's IMO. There just isnt any real danger or sense of real change in an MMO now a days. Ive tried a ton of MMOs that have tried to bullshit their way around this and say HEY LOOK WE HAVE CONSEQUENCE. GW2 was a joke, you save the town and it changes the quest to one other random thing then resets?????? Sorry.
Think about a game like SWTOR. Imagine if you were a real bounty hunter and you could actually capture other players characters freeze em in carbonite, and sell them to someone who would ransom the person back to their guild. Or their guild would have to try and forcefully get him back. This is the shit I want to happen, its about as hardcore as you can get. But thats what this genre needs. That right there would beat the fuck out of any bullshit MMO storyline the devs could think of. The successful MMO's in the future are the ones that will create their own story line from things that happen to the players.
Nothing beats that EVE online story about the guy who smurfed his way into the top guild, then sabotaged all their defenses at 2am while the rest of his guild took over everything and destroyed a few years of farming. that is so hardcore and so legendary.
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Sorry, but I have plenty of fun playing WoW no matter how many times you say MMO's aren't about having fun. You should probably put this effort to use in something useful rather than telling huge swaths of people that they aren't really having fun playing a particular game. In fact, the emergence and popularity of MOBA's pretty much totally invalidates your point about MMO's exerting any sort of endemic influence; MMO's and MOBA's are antithetical in a host of ways.
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4713 Posts
On November 06 2013 03:54 farvacola wrote:
Sorry, but I have plenty of fun playing WoW no matter how many times you say MMO's aren't about having fun. You should probably put this effort to use in something useful rather than telling huge swaths of people that they aren't really having fun playing a particular game. In fact, the emergence and popularity of MOBA's pretty much totally invalidates your point about MMO's exerting any sort of endemic influence; MMO's and MOBA's are antithetical in a host of ways.
MMO's and MoBA's aren't anything alike. While one contains gameplay elements that are purposefully tedious, boring and entrapping, for the purpose of making you linger, the other has action packed and and fun gameplay that keeps you in trough its own merits.
The shear combination of potential hero/champion match ups, item match ups and skill discrepancies add up to a ridiculously massive number of possible permutations of how a game can play out to the point that even if you are still doing the same relative thing, killing creeps, destroying towers, pushing lanes and killing heroes, it still leads for a lot of fun and action packed games.
MMOs don't have that, you still quest in more or less the same way, travel the same way, fight the same way, and progress the same way towards your end game goal, where you do the same thing over and over again.
But hey, if repetition and tedium are your kind of fun, don't allow me to break your bubble, just don't put MMO's and MoBAs in the same boat, design wise they aren't alike.
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One thing I'll say, this write-up isn't about MMOs. It's about a certain type of MMO. Games like Planetside 2 come to mind as a direct contradiction to what you're saying about MMOs. For one thing, a player of planetside 2 is under no illusion that their individual contribution really affects much. It's about the grand scheme of the battle and groups of people assaulting and defending, not individuals. But the battleground definitely changes as time goes by. When a faction controls a base, they keep it until another faction takes it away. You want direct consequences? It doesn't get much more direct than that.
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On November 06 2013 04:02 Destructicon wrote:Show nested quote +On November 06 2013 03:54 farvacola wrote:
Sorry, but I have plenty of fun playing WoW no matter how many times you say MMO's aren't about having fun. You should probably put this effort to use in something useful rather than telling huge swaths of people that they aren't really having fun playing a particular game. In fact, the emergence and popularity of MOBA's pretty much totally invalidates your point about MMO's exerting any sort of endemic influence; MMO's and MOBA's are antithetical in a host of ways. MMO's and MoBA's aren't anything alike. While one contains gameplay elements that are purposefully tedious, boring and entrapping, for the purpose of making you linger, the other has action packed and and fun gameplay that keeps you in trough its own merits. The shear combination of potential hero/champion match ups, item match ups and skill discrepancies add up to a ridiculously massive number of possible permutations of how a game can play out to the point that even if you are still doing the same relative thing, killing creeps, destroying towers, pushing lanes and killing heroes, it still leads for a lot of fun and action packed games. MMOs don't have that, you still quest in more or less the same way, travel the same way, fight the same way, and progress the same way towards your end game goal, where you do the same thing over and over again. But hey, if repetition and tedium are your kind of fun, don't allow me to break your bubble, just don't put MMO's and MoBAs in the same boat, design wise they aren't alike.
You probably need to check out what antithetical means.
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The ideal story for an MMO is one created by the players themselves.
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4713 Posts
On November 06 2013 04:04 farvacola wrote:Show nested quote +On November 06 2013 04:02 Destructicon wrote:On November 06 2013 03:54 farvacola wrote:
Sorry, but I have plenty of fun playing WoW no matter how many times you say MMO's aren't about having fun. You should probably put this effort to use in something useful rather than telling huge swaths of people that they aren't really having fun playing a particular game. In fact, the emergence and popularity of MOBA's pretty much totally invalidates your point about MMO's exerting any sort of endemic influence; MMO's and MOBA's are antithetical in a host of ways. MMO's and MoBA's aren't anything alike. While one contains gameplay elements that are purposefully tedious, boring and entrapping, for the purpose of making you linger, the other has action packed and and fun gameplay that keeps you in trough its own merits. The shear combination of potential hero/champion match ups, item match ups and skill discrepancies add up to a ridiculously massive number of possible permutations of how a game can play out to the point that even if you are still doing the same relative thing, killing creeps, destroying towers, pushing lanes and killing heroes, it still leads for a lot of fun and action packed games. MMOs don't have that, you still quest in more or less the same way, travel the same way, fight the same way, and progress the same way towards your end game goal, where you do the same thing over and over again. But hey, if repetition and tedium are your kind of fun, don't allow me to break your bubble, just don't put MMO's and MoBAs in the same boat, design wise they aren't alike. You probably need to check out what antithetical means.
I'm not sure what your argument is then. My argument on MMO's is that contain boring, tedious and repetitive gameplay and also are a poor medium in general for storytelling, you then direct me to MoBAs but also remind me that MoBAs are complexly different from MMOs?
I also forgot to add, not only are MoBAs unlike MMOs in that they don't contain bad gameplay elements, they aren't MMOs in the sense that you don't share a massive world with other players, you are contained in a small arena, 5 vs 5, or 3 vs 3 in general.
If you're trying to tell me MoBAs are MMOs but with fun features then you don't fully understand what a MoBA or a MMO is.
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Part of your post revolves around the idea that MMO's exert undue influence on the game making/buying population in terms of what is popular and what people enjoy. My point in mentioning MOBA's is that, considering just how popular LoL and DotA are, MMO's are clearly not shaping taste in games the way you suggest they do.
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United States24495 Posts
I have given a bit of thought to MMOs as well. The only one I have actually played much at all is WoW so I don't know how different my ideas would be if I had exposure to more games. I have played a considerable number of single player console games over the years, and some online computer games of other genres, as well.
Both of the criticisms of MMOs you make seem true to me. Story just works differently in an MMO than it does in most other types of games... for the reasons you gave. WoW has an interesting lore, but a plot that is very spread out and often twisted out of any type of logical chronology if you don't play the game exactly the way the developers intended. Also many elements of the gameplay are designed with the intention of keeping you a paying customer, rather than simply maximizing some measure of fun.
However, most games are 'sellouts' in one way or another nowadays. The way in which an MMO is a sellout is pretty obvious. However in many ways SC2 sold us out (there were plenty of threads complaining about this, for sure). Console games, unwilling to spend tremendous amounts of money creating a huge world with performance-pushing graphics, sell out and have half of the game take place in small, very beautiful hallways, with only a couple of large, impressive areas that fully utilize the graphical capabilities of the next generation system (refusing to just tone down the graphics a bit to have a larger 3d world). I recall tremendous amounts of complaining about how Diablo 3 was different than our beloved D2. The list goes on and on.
There are some gaming purists who refuse to play games that put making money ahead of all else, and stick to those occasional indie games made by people who wish it was still the 70s, 80s, or 90s. Honestly I have nothing against someone who approaches gaming this way. However, I think we should hold MMOs to the same standards as we do all the other games which suffer from the types of problems we've seen. They often sell us out. It's our job not to collectively object to one of the genres where this happens, but pressure the creators of games in these genres to find a more reasonable balance.
If you want to play a game with a good story that is not disjointed, you shouldn't be playing an MMO. Many of my favorite games (non MMO) have had virtually no story. Some of the most famous games ever have no story, or simply don't have that good of a story. Having a good story is not a requirement for a good game. It is a very good idea to have a good story in a traditional-style RPG of course... but not in a sports game or MMO.
If you want to play a game devoid of large amounts of repetitive elements, you have two choices. One is you can play another game type besides an MMO. The other is you can play the MMO in the way you choose to. The nice thing about an MMO is how there are so many things you can do and so many ways you can do it. You don't have to complete the most recent raid 7 times a week, farming for that last piece of Best in Slot armor. You don't have to do fishing dailies for 30 minutes every day for 3 months, with the purpose of maxing out reputations so you can get a mount that walks on water, or a raft that lets you fish... in the middle of the lake! There are many different ways to level, and many things to do besides leveling. There are many things to do at max level, or you can always create new characters.
MMOs might need to be kept in check, but their apparent inherent weaknesses just mean it won't be the only type of game worth playing for most people. MMOs have a lot to offer that most other game-types don't. I won't address how horribly addicting they can be (ie southpark), as I haven't personally suffered from that... but that's a whole new conversation worth having.
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I'm seeing a lot of emphasis on the lack of story being a major contributor to the "bane of modern gaming" in this blog post. I don't see it as such; at least not to the extent as you make it out to be. You claim to be an "older generation gamer" and criticize the lack of story in MMOs, and yet, many great games of the past didn't have much of a story to begin with. All you needed to know was that "the princess is in another castle", and that was enough to keep one's hands on the controller.
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I think the biggest issue is that World of Warcraft was too big and too good? Seriously World of Warcraft was like the perfect storm. They had a strong fanbase ( from wc3), and the game was excellent and just a totally new experience at that time.
(Also CEOS saw the amount blizzard was making from WoW and are trying to milk that)
No other MMO even comes close to the amazement and grandeur that was world of warcraft. Unless another company takes a totally different approach all other MMOs are just an attempt to be WoW clones. I think korean mmos are in the right trend? (think gunbound, maplestory??, dragon's nest,) etc. They do not try to emulate the awesome and grandeur that was WoW.
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I will draw a lot of comparisons to hack and slays (diablo 2 and 3), because they are the games that were more or less the predecessors of WoW and they share a lot of gameplay-similarities like item-spiral, leveling-spiral, multiplayer support etc.
@Story: There were tries to create better stories/better presentation of stories for mmos, e.g. sw:tor. It would even work if the whole system wasnt as flawed overall and the credibility would lack as a result.
@Consequence: Consequence is a general flaw in the world of RPGs, not just mmorpgs. You always have to find a balance between players who want to grind (sounds odd, but think of the old final fantasy-games and other rpgs) and players who want a more "realistic" world where a dead enemy stays dead (like gothic 1 where you could pretty much kill every single npc). In the same way that creating flow by spawning always enemies that are slightly weaker than the player ruins the credibility of a game, respawning enemies does it. Grinding can be fun if the gameplay and leveling system are fun. Games like japanese tactical rpgs (fft, ffta, disgaea) are prove of that.
But that's where i see the real weakness: The gameplay.
It is boring and repetitive. Things like global cooldown take a lot of speed out of the fights and as a result of the addictive leveling-spiral you have lots of similar abilities, which makes handling the amount of abilities the "difficulty" and not intelligent usage.
The problem that everything needs to be balanced increases that misery. MMORPGS often contain small pvp-elements, and even if they dont they have a linked community where you can easily see each other in action. Envy becomes common suddenly (look at d3 again, sw:tor is a good example for this as well), which stops the developers from creating unique rewards for classes and signature-abilities that are over the top like lightning fury or frozen orb in d2, because they fear that it will become broken easily. Suddenly most classes play themselves more or less the same, especially if they share their role. D2 was fantastic because every class had abilities that were totally over the top and devastated entire screens, d3 is lacking in that regard and the mmorpgs i played are a catastrophe in terms of ability-design.
To make things worse the item-spiral results in a load of items, even more than arpgs like diablo drop. Since everything is streamlined to create the smooth leveling and item-flow, you update your gear every five minutes, which makes quest-rewards less tempting and reduce the importance of quests even further. Killing a dragon and finding a magic blazing sword is just half as awesome when the magic sword is sold five minutes later because the wild boar dropped a better one.
On November 06 2013 04:05 spinesheath wrote:
The ideal story for an MMO is one created by the players themselves.
Sounds like d&d. Sadly that's impossible for a game not hosted by a human. A lot of bioware-games tried to give players a bit of freedom in their decisions, but you can never achieve total freedom in a game.
Besides the reason why it's criticized in the op is that mmos usually have worse stories than the average rpg, not that they cant solve the problem rpg-devs cant. They usually have close to no story at all for 3/4 of their quests.
Or did you mean that players write quests for mmos? How do you get the players to do that?
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4713 Posts
On November 06 2013 05:33 micronesia wrote:
I have given a bit of thought to MMOs as well. The only one I have actually played much at all is WoW so I don't know how different my ideas would be if I had exposure to more games. I have played a considerable number of single player console games over the years, and some online computer games of other genres, as well.
Both of the criticisms of MMOs you make seem true to me. Story just works differently in an MMO than it does in most other types of games... for the reasons you gave. WoW has an interesting lore, but a plot that is very spread out and often twisted out of any type of logical chronology if you don't play the game exactly the way the developers intended. Also many elements of the gameplay are designed with the intention of keeping you a paying customer, rather than simply maximizing some measure of fun.
However, most games are 'sellouts' in one way or another nowadays. The way in which an MMO is a sellout is pretty obvious. However in many ways SC2 sold us out (there were plenty of threads complaining about this, for sure). Console games, unwilling to spend tremendous amounts of money creating a huge world with performance-pushing graphics, sell out and have half of the game take place in small, very beautiful hallways, with only a couple of large, impressive areas that fully utilize the graphical capabilities of the next generation system (refusing to just tone down the graphics a bit to have a larger 3d world). I recall tremendous amounts of complaining about how Diablo 3 was different than our beloved D2. The list goes on and on.
There are some gaming purists who refuse to play games that put making money ahead of all else, and stick to those occasional indie games made by people who wish it was still the 70s, 80s, or 90s. Honestly I have nothing against someone who approaches gaming this way. However, I think we should hold MMOs to the same standards as we do all the other games which suffer from the types of problems we've seen. They often sell us out. It's our job not to collectively object to one of the genres where this happens, but pressure the creators of games in these genres to find a more reasonable balance.
If you want to play a game with a good story that is not disjointed, you shouldn't be playing an MMO. Many of my favorite games (non MMO) have had virtually no story. Some of the most famous games ever have no story, or simply don't have that good of a story. Having a good story is not a requirement for a good game. It is a very good idea to have a good story in a traditional-style RPG of course... but not in a sports game or MMO.
If you want to play a game devoid of large amounts of repetitive elements, you have two choices. One is you can play another game type besides an MMO. The other is you can play the MMO in the way you choose to. The nice thing about an MMO is how there are so many things you can do and so many ways you can do it. You don't have to complete the most recent raid 7 times a week, farming for that last piece of Best in Slot armor. You don't have to do fishing dailies for 30 minutes every day for 3 months, with the purpose of maxing out reputations so you can get a mount that walks on water, or a raft that lets you fish... in the middle of the lake! There are many different ways to level, and many things to do besides leveling. There are many things to do at max level, or you can always create new characters.
MMOs might need to be kept in check, but their apparent inherent weaknesses just mean it won't be the only type of game worth playing for most people. MMOs have a lot to offer that most other game-types don't. I won't address how horribly addicting they can be (ie southpark), as I haven't personally suffered from that... but that's a whole new conversation worth having.
Thanks for the post. I do agree about a lot of other games being sellouts, but I tried to not touch on that and mostly went for a pure MMO discussion since it feels that in that regard they are the biggest offenders.
I personal already do follow your advice, I don't play MMOs, and if I do I only play for the story elements and abandon them after I have consumed that. The social aspects of it no longer intrigue me.
I do accept that MMO's have a lot of positives and can do some things other genres can't. My biggest gripe however is the alarming number of devs that have mainly specialized either in story driven games or completely different genres that try to make MMO's. In this particular case I feel that they are wasting their talents and their energies and they truly are selling out their core audience just to make money.
I'm glad someone mentioned Planetside as an example, because that's the kind of a MMO that sounds a lot better then the previous inceptions, you remove the story elements that don't work but leave the open nature of the world intact and, unhindered by story can allow the players to have greater freedom and impact upon the world.
I also agree that the future of story based MMO's is for them to be entirely player driven.
Its this trend of storyteller devs moving to MMO's that I refer to as a blight upon gaming, I probably didn't make myself clear in this regard, so in that case I apologize but I do thank you all for the feedback and your thoughts.
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MMO's being grindfests isn't a consequence of the genre, it's just developers being boring and conservative.
As for the storylines being poorly written or disjointed,
On November 06 2013 04:05 spinesheath wrote:
The ideal story for an MMO is one created by the players themselves.
This is the main reason people have such nostalgia for older MMOs; people could make their own adventures. Newer MMO's, including the WoW expansions, have gone out of their way to remove the elements of mystery and player conflict.
I'm wondering if Blizzard plans on recapturing this sandbox-esque feel for their next big MMO. They're definitely taking their time in making it o.o
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On November 06 2013 04:11 Destructicon wrote:Show nested quote +On November 06 2013 04:04 farvacola wrote:On November 06 2013 04:02 Destructicon wrote:On November 06 2013 03:54 farvacola wrote:
Sorry, but I have plenty of fun playing WoW no matter how many times you say MMO's aren't about having fun. You should probably put this effort to use in something useful rather than telling huge swaths of people that they aren't really having fun playing a particular game. In fact, the emergence and popularity of MOBA's pretty much totally invalidates your point about MMO's exerting any sort of endemic influence; MMO's and MOBA's are antithetical in a host of ways. MMO's and MoBA's aren't anything alike. While one contains gameplay elements that are purposefully tedious, boring and entrapping, for the purpose of making you linger, the other has action packed and and fun gameplay that keeps you in trough its own merits. The shear combination of potential hero/champion match ups, item match ups and skill discrepancies add up to a ridiculously massive number of possible permutations of how a game can play out to the point that even if you are still doing the same relative thing, killing creeps, destroying towers, pushing lanes and killing heroes, it still leads for a lot of fun and action packed games. MMOs don't have that, you still quest in more or less the same way, travel the same way, fight the same way, and progress the same way towards your end game goal, where you do the same thing over and over again. But hey, if repetition and tedium are your kind of fun, don't allow me to break your bubble, just don't put MMO's and MoBAs in the same boat, design wise they aren't alike. You probably need to check out what antithetical means. I'm not sure what your argument is then. My argument on MMO's is that contain boring, tedious and repetitive gameplay and also are a poor medium in general for storytelling, you then direct me to MoBAs but also remind me that MoBAs are complexly different from MMOs? I also forgot to add, not only are MoBAs unlike MMOs in that they don't contain bad gameplay elements, they aren't MMOs in the sense that you don't share a massive world with other players, you are contained in a small arena, 5 vs 5, or 3 vs 3 in general. If you're trying to tell me MoBAs are MMOs but with fun features then you don't fully understand what a MoBA or a MMO is.
I think he was trying to tell you that the rise of Dota-games (xD) is the proof of the fact that MMOs dont negatively influence the gaming market in the way that everyone tries to use their concepts in their games, as Mobas are very popular atm and have very little similarities.
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