23rd July 2004, 6:33 PM
Here's the thing about those types of games. They tend to eat up your time in a LOT of boring things, namely getting XP. Sure, there are plenty of fun things to do I suppose, but when there is such a SHARP difficulty curve, you MUST level up, and when you need so much XP to level up, and the only way to level up at any good rate is taking on creatures just slightly stronger than you (requiring a party, which will cut into the XP), and then when you die, you LOSE XP, well, it's fairly easy to get frustrated beyond belief.
However, there is a VERY obvious reason why they would eat up your time with such boring things. Money. There is a monthly fee involved after all, and it would be silly to think that ALL that money goes to server costs. SOME of it certainly goes into the programmer's hands. So, they keep you paying the fee by dragging out your play time as much as possible. When it is truly warrented, in the form of a LOT of varied quests and special events, there's no problem. However, the tactic of just making us spend most of our time levelling up is NOT what I call good. That's why I'm interested in games like City of Heroes and World of Warcraft.
You see, they seem to be, in their own ways, dealing with these issues. Both apparently allow much faster levelling up than normal. Both also don't punish you for dying by taking levels. Warcraft allows you to get some sort of XP boost when you haven't played in a while, so you can catch up with the people who somehow find the time to go into the game 24/7 without having to do what they do. However, it still suggests there is a lot of XP gathering to do. COH however seems to just make the XP requirements low enough that you can easily level up, by yourself, several levels in just a few hours. More than that, you can actually team up with your friends even if they are REALLY low level and have a GOOD party out of it thanks to the sidekick system. Now, I don't know if the sidekick manages to gain XP for their "true" level (as in, their XP is gained with the amount gained from enemies being determined by the sidekick level and the amount needed determined by true level), but it REALLY seems like the best way to go. From the experience I've had lately playing around with a few of these things, there's NOTHING more aggrivating than getting your friends to play, and finding out a week later that due to one or the other playing more or less often, you are suddenly so different in levels that you can't accomplish anything as a team except watch the weaker guy die over and over again, and level down (and the term "level down" should NOT exist, thank you MMORPGs for creating that lovely "feature" for us!). Also, City of Villians is supposed to finally add a whole lot of extra things to do so that MMORPG (that's really not a good acro...) will be as "full" as the rest.
Basically, there are two things about MMORGPs that annoy me, as things stand right now. One, tediousness. Way too much time spent on the most annoying aspects of any RPG (ah yes, I ALSO don't like having to run for my life from super strong monsters placed right next to the monsters I have to fight anyway for decent XP), and this also goes for other things like money gathering (though some really do make it easy to get money, just not from monsters, ever), and special leveling ups, like "crafting" in one where to be better at crafting in a certain class, you have to do really pathetic crafts over and over again, loosing the items involved in the craft, possibly many times, in the process. That's not fun, it's annoying. Another bit of tediousness is travelling. Now, a lot have these complicated quests to speed up travelling, and later REALLY complicated quests to actually get to go whereever you want in a flash, but considering the sheer size of these worlds (which they HAVE to be I understand), I would think they would give you SOMETHING aside from running on foot for HOURS on end to get from one place to another from the START.
Second, dull quests. Now, some of these quests are really pretty fun, but for the most part you are kinda doing the same thing over and over. Essentially, there are 3 basic quest types I've seen so far. One, go somewhere and get something. Two, go somewhere and kill something. Three, town quests, these are the most fun actually. Now, one and two are standard fare actually for ALL RPGs, but they keep it interesting. In the ones I've played so far, it really IS just walking up to an interactible point, using the interact command, and running ALL the way back. No special events, normally no special boss encounters, no puzzles or interesting brainy bits, just run over there, click, run all the way back. Monsters are the same. I have fought THREE bosses in all the games I've played so far. Normally, on a monster hunt, it's not even a special rare monster. I've been told to "kill this type of monster until they drop these special items" I don't know HOW many times. Generally, it's done like that because since it's a persistant world, they want something anyone can do at any time. Gee, doesn't THAT make me feel special, to see 40 other people running around killing these creatures for the same item, occasionally one will run up to me and ask me if I have it, once RUDELY demanding I fork it over because, and I paraphrase "I died like 5 times here, the LEAST you could do is just give me that thing!", as though they were dying for my sake or something... Now, sometimes you get the special boss monster quests. These are fun because wow, you finally get to do something that makes you feel legendary. Too bad you don't get to do it in front of a crowd. You have to get an instanced dungeon... (gee, I could have done this in Neverwinter...), which is seperated from the World. Sure, there's the party you take with you, and it IS fun generally, but I wanted Massive...
Now, then there are those town quests. Here you interact with people. Some of them will send you on the same quests, in fact in two of the MMO~ that's all they did. In one though, they really made these quests all unique. Good thing too. I was passing out fliers, cooking meals, going shopping for people... um... wait that's not that legendary... well, I did have to rescue a kid and escort this diplomat. My point is that things were actually pretty unique, and thus kept my interest in what would otherwise have been a dull season...
So, actually I think I'll be liking City of Heroes with the City of Villians expansion the most from what I've read of that game. If I really get into this phenomenon, that's the one for me. Otherwise, it's just too... dull... I want the level of interaction and lack of boring nothingness I expect from a single player RPG.
However, there is a VERY obvious reason why they would eat up your time with such boring things. Money. There is a monthly fee involved after all, and it would be silly to think that ALL that money goes to server costs. SOME of it certainly goes into the programmer's hands. So, they keep you paying the fee by dragging out your play time as much as possible. When it is truly warrented, in the form of a LOT of varied quests and special events, there's no problem. However, the tactic of just making us spend most of our time levelling up is NOT what I call good. That's why I'm interested in games like City of Heroes and World of Warcraft.
You see, they seem to be, in their own ways, dealing with these issues. Both apparently allow much faster levelling up than normal. Both also don't punish you for dying by taking levels. Warcraft allows you to get some sort of XP boost when you haven't played in a while, so you can catch up with the people who somehow find the time to go into the game 24/7 without having to do what they do. However, it still suggests there is a lot of XP gathering to do. COH however seems to just make the XP requirements low enough that you can easily level up, by yourself, several levels in just a few hours. More than that, you can actually team up with your friends even if they are REALLY low level and have a GOOD party out of it thanks to the sidekick system. Now, I don't know if the sidekick manages to gain XP for their "true" level (as in, their XP is gained with the amount gained from enemies being determined by the sidekick level and the amount needed determined by true level), but it REALLY seems like the best way to go. From the experience I've had lately playing around with a few of these things, there's NOTHING more aggrivating than getting your friends to play, and finding out a week later that due to one or the other playing more or less often, you are suddenly so different in levels that you can't accomplish anything as a team except watch the weaker guy die over and over again, and level down (and the term "level down" should NOT exist, thank you MMORPGs for creating that lovely "feature" for us!). Also, City of Villians is supposed to finally add a whole lot of extra things to do so that MMORPG (that's really not a good acro...) will be as "full" as the rest.
Basically, there are two things about MMORGPs that annoy me, as things stand right now. One, tediousness. Way too much time spent on the most annoying aspects of any RPG (ah yes, I ALSO don't like having to run for my life from super strong monsters placed right next to the monsters I have to fight anyway for decent XP), and this also goes for other things like money gathering (though some really do make it easy to get money, just not from monsters, ever), and special leveling ups, like "crafting" in one where to be better at crafting in a certain class, you have to do really pathetic crafts over and over again, loosing the items involved in the craft, possibly many times, in the process. That's not fun, it's annoying. Another bit of tediousness is travelling. Now, a lot have these complicated quests to speed up travelling, and later REALLY complicated quests to actually get to go whereever you want in a flash, but considering the sheer size of these worlds (which they HAVE to be I understand), I would think they would give you SOMETHING aside from running on foot for HOURS on end to get from one place to another from the START.
Second, dull quests. Now, some of these quests are really pretty fun, but for the most part you are kinda doing the same thing over and over. Essentially, there are 3 basic quest types I've seen so far. One, go somewhere and get something. Two, go somewhere and kill something. Three, town quests, these are the most fun actually. Now, one and two are standard fare actually for ALL RPGs, but they keep it interesting. In the ones I've played so far, it really IS just walking up to an interactible point, using the interact command, and running ALL the way back. No special events, normally no special boss encounters, no puzzles or interesting brainy bits, just run over there, click, run all the way back. Monsters are the same. I have fought THREE bosses in all the games I've played so far. Normally, on a monster hunt, it's not even a special rare monster. I've been told to "kill this type of monster until they drop these special items" I don't know HOW many times. Generally, it's done like that because since it's a persistant world, they want something anyone can do at any time. Gee, doesn't THAT make me feel special, to see 40 other people running around killing these creatures for the same item, occasionally one will run up to me and ask me if I have it, once RUDELY demanding I fork it over because, and I paraphrase "I died like 5 times here, the LEAST you could do is just give me that thing!", as though they were dying for my sake or something... Now, sometimes you get the special boss monster quests. These are fun because wow, you finally get to do something that makes you feel legendary. Too bad you don't get to do it in front of a crowd. You have to get an instanced dungeon... (gee, I could have done this in Neverwinter...), which is seperated from the World. Sure, there's the party you take with you, and it IS fun generally, but I wanted Massive...
Now, then there are those town quests. Here you interact with people. Some of them will send you on the same quests, in fact in two of the MMO~ that's all they did. In one though, they really made these quests all unique. Good thing too. I was passing out fliers, cooking meals, going shopping for people... um... wait that's not that legendary... well, I did have to rescue a kid and escort this diplomat. My point is that things were actually pretty unique, and thus kept my interest in what would otherwise have been a dull season...
So, actually I think I'll be liking City of Heroes with the City of Villians expansion the most from what I've read of that game. If I really get into this phenomenon, that's the one for me. Otherwise, it's just too... dull... I want the level of interaction and lack of boring nothingness I expect from a single player RPG.
"On two occasions, I have been asked [by members of Parliament], 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?' I am not able to rightly apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question." ~ Charles Babbage (1791-1871)