The rotten legacy of the AAA MMO

[jamiehavok]

I gave up on mmo's when it became painfully obvious there was a fixation by players and publishers alike on trying to bypass 80% of the content, story, exploration and adventure as quickly as possible in a race to get to max level and then do the same tedious rinse and repeat content over and over again following a set formula (aka raid). MMOs may as well have a tutorial followed by a "/level 50" command, save themselves a lot of time developing content people ignore whilst looking for the closest "!" and have done.

Bah humbug... ��

this is exactly why i have liked only 2 mmos,

1 being classic final fantasy xi back when it took forever to reach level cap and the storys, world, exploration were awesome and the sheer challenge of some of the missions, actually i'm playing this with a new character now, but not rushing to level cap where 99% of the rest of the population is, instead i'm doing all the missions again with my npc mercenaries they added recently, its still quite challenging and a lot of fun though a bit lonely as there are like 600 people on the server at any one time and 500 of them are at lvl cap! sod end game ill probably finish most of the missions before i reach lvl cap except the latest expansion.

The other is the secret world, that game is less about end game, and the quests are again really involved and not about kill x amount of x, yes there is an end game but the story missions and quests they are starting to add quite regularly are where the game really shines,
never got into any mmo based on the wow formula.

 

[Curunen]

<snip>
I then went on to GW2.
It was OK, but I think it peaked to early. The first 30-40 levels aren't bad but then the next 40 or 50 were just dull grinds.
The skill were pretty meh. Having skills based on weapons was a nice touch but there's only 5 and often at least one of those is very situational. The other 4 weren't great either, often having pretty long recharges meaning they weren't part of an attack chain. It was done best on the Thief where the middle skill was unique based on the combination of right and left hand weapons. More classes should have had this.
Combat just felt mind-numbingly repetitive, even for a MMO. Personal stories were done well, but the missions were too far between, level-wise. The area missions were dull grindy kill X number of enemy Y missions. I hated those in CoH and SW:ToR and that's pretty much all GW2 had. They made a big thing about the mission system being different with no central hub. But you still had to go to the areas so it really saved you very little. CoH introduced a system where you could phone your contact to avoid travelling to them, this served the purpose just as well.
The events that happen that you can just join in were ok, but generally needed other players, too few and it wasn't fun, too many and it wasn't fun.
The system where you don't kill steal was nice but also annoyed me as sometimes I like to challenge myself to see if I can take out this enemy or that one solo. In most MMOs I've played people will respect that for the most part and leave you to it. In GW2 people would just run up and join in. I completed some skill points by just being in the area (pretty much), that no challenge or fun!
But for me the big disappointment was the grouping mechanic. Joining a team seemed to offer nothing more than a common chat channel. In most MMOs if you in a team you get a share of XP for being in range of the team. In GW2 you have to hit the enemies. If you're a melee character with high single target damage with a team of AoEers then it can be difficult to hit every enemy to get your share. Also means it hard to concentrate on non-combat roles like healing as you have to be hitting too. Yeah it means people can't leach, but they can be kicked if it's felt they're not pulling their weight the game doesn't need to force it. Because of this I never wanted to team in the game, which ruins an MMO for me.

I think wanting to play in a team and having a good community is what makes an MMO work. If you want to play solo then I think it's doing something wrong. Not as wrong as if you don't want to play at all, but...

PvE is mind numbingly boring in GW2 - the mob AI is awful, the grouping mechanic encourages mindless zerging all spamming auto attack, and instanced content (fractals/dungeons) are full of the most contrived BS...

It's funny because this is the gameplay most encouraged and developed for by the development - add to that the nonsensical addition of higher tier equipment (ascended/legendary...) and assosciated insane grinding... it is no better than any other mmo.

The only way to play GW2 PvE and have fun is to play super casually.

WvW and PvP is where the real action and fun is - using the combat mechanics in small scale fights against other players (not the blob vs blob on T1 wvw servers... this is equally stupid), but Anet don't seem to understand this and after 2 years the amount of content added in these two game modes is pathetically minimal. EotM should have been an amazing addition to WvW - instead we get another pve grinding train. Pvp has so little new content it's a wonder it is still alive.
Nevermind the balance teams making the most ridiculous balancing decisions...

There is good stuff to be found in this game, but it is overwhelmingly drowned out by the same mediocre nonsense as in every other mmo. It seriously annoys me a lot because of the stupid decision made for the direction it has taken.

 

[MissChief]

Hate to mention it (again) but COH had the grouping mechanic down pat. Shared XP, bigger and more powerful groups of bad guys the more people you had in your team, up to 8 people. 3 or less and only Minions, 4-6 and you'd get added lieutenants and 7 or 8 people you'd get some bosses in there with the occasional Elite Boss on certain missions. They also added customisable options so you could increase the difficulty if you wanted to.

 

[Greenja]

I found the PvP in GW2 just mind numblingly boring. It just equated to hitting every ability on cooldown and pointing in the right direction.

GW2 could have been a really great game, I mean I still put like 200+ hours into it, but theres no real end game progression at all and the PvP is just a zergy spamfest.

It's just there for the living story now really. Which fair play is a good idea, but the game could be so much more.

 

[Curunen]

I found the PvP in GW2 just mind numblingly boring. It just equated to hitting every ability on cooldown and pointing in the right direction.

GW2 could have been a really great game, I mean I still put like 200+ hours into it, but theres no real end game progression at all and the PvP is just a zergy spamfest.

It's just there for the living story now really. Which fair play is a good idea, but the game could be so much more.

PvP as in the monotonous conquest mode, or pvp in general as in fighting other players? I'll give you that conquest is boring and wvw "blob vs blob" is boring. But otherwise...

I don't know which classes or builds you have played but you would find it boring if playing passive builds like P/D condition thief, spirit ranger, PU condition mesmer, turret engi... or any other condition bunkers... these are all the most boring to play and the most annoying to fight against.

But there are many more builds which require incredibly high skill to pull off effectively in 1vX situations, and playing as you say won't end well. For example if you've ever played an active build like shatter mesmer, you'd know that simply "pointing in the right direction" and pressing all the skills is going to result in you dying very, very quickly.

I'll speak more about shatter because that is the class and build I have played the most and it's heavily reliant on positioning, timing, reflexes, knowledge of opponent's build/skills and avoiding damage - being one step ahead is mandatory especially when fighting one of the aforementioned condition bunkers, or you'll melt ASAP.

If you can honestly say after watching this (everything before 7:40 - no need to waste time watching after that) that fighting other players is boring and required no skill, then I don't know what to say.
Edit: Not shatter, but I can't link a mesmer video without linking one of Seven Mirror's : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pf1wEsAsHDI 2:30 is where some impressive action starts.

 

[Crimefighter]

I don't claim to have played every MMO since WoW, but the ones I have played suffered from either sh1tty core gameplay, lack of compelling content, or both.

Designing and programming a AAA MMO must be extremely challenging, but I wonder how some things ever get through Alpha testing.

 

[Rroff]

I've been on alpha/beta testing on quite a few titles and often they simply don't listen to feedback even when its constructive feedback with good reasoning. Seems to be becoming a more and more frequent theme with game development :S obviously sometimes players have very bad ideas when it comes to game development and "design by vote" isn't a great way to produce a game or implement updates/changes to a game either i.e. just because most of the testers say one thing doesn't mean its the best thing for the game always but as often as not the developer just ignores pertinent points that have been raised and then has to backtrack when it goes live and is a complete mess or bone headedly pushes features through and then wonders why their game fails heavily.

 

[MissChief]

I've been on alpha/beta testing on quite a few titles and often they simply don't listen to feedback even when its constructive feedback with good reasoning. Seems to be becoming a more and more frequent theme with game development :S obviously sometimes players have very bad ideas when it comes to game development and "design by vote" isn't a great way to produce a game or implement updates/changes to a game either i.e. just because most of the testers say one thing doesn't mean its the best thing for the game always but as often as not the developer just ignores pertinent points that have been raised and then has to backtrack when it goes live and is a complete mess or bone headedly pushes features through and then wonders why their game fails heavily.

People on forums tend to be passionate but also vociferious about making changes that suit them or their playstyle. You only need to look at the severe dumbing down of aircraft in BF4 because of all the moaning on the BF3 Battlelog forums (OMG Aircraft so OP! NERF THEM PLEASE)to see the problem with forums when they could easily stop the aircraft dominating by taking Engineer and Stinger/IGLA but that spoils their choice of class so they moan. Design by majority (or loudest voice) is always destined to fail.

 

[esoteric]

I've played most MMO's released since WoW with the last one being Wildstar. You are right about WoW being right place right time, but more then that it's got a rich history. I'm sure any MMO since WoW if released back then instead of WoW would have had similar success without WoW being a benchmark.

WoW grew into a success, it had the time to do so and no competition. At the start it was as crappy as every other MMO.

So the best MMO since WoW I think was Warhammer: AoK, the PvP was SO good and the end game potentially was awesome because it had an original concept, just no one got to see it because it's dev time was cut, released early and thus had ungodly lag that kept crashing the server.

The biggest fail imo was Guild Wars 2. I don't know if it was documented well or not that end game had a 150'ish slots per server capacity and there was only 3 instances, so with 1000's of players per server...

WoW needs to die before any other AAA MMO gets a fair crack.

 

[Calgar117]

My Two Cents

Personally i have purchased an MMO at launch for the last time (ESO)

What always kept me playing WoW was its rich lore and very interesting characters plot storyline etc etc aswell as everything else that made the game what it was (i no longer play it as for me personally its just one big cash cow now) the community however was very SO SO

2 other MMO's i really enjoyed playing Everquest 2 (graphics aswell as the immersion) and Warhammer online (lore and good community)

all these new released MMOs since have promised and failed to deliver ESO was just boring the leveling etc and there wasn't much of a story line to follow it felt like a chore to level up.

So i agree with the OP hopefully with new MMO's they wont just try and cash in on WoW's success and make something unique with a rich and interesting lore.

 

[OrionTC]

played mmo's for a good 15 years. UO/DAOC/Lineage 2/Rift/Warhammer/TERA/Aion/EQ2/Vanguard/GW2/ESO/Archeage, you name it ive probably played it

the best and longest MMO's ive played were UO for many years, DAOC for many years, Lineage 2 for many years and now hopefully archerage for many years....

common thing? either V good pvp or excellent sandbox elements or both.

theme parks are so dull and refreshed, instances are boring, no risk no reward is boring.

im so thankful for archeage in this age where "i want everything" seems to prevail