Game Rant
I don't post often at all but thought I wanted to vent some frustration regarding "Massively Multiplayer Online" Games.
I'm a fan of computer games with human controlled entities I can interact with over AI. It's the competitiveness that makes it fun. Beating an AI controlled character seems to be a matter of learning a pattern and once you have it, it is boring/easy from that point on.
Now you'd think that games like World of Warcraft, Champions Online or Aion would suit me to the ground but they REALLY don't! They are awful and I'll tell you why!
If you take away the graphics and sound then replace them with wireframe boxes, you soon find that you end up interacting with each box in virtually the same manner every single time or in repetitive patterns. It soon becomes clear that if you don't want to digest the awful "collect me 10 weasel noses" stories that are some how meant to be entertaining, then you are running from the mission giver to the target and back again constantly for about 1 month of solid game time until you hit the top level. Only then do you really get any sort of rewarding player versus player experience and the majority of the games content becomes invalid from that point because it was there to level with.
(As an extra note, often you get very little player interaction during levelling because most people are frantically grinding their characters up to the cap, making the game even more tedious.)
The next thing that annoys me about MMO's is that they copy each other to the point where they use the same structure and simply give them different names. For instance, I just looked up Aion and saw that they had taken all the main elements of WOW and renamed them ("Factions" aka Horde/Alliance split, "Legions" aka "Guilds", generic classes, "raids", "gathering" and "crafting" etc). Why would I want to buy another game that does exactly the same thing?!
It really irritates me when I try a new MMO only to find it has the same structure and they expect you to do the same tasks as other MMO's but redressed in their own game world graphics.
Another beef is that they give you a limited options when it comes to how you spend you game time to "entertain" yourself. I have played quite a few MMO's in the past and with the exception of a few minor short lived activities (e.g. decorating a guild house, making your clothes change colour), none seem to offer anything more than grinding to go up in level, grinding to craft items and fighting in separate PvP areas. If you get sick of grinding and PVP (or you are too low level, it's quiet), what can you do?!
These games need to change the rules and stop rehashing! Maybe make it so that your character only has X number of lives. Bring in investigation skills to track the killer. Make characters reliant on their home area so that moving away from there to attack leaves it exposed. When you hit another area of the game in PvP, take assets that really matter to the people living there and let them suffer until they get them back etc. Perhaps make it like an RTS and errect buildings that increase resources but can also be sabotaged if not guarded... etc etc! These are just ideas but is really isn't hard to come up with!
I'm guessing that the new Star Wars MMO is going to be in a similar vein again and if they manage to rehash the same millarky again for the Star Trek one, then I will never play an MMO again because I will know the major games developers don't have it in them to change.
Anyway... venting over! I hope you didn't read all that haha!
I'm a fan of computer games with human controlled entities I can interact with over AI. It's the competitiveness that makes it fun. Beating an AI controlled character seems to be a matter of learning a pattern and once you have it, it is boring/easy from that point on.
Now you'd think that games like World of Warcraft, Champions Online or Aion would suit me to the ground but they REALLY don't! They are awful and I'll tell you why!
If you take away the graphics and sound then replace them with wireframe boxes, you soon find that you end up interacting with each box in virtually the same manner every single time or in repetitive patterns. It soon becomes clear that if you don't want to digest the awful "collect me 10 weasel noses" stories that are some how meant to be entertaining, then you are running from the mission giver to the target and back again constantly for about 1 month of solid game time until you hit the top level. Only then do you really get any sort of rewarding player versus player experience and the majority of the games content becomes invalid from that point because it was there to level with.
(As an extra note, often you get very little player interaction during levelling because most people are frantically grinding their characters up to the cap, making the game even more tedious.)
The next thing that annoys me about MMO's is that they copy each other to the point where they use the same structure and simply give them different names. For instance, I just looked up Aion and saw that they had taken all the main elements of WOW and renamed them ("Factions" aka Horde/Alliance split, "Legions" aka "Guilds", generic classes, "raids", "gathering" and "crafting" etc). Why would I want to buy another game that does exactly the same thing?!
It really irritates me when I try a new MMO only to find it has the same structure and they expect you to do the same tasks as other MMO's but redressed in their own game world graphics.
Another beef is that they give you a limited options when it comes to how you spend you game time to "entertain" yourself. I have played quite a few MMO's in the past and with the exception of a few minor short lived activities (e.g. decorating a guild house, making your clothes change colour), none seem to offer anything more than grinding to go up in level, grinding to craft items and fighting in separate PvP areas. If you get sick of grinding and PVP (or you are too low level, it's quiet), what can you do?!
These games need to change the rules and stop rehashing! Maybe make it so that your character only has X number of lives. Bring in investigation skills to track the killer. Make characters reliant on their home area so that moving away from there to attack leaves it exposed. When you hit another area of the game in PvP, take assets that really matter to the people living there and let them suffer until they get them back etc. Perhaps make it like an RTS and errect buildings that increase resources but can also be sabotaged if not guarded... etc etc! These are just ideas but is really isn't hard to come up with!
I'm guessing that the new Star Wars MMO is going to be in a similar vein again and if they manage to rehash the same millarky again for the Star Trek one, then I will never play an MMO again because I will know the major games developers don't have it in them to change.
Anyway... venting over! I hope you didn't read all that haha!