The Mindless Process

[Seceres]

The Mindless Process of leveling is outrageous. Why any one would want to spend hours beating away at things to achieve another level goes beyond me. I just can never get to a high level in these types of games. Star Wars Galaxies promises a skill-based system, lets see what they come out with. Dark Ages of Camelot could be a wonderful game without the level, level, level theory. Even if it makes money, there are more creative ways to draw people. Economic models, economic achievement, heck even if there were trade routes between cities it would be more interesting. There is nothing but pretty scenery, and creatures to kill. It is just like a treadmill as you say. I love the scenery, the opportunity it presents as far as actually being in that world (I do have imagination, but you must admit scenery is good to see). I do not know why they did not think of putting an economic model into their games, other than just getting money from killing. Yet even that can become mindless. Ultima Online had some roleplay towns which were nice, but now mindless masses dwell on there often. What I want is a /roleplaying/ game, and perhaps www.adellion.com will provide.

[Bear]

From the little I have seen, Ages of Athiria (sp?) might be pretty good. If they ever finish it.

World of Warcraft is beginning to sound attractive for one reason. They are planning to make a game that does not require a player to invest 123,763,456,234,2345,875,345,348 hours of their life per level. Supposedly, you can log in and DO THINGS immediately, have fun for a while and then log out and go on with your existence. A game like that (assuming it works) would be something that I could keep and play for many years, never getting burned out as long as they continued to add and upgrade over time.

But these dang chat rooms that pass for games now are getting very, very old. If I want a chat room, Yahoo and MSN both offer them for free. If I want to sit mindlessly and keep hitting buttons, Checkers is also available free. Or tic-tac-toe for that matter. There is about as much strategy and challenge in tic-tac-toe as there is in the average online MMOG nowadays.

But I like to bitch a lot. Ignore me. I just hope that an online world worth the time to play it comes along someday. So far.....nope. :(

I spent almost four years in EQ waiting and hoping that they would eventually turn it into a game. No luck. I stayed because they were the only first person online game in town. There was nowhere else to go. Now that the others have started to come out, they are just clones, repeating the same mistakes. It is disheartening. How come MUDs can hold player loyalty for year after year after year, but MMOGs like EQ and DAoC keep losing customers in a steady trickle? Boredom maybe?

Let me ask the average game designer something? IF YOU did not have access to the underlying machinery that makes the game run, and IF you did not have have privy information about the game "storyline" and IF you were not personally acquainted with the people who designed the other parts of the game and IF it were not your personal baby anyway....would YOU continue to play something as mindlessly repetitious as the current plague of online graphical chat rooms?

Maybe so. Programmers are a breed apart anyway. Guys....Hire a writer and hire a psychologist. You might find their input to be blindingly illuminating.

Bear

[Proteus]

I agree. Massive online game developers have to actually like the games they are making!.. if not than the game itself would not last a year or so. Another thing I realized about these massive online games that they are unproffessional. Some guy comes up with a great idea gets some people to make it and see how long they can make money off it without lifting a finger. The big rpg games such as EQ I bet have a fairly decent dedicated team making the game hence they come up with add ons and such.
The mass market for online gaming lies in the Rpg gamers that grew up on games such as everquest so it makes sense to make spin off games of that to try to attract more costumers. It makes sense cause they are simple and technology friendly. The untapped audience lies in the squad wars gamers that is for example Freespace2 (space combat) maximum 8 players join up and fight against each other.
The combination of rpg element and armageddon style of warfare must be either hard to do or technology is not available for it yet.
Todays technology could pull this off however (I think) by re-visting the classic era of 2d shooter and strategy games...

[Seceres]

Everquest, and the other MMRPGs follow a certain standardized safe selling corridor. This means they use the same program of play over and over to make their games, as in level-receive reward. This essentially traps people into the process of level after level. It is psychological to want to come out on top. So they make these games that have enough levels to keep addicted. The entire game is built around addiction, it is like taking gold foil and covering a column to make it look like real gold. The same essential formula is used over, and over in every game. Level-Gain Reward (Level, Items, etc.) Even the social aspect of the game (guilds) center around gaining more levels. Being able to travel to more areas, do certain things, etc. Once people finish the leveling, they either create a new character, or leave. Or they leave after creating a new character, so the darned process continues. They will probably not solve it by putting in new theme elements, but rather just putting in new levels. Even though EQ oddly did not. Dark Ages of Camelot has more opportunity with PvP, but even that can get boring. The industry is afraid of keeping a game on a social level without character development levels because they know it wont keep people psychologically obsessed with winning as much, but rather is more unstable.