Rift: Going Off the Rails – Is the Race to End-Game Killing the MMOG? @ TTH

[Medawky]

You can't swing a stick these days without hitting a gamer claiming to be bored. Even a company like Trion, who has pumped out more quality content at a faster pace than anyone before them can't keep up with this almost insatiable demand. Would creating a longer journey result in a more meaningful end-game? Or are players are own worse enemy as we abandon a game where we can't hit the level cap in a few days? We explore the issue this week at Ten Ton Hammer.

The cries of the playerbase should fall on deaf ears as they proclaim their boredom after chewing through content like a fat kid at an all you can eat buffet. Even the recently introduced Instant Adventure scenarios, that launch players into a frenzy of load and go gaming, have been criticized by these voracious omnivores as being either a) too easy or b) too light in the experience department. How can a developer win when the players deride them for making content too easy but won’t play their game if they can’t reach the level cap in under week?

[Nestran]

That article hits on what has rolled around in my head for a while now. I hated reading that it was Trions intent to have players level fast.
The idea of level your first toon and get all the others at max doesn't work for my, why bother with the leveling process at all?

If you remove levels you have another problem, we are so conditioned to use levels as a measure of progress we would feel like we are getting nowhere. Maybe replace levels with something else?

I would love an MMO that takes forever and a day to get to top level but I think those days are gone.
I log into Rift these days to see what I sold on the AH and that's been about it. I'm not interested in doing the dailies on EI lately, the carrot is just too far ahead of me I guess.

[Oggiefishier]

Personally if I wanted to eternally level I'd play an SPRPG or an ORPG..
To me leveling has alwaYs been the training simulator for learning the basic mechanics of the game and the class.. once you hit endgame you learn ,refine,and perfect your personal skills and work on your group teamwork.
The main reason I hear for boredom is endgame being to EASY..not that it doesn't take long enough.
Those of us who remember banging our heads against a single encounter for months before beating the one encounter out of 15 in a raid get bored quickly when we down 3-5 boss's in a singlre night on our first night in a new raid... wow's ICC was a perfect example of this. The content was so easy they had to put gates up to artificially slow people from finishing it

[Ravel]

The answer to the title of this thread is simple: yes.

[Gyle]

Interesting premise to the article, but it gives very little evidence, and doesn't even begin to explore the situation in any worthwhile depth. Seems like the article was written by/for the same vapid borg like masses it derides.

[Hawkmoon0028]

Pretty sure it's been mentioned once or twice before that these types of threads belong in the Fan Site area....

/inb4move, I guess.

Oh, and P.S. you know, for a "fan site"-type of thing, you guys sure talk a lot of S*&t about this game... How about we cut back on the doom and gloom drivel?

[Medawky]

Interesting premise to the article, but it gives very little evidence, and doesn't even begin to explore the situation in any worthwhile depth. Seems like the article was written by/for the same vapid borg like masses it derides.

Valid criticism, and if I were writing this for an EQ1 crowd it could have been 10,000 words. But you have to play to your audience, and we are surrounded by ADHD sadly.

[Deggon]

Did not read the article but GW2 will not have a race to end game because of their mentor up/down system, you can take you merry time in that game and not be hampered. Keep Rift the way it is, I love the raids and end game content and this is where I will get my fix for it, gw2 will be my pvp/casual game for when its an off raid day or I got the itch for PvP.

[Mayuko]

For my reply to this thread, please visit my blog and click a few of the ad$.

[Skidrow Bro]

Pretty sure it's been mentioned once or twice before that these types of threads belong in the Fan Site area....

/inb4move, I guess.

Oh, and P.S. you know, for a "fan site"-type of thing, you guys sure talk a lot of S*&t about this game... How about we cut back on the doom and gloom drivel?

Truth hurts?

[batou079]

Any MMO's replayability boils down to what you make of it. Ultimately, you cannot find a single player in this game that has literally completed every possible grind aspect provided to us. Because players all find certain elements fun/unfun based on personal preferrence.

There is no game, MMO or entertainment in existence where 100% of players/users will agree on as the best/worst. Human nature dictates a variety of opinions.

What the heck am i on about? The above is a direct reason why MMOGs aren't ever really going to "die" but due to how the general public perceives these games so diversely, MMOGs will always be EVOLVING, not dying.

[Sargonnas_KoA]

I'm an old MMO player. There were good and bad sides to the early graphical MMO's. I know its not a good idea to go back to the harshest parts of that time, but the current group of MMO's is just missing something that those old games had. They took chances, they catered heavily to many playstyles, the sense of immersiveness was higher, and I felt more connected to what I was doing, even if it was just fishing in Ultima Online. We could build our own player town, we ran events with Origin Systems, and there was more teamwork between the players and the people making UO, especially for roleplaying.

Ultima Online used to "bless" houses and locations in game. Player towns that contributed a lot to the game, events, and trying to make the game fun for people could receive decorations or have their player town look more like a actual town. It wasn't a perfect system, but some players had a fit because they couldn't get the same thing. We ran events for years in UO with Game Masters and Seers and had detailed scenarios set up on Lake Superior, but people that did nothing thought they were entitled to the same thing. Why couldn't they be "blessed"? Why didn't they get special events? After some complaints Origin stopped doing "blessings". For me that was the beginning of what we see today.

We've entered a time when companies are trying to allow everyone to get the same rewards, see the same content, and everyone is on some imaginary even playing field. Things are made easier instead of people actually putting the work into getting to a goal. I haven't done Hammerknell, but I'm not going to sit here and blame the guilds in Hammerknell and demand I get the same access to the content and rewards. Even if I'm working 60 hours a week I still understand its up to me to join a more hardcore raiding guild or put that time and effort into the game and if I don't that's not anybody else's fault.

At the end of the day these games are run by businesses. They need to run these MMO's in a way that will cater to the largest amount of people. Unfortunately, just as in real life, most people are followers and not leaders, and the game shows that in some twisted way. Blizzard went from 40 man raids to 25 and 10 man raids because it made the game more popular and they made enough money to buy a small country, but in the long term its leading to something not so healthy for the industry. Its the same crap, different game and now most of these companies cant figure out the answer because they have created their games for the more casual player instead of making a truly memorable experience.

Trion has tried to get past this by putting out rapid content and its definitely been somewhat successful, but its also putting them in a hole they will have hard time getting out of. In the restaurant industry many of the companies started putting out a extreme amount of coupons when the economy tanked. The goal was to just get more people in the door. After a couple of years of this some of us started to protest the "coupon crack" because it was creating a environment where the people would stop coming if the companies stopped the coupons, and that's pretty much what happened whenever we tried to stop. It went too far. I see the same thing here. People freaking out on the forums, saying they are bored, and playing less and less because we haven't had our usual six week injection of "content crack".

TOR thought the heavily scripted and voiced quests were going to re-invent the wheel only to find people just don't care much and many want to skip it. Blizzard made WoW too easy, then it was too hard, and even they are saying they are having a hard time finding the right place to be in a recent interview.

I don't know what the exact answer is to this fun problem. The MMO industry as a whole has created a hole that is hard to dig out of and the farther down that hole it goes the more leery anyone is of trying something different or truly innovating the genre. The people and playstyles coming into the MMO world these days are not the same as the generation that started playing MMO's like UO, EQ, and AC years ago and its become very hard to cater to both sides of that coin. The technology to make these games improves as the years go by, but I still find myself less and less interested in all the games coming out. Rift was a pleasant surprise, but even this game is having a hard time figuring out its identity as it comes closer to its 1st anniversary.

[Ravel]

Pretty sure it's been mentioned once or twice before that these types of threads belong in the Fan Site area....

/inb4move, I guess.

Pretty sure it has been explained a couple times too. Nobody is allowed to post there. Fan Site owners have to post in the General forum and after a day of inactivity of the thread they have to ask Trion to move the post there.

[batou079]

That article hits on what has rolled around in my head for a while now. I hated reading that it was Trions intent to have players level fast.
The idea of level your first toon and get all the others at max doesn't work for my, why bother with the leveling process at all?

If you remove levels you have another problem, we are so conditioned to use levels as a measure of progress we would feel like we are getting nowhere. Maybe replace levels with something else?

I would love an MMO that takes forever and a day to get to top level but I think those days are gone.
I log into Rift these days to see what I sold on the AH and that's been about it. I'm not interested in doing the dailies on EI lately, the carrot is just too far ahead of me I guess.

i never really understand players like you... do you realize how ironic you are being? You argue that leveling is too fast/easy... but then say you have no interest in Ei dailies cause, "the carrot is too far ahead"... You do realize the faction/Planar attument/gear grind all are another form of leveling? AkA universal grind.

Truly, end game IS leveling. 1-50 perhaps is easy, but its just long enough not to become insanely boring and monotonous. Which means players that play simply to level, don't have to play 24/7. Those that DO want the hardcore grind have TONS to grind for after level 50. So... not sayin, just sayin.

[Kaelani]

But you have to play to your audience, and we are surrounded by ADHD sadly.

This statement answers the question in the thread title, too.
Trion knows the mindset of its players... in fact, of all players in all games today.
You can hold tight to your vision, and lose money... or you can give the customer what they want, and make money.
That's every business...