STO is the first MMO that I've tried to invest myself in, although I've been playing FPS PC games for years, mostly ones that have really good multiplayer aspects, because I enjoy a game that has a gaming community that feels... well... massively multiplayer.
What has kind of irked me during my STO experience is how often MMO players say things like, "But it's an MMO!" when it comes to stuff that has been a regular feature of PC games for over a decade.
Things like:
cut scenes
Voice acting
dramatic story arcs v. mindless grinding
I can't help but get the impression that MMO players seem to have lower standards for the production quality of a video game, accepting the lack of features. Granted, my experience of an MMO comes from STO, and I've not played WOW or other games that have huge universes that make STO seem tiny. I also understand that most MMOs don't have these features, but that seems besides the point.
When I compare this game to other games, even 10 year old ones like Star Trek: Elite Force, it doesn't make sense that a game I have to pay for monthly lacks the features of a game that I didn't have to pay to play 10 years ago.
On top of all of that, this Massively Multiplayer Online game feels more like a single player game than did those single player games that had good multiplayer components. So, all of it is pretty baffling to me, an MMO noob.
Are my comments fair here? Does anyone else feel likewise? I'd be interested in hearing from other MMO noobs who came to STO not having played other MMOs.
It isn't just MMO players that have lower standards these days, it's gamers in general. The fact that Ubisoft still exists as a company is proof of this...
The only vids you see are trailers on the web page, mainly using in game graphics.
Now coming from EVE Online myself I´m used to some bigass trailers on every expansion. But even they started small.
It´s all a question of money, and paying the in house devs for coding more stuff for the game clearly is preferable to paying some gfx-design monkeys to pretty up a nice trailer for the masses.
Though you rather meant in game cut scenes. I´m a bit stumped on that one too, now that I think about it.
Why don´t we get a nice scripted view of that shiny new Sovereign floating out of a dock?
Stuff like this really adds to the atmosphere, pity they don´t go for it.
The answer is yes and no. MMO players are an odd combination of zen like patience and extreme impatience. The same guy that will go grind for days on a single rat mob will skip past the cutscene or voiceover acting in a heartbeat. There is an ethos of instant gratification that is sometimes hard to find a balance for and precludes some of the niceties that one might find in a single player game.
The argument against voiceover and cutscenes in an mmo is that we have multiple characters and the definition of insanity is "doing the same thing over and over, each time, expecting a different result. By that definition MMORPG gaming is the very essence of insanity, or the other way 'round, I have never been all that clear on it.
It's not about standards. It's about tech and resources.
MMOs simply could not do most of the things single player games can do. This is mostly due to their MMO nature of having tons of people online at once and potentially a lot in the same area and internet connections.
This limits graphics. This limits gameplay. This limits a LOT.
Making voice work for an MMO would be so expensive it wouldn't be funny. That's why so far only Lucas Arts is doing it (they're investing with their riches). Most companies couldn't afford this on such a large scale.
As for cut scenes. They're getting more common. The ones that you might see from TOR and Blizzard are freakin' millions of $$$ though. Again, most companies can't afford that.
If you're talking in-game cut scenes those are becoming more common place. They're never that amazing though because you can't stop ALL the action to show them.
The scale of MMOs prevents a lot of stuff. Such as having each quest quality instead of just a few. The truth is those single player games have awesome storylines and gameplay elements because those people don't have to design 100000 hours worth of good stuff and instead like 20 hours.
The standards for MMOs are lower. There's no getting past it yet though.
The limited internet speeds makes you unable to have truly actiony things like FPSs, fighting, stuff done more realistically instead of the common "target and pick a move" thing. Games that DO use these are ALWAYS limited (like with STO and server shards). They can never stick everyone on the same servers like WoW.
As for epic and GOOD stories... There's no real excuse. It's just hard. Writing an epic story that everyone loves like in Bioshock, Final Fantasy, Warcraft III, etc is just HARD. Games are hit and miss. Now imagine writing a great story that's 100,000x as big and detailed and expansive. HARD! lol
etc etc etc I can go on forever. The tech and sheer size of MMOs is what limits them. We're seeing some headway like with TOR and their complete voice work however we're not seeing an amazing amount of progress.
The only vids you see are trailers on the web page, mainly using in game graphics.
Now coming from EVE Online myself I´m used to some bigass trailers on every expansion. But even they started small.
It´s all a question of money, and paying the in house devs for coding more stuff for the game clearly is preferable to paying some gfx-design monkeys to pretty up a nice trailer for the masses.
Though you rather meant in game cut scenes. I´m a bit stumped on that one too, now that I think about it.
Why don´t we get a nice scripted view of that shiny new Sovereign floating out of a dock?
Stuff like this really adds to the atmosphere, pity they don´t go for it.
It's strange, because they're obviously able to do some types of cut scenes, since they do them for ads, but thinking of cut scenes as a priority is like at the very, very bottom of the dev list.
Meanwhile, every good game coming out on Xbox 360 plays like a cinematic movie. I don't get it.
It's strange, because they're obviously able to do some types of cut scenes, since they do them for ads, but thinking of cut scenes as a priority is like at the very, very bottom of the dev list.
Meanwhile, every good game coming out on Xbox 360 plays like a cinematic movie. I don't get it.
I like their music video myself, nothing like amateur Icelandic rap to get things going.
They definitely do. You should see how the general RPG community and places like RPGCodex make fun of MMO players all the time, and it's all warranted. I'm staying with some people who play WoW, and while I'm watching them I can't understand how they can waste there time on such boring pointlessness. It also makes them boring people in real life, as if the boringness of the game somehow spreads like a disease. Wow does do one thing right though, it lives up to its "massive" namesake (unlike some other games we know). I'd rather play a good single player RPG like Planescape Torment or Fallout (not 3) over and over again than an MMO any day of the week. It may sound like it would get boring doing the same thing over and over again, but that's what we do in MMOs anyway! It's just that the content is much lower quality and gradually changes!
I'm definitely not here because I want to play an MMO, I'm here because this is (or is supposed to be) a Star Trek game (also got suckered into a LTS when I thought they were a limited time thing). Given how un-massively this game is in the first place, I don't think its too much to ask that the devs attempt to get closer to the standards you see in a single player game.
It's strange, because they're obviously able to do some types of cut scenes, since they do them for ads, but thinking of cut scenes as a priority is like at the very, very bottom of the dev list.
Meanwhile, every good game coming out on Xbox 360 plays like a cinematic movie. I don't get it.
MMO's are a completely different type of game with a completely different type of gamer. They are limited by technology, you can't have the same things in a mmo that you have in a single player game, not yet anyways, and some things you'll never have due to balance issues. As someone said before me, Bioware and Lucasarts are pushing the envelope a "little", but just a little.
It's just that the content is much lower quality and gradually changes!
.
I really appreciate your post, and I wanted to comment on this aspect of an MMO.
I am currently paying the devs to develop more content, but from my experience, when a game, like Unreal or Half Life 2 releases, and after the devs basically give the tools to the community for FREE, the game changes and expands at a very fast rate. New mods create new types of game play. mapmakers provide new maps. etc etc.
It just feels bizarre. I am paying a company to continue to develop a game, when the older games I've played expanded much faster and more creatively without subscriptions. Expansion packs came along sometimes too, and I was happy to pay $30 after six months for new content.
STO is changing more slowly than most of the multiplayer sides of single player games did, when there were no active devs continuing to work on it.
It's strange, because they're obviously able to do some types of cut scenes, since they do them for ads, but thinking of cut scenes as a priority is like at the very, very bottom of the dev list.
Meanwhile, every good game coming out on Xbox 360 plays like a cinematic movie. I don't get it.
Here's a shot explaination of that - when you buy an X-Box, it has a particular set of hardware and softwware that doesn't rally change. At it's core, and X-Box is an X-Box; and developers know the limitations and can program more specifically for it.
MMOs on the other hand want as many players as they can get, so they have to pick a target point for hardware that's mddle of the road to low end, because they know that MANY subscribers will be using older PCs, etc; so they pretty much have to make sure things will always run on as wide a variety of hardware and OS configs as possible.
The X-Box folks know right off if some tech will work well. MMO developers have to wait for betas and get a good cross-section of base hardware to test, and if something is found to not work, they have 3 options:
1) Scrap it.
2) Raise the Hardware reqs (which they don't like to do as it excludes potential customers.
3) try and re-work the system code and optmize it further to run the way they would like on the lower end hardware (takes more Dev time, and money, etc.)
One STO example from closed beta - Originally, the loading screens were all animated to a degree. When launch came around all these nice animated screems were scrapped and replaced by teh static 'screencap' screens we have today. Why? tjhe animated screens (because they required more CPU cycles for the animations, increased load times a fair bit on the lower end systems (if you had a medium spec system, you saw a 1 - 2 second increase; low end 5 - 15 seconds.)
So again, it's not lower standards, it's realization that they need to make the game run well enough on a minimum spec system. That's something Console developers don't need to worry about. They KNOW an X-Box's specs; and that if it uns on one, it'll run on th rest.
MMO's are a completely different type of game with a completely different type of gamer. They are limited by technology, you can't have the same things in a mmo that you have in a single player game, not yet anyways, and some things you'll never have due to balance issues. As someone said before me, Bioware and Lucasarts are pushing the envelope a "little", but just a little.
Oh stop it already with the tech limitations!
Having a scripted in game graphics view of the ship you currently bought slowly floating out of one of the docks around Earth dock cannot be that hard!
And it would add a MUCH needed cinematic feel to the whole game, instead of the current fantasy MMO spiel.
Go to the vendor, buy new armor, BAM you wear new armor, go smash some things.
I think you´ll be very surprised as to "how little" Bioware will push the genre. But they´re also already working about roughly double the time on their game compared to Cryptic.
Why are you guys making such a big deal out of cut scenes? They're just a topping. You need to get a lot more right before you worry about that. Lots of great games don't have huge cut scenes.
It's not about standards. It's about tech and resources.
MMOs simply could not do most of the things single player games can do. This is mostly due to their MMO nature of having tons of people online at once and potentially a lot in the same area and internet connections.
This limits graphics. This limits gameplay. This limits a LOT.
Making voice work for an MMO would be so expensive it wouldn't be funny. That's why so far only Lucas Arts is doing it (they're investing with their riches). Most companies couldn't afford this on such a large scale.
As for cut scenes. They're getting more common. The ones that you might see from TOR and Blizzard are freakin' millions of $$$ though. Again, most companies can't afford that.
If you're talking in-game cut scenes those are becoming more common place. They're never that amazing though because you can't stop ALL the action to show them.
The scale of MMOs prevents a lot of stuff. Such as having each quest quality instead of just a few. The truth is those single player games have awesome storylines and gameplay elements because those people don't have to design 100000 hours worth of good stuff and instead like 20 hours.
The standards for MMOs are lower. There's no getting past it yet though.
The limited internet speeds makes you unable to have truly actiony things like FPSs, fighting, stuff done more realistically instead of the common "target and pick a move" thing. Games that DO use these are ALWAYS limited (like with STO and server shards). They can never stick everyone on the same servers like WoW.
As for epic and GOOD stories... There's no real excuse. It's just hard. Writing an epic story that everyone loves like in Bioshock, Final Fantasy, Warcraft III, etc is just HARD. Games are hit and miss. Now imagine writing a great story that's 100,000x as big and detailed and expansive. HARD! lol
etc etc etc I can go on forever. The tech and sheer size of MMOs is what limits them. We're seeing some headway like with TOR and their complete voice work however we're not seeing an amazing amount of progress.
Quoted for emphasis. I was going to essentially post the exact same.
As an MMO they can't achieve the "quality" you'd get in a single-player experience. Often even Multi-player modes of games are beginning to be effected.
Players don't have lower standards, but the average gamer is not the same person they were 5-10 years ago. I think what's happened is that developers took one look at what the Wii did to gaming and decided that they could make handfuls of cash quicker by releasing watered-down, casual games that appeal to a larger market rather than spending oodles of cash on a fully-developed, epic-content masterpiece. Can't fault them for that, but in the process, they have destroyed what it is that made MMOs the pinnacle of technological and artistic progress in the gaming world.
Cut-scenes are just another casualty. Hopefully TOR will revive this idea that MMORPGs are something special.
Players don't have lower standards, but the average gamer is not the same person they were 5-10 years ago. I think what's happened is that developers took one look at what the Wii did to gaming and decided that they could make handfuls of cash quicker by releasing watered-down, casual games that appeal to a larger market rather than spending oodles of cash on a fully-developed, epic-content masterpiece. Can't fault them for that, but in the process, they have destroyed what it is that made MMOs the pinnacle of technological and artistic progress in the gaming world.
Cut-scenes are just another casualty. Hopefully TOR will revive this idea that MMORPGs are something special.
They destroyed MMOs?
MMOs are pretty much the same as before but just upgraded a bit. I don't think you played MMOs back when every quest was "kill X/X".
You're perceiving something that's not true. Why there hasn't been a huge leap recently they haven't been getting worse and haven't been suffering from having less. We've just all played them for years and they're not changing fast enough.
Quoted for emphasis. I was going to essentially post the exact same.
As an MMO they can't achieve the "quality" you'd get in a single-player experience. Often even Multi-player modes of games are beginning to be effected.
I'm pretty sure nobody cares about a real answer like mine. They'd rather ignore it. :P
People have grown complacent, they don't expect much from the develpoers anymore. They give the excusses that hey the content is comming just give it time. Or it's a living breathing entity it will grow in time.
I say B.S to that TRIBBLE. It's time we ask and expect more for our money. We work hard for it and give it to the gaming company for a fun good time.
We shouldn't settle for less that a completely fun experience with adventure and story and some pvp. No grinding or farming wich is not content at all.
We must let the developers know we will not tolerate anylonger new content that lasts only 1 week!
Factions without fun and story based content.
Repeatable instances with difficult bosses that require teams that don't last more than 3 hours is a must!
We want content, mini games, and off the wall stuff thats wimsical and fresh! That is what we pay for and our money is worth alot!
So game developing companies please take a moment and look long term. Do you want a loyal fanbase that does not leave? Then take a lil less profit off the top, hire some extra dev's and make a real game complete with all said above regularly.
You will find that people will stay and bring thier friends. Not leave and vow to not return because your game is weak!
MMOs are pretty much the same as before but just upgraded a bit. I don't think you played MMOs back when every quest was "kill X/X".
You're perceiving something that's not true. Why there hasn't been a huge leap recently they haven't been getting worse and haven't been suffering from having less. We've just all played them for years and they're not changing fast enough.
Every quest still is "kill X/X" they're just painted differently. I don't think you've played many MMOs, since we're going to play the "tell each other what they have or haven't done" game.
There are very few show-stopping MMORPGs on the market currently, and it's because of what I alluded to. There has been a shift in the mentality of developers to release content that appeals broadly, but perhaps isn't ground-breaking. Meaning that they're trying to cater to the lowest common denominator to draw in the most subscriptions. My point is that in the process of doing this, they're losing - or dumbing down - a lot of what the old MMOs (EQ comes to mind) pioneered.
MMORPGs are an artform. I get the feeling that that sentiment has been lost in favor of the old dollar.
Every quest still is "kill X/X" they're just painted differently. I don't think you've played many MMOs, since we're going to play the "tell each other what they have or haven't done" game.
There are very few show-stopping MMORPGs on the market currently, and it's because of what I alluded to. There has been a shift in the mentality of developers to release content that appeals broadly, but perhaps isn't ground-breaking. Meaning that they're trying to cater to the lowest common denominator to draw in the most subscriptions. My point is that in the process of doing this, they're losing - or dumbing down - a lot of what the old MMOs (EQ comes to mind) pioneered.
MMORPGs are an artform. I get the feeling that that sentiment has been lost in favor of the old dollar.
You eluded to MMOs being destroyed. They're stagnant. They're not dumbing down stuff from old MMOs unless you consider the PURE GRIND nature of the old MMOs the thing they dumbed down (which is good).
EQ is leagues and bounds less than modern day MMOs. Modern day MMOs are just all crappy clones and more stagnant than Pokemon games and a 10th as fun.
You eluded to MMOs being destroyed. They're stagnant. They're not dumbing down stuff from old MMOs unless you consider the PURE GRIND nature of the old MMOs the thing they dumbed down (which is good).
EQ is leagues and bounds less than modern day MMOs. Modern day MMOs are just all crappy clones and more stagnant than Pokemon games and a 10th as fun.
I don't think you're understanding my point, and in the interests of not turning this thread into a back and forth, and to avoid having us just talk past each other, I'm going to leave it at that.
And you made my point in that last sentence, by the way. Thank you.
Well there is one major huge difference between the games you listed and MMO's.
In a single player game, the story reolves around you. You are the Savior, you are the one. It is all about you. In a MMO, you are 1 of many. You are not special as you are one of X. Some MMO's have tried to replicate this and most flop. Eventually everyone gets that special rare award. So once again you either are in dev cycle hell or have to cut it.
For STO, it is a good Single Player game. With the exception of fleet actions, it is possible to solo the entire game.
I don't think you're understanding my point, and in the interests of not turning this thread into a back and forth, and to avoid having us just talk past each other, I'm going to leave it at that.
And you made my point in that last sentence, by the way. Thank you.
Comments
The only vids you see are trailers on the web page, mainly using in game graphics.
Now coming from EVE Online myself I´m used to some bigass trailers on every expansion. But even they started small.
It´s all a question of money, and paying the in house devs for coding more stuff for the game clearly is preferable to paying some gfx-design monkeys to pretty up a nice trailer for the masses.
Though you rather meant in game cut scenes. I´m a bit stumped on that one too, now that I think about it.
Why don´t we get a nice scripted view of that shiny new Sovereign floating out of a dock?
Stuff like this really adds to the atmosphere, pity they don´t go for it.
The argument against voiceover and cutscenes in an mmo is that we have multiple characters and the definition of insanity is "doing the same thing over and over, each time, expecting a different result. By that definition MMORPG gaming is the very essence of insanity, or the other way 'round, I have never been all that clear on it.
in conclusion
WIBBLE.
MMOs simply could not do most of the things single player games can do. This is mostly due to their MMO nature of having tons of people online at once and potentially a lot in the same area and internet connections.
This limits graphics. This limits gameplay. This limits a LOT.
Making voice work for an MMO would be so expensive it wouldn't be funny. That's why so far only Lucas Arts is doing it (they're investing with their riches). Most companies couldn't afford this on such a large scale.
As for cut scenes. They're getting more common. The ones that you might see from TOR and Blizzard are freakin' millions of $$$ though. Again, most companies can't afford that.
If you're talking in-game cut scenes those are becoming more common place. They're never that amazing though because you can't stop ALL the action to show them.
The scale of MMOs prevents a lot of stuff. Such as having each quest quality instead of just a few. The truth is those single player games have awesome storylines and gameplay elements because those people don't have to design 100000 hours worth of good stuff and instead like 20 hours.
The standards for MMOs are lower. There's no getting past it yet though.
The limited internet speeds makes you unable to have truly actiony things like FPSs, fighting, stuff done more realistically instead of the common "target and pick a move" thing. Games that DO use these are ALWAYS limited (like with STO and server shards). They can never stick everyone on the same servers like WoW.
As for epic and GOOD stories... There's no real excuse. It's just hard. Writing an epic story that everyone loves like in Bioshock, Final Fantasy, Warcraft III, etc is just HARD. Games are hit and miss. Now imagine writing a great story that's 100,000x as big and detailed and expansive. HARD! lol
etc etc etc I can go on forever. The tech and sheer size of MMOs is what limits them. We're seeing some headway like with TOR and their complete voice work however we're not seeing an amazing amount of progress.
It's strange, because they're obviously able to do some types of cut scenes, since they do them for ads, but thinking of cut scenes as a priority is like at the very, very bottom of the dev list.
Meanwhile, every good game coming out on Xbox 360 plays like a cinematic movie. I don't get it.
I like their music video myself, nothing like amateur Icelandic rap to get things going.
I'm definitely not here because I want to play an MMO, I'm here because this is (or is supposed to be) a Star Trek game (also got suckered into a LTS when I thought they were a limited time thing). Given how un-massively this game is in the first place, I don't think its too much to ask that the devs attempt to get closer to the standards you see in a single player game.
MMO's are a completely different type of game with a completely different type of gamer. They are limited by technology, you can't have the same things in a mmo that you have in a single player game, not yet anyways, and some things you'll never have due to balance issues. As someone said before me, Bioware and Lucasarts are pushing the envelope a "little", but just a little.
I really appreciate your post, and I wanted to comment on this aspect of an MMO.
I am currently paying the devs to develop more content, but from my experience, when a game, like Unreal or Half Life 2 releases, and after the devs basically give the tools to the community for FREE, the game changes and expands at a very fast rate. New mods create new types of game play. mapmakers provide new maps. etc etc.
It just feels bizarre. I am paying a company to continue to develop a game, when the older games I've played expanded much faster and more creatively without subscriptions. Expansion packs came along sometimes too, and I was happy to pay $30 after six months for new content.
STO is changing more slowly than most of the multiplayer sides of single player games did, when there were no active devs continuing to work on it.
Here's a shot explaination of that - when you buy an X-Box, it has a particular set of hardware and softwware that doesn't rally change. At it's core, and X-Box is an X-Box; and developers know the limitations and can program more specifically for it.
MMOs on the other hand want as many players as they can get, so they have to pick a target point for hardware that's mddle of the road to low end, because they know that MANY subscribers will be using older PCs, etc; so they pretty much have to make sure things will always run on as wide a variety of hardware and OS configs as possible.
The X-Box folks know right off if some tech will work well. MMO developers have to wait for betas and get a good cross-section of base hardware to test, and if something is found to not work, they have 3 options:
1) Scrap it.
2) Raise the Hardware reqs (which they don't like to do as it excludes potential customers.
3) try and re-work the system code and optmize it further to run the way they would like on the lower end hardware (takes more Dev time, and money, etc.)
One STO example from closed beta - Originally, the loading screens were all animated to a degree. When launch came around all these nice animated screems were scrapped and replaced by teh static 'screencap' screens we have today. Why? tjhe animated screens (because they required more CPU cycles for the animations, increased load times a fair bit on the lower end systems (if you had a medium spec system, you saw a 1 - 2 second increase; low end 5 - 15 seconds.)
So again, it's not lower standards, it's realization that they need to make the game run well enough on a minimum spec system. That's something Console developers don't need to worry about. They KNOW an X-Box's specs; and that if it uns on one, it'll run on th rest.
MMO's have been evolving steadily for quite a while .....
to the point of, when talking about said MMO's you can now truthfully say: " when I was your age ..."
.
Having a scripted in game graphics view of the ship you currently bought slowly floating out of one of the docks around Earth dock cannot be that hard!
And it would add a MUCH needed cinematic feel to the whole game, instead of the current fantasy MMO spiel.
Go to the vendor, buy new armor, BAM you wear new armor, go smash some things.
I think you´ll be very surprised as to "how little" Bioware will push the genre. But they´re also already working about roughly double the time on their game compared to Cryptic.
the cinematic when they called out the litch king made me go "whoa !...".....
.... I liked the" I am Merloc" song too....lol
Have good memories of that game. It was worth it for the time I played,
As an MMO they can't achieve the "quality" you'd get in a single-player experience. Often even Multi-player modes of games are beginning to be effected.
Cut-scenes are just another casualty. Hopefully TOR will revive this idea that MMORPGs are something special.
They destroyed MMOs?
MMOs are pretty much the same as before but just upgraded a bit. I don't think you played MMOs back when every quest was "kill X/X".
You're perceiving something that's not true. Why there hasn't been a huge leap recently they haven't been getting worse and haven't been suffering from having less. We've just all played them for years and they're not changing fast enough.
No, but we have different expectations.
I'm pretty sure nobody cares about a real answer like mine. They'd rather ignore it. :P
I say B.S to that TRIBBLE. It's time we ask and expect more for our money. We work hard for it and give it to the gaming company for a fun good time.
We shouldn't settle for less that a completely fun experience with adventure and story and some pvp. No grinding or farming wich is not content at all.
We must let the developers know we will not tolerate anylonger new content that lasts only 1 week!
Factions without fun and story based content.
Repeatable instances with difficult bosses that require teams that don't last more than 3 hours is a must!
We want content, mini games, and off the wall stuff thats wimsical and fresh! That is what we pay for and our money is worth alot!
So game developing companies please take a moment and look long term. Do you want a loyal fanbase that does not leave? Then take a lil less profit off the top, hire some extra dev's and make a real game complete with all said above regularly.
You will find that people will stay and bring thier friends. Not leave and vow to not return because your game is weak!
Every quest still is "kill X/X" they're just painted differently. I don't think you've played many MMOs, since we're going to play the "tell each other what they have or haven't done" game.
There are very few show-stopping MMORPGs on the market currently, and it's because of what I alluded to. There has been a shift in the mentality of developers to release content that appeals broadly, but perhaps isn't ground-breaking. Meaning that they're trying to cater to the lowest common denominator to draw in the most subscriptions. My point is that in the process of doing this, they're losing - or dumbing down - a lot of what the old MMOs (EQ comes to mind) pioneered.
MMORPGs are an artform. I get the feeling that that sentiment has been lost in favor of the old dollar.
You eluded to MMOs being destroyed. They're stagnant. They're not dumbing down stuff from old MMOs unless you consider the PURE GRIND nature of the old MMOs the thing they dumbed down (which is good).
EQ is leagues and bounds less than modern day MMOs. Modern day MMOs are just all crappy clones and more stagnant than Pokemon games and a 10th as fun.
I don't think you're understanding my point, and in the interests of not turning this thread into a back and forth, and to avoid having us just talk past each other, I'm going to leave it at that.
And you made my point in that last sentence, by the way. Thank you.
In a single player game, the story reolves around you. You are the Savior, you are the one. It is all about you. In a MMO, you are 1 of many. You are not special as you are one of X. Some MMO's have tried to replicate this and most flop. Eventually everyone gets that special rare award. So once again you either are in dev cycle hell or have to cut it.
For STO, it is a good Single Player game. With the exception of fleet actions, it is possible to solo the entire game.
Blakinik
You said your point clearly. It's wrong.