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talonxv
Member Posts: 4,257 Arc User
So who else plays a lot of other games and the general theme of these games is get to the end and then it's "well what now?"
Cause I'll tell ya, World of Tanks, BSGO, this game SWTOR, it's run through and then you get to the end and it's well what do I do now?
Anybody else having that issue with online gaming?
Cause I'll tell ya, World of Tanks, BSGO, this game SWTOR, it's run through and then you get to the end and it's well what do I do now?
Anybody else having that issue with online gaming?
Star Trek Battles member. Want to roll with a good group of people regardless of fleets and not have to worry about DPS while doing STFs? Come join the channel and join in the fun!
http://forum.arcgames.com/startrekonline/discussion/1145998/star-trek-battles-channel-got-canon/p1
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Sure, Everquest 2 is now selling shortcuts to 80, but players playing through games with the assumption that everything before the endgame is meaningless is the players' problem, not the game's.
And don't get all flabbergasted when it takes a while to make MORE new content to cut through like a buttered bat'leth. Content generation, i.e. creating quests, missions, etc. is the most time-consuming and expensive part of game development.
No wonder developers like Cryptic prefer to add new systems like rep grinds or repeatable adventure zones rather than scripted one-use feature episodes these days. And there's also no wonder that you have to pay to get TOR's expansion packs, what with all the cutscenes, voice acting, and whatnot that costs big money to produce.
On BSG I strap on some nukes and nuke a lvl1.. I tell you what, Nuking a strike with a ruin-er is its own fun.
*********.. I make **** none can make...
and then move on to other games and come back here and there for a break or change.
Next one is Star Citizen but still have a bit to wait.
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This is the biggest problem with MMO development, the players think its ok to make the same game in a new setting, and the developers have completely lost that creative spark that used to be in every new game back before the craze of online gaming took hold. Please see the video titled "How WoW ruined everything" to understand how this came to be...http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nvK8fua6O64
I am not sure how many here have played Ultima Online when it was ONE world that was full of consequence and a TON of fun to play. I sub'ed to that game for almost 8 years and the only reason I ended up quitting it was because EA ruined it when they thought they needed to make it more "carebear" and made the duplicate world (Trammel) with no player collision detection, no PvP, and absolutely all consequence taken out of the game.
MMO's have take HUGE steps backwards in terms of complexity and consequence for players actions. Developers are afraid to put any consequence into their game now and instead they try to make it all way to easy and so that anyone can get all the best things the game has to offer. This makes the game become boring much faster because players have absolutely nothing to strive for and even if they make a mistake it is just a minor inconvenience at most.
That is why there is no endgame and it is 99% because developers are afraid to put any consequence into the MMO and everything is way to easy, period.
You are describing a problem inherent with all MMO's. It has been proven that players will burn through content faster than it can be created. Artificial stopgaps are put in place to keep players playing while new content is developed.
In some games it's a loot table with extremely rare chances to get what you want. Some games take it one step further and require entire raids to work together for hours on end so a select few can get good equipment, with the end goal being the entire raid party has the best equipment to do future content in after enough raids of this nature. In others it's a daily system that can only be repeated every 24 hours. In others it's an artificial limit to how many "end game" missions you can run in a week. In STO's case it's a combination of dailies and a rep system, as well as having a dilithium refinement cap.
You will not find an MMO out there without some kind of grind system or an "end game" that leaves you saying, "Well, what now?"
Thankfully, you live in a world where the market is oversaturated with video games, and yes, even people at Cryptic also play other video games. You aren't cheating on STO by firing up some other video game. And it has always been designed as a casual game where you could just drop in and play whenever you want, leave, come back, etc.
Personally, I check in periodically in-game to manage fleet projects and do a few STFs, but I'm usually in another game which... you guessed it... also has a long-term carrot being dangling from a stick which requires you to play the game to get there.
And of course I'm on the STO forums when I'm bored.
Not really, but that may be because I don't restrict myself to MMOs.
As has been fairly stated, players in MMOs burn through content faster than it can be created.
So, I also play team based shooters.
Thing about such games (Battlefield for instance) is that there is no end game as such. Instead there is emergent gameplay.
You can play with the same team against the same team on the same map in the same mode and each match will be different.
Don't get me wrong, STO is my current go-to game, but everyone needs a change of pace now and then.
Pick a wholly different game type, play it off the side of your desk and see how that goes.
Publishers think we want single-player games in online worlds, with content spoon fed to us when we lap up what's already on the plate. But this philosophy of development isn't sustainable (as Cryptic learned), and even so there's little room for emergent gameplay in todays MMOs--which is exactly what made the games of yore so interesting and lasting.
Things are starting to shift thanks to the success of games like Minecraft which put content and storytelling in the hands of players. It will be a slow return to the MMOs that made MMOs popular, but I have faith that we'll see publishers wake up to reality. There's money to be made, after all.
Oh trust me, I play other games like WoT and such. The foundry missions are nice but even players can make them only so fast and well, some of them while nice are choppy and can be glitchy.
And I didn't rush each story for Fed, KDF and Romulan. Took my time and enjoyed the ride. But rides come to and end and it's well "Where do I go from here?" That's the problem with the industry.
They make these amazing stories, they come to an end, and IMO I don't really think many of them think about "End game" content very much.
Star Trek Battles member. Want to roll with a good group of people regardless of fleets and not have to worry about DPS while doing STFs? Come join the channel and join in the fun!
http://forum.arcgames.com/startrekonline/discussion/1145998/star-trek-battles-channel-got-canon/p1
I'd like to respectfully disagree, since I was present in Everquest when the news broke that the developers were releasing expansions on the shelves when they weren't even completed yet to make their "2 expansions a year" deadline in the prime of that game's life. My guild climbed through the progression of the "Planes of Power" only to find that the keys we needed for the final plane simply did not drop where they were supposed to.
Then it happened again, and again, and again. We asked for GM assistance with no response. We filed bug reports. We sent e-mails. No response.
It took someone else datamining (against the EULA of course) to discover that the final level of the game was nowhere near being completed despite the fact we laid down money for the entire expansion, and that the devs purposefully broke the penultimate raids so that noone could get there while they finished their work.
Their reasoning was they expected players to take months and months to get to that point, which allowed them additional time to finish the raid, and they broke the quest as a failsafe to prevent people from accessing uncompleted content.
What they did not anticipate (since mainstream MMOs were still new at the time) was how quickly and efficiently players could be at burning through content they anticipated would take months to do, but took months less to do. After the news broke, SOE finally admitted that it was true and that they were sorry, etc. etc., but did go on record to state that players will simply burn through content faster than it can be created.
So what does this have to do with STO and any other MMO? They learned their lessons from Everquest, and other MMOs. Because the PR backlash was destructive at the time for SOE, and it sent a warning to every subsequent MMO developer that no matter how well-budgeted, no matter how quickly you can work, nothing you do will stall players from burning completely through it only to get to the end and say, "kay. Bored now."
But here's a thought, why not do what the show does? Why does each season have to be this one HUGE arc? why can't it be hey a short 3 mission set episode, and maybe do it more like the shows. Ya know we go here, figure out something and move along to do something else.
I mean it's not that hard to put out an exploration or diplomatic mission here and there.
Star Trek Battles member. Want to roll with a good group of people regardless of fleets and not have to worry about DPS while doing STFs? Come join the channel and join in the fun!
http://forum.arcgames.com/startrekonline/discussion/1145998/star-trek-battles-channel-got-canon/p1
I was perfectly happy with this idea. Unfortunately, the majority of the playerbase complained about the lack of combat in the 'non-combat' missions, and how everything seemed cheap and quickly cobbled together, and easily done and over with... with very little replay value.
Cryptic took this feedback to heart and changed gears and decided that the "weekly" episodes would be done in blocks (the Featured Episode series), and would offer something "new" to STO that was not seen before. In this instance, we received the Romulan story arc which introduced new technology not seen in any other mission. After that, we received the Dominion story arc, which introduced new technology too, like EVA suits.
They wanted each FE series to be spectacular and phenomenal because the majority of the playerbase loathed the "simple" story arcs like the Breen or Devidian arcs, particularly the ones without any combat.
I personally would have been happy with a non-combat mission or something every weekend, a little bone to gnaw on. But the players decided they wanted bigger and better missions, particularly in the wake of STO's launch, and the first few seasons which were extremely light on content (by today's standards)
It's worth noting that Everquest is ancient by gaming standards, so if what you say is true (and I'm inclined to believe you), this has been player behavior since the very beginning. How, then, could any developer or publisher believe that players wouldn't "burn" through content before the team could launch the next block of stuff to do? Certainly they can see players have always been quick to play through content?
You've provided an example of this being normative behavior for players--and assuming this is the case, it only supports my claim that content locusts are not a real phenomena but a construct created (intentionally or organically) to excuse a faulty development philosophy that puts an emphasis on episodic content as opposed to providing players emergent gameplay tools.
perhaps sandbox games are more for you.
those games are limited strictly by your imagination
You are correct. Most developers do know (and anticipate) that players will burn through content quickly. This is why we have artificial stopgaps in MMO's now (in STO's case the Rep grind) which come in a variety of different forms.
Content Locusts are not a myth, however. We've seen them on the STO forums before. They burn through content, don't care about the story, get the best of everything, and then they have nothing else to do. So they complain on the forums there's nothing to do and then move on to another MMO.
That being said, they represent a very very small fraction of the player population. But the fact they exist is what leads to this trend of "episodic content" rather than more emergent gameplay tools. While I think more emergent gameplay tools would be great, they do come with their own problems. I'd consider the Foundry as an emergent gameplay tool, where players can create new mission content and write their own stories.
The bad part about that is the Foundry has been used as a simple farming mechanism, and likely always will, with only a fraction of players actually using the User-Generated Content tools to play new storylines and missions. So one of the problems with more emergent gameplay tools is the capability for abuse -- and its unintended consequences on the rest of the game. For example, the in-game economy.
You can also find emergent gameplay in other areas, such as collecting the Path to 2409 datachips or the History of New Romulus datachips. Epohh tagging and other scientific work on New Romulus could be seen as emergent gameplay. One of the emergent gameplay trends has been exploration accolades by moving across particular terrain to get to a hard-to-reach area. Tumerboy has even commented he's looking at creating more challenging terrain to create exploration badges for, after we discovered many on New Romulus.
So let's say I'm right and it's a universal truth that players will burn through content quicker than it can be developed (even with an extremely well-paid, well-staffed development team like SOE), but the developers want to focus on the storyline more than alternative gameplay.
While emergent gameplay tools are cool, they don't really fulfill Cryptic's desire to further STO's storyline. If they want to create missions, STFs, or what have you... it requires a lot of time. The artificial stopgaps like the rep system buy Cryptic time because there's no burning through rep systems. You have to grind through it to Tier V.
While it doesn't completely solve the problem, it does a good enough job of keeping players in the game while preventing them from reaching "the end" incredibly quickly. By the time they do... the episodic "block" (like Season 8) is ready to be delivered (or thereabouts), which furthers the story even further and provides additional gameplay options, and emergent gameplay tools.
I dig.
I'm good up to the last part, where you posit that the "emergent tools" like reputation work to keep people in the game until the next block of content; for my own part, these artificial stopgaps chaff to no end, reminding me how game-y STO has become. They do more to push me away, personally, though I wouldn't classify myself as the type of player those systems exist for (I'm too cognizant of the fact that they're there to part me with my money).
I would say, above all else, starbases were a great emergent gameplay system, but they've since been used to push out more of those stopgaps and encourage RMT. Not quite what I mean when I say emergent gameplay, but the basic principle is there.
So yeah, think we're on the same page, but differ in degrees.
if I may also add ...how about going OUTSIDE for a change? ... dismissed