I miss games. Overtime games have become more like gambling, with loads of flashy stimulaiton and reward notifications. In newers games mechanics take a back seat. That's the gradual progression since the 90s.
It's happened with every frachise i've liked...
Rainbow six --> rainbow six vegas / Seige
I miss planning the attack and watching and playing as it unfolds
Warcraft 2 --> Warcraft 3
I miss the problem solving with simple base building and armies. I didn't like the heroes or art of wc3
Age of Empires 1 / 2 --> Age of Empires 3
I miss how well balanced AoE1/2 felt causing battles to unfold organically. The historical aspects were more fun in the first 2 titles.
Totalwar Medievel --> Totalwar Warhammer
I miss how unbalanced the battles would be. Strategy and tactics could turn you into a legendary general or atleast make you feel that way.
Gangsters 1 --> Gangster 2
I miss organizing crimes and watching it dynamically unfold
Dragon Age Origins -->Dragon Age 2/3
I miss the synergy and flow in combat. I miss the the characters and the story in the first game.
Civ 4 --> Civ 5/6
I miss how through trial and error i could learn to totally unbalance a playthrough with a number of different mechanics. Now everything is so well balanced or limiting the win feels artifical.
I don't want those games to be remade but the soul of the earlier games had obvious game mechanics that I wanted to beat, nowadays game mechanics take a back seat. It's all about artifical progression or rewards for just playing. In games today there's a huge lack of problem solving, trial and error or memory involved.
I'm interested in Pantheon because it's the only mmo in develope that appears to be built as a game.
Ainadak said:Knowing less. When you come across something that you just didn't realize was possible to have in a video game it can be a pretty magical moment. Perhaps a sad consequence of getting older.
^^This
Also I miss a good community. Back then communities were like going to Kansas or centeral American state and seeing how friendly people are. Now its turned into something like California where no one gives a **** and do there own thing and if you get in the way they yell at you.
That's a big question, and I prefer an evasive answer :
I miss wanting to play and do various activities instead of feeling compelled to.
Mmo's today are a pack of chores with daily lockouts you feel compelled doing, as missing one reset will pull you back. But if you got spare time you cannot do more, as burning content is what moderns mmo fears the most. Unfortunately, the content is too much of reheated things with various difficulty cursors than true genuine content.
That's what I miss, playing for pleasure and willing to, and not beeing brought on tracks with daily chores.
I miss having an active community. I miss having active zones. When a game feels dead i might as well play a console game. I do appreciate my solitude sometimes, but it should be a solitude based on my play-time, not based on the fact that the zone has no use anymore. Also, i miss the latenight crazy groups/conversations i used to get into.
I miss a world which is to be discovered the hard way . Not just watching a youtube which shows you where everything is and how everything has to be done . Not just reading a strategy for a raid that I will be trying for the first time .
I miss people . Like going into West Karanas for the first time and fighting with 5 other people for hours and learning new things all the time . I miss the ease to find groups or to be invited by groups because then one feels really useful . Not just flashing solo through some dungeon to get some Drop of Awesomness (which is finally not so awesome because everybody flashes through the same dungeon) and never come back again .
I miss a place in a game that I call home and everytime I return there, I find real people and not just NPCs repeating forever their scripted walks and saying their scripted words .
Today and since more than 10 years all these things cannot be found in MMOs . Last I played was SWTOR and the experience was horrible despite excellent story, good graphics, plenty of quests in a vast and diverse world . It had theoretically everything for an MMO player yet ... it lasted for me whole 2 months ! The reason ? In 2 months I have been there, done it . I don't remember a single person because people just met during 5 minutes to rush through some instance to never meet again . It felt like a vain waste of time and the only reasonable action was to leave .
Kilsin said:What is something you miss the most about gaming these days, compared to the past? #PRF #MMORPG #MMO #communitymatters #reminisce
I miss a game where you *need* and *want* to *cooperate* with other people.
The need because it's very hard without.
The want because it's more interesting with.
The cooperate because it's not about beating someone else, it's about killing monsters with your friends.
I think there are a lot of ingredients to make a good, compelling MMORPG/world. They are all present in some degree in the games I have played recently, although they seem to be getting harder and harder to find though.
The thing I miss though, that I haven't really been able to find in any game or world I have played in a long while, is patience on the part of the general playerbase. Everyone is so focused on getting to the end as fast as possible, on keeping up, catching up, doing it all as quick as they can...that they never really stop to appreciate what they have.
I miss the days when people understood that they didn't need to rush, that the content would be there when they were ready, and that the other players they needed to so that content would still be there too. When people felt like they could take the game in their own way and at their own pace, without having to rush to keep up with everyone else.
It is my hope that Pantheon can be designed in such a way as to bring this back. It will be hard since this isn't really a conscious choice players make. It's something where the game has to be set up so that if someone misses an evening of leveling, they aren't really behind their friends in any meaningful way. Where people have time to do their own thing and can still join together and help each other. It involves every aspect of the game though, not just the speed of leveling. But that is what I miss.
I can't really say what "I miss", but I can tell you what I want.
I want games that trigger real world feelings & emotions.
Examples:
EQ instilled a constant fear in me. "Am I going to die?, Will I be able to get my corpse back?" etc.
Counter-Strike made my adrenalne rush and caused me to be at the edge of my seat.
Sim City would just lock me in for hours because of my desire to make my city perfect.
And then there's everything you get from the community which is a unique thing in itself that changes with every interaction you have with each different person.
That's what people want to find. Figure out how to pull all those feelings out and no one will ever leave.
I miss the awe and fear of going to a new area in a game. Most games don't punish you for failure, so you just move from area to area until you complete the game. I miss the awe of entering a truly inspiring area for the first time. Elder Scrolls does have does this, but not the extent I experienced it in EQ. There was something to entering Naggy's Lair, The Plane of Fear, or even watching a magnificent train run by and know that if you didn't do something quick, a corpse run was in your very near future.
I miss the music. Sometimes you could go into a zone and it would be a certain time of day and then the music would hit the crescendo and it would make you feel something, I miss that, especially PoP and GoD music from EQ, both great ones, OoW comes close to being the same. It's sorely missing in most games today.
I miss the quests that are difficult, camping for couple of hours is a bit of a pain and can be frustrating, but when you get it, then you are like 'Holy **** it dropped!' then you feel like you did something. FF14 and WoW its just go here, find this, dialog windows at every stop and congratulations you win at life! Yay! Sorry but thats a load of horseshit. Quests are supposed to be something that are difficult, something that makes you strive to be better, to take more chances, to risk it all (fighting down into a dungeon and camping the spot for the drop even though you know if you miss a single kill in the rotation you might end up fighting 3 or 4 instead of just one at a time). In BiC i remember there was multiple places you had to go and find this or that, just ground spawns, similar to keying for VP, you could run right over the damn thing and never know it was there if you didnt take the time to look.
Anyway, thats what i miss most, music and quests that mean something.
Lol, I commented on the facebook one as well, but will add my comment here, just copied and pasted.
I tell you this, EQ nailed it. You got with a group, and you all talked and meshed very well together. The traveling, the farming, everything EQ did an amazing job with. I miss the good ol EQ community too, for the most part. It wasn't ever too crazy. Nowadays everything is sucha button mash and move you can't talk anymore. If you aren't completely focused on button mashing your 4+ hotbars you suck at dps or you suck at tanking or you suck at healing. We need to get rid of the button mash and invite more time for people to talk
I miss the large scale raids and the time sink dungeon crawls. Everything in society is so immediate and no patience. But when you raided in a 72 man EQ raid or even 100+ on Avatar of War, it was truly a special moment when you managed to keep 70-100 peoples attention and keep them from screwing up. These MMO's these days pump out 16-24 man raids and everything becomes an instance world to accomodate. I also miss grinding, I always got to know people real well in group chat when you sat down and grinded out exp or AA's. I don't want the game to go by fast. I don't want to level quickly, or find the fastest way to level just to keep up. I want to be able to experience the game. It's hard to do that when you are constantly rushing to get to a certain level so you can participate where everyone else is. My life has drastically changed since the days of EQ. I have a family now, I don't have the amount of time I used to have to game. But I would still like what time I do have to be challening and fun instead of rush rush rush trying to keep pace. The scary world that was EQ where danger lurked around every corner was a feeling I don't think I'll ever get again. That newness that awe is just hard to bottle up and remanufacture. But I would like danger, I want it to be hard and kick me in the junk from time to time. Question why I play this game, then give me the item I worked so hard for and made it all worth it in the end.
I miss the feeling like I was logging into a different life. Losing the feeling of playing a video game that requires me to memorize dance moves in fights while not really being able to appreciate the beauty of the world the game developers painstakingly develop. I didn't play eq, but ffxi exposed me to those elements. I still remember being a very low level, and stumbling upon a particularily nasty named that started chasing me only for a higher level to come to my aid and slaughter the monster. I remember making good friends at an early level, and eventually making a comfy guild with many friendly members. I remeber the first day I stepped into an endgame zone, it sent chills down my spine, and the first piece of endgame gear I obtained which I proudly wore in town. Competing or working in conjunction with other guilds for various content, and all of it having valuable gear no matter the age. And of course, epic storylines that drew you in. My favorite job in the game was a bluemage, I felt like a bluemage not someone playing one, I was an Immortal.
It's sad when good things have to come to an end, I would play that game still if the developers had left it to it's old merrits instead of overhauling it into an unforgivable mess.
I miss camping a rare spawn all night long with a group of friends. Every 20 minutes or so, you kill the repops and hope the rare spawn shows up and drops his rare loot, and the rest of the time you just chat and BS the night away with your group while you wait on the repop timer. So, camping named mobs, especially deep in a difficult dungeon, with a group is what I miss most.
I miss development forums that were honest, constructive and cut straight the point, having been replaced with these sycophant echo chambers of false adulation and hero worship. This trend in game forums, where criticism only happens AFTER a game is released and almost never during its development, is the single most common root cause of so many failures, particularly in the MMO genre.
I also miss games that were made under the theory of a game the developers wanted to play, versus a game that sells boxes and grabs as many "one month and done" subscriptions as possible.
I miss games that started off difficult and never got easier because of level and/or gear. Hip hip hooray for exponential mob difficulty curves, where things get harder and less forgiving as you level up.
Venjenz said:I miss development forums that were honest, constructive and cut straight the point, having been replaced with these sycophant echo chambers of false adulation and hero worship. This trend in game forums, where criticism only happens AFTER a game is released and almost never during its development, is the single most common root cause of so many failures, particularly in the MMO genre.
I also miss games that were made under the theory of a game the developers wanted to play, versus a game that sells boxes and grabs as many "one month and done" subscriptions as possible.
I miss games that started off difficult and never got easier because of level and/or gear. Hip hip hooray for exponential mob difficulty curves, where things get harder and less forgiving as you level up.
THIS!
Krugus said:Venjenz said:I miss development forums that were honest, constructive and cut straight the point, having been replaced with these sycophant echo chambers of false adulation and hero worship. This trend in game forums, where criticism only happens AFTER a game is released and almost never during its development, is the single most common root cause of so many failures, particularly in the MMO genre.
I also miss games that were made under the theory of a game the developers wanted to play, versus a game that sells boxes and grabs as many "one month and done" subscriptions as possible.
I miss games that started off difficult and never got easier because of level and/or gear. Hip hip hooray for exponential mob difficulty curves, where things get harder and less forgiving as you level up.
THIS!
Oh yes Ox agrees!!!