We need more Complex MMORPG's

Is there anyone else out there than me that think we need more complex MMORPGS on the market?

The way things r going now makes me scared! First WOW, which you can learn in 30 minutes of gametime, than AoC which is about the same and than Warhammer which is even less complex the WOW!

I know there are some good complex MMORPG's out there like Eve, Anarchy Online, Everquest 2, and old SWG but there are not many people playing these advanced games after easy games like WOW and warhammer came on the market.

Why do people choose so simple games that u can master in 30 minutes over more complex games? Is it because people think some of the MMORPGS are to much complex or is it because people dont have time, or do they just dont understand these complex games? Or is is because of the young gaming community that kida rather play cookie cutter games?

 

They don't want to take the time to learn. If they can't learn it in a few minutes, they have already lost interest. They have the attention span of Homer Simpson..."Look! A squirrel! Hahahahahha!" *runs after squirrel*.

 

Personally I work 2 jobs. That takes up at least 55hrs of my week. I really don't have alot of time to play games after that. I currently have 58 and 54 priests in WoW and I believe a rank 12 Witch Hunter in War. I like that I can actually accomplish things in a small time frame in War! Otherwise I just wouldn't play because there's no point if I only have an hour to play and I can't get anything done.

 

ultima online > *

:cry:

 

if you have raided in sunwell, in wow, you would know it isn't very easy.
but yea, other than that the game is a cakewalk.

 

you want to add more complexity to these games?

 

i don't play MMORPGS at all, i just can't get into them.

 

Ultima Online was where it was at.

 

True, but am really talking about that and talking about the complexity of the game. In WOW all u do is pvp and raid and all the items u get from drops and a stupid craftig method.

Take for example old SWG. Here all the items in game was created by other players. If you didnt buy em from playershop or made gear urself u didnt had any, you could not simply find boss loot. You had to set up facory's and produce 100 of different metals, make weapons parts with good quality metal of some of the 100 different types and put them togehter. Than you had a weapon ranging from quality level 1-200 or something. Everyting in this game was played driven and everything was played built. Cities, spaceships. robots, hoovers, weapons armor and god knows what. Everything had to me made by enginners, architect, weapon makers, robot makers and tons of other classes. The factory you had to set up to actually collect minerals also had to me made and eprfected with parts and god knows what. I took me several years to learn the whole game and all the things you could do.

There were so much to do besides pvp and raiding in this game and others like i already mentioned. Not to say that there was over 30 classes you could also be multy class and combine classes togehter and decied your own progess with a skill tree.

Anarchy Online for example got 50 different skills put points in each time you level, and special peek points and alien perk points and personal and general research, you couls really make a unique character, not to mention the huge database of equipment in the game raning from quality level 1 to 300 for each different item. I mean you dont see this complex stuff in WOW and other cookie ciutter games. Hell in WOW you cant even raise your stats when you level!!

 

I don't think it matters how may things there are for a player to do. What matters if how fun it is and how much complexity it can retain while being fun.

 

i though ffxi was complicated.

thats a pretty recent game in term of mmo's

 

Glad to see some UO fans here XD It seems that the average mental age of the WoW community is about a quarter that of what UO had, heh.

 

Amen. Note before we get flamed, he said average. Not all WoW players are pre-pubescent idiots, just most.

 

UO is a good MMORPG, but its getting dated and i dunno how many players still play but i guess there r some.

I just saw that Everquest is coming out with their 14th expansion, pretty crazy

When it comes to WOW, it is actually the third funnest mmorpg i have ever played but i wish they would make it more complex. The community in it is really bad though. I would say Anarchy Online have on of the best MMORPG community's. I am a lvl 89 Enforcer and so far i have only met 1 childish. annoying player. Thats very good!

 

It's hard to determine the quality of a community from a single person. We all pretty much agree that WoW has too many idiots though.

And it's "most fun".

 

I personally think if an mmorpg was overly complex it would attract fewer players than say WoW & WAR & that's less cash in the developers pockets, I don't think WAR is any less complex than WoW I'd say on a par, what WAR brings is fantastic RVR (DaoC devs)

Why not try one of the less popular mmo's like Vanguard, Tabula Rasa, or wait & see if Darkfall isn't just vapourware http://www.darkfallonline.com/ that might be what your looking for..

 

I am playing Anarchy Online for the moment so i dont need another game to play i just wanna see a bigger community in these games or get a new complex MMORPG

 

That's why I mentioned Darkfall http://www.darkfallonline.com/ though its been in development so long it's often considered Vapourware..

I agree with lack of community these days, when I played DaoC it was the community spirit which made the game, I expected the same in WAR but that hasn't happened, people seem so quiet, no one chats, very little banter & I have even encountered quite a few rude people which I'm unused to but guess it's part of the now society...

 

Yeah, i know all about that game and on paper it sounds awesome but i doubt we will see much of it in the game. I bet the servers wont be able to handle it. AoC was also good on paper with no instances and not a turn based gameplay but u see how it turned out

 

u HAVE to have played UO back in its prime to know how good it really was. before they created the good world/bad world bs or early faction days were really fun. UO was like a real virtual world. even small things like hunger level affected yur stamina, accuracy, etc. skills could be mixed and matched to make any kind of custom char u wanted. there were also special combination of skills that had different bonus effects. different patches would add new skills and add/revise existin skill combos. 90% of the game required actual brain power and skills. i really hate games that can easily be dominated by a chump with godly equips or maxed level.

i have yet to play a game that has come even close to what UO was. if they made a version of UO right now...they could leave everything the same and just update the graphics...i would drop every game i'm playin now and start UO again in a heart beat.

 

The problem with MMO's is that ever since the success of WoW, developers are no longer creating these games because they have a passion for the genre; they are only in it for the money. Games like EverQuest, Asherons Call, and UO were designed and made by people who were gamers themselves and had a passion to make games they and their friends liked. No one even imagined these games would reach the level they're at now.

Once investors and large corporations saw that they could be extremely profitable, business decisions started steering the direction games went. I still believe a genius like Brad McQuaid could have continued to be successful if businesses like $ony Online hadn't gotten a hold of him.

 

We just need to get back to the basics, more good single player RPG's.

I miss games like Final Fantasy 6, Chrono Trigger, and most of the Zelda series. Lots of hidden things to find, good music score and game design, ect.

We have all these games these days that seem to try to make up for what we used to have with just graphics and other useless content.

 

Steep learning curve != Depth

Especially when MMOs are intent on ****ing players over that happened to choose the wrong ability or even just misclicked and can never change it.

 

The majority of people don't have the time or effort to learn over-complicated games. If a game is boring and hard at the start most people would be put off (I know I would ) and the games companies would make as much money, so they dont develop many of these types of games.

 

I am a manager working 50+ hours a week and I am going to school. and a g/f i have very little time for games or mmorpg's. i started playing my druid on wow again. but i only get about 5 hours a week in on wow. i use to get 20 hours a week in. but work/school/gf take's most of my time. so thats my reason i like simple game's. i can learn any game in about 5-6 hours. been playing pc games since i was like 6 i am 22 now.

 

WoW is not good for me as a casual player, takes hours to form & run a raid and most guilds that are good enough to run said places almost require you to live in the game.

Its not just about being simple/complex its game design.

Low levels WoW can be a pick up and play game for a busy person with family/job/work ect, but end game sucks IMO, thats why I only occasionaly play on a private server where things are much faster/easier and I also dont have to waist $15 a month to almost never play.

Phantasy Star Online wins in my book for being the best pick up and play MMO, it was fun, it was social, and it seemed like you could achieve something no matter how much time you had to play.

 

see i want to play an online game but i dont want to pay a monthly fee, any good suggestions? and im looking for somehting complex as i like hard games

 

Darkfall Online.

 

is that directed at me?
i might look it up

 

Coming soon. I don't know how I feel about it though.

 

Isn't Eve somewhat complex?

 

It is complex, not incredibly hard though. You could also argue that you dont need very much time to play it - (because it has a time based skill system)
as in you constantly are training your skills, even if you are offline. This means a casual player can progress with the same speed as a player who plays the game very much, while the player who plays very much still gets the chance to make a lot of money and buy a lot of nice gear for their ships.

But in the end EvE is really only great in the long run if you find a great group of people to play with, who fit your playtimes. (Which is not too hard imo, since everyone plays on only 1 server)

 

i think guild wars is somewhat complex. not nessesarily in pve, but in pvp. you cant just chose one or 2 professions that pwns all others, every one has many strengths and weaknesses, and you have to chose between thousands of skills to put on a bar of 8, and chose your attributes correctly, also your team needs to sync very well, you cant just pull 499 people to attack one thing, you have alot of limiters. pve can be complex depending on who you play with or if you just use heroes/henchman (on hard mode)

 

Ragnarok was fun up to a certain point.

 

Who needs mmorpg's when Fallout 3 is out in a month.

 

lots of people..

when fallout 3 gets boring, the MMORPG will still be there. (most likely)

 

They are not overcomplicated but some people just don't have the brain to handle it.

 

Agreed, I've played MMO's for 9 years and have never encountered anything complicated or hard. MMO's are designed around being time sinks, you're practically guaranteed the rewards if you put in the time. These games need to keep people with 50+ hours of time to burn on a single game interested enough to keep sending in $15 a month year after year.

 

Old SWG is comming back, wait for SWG EMU. They are brining back the game to pre CU.

 

Can you tell me more about that or give me some kinda source for it?

thanks

 

Never did get into the sci-fi MMO's like Starwars.

However, an MMORPG without "training wheels" would be nice.

The complexity should be in the character building, team-work required, player politics and npc interaction and world story.

The interface should remain easy-to-use.

Anyone should be able to handle basic things, the skill would be in building the character and whatever tradeskill profession you chose, making proper choices in and out of combat, and choosing when to fight and when to flee!

That's right... not every combat scenario should be about a single player character stomping 800 monsters with such a guarantee as to emit a yawn.

Some encounters you SHOULD have to run.
Every (level appropriate) encounter should entail at least a bit of risk as well.

This would also eliminate the "bots" which show up in so many other games.

Death penalty-> I know people hate this but every MMO I have ever played without a penalty for dying or with penalties so small turns out to be too easy. You end up with death being so little of a problem that people die to travel faster. (one of the things I really hated about Conan)

EQ and Lineage2 seem a bit harsh, but WoW, AoC, and even Warhammer have penalties so low that you frankly don't care that you died.

I think I liked EQ2's system best where you incurred an XP debt on death. (death takes its toll) PvP should be separate and have its own bonuses and penalties.

It would also be nice if the game makers would wrap the story around why death works differently for the players than the world around them.

Levelling curve... seriously... we need to get rid of the "max level in 2 days" MMOs... Tune the MMO to reward players for 1-2hour play sessions with diminishing returns past 4 hours. Make levelling up to a useful level relatively easy, but not the whole "WoW-easy" concept where players don't even have the slightest clue at max level.

L2 now does this pretty well with level 6x being a one-month exercise even with extremely light play. Warhammer does this quite well as well with levelling being pretty easy and there being realm points that make up the vast majority of grind (and only when you want to)
Neither of these games have max level, max equipment characters in a month or two and someone even NEAR max level at least knows what the character can do.


Deeper more invloved MMORPG's with story and more than just PvP "quake"-like fighting or scripted PvE "show up and win guaranteed" encounters? Yes please.

 

i really hate games with any kind of level system. they are simply too easy to dominate.

i know i might sound repetitive, but UO had just about everythin u guys are sayin that current games are lackin. i haven't played a MMO, since UO, that has had me "addicted." UO made u use yur head and think like if it was a real life situation. there were no godly spells that did 999999 damage to everythin on the map. there were no crazy godly weapons that would kill u in one hit. everything and everyone was interlaced with each other. everything was balanced. everything depended on yur hand/eye coordination and how well u worked yur preset buttons. didn't matter if it was a 1 month old char vs a 1 yr old char. it all came down to users' abilities.

UO was one of the first MMO's that implemented a community market system. like there would be certain towns/places where all kinds of merchants would gather and try to sell their goods. similar to a big flea market. there were so many things to do. from bein a merchant/craftsman, to bein a miner/blacksmith, to makin a livin by doin big PK raids.

another thing i liked from UO was that yur corpse can be looted when u die. i hate MMO's of today. they've been taken over by little snotty kids that just talk alot of crap, out of their rear. back in my UO days...if a little rugrat talked mess to me...i would wait for him to come out of town...and then... i really think thats how all real MMO's should be. it's like now-a-days, there's an "easy button" for everythin. we need to take that "easy button" away sometimes and let the kiddos learn the hard (correct) way.

 

Sigh...

UO was all ONE class, ONE build, ONE everything.
Everyone was the same, wore the same equipment, and did the same things.

There was no PvP in UO... only 10 on 1 ganks. (early play after release was fun, but after then it went downhill fast)

Oh and you didn't need to wait until they got out of town.

Make a newbie, train pickpocket with a friend and die all day long stealing everything with a friend who would loot your corpse after you die from the guards.
There is no way the victim would get all their stuff back if your friend wasn't massively stupid.
Sell everything, put in the bank, go again in your death robes... If they did it right, it didn't natter how good your were... you better be nakid in town or you lose out.
(it was funny to find someone had pulled a halberd from your pack and "you didn't notice")


UO was ok for its day, but is REALLY horrible by today's standards...
No cooperation other than gankfests (skilless anyway) and no community.
No complexity other than train up the skill every one else uses because its the only one that works and gank everyone else mindlessly.

 

say what...?

we must've been playin different versions...cuz what u describe is NOTHING like UO in its prime.

u sit there and say, "there's only one class blah blah blah booty chatter..." then sit there and say, "...u can just train a thief and rob people." so does the game only have one class or different skills/classes u can train? lets talk about mages alone. i haven't touched UO in about 10 years. even at that time there were mace/mages, archer/mages, sword/mages, halberd/mage (for pvp), hand to hand combat/mage, etc. just the mage class alone had different build combos to make different hybrids. they also had skills that had passive effects when trained with another skill. like i remember mages needed evaluating intel skill to cancel out opponent mage's magical resist level. the skill book had like 100 different skills u could train. there were no real "set" builds. there were no boundaries to what skill combination u wanted to train, as long as yur max skill points didn't exceed 700 or 800 total.

i remember DEX even effected the speed u swing yur weapons at. ex: a warrior with 100 dex would swing a halberd 50 times a min; where a mage with 25 dex would swing a halberd 20 times a min.

no pvp in UO?!?!?! say what...?

and i waited outta town so i could kill them and loot them myself. bein a thief just isn't my thing.

all in all...yur post was pretty bogus. don't think any part of it was correct except the items part. i agree that UO lacked a wide range of different items, but the different ways to use each item were 10x better than any game with an items glossary, the size of an almanac.

edit: i forgot to add that...if u were gettin robbed, blindly, like that by thieves. then u were a dummy. it says "u stumbled on somethin" when u bump into people that are hidden. all u had to do was cast reveal and it cancels out their hide skill. even if the thief did happen to jack me, his name would remain grey to me and i could kill him anytime. i could even kill him in town and the guards wouldn't whack me.

 

As said eralier i play Anarchy online now and when you die you loose all your exp unless you got to a saving point and save your character. This is very nice because it prevents the noobs and bots from leveling.

Lets say you have been out doin a huge quest for 5 hours and right before u gonna level u die and than u loose all your exp. It actually feels good because than you know you suck and have to improove your gameplay.

Another thing i like about the game is that i never see anyone with the same gear, i believe Anarchy Onlne has the biggest item database out there. I played for 6 months and i only knw 5% of the gear you can get. Everyday i see new gear on people that i have never seen before and the gear really looks awesome too.

There is also no gear that is "best" like in WOW you will see all the end gamers use the same arena gear etc but here omg u never see 1 dude use the same stuff cuz there r so much to choose from and there r no "best" everything is good and can be good for ur unique character build.

Another cool thing is that you can enter huge mechs and fight from them vs the other faction. There mechs r huge and its really cool entering one a smashing buildings, cannons etc in ur way.

i love this game

Edit: forgot to mention that ur guild can also build your own cities and houses with tons of different buildings etc. The guild i am in have over 1000 members and a huge city. Thw playerworld is also the biggest ever, at least i never seen bigger. Maybe 15 times bigger than the world in WOW, but with whoompas (teleport system), grids (some complicated teleport sytem all the noobs get lost in) and over 25 different cars like flying ships, hoover boards, hoove scooter, water cars and more its easy to get around, at least if you played for a few years ^_^

 

I played UO from release until EQ came out.
It is possible you started playing after they had a chance to tweak things, but the game was pretty much a 100% loss when I quit.

Must have been much later... there was ONE build period if you didn't want to lose every time. Heavy Crossbow and mage... mostly crossbow as the magic was used to defend yourself.

When I quit you had two characters... your PvP one in fullplate, crossbow and with magic reagents buried as far as you could in backpacks, and one town thief to push people out of town. Anything else was easly destroyed.
Swinging a halberd didn't work past the first few weeks as you'd just be donating it to whoever. All other skills save PvP ones were completely pointless.

You were either dying beign shot 10 times by 10 people or firing once with 10 people and ganking...

You are PvP-challenged I see... 10 vs 1 is PvP as it imples "versus" which also implies a challenge. Killing someone 10 vs 1 is skilless...

Um... these thieves never left town... they were nakid/wearing deathrobes only and never lost anything because they only practiced pickpocket and died 40 times a minute anyway. Their partner never left town either... they were gimps who didn't advance in anything save pickpocket.
You could wait out of town all you liked...

The truth is... you obviously never played UO or played when it was in its death throes long after I left.
/shrug

Maybe you just don't know what "good" is...

 

i really couldn't tell u an *exact* date, but i remember playin UO about 10+ yrs ago. so i'm pretty sure i was there for the beginnin. i quit right after they came out with the felucia/trammel stuff. i thought the 2 world bs ruined the game.

archers were only good if there was a group of archers targetin 1-2 ppl. we only used archers in trainin and long ranged attackers in pk/anti-pk raids. i pvp'd on a daily basis. that was one of the main reasons why i loved UO so much. i could just be trainin one minute and all of a sudden a bunch of PK's would raid the whole trainin spot. kill and loot everyone. anti-pk raids were fun as hell.

from yur descriptions, u don't sound like u were a very advanced player. first of all, a PvP char will NEVER ever wear full plates. a full plate of armor nullified too much dex and dex is everythin to a warrior class. ESPECIALLY an archer. they can't shoot on the move, they have to be standin still. dex affects their load and shoot time. most warrior classes wore plate/chain combos for the best defense to dex loss ratio. i could put a sword-warrior with a poisoned katana & 100 dex on an archer, and the archer would do nothin but run. hardcore dex archers wore all chain or GM-tailored/magical leather armors. i could go on and on about armor preferences between each of the different pvp classes.

and are u forgettin all the important classes that were not fighters??? blacksmiths, tailors, food makers, fishermans, lumberjacks, miners, on and on...

i don't know about u, but all those classes were very important to me. if i am not usin my rare items. i only wear GM blacksmith-made stuff. i needed people to make furniture and stuff for my houses. only GM miners could mine the more rare ores. again...i could go on and on...

i was a pretty good pvp'er back in my UO days. when i pvp'd 1 on 1, it would usually be from people challengin me. they either hear about u or u killed their buddy and they want a 1 on 1 duel. i used to take on up to 4-5 people at once, by myself. i was a mace-mage. i remember when mace-based weapons would break armor's durability. there were also many pk/anti-pk raids. if i was on my blue (good) character, we'd set up big parties of 20-30+ and raid all the known trainin spots. we even had recall runes to alot of guilds' bases/houses. there would be huge raids outside enemy castles/bases/houses.

i never really played a thief. it really wasn't my thing. i was into all the pvp'in, raids, dragon and nitemare taming, etc.

 

I knew Brad McQuaid's latest would fail miserably. McQuaid was openly gleeful about creating bottlenecks and time sinks in EQ. That only works when people have no alternatives for either social games or MMORPG's, or both. Now there is really no reason for people to put up with that anymore.