Off Topic Discussion Megathread

[Misplaced_Marbles]

I don't expect that to happen. Nowadays everyone wants to play MMORPGs but no one wants to commit to them. And that affects the design of mainstream MMOs. Personally I gave up waiting. There is only one MMORPG I'm interested and it has been in the making for so long that it will either never launch or will fail to meet expectations... Or third, it might meet expectations but because it targets a niche audience (like me) in terms of MMORPG, it will be fated to resort to heavy monetization or die young. (You might have heard of the game)

I don't think I'll find what I want from games like FFXIV outside of single player RPGs anymore.

I'll die in the hill that 1.23 had way more potential than everything since ARR and I would probably be enjoying XIV a lot more if they didn't scrap almost every design choices from back then.

This isn't a "nowadays" thing at all. People who want grouping to be a requirement to get anything done were ever a niche.

[ReynTime]

This isn't a "nowadays" thing at all. People who want grouping to be a requirement to get anything done were ever a niche.

Not at all. It's just the genre fails to attract a younger audience. People who today swear they don't have the time are adults who used to be kids or teens back then. MMORPGs have an aging audience compared to other genres. An aging audience that doesn't want to spend time grouping up.

Old school mmorpgs or mechanics are deemed tedious, and archaic. Something like that really would only fit with a niche audience, and in turn that means a triple A studio/publisher that actually has the resources to create and maintain something along these lines will most likely not bother investing in it. Heavy monetization won't save a game people don't want to play. Might put it on life support for awhile though.

I don't think you have any idea of what I'm talking about. Are you trying to tell me single player RPGs are archaic? Because they're doing well enough, some more than well enough even. I'm not talking about endless grind, which XIV itself has in spades.

But OK. You want to argue that MMORPGs with old-school mechanics/challenge are not viable. Well, guess what, FFXI is still around. And it's only no longer SE's most profitable product because XIV surpassed it after almost a decade trying with its vastly more populated playerbase. Does XI now has about a half a dozen populated servers only? Yes. But it's still very profitable, active, and getting more frequent updates than a lot of "not dead" MMOs. Now imagine if SE actually assigned more than two people to sustain it, if it's UI wasn't clunky and its registration/login process was updated...
Besides XI in its "dead" state as people in the XIV fanbase like to say in the most ridiculous hyperbolic sense is more active than every MMORPG not called WoW/XIV/ESO.

The audience exists.

And to elaborate a bit on old XIV. Grouping was nowhere near as bad as people who probably weren't there say it would have been. The copy-paste camps that people like to bash now were extremely important in the grouping process because you'd go to one and you KNEW there would probably be players forming or looking for parties for leve sharing or behests there. They designed these specific spots to act as mini hubs for adventurers leveling in specific tiers and Tanaka, who isn't the "idiot" youtube videos like to tell you he was, knew what his team doing when they created the camp locations. Grouping for the instances and NMs was more time consuming because you needed a larger party. But that's the beauty of having content of flexible party size like the old leves were (and FATEs are supposed to be now). Grouping for hamlet defences? Not that bad either. A lot of people wanted the relics and that feature was part of the process of getting it + it was on a timer so people didn't want to miss it.

There are always ways to design a game in a way that it naturally pushes players into grouping without making them sit around for an hour shouting in the chat without using a DF system. Specially in a day and age where party finder exists.

[SenorPatty]

So I have finally made up my mind to create a Reddit account once I get home.

I visit a bunch of... subreddits (idk if I'm using that correctly) on a daily basis anyways and there are some I revisit time to time so why not.

Can't be worse than Facebook (thank god I deleted that years ago).

[Kolsykol]

Can't be worse than Facebook (thank god I deleted that years ago).

[Caurcas]

Well, in Malenia's defense, I think she's barely sane. She requires Miquella's Needle in order to not just be a festering bag of organs. The more she relies on the Scarlet Bloom, the more she's giving herself over to the power of the Outer Gods.

Wish I could get Radahn a needle too. Maybe it'd fix his brain. Maybe not.

I still prefer Radahn, given Maleina kind of bionuked a whole region when she was losing. Also, kind of shoot herself in the foot because this led to Mohg kidnapping and doing....very not good stuff to Miquella. However, all is moot because Ranni is the way.

[Cincierta]

Well, since today is St. Patty's Day, we've gotten all of our St. Patty's products out for sale, except for what little Irish soda bread dough they sent us.

Our warehouse only sent 2 cases per store out this year. This was not enough as we were supposed to get 15 cases of the stuff.

The amount of people who lost their minds at us because of not having Irish soda bread out today (we could only reserve the bread for those who ordered ahead), was absurd. Every store in our chain is experiencing this. I know, how dare we, because of worldwide shortages and supply chain issues that caused it, that we did NOT have their holiday bread out in massive surplus.

To those people: it's not the end of the world. We have plenty of rye bread for you to make your other sammiches. Go buy some cases of beer and corned beef we have in stock and make yourself some open-faced Ruben sandwiches. You won't die if you don't have your holiday bread for a year. Same thing will probably apply to our Easter bread. You will be fine.

[Kolsykol]

I was so focused on Sith and Jedi that I forgot Imperial Agent was in SWTOR too xD.
I remember I had an Operative and played the melee knife build which was fun, animations aren't as bad either it seems.

Got me a bit hype to hop in again then I remember oh it's EA and Bioware ( also time sink ).
Eew.
I am very picky about who I financially support nowadays, VERY picky.
Tbh even just being a statistic by playing altogether makes me think twice.
Just want nothing to do with it.

On a side note for Kotor fans I found this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OagQ818xZXo

Pretty well made Malak vs Revan, the models are a little goofy at times but overall it's quite well-made.

[Theodric]

I think there's plenty of ways to strike a balance between 'tedious' and 'engaging'. At the time of its initial release, WoW was actually a lot less tedious compared to its competitors and had done away with concepts such as losing equipment and items upon death.

We're also seeing a surge in the number of pseudo-MMO's such as Monster Hunter World and Elden Ring. Which, certainly, can be played entirely as single player experiences if people so wish but have the potential to have players team up with friends and strangers alike.

I'm cautiously optimistic about what we might see in terms of MMO's in the future - it'll probably take a while until there's another 'lightning in the bottle' moment but as trends and tastes shift in their typical cyclical manner I'm sure we'll see something with a lot of depth that is also enjoyable to play.

If it wasn't for the awkward combat system, I'd be playing ESO instead of FFXIV. Both it and WoW are more to my liking in terms of the sort of factions, playable races and story elements - so it's a real shame that WoW opted to go so far off of the rails.

[Kolsykol]

I think there's plenty of ways to strike a balance between 'tedious' and 'engaging'. At the time of its initial release, WoW was actually a lot less tedious compared to its competitors and had done away with concepts such as losing equipment and items upon death.

This is true it has moved even further since then I'd say.
But it's true that WoW was essentially the '' casual MMO '' in comparison and it was designed to be that.
I think ultimately MMO's have become more engaging and less casual, but also less tedious.

WoW raids in Classic are a complete joke, bosses barely have any mechanics sometimes bosses in dungeons and raids just don't have any at all.
But I would say it's tedious.
It's hard for me to really judge it fairly tho because it was such a massive part of my childhood that I have some very strong nostalgia goggles on when I think back to it and when I played Classic.
To me I still enjoyed the gameplay but I don't think someone who has never played it would really think it's that great.

Like to me maybe it's worth spending a ton of time putting a group together for BRD and then spend all the time traveling there and the time it takes to complete it, it's A LOT of time.
Is it worth it to someone who never played Vanilla tho and Classic was their first experience with WoW vanilla?
Eh...
I am honestly not sure, perhaps as a one time experience?
I just dunno if new players really would look at it and feel the same about it as I did, I don't think so.

At some point the tedium just takes over and gets in the way too much and I think WoW Classic crosses that line still for most people even if it's not as bad as even older MMO's.

[Theodric]

I'd agree that many boss fights in early WoW are very 'simple' by present day standards, but back then internet connections weren't as reliable as they are now so many design choices are pretty much a product of their time. More than anything, it's the world building and sense of scale that I miss the most. I'm the type of player who likes to go and explore in the games that I play. If there's a big, imposing mansion in the distance then I expect to be able to enter it and see what's inside. I liked how ARR had a bunch of buildings in settlements such as Aleport that could be entered - it helps make the zones feel more alive. Newer settlements are just a bunch of NPC's standing around buildings that, more often than not, are entirely closed.