Off Topic Discussion Megathread

[ReynTime]

I enjoyed raiding back when I played WoW though the atmosphere and attitude towards it was very different back then. It feels too much like a second job these days and finding people who are reliable, friendly and genuinely trying their best is pretty tough. I'd rather not team up with a bunch of complete strangers and instead build up rapport with the same band of players each time.

Though particularly in this game, a lot of players just don't seem to want to team up even for easier content. I guess that comes with the territory - aside from FFXIV being treated like a visual novel by many players, every other individual I encounter seems to have 'anxiety' these days. I don't say that to be mean but Yoshi-P's decision to gradually turn more and more aspects of FFXIV into a single player experience isn't really my cup of tea. I just hope that another viable MMO emerges within the next few years and by that point interacting with other players becomes a novelty again that many people want to do because it's more engaging than just logging on and doing everything with NPC's.

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.

[SturmChurro]

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.

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.

[Larirawiel]

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.

Och, WoW Classic has also tons of tedious and archaic mechanics. And it was a huge success for Blizzard. I do not see, that tedious and archaic mechanics always lead to a niche game.


Cheers

[Kolsykol]

Och, WoW Classic has also tons of tedious and archaic mechanics. And it was a huge success for Blizzard. I do not see, that tedious and archaic mechanics always lead to a niche game.


Cheers

Would WoW Classic have been as successful if it wasn't WoW Classic tho?
It was more of a nostalgia thing I think.

I mean a lot of the stuff in question in WoW Classic was quite unpopular too, especially stuff like world buffs.
People kinda regretted the whole '' no changes '' thing.
Few people also stuck around, the game is essentially dead at this point.

[Larirawiel]

Would WoW Classic have been as successful if it wasn't WoW Classic tho?
It was more of a nostalgia thing I think.

I mean a lot of the stuff in question in WoW Classic was quite unpopular too, especially stuff like world buffs.
People kinda regretted the whole '' no changes '' thing.
Few people also stuck around, the game is essentially dead at this point.

This guy also thought, that it was all nostalgia:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-k5K4a-teWo

And yes, some things in Classic like World Buffs were way too powerful and overused. And yes, some changes would be good. But the people feared, that if Blizzard makes changes, then the changes would make the game similar to the Retail version.


Cheers

[Kolsykol]

This guy also thought, that it was all nostalgia:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-k5K4a-teWo

And yes, some things in Classic like World Buffs were way too powerful and overused. And yes, some changes would be good. But the people feared, that if Blizzard makes changes, then the changes would make the game similar to the Retail version.


Cheers

I enjoyed it, but I think it'd be quite silly to deny that WoW Classic wasn't as massive as it was because of nostalgia.
And there's a reason why the servers are essentially dead at this point.
I think it's going to be similar with TBC altho TBC did modernize quite a bit.

And I do think it exposed how aged a lot of the tedious aspects are that people were looking back at with nostalgia goggles.
There's a certain charm for example to looking for groups in the areas and city chats etc, but duty finder/ lfg I think doesn't really deserve the demonization and as soon as the hype for WoW Classic died down it kinda showcased that.
Sure if you're a big streamer you won't have issues finding groups, but the average player will be severely limited by it.
Even fairly close to launch I already had issues finding groups for Deadmines and it only got worse.
Most people don't want to spend hours on a dungeon, I mean people freak out over 15 min waits in duty finder/ lfg that's nothing by comparison.

[SturmChurro]

Och, WoW Classic has also tons of tedious and archaic mechanics. And it was a huge success for Blizzard. I do not see, that tedious and archaic mechanics always lead to a niche game.


Cheers

Yeah, it had a lot of initial success and a couple active servers now. As far as I am aware, WoW classic is largely dead aside from the niche playerbase that still plays it.

...

No, I have made it quite known on here that I like to play single player RPGs. Yes, FFXI is still around, for the niche playerbase that still plays it. I never argued that there wasn't an audience, I argued that these games are niche, and they are.

[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.