Off Topic Discussion Megathread

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[ReynTime]

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.

Not to mention compact as ARR zones are, they still have a lot more points of interest and lore hidden in plain sight than the barren zones from Heavensward onwards.
Or Heavenswonwards if you will.

Even if you take the newer maps and removed the excess barrenness you'd be hard pressed to find enough PoI in them. They're designed as not much beyond background view for MSQ over which they expect you to fly over so "why bother".
I can count the exceptions in one hand: Rak'tika, Labyrinthos, The hinterlands and Yanxia.

[Kolsykol]

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.

I definitely agree about the world building, even tho the WoW expansions had more impressive areas in many ways they have this artificial feeling to them.
They don't really feel like real places as much.
The great thing about the Vanilla world in WoW was that it felt real it's probably my favorite MMO world to date, I think that ESO in my experience at least comes fairly close.

Internet connections and fps do play a part I think but I also think that game design has just come a long way.
FFXIV has improved significantly with time too and become more complex, the devs learn and build on what is already there.

But yeah the world in Vanilla is what makes me look back at it and basically always have an urge to play it.
Part of me actually wishes that they made an offline mode too that was solo friendly I'd just like to experience it without the tedium and waiting too.
BRD is also just a really cool dungeon in concept and I actually do like the dungeons overall a lot, they just lack in boss design but the overall atmosphere and layouts are really good.

I also miss using utility like Sap and Sheep, when I played Classic we didn't really use that I think people are just simply better today since we have more experience with games and MMO's in general so it tends not to be necessary.
But I remember back in the day it was necessary and something you did, same in Heroic dungeons in TBC.
I remember Spellsteal being useful in Magisters Terrace, you could steal a mobs dps buff and become super powered and CC:ing one mob felt almost mandatory Warlocks were useful too to either steal or Banish the demons.
Imo I prefer that kind of stuff over just lumping everything together and mindlessly AoE:ing it down.

Edit: I went ahead and reinstalled SWTOR again, it actually didn't look as bad as I thought and remembered.
There's still issues ofc especially again the animations and effects but overall it's okay.

Damn tho I nerded out when I still played lol, had way more characters and blinged out characters than I remembered.
Something really cool I found out is that they allow you to do the stories on any advanced class you want and you can now also play Trooper for example with dual pistols or Bounty Hunter with rifle etc.
So you can do the Sith Warrior story for example but play a Sorcerer.
Wanna do the Jedi Knight story since I never did that one and it's supposed to sorta feel like the '' main story '' of sorts but didn't really want to play a Jedi Knight so that's cool I can play it as Shadow.

There's way more players in the '' main city '' ( Imperial ship ) than I expected too.

[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.

[Kolsykol]

So uh.
I was gonna create a new character in SWTOR and on the creation screen this was the first thing I saw.



I picked a female character btw, I also clicked randomize and I got another similar one lol.
If I keep pressing I get quite a lot like these.
I consider myself to be quite progressive and am fully supportive of trans people and all that, but I really feel like this kind of stuff turns it into a joke.
It's like people don't even understand what transgenderism and body dysmorphia even is, there's a reason why trans people actually make an effort to change how they look it's not just about pronouns.
This could unironically have the effect of causing a body dysmporhia reaction for someone who's especially aware and sensitive about that.

It feels like they're just giving people ammunition to be shitty and don't even have a basic grasp of the issues at all.
I don't see anyone playing a character like this except for as a joke.
Which granted people do that with the obese body type too on male characters, which is shitty too but like cmon.

This is also totally one-sided, male characters can't have womens faces etc when I press randomize too it's all clearly guys.
Then when I create a female character I am met with this and when I press randomize I get it with what feels like at least a 30-40% ratio.

[SturmChurro]

I don't see anyone playing a character like this except for as a joke.

Exactly right.