PPQ Purple

Video Games: The General Discussion & Community Thread

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@Ammokkx

I do not think you understand what I am saying. Or rather you are refusing to understand on account of the fact that you stubbornly refuse to accept that there is a difference between the commercial success and failure of a product and its success or failure as representative of a genre.

You can have a movie that's billed as horror but isn't scary at all. And yet such a movie can make huge amounts of money. Does this mean that it's a good "horror" movie? NO. It makes it a good movie overall that did good as a movie but it still fails at its genre. And that's what I am saying here as well.

A good "MMO game", two words combined and not just one, is a game based around having fun through group socialization within the context it provides. Therefore in order to succeed both as a product AND as a MMO it has to tick not one but both of those boxes. It has to combines both a set of good team and/or PVP activities to engage you and keep you engaged when you have friends around and a good set of mechanics to forcefully make sure even the most awkward shy person ever could make friends so as to ensure nobody was stuck awkwardly playing alone and missing out on the true content, which is the fun of socialization. It's a game that creates conditions for forced (if stealthily so) socialization and than makes that socialization fun.

And if it fails at one or the other it either fails as a game overall or it fails at its genre. And the two are, like in the movie example, completely separate things.

A good and fun multiplayer game that does not create those conditions, one that does not in fact have a way to push people into forming bonds almost against their will whilst making them feel like it's organic natural and even their own idea is not a good MMO. It's just a good multiplayer like DOTA or Warthunder or Counter Strike. It might be fun, it might be successful and it might rack in a lot of cash. But like our movie example above it still fails at the genre it's trying to belong to.

Equally so a game that creates those conditions and does so fantastically but that just isn't fun to play is a good MMO but a crap game. It succeeds at its genre and might do so brilliantly. But because its just not fun it fails at the "game" part and is thus doomed to failure, and rightly so. Just like a "horror" movie that is incredibly frighting but otherwise just plain crap.

But those are two separate things that need to be looked at separately. Because you can and do have plenty of situations where you fail at one and succeed at the other.

Dragon Ball: Shattered Worlds

<Snipped quote by PPQ Purple>

Wait, you're planning to pay for your stuff? Shit, I was just gonna loot one of the abandoned shops for my replacement Scouter.

@Double

I would but firstly all my money is in my purse which I imagine has been blasted into atoms and two I don't think there is anyone left to take it anyway. But shopping just sounds so much better than dumpster diving in the ruins.

Dragon Ball: Shattered Worlds

So like does that mean we can finally go shopping? Because my girl needs a new handbag. And makeup set. And a change of clothes. And I guess we can get stuff like food and other survival supplies while we are at it. But only if there is money left after the essentials are taken care off.

Video Games: The General Discussion & Community Thread

Mate you literally can't remember shit about the MMO's you played.

@Ammokkx

Because they did their job of locking me and a bunch of other people in a room with the explicit order that none of us are getting out before each has at least one friend good enough that I don't have to remember them. Plus frankly once you get to my age I'll see if you can remember stuff from over a decade ago. These days the only stuff from my youth I generally remember is the stuff that stood out for one reason or another either by being very good or very bad.

Like half the reason why I remember Silkroad Online is because in the later years the devs didn't realize it was a bad idea to allow botters to accumulate ingame currency by botting 24/7 and than sell it for real money which actually triggered an ingame hyperinflation. And I found the whole situation to actually be quite educational from an economics perspective. So it stuck in my memory.

Video Games: The General Discussion & Community Thread

You can say what ever you want but I will until my dying day hold that what I described is what differentiates a good from a bad MMO. And yes, I am aware it's an old and "outdated" formula. But that's the point. All MMOs that have come since or have "evolved" past this are simply doing it wrong. Which by the way is the reason I quit the genre to begin with. It changed and now it sucks and I hold and will hold this to my dying day. And there is nothing you can ever say to convince me of the opposite.

And if that makes you all upset than that's your problem. I am entitled to my opinion.

Video Games: The General Discussion & Community Thread

The true magic of an MMO is that it's just fun enough to give you a goal to play toward and just boring enough to force you to make friends. That's my final say.

The true enjoyment of playing an MMO is when you know there is a cool goal just beyond that boring quest that has you grinding up 300 tigers or some such. So you go into a field and stand for two hours grinding on tigers. And it's as boring as this conversation. Only you aren't alone. There are tens of other players in that same field grinding those same tigers all being bored and yet all looking for that shiny goal in the end.

Knowing you are in the same situation and that you are all sharing the same experience combines with internet anonymity to ensure all inhibitions you might have toward the notion of talking to random strangers vanish. All the things that ordinarily hold you back from socializing just go away because you know you are in no way worse or better off than anyone around you. So you start chatting even if you newer otherwise would. And hey, you actually have that shiny goal at the end to talk about.

Before you know it the two hours of grinding are over and you are actually sad to see them go. So you stick around to chat some more and help the other players grind up. And by the time you are done it's next morning and you have met new friends with whom to chase after the next shiny goal.

That is the purpose of MMO games and that is their magic. Any game that fails to provide that fails at being an MMO. Because that is the one and only thing you can NOT get from any other genre. And that's just that.

Video Games: The General Discussion & Community Thread

is asinine.

@Ammokkx

What"s asinine is you openly admitting that you are the odd one out and than proceeding to lecture on what the thing you are odd and unusual in is all about. You might as well be a non drinker lecturing about the true purpose of Octoberfest. At that point there literally is no more point talking to you as you will continue to demand your odd and unusual perspective is the correct one.

Video Games: The General Discussion & Community Thread

Please stop making sweeping statements about genres you don't play, have no interest in, and don't know the target audience for.

@Ammokkx

I spent more than a decade of my life playing MMO games. And I played more than 10 of them during that time and different periods. And I even stated as such before in this thread. So stop making assumptions about me simply in order to advance your confrontational agenda.

MMOs exist as a venue for socialization. That is their literal selling point. Like taverns and conventions they exist to create a fandom and than maintain it for the members to facilitate socialization. In fact I would go so far as to say with some confidence that the vast majority of the hundreds of people I hung out with during that period of my life realistically couldn't have actually cared less about the game as such other than the fact that it was the thing we all used to hang out in and do stuff together.

I personally have tried more than 10 (I lost count) of the various free MMOs out there and I can't even remember their names. I remember Silkroad Online because it was my first game of the genre but that's about it. I don't even remember what the last one was.

If you play an MMO in order to sit alone and play a game without or with minimal interaction with other players than you are the strange one. You are the guy that goes into a pub to sit in a corner silently drinking his beer all night. You might well enjoy the experience and nobody can invalidate your enjoyment but that is objectively not what the venue is for.

Video Games: The General Discussion & Community Thread

]I'm sorry to keep going off on you like this PPQ, but you have some hilariously misinformed or wrong opinions on genres and how they're structure. Games don't often survive by being actually bad, they're doing stuff right. XIV, especially, is lauded for its great storytelling and newbie-friendly Level Sync system. You can still do most old content as if it was new, and for the ones you can't, it's not impossible to find someone in party finder to help you out.

@Ammokkx

I didn't say bad. I said that they need to be good enough to sustain a community but not so good that they destroy the community by just having everyone sit and play so focused on the game that they don't actually socialize.

That might make for a good game that pays off well but it fails at the fundamental purpose of a MMO.

I'd still be playing even if I didn't have people to hang out with in-game. In fact, I kind of don't want to be in an FC, but if I'm not, I'm hounded 24/7 by invites from all over.

Which makes it a good game, but not necessarily a good MMO. That's the key thing.

You can have something that is excellent all round and enjoyable but still fails at the fundamental purpose of its genre. And the purpose of the MMO genre is to provide people who don't ordinarily get up and socialize with a way of doing so that does not actually involve getting up. It is a venue for social interaction first and foremost.

If the game keeps you happy and engaged but does not push you into socializing than it has failed at its job as a MMO.

Video Games: The General Discussion & Community Thread

I played ff 14, beat everything up to the end of Shadowbringers but my subscription ended before I could do any of the end of game content.

I think the greatest flaw with MMOs is just how bare bones a lot of them are before you get further into the game. I don't think I've ever booted up an MMO and thought to myself "hellz yea! these early levels are so fun and challenging!" your most challenging content is always going to be found inside dungeons, or raids, or stuff like that. Massively multiplayer online games are, ya know, massively multiplayer for a reason. multiplayer is the appeal. Not playing an MMO with other people is like, really silly. It feels like the early levels are to learn controls and just find people to party with. From there, you can join a guild and have people help you find whatever you need for the annoying fetch quests.

The story for FF 14 is good, but like everything else in the game, you need to work your way past the base game to enjoy all the cool content. A realm reborn is painfully vanilla, then you get to Heavensward and stuff gets better quickly. Post stormblood and pre Shadowbringers was also interesting.

Me though, I like playing scholar. it's a lot faster to que up.

@BrokenPromise

Yea, that's sort of the point. As someone who has played a lot of the free MMO's out there I can tell you that what set the good ones out from the bad ones was that the good ones weren't fun. Or rather they were just unfun enough.

Basically a good MMO is fundamentally not a game you are supposed to have fun with but something that's meant to facilitate social interaction. It's the computer nerds equivalent to the old "go out and meet some friends" your parents always bug you about. So functionally what it needs to do is NOT provide you with riveting gameplay but instead give you an environment in which you can relax knowing you are surrounded by like minded people who share at least one big common interest so you can socialize with them.

It's exactly like going to a pub to get drinks or something. You aren't there for the drinks. You are there to go have fun with friends and meet new ones. Thus the content of both has to be just engaging enough to make you not want to leave the venue but also boring enough that you are not so subtly encouraged to find people to pass the time with as you do the boring padding stuff.

And once you've found the people you want to spend time with it has to be designed so that it continually gives you new and boring but challenging tasks to do so as to keep giving you an excuse to keep hanging out. Sort of like a drinking game. It's not the worlds most intelligent form of entertainment but it keeps the party going.

Conversely if a MMO is too good of a game in its own right than people will just focus on playing it and not socialize.