Hello MMORPG players. Snafudamus here to delve a bit deeper into the industry that has made some major changes in the past year or so. Cyptic's release of both Champions Online and Star Trek online along with a myriad of other ultra shallow, casual, easy mode games has spurred this new look at the industry.
The Casual Catastrophe of 2009/2010 or...”Is it a game if you can't lose?”
Hello MMORPG players. Snafudamus here to delve a bit deeper into the industry that has made some major changes in the past year or so. Cyptic's release of both Champions Online and Star Trek online along with a myriad of other ultra shallow, casual, easy mode games has spurred this new look at the industry.
Now I do want to seem pugnacious however I do feel a bit jaded that the market has forsaken all that is holy in my vision of MMO dogma. The question has been raised, “Is it a game if you can't lose?” In recent releases of numerous MMOs, I have discovered a disconcerting trend. No matter how careless my play style, I am rewarded. If I choose to take on an adversary that is way out of my league or if I take on too many enemies by blindly wading into a swath of foes I am not reminded I should not do this. I am in fact rewarded with free travel across a zone or rewarded by spawning right back where I was so that I may continue to beat the heck out of the poor mob that is still at half health from the last trouncing I gave him a second before. I am certainly not penalized in any way shape or form. Suicide tactics appear to be the in thing these days, this includes in PvP play.
Now I play and have played MMOs that have varying degrees of death penalties and while people will always complain about them it is rarely what stop people from playing a game on their own. I have stopped playing many MMOs over the years, never because the death penalty was too harsh. It was always because of unfixed bugs, or lack of content or I just had played all that game had to offer. The non death penalty advocates seem to be very can cantankerous in their discussions about the topic, well they are not really discussions. They amount to them shouting you down like they are a scolding member of the English house of commons. The usual response to an attempted discussion on the matter is, “There are plenty of games that have that type of play, go play one of them”. They never want to actually discuss any type of death penalty no matter how benign. When a casual hears the words death penalty they picture per-ma death or some other ridiculous ultra harsh penalty. When in fact almost 100% of the time the advocator merely would like to see a deterrent to bad game play. A penalty just harsh enough to stop the 11 year old (or that person with the mentality of one) in your PuG from running face first in to the mission or quest thinking he is actually going to accomplish something other than getting the entire party killed. Just harsh enough to stop that same 11 year old from attempting suicide run after suicide run on you in PvP. The penalty should at the same time be benign enough to encourage continued play.
The games that have released recently have zero death penalty at all. Using Star Trek Online as an example, In a game where money literally falls out of the sky, and it is so easy to level that the game had max level players in five days after release there is no death at all. Your space ship explodes and all that happens is you re-spawn a few feet from the action ten seconds after you explode. You do not lose a single thing. The ships are all free, all the gear is free, and by mid max level you have more money than you know what to do with. So what do you win in this game? If every thing is handed to you and there is no possible way to lose, is it possible to win anything? I never came across a single quest I needed help with, never a foe I could not defeat, nothing I needed a team for. Not one time was there any sense of accomplishment. It was a game in which a monkey could be a king.
This takes me to the next part of the article. Where has my MMO gone? All the games that released within the last twelve months have been easy as pie to play. Totally solo-able, totally mindless button mashing, totally console in the way they play. Massively Multi-player Online Role Playing Games seem to have evolved into glorified single player games with a social chat box attached.
There ARE however a few diamonds in the rough that are appearing on the horizon. A few real MMORPGs that just might make a splash this year. I can only hope that games like Earthrise have a huge impact on the industry if only to remind them what an MMORPG is. Earthrise is what I call a real MMORPG. Is has its own story line, yup that is right it isn't based on some movie or borrowed plot from some long lost comic. It has actual PvP where if you lose you actually lose. There will be no suicide runs in this game as you will only be able to afford to do that so many times. It has actual team play where if you play well as a team you are rewarded. So an MMORPG that actually rewards good game play. Hopefully Earthrise and the few other attempts at getting back to our MMO roots will prove to the industry that it needs to wake up and start making MMORPGs again, not these ultra shallow reward the loser games we have seen as of late. We need developers that have the courage of their conviction and make games for a certain crowd. The games that try to appeal to every one wind up appealing to no one.
With money tight all over the world in every facet of business It has had an effect which I outlined in a previous article http://gamesnafu.com/readarticle.php?ArticleID=128 . All the wanna be MMOs have been either dropped or made into MMO/FPS games which in fact are not MMOs at all but console style shooters with a ready room before each battle. We are now left with two sides of the same coin. We either get the ultra casual easy mode game like STO or we will get the games that actually reward good play like Earthrise. Only time will tell but I can only hope the industry gets its head out of its collective ass and starts making games that gamers can enjoy again.
