The greying of the MMO and what does it mean for RP players?

[hypatiala]

I wanted to share an article from eorzeareborn about The Greying of the MMO. This article basically talks about aging player base of MMOs and how the new twitchy MMOs may be alienating aging gamers. I was wondering what ya'll thought about how this applies to RPers in generally, RPing is in general a more careful and more intensive experience that I would imagine would have much older gamers than non-RPers.

[Elisea Renyven]

I wanted to share an article from eorzeareborn about The Greying of the MMO. This article basically talks about aging player base of MMOs and how the new twitchy MMOs may be alienating aging gamers. I was wondering what ya'll thought about how this applies to RPers in generally, RPing is in general a more careful and more intensive experience that I would imagine would have much older gamers than non-RPers.

 

I don't know about that. Me and some friends went back to our old Nintendo games... Contra, Life Force etc... and I swear those games are harder than today's genre of games. So I don't really think so. I think things are more shiny, but at the end of the day I still go back to my NES if I want some really hard challenges. So I don't think it effects Rpers that much since many of us like to see the entire game.

[Taeh Niumoenwyn]

One of the reasons I like FFXIV:ARR is that the combat isn't fast paced or twitch orientated. As for the trend in MMOs then I think a certain amount of this is down to the blurring between MMORPGs and MMOother game types such a first person shooters.

 

Does any of this effect roleplay? Unless you're using the combat as part of roleplay I don't think so. Having said that though I always have to sit on my hands when I'm roleplaying with anyone who I realize is a slow typer.

:bouncy:

[synaesthetic]

Sure, let's give the industry more excuses to play it safe and cheap.

 

No. Just no. The reason that games like ARR continue to have boring, bland tab-target nonsense isn't due to anything special. 

 

It just comes down to money.

 

Keeping your IT infrastructure up to snuff enough to support free-target action combat (aka "active combat") is much more expensive than passive "tab-target" combat. Active combat is much more latency-sensitive. Active combat requires far more thought and planning in encounter design to make sure raid bosses remain challenging without being a DPS-race copout.

 

You see lots of KMMOs with active combat these days because South Korea's broadband infrastructure is vastly superior to America and Europe's. It's cheaper and easier for them to use active combat than it is for us, so you see it more over there. When those games get localized in NA and EU, we see lots of problems with latency, attacks not firing, blocks not activating when they should...

 

It's not an issue of aging populations, a desire to remain true to the Final Fantasy spirit (if that were the case, why is the combat not straight up turn-based with the usual Attack Magic Special Item menu?) or anything interesting like that. Nope, it's money. Just money.

 

People seem to have developed a hate-on for active combat due to the terrible shovelware Korean MMOs the system is associated with. Ya'll are throwing the baby out with the bathwater; if Squeenix had put a TERA-style active combat system in ARR, with their considerable resources and talent behind that system, it could have been incredible. Instead we get a fairly underwhelming experience that's less interesting (especially for healers) than the "king" of tab-target games, World of Warcraft.

[Naunet]

People seem to have developed a hate-on for active combat due to the terrible shovelware Korean MMOs the system is associated with. Ya'll are throwing the baby out with the bathwater; if Squeenix had put a TERA-style active combat system in ARR, with their considerable resources and talent behind that system, it could have been incredible. Instead we get a fairly underwhelming experience that's less interesting (especially for healers) than the "king" of tab-target games, World of Warcraft.

 

So much thiiiiiiiiiis.

 

ARR with TERA's combat system would just... I have no words to describe the orgasm of joy I would experience.

[lady2beetle]

Sure, let's give the industry more excuses to play it safe and cheap.

 

 

I don't know that I agree with this at all. For me it's not the fact that I'm older. It's the fact that the active combat systems simply do not appeal to me. I confess to being a "clicker" because I'm not interested in memorizing the keybinds for every ability. Then again, maybe it comes down to what we were raised on. I grew up on Turn-based RPGs such as Might & Magic and other similar strategy games. At least on the PC. Consoles are a little different, I'll admit. Still, even the first FF games were primarily turn-based. That's what I cut my teeth on and what I prefer.

 

In fact, one reason I avoided WoW for so long was that it wasn't turn-based and I was really worried that I couldn't keep up with an active combat (I use active here because this was back in 2000 or so). I've tried to play more active combat games and maybe I've not been playing the *right* games, but Deux Ex and even Mass Affect are simply not the games for me. I'm not good at them and in fact they make me nauseous. And real 1st person shooters? HAH! That's just comical. I'd be that one going, "Ack! Where am I shooting? What button do I push?!" Noooo thank you.

 

So... I don't know if I can argue that it is based on the gaming community getting older, but I can definitely tell you I see a lot of the "twitch" that gives the active combat its nick name and I'll pass, thank you very much.

 

Edit: BTW, I am aware that the games I mentioned are not the kind that you all refer to as 'active combat', but in my understanding, they are even less so, and they are all I've had experience with, so if I can't handle them, I don't think there's any point in my wasting money on something even more intense.

[Myxie Tryxle]

Roleplaying games are roughly the same age as video games, with D&D first appearing in the mid 70s. I'd expect to see similar age trends for video gamers and roleplayers.

 

The combat system he describes reminds me of the attack chains from FFXI. With proper communication and planning, you could do some hefty damage with attack chains, but even then timing was important. Each player had a short window in which to add their own special attack to the chain, so reflexes were still important.

 

I think FFXIV is leaning towards the older players. Just looking at the Japan demographics, they'd be silly not to try to include the aging gamers. That or they're compensating for the fact that consoles aren't the ideal platform for MMO gaming. Either way, the 2.5 second global cooldown as well as the limited ability for tanks to taunt (one single target taunt with a 40s cooldown, no AoE taunt) indicates they expect players to be working more tactically. The general impatience that younger gamers often exhibit is not going to be rewarded in this game. It's also part of the reason I plan to level conjury with friends and guildmates rather than random pickup groups.

[Ildur]

ARR's combat has nothing to do with age and all to do with latency: the tab-targetting system they are using is less vulnerable to ping issues, unlike an action-y one like TERA. I remember TERA was completely unplayable if my latency went up 300+ which is, incidentally, the point where all First Person Shooters also become unplayable, unenjoyable or, at the very least, annoying to play (because you react, literally, a third of a second too late no matter what).

 

They still placed those charged attacks to mobs that you have to 'dodge' by calmly running out of range or around the mob, though, so it's like they were trying to throw a biscuit to the action-combat crowd anyway.

[Selsix]

I wanted to share an article from eorzeareborn about The Greying of the MMO. This article basically talks about aging player base of MMOs and how the new twitchy MMOs may be alienating aging gamers. I was wondering what ya'll thought about how this applies to RPers in generally, RPing is in general a more careful and more intensive experience that I would imagine would have much older gamers than non-RPers.

 

I don't know about that. Me and some friends went back to our old Nintendo games... Contra, Life Force etc... and I swear those games are harder than today's genre of games. So I don't really think so. I think things are more shiny, but at the end of the day I still go back to my NES if I want some really hard challenges. So I don't think it effects Rpers that much since many of us like to see the entire game.

 

This. 100% this. Newer games are far too easy. I used to get blisters on my palms playing old N64 games, and have my thumbs cramp up on my NES or SNES.

 

Nowadays I'm just typically bored. If anything the system is catering to aging gamers.

[Naunet]

They still placed those charged attacks to mobs that you have to 'dodge' by calmly running out of range or around the mob, though, so it's like they were trying to throw a biscuit to the action-combat crowd anyway.

 

A kind of stale, half-baked biscuit complete with the same ping issues you have in other action combat MMOs but this time you're stuck in a tab-target game. D:

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The general impatience that younger gamers often exhibit is not going to be rewarded in this game.  It's also part of the reason I plan to level conjury with friends and guildmates rather than random pickup groups.

 

That impatience (presuming you mean the "Go go go go tank go!" people) has nothing to do with the combat system. You get it in tab-target games with 1 second GCDs, tab-target games with 2.5 second GCDs, and action combat games with no GCD but animation locks, as well as the weird hybrids like GW2 and WildStar (which are basically just glorified tab-target games). The combat system is not what breeds impatience - that's just the direction of gamer culture in general.

[lady2beetle]

Either way, the 2.5 second global cooldown as well as the limited ability for tanks to taunt (one single target taunt with a 40s cooldown, no AoE taunt) indicates they expect players to be working more tactically.  The general impatience that younger gamers often exhibit is not going to be rewarded in this game.  It's also part of the reason I plan to level conjury with friends and guildmates rather than random pickup groups.

 

Admittedly, this is also why I shudder at the very idea of grouping up with people in a more action-based combat MMO. WoW is bad enough - you couldn't get involved in raiding without it being this total contest - could you hit the right buttons at exactly the right times to maximize your dps output? DPS became an e-peen contest and it was doing that in a way that made me think an even more active combat would be even more prone to e-peen competitions. *shudders* It's like that PVP battle between The Guild and their opponents where they are all spamming buttons and winner takes all. It might appeal to some people, but not to me.

 

In table top D&D, to use another example, it is a LOT more strategic. And cooperative. It's like the opposite of "twitch", because the players may take time to set out their battle plan before each move. And guess what? No e-peen competition! At least not in the groups I play with.

 

That's why it really makes me happy that FFXIV is moving more in the direction of the latter. More strategy, more cooperation, less reflex. *shrugs*

[hypatiala]

I wanted to share an article from eorzeareborn about The Greying of the MMO. This article basically talks about aging player base of MMOs and how the new twitchy MMOs may be alienating aging gamers. I was wondering what ya'll thought about how this applies to RPers in generally, RPing is in general a more careful and more intensive experience that I would imagine would have much older gamers than non-RPers.

 

I don't know about that. Me and some friends went back to our old Nintendo games... Contra, Life Force etc... and I swear those games are harder than today's genre of games. So I don't really think so. I think things are more shiny, but at the end of the day I still go back to my NES if I want some really hard challenges. So I don't think it effects Rpers that much since many of us like to see the entire game.

 

This. 100% this. Newer games are far too easy. I used to get blisters on my fingers playing old N64 games, and have my thumbs crap up on my NES or SNES.

 

Nowadays I'm just typically bored. If anything the system is catering to aging gamers.

 

Slightly related but ducktales remastered came out today and its amazing and also very hard, I got a game over on the first level which is refreshing!

[allgivenover]

I love me my twitch based games, I enjoy a lot of stuff that requires precise timing, like Monster Hunter, 2d fighters, and old school Megaman. However, I don't like the action combat thing in MMORPGs, I prefer the tab target and numbers game. 

 

Why? Well, for me it's because I enjoy RPGs the most when they're about planning, investment, and immersion. I feel that the run and gun mentality that action MMOs foster is directly contrary to the type of experience I'm looking for in an RPG.

 

So, so very glad that ARR isn't a twitch game, would've killed it for me.

[Naunet]

WoW is bad enough - you couldn't get involved in raiding without it being this total contest - could you hit the right buttons at exactly the right times to maximize your dps output? DPS became an e-peen contest and it was doing that in a way that made me think an even more active combat would be even more prone to e-peen competitions. *shudders* It's like that PVP battle between The Guild and their opponents where they are all spamming buttons and winner takes all. It might appeal to some people, but not to me.

 

This is rather not an accurate representation of WoW, let alone a "real action combat" game like TERA. In any game where there is competition, you are going to get players who want to be at the top. You will have it in ARR, and the slow-as-fuck 2.5 second GCD will not stop it, because ARR has dungeons and raids and PvP, so there will be people who min-max, and there will be people who compare their ability or accomplishments with others. That's just the nature of competitive gaming, be it developer-sanctioned (e.g. world or realm first achievements) or player-created (e.g. dps meters).

 

I was very heavily into progression end game raiding and arenas in WoW for some time, so I'd also like to clarify that the "spamming buttons and winner takes all" perception is also very off-base. There was a lot of strategy that went into pretty much every button I pressed when healing a raid or in an arena; just because it happens ever 1 second instead of ever 2.5 seconds, doesn't make it a spam fest. That implies mindless button mashing, which even for heavily rotation-oriented dps classes is simply not the case.

[allgivenover]

 

 ...if Squeenix had put a TERA-style active combat system in ARR...

 

 

 

Thank the Twelve they didn't.

 

Also, there was nothing fun about circle strafing a mob to death in TERA. People went on and on about how it all different and revolutionary, but in fact it was just as "grindy" (I put "grindy" in quotes because it's used to describe any task that is repeated often in a game that people don't like because there is no real quantifier for the term) as any old school tab-target MMO. The details were different but the result was the same. There's also the issue of having to aim the target reticle, constantly forcing a camera angle that was focused on the mob alone. I prefer the "scene" sort of viewpoint that the third person, reticle free target system provides.

 

The best online action RPG I've played so far is without a doubt Phantasy Star Online 2. While not a proper MMO they pretty much nailed the action part down without making me feel like I'm playing a shooter.

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Zoom to about a minute in.

 

Oh yes, so different and revolutionary~ it's still a bunch of high level people surrounding a boss mob and spamming heal/dps moves, while occasionally moving out of the way of area of effect attacks.

 

Really, the action combat didn't make any /real/ difference in the end, aside from divide low ping players from high ping players

[Ildur]

TERA was grindy, yes, but that had nothing to do with the combat and all to do with the quest design. There were only three things at which TERA was good: the combat, the art design and unique racial-gender animations/clothes.

Quests were boring 'kill ten bears for their rears' which are a sad strapple of MMO games.

 

I also don't know how you could get bored of circle straffing a mob to death unless all you played were warriors (and maybe slayers, but I never got the hang of slayers). The other classes had to kite, dodge, slow the enemy...the most boring class was probably lancer, because they could sit in a spot and block constantly. But even -them- had to turn around and block the other way when facing hyenas. Those friggin' hyenas.

 

I accept that the reticle and camera controls could have been better, but a lot of action games (of the non mmo variety, like Dark Souls or Kingdoms of Amalur) also center the camera on the mob. I also think you could hold a directional key to force your character into attacking in a particular direction. I remember doing so constantly with my berserker, at least.

[Twinflame]

TERA's Nexus was just the stupidest fucking thing and was nothing like anything else in the game at all ever period. It was the most ridiculous rip-off of Rift events and didn't even look like them and broke the servers every three hours and as long as I live I hope I never see anything like it in video games ever again.

 

That's all I have to say about that. <3 u all ~

[Naunet]

Oh yes, so different and revolutionary~ it's still a bunch of high level people surrounding a boss mob and spamming heal/dps moves, while occasionally moving out of the way of area of effect attacks.

 

... You post a video of nexus to illustrate TERA combat. I am having so many lols right now.

 

Nexus is a low-fps zergfest that everyone hates but they do it because you get need the crafting mats for the top tier endgame gear. It's awful and certainly not representative of TERA's combat.

 

Try this video of a warrior soloing a smoldering moloch bam or maybe a video of

. But definitely not the craptastic zergfest of nexus.

 

[edit] Weird. I coded for URL links, but it embedded the videos anyway... ew. D:

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TERA's Nexus was just the stupidest fucking thing and was nothing like anything else in the game at all ever period. It was the most ridiculous rip-off of Rift events and didn't even look like them and broke the servers every three hours and as long as I live I hope I never see anything like it in video games ever again.

 

Bahahahaha yes. So true.

[allgivenover]

I still don't see how it's different from moving out of a mob boss's frontal cone area attack, or backing off to avoid a mob centered aoe in a traditional tab target MMO. The interface the player uses is different, that's really it.

[Naunet]

I still don't see how it's different from moving out of a mob boss's frontal cone area attack, or backing off to avoid a mob centered aoe in a traditional tab target MMO. The interface the player uses is different, that's really it.

 

You can avoid literally every attack a mob does in a game like TERA. Every attack has a "telegraph", even if it's just a very brief lifting of one arm. That is not the case for tab-target games, as most attacks from mobs are completely unavoidable. That pirate punching you in the face? He'll be punching you in the face even if you try to run to one side or behind him. That caster mob spamming fireballs at you? Those fireballs will hit no matter where you go. This turns tab-target combat into a race of "who can do the most damage fast enough", which takes a lot of the control out of the hands of the player.

[Ildur]

I don't see how First Person Shooters are any different from MMOs: they still rely on not getting hit by the enemy by moving yourself away from wherever they are aiming, or backing off to avoid their grenades. The inferface is different, that's really it.

 

See? I can also reduce all combat systems to 'don't get hit by the enemy'.

[LandStander]

I'm okay with the tab targeting-esque style that SE has decided to implement. I have played Tera and other action oriented combat games and think that they were nice for awhile, but I usually always end up going back to something a little more slower and turn based. I personally would prefer the current system to be slightly slower so I can actually type, but I guess I will have to buy a mic and actually speak online *remembers the days of having to talk to people over Xbox Live* . Something about actually giving planning my moves out has always appealed to me; probably because that is the kind of RPGs that I have been raised on. 

 

I personally think GW2 had a much better combat system than Tera. It had a nice amount of action with dodging, jumping, etc., and it was not overwhelming with a bizzilion hotkeys to press. If only they had some kind of endgame that existed that was outside of PvP.

 

Edit: In response to the article I think its a bit bs. Its saying that people in their 30's and 50's can't keep up with teenagers in gaming because they have dulling senses when the opposite would be true. It has been scientifically proven that gamer's have faster reflexes and also have a much lower chance of acquiring brain degenerative diseases such as Alzheimers.

 

I'm personally just more lazy than I was 10 years ago and don't want to keep myself in a high stress twitch kill environment like I was back in high school when Counter-Strike was all the hype. That is the reason why I have a job to help the greying of my hair :3

[Ildur]

My problem with GW2 is...well, not the combat. That was actually quite nice and fun. They screwed it up with dungeon design and the implementation of all those 'one hit kills' that are supposed to be telegraphed but you can't see. Why can't you see them? Because the animation gets buried into a pile of special FX.

[allgivenover]

Only in poorly designed content. It's certainly not limited to a DPS epeen race as you describe. An earlier post of yours...

 

I was very heavily into progression end game raiding and arenas in WoW for some time, so I'd also like to clarify that the "spamming buttons and winner takes all" perception is also very off-base. There was a lot of strategy that went into pretty much every button I pressed when healing a raid or in an arena

 

...is that strategy and timing of your heals not evidence that it's not the control scheme or lack of being "trapped in a tab-target" interface that determines how skill based a game is? It's certainly a different way of going about it, but I disagree that it's inherently superior and that ARR would've benefited from an action combat system.

 

In my case I actually enjoy playing the odds and don't like the fact that an entire attack can be mitigated if my ping is high enough and I can get out of the way in time. I wasn't around in TERA for very long, but it was infuriating to lose out in PVP because someone lived much closer to the servers than I did.

 

Speaking of server latency and infrastructure, yes, South Korea has better internet infrastructure than we do, but even if we had an equal level of infrastructure we still wouldn't see nearly the same amount of reduced latency that South Korea enjoys. South Korea is roughly 100 times smaller than the USA, and in our case the vast geographical distance that connections have to cross would cancel out a good portion of the benefit that better infrastructure would provide.

[Naunet]

...is that strategy and timing of your heals not evidence that it's not the control scheme or lack of being "trapped in a tab-target" interface that determines how skill based a game is?

 

I'm not sure what you're trying to say here and in fact haven't brought up the word "skill" at all in any of my posts in this thread. My post was in response to people likening a faster-paced game to mindless button mashing, which it is not.

 

[edit] Incidentally, there's not all that significant a difference in ping between playing any given MMO on the east coast or the west coast or in the middle of the country or whathaveyou. Maybe a few tens of ms.