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Ask Slashdot: MMORPG Recommendations?
An anonymous reader writes "Lord of the Rings: Online's latest expansion, Helm's Deep, involved cutting many skills for all classes, with a only a handful reclaimable through the new, 1-dimensional trait trees. If you're not an end-game raider, you're out of luck. And if you are, you can now play your character perfectly with only one or two buttons. Like many who preordered the expansion, I feel robbed and I'm joining the mass exodus. What do you folks suggest? How do Guild Wars 2, RIFT, World of Warcraft and all the other MMORPGs stack up these days? What else would you recommend looking at?"
really, nowadays I play a bit MMO around until mid level, then give up. They become repetitive and raiding is only a slightly less rewarding skinner box.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
Being able to put my own stamp on the world ranks so highly in importance for me that I'm staying out of the fray until EQNext comes out.
Personally I find The Secret World very nice for my wife and me as we play casually. There is new content on a steady basis and lots of outfits that my wife loves. :)
It's set in a dark contemporary world where the secret societies are comming into the open due to paranormal events.
It's quite a horror style dark mmo
We also play minecraft multiplayer on a whitelist server, and my 2.5 year old daugher is starting to take very much interest in watching us feed cows or ride the minecarts :)
Final Fantasy XIV is currently my MMO of choice. As you have the freewill to spec as any class on the same character, it gives you a great deal of flexibility on how you want to play.
It's a lesser known title, but with a very dedicated core of players.
The cow says "Moo." The dog says "Woof." The Timothy says "Thanks, valued customer. We appreciate your input."
The best review I ever heard of EvE Online was from a guy who said that he wasn't going to pay $15 a month to be chased down and killed by some teenager with daddy issues in the Battlestar Galactica. Pretty much summed it up for me.
When I tried it out, it seemed like their were basically two modes to the game: either incredible boredom in safe space or getting constantly jumped and butt-raped in unsafe space. I guess there was some appeal in trading (kind of a much less satisfying version of the old trading routes in Elite), but it seemed like all the good routes were owned by the corporations and all that was left for the little guys were the scraps. In the end, it's even less rewarding than mining.
In short, EvE Online reminds me way too much of real life. And that's what I play videogames to avoid.
The cow says "Moo." The dog says "Woof." The Timothy says "Thanks, valued customer. We appreciate your input."
Well, I'm kinda addicted to http://worldoftanks.com/ at the moment.
Sure, it gets repetitive after "figuring it out", but it actually has pretty varied gameplay, and each battle lasts 15-minutes max.
I like it because it's not much of a stats or twitch game.... yes stats and twitch helps, but a lot of your success often hinges on finding a good rock (or teammate) to hide behind and playing the camouflage system. Still, it's a pretty detailed physics engine, so you can still score the occasional blind shot if you know what you're doing (and you're lucky with the RNG, but mostly by knowing where to aim).
I hate RPG-type battles like in EVE where you're basically playing rock-paper-scissors with dice... Vendetta Online is much more interesting where you can use physics and cover and stuff rather than just banging out options into the interface like you're playing DDR.
WoT is free-to-play, but there's not really anything worth paying money for that you couldn't get by grinding (via successful gameplay, not "menial repetitive tasks"). I only spend a small amount of gold to carry over expensive modules when upgrading tanks, and you can score enough gold for free by doing tutorials and various other things.
Bonus for actually learning things about physics, WWII-era tanks (which all looked the same to me before), various historical artifacts, etc. so I'd even call it mildly more educational than your typical fantasy clickfest.
Amateur!
I solo'd up to the last level with just one button. Picked up some sweet 'shroom upgrades on the way, that Bowser guy didn't even stand a chance!
> In short, EvE Online reminds me way too much of real life. And that's what I play videogames to avoid.
I hear you. Same with movies. Wife's choices are inevitably downers. I tell her, if I wanted to be depressed, I'd stay at work.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
I think the skill revamp is a big change, but it's not the disaster people claim. Many other MMOs have even simpler play styles. People are really using the skill revamps as the excuse they were looking for to justify their pre-planned departure.
The real problem is that the game has gotten simple anyway and the developers are making leveling up be faster and combat simpler. The sooner you get to end game the sooner you feel compelled to spend money on an expansion. It is true we used to have a large variety of skills, even before the first expansion you could argue that some classes were overloaded, but there was more grouping involved from just getting together to defeat a tough opponent on the landscape up to doing a full raid. Later it was simplified so that casual grouping was never needed, as that would slow people down on their accelerated leveling schedule. If you only solo then you really don't need many skills, but this applies to all MMOs.
Part of the problem is with players too. They really don't want to do quests on the landscape as much, they don't want to explore, they're not doing any of the single player RPG style of play at all. Instead they want to get to end game fast. They'll feel powerful if they kill things with one shot while leveling but then at high levels that same play style makes them wonder why it's easy. Most new players focus intently on making a high damage build, choosing high damage classes as main preference, others will discourage new players from trying harder or more nuanced classes, etc. So don't blame just the devs, also blame players who want to turn the game into yet another generic MMO.
And for those players who left last year for the glorious offerings of new games, I've seen quite a chunk of them returning later saying how another game was even worse or that they couldn't stand the other players and so on. There's good stuff in this expansion: the epic quests are very good again compared to the last few updates, the landscape looks great, etc. Sure not as many raids but this was never a raid heavy game.
As for the original poster: you were NOT robbed. Every game out there changes mechanics along the way, this was just a bit larger than some. But it is in no ways similar to the massive change of NGE that some compare it too. And pre-ordering is always a bad idea for any game or product. It's just dumb. Always know what it is before you buy. And since there's not sub required, you can still keep playing. The game is not the pay-to-win so many claim when you compare it to other games; you can get everything for a much smaller cost than a traditional subscription game (being forced to subscribe to play is the very definition of pay-to-win).
Finally. Please, if you're going to leave a game then just leave. Don't stick around bad mouthing it. Don't go onto all the forums to bad mouth it. Don't go onto slashdot to whine about it. JUST LEAVE! This is not a popularity contest where you're required to drag others away with you when you leave. Getting bored and leaving because of that is natural; it's an old game so it is normal for people to leave. Just don't try to drag it down when you do go.
EVE Online:
Pros: player-driven game, space!, huge selection of ships, skills, development paths.
Cons: subscription-driven, scammers galore, some RMT, mandating long gaming sessions, a destroyed ship is a lost ship, steep learning curve.
World of Tanks:
Pros: Free-to-Play, one of the cheapest premium costs around, tanks!, PvP-only.
Cons: filled to the brim with retard players.
World of Warplanes:
Pros: Free-to-Play, airplanes!, PvP-only.
Cons: fledgling game, retard players galore, gay game mechanics (literally: get behind the enemy player so you can fuck him up)
War Thunder: World of Tanks and World of Warplanes combined, same pros and cons apply.
Mech Warrior Online:
Pros: mechs!
Cons: pretty much everything else...
LOTRO: screw it, it's discussed.
Path of Exile:
Pros: Free-to-Play, no P2W whatsoever, huge skill tree.
Cons: confusing trading system, too much crap loot, if you mess up your build you have to start over.
Firefall:
Pros: Future-based, apocalyptic setting, jumpjets!, battleframes! (and a nice selection too), PvE, nice graphics, original mining method.
Cons: forever beta, filled with bugs, weird mix of fluff and gloom, confused development path, durability hit on death, gets boring and repetitive very fast.
Warframe:
Pros: Nice space-based lore, battleframes, interesting idea behind the game.
Cons: confusing level design, in-your-face P2W, gets boring after a while.
Neverwinter:
Pros: great lore, nice graphics, good game mechanics, good skill tree, consistent development, web gateway with crafting.
Cons: one of the most P2W games ever!, end-game means you either do 5-man quests or nothing.
Planetside 2:
Pros: huge maps, has tanks, has motorcycles of sorts, has flying vehicles, pew-pew PvP, massive PvP.
Cons: P2W galore, rubberbanding massive fights, vast areas feel devoid of... well, everything.
Hawken:
Pros: F2P, mechs!, PvP
Cons: too complex to handle for a twitch-based game. I think game speed should have been 1/2x of what's now to warrant tactical thinking rather than just "the younger player wins by reflex skill".
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Some of the games I have only played very little:
Rift: horrible game mechanics. Enough said.
Vindictus: too manga. Could have been great but...
Tera: played the stress test limited open beta, didn't quite understand what was happening, I just didn't click with it.
Ryzom: played it a bit years ago, I heard it no longer requires subscription. IIRC it was good enough for a F2P MMO, but not good enough for subscription-based.
Disclaimer: this is my personal, subjective opinion on all these games. I played them all. YMMV.
...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
Plain and simply, wow has the best boss and quest mechanics, and is essentially required to be fairly balanced. Few bugs. No mmo has come close to the wealth of mechanics they have, from riding vehicles, reverse gravity, several stages of fights, dual-phases where people teleport around, special abilities gained to help defeat a boss, etc. And they have some clever people who balance things out to make sure the challenge is appropriate.
GW2 has attempted to get away from the holy trinity of tank/healer/dps, and introduced working area quests. Yes, they're not the first, but it works. It also has many exploration quests, which I find awesome. Even unmarked platform jumping challenge "quests" of sorts.
Sad to hear about lotro. But as I've always said, "The best, and the worst, thing about MMOs is the people."
Your enjoyment might hinge on having a good social construct in-game. If you're moving with your guild, move to whatever game they go to. If you're off to solo, find a game that's soloable. If you have limited playtime, find a game that you can dabble in and still be successful. But just saying "I need a game that requires more than 2 buttons" doesn't give much insight on how you actually prefer to play. There are tons of different games out there, from things like group-oriented Puzzle Pirates to soloable Asheron's Call to Star Wars to Neverwinter. But it's not possible to make a good recommendation without better info.
You might even be happy playing a single-player game, depending what you want.
You're doing it wrong. It's an MMO. If you aren't making it on your own, *JOIN* one of those corporations (or get a bunch of people together and create your own).
Or go solo. It's entirely possible. It's risky and requires a lot of skill, and you'll get blown up a lot at first... but if you're actually good (and combat is Eve is much more skill-based than a casual observer might think) you can easily find, and win, small fights all day long. Yeah, you'll need a good ship (which means money and training time), but the risks are also lower when you're starting out. Be a pirate. Be a mercenary. Take over a wormhole.
You make the rules, man. That's the essence of the game. It's like libertarian paradise. Would I want to live there for real? Hell no! But it's a fun thing, to go out and fight, solo or with a small gang or with a massive battle fleet.
There's no place I could be, since I've found Serenity...
I keep my EQ1 subscription up, but the old UI just bugs me after being used to modern MMOs, so that gets in the way. However, for PvE content, bar none, EQ1 is king and emperor. There is a lot to do, although some of the more older content may not be worth the time (epic 1.0 quests for the most part.)
WoW is good with friends, but I just get bored there, especially when the mindless dailies have changed to goofing around on Timeless Isle where it feels like a playground... kick over this turtle, get a purple. Kick open a random chest, another purple. Jump in, toss some spells at one of the spirits, etc.
The next expansion announcement didn't help much, especially with flight (which previously was something you got once you hit top level) becoming apparently a months long grindfest similar to the artifact cloak [1]. WoW has a lot of cool single player intro quests (such as the Thunder King Isle quest arc), but once done, things can be really random. One night may be OK, another night can be a complete waste of time with pickup raids. Of course, chat in towns is banal at best.
For being able to tune stats and your exact DPS/heal/tank play style, Rift was great. However, since they put raid level gear for sale in their RMT store, I just lost all interest in the game whatsoever, even though I have bought a multi-year subscription. The fact that they are going to have an entire expansion that is like one big Kedge Keep doesn't help either.
These days, I've ended up on EQ2. Its population isn't huge, but people know what they are doing in groups/raids, and even the trolls in General chat are intelligent. The devs know how to make combat and such work in zones with flight, so each expansion doesn't take flight away from the players in order to have decent content progression. EQ2 also has a nice tradeskill faculty so one can actually wind up in endgame areas at a low adventure level, which can help later on.
The game that had so much promise, IMHO, was Vanguard. I wish that it could have been kept under development for at least a year, perhaps 18 months. That would have been a solid MMO, and a decent challenge for PvE. However, these days, even though EQ2 doesn't have the cool quests like rolling down the Great Wall, it has very good content all around from solo to group to raid. Plus, one can start at level 85, so one can hit endgame raiding fairly quickly, although there is a lot of interesting content to be seen at lower levels (Sol eye especially.)
I have some hopes for Everquest: Next, but the graphics are off-putting (it looks like a 1950s cartoon and a WoW character model had offspring.) However, gameplay is what matters, so I'm going to wait and see on that.
IMHO, I dislike F2P, because it implies P2W. EQ2 is probably the best balance -- other than starting at level 85, there are no raid level items (other than appearance stuff) that one can just buy. Gear still has to be earned to hit ToV or other endgame places. No chest and keys system either. What you loot is what you get.
Of course, there are other MMOs, but when you get PK-ed when you create your first character before you ever load completely into the newbie zone makes the games an instant turn-off, or even better, you keep getting killed repeatedly at the respawn point until you just kill the game client.
[1]: I'd hate to deal with the next expansion on a PvP server. Flight means being able to get somewhere versus becoming someone's HKs, so it just makes playing less worth it if one is on those realms.
" gay game mechanics" (my emphasis)
Using the word "gay" as a synonym for "bad" isn't nice. I know it's common, but that doesn't excuse it, and you probably wouldn't use the descriptor for another minority group in the same way. Please consider not using the word gay this way. Thanks!
The best review I ever heard of EvE Online was from a guy who said that he wasn't going to pay $15 a month to be chased down and killed by some teenager with daddy issues in the Battlestar Galactica. Pretty much summed it up for me.
When I tried it out, it seemed like their were basically two modes to the game: either incredible boredom in safe space or getting constantly jumped and butt-raped in unsafe space. I guess there was some appeal in trading (kind of a much less satisfying version of the old trading routes in Elite), but it seemed like all the good routes were owned by the corporations and all that was left for the little guys were the scraps. In the end, it's even less rewarding than mining.
In short, EvE Online reminds me way too much of real life. And that's what I play videogames to avoid.
I may have been the guy who wrote that review—I certainly have passed up no opportunities to damn the game whenever the subject was brought up. Yet now I'm playing the thing again. Why?
Well, the number one reason is probably lack of something better to do. Also, I'm retired and now have a surplus of hostility that I can no longer vent on my boss. I had been playing the original Everquest from the day it started until about 9 months ago, except for the 3 or 4 year break I took to play Eve, World of Warcraft, and Aion. None of them held my interest, so I went back to EQ. Then one day, I just had my fill of EQ again. There's no attempt to keep the game improving or growing; Sony just wants to keep hold of the same few thousand players they have who stick around for the sake of nostalgia. I doubt whether Sony has more than one developer assigned to EQ, and his job is to create cut-and-paste "expansions" where the only differences are armor with higher stats that you have to do the same crap missions to get as every other expansions. Oh, and new spell levels that do basically the same thing as the old spells. Nostalgia is a powerful force, but it can only take you so far. Maybe some day I will feel nostalgic for EQ again.
So I popped back into EVE again just to remember how awful it was. And indeed, the awfulness is still there. To judge by the language people use, by the stuff they put in their character bios, etc. the players are still a bunch of 12 year old sociopaths with a fixation on anal rape. About half of them pretend to be girls, but you know they're not. Girls are too smart to play a game like this. (Besides, most females I've met have had a fairly limited interest in anal rape.) But I've been playing the game since early this year. Why in the world would I do that?
There are some very good things that have to be said about the game design of EVE and about the way it's run. First of all, the game is continually being improved, and the expansions are free. To get a new expansion, you just have to pay your monthly fee to pay, and that's it. There's no "free to play" BS where you get nickle and dimed to death for better sword models or whatever; you just pay your fee and you get the service you pay for. Some of the improvements have made the game more playable for me than it was before.
Eve has got a complex and fairly realistic economic simulation going (if you ignore the fact that the economy is propped up by the nightly re-seeding of minerals and NPC drops), so if you are one of those obsessive people with no other life who draw up complicated spreadsheets and calculate how to make money off manufacturing, and spend many, many hours buying and selling at the best prices, then you can be an EVE tycoon. I'm not one of those: I never did spreadsheets for work, and I'm certainly not doing them for a game. Still, it's a role some people like to play. The spaceship tech is well-thought out and complex enough to keep you working at coming up with a perfect "fit" for that cruiser or battleship you're flying. There's a lot of different kinds of things you can do in EVE, and the game doesn't force you to play one
Great men are almost always bad men--Lord Acton's Corollary