Video Games: The General Discussion & Community Thread

[BrokenPromise]

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.

[Fabricant451]

<Snipped quote by Fabricant451>

I wasn't exactly enthralled by the story either. (Which is supposed to be its greatest strength.)

@SleepingSilence

That's only true once you get to Heavensward and even that's a pretty heavy ask.

[Ammokkx]

just one more thing, sleeping

But I just can't sit there and cook/fish. I'll go insane.

@SleepingSilence

I hesitate to say anyone can play videogames wrong, but this is dangerously close to having the wrong mindset going in.

Speaking as a guy who got fishing to 80, fishing sucks big time. But the thing is, it's also extremely optional. Not only are there two other gatherers you can use for Beast Tribe quests (which I don't think you even got to), but being an active gatherer requires a radically different mindset compared to being someone who's in it for the combat classes. You almost need to be thinking you're playing Runescape instead of FFXIV 'cause it takes a similar grind mindset for it.

Even then, you can level Fisher/Miner/Botanist and all the crafting classes ludicrously easy through Levequests. It would only take you a couple days to, at the very least, get most everything at 70 (if not maxed out purely on Leves, as I have done on a fair number of them). And this is only if you want to do it; plenty of people in my FC and a couple of my friends don't even bother with the crafter/gatherer aspect of the game.

There's only one thing the game 100% definitively asks of you to do: Get a class to 80 and do the story. The rest is all up to your discretion. You can pick and choose which elements of the MMO you want to engage with, and if you're not engaging with craft/gather, you'll do just fine. Either you buy what you need off the MB or you bother a crafter/gatherer friend to make something for you if you need it for whatever reason.

[SleepingSilence]

@Ammokkx Yeah, that's fair enough. Like I said, I'm sure that I wouldn't have burnt myself out in the way I did. If I wouldn't have even bothered with the job stuff. I just figured that it was something to do, because I was told that they're quite useful to have. (Though I have done some of those tribe quests, if I've not mistaken.)

---

Also, related and unrelated to prior statements. My friend's obsession for Final Fantasy 12, has saved me from playing more Prequel Borderlands. So I can't help but be thankful for that.

Now I only need to actually be in the mood to start playing video games. '>.>

[Fabricant451]

Spider-Man: Miles Morales may well have been expanded DLC but I don't even give a fuck because it plays better than its predecessor both in terms of the new Venom Attacks and because of the animation differences in stuff like Miles' swinging and finishers. The fact that they made the random crimes no longer tied to completion (seriously, five random crimes and then all crime in a district is done was a weird choice) means I'm way more likely to do a random crime on my way to a side mission or collectible or whatever and it feels more organic than just intentionally swinging around one area of the map waiting for the last crime to proc for completion sake.

While it's not worth getting a PS5 specifically for (I mean it's on PS4 but psssh, 60 frames baby) it's definitely a nice addition to the original game as a sort of psuedo-sequel thing.

[BrokenPromise]

SYNTHETIK Is pretty fun, even if I suck at it.

[PPQ Purple]

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.

[Ammokkx]

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.

@PPQ Purple

XIV is actually good as a game too, though

I socialize in the MMO to the best of my abilities (I hang out with my FC and friends) but I'm not very good at that part. I do like playing XIV as a game, however, and have been for a good year now.

In fact, an MMO needs to be good as a game to be sustainable, unless you want to make it a pay2win KMMO nightmare. Games like Guild Wars 2 are good games.

The problem is that the "good part" of the game in XIV's case is constantly shifting back. You had many more skills to work with back when ARR was new compared to now, because it's the same number of skills at 50 compared to at 80. They purposefully keep the amount of buttons introduced low because they want to keep the game controller-friendly. Sure, there's a lot of grinding and busywork involved with any MMO, but if Runescape's enduring success is anything to go by, some people like that. Runescape isn't exactly the most social MMO, either. It's very focused on its repeating-task nature and seeing big number become bigger number.

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.

And for the record,

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.

@PPQ Purple

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.

[PPQ Purple]

]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.

[Ammokkx]

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.

@PPQ Purple

No?

Not at all?

The only function of an MMO is to keep a lot of players playing it, through whatever means neccessary. This is true for literally every videogame.

You also say this as if I am the only person playing XIV and everyone shares my attitude to it. They don't.

Plenty of people socialize in XIV. The saying goes "Glamour is the true endgame" after all, because people are spending more time making their character look pretty at the end of the game rather than doing endgame content.

And you know what that says about XIV?

That it succeeds at both being a good game and a good social experience. It didn't need to sacrifice one for the other. It offers a satisfying experience on both ends of the spectrum.

Saying an MMO can't be "too good or else people wouldn't socialize" is an asinine standpoint to take in. People are upset with WoW because it isn't a very good or rewarding game. Actively making it the game a chore which forces you to engage with it rather than letting you do so on your own terms doesn't facilitate social interaction, it pushes you away from it.

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

[PPQ Purple]

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.

[Ammokkx]

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.

@PPQ Purple

Sure.

But saying

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.

@PPQ Purple

is asinine.

The best MMO's are both something you fundamentally have fun with and facilitate social interaction. They're not mutually exclusive concepts. Upping one doesn't reduce the other.

I would even argue that the more fun an MMO is on a fundamental level, the more people will be drawn to interact socially on it. Why? Because that MMO will be recommended to friends, who will in turn naturally fall into socializing, so having even more people actively running around and engaging with the game's content.

Fun, inherently, incentivizes social interaction, because if you're passionate about something, you're going to want to talk about it.

If I play an obscure videogame for its own merits, I don't need to talk to anyone about it. That doesn't make me any less happy when I find someone who also has played it, but the fact of the matter is I didn't need to have met them in order to have had fun. In the same way, if you fundamentally have fun in an MMO, then meet someone by chance who hits you up for a conversation and you become friends, the MMO has done its job.

Friends got me into XIV, friends that are far more social than I, but if XIV wasn't a good videogame then they couldn't have gotten me into it. Now I'm an active part of the Free Company they're in, and while I'm still easily the most distant person there, the mere fact of the matter is that if the game hadn't kept me playing on its own merits, I wouldn't be there at all.

If you want a chatroom, go to a forum. Like where we are now. MMO's are still videogames and need to use every trick in that book in order to be competent ones.

[BrokenPromise]

@PPQ Purple Woah woah woah! FF14 is loads of fun! It's just more fun to enjoy with other people. Playing a dungeon by yourself is a lot like playing cards against humanity by yourself. Just because playing cards against humanity by yourself isn't as fun as with a bunch of your friends doesn't make it an inferior game to say, solitaire. CAH and FF 14 are both fun with people because working together/competing is what the game is all about!

[PPQ Purple]

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.

[Ammokkx]

<Snipped quote by 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.

@PPQ Purple

You still haven't established how fun takes away from socializing, while I've made the point that the game keeping you engaged through fun will, naturally, lead into socializing.

Yeah I'll continue to call your side asinine until you explain to me why an MMO can't be fun to be good at its job.

[SleepingSilence]

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.

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.

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.

@PPQ Purple

To be clear on a few things.

1. There's plenty of people that play MMO's for a single player experience. Especially, as time rolled on and the games exploded into popularity. So, if you played enough of them. You'd know that many of them designed themselves to make that more than possible. From niche ones, to the more popular and mainstream ones.

But if I needed to see evidence for why you believe MMO's aren't designed to be too engaging. (Like they're bad free to play mobile games or something.)

2. "10 years of playing + I played 11 (more than 10) MMO's. (Means you played a single MMO on average in a whole year.) Which is certainly not the appeal to authority counter that you may think it is. Since it's the equivalent to saying, "I know I don't like any Asian Cuisine, I've had take-out at least twice this year."

But let's be clear, one game a year isn't even close to scratching the surface, in any genre. (Though admittedly, that also depends significantly on the window of time. Since according to sites that track this stuff, around 250 MMO's were released in 2016 alone. Which probably isn't even the highest year either...)

However, from how you've described it, I would assume that you've simply played the wrong MMO's. And had the wrong reasons to play on top of it. (As if you were socially pressured into playing them with others. But then consider, how fun it is to do anything under those circumstances. Though my guess stems from how dismissive you've sounded to Diablo and other RPG's too.)

So if that isn't the case, I'll stand corrected. Though playing a few (and yes, ten is most definitely VERY few.) The argument should boil down to your taste, versus some general statement on the "mmo genre" itself.

3. Because, here's the secret, MMO's are (or I'd at least argue were) incredibly diverse games. So putting it in a box, is already likely doomed to inaccuracy. Since there were too numerous to count back in their more popular days, and basically included every single genre. Sports, JRPGS, Western RPGS, Slice Of Life, Sandbox, Simulation, RTS, Shooters, Mystery, name a genre or theme, it existed. And even within ones of similar genres, didn't remotely play like each other.

Something that likely couldn't be said as easily for other genres that garnered popular and attention. But, really, if you name some of your favorite games out there, someone else could very likely boil them down to a simple gameplay loop. Though like the best open world games, an enjoyable variety of content, is what the best MMO's provide.

So, I'd be curious to know what games you do primarily enjoy. (Then I could very likely point you to its MMO counterpart that exists/existed.)

[Fabricant451]

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.

@PPQ Purple

It's not 2004 anymore and MMOs these days can literally be played solo until you get to optional super end game raid content and even then the entry level raid stuff can be done with randoms to varying degrees of success. Hell, in SWTOR the game just now gives you a one-man raid team NPC to do the important dungeons with and even the non-important ones can be soloed with you and your NPC companions. 14 has implemented similar things as well. I'm someone who plays(ed) 14 and never found a permanent FC and so didn't exactly socialize outside of saying 'Hello!' in a random dungeon and still had a good time doing it.

MMOs are single player friendly almost to their own detriment at times. In most cases, the social interaction in an MMO outside of a guild is muting general chat because oh no they're talking about racism again or whatever the fuck. Some people get enjoyment out of an MMO by treating it as a largely single player experience that just happens to also have a chat room attached to it; that doesn't mean an MMO's primary purpose is socialization

[Ammokkx]

14 has implemented similar things as well.

@Fabricant451

Trusts are the coolest shit, they add so much to the main story. I never want to first time a story dungeon without them ever again.

[Obscene Symphony]

Video games that are only fun with friends and not on their own are generally doomed to a flash of success and then death. See: Among Us in like 6 months, or any of those party games. You might pick them up in a year or two for like, an evening or a week, but you won't exactly be coming back to it on the weekly.

That's a horrible model for an MMO, since MMOs rely on replay value to make their money. Games like Among Us and Town of Salem and all those other "fun with friends but not on their own" little games are one-time sales - the company has made their money whether you play it continually or not, and in that sense can be called a success. But since the MMO model is too long-running to rely on initial sales alone, they NEED people to keep coming back (and frequently, too) in order to stay profitable. And before you come back screaming capitalism, you should definitely care if your MMOs make money, cause if they don't, they die and you don't get to play them anymore.

Besides, it's nice to be able to play an MMO you enjoy without needing other people, for those times when you want to play but your friends aren't around, or it's a slow time on the server and queues are taking forever. Engaging singleplayer content (especially overarching main story) is also a great way to get players who haven't played in a while to come back for updates and expansions, because the singleplayer content has them engaged enough to want to see what comes next regardless of if their friends still play the game.

Singleplayer content also adds to the multiplayer experience. An MMO that's basically just a chat room relies on the players to make the content, and they're not always up to the task. But an MMO that also has a main story going on and side content that's done singleplayer can enhance the multiplayer experience by giving you and your friends something to talk about, compare, or even turn into a multiplayer engagement (ex. gathering convoys in XIV, housing, etc).

Then there's kinda hybrid content where it's singleplayer 95% of the time but requires multiplayer objectives to progress, ex. story quests in XIV that are played singleplayer until you reach a dungeon or trial requiring other players to beat. Mind you, that's hours of singleplayer content combined with maybe a combined hour of mandatory multiplayer across an entire expansion.

Basically if I can't play the game unless my friends are online, then I probably just won't play the game, and that's a terrible idea for the MMO model.

And needless to say, MMOs absolutely have to be fun as games. "Facilitating social interaction" is the design philosophy of AA, not video games XD If it's not fun, it'll just be passed over in favour of the millions of other games that ARE fun, and therefore die.

For the record, I love the multiplayer aspect of MMOs. I love playing with friends and even strangers. But if not for the singleplayer content I definitely wouldn't have stayed with FFXIV for this long. I would never have made it through the early leveling stages, since back then I was too baby to participate in the content my friends were running!

[PPQ Purple]

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.