I can't stand MMOs because of the filler content!

[May90]

Just wondering...when you're playing a srpg do you bother with taking a character to cap, doing every single side quest to be found, doing optional bosses for extra loot etc or do you just do the main quest and finish off a game? Will use Mass Effect 1 as an example, did you harvest nodes on every single planet, go do all those random sector quests even if they had zero bearing on the main story line? I guess what I'm trying to understand is why is filler content in an mmo more odious to you than filler content in srpg? Is it because mmo filler is "less disguised" or something?

Believe me or not, but yes, I am a devoted completionist and always do all the sidequests, explore all the zones, talk with all the characters, kill all the mobs I can find at least once and so on. That's how I manage to spend sometimes 120 hours on DAO with expansions and DLCs while most people are usually done in 60 hours or so. And, specifically for Mass Effect, for some reason I just adore exploring all the planets there, collecting all resources and such.

Yes, there is a lot of filler content in single player RPGs as well, as I stated in my post. However, there is two major differences:

1) The percentage of it in single player RPGs is generally much lower. Dragon Age: Origins surely has Fade, Deep Roads with a lot of Darkspawn just standing in there and waiting for you to attack them, Tower of Ishal with 4 levels, Circle of Magi with 5 levels... However, it also has hundreds of PCs having meaningful, fully voiced conversations. It also has many companions to talk to. I don't want to compare it now, but I don't think I would be far from truth if I said that 3/4 of the overall time spent in DAO was meaningful experience which I really enjoyed. In MMOs that percentage is totally different: even in SWTOR where it is said to be the focus of leveling ("story-driven", remember?), at least, 4 hours out of 5 were spent "killing 20 Imperials" and such and only a very tiny fraction of time I actually had some meaningful conversations expanding on the story and lore, some exploration of some important zones (instead of circling around some rock looking for 1 more crate to loot as needed in the quest). I don't even mention GW2 where the main story is not even that important at all and WoW with no character story whatsoever, only some quest lines related to races or factions as a whole.

2) Those fillers are usually somehow correlated with the story. For example, you mentioned the Deep Roads with hordes of Darkspawn, but they kind of make sense lore-wise, Deep Roads were said to have hordes of Darkspawn. Chantry Boards, Blackstone Irregulars and Mage's Collective Bag were lame, I agree, and they definitely were copy-pasted from MMOs, but there were very few such really pointless and lore-less quests. Now, look at any zone in WoW, say, Zangarmash (my favorite post-60 zone). You come to this completely new zone for you about which you don't know anything. You kind of expect to get some basics of the lore and history of the place, of the general problems and such. You expect to do something really important for the Cenarion Circle. Instead, you only get a bunch of weird quests, "Kill me 20 large flying things so I could have something to eat", "Collect me 20 samples of moss so I could analyze it", "Kill 15 nasty Nagas so we could walk around more freely". And my excitement about the new zone immediately vanishes, I realize that it is nothing different from Hellfire Peninsula I just came from, short of looks.

[Belloc]

well I'm looking for a developer with a AAA budget to design a game like it. That is why EQNext is intriguing to me.

Ehhhh, I kind of get the feeling that there isn't a market for it. I mean, I've yet to play a game with a focus on player-driven content that hasn't grown old really quickly. I want the designers to create the content and I want to explore it. I imagine most gamers are the same way, much as they are when it comes to TV and books. I want to enjoy what someone else created.

I expect that developers feel the same way.

[Terahertz]

Everything in games is filler content. Hell, everything in life is filler content. All we need to do is pay taxes and die.

... games are filler content in our life

[Valeron]

... games are filler content in our life

well if you want to go that far then you can say that for any leisure activity or entertainment in general

[Zenotetsuken]

What it comes down to is that Single Player games are designed to give you a streamlind tailored experience from start to finish.
MMOs are designed to give you an open ended experience and be an escape to a new world, so they design a new world full of normal everyday problems set against extraordinary circumstances.
Fetching that magic stone= Going grocery shopping,
Looting 10 Bear Asses= picking up dog poop,
Killing 10 Spiders= Cleaning the house,
Escorting Slow-Mo Joe= Sitting in Traffic,
Killing trash before a boss= Working hard at your job,
Killing a boss= Getting a raise/promotion.

MMOs aren't meant to be played through, they are meant to gratify our inner desire to be rewarded for doing all the crap that we deal with in real life on a daily basis. In order for our brains to accept that, we need to be given meaningless tasks to be rewarded upon completion. That is a big reason why some people get so addicted to them

[Sj]

In general, MMOs are not well designed video games. They tend to have a lot of design contradictions or at best, poor design practices.

Basically. The genre was basically originally designed to be a time-killer, not the pinnacle of online gaming people keep hoping it turns out to be.

[Paperfox]

Being online with your friends is the best part of WoW. Take that away and you still have a good game.

If you removed 'filler content', everything - games, books, movies, tv shows etc - would be much shorter.

[May90]

What it comes down to is that Single Player games are designed to give you a streamlind tailored experience from start to finish.
MMOs are designed to give you an open ended experience and be an escape to a new world, so they design a new world full of normal everyday problems set against extraordinary circumstances.
Fetching that magic stone= Going grocery shopping,
Looting 10 Bear Asses= picking up dog poop,
Killing 10 Spiders= Cleaning the house,
Escorting Slow-Mo Joe= Sitting in Traffic,
Killing trash before a boss= Working hard at your job,
Killing a boss= Getting a raise/promotion.

MMOs aren't meant to be played through, they are meant to gratify our inner desire to be rewarded for doing all the crap that we deal with in real life on a daily basis. In order for our brains to accept that, we need to be given meaningless tasks to be rewarded upon completion. That is a big reason why some people get so addicted to them

Interesting explanation. However, for some reason, I don't feel this way in MMOs. If I do something I really don't want to do (from your examples, let's take cleaning the house) in real life, I usually get properly rewarded (my house is clean!). But in video games, how can I get rewarded? By my XP bar moving a bit to the right? By a few silver coins when I already have dozens of gold? Hell, even if I was rewarded by real life money on my bank account for doing such quests, I would still better find a better way to earn money.

I don't know, I just don't play video games for any rewards. My real life is good enough, I don't need any shiny mounts or gear tiers shown on my monitor to feel great. When I play single player RPGs, I do it for story, character interaction - it is basically like watching a good movie, only interactive and lasting much longer than 2-3 hours. When I play multiplayer games like Starcraft 2, I do it because I like to play some interesting custom map with other people, basically like playing Chess, only much more interactive kind of game. But when I try to play MMOs... I just cannot find any motivation to do all these grindy quests, to go raiding regularly with other people, to do dailies. I just don't see any reason to do it. Usually, when I once again try to get into MMO world, I do it for the open worlds and exploration which usually are quite lacking in single player games - but then, instead of open world and exploration, I get stuck in some zones with a list of "do X N times" quests I need to do to raise in level and be able to get further. It completely kills any motivation to continue for me.

Being online with your friends is the best part of WoW. Take that away and you still have a good game.

If you removed 'filler content', everything - games, books, movies, tv shows etc - would be much shorter.

Depends on games, books, movies, TV shows... Some books don't really have much content you could safely remove without harming the story. All games I know of have some form of filler content, but not always much of it - I would say filler content in Mass Effect 2, for example, is next to none, the game is tightly packed with meaningful action, dialogues and cutscenes.

Anyway, I prefer "shorter and better" to "longer and worse".

[Manhands]

Everything in games is filler content. Hell, everything in life is filler content. All we need to do is pay taxes and die.

Evolution eventually creates self-consciousness after billions of years of random chances.

Self-consciousness then decides that the only point of living is to pay taxes.

Do you see what you've done?

[Vankrys]

for me, it really depends on how fun is the actual gameplay. If the combat is actually fun, i don't mind just going fighting, so kill 10 spiders wouldn't feel dull. If the combat is either tedious or far too easy, those quest would feel like grind.

So i don't necessarly big story developement to be engage, sometimes i just want to play for the fun. That is why i think having an engaging combat system is very important in MMO. And that's why i think challenge and difficult content, even solo content is important. It make grinding and farming more fun and engaging.

[xenogear3]

Everything in games is filler content. Hell, everything in life is filler content. All we need to do is pay taxes and die.

Although profound and makes you sound like a smart guy, this is actually wrong.
There is a huge difference between high quality and boring games.

If you start a new MMO game, the first quest is "Killing 100 xxx monsters" which takes 10 minutes.
Will you continue to play it?

[Halicia]

Although profound and makes you sound like a smart guy, this is actually wrong.
There is a huge difference between high quality and boring games.

If you start a new MMO game, the first quest is "Killing 100 xxx monsters" which takes 10 minutes.
Will you continue to play it?

Or look at it this way... which is more enjoyable, a 2 hour movie... or a 10 minute movie thats been filled with almost 2 hours of commercials because 'obviously if it was only 10 minutes long people would finish watching it too early and get bored'.

[May90]

for me, it really depends on how fun is the actual gameplay. If the combat is actually fun, i don't mind just going fighting, so kill 10 spiders wouldn't feel dull. If the combat is either tedious or far too easy, those quest would feel like grind.

So i don't necessarly big story developement to be engage, sometimes i just want to play for the fun. That is why i think having an engaging combat system is very important in MMO. And that's why i think challenge and difficult content, even solo content is important. It make grinding and farming more fun and engaging.

Well said. I also don't necessarily need big story. But I need something that keeps my attention in the game, that doesn't make my brain go idle. Like you said, killing 10 spiders is not boring if it is really challenging and requires some tactics - but, unfortunately, all modern MMOs I've tried are too easy for questing gameplay to actually require anything special from player; even Guild Wars 2 in which I adore combat system still feels way too easy, and WoW - no comment here, I managed to 1-shot questing mobs with Aimed Shot up to level 79.

Again, it should not necessarily be challenge or story/characters. It may be fun observing your city/country grow from nothing to world power in a set of struggles (SimCity, Europa Universalis, etc.), it may be real feeling that you are actually doing something in the world (Kingdoms of Amalur, Skyrim, etc.), it may be experiencing life of someone you have seen in a movie or read about in books (Jedi Knight series)... But there should be something, some THING that really makes me very focused throughout the entire gameplay.

Killing 10 weak spiders that don't even put up any fight, unless I pull 3 of them at the same time (why would I do that?), makes me fall asleep very quickly. There should be some diversity that keeps me paying attention to what's happening. When I am doing a "kill X dudes" quest 500th time, there surely is not much to do it for since I've done it million times already, so I don't see how this experience is supposed to entertain me.

Or look at it this way... which is more enjoyable, a 2 hour movie... or a 10 minute movie thats been filled with almost 2 hours of commercials because 'obviously if it was only 10 minutes long people would finish watching it too early and get bored'.

Or, how I felt about SWTOR, imagine Star Wars anthology, but not 6 movies - a series of 100 movies 5 hours long each. 2 hours per each of the 6 original movies is how much content there is related to the story, character, companions, etc. All other 500-12=488 hours you observe Anakin or Luke running around killind Sand People to hand over 20 of their sticks to a quest giver.

I don't think such a movie would be really popular, right?

[Orange Joe]

Killing 10 weak spiders that don't even put up any fight, unless I pull 3 of them at the same time (why would I do that?), makes me fall asleep very quickly.

This is just..... You complain about the game not being hard, but you will only play the game safely......

[May90]

This is just..... You complain about the game not being hard, but you will only play the game safely......

I am just... how to put it? I am one of those weird guys who, walking on the street and bored, does not start running around the road with a lot of traffic just to get excited. I am one of those guys who in such situation is going to find something better to do. So, instead of pulling 3 spiders at once to even have a slim chance to fail, I will better switch to, say, Dragon Age: Origins on Nightmare where, if I don't try hard enough, I die.

To put it simply, I am not going to fix a game for developers. If they don't fix the game themselves, then I will find a game made by those who do.

[Kelimbror]

on Nightmare where, if I don't try hard enough, I die.

...Compares killing landscape mobs in an MMO to a highest difficulty mode on a multimodal single player game. I think I see where the problem is.

[Vankrys]

...Compares killing landscape mobs in an MMO to a highest difficulty mode on a multimodal single player game. I think I see where the problem is.

i don't personally. Is it written in some guide book that solo content MMO must be braindead easy and repetitive. I know MMO like wow or swtor have some form of hreoic raiding content that is quite challenging, but why not offering such difficulty to solo content, with obviously the improved reward that go with. Is that bad design?

[Kelimbror]

i don't personally. Is it written in some guide book that solo content MMO must be braindead easy and repetitive. I know MMO like wow or swtor have some form of hreoic raiding content that is quite challenging, but why not offering such difficulty to solo content, with obviously the improved reward that go with. Is that bad design?

You entirely missed the point of having multiple difficulty levels compared to one default setting that can't be changed. Apples and oranges. To even come close to dignifying a response like that I would have to tell someone to go do H Garrosh and then get back to me. Compare things on equal terms or don't compare at all. Solo MMO content doesn't have to be easy, but there are plenty of content offerings that are not a cakewalk. If you aren't doing that content, you have no right to complain. Pretty simple really.

[Orange Joe]

i don't personally. Is it written in some guide book that solo content MMO must be braindead easy and repetitive. I know MMO like wow or swtor have some form of hreoic raiding content that is quite challenging, but why not offering such difficulty to solo content, with obviously the improved reward that go with. Is that bad design?

At the same time. where is it written that it must be brutally hard?

- - - Updated - - -

I am just... how to put it? I am one of those weird guys who, walking on the street and bored, does not start running around the road with a lot of traffic just to get excited. I am one of those guys who in such situation is going to find something better to do. So, instead of pulling 3 spiders at once to even have a slim chance to fail, I will better switch to, say, Dragon Age: Origins on Nightmare where, if I don't try hard enough, I die.

To put it simply, I am not going to fix a game for developers. If they don't fix the game themselves, then I will find a game made by those who do.

Maybe it is time to accept that not all games are made for you. There is nothing wrong with not liking a game. Honestly from your posts in this thread MMORPG's are really the last type of game you should be looking at.

[Gangplank]

If there was an entry for MMO in the dictionary, it would be "time sink multi-player RPG". I understand what you are saying about getting bored with MMOs in general, however you are complaining about the entire MMO genre as a whole and not just one game in particular, which to me says that you simply don't like MMOs. The obvious answer is to tell you to not play them. MMOs aren't for everyone. Just because you are a "gamer" does not mean that you need to like playing every style of game. As a fellow gamer, I can tell you that there are some genres I cannot stand, and therefore I do not play them. Going to a forum for that particular genre and complaining about how I don't like it is not going to make for meaningful discussion, nor is anyone going to change my opinion on how I feel about it.

In conclusion, if you don't like the genre as a whole, don't play it. The genre won't change for just one player, and I don't see the genre making sweeping changes in general.