Why can't the game be played as before?

[Goirbagh]

This is not a criticism of where the game is currently at, but rather a rumination over why it necessarily has to be different.

I recall the time that almost everything was dropped upon leaving the realms, where travel took time and the world felt huge - because you couldn't teleport as easily and the shipping routes were way more esoteric. I also recall that stomach churning feeling I got when I HAD to quit, either because of time or because I ended up in a situation I just couldn't get myself out of. There was a huge cost to quitting and dropping everything.

That doesn't work today. I want to understand why. I don't think even I personally would have the patience for that. Everything has become sort-of bland; things are widely available, everyone wants to have everything, everyone has darkness imbuements, magical stuff, teleports and whatnot. As I remember it, magical items and especially magical spells were REALLY rare back in the day - to the point that seeing a mage in Calia almost blew my mind. It just wasn't available to everyone - it took a looong time and a ridiculous amount of patience.

Now, again, I realize that wouldn't work. Players would just drop off. No one wants to have that level of difficulty or whatever we want to call it today. But WHY?

What has changed so drastically in the world that that kind of setup does not work anymore? Whatever that change is, it does not seem or feel healthy.

I also noticed this in some discussion here regarding new mortal levels, people suggesting that there should be an xp boost for lower levels because otherwise newer players will get disheartened. I mean, I agree with newer players getting disheartened - but why weren't they before? Why have people before had the patience to do it? And why wasn't it the main focus? Why does everything have to happen so quickly?

Again, I'm not looking for definite answers but rather a discussion of the topic.

[Skythus]

I agree that individuals are too versatile.

I think that's a decent reason why the Mercenaries were nerfed, to push players into serious guilds so they're not a guru in every skill. But we still have situations where one person is the tank, the damage, and the healer there's no reason to do anything but grind solo.

It killed quite a bit of fun for me when people were making cheat sheets to find spells for SoHM. I can live with herb or imbuement translators but racing peers to get the fattest spell book was a huge joy and incentive for me to quest. That goal of improving eventually got me into a the much more serious WoHS and I'm still having a blast researching spells and watching future students. However, some will just whip out a <do> list and then they have the spells to grind whatever they want and stop pursuing anything but size.

Everyone from virtually any guild has the equipment for dark vision, haste, magic resist, and maps pointing out special equipment. It wouldn't take a whole lot of effort to automate farming valuable NPCs in different realms assuming you mapped everything.

To quote Sindrome from the Incredibles, "When everyone's super, no one will be."

But what could we do about that? Other than rouge-like dungeons tailored for the team I couldn't really say. Like you mentioned, restrictions are going to hemorrhage players, but adding new features can add bloat. We could have a larger team-exp boost that procs if certain "roles" are filled such as DPS, Tank, etc but not everyone fits into a nice slot.

I think the only ways someone should get a boost to combat experience should be meaningful teaming, PvP or Questing.

[Greneth]

Now, again, I realize that wouldn't work. Players would just drop off. No one wants to have that level of difficulty or whatever we want to call it today. But WHY?

What has changed so drastically in the world that that kind of setup does not work anymore? Whatever that change is, it does not seem or feel healthy.

I also noticed this in some discussion here regarding new mortal levels, people suggesting that there should be an xp boost for lower levels because otherwise newer players will get disheartened. I mean, I agree with newer players getting disheartened - but why weren't they before? Why have people before had the patience to do it? And why wasn't it the main focus? Why does everything have to happen so quickly?

Again, I'm not looking for definite answers but rather a discussion of the topic.

Because people value time and effort. While the value of time has not gone up or down the options of what you can spend that time on has grown immensely and for less effort. If I can spend 1 hour to every 10 hours on another game requiring less effort compared to Genesis and obtain the same satisfaction if not more so, then what am I doing here?

Thats the mindset Genesis has to compete with these days. And not just in its own genre of MUDs, but in fantasy as a whole. It takes a special breed of player to want to play this game and even more to ignore all the other options available. You'll hear it from a lot of people, the magic map was something that made Genesis stand out compared to some of the other text-based options. Had it not been created and the game evolved with the times, those players possibly could not have stuck around or came back after trying other games out.

This goes for a lot of changes in the game, we were one of the very last MUDs in existence to not have saving EQ. It cost us a lot of new players. Genesis requires a lot of effort on the players part if they are a true newbie. Some of this is lessened with the help of others in game, ntell line, discord, but its still steep.

[Cherek]

Goirbagh: I think this evolution in Genesis simply reflects how computer games have evolved in general. It’s not some grand plan by the admin, it’s a number of decisions by a lot of people the last 20 years, that have taken Genesis in the direction of games in general. We haven’t gone as extreme as the rest of the gaming world, though. But if you look at an average game 20 years ago compared to today, you’ll likely see the same pattern. Today games are more easy to learn, it’s more about easy and quick progress, instant gratification, keep players engaged by bombarding them with rewards so they don’t stop playing, etc.

Personally I very much prefer the “old” type of games that were much harder, and in my opinion offered a much deeper kind of sense of achievement when you “beat” them. And if we compare Genesis to many other games of today, I think much of that remains in Genesis still. But we’ve definitely also moved in the same direction as games in general.

Interestingly, when it comes to physical board games, the evolution has generally gone in the other direction. Mainstream board games used to be simple and mainly rely on luck a few decades ago, while today a “mainstream” board game is generally more advanced and strategic. I’ve never thought of this before, but it’s a bit interesting that physical and digital games had pretty different starting points and have in many ways also evolved in different directions. Broadly speaking of course.

Actually, if you think about physical games a bit more, it’s perhaps more that they also started as pretty complex with steep learning curves, then became very simplified, and are now returning to be more involved and advanced again? Perhaps that is what we will see with the digital games too?

I don’t really have a point with this post, just my random thoughts about the rather interesting topic you raised

[Budwise]

"Why can't the game be played as before?", you ask?

Short answer: "Because even nostalgia isn't what it used to be."

Apologies, but this is just the same old rosetinted nostalgiaglasses,
where you pine for some lost golden age when things were (presumably) simpler.
Only trouble is back then we were also pining for some lost golden age further back.

The game can't be played as before because it has evolved and is still evolving.
And you probably wouldn't want to revert to the game I started on.
HP/SP. Universal tell/shout. Limited areas. What was it? Two guilds or something like that.
Katanas from market were okay weapons and if you wanted to heal
you visited the hooker in the same place. And when you reached level 20 (?),
you were automagically made a wiz. (This before big recode of early 90'ies)

If I should wax nostalgic I'd say too much stuff like interest rates, house mortgages,
and similar rather boring RL-stuff seem to be creeping in and the fun stuff like magic
for the heck of it vanishing. (Yes, Cherek. I'm not happy about those costumes
being made Perfectly Safe TM. ;o) ) But thats just me. Overall I think the game is still
addictive and thanks to our wizards and players for that.

B.

[Budwise]

Of course if we could also have the queue back and run the game on a 586 or whatever it was,
that would be grand. And more crashes. Who doesn't love a good crash?

[Drazson]

Bottom line probably because the people playing it are not the same as before, in terms of population and otherwise.

[Cherek]

And more crashes. Who doesn't love a good crash?

Totally agree. I try to encourage new wizards to try crash the game but Cotillion has so many stupid precautions and safety stuff in place it's almost impossible these days

[Goirbagh]

Apologies, but this is just the same old rosetinted nostalgiaglasses

No, it really isn't.

https://www.quora.com/Were-the-video-ga ... e-ones-now

https://www.reddit.com/r/truegaming/com ... s_so_hard/

I think you're one of the old times so you're either facing some kind of cognitive dissonance or you misunderstood my origial post.

It has nothing to do with rosetinted nostalgiaglasses. Life hada its ups and downs back then as well.

Games, however, were WAY more difficult and required WAY more of the player. Be it Genesis or any other game. NES, SNES, and so on.

This is undisputable, I would say. I'm not interested in discussing whether games were easier or harder back then - it's just established as a fact in my mind.

I'm obviously not longing back to a time when there were only two guilds - I don't think you even think that's what I was after, which sort of makes it a strawman. Neither of us want to remove 95% of all guilds.

However, my post was an attempt to understand WHY we do not have the patience that we used to have. Whenever I play any game, I always pull all difficulty sliders to the max. I don't care if I can't even beat it. Beating it is not the end goal for me - having a crazy fun challenge is. Now, everyone is different of course. I'm sure people are happy being able to get magical darkness imbued items after grinding orc fortress for 45 minutes, buying them off of the auction house.

Attaining items like that used to be VERY hard. Like, ridiculously hard. Maybe even too hard, I'm unsure.

Here's something to think about though: Those of us who prefer the old style of playing games are the fanatics, the patient ones, the ones with almost endless grit. We're going to be around in another 20 years (hopefully, if I get to stay alive - you never really know). The ones who think that it's more fun to have magical items and super powers after 20 minutes - those are not going to stay just because you give them that. They play and then move on after a couple of months at best.

This is a problem, because they are now the majority of the player base (not speaking about Genesis in particular here). This creates incentives for game developers that are skewed - it makes the devs cater towards a high churnrate of uninvested players who come around, play the game, max everything and then move on. Again, this is (likely) working AGAINST the long term interests of both the players and the devs. Catering towards diehard patient mature players who rather bang their head against the wall than leaving the game would create a stability, unique identity and a ridiculous strong player base over many years (as Genesis has mostly done right, except for maybe past couple of years).

There is a big RISK to catering towards this new kind of player with a short attention span. Actually, let me rephrase that. There's a big risk to catering towards this type of person, in games, in society, in relationships or anything else.

It makes things pointless and it makes everything boring. Otherwise, we should LOTR consist of many books and many, mange pages? Why not just have the final 10 pages to conclude the story? If the goal is getting to the end as quickly as possible - WHY NOT?

You see this in many tech companies as well during scale up (which is an area I've worked within much). They create a strong base with a unique product, feel the pressure to scale up, cater towards new users and dumb everything down, lose their original user base which really loved the product, and then get stuck with high churn users who come and leave, none of which care about the product, the company or its direction.

Again, I'm not criticizing anything per se, but I think it's important we have a discussion on this with regard to Genesis. Because the game IS moving in that direction - forgetting more and more about the original, strong player base and catering towards new players ("how can we get more players?" without seriously investigating what the answer to that question does with current, old players). Now, there are a few very prominent examples of this, but in general, I think the game is doing somewhat ok. But all these guild rebalances are taking it too far, and there are way too many magical items in the world now. There's a great fun to an imbalanced game as well - not everything has to be balanced in terms of strengths.

[Budwise]

Well, ban triggers then? People will be forced to play and pay attention.
Just have to fix the stuff that makes triggers needed first tho.
The endless xp grind. (And no, I don't expect this to happen.)

I don't use triggers, only quicktyper commands. Fun enough and means I'm
playing the game instead of it playing itself in another window.
So one way of challenging yourself would be to turn all the automation off.

B