Lazy Peon Video - Things I Hate About MMOs in 2023

Optics2134

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lLUuGJhPmuE

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Roshen

Hey we watch Lazy Peon videos a fair amount.

Do you agree with what is shared here? If not, which points do you agree and disagree with?

@Optics2134 FYI: Edited the title here, so more people understand what thread is about if they want to join the discussion.

Nerror

@Roshen I pretty much agree with all of LazyPeons points with one major exception, and that is that I like story and lore heavy quests where I have to pay attention to what is being said, but I definitely still want quality over quantity. If I had to prioritize his points by importance, it would be something like this:

Ingame currency sold in the shop and lack of banning RMT buyers (top bad thing by a big margin)
Quantity over quality questing
Auto-play / AFK gameplay
Daily Chores
Addon Requirements
Alt Friendly MMOs & Non-account wide completionism
Transmog
Multiple Gearsets & Inventory Management
Ugly UI
Build Websites

Enigmatic Sage

to me...

Probably one of Peon's more relatable video's that I have watched. It does briefly cover some of the issues that stem from and continue to plague the industry especially for mmorpg genre.

But I will say in addition to his section about quests as I am someone who actually reads the quests for at least the first playthrough anyways, that aside from the main campaign, I do like more detailed class/archetype quest chains that have weight to them. It's a good way to tie in more meaningful quests instead of pointless crap and pointless rep grinds. Leveling should be a memorable experience instead of a hurdle to enjoy the game which I believe AoC's design handles this much better in terms of content goals. I dont really want to say end game content with all the controversial issues surrounded the terminology and specific game design nuance.

To me, if you want to play an alt, you should put the time into it. This way you can have something to look forward to as each archetype (or just based on primary archetype perhaps) could have a unique adventure to them aside from what religion campaigns can potentially offer the players in new content to explore. Just having the same linear path for leveling across all archetypes becomes essentially pointless like many of those games mentioned in the video.
Nothing wrong with wanting to have several alts and being somewhat alt friendly but if leveling becomes pointless then there is no point to having a level system.

Minimal pointless quests, good campaign, good primary archetype campaign, good religion campaign with unique rewards accordingly. You can even add in meaningful artisan campaigns which I am assuming is the current goals haha.

Sylvanar

I agree with some of the points but differ wrt some as well because not everyone has played MMOs as much as he has and or has the same agenda when it comes to playing the game.

This makes things like the game being "Alt friendly" make sense for him but not for me. The only thing spanning all the characters in account which make sense to me are achievements. Maps and Mounts are a stretch but acceptable. Nothing beyond that. Nope.

Features which make the game dead to me would be:
- Auto-play/ AFK gameplay
- Addon requirements

Features which I really really hope are not included in the game are:
- In-game currency shop
- Daily chores
- Alt friendly crap and account wide completion.
- Ugly UI

Features I hope are included:
- Quality over quantity
- Multiple gear sets and inventory management
- some ingame guides for builds like in dota.

Transmog is going to be there and it has its pros and cons. No point thinking about this.

Lastly, this.

Enigmatic Sage wrote: »

But I will say in addition to his section about quests as I am someone who actually reads the quests for at least the first playthrough anyways, that aside from the main campaign, I do like more detailed class/archetype quest chains that have weight to them. It's a good way to tie in more meaningful quests instead of pointless crap and pointless rep grinds. Leveling should be a memorable experience instead of a hurdle to enjoy the game which I believe AoC's design handles this much better in terms of content goals. I dont really want to say end game content with all the controversial issues surrounded the terminology and specific game design nuance.

Again, Lazypeon has different reasons for playing MMOs than normal people who play just to relax, socialize or time pass.

Enigmatic Sage

Sylvanar wrote: »

Again, Lazypeon has different reasons for playing MMOs than normal people who play just to relax, socialize or time pass.

yup such as he makes money doing it through videos

But on a more serious note, youtubers and streamers are a contributing factor to many issues as well unfortunately as they can make content about something positive one day and negative the other based on perspectives. At the end of the day, it's content for them but this does not mean I am negatively going after them just pointing out the obvious that gets lost to some. If companies manipulate their game for PR reasons to certain youtubers and streamers it also affects the game design directly as some companies literally cater their games to these content creators to make the game more appealing which in context has proven to be quite detrimental to many games development. Too many people creators shilling selfishly.

That aside... they grow up so fast dont they

TheDarkSorcerer

"We have enough daily chores to deal with in the real world. So adding to that list of chores to a game which is supposed to be an escape from reality is a bad idea."

This is a HUGE dealbreaker for me. I just want to enjoy the game and have fun.

Barab

Let me list all the mmo aspects I hate but first let promote this mobile mmo ☹

I have hundreds of hours into mmos that Lazy Peon couldnt even make it past the tutorial in his reviews. Has he ever claimed a mmo as his main played or playing mmo ?

Enigmatic Sage

Barab wrote: »

Let me list all the mmo aspects I hate but first let promote this mobile mmo ☹ ?

you got a laugh out of that too?

Dygz

OMFG
Lazy Peon just needs to git gud at playing RPGs.
You don't need to leave the game to figure out what to keep in your inventory.
And you should never be relying on other people to config your build. An RPG should never be designed in such a way that there is any merit to other players dictating what your build should be.
If you don't like Dailies - skip them.
(You also don't actually have to use add-ons if you don't want to.)

Sylvanar wrote: »

Again, Lazypeon has different reasons for playing MMOs than normal people who play just to relax, socialize or time pass.

Apparently!

Enigmatic Sage

@Dygz
"If you don't like Dailies - skip them."

That's probably a terrible mentality to have as a generalisation of game design outside of mainstream games and studio's lol. Pretty much the same as enabling bad design foundations and turning it around on the players decisions as a fault

The unfortunately truth about meta builds and the toxicity of gaming communities mentality unfortunately does exist. People do commonly project negatively to those who do not meta because that's how the top players do it so everyone should. There is a good majority of players who don't even look at their class talents etc and just go to guides which is just a reality as many gamers do the cookie cutter method. Now I'm not saying everyone does this but it's an unfortunate truth especially from mainstream games as mentioned in the video's.

Peon isn't necessarily wrong about the inventory manipulation with loot pollution either. These big studio's do manipulate players to spend unnecessary money for convenience and QoL nonsense that many muppets buy into. The evidence is clearly out in the open regardless of this current video, it has been for years. They do spend lots of money to manipulate people for player and money retentions for capital success because that's what most of the companies mentioned mainly care about.

Suggesting ignorance is essentially enabling this to continue. Ignorance isn't necessarily bliss, it's a choice to be part of the problem in this scenario by doing nothing.

Dygz

Yep. Which is why RPGs should be designing builds closer to the Ashes design rather than do what LP suggested.
Who suggested ignorance?

Enigmatic Sage

Dygz wrote: »

Yep. Which is why RPGs should be designing builds closer to the Ashes design rather than do what LP suggested.
Who suggested ignorance?

you did with your comment as to why I put quotations around. Not intended to be throwing shade or anything just saying. It's like saying " if you dont like p2w, just dont do it"

As to why i made a generalisation remark about the mentality and manipulation.

I do agree though, ashes game design from what I know of is definitely less about being a meta and more about synergy in a basic way to put it. Keeping it relatively more simple opposed to a false complexity for self-fulfillment is not a great way for class/archetype balance. A lot of those designs are being masked under unnecessary system stacking to hide the problems. But that's a tale for another thread lol

3Earthling3

I do agree with most of his takes except community voted builds in the UI. I know everyone now a days goes and looks up a build like he mentioned, but to me that takes away from the rpg aspect. The point is to build out your class towards your play style and learn the mechanics. Trial and error to me is one of the most fun parts of these games and I wish we could get this aspect of mmorpgs back. Please do not add a community voted UI for builds.

Nerror

Z4ddy wrote: »

I do agree with most of his takes except community voted builds in the UI. I know everyone now a days goes and looks up a build like he mentioned, but to me that takes away from the rpg aspect. The point is to build out your class towards your play style and learn the mechanics. Trial and error to me is one of the most fun parts of these games and I wish we could get this aspect of mmorpgs back. Please do not add a community voted UI for builds.

Yeah I honestly don't really care about this part either tbh. I am not against it like you are, but not having it in the game is completely ok too.

Liniker

Dygz wrote: »

If you don't like Dailies - skip them.
(You also don't actually have to use add-ons if you don't want to.)

so, theres something to be said about players that dont want to "RP" and want to play a game efficiently, I myself agree with peon, because if a game has addons, I will be forced to use it, if it has dailies, I will be forced to do them - I have fun being the most efficient I can, using my time wisely, being stronger than others and I prefer PvP MMOs because of that, that's my playstyle in an MMORPG, and sometimes I play classes that I don't want to and do things I dont like because of the endgoal, and that is the "fun" part for me

skipping is not an option if that's going to put me at a disadvantage, I'd rather just not play the game, which is exactly what I, and hundreds of thousands of players did with Archeage or Lost Ark,

now, you can argue that you think that's stupid and it goes against what an RPG is supposed to be (for you) but the reality is there is a significant amount of the player base that has this playstyle, and actually do care about efficiency and feel frustrated when the META is doing dailies, having 9 alts like in LA or just doing things that aren't fun but are the most efficient way of progressing

and if the developer wants those players - which in Intrepid's case they do, since its a competitive game as well, they need to address it, as they have been with backing out on the original login reward idea and overall risk vs reward design,

CROW3

I generally see eye-to-eye w/LazyPeon. His points on inventory were dead on for me - too much meaningless cruft clearly created for 'engagement' and 'retention' , but ultimately turns into a repellent.

I agree on the build META bullshit, though I think Ashes' approach will actually help with this. I prefer to understand my class and abilities to their atomic level and create a spec respectively. I don't care about player voted specs - if you want to use it, great, if not, great. From a grouping perspective, be good at whatever build you choose to have.

Agree on supporting altaholism. The flipside is that an mmo needs to provide enough depth to support focusing on 1 main character, while also being friendly enough to provide meaningful ways to play the game from multiple perspectives.

I disagree about being nostalgic about pre-xmog days. F*ck that. I want my character to look exactly how I want them to look. If that comes with the price of paid cosmetics and 'visual-progression' arguments - it's worth it.

I disagree about injecting story into the mmo flow. I want to be immersed in a living world, those worlds have histories and cultures and people trying to get stuff done for a reason - i want to know why - and that involves narrative.

Agree on the suck of AddOns, but still have a list of 17 standard addons for wow. Yeah, I'd rather not have to use the client updater for Curse, but like xmog - I want my UI to be very specific, and if the vanilla application won't provide that level of customization, then AddOns have value. This is one of those areas where Intrepid needs to pay particular attention to listening to players and making consistently quick updates to their UX.

Lastly, and probably most vehemently, I completely agree with the backlash on auto-play. It's just an immediate 'no' to the game the developer and the publisher. Everyone involved in producing a game with automatic / AFK gameplay simply hates gaming.

Enigmatic Sage

@Z4ddy I agree. There's a lot of cookie cutters out there who don't want to take the time to learn their class, read abilities etc. I've come across many gamers who are like this and complain that they're not good or expect gear to fix their lack of understanding while expecting free hand outs from the game. They get told to watch other's so they can mimic what they do to get better but that's not learning how to play, that's just trying to play the game like someone else to some extent. Some abilities literally explain synergies to optimise performance but they'll just end up going to a cookie cutter guide and mimic rotations. But that could also because of the type of players and target audience they're trying to appeal to. If they have an abundance of abilities that cater to flavour of the month balancing then it's probably not a great design in my opinion as we've seen many games with abilities and talents that havn't been used in several years because they're just not meta.

@Nerror I would definitely prefer it to not be in Ashes. I just don't see it being an essential part of it at this time based on current information about archetypes, active/passives and additional stats. Seems like an in-game self promotion tool that could be abused.

Astealoth

I've played to deep end game in the whole lineup of usual suspects, GW1/GW2, ESO, DAoC, UO, BDO, WoW, Albion, EVE, RS3/OSRS, Neverwinter, TERA, TOR, and more. The only daily system in the entire industry I think works and is highly enjoyable is Albion's.

What Albion does is get the dailies out of everyone's way. They are there, but the objective is earn any type of XP. It just feels right. I absolutely despise getting on an MMO and having a big list of random garbage I don't want to do.

RuneScape dailies suck, never know if it's going to be chop down 5 trees, do a dungeoneering floor, do a slayer task, etc. It's all over the board in type and difficulty. New World, Planetside 2, and Guild Wars 2 do it about the same way, just given random nonsense tasks to chase all over the map. Horrible design.

Then you have games like WoW, ESO, and BDO that have a huge crappy mess of fixed dailies all over the map to chase, same crap every day, day after day whether you enjoy that task or not. Horrible design.

Flexibility is king, makes the game fun for everyone. Every skill level and every play style can tackle their daily bonuses as they see fit. It can't be done better.

Albion basically has 3 daily bonus systems. You have your main daily quest, earn any type of XP. This grants you a combat XP tome, learning points if you are F2P (you get your LPs automatically for free if you are subbed without having to do your daily quest), and a huge bonus toward your monthly reward track. They have this system cloned in the faction system, and the faction system has a second monthly reward track. You can work them both at the same time if you are faction flagged. And lastly, they have an activity type on bonus each day, rotates between a gathering type, a refining type, and a combat type usually, for a 10%-20% bonus XP for that activity for the day. That's a heckin' good daily system and no one else is even close.

Leonerdo

I'm gonna give my opinions without watching the video, sorry. Just going off this list:

Nerror wrote: »

Ingame currency sold in the shop and lack of banning RMT buyers (top bad thing by a big margin)

Quantity over quality questing

Auto-play / AFK gameplay

Daily Chores

Addon Requirements

Alt Friendly MMOs & Non-account wide completionism

Transmog

Multiple Gearsets & Inventory Management

Ugly UI

Build Websites

Agree that currency shouldn't be purchasable. For AoC, the economy needs to be tight, with no shortcuts. Don't think it really matters for themepark MMOs though.
100%. Questing in MMOs has been stale and predictable for a long time. This is kinda unavoidable though, when you've played RPGs for decades. Quests are always the same old "please kill those guys who are harassing us" or "bring us supplies" tasks. The solution like you said is quality over quantity. At least make the characters and backstory of the quests interesting, even if the task is still killing 10 wolves. Give us a glimpse at local cultures or politics. Give us a reason to care about the characters emotionally. Etc. And that doesn't mean quests need to be longer. Just better written/acted, more connected with interesting parts of the world, and more theatrical in some cases. Not many MMO players care enough to read books, so don't rely on that for making quests interesting.
AFK gameplay is fine for some side activities, but obviously not combat. I don't think anyone would say that gardening/farming needs to be removed from MMOs. Checking in daily to take care of your crops/animals/shop/whatever can be a satisfying touchstone for a lot of players, both casual and hardcore.
Daily chores... Too much to unpack with this topic. All I will say is that you shouldn't have to do the same 1+ hour chore list every day for months to get basic stuff needed to enjoy the game or access challenging content. There a lot of different ways to fix that problem (less grind, more challenge/fun, more variety, less time-gating), and not all are necessary. If I had to pick one angle to focus on, it would probably be making daily activities challenging/engaging. Doing something every day isn't necessarily a chore if it's fun and it grows with you. That's just a good hobby.
Yeah, addons suck the fun out of MMOs. Good luck preventing them, though.
I have no strong opinions on alts. If it's easy to make alts and start having fun on them quickly, then I'll probably make a couple. If making an alt requires you to go back to tutorial-mode brain-dead leveling gameplay, or story reruns, for 50 hours, then I won't bother. Also, I think certain things related to convenience or comfort should be account-wide if the game wants to be alt-friendly. Just feels really bad to switch to an alt and suddenly have a worse or no mount/less bag space/no fast travel unlocks/no housing/etc. Unless those things are very easy to re-acquire.
Transmog is cool. I'm not one of those people who say "Fashion is the true end-game," but I think they are cool people who deserve to enjoy their fashion and transmog collections without any archaic restrictions. It doesn't hurt anyone except the immersion purists. So let the haters turn off transmogs on their client if necessary.
Many people... are not very organized. Those who ARE organized probably didn't enjoy GETTING organized. Helping your players get organized with the least amount of effort can only be positive for your game, even if it's forcing prescriptive or weird designs on them. They'll figure it out and grumble a bit, but they'll get back to the fun parts of the game faster.
The previous point also applies to UI. Oh, yeah, I forgot to say that was in regards to gearsets and inventory management. See how hard this organizing thing is? Anyways, UI or inventory, it's the same concept. I don't care about the looks, I care about things being grouped together in sensical places, so I don't have to think as much to find/use them.
I have nothing against build websites. Build crafting is it's own kind of gameplay with a skill floor and ceiling. In order for the ceiling to be high enough, so people can keep tinkering with builds in a long-running MMO, the build crafting has to be complex and varied. But if builds are complex, then casual players will get their skill floor from research rather than tinkering (i.e. they go to a website). In order for a game to make build crafting accessible enough that most players never need a website/guide, I think it would have to be exceedingly simple and boring. Better to make it complex. Then try to make it somewhat easy for players to tweak builds after they've gotten their footing with a meta build.

Also, I think putting recommended builds into the game is fine. Just another level of skill floor, that requires less research but for (probably, slightly) worse results. League of Legends was an infinitely more accessible game after they added item recommendations in-game (based on recent pick-rate data), and there's still plenty of build crafting for those who care about it.

Dygz

Sylvanar wrote: »

you did with your comment as to why I put quotations around. Not intended to be throwing shade or anything just saying. It's like saying " if you dont like p2w, just dont do it" As to why i made a generalisation remark about the mentality and manipulation.

That is an absurd parapharase of what I wrote and what I suggested.
If you don't like P2W, just don't play that game.
Same, really, if you don't like Dailies, but... you can just skip Dailies if you want to.
Ignorance has nothing to do with that. Ignorance means lack of knowledge.
I suppose you mean I suggested people can skip/disregard/ignore Dailies if they want to. Could be a language issue.

Sylvanar wrote: »

I do agree though, ashes game design from what I know of is definitely less about being a meta and more about synergy in a basic way to put it. Keeping it relatively more simple opposed to a false complexity for self-fulfillment is not a great way for class/archetype balance. A lot of those designs are being masked under unnecessary system stacking to hide the problems. But that's a tale for another thread lol

Mmmmn. Yeah. I don't know what you're trying to imply, so...
Another thread where you can be more explicit would be best.

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