Well this is an odd question Kils. If I'm bored in an MMO, theres a problem with the MMO. If I'm bored I stop playing. Last time that happened was the last time I gave Rift a shot. I came back to game with 10 levels to get, got them way to easily and fell into the routine of run the dungeon, do the dailies, run the dungeon, do the dailies. Two weeks into that, I was bored numb and quit. Won't be back.
Garmr said:Well this is an odd question Kils. If I'm bored in an MMO, theres a problem with the MMO. If I'm bored I stop playing. Last time that happened was the last time I gave Rift a shot. I came back to game with 10 levels to get, got them way to easily and fell into the routine of run the dungeon, do the dailies, run the dungeon, do the dailies. Two weeks into that, I was bored numb and quit. Won't be back.
It is a very open question with many answers and meanings though man, I get a lot more information from these than you may think, you could get bored at max level or after completing a certain milestone, or obtaining a certain level or doing certain tasks or just struggle with the game in general, plus many more options or ways of leading to boredom so by leaving it so open, I get the most varied replies and maximum information from the community, plus I love hearing everyone's stories and opinions on different topics ;)
That's a good question Kilsin.. especially if you consider what the biggest problem with our style of gaming is.. and I believe it's being Bored while LFG. If most things can only be done via grouping/co-operation then boredom presents itself as a problem if you're waiting for a group.. which is one of the main/root problems to how we've ended up like this. "the demise of the social mmo".
Funnily enough, I was thinking about this exact problem while actually being bored LFG on an Everquest progression server... So how do you not be bored while LFG?" the answer is "solo" of course by switching to a solo class. Solution: Allow all players to be LFG with more than one character.. and allow them to switch quickly via the lfg tool. That way groups aren't waiting around and there's more choice out there while LFM and LFG. Just a thought.
For me there are two main areas of boredom in MMOs.
1) If leveling rate is too slow with long stretches where there are no equipment or skill upgrades. I am not saying I need to gain multiple levels every session, but I have been in games where your character is static for so long it become tedious. I think a lot of this lies on the dev team to plan out the leveling experience, but I have also found experimenting with different builds and/or gear can help alleviate some of the boredom.
2) Second and more common is the boredom between content update. Being in a small guild we don't get content to farm status quickly, but there can still be long stretches between new content where your character is making little progress. I can only take grinding faction for a certain amount of time each day. This is where world events and achievements have kept me busy in the past. Keeping the world dynamic and challenging should help keep idle hands busy.
When I'm playing a game in general, specially rpgs I like to set goals for the day. When I run out of goals I start to strugle to see the point of logging in due to "boredom", I don't think I've ever really been bored in a mmorpg if I'm not finding things to do or things I'd like to do I'll tend to just find somthing else to do in another game.
Early on in a game it may be "I want to earn X amount of experiance by the end of the day" and so I'll set out for the day earning experiance. Other goals like "I want to get this quest chain finished today" all fall into the "Earn experience" and contribute to enjoyment, even somthing as simple as "I want to kill X boss today" or "Group up with friends for several hours". When you then hit the so called end game goals change, more into what is avaliable for me to do. Some days the goals may be "We want to beat X raid boss" "We want to beat X world boss" and so on, however a lot of the end game usually and rightfully so tends to be group based.
I guess some could strugle with bordem if you are struggling with social aspects, getting involved with others to achive these goals and the likes. While I strongly belive that content requiring social ties such as partys and raids should always be the key focus and the most productive, there does need to be content that can keep people ticking over while they search for groups or wait for friends, some days people may not feel up to working with others, its still in the intrest of the game that these people are inside the game enjoying themselves. Systems for crafting and gathering can keep people in game doing things while they search for groups - However if bag space is too much of a preimum people then feel torn between searching for a group and gather, becuase you don't want to spend a few hours looking for a group while gathering, lets say ore. Only to then find a group but you have to then ask the group to wait around for you while you deposit or sell the gathered materials you've spent time getting. (Would be nice if materials had their own inventory tab where it is stored rather than found/quest items.)
Collection systems (Shineys) is another system that allows people to spend time hunting and looking for bits and bobs that may reward or just be there for the sake of collection. While this may seam like an odd one to bring out, Pokemon has a great deal of retention in players over the years due to its very foundation being build upon collecting "Gotta' catch em' all." Mini pets could be introduced or given as rewards for collecting stuff, for exsample lets say there are 6 Dragon bosses, and each dragon has a chance to drop an egg, once you've collected all 6 eggs your rewarded with a baby hatching, its cute and its fun to collect. This also translates into a housing system as well, allowing players to collect and gather furniture and goods for their homes while we've already been told we won't have a housing system at launch I look forward to seeing it in the future after launch.
Edit: Spelling & structure.
This is actually a really complicated question. I'd say that, for me at least, there are varying degrees of boredom. If I just feel a sort of short-term boredom, I tend to climb things that aren't really meant to be climbed. I think most of us want a sense of accomplishment periodically and if you're not readily finding an activity you enjoy that causes the game itself to give you that feedback, you can get that "yay!" moment by meeting your own spontaneous goal. Climbing sometimes has a bonus reward--sometimes the view of the game world is beautiful from a new angle (and sometimes you find out that things aren't actually attached/solid when viewed from the top, lol.) Sometimes I start a screenshot collection of weird geography!
Longer-term boredom sets in when, I think, there's not enough end-game content in a game designed to get your characters to end-game as quickly as possible. This is the trickier part, because it's no longer just *my* perception of boredom that influences my actually feeling bored. If I enjoy spending time with other people in-game and those people aren't particularly bored (yet), I feel compelled to log in just to hang out. They may still be working towards game-provided goals, and if those goals aren't something I can help with, I'll invent my own. (Achievement systems can help with this, too, because it gives not only a to-do list of otherwise unnecessary goals, but also sparks ideas for things to do that aren't on the list.) For example, I liked hanging out with my guildmates in WoW. They were still leveling alts and having fun with the game. I had two accounts full of max level characters on our server, most of them fairly well geared (yeah, I could've geared the others, but three paladins is really quite enough :P ), my various reputations were maxed already, I'd done whatever time-gated content there was to do for the day/week, so I decided to max all available weaponskills... on a priest. Because hitting things with a staff/mace/my bare hands is super effective! ;P
I guess a caveat to the above is that I'm used to the trend of rush-to-max-level, get to max level, there's-nothing-to-do-at-max-level thing in a lot of games, so whether by nature or subconscious planning, I approach games with a "do all the things!" attitude. It hugely delays running out of things to do if you have an overwhelmingly long list from the beginning.
The killer, though, is long-term personal boredom met with everyone else's long-term boredom. If the people I enjoy spending time with stop having fun and generally mope around bored, if shout/general/ooc are typically filled with people saying there's nothing to do, and I've run out of things to do... bleh. Sometimes I'll try to think up a group activity, like Hide and Seek in GFay with druids doing the hiding... in treeform. :P Sometimes facerolling old content can entertain a group for a while, though it gets old pretty quickly. It's usually when most of what I've heard for months from friends and strangers alike is some form of "there's nothing to do" and more and more people stop logging in altogether that it becomes an unrecoverable sort of boredom. Even when the game releases new content, even when a bunch of those people come back to excitedly do the new content, it often doesn't last. I guess there's an unspoken, or even unacknowledged, expectation that if what was available before wasn't enough, the new stuff better be amazing and be something that was worth waiting for. When it's more of the same (and sometimes less of it), people stop coming back at all. :(
And to end on a less "blah" note: for pretty much any degree of boredom, I like to help people with their goals, whether they're guildmates or strangers or newbies that haven't the slightest idea where to go. Being excited for someone else's accomplishments is, for me at least, just as rewarding as accomplishing something myself.
Edit: spelling
For me it depends on what I am bored with. If I am bored with the game in general then like Garmr said I will usually leave the game. If however I am just bored with one aspect of it (say crafting) I will go do something else. If I am getting bored with that class, make an alt etc.
I don't think anyone will say camping a named PH for 20 hours over the course of a week is fun but I can deal with a certain amount of boredom to get what I want (Dusty Soriz Pouch for instance).
Yep, definitely been bored in an MMO, not that long ago. There was no challenge left, everything would die pretty easily without much (if any) thought being required. Also, things had become very routine. Running the same dungeons and raids over and over, no new experiences to be had. So I did quit, haven't played that game in months. When things become a walk in the park I just feel "what's the point?"
I think it's a catch-22. The fear of players being bored in games and always needing to have "fun" have led to endless fetch/collect/kill quests, quick leveling, lack of downtime, loot handouts etc. Now, can downtime be boring? Absolutely, but I think it's necessary to have a quality MMO that promotes grouping, interdependence, dangling carrots, and resource management. So, to alleviate it, if I was soloing, was bored, and was having long downtime periods - I would group.
If the boredom is due to "lack of things to do," then that's just bad design. /Agreed with Sypderoptik's point on EQ's AA system. It was one of the main reasons I played EQ for so long because I always had a way to meaningfully progress my character at max level without needing or being forced to raid. So, to alleviate boredom at max level, there needs to be options outside of "just" raiding to advance a character.
Nimryl said:That's a good question Kilsin.. especially if you consider what the biggest problem with our style of gaming is.. and I believe it's being Bored while LFG. If most things can only be done via grouping/co-operation then boredom presents itself as a problem if you're waiting for a group.. which is one of the main/root problems to how we've ended up like this. "the demise of the social mmo".
Funnily enough, I was thinking about this exact problem while actually being bored LFG on an Everquest progression server... So how do you not be bored while LFG?" the answer is "solo" of course by switching to a solo class. Solution: Allow all players to be LFG with more than one character.. and allow them to switch quickly via the lfg tool. That way groups aren't waiting around and there's more choice out there while LFM and LFG. Just a thought.
I think this is a really good idea. The difficulty of finding groups in EQ is why I eventually quit. This was after a few expansions and the world had spread out so far, but server populations were not really increasing, at least not by much. So people tended to stay in specific hot zones all around Norrath. So I would spend all this time travelling from hot zone to hot zone waiting around for groups, and it wasn’t always easy.
Yes, I had alts also, and would go back playing the alts. But even then, sometimes it was hard to find groups for my alts. I think a LFG tool that would allow you to lfg for all your characters would be a great idea.
Have you ever been bored in an MMORPG and if so, how do you alleviate it, is there something that takes the boredom away for you? :)
Good gravy, this question is so large and vague … Bored?
I get bored when the “race to max level” is over, and the only thing left to do is acquire better gear through mindlessly zerg-farming the same dungeons and raids over and over and over again. Honestly, the game isn’t about getting the uber-leet gear for me. It’s about playing the game and pushing the envelope – doing difficult things and telling the tales about it later. I get frustrated when game designers think RAID=LEET. I think raids are a way to get a bunch of people involved at one time, but I don’t think you’ll find everyone in a raid playing at their top level or efficiency. I’d love to see real end-game content that is balanced for party-level play. Perhaps some nice, big, sprawling dungeon that keeps getting tougher the farther you go in … like taking level 10 (if level 10 was our end-game) characters into a zone where the mobs start out at level 10, but they scale up to level 11, 12, 13, 14, then perhaps level 20 at the end … You wouldn’t be expected to make it to the end, but the ability to push yourself ever harder would exist.
I get bored when I’ve finished my 1 billionth “kill 50 wolves” quest. Thank god Pantheon isn’t planning to have these.
I get bored when I’ve tanked my 50th run of a certain dungeon for the day (because I was maxing out my “trinket-that-shows-I-did-my-daily-dungeon-run”). Then I change to another character to do the same thing as a healer. Honestly, why can’t characters multi-class? What is the difference between letting players running a bazillion alts and letting them have one multi-classed character? I’d much rather have a few classes and professions on one character than one class and one profession on several.
I get bored when waiting for a group to form once I have maxed my trade skills and start thinking of PvP.
I get bored running “daily quests” … holy cr@p I hate daily quests. What sadistic individual thought of those?
What’s the opposite of boring? What is exciting?
I find it exciting to play new and different classes.
I love finding new areas, new content, exploring deeper into places I’ve never been before. I love traveling to new and exciting places and killing new forms of life!
Sure, I love it when a new shiny piece of loot drops, but keep it rare and exciting. I do find the loot-piñata that today’s games have become … well, boring.
I love it when some strange mob puts the smack-down on me when I wandered into the wrong place … and then I level a bit and return the favor.
I find different gaming environments exciting to explore … forests, plains, cities, ruins, etc.
Man, I love it when I have a whole list of places to explore/quest and a group is forming to go to one of those places! That’s a great day.
I've been bored in every single MMO I've ever played, even those that I would say are the best games I've ever played. It is inevitable.
What do I do?
Just a brief list. I don't think it's possible to design an MMO that keeps you completely mentally engaged for several years. EQ might've been the only exception for me but even then I would stop playing to pursue other things in my lesiure time.
You do eventually become bored but still love the game. With a MMO getting bored is different than a single player game, usually a leading contributing factor is people not being online you like to play with or had hoped to play with, OR, perhaps to a lesser extent overall something you had planned on just doesn't happen (i.e., raids canceled).
I'll keep my actual answer short, my solutions:
1) Farm tradeskill components for something I needed to get done, I hate tradeskills though so the reward must be wicked,
2) Solo something if possible,
3) Box,
4) Get a pickup group,
5) Log off.
Not in any particular order, just overall what I do.
Boredom comes from going down the same path or trail and having nothing change over the many years.
The lack of dynamic game play is what creates stagnation and boredom. Anyone ever wonder why the pickclaws in the basement of High Hold keep have never dug any deeper.. and in 15 years, it is still the very same mine? Because Everquest was taken away from the Visionaries and placed into business mens hands.
Business men who are not creative and have never created. (ie: John Smedley)
Hieromonk said:Boredom comes from going down the same path or trail and having nothing change over the many years.
The lack of dynamic game play is what creates stagnation and boredom. Anyone ever wonder why the pickclaws in the basement of High Hold keep have never dug any deeper.. and in 15 years, it is still the very same mine? Because Everquest was taken away from the Visionaries and placed into business mens hands.
Business men who are not creative and have never created. (ie: John Smedley)
HHK was classic content. By your logic, Kunark, Velious, Luclin, PoP, etc. were not creative?
You make it sound as if every single portion of the game world has to change for a game to be considered "creative". Do you have any idea how impractical that is?
I get bored when I am LFG for hours on end and with no way to progress my character on my own. In situations like that I tend to try and do different things while I am waiting for a group such as chatting with guild mates or doing some crafting or maybe some solo quests that have been sitting in my backlog. But at the end of the day I am still LFG and do tend to get bored.
I know this goes against some of the people in this community but while I understand this game is heavily group focused (and I agree with that principle in general) it is also important to provide at least some solo content so that there is always something for the player to do while they are LFG. Crafting is normally a good example of this although it does require you to be a certain level or have the in-game currency to buy materials in order to craft items.
I'm certainly not saying this game should be focused on solo content but I am saying there should be some solo content for those reasons I have laid out above. No one wants to be sitting at a zone entrance LFG for 2 hours with nothing to do. I've been there and done that and I don't have the patience for it any more.
Cromulent said:I get bored when I am LFG for hours on end and with no way to progress my character on my own. In situations like that I tend to try and do different things while I am waiting for a group such as chatting with guild mates or doing some crafting or maybe some solo quests that have been sitting in my backlog. But at the end of the day I am still LFG and do tend to get bored.
I know this goes against some of the people in this community but while I understand this game is heavily group focused (and I agree with that principle in general) it is also important to provide at least some solo content so that there is always something for the player to do while they are LFG. Crafting is normally a good example of this although it does require you to be a certain level or have the in-game currency to buy materials in order to craft items.
I'm certainly not saying this game should be focused on solo content but I am saying there should be some solo content for those reasons I have laid out above. No one wants to be sitting at a zone entrance LFG for 2 hours with nothing to do. I've been there and done that and I don't have the patience for it any more.
Hopefully there will always be stuff to solo, yeah. I'm hoping Pantheon will give Rogues some things like stuns (like we had in Vanguard) so I can at least stand a chance of soloing some lower con mobs. In EQ, Rogue might well be the worst solo class in the entire game, and I won't miss that.
Just killing light blues or something to pass the time while LFG would be acceptable.
xtnpd said:I get bored when I’ve tanked my 50th run of a certain dungeon for the day (because I was maxing out my “trinket-that-shows-I-did-my-daily-dungeon-run”). Then I change to another character to do the same thing as a healer. Honestly, why can’t characters multi-class? What is the difference between letting players running a bazillion alts and letting them have one multi-classed character? I’d much rather have a few classes and professions on one character than one class and one profession on several.
I just wanted to respond to this bit in particular. I love this idea in theory, but I haven't run into it lately where its implementation doesn't create a new set of problems. :/ FFXIV is the only example I can give, so it may just be a limited exposure thing for me. Anyway, doing it this way absolutely solves the issue of capping your daily/weekly tokens without needing to repeat it again and again. It gives you flexibility to run with friends when one of them is a tank, and while you'd usually tank you can still go as a different role. It gets rid of that "Why does this only drop when I'm tanking, but never when I'm healing this?!" thing and watching gear rot on the floor that you know someone wants for their alt. It also cuts down on the trouble of keeping track of which character is which person's alt. The problem, though, is end-game. After you've got everything to max level (or everything you enjoy playing), you don't need those dungeon drops any more. You capped your weekly tokens already, so there's no point (aside from faster queue times for a friend) in doing them any more that week. "New" max item level gear comes from one of two places: those weekly tokens, and the current raid(s). Because there's a cap on how many tokens you can earn in a week, you have to choose a class to gear up first. That, in turn, limits the usefulness of your other classes, because they aren't as well geared. If you've completed a particular raid that week, you *can* run it again (on your main job or an alt if it's geared enough) to help other people clear it or just for fun, but your presence in their raid cuts the available loot by half, or entirely if there are enough people repeating it that week. (If one to four people in the 8-person raid have already cleared it, only one loot chest appears instead of two. If five to seven of you have already cleared it, there *is* no loot.) So, at least in terms of implementing it in games with similar end-game designs, it's fantastic while leveling, but only useful at max level when a content cycle is nearing its end. :/ A lot of people end up rolling alts anyway, just to get around that problem or to have something to do by repeating leveling content they're locked out of from having done it once.
Liav said:Just a brief list. I don't think it's possible to design an MMO that keeps you completely mentally engaged for several years. EQ might've been the only exception for me but even then I would stop playing to pursue other things in my lesiure time.
This, too. Sometimes you just need a break to do other things for a while. (Hopefully while avoiding the terminal boredom that keeps you from ever logging back in, heh.)
I just get bored of the whole hand holding thing. It ends up streamlining the entire game ... I know exactly where to go and who to talk to all the time. Everything is neatly packaged so you can knock out 5+ quests in the same area before it sends you off into the next one. Mobs are incredibly easy... dead after 3 attacks, on and on until end game. Even at end game its the same deal with dailies, and weekly allowances by just queuing up and mashing your keyboard with a few other players for 10-15 minutes. Rare drops dont really matter ... just your participation trophy.
Then there is the lack of social aspect of MMO's. Maybe ive just become anti-social over the years. Maybe everyone else has as well. Or maybe its the games have become such a walk in the park that its not even worth bothering to put up with, or even talking with other players. Its just "shut up, do your job and gimme my loots!" Thats not fun, not for long anyway. Not sure what can be done about this since forcing group content is kind of a no-no, and relying on player socializing to have fun isnt very practical. Hell, watching paint dry can be fun with the right people ... the trick is finding them.
It's a multi-faceted thing that has contributed to games becoming anti-social.
I'm sure there are other factors but I think these 3 things are the bulk of it. In general, Pantheon definitely will not have any of these things (based on the FAQ) so I'm not too worried about it. If anything, I think boredom will occur when a lot of people hit endgame and have nothing left to do but raid. I'm sure Pantheon will be amazing on release, but making sure the game is sustainable for years to come is where things really get challenging.
We have 20 years of knowledge of game mechanics and despite some innovation, your average seasoned raider should be able to deduce many things on the fly.
Keeping things fresh will be a challenge for the developers, but I think they can do it.