|
This may be a weird question, but are there any recommendations for "chill," low-key MMOs? I've bounced off of most MMOs I've tried to play over the years because they feel like they're designed to program players into making a job-like commitment in order to eventually experience fun content. Over a decade ago, I remember playing the beta for an MMO called Fairyland Online that was pretty much what I was looking for. There were turn-based battles, and a big emphasis on gathering/crafting, and it was the type of game you could chill and play while not requiring 100% of your concentration or requiring multi-hour sessions. Unfortunately, I eventually ran out of content (due to it being an early beta, not due to poopsocking) and ended up forgetting about it before its actual release. For the past few years, I've used gacha games as a substitute for the type of vibe I'm looking for, since I can fiddle with them on my phone while doing something else, and you can enjoy a sense of community as long as you aren't relying on Reddit pubbies. But I'm getting burned out on the RNG/lootbox mechanics, time-limited events/units/etc., and daily quests mechanics combo meant to drive constant player engagement, so I was wondering if there are more traditional MMOs out there that provide the experience I'm looking for. I don't want to be locked into a subscription, but I'm generally willing to buy whatever monthly pass a F2P game has while I'm putting a decent amount of time into it. And it doesn't necessarily need to be a traditional MMO with hub cities with hundreds of players in them as long as it's an online game with co-op. Spiral Knights was another game I enjoyed until I eventually burned out on it due to it being in beta/Early Access at the time (maybe I should stay away from GaaS that are still in beta).
|
#
?
Jan 17, 2021 18:11
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 17, 2024 07:20 |
|
|
Guild Wars 2 might suit you real nice.
|
|
#
?
Jan 17, 2021 18:26
|
|
|
Genshin Impact is a very chill game with co-op. It’s gacha but it’s not particularly rude about it, it has a $5 thing that is the best value by a very significant margin that rewards you for playing a little bit every day. Way more of a solo experience though. FFXI is a very chill experience. Combat isn’t particularly scary since you fill your party with whatever trusts you want, so you can play anything you like and do well. With all the QOL upgrades over the years you can just relax and have a good time in a particularly immersive world, traveling and slaying things. Be sure to download the thing that makes everything look better and let’s you add little mods to your UI. There are people who have been playing this since forever, and everyone seems very kind to new players. Goons still play, but it’s generally a bit more of a solo experience until pretty late in the game. WoW Ascension is a free WoW private server that lets you build your own class using TBC era skills/talents. WoW used to be a particularly chill experience before endgame. Without a sub it’s a good time. Login and do some quests or whatever, look at some dope poo poo, call someone in trade chat a racist since it’s WoW. It definitely is a social experience though if you’re doing any amount of dungeons or trading or PVP. This is very very fun, and the things that will piss you off are almost entirely things that Blizzard put in WoW that the Ascension devs haven’t fixed/changed, like enemies being CC monsters. LOTRO is still kicking and has a sense of community, and people seem to say it’s a very chill experience but it mostly appeals to LOTR nerds so if you don’t like LOTR maybe go elsewhere. Warhammer Age of Reckoning was recently re-released as a free private server by some fans. It is a shockingly great experience of what was one of the more... I’d say forgotten WoW clones, but it really stands out as a fun and cool time. Bit more stressful because it’s built around PvP. But there’s a very ardent community there, and people fuckin’ love their Warhammer. Also the devs are shockingly competent. Guild Wars 2 is a very, very chill experience. The community is essentially locked in forever by virtue of not being a sub, and the goons are very inclusive and cool. Lots to do, tons of story, group content is forever.
|
|
#
?
Jan 17, 2021 18:35
|
|
|
I love FFXI but people who haven't played it by TYOOL 2020 aren't going to find it chill at all. That's your years of experience speaking. FFXIV is very chill but that monthly fee. Guild Wars 2 is probably the best chill MMO. LOTRO isn't a bad callout. I guess I'll add SWTOR to the mix. SWTOR is basically Mass Effect Online. Its very chill to play as basically a single player RPG with bioware style dialogue, and you just also have other people playing too. You don't have to pay a monthly fee to play SWTOR so you aren't locked in, but if you're willing to buy the premium pass while you are playing a lot then it can help. Although the level balance is somewhat funky where if you don't pay, then you level slower than you should, but if you do pay then you level much faster than you should. Its still pretty enjoyable stuff though. Especially fun because you can play either Republic or Empire side, but you can also play Good or Evil independent. So you can be an Evil Jedi or a Good Imperial Officer which is pretty fun. (Or do like me and play an Moustache-twirling Evil Sith and force-choke and force-lightning people in cutscenes because you can)
|
|
#
?
Jan 17, 2021 18:47
|
|
|
Sounds like you're looking for Guild Wars 2. Different class/race combos play wildly different, so if you don't like the first thing you try, I suggest starting a new character. I hated the first two classes I played and then the third one really clicked for me. The goon group is pretty cool as long as you never say anything negative about the game. You can be in multiple guilds at the same time, so the goon one is a pretty good starting point.
|
|
#
?
Jan 17, 2021 18:57
|
|
|
Thanks for the suggestions, but most of these other than Genshin Impact seem like standard MMOs that just happen to not require hardcore farming/raiding/dealing with rear end in a top hat pubbies. I'm not surprised Fairyland Online was too obscure a reference  And it's funny that GI was mentioned, because that's the last gacha I've played. I actually give the "single-player game" GI content an A, and the "gacha game" content an F, if that makes sense. So if I play it at all in the future, it will be strictly for the BotW clone parts, and I'll have to pretend the gacha/event/domain/resin parts of the game don't even exist. I also thought the co-op was actually less fun than playing solo, even when playing with friends. I haven't played since the end of October. I do own GW2, and I played it for a couple weeks at launch. I agree that the MMO part of the game was chill, and I didn't dislike the gameplay, but I wouldn't say the gameplay itself was chill. Maybe I was just terrible at the game, but there was a story mission fairly early on where I needed a friend to help me through it because I wasn't even close to being able to beat it solo. From what I remember, it was in a swamp-like zone and I basically had to horde mode a swarm of undead. I don't know whether or not that's indicative of the entire game, or indicative of my complete lack of skill. Maybe I should try again and start from scratch. I'm guessing there's some obscure, relatively simple 2D Korean game out there that isn't a particularly good game, but is what I'm looking for.
|
|
#
?
Jan 17, 2021 19:23
|
|
|
Quixzlizx posted:I'm guessing there's some obscure, relatively simple 2D Korean game out there that isn't a particularly good game, but is what I'm looking for. Welcome to the path, friend. Someday we'll catch up with that dragon.
|
|
#
?
Jan 17, 2021 19:59
|
|
|
Quixzlizx posted:Thanks for the suggestions, but most of these other than Genshin Impact seem like standard MMOs that just happen to not require hardcore farming/raiding/dealing with rear end in a top hat pubbies. I'm not surprised Fairyland Online was too obscure a reference The GW2 events or whatever the ones that you stumble into rather than having an explicit quest for are called; are designed around group play. They were intended to drag in all the nearby players in the zone. You are definitely not intended to solo them.
|
|
#
?
Jan 17, 2021 20:56
|
|
|
Quixzlizx posted:I do own GW2, and I played it for a couple weeks at launch. I agree that the MMO part of the game was chill, and I didn't dislike the gameplay, but I wouldn't say the gameplay itself was chill. Maybe I was just terrible at the game, but there was a story mission fairly early on where I needed a friend to help me through it because I wasn't even close to being able to beat it solo. From what I remember, it was in a swamp-like zone and I basically had to horde mode a swarm of undead. I don't know whether or not that's indicative of the entire game, or indicative of my complete lack of skill. Maybe I should try again and start from scratch. Story missions should all be doable solo, I think once you get into the living seasons / expansion stuff they expect you to have some gear and build put together but before that you should be mostly fine. I will say that I think the game is bad at explaining poo poo though. Like some skills give me might and I don't think it ever explained to me what might does. But you can do "/wiki might". I myself have a bunch of level 80 characters I have no idea of playing, 1 of them I leveled and 2 of them I boosted with the expansion boosts but the last time I played any of those is like 6 years ago. And with all the currencies and poo poo it is really hard to get back into it. Then I have assorted characters that are leveling. I started a warrior recently and just playing it chill. Like there is a lot of poo poo you can do, but if I wasn't playing I wouldn't be doing my dailies either, so why stress about them now? Either way, it is has been pretty fun, just leveling the warrior, doing the story missions, clear a map here and there. I would like to maybe get a character more WvW ready. But at only a few hours a week I am in no rush. I do miss being at the start of a new MMO though, something I could sink my teeth in and play for a while. It always feels weird to drop into an mmo later. Often there will be a lot of feature bloat and poo poo at that point, makes it harder to get into / invested for me. While if you were playing from the start that is just small additions over time. DaitoX fucked around with this message at 23:17 on Jan 17, 2021 |
|
#
?
Jan 17, 2021 23:13
|
|
|
How is the GW2 community these days? Ive thought about giving it another shot for quite a while but when I played vanilla it just never really got my attention. The leveling and exploration part was fun and I liked the classes, but the end game consisted largely of doing quests for cosmetics and cheesing horribly designed dungeons. Neither of which really got my attention.
|
|
#
?
Jan 18, 2021 00:50
|
|
|
Y’all got me thinking about coming back too... haven’t played since launch. I’ve been exposed to Jazz through Toilet Eve and learned that goons still play it. I’ve been playing the very generous trial of FF14 and have had some fun. I’ve never been very into FF games and the anime thing isn’t doing much for me but I like the class system and how you don’t need to level a dozen alts to do different roles.
|
|
#
?
Jan 18, 2021 02:06
|
|
|
I really, really liked a lot about FFXIV but the way content was gated absolutely killed it for me. I quit during early RR right as people were clearing the Titan trial on the regular. I came back for Skyward and grinded out what must have been forty hours of that horrible main quest before I was able to get into Skyward content with my friends. It felt like almost all of that forty hours was fetch quests and collecting bear assess, too. I play MMOs mainly for the group content and having to do all that yet again to be able to get into current content just isnt something I am willing to do.
|
|
#
?
Jan 18, 2021 02:57
|
|
|
the chillest mmo is city of heroes
|
|
#
?
Jan 18, 2021 03:21
|
|
|
Jazerus posted:the chillest mmo is city of heroes i missed it live but the homecoming server was a bunch of fun
|
|
#
?
Jan 18, 2021 03:29
|
|
|
Someone tell me if LOTRO ever gets to Rhun, I've always wanted to see what that place was like ever since I saw the map in my copy of Fellowship way back when.
|
|
#
?
Jan 18, 2021 04:16
|
|
|
Ibblebibble posted:Someone tell me if LOTRO ever gets to Rhun, I've always wanted to see what that place was like ever since I saw the map in my copy of Fellowship way back when. Not yet but it’ll likely be the next expansion. There are a bunch of clues and references to it in the recent content. Pretty much everything else around there is already in game.
|
|
#
?
Jan 18, 2021 04:21
|
|
|
Kaysette posted:Not yet but it’ll likely be the next expansion. There are a bunch of clues and references to it in the recent content. Pretty much everything else around there is already in game. Oh cool, maybe I can find time in my life for another MMO hahaha 
|
|
#
?
Jan 18, 2021 05:21
|
|
|
DapperDraculaDeer posted:I really, really liked a lot about FFXIV but the way content was gated absolutely killed it for me. I quit during early RR right as people were clearing the Titan trial on the regular. I came back for Skyward and grinded out what must have been forty hours of that horrible main quest before I was able to get into Skyward content with my friends. It felt like almost all of that forty hours was fetch quests and collecting bear assess, too. I play MMOs mainly for the group content and having to do all that yet again to be able to get into current content just isnt something I am willing to do. this is exactly why every time I introduce a friend to FFXIV they end up quitting by level 40 or 50, which sucks because once you get to shadowbringers i'd rate the shb story as one of the better and more coherent final fantasy stories but you gotta slog through essentially 1 bad, 2 mediocre and 1 great full length single-player JRPGs to catch up with your pals (bad = ARR, mediocre = Heavensward and Stormblood) like it DOES get better, and they did cull a lot of the fluff in the ARR grind recently but the problem you identified is still there and still a huge issue, especially when you factor in the jobs that are expansion/level gated, which makes sense considering this is the company that made final fantasy 5 but it sucks rear end if you really want to play as a dancer or a dark knight or red mage because now you've gotta slog through enormous heaps of content to get to them
|
|
#
?
Jan 18, 2021 09:00
|
|
|
Jazerus posted:the chillest mmo is city of heroes I actually find DCUO to be really chill. You get flying after just a couple levels and can zoop around. The gameplay is also more beat'em'up than classic MMORPG. Its a pretty fun thing to just fly around smashing dudes in Metropolis or Gotham.
|
|
#
?
Jan 18, 2021 09:08
|
|
|
Black Desert Online can be pretty chill, if you focus on the Lifeskills. Fishing and bartering, you just sail the oceans to play the MMO version of Sid Meier's Pirates. Kinda. All you do is trade items, upgrade your ship, fight sea monsters or pirates. You can theoretically autopath between islands, so it gives you ample time to alt-tab and shitpost. Maybe a cross between Eurotruck Simulator and Pirates. Apart from that, leveling is no longer a pain in the rear end and reaching 61 through quests with zero grinding is possible. The game changed a lot for the better since the last time I played it in 2017.
|
|
#
?
Jan 18, 2021 09:34
|
|
|
Zaphod42 posted:I actually find DCUO to be really chill. DCUO is pretty fuckin' cool. I didn't know they revived it
|
|
#
?
Jan 18, 2021 10:57
|
|
|
DapperDraculaDeer posted:How is the GW2 community these days? Ive thought about giving it another shot for quite a while but when I played vanilla it just never really got my attention. The leveling and exploration part was fun and I liked the classes, but the end game consisted largely of doing quests for cosmetics and cheesing horribly designed dungeons. Neither of which really got my attention. The dungeons were never updated and the few people who still did them regularly when I played were near universally shitheads. While they're still in the game, there's a second more modern dungeon system in there now, which isn't nearly as janky, actually gets updates and has a lower proportion of jerks. Expansions have focused on exploration and world events
|
|
#
?
Jan 18, 2021 12:03
|
|
My first car was a stick
|
blatman posted:this is exactly why every time I introduce a friend to FFXIV they end up quitting by level 40 or 50, which sucks because once you get to shadowbringers i'd rate the shb story as one of the better and more coherent final fantasy stories but you gotta slog through essentially 1 bad, 2 mediocre and 1 great full length single-player JRPGs to catch up with your pals (bad = ARR, mediocre = Heavensward and Stormblood) the catch with ffxiv is that you really have to enjoy the journey. like 90% of the people I know who bought a skip burned out of the game because they weren't invested at all in the ongoing story or the characters. they'd enjoy one raid tier and then peace out. a lot of the quests are more of an excuse to get you moving between points to fill in the world and set up plot points that get knocked down later.
|
|
#
?
Jan 18, 2021 13:28
|
|
|
Jazerus posted:the chillest mmo is city of heroes
|
|
#
?
Jan 18, 2021 18:48
|
|
|
CYBEReris posted:the catch with ffxiv is that you really have to enjoy the journey. like 90% of the people I know who bought a skip burned out of the game because they weren't invested at all in the ongoing story or the characters. they'd enjoy one raid tier and then peace out. A lot of people say that if you struggle in ARR it's because you don't enjoy the story, but I don't think that's true. I think ARR feels even worse if you enjoy the story. I care about finding out who the masked dudes are, what the deal is with primals, what's going to happen to the ala mhigan refugees, what the monetarists are up to, etc. What I don't care about is the 5 hours of quests where I am not really involved with any of those things, because I am having to go to zones across the world to make an omelette so that a dude can tell me primals are bad, which is established like immediately after you hot level 15. Omelette lore is not the interesting part of the story.
|
|
#
?
Jan 19, 2021 05:15
|
|
|
Mormon Star Wars posted:A lot of people say that if you struggle in ARR it's because you don't enjoy the story, but I don't think that's true. I think ARR feels even worse if you enjoy the story. Despite its many flaws, the new level scaling system in WoW got this kind of thing right. Any quest line is going to have weak points thrown in just to get you to move from area to area, but making it so you can have appreciable gains anywhere without worrying about quest chains helps push away a lot of the filler quests without a lot of involvement from the writing team. Although personally I find the omlettee quests often more fun than the main story quests just because FFXIV has the final fantasy series problem of needing six weeks with some pruning shears just to be overwrought.
|
|
#
?
Jan 19, 2021 15:22
|
|
|
my friends are into FF!4 but I am already tired of the quests quests quests. I think WoW quests are boring, too, but at least you can play endgame content if you hit level cap (or at least you could before, I think in the new expansion you need to do all the quests in each zone to do endgame... ugh). I think, for all its flaws, Elder Scrolls Online does quests right. Everything scales so you can do anything in any order which helps prevent zone fatigue, and you actually get to make decisions in how the quests go sometimes. I had the opportunity to turn in a moonsugar farmer to the law but I chose to let him slide and he rewarded me. That felt like my decision mattered and was interesting. In FF14, it's just kill x things, retrieve x bear asses, etc.
|
|
#
?
Jan 19, 2021 19:26
|
|
|
I guess I don't know what you think gameplay in WoW is, but it's just quests and dungeons and raids. And pvp I guess.
|
|
#
?
Jan 21, 2021 02:02
|
|
|
DapperDraculaDeer posted:How is the GW2 community these days? Ive thought about giving it another shot for quite a while but when I played vanilla it just never really got my attention. The leveling and exploration part was fun and I liked the classes, but the end game consisted largely of doing quests for cosmetics and cheesing horribly designed dungeons. Neither of which really got my attention. The pretty princess end game hasn't changed, they did add another higher tier of gear since you played, but the stat increases are so minimal it doesn't matter except to the OCD min/maxers. So if you're wanting some sort of loot treadmill it still doesn't exist in GW2. Each class has gotten 2 specializations (subclasses), so the progression these days is unlocking the traits for those subclasses and gearing them up in the appropriate stat gear. Long story short they overhauled class roles/stats so there exists tanks/healers/direct dmg DPS/DOT DPS based specs (nowhere near to the degree in traditional mmos though). No one runs the dungeons anymore and end game for a lot of people these days is generally farming/doing world bosses/meta events for the newer zones for zone currency that unlocks X. You're not required to join a group or party to participate, but some meta events are more complicated than others, so joining a map with organized commanders saves you time/grief. Updated dungeons and raids have been added into the game, but it's never been a focal point of end game, it's there just for the people that want it.
|
|
#
?
Jan 21, 2021 06:05
|
|
|
jokes posted:I guess I don't know what you think gameplay in WoW is, but it's just quests and dungeons and raids. And pvp I guess. It's the way in which these things are handled that matters. One of the barriers for Final Fantasy XIV to me is how much it roadblocks you and tries to force every player down the same path. In order to progress to do content, you have to do all of the previous content, and you're given absolutely no flexibility. A lot of that content is forced group content with very lengthy wait times depending on what class you're playing at that moment.
|
|
#
?
Jan 21, 2021 16:40
|
|
|
Yeah I like having group content like that before the level cap but waiting 15 minutes to progress my main quest can be annoying.
|
|
#
?
Jan 21, 2021 16:46
|
|
|
I played Final Fantasy XIV up until I think level 30 and it was indistinguishable from a single player game. It was like I was on cruise control the entire time.
|
|
#
?
Jan 21, 2021 17:19
|
|
|
FFXIV is 4 single player games where you see other players doing their own single player things, with the occasional group activity.
|
|
#
?
Jan 21, 2021 17:23
|
|
|
Yep, also pretty princess dressup and very kind/active communities if you want to cyber or whatever people do in Limsa all day.
|
|
#
?
Jan 21, 2021 17:49
|
|
|
FFXIV is the 4 worst single player games you've ever seen. In addition to that, it sometimes it forces you to wait an unknowable amount of time to do the next story dungeon, usually less than half an hour, but sometimes over an hour. Lots of people like to say FFXIV has the best writing of any MMO, but they're clearly not including the first 50 levels/40 hours in that. Ask any FFXIV vet if they enjoyed the Titan storyline. Then realize that the Garuda storyline immediately following it is worse.
|
|
#
?
Jan 21, 2021 17:59
|
|
|
FFXIV is a Final Fantasy first and whatever else second and an MMO third. You only really do MMO things at endgame, otherwise you're just doing a Final Fantasy through a quest system. Of the Final Fantasies, ARR is the worst and I mostly recommend people skip it and watch a video series explaining the plot and stuff. Heavensward is a great story/setting, Stormblood less so, but Shadowbringers is the best Final Fantasy in the franchise (and my personal favorite game)-- this isn't even a particularly controversial opinion. All of them are single player games outside of dungeons, raids, and pvp. And buying things. But at every stage, you're progressing through the story by accepting and completing quests which a lot of people understandably hate. End of the day I just don't think MMOs are fun games to play. FF14, at least, understands that. But there are reasons to play video games other than gameplay and action and poo poo. Some MMOs have fun gameplay, but usually that's because they're actually a dynasty warriors game or whatever and you'll probably have a better time just playing dynasty warriors or dark souls or whatever. WoW is the exception, but the only reason to play WoW is because they try to make the gameplay engaging and it mostly is, but the MMO part kills it. Gear, grinds, other people. The worst. jokes fucked around with this message at 18:13 on Jan 21, 2021 |
|
#
?
Jan 21, 2021 18:10
|
|
|
For all of its faults, FFXIV still has the best community of players that I've interacted with in recent years. Everyone is just so chill and you never feel pressure when you're doing a trial or dungeon. I can count on maybe 1 hand the amount of times someone was angry in a group. Also, the armory system is the best MMO class system ever invented. I will never back down from this opinion.
|
|
#
?
Jan 21, 2021 19:54
|
|
|
LLSix posted:FFXIV is the 4 worst single player games you've ever seen. ehh the first 30 hours have a bunch of serious poo poo thrown in, but the rest of it is really good. and then there's the mmo bits which are real loving good
|
|
#
?
Jan 21, 2021 20:03
|
|
|
Story progression constricting content progression is a very valid complaint, if you're not into the story so much attention and love is poured into it that pushing through it is just a lot of time down the drain. ARR sets up a lot of what makes the expansions so good but the fact it was developed in a frantic timeframe still shows in a lot of places even after the Great Cruft Purge.
|
|
#
?
Jan 21, 2021 20:24
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 17, 2024 07:20 |
|
|
Cardboard Fox posted:For all of its faults, FFXIV still has the best community of players that I've interacted with in recent years. Everyone is just so chill and you never feel pressure when you're doing a trial or dungeon. I can count on maybe 1 hand the amount of times someone was angry in a group. The armory system is the single best part of the game. I dont think a lot of mmo devs understand how much benefit that having someone invest in a single character rather than a new one for every class adds to it. You don't end up having a paladin named "healysword" with no secondary decor or achievements because he's your sixth toon and you rolled him just for instances.
|
|
#
?
Jan 21, 2021 20:35
|
|