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2014- Dynamic MMORPGs become mainstream
Kaiphas
Member Posts: 59
We've discussed the effects of grinding on modern MMORPG players through several threads, so I won't touch on them very long.
Several products of the grind that normal MMORPG incur (Even Eve, yes):
1. Players spend vast, miserable ammounts of time trying to keep up and grow frustrated
2. Players develop a sort of hatred for the particular MMORPG
3. Players search for new MMORPGs, and possibly get hooked on another
4. Players lose interest in the levelling treadmill and desire more dynamic activities involving risk/reward, learning, exploration, and player vs player activities. This could materialize as PvP, markets and crafting, etc.
It took myself and my friends about 7 years to go through this cycle. We represent the post-UO era of MMO players. We can still play Mario Kart, Goldeneye 007, and Secret of Mana, but are completely unable to stand more than 5 minutes of WoW. It is not age that kills our interest in MMORPGs.
Blizzard announced that their new MMORPG will bear very little resemblance to WoW and the playstyle of WoW. This mmorpg will be released in 2014, they predict. 2014 is 6 years from now, which is about the timespan that it takes to develop an MMORPG.
The release of WoW 3 years ago effectively defeated the competition in the rest of the MMORPG market. However, the market has also expanded, as WoW has brought new players into the market. Some niche MMORPGs like Eve (space combat), everquest (hardcore PvE), and lineage 2 (???) are able to survive on a small scale.
I theorize it will take the next 3 years for the majority of these players to be completely broken by the grind treadmill. At this point, developers will recieve a clear message that dynamic MMORPGS (which I will not touch on, and assume you are already familiar with) are desireable as the next stage in the MMORPG evolution scale.
Throughout 2009-2011, developers will begin working on dynamic MMORPGs, and we will see a vast array of failures and semi-successes that will garner much interest from the MMORPG crowd. These 'test games' will help larger firms determine the direction they want to take with their projects. In 2014, Blizzard will release their dynamic MMORPG, and we will see other large companies (we can only guess) doing the same around that time.
Questions:
When do you think dynamic MMORPGs will become mainstream?
What companies will develop these games?
Will games involving a significant grind treadmill exist until infinity, or will new MMORPG players have no interest in grinding, when offered a better alternative?
If you don't like it, don't play it.
800 million subscribers cannot lie
Comments
if WurmOnline can hold the interest of a few thousand people(spreading with just word of mouth type stuff), I'm sure something that is well invested would be able to easily be able to capture a large enough audience to deem it worth the risk.
I find it amazing that by 2020 first world countries will be competing to get immigrants.
I agree.
Blessings,
MMO migrant.
Why should Blizzard be among the first? WoW was but a perfect copy of previous ideas.
But what you call "dynamic" is already partly available in recent MMOs. Look at the complex storylines in games like DDO and LotRo. Look at what the Bioware devs write about their upcoming MMO.
LotRo of course also has a lot of grind available, but it is seemingly being replaced by content over time.
"broken by the grind treadmill" i stopped there to laugh just a little bit for a second, then went on....
If WoW is a grind treadmill, then the other games (including the ones you seem to favor) are KZ camps with you, the gamer, as the slave....
Anyways.... the mmorpg veterans are a pain in the arse for mmorpg companies because they belong to the minority but are the loudest kid in the family, they are the ones who have tried a little too many mmorpgs and thus have a certain opinion towards everything.
This site alone stands as a great exsample to it, not the ones who run it ofcourse but the forum....
Since i did play mmorpgs long before wow i guess i belong to that bunch myself, though i kept myself to Asian market at that time, western mmorpgs were too slow in combat dynamics for my taste.
blizzard's next mmo will be like their other games in general...... which is meant to be FUN and playable by all, i guess some people never catch blizzard's trademarkis, so it prolly won't be a niche game but more a game with many open doors to different kinds of poeple and personalities ect.
Take the Magic: The Gathering 'What Color Are You?' Quiz.
A truly dynamic MMO would be where every player decision base on events would change the game for everyone else. Which would change possible events for other players.
No player game experience would ever be repeatable.
This would be the most incredible game ever, and people would sill complain. They would say they miss having things the same ever time.
The problem is not the games. I can have fun with spider solitaire all day long, the problem is the gamers. They don't know how to have fun. They play games they don't like and they stick with them, talking about grind. They need to put the games down and go outside.
I'm currently working on a dynamic story engine. There are no quests, only opportunities and choices. And opportunities can pass you by (but that's ok). And if you don't go out and find the story the story comes to you. You could play 5 years sitting in a bar, and characters and plots and action would just come to you. Or you could go out and explore.
Dynamic games are the future, but they're already here in some fashion, or have been here for thousands of years. Two examples: Chess and Go. Chess and Go have very simple rules, each piece follows its functions exactly and never change in them, yet in both games despite there being three possible states (Win, Lose, and Draw), the possible sum of the exchanges within these states often exceed the current age of the Universe by at least two hundred digits. Two games, especially Go, illustrate emergence which is what dynamic gaming is about: the product of a whole that is not reducible to the sum of its parts.
-- Brede
its not going to be 2014, it will be 2009 when bioware releases their mmo.
I very much doubt it, it would be cool, but I doubt it, both the 2009 and the dynamic.
If this happens, it'll be hilarious to tell the grindfags that no game will ever come out for them because grind is the past.
The warcraft strategy genre will always be fun. However, can you imagine playing Diablo II again?
If you don't like it, don't play it.
800 million subscribers cannot lie
Chess is a game that demonstrates good design - it adheres to some basic concepts and requires no revision.
How often have you run into chess players who desire:
- new mapz - All new diamond shaped board as well as town-shaped board
- new classez - A new type of unit that moves in a Z shape.
- counterz - A skill with a three turn cooldown that allows your queen to avoid rook attacks
- persistent statz - Play through 100 chess scenarios and you recieve a third knight!
Of course, people are already arguing that the vets are a niche. In reality, they compose about a third of the market. Normal MMORPG players would come play a dynamic game, but are not aware that they want it - just as they weren't aware that they wanted to play WoW until they heard about it. If you build it, they will come!
If you don't like it, don't play it.
800 million subscribers cannot lie
I don't even think I will play computer at all in 2014. Thats about six year from now.
. I think I will be pretty feed up with family life.
EvE in six years... mm IDC about other mmo's
There are games that are coming out this year or next year that may have some of these factors. W.E.L.L online for one, and Earthrise, and APB, if these games come out and are done well (no pun intended), we could have a form of dynamic game come out soon. Now how dynamic will they be, fully or partially thats the question. I hope we don't have to wait till 2014 that would be really sad.
I have a few ideas for dynamic games I've written down myself.
Boiware already showed on many ocasions it will be similar to games like wow, so dont count on that.I very much doubt it, it would be cool, but I doubt it, both the 2009 and the dynamic.
99% of mmorpgs today are lvl based and grinding style mmo's. majority likes lvls and grinding, only few who come here dont like it, that dont mean everybody don't like it, only a small portion what something different then lvls and grind in a mmo..
Hope to build full AMD system RYZEN/VEGA/AM4!!!
MB:Asus V De Luxe z77
CPU:Intell Icore7 3770k
GPU: AMD Fury X(waiting for BIG VEGA 10 or 11 HBM2?(bit unclear now))
MEMORY:Corsair PLAT.DDR3 1866MHZ 16GB
PSU:Corsair AX1200i
OS:Windows 10 64bit
I completely agree here.
It seems to me that a vast majority of MMORPG devs are total amateurs regarding the very basic game design principles which are the most obvious in the best board games.
I don't know why this is so but it really seems to be the sad fact.
Maybe because graphics and thunderous IP takes precedence to smart game design from a marketing standpoint but this can only get you so far... and obviously not quite as far in MMORPGs whose main revenue comes over time rather than one-off purchase which you can cheat buyers into. Imo the computer game design community should move away from the movie-industry model of thinking because it is not going to cut it in the subscription-based environment.
Imo the place to look for new ways of thinking should be amusement parks - they are interactive and depend on customers visiting regularly... and of course the best of the board games. Imo everything anyone can learn about game economies can be taught in one game of Puerto Rico for example.
New styles of games add to your choices, they don't shrink your choices. Grindfests will always exist, because people like to play them. If developers start designing popular dynamic games, then we will have dynamic games, and grindfests. The RPG didn't make the FPS go away, or vice a versa. If a game type is popular, there will always be people that like to play it, and developers will always make them, so it's not an either or situation.
MMORPGs are already dynamic, they are just not dynamic enough. Dynamic just means "change the game world for all players". You do that when you log into the game.. Where there used to be an empty space, now there is a hawt elf chick in plate mail armor standing there for any person in the game to see. The game world is changed for all players.
You also change the game world when you do quests. The quest is "bring me back 10 spider eggs and I will give you a reward." Killing the spiders doesn't change anything, because they just respawn. Collecting the spider eggs doesn't change anything, because you turn them in to the NPC and they disappear.
But, when you turn in the spider eggs you get a rusty dagger of crappiness! That rusty dagger didn't exist before, and now it does. You've changed the gameworld! Why? Because soon you will sell this rusty dagger of crappiness, in fact you might sell 100 rusty daggers of crappiness, and then you'll have so much extra money, you'll give it away to noobs, causing "mudflation". Certainly that changes the game world for everyone.
But that's not the dynamic change we're looking for. The quest is "save the princess" and even though you save her and get a reward, she still needs saving, and the next player can save the same princess. That's what the rub is. IMO, that part isn't likely to change. It doesn't make sense to design a unique princess for each player in the game to save, does it?
However, we are seeing more dynamic features in MMORPGs. DAoC had Darkness Falls. Players could determine which faction had access to this dungeon by capturing Keeps. That changes the game for everyone.
And WAR will add more dynamic features as well, along those same lines.
EVE has dynamic features too, because you can capture territory, and this changes the game world for everyone.
So, we are seeing some progress in that direction. If Blizzard makes a more dynamic game, they won't be the first. But, like WoW they may improve on the existing model, and that would make for quite a fun game.
MMORPG Maker
I completely agree here.
It seems to me that a vast majority of MMORPG devs are total amateurs regarding the very basic game design principles which are the most obvious in the best board games.
I don't know why this is so but it really seems to be the sad fact.
Maybe because graphics and thunderous IP takes precedence to smart game design from a marketing standpoint but this can only get you so far... and obviously not quite as far in MMORPGs whose main revenue comes over time rather than one-off purchase which you can cheat buyers into. Imo the computer game design community should move away from the movie-industry model of thinking because it is not going to cut it in the subscription-based environment.
Imo the place to look for new ways of thinking should be amusement parks - they are interactive and depend on customers visiting regularly... and of course the best of the board games. Imo everything anyone can learn about game economies can be taught in one game of Puerto Rico for example.
Here, IMO, is why the board game analogy, like Chess, doesn't quite fit. It's easy to make something dynamic when it has a beginning, middle, and end.
With Chess there is the opening move, then the players take turns, then Check mate. Then, and here's the most important part, the board is set back to the beginning.
Players in an MMORPG want something that is both dynamic, AND they don't want a complete reset. THAT is much harder to design than Chess. Imagine a fun Chess game, that never ended. There was never a Checkmate, just another move to make. THAT would be pretty hard to design.
In addition, there is the problem that MMORPGs run 24/7. Imagine a Chess game that was played 24/7. When you quit playing, someone just walked up and started moving the pieces around for you. And when he quit playing, someone else started moving the pieces. That would be very confusing the next time it was your turn to play. Everything would have changed.
People always want to take over territory in an MMORPG, like in an RTS. The problem is you're not always online to defend your territory, but someone is always online to attack it. That's a difficult balance to maintain.
So, designing a dynamic MMORPG is much harder than making a Chess game.
I completely agree here.
It seems to me that a vast majority of MMORPG devs are total amateurs regarding the very basic game design principles which are the most obvious in the best board games.
I don't know why this is so but it really seems to be the sad fact.
Maybe because graphics and thunderous IP takes precedence to smart game design from a marketing standpoint but this can only get you so far... and obviously not quite as far in MMORPGs whose main revenue comes over time rather than one-off purchase which you can cheat buyers into. Imo the computer game design community should move away from the movie-industry model of thinking because it is not going to cut it in the subscription-based environment.
Imo the place to look for new ways of thinking should be amusement parks - they are interactive and depend on customers visiting regularly... and of course the best of the board games. Imo everything anyone can learn about game economies can be taught in one game of Puerto Rico for example.
Here, IMO, is why the board game analogy, like Chess, doesn't quite fit. It's easy to make something dynamic when it has a beginning, middle, and end.
With Chess there is the opening move, then the players take turns, then Check mate. Then, and here's the most important part, the board is set back to the beginning.
Players in an MMORPG want something that is both dynamic, AND they don't want a complete reset. THAT is much harder to design than Chess. Imagine a fun Chess game, that never ended. There was never a Checkmate, just another move to make. THAT would be pretty hard to design.
In addition, there is the problem that MMORPGs run 24/7. Imagine a Chess game that was played 24/7. When you quit playing, someone just walked up and started moving the pieces around for you. And when he quit playing, someone else started moving the pieces. That would be very confusing the next time it was your turn to play. Everything would have changed.
People always want to take over territory in an MMORPG, like in an RTS. The problem is you're not always online to defend your territory, but someone is always online to attack it. That's a difficult balance to maintain.
So, designing a dynamic MMORPG is much harder than making a Chess game.
Woah, sorry mate but you can't even begin to compare Chess and Go with any of the existing MMORPGs.... This is ridiculous - it is like saying a potboiler by Tom Clancy is a better novel than Old Man and The Sea because it has more pages and characters... The argument about a never-ending game is moot because it all boils down on how you define the goal of the game. A board game can be made never-ending and it can be done right or wrong. It is not as difficult as it seems and I give you an example at the end of my post.
Trust me on this one - it is much harder to design something simple yet deep rather than complicated and shallow like a vast number of computer games are. There is but a few computer games from the beginning of the medium that could conceivably be called "great" and so far not one of them is a MMORPG... the only one current well-known MMORPG that may be called "good" from a game-design standpoint (what I mean the way it's basic premise and ruleset is set-up) is EVE online and it has its share of flaws.
Almost all of today's MMORPGs are deeply flawed simply because the devs haven't yet realized that they are not designing a single-player RPG that can be played online. Linear story and advancement might be OK for single player games where you "fight" against a computer or, to be more precise, are led by it. However even this is not actually completely natural to the medium - it is a throwback to old, non-interactive forms of storytelling. The greatest computer games of all times were non-linear and are not pre-scripted story driven - I'm talking about the games you can play today and enjoy them as fresh as they were the day they were published - Civilization, Tetris, Sim City and the like. These are the "Chess" games of the medium. (You might mention Diablo with its linear story but I can bet that it wasn't the story that sold it - it was the unpredictable randomness of item drops and crazy imba mob fights at top levels of difficulty that were the thing. A scripted Diablo would have been a total flop.)
Online gaming, where the very essence of the genre consists of human-to-human interaction shows this awful "story" misconception in it's full goriness - The pre-written NPC-driven non-interactive stories are automatically perceived as fake and dull when placed side by side with real human stories taking place in a virtual word. I don't give a fig about some NPCs personal problems but I care about other people playing the game - even if only to hate them. A "true" MMOPRG which would play on the true potential of the technology would give players the maximum possible number of tools to create their own stories rather than hysterically trying to cram new scripted content and stifle all player creativity - like WoW if we want to be blunt.
A smart MMORPG designer would create an environment which would lead itself to manipulation by players to create new content for others to enjoy - in perpetuity. Ofc the rules governing that world should be set extremely carefully to avoid numerous pitfalls along the way, but this is where smart game-design using games theory comes into play.
A good board game designer would ROFL if someone presented him WoW as a board game - what a load of crap! It has an end-game for chrissakes!!! An end-game with linear advancement and attendent player-stratification .... - in open-ended multiplayer!! If you want to see an excellent and massively succesful example of a massively-multiplayer board game look no further than Magic the Gathering (although it did degenerate somewhat over time, sigh) - non-linear advancement, competition, opportunities for role-play, non-stratified - your cheap deck might beat a vastly expensive one if it fits just right, it supports various modes of play.... You see where I'm going? The designer's job in MM games isn't to create rigid content - his job is to create fun toys for players to use and to make fool-proof rules to ensure that no one really gets hurt and that there are no permanent "winners" and "loosers". In essence MMORPGS are gaming hobbys rather than simple one-off games and they must be designed with this "hobby" meta-game in mind... and the point of a hobby is that you can never "beat it" or "finish it" - you enjoy it creatively for what it is and share it with others both competetively and cooperatively.
Boiware already showed on many ocasions it will be similar to games like wow, so dont count on that.I very much doubt it, it would be cool, but I doubt it, both the 2009 and the dynamic.
99% of mmorpgs today are lvl based and grinding style mmo's. majority likes lvls and grinding, only few who come here dont like it, that dont mean everybody don't like it, only a small portion what something different then lvls and grind in a mmo..
The majority has no choice but grind. When given a choice and people invest time into that choice that plays differently and say it sucks, then you can say that something different than lvls and grind is niche.
Your time period of 2014 might not be that way of, i alway's said that we just beginning with this genre. I also firmly believe it has nothing to do with what people WANT, it has to do with what is capable in form of tech being used.
Tech is improving, we get glimps of that seeing the newest single player games where more and more games do look very realistic, think Cod4, MMO's do try hard to look that way but tech is preventing many in so many way's.
Probebly all already known top gaming company's
The alternative will be offered not because of the request of us players but again due to tech making it possible.
Overall i still have this feeling people do not understand that it is tech what is preventing these games to evolve into what most refure to as dynamic worlds, somehow i get the feeling people really think it's developers that do not want dynamics in their games......doh....
Overall most gamers i know will addept and afcourse even when we have the games we dream of today tommorow we still will continue to see the loud complaints as thats just for some people human nature.