Are some developers ruining their games by making them MMOs

RavZterz

I was thinking about some of my favorite games the other day and what made them so great and incorperating that into a MMORPG but I decided they were better off without hundreds of other players runniing around.  For example:  X3 Reunion.  It's a space sim and it is very open to crafting your own universe but would it really be better as a MMO?

Lets see... I'd love to be able to have a squad of my friends and go around blasting pirates and Id love to have a large scale pvp match with another clan, but that would be it.  Think of the sacrafices the game would have to go through to add more players then that.  I'm not talking about technology wise but simply how many features would have to be removed because they would be broken in a MMO environment. 

Another example: Oblivion.  A simple RPG game... I could imagine an MMO playing exactly like that but think about how many of the features would be useless.  I'm sure you could figure a way to make treasure chests respawn and maybe make player homes private but think of how many of those single player aspects you'd have to "tweak" to make it effectivly work in a MMO.  You would butcher the game.  But if you had maybe four people playing together you wouldn't hardly have to change an aspect of the game.  You could group together or fight each other and the game itself would be realtively the same except a lot more fun.

 

Now to current MMOs...a lot of developers look at a succesful game like WoW and think if they change something in it then it would be more appealing to people.  Unfortunatly most of these developers only have a fraction of the resources Blizzard and no real unique idea.  Usually they even realease their game early because of "money issues" of some kind and we end up getting a half ass WoW clone with a twist.

By my standards:      Half ass WoW clone with a twist = epic fail that shouldn't have been made in the first place.

 

Now I know a lot of people who enjoy MMOs for what they are and a lot of games this doesn't apply to.  Some people just like rushing to endgame, some people like mindlessly grinding, some people like mass PvP...and then there is the social aspect.  But there are MMOs out there that don't offer any of that and they still are MMOs. 

Two games I think would be better without the MMO title are DDO and AoC.  I'm sure a lot of people like these games for what they are and I'll be honest,  I haven't played either game for more than a week.

Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong but both of these games are heavly instanced and you almost never interact with people outside your guild/group.  Theres no mass server wide pvp or anything.  Wouldn't you guys who play the game enjoy it more if they added more of the single player aspects of RPGs into the game instead of the "useless" MMO ones that they currently have. 

 

I know a lot of this has to do with the community that plays the games as well.  Some people are simply out there to be the best.  You have to expect that kind of attitude in an MMO environment.  In games like Diablo you could have four people totally having fun by themselves or you could have four guys complaing about how their classes aren't balanced at all.  There is just so much you have to sacrifice to make a workable MMO.  Even games with tons of freedom still have their drawbacks, like EVE, but EVE is still succesful and it works.  It has its up and down points in my opinion such as the time based skill system.  It works in this case and it is a solution to the MMO problem.

 

For people who didn't want to read the wall of text

Do you guys think some current MMO games were a complete waste and you'd have more fun if your single player game had a limited multiplayer aspect.

Darkheart00

Hellgate london is case book example of that, granted the game had issues but if they had followed Guildwar model and had given out free content updates or even released the game for console. Flagship would not have gone under.

RavZterz

Originally posted by Darkheart00


Hellgate london is case book example of that, granted the game had issues but if they had followed Guildwar model and had given out free content updates or even released the game for console. Flagship would not have gone under.

 

Totally agree.  I loved that game but it shouldn't have been an MMO.  Almost all the players classified it as an ARPG like diablo but Flagship wanted to go along the MMO approach.  Granted a lot of different mistakes were made but that is the perfect example of what I was trying to show.

Shawk

I think most newer MMORPGs were bad games to begin with, older games like Everquest/Ultima Online/Daoc, those were good games with good graphics and good ideas.

Now, MMOPRGs are trying to hard to create the newest idea that gets people most hooked. Developers need to realize that EQ/UO/Daoc were made perfect, there was and is nothing wrong with those games, we just need a new game like them with better game engines and graphics to refresh our minds.

I would love to play a Realm vs Realm game like Daoc again with new servers that allowed people to have 200 v 200 v 200 battles without the lag we had in Daoc. Those are the ideas MMORPG developers need to start thinking of. Thinking of a new way to use instances is NOT what they should be thinking about.