Originally posted by AgentAnarkii No Devs have ever thought to ask this question and actually consider following through with the answers...well at least the good ones. So i'm asking you, in a few short sentences desribe to me what YOU want when it comes to the genre of MMORPGs.
I want trust in first place.
I wanna trust that company at least half a way, that creates the game i play.
For example, when i was playing Allods, the EU publisher Gala Networks made it a milking machine.
My trust for Gala Network Games (Ireland) is totally gone.
Now, Age of Wushu nearly got me to subscribe but i learned it is pay to win - i was deceived by its first impressions.
Would i have regged to AoW, i would be pretty angry when i see that my subscribtion fee doesnt give me all freedom in game.
Instead i gotta buy this and that and gamble and whatnot ... man i wanna play a game, when i wanna gamble, im going to a casino.
So, it is clearly a trustfull relation between me as customer and the company that makes the game i play.
That is, what players really want.
Then we can talk about the typ of game we want, and it is not another second hand fantasy ...
And with only 3 pages, the Devs would have already committed suicide
Hey! Mine wasn't so bad really. Minecraft already has the Hack/Mine mod which brings it halfway to what I wanted! Slap a grid system for leveling like PoE has and I'm set. Notice, I never said the game had to be visually stunning. I think we could all "get" more from our games if we'd just let go of our need to see pretty pictures. Less stress on the hardware from video means, in some ways, more stress you can put on it from systems.
Epic or fun world which is alive. Freedom in PvP - open world PvP / PK system. By epic world I mean something what is new to MMOs, no ogres, no elfs etc. Its usualy the same. Even GW 2 has very similar world to others. I actualy kinda like TERA world, it looks like from another dimension. Its supposed to be a game, fantasy or sci-fi, so devs should try to create something outside of this world. Of course I want cool bosses, more droped items rather than get gzilion of tokens and buy them - drop gives you surprise, tokens don't.
Once there was a topic from a dev who asked about theme for an MMO. Well, people said something like steam-punk, atomic punk etc. Just themes you don't really see in MMOs. He said, well, we don't want players to go in the world where they don't know anything, they need to get quickly familiar with the world they play in. I say this is crap. I don't want to understand whole world. I want it to be a mystery, something to challenge my brain, my character in game, something different.
It was obvious he goes for money, not for the game. Best dev should do one thing only. Make a game HE / SHE or THEY think, it is worth playing. I think devs should be MMO gamers or former MMO gamers and put theirs ideas in the game. Once I heard one guy who was working at Seinfeld show from beggining and he said that marketing statistics and making show towards them was horrible, show almost ended, they started to do as they want and bam, show was a hit. Too many greedy bastards got into this business, hope they all fail and those who want to create a real thing, they stay. Look at Minecraft, not sure how new it is if it copied something or not, but it IS DIFFERENT. Same with WoW (was different when it started), EvE online, Lineage 2, Planetside 2, Ragnarok online.
Bad games which are similar to thousands others need only one thing, good marketing and mainstream stuff in it. Good games need original ideas, different aproach and your own ideas. Its gonna work out or not. Sometimes I feel that devs listen too much to players. Yes, they should? Don't think so. Who are you going to listen to? WoW ppl? Who always go into new games, cry its not like WoW so its made like WoW and they say, hey, its like WoW, why not play WoW again? I think devs should let players post their ideas on forums, yes, but they should keep doing theirs ideas with the game and in the same time implement some of those players original and different ideas.
Games just should feel like you are visiting someone elses imagination, not like you are on planet Earth just in different place and time because reality is better than that, but reality is usualy very different from imagination.
Played: Lineage 2,Guild Wars 1 and 2, Age of Conan, Ragnarok Online, LOTRO, World of Warcraft, League of Legends, EvE online Tried: KAL Online, Face of Mankind, ROSE online Playing: CS:GO
I want freedom that the genre has lost over the years.
Freedom to attack who ever I want when i want, (npc guards, merchants, or what ever)
Real meaningful consequences for my actions
A feeling of death actually meaning something, instead of just shrugging it off and meaning something. So that I'm actually scared to die.
A player generated economy. Where 100% of every piece of equipment is player made, and no equipment drops from mobs, only mats to make them.
No instances - I want to be able to see other people wondering around in the dungeon I'm in.
Offline players stay within the game and do tasks in the game while offline. Thus it adds a bit of realism and makes the game world seem more living & breathing.
Non-instanced housing. Think SWG & Vanguard. Property means something, and property goes up in value as fewer lots become available.
North American studio- tired of badly ported Asain MMO's that have poor localization & no support staff.
The problem with asking that question is that Players expectations arent realistic, or worse; rarely balanced.
I could say I wanted a million things in my MMO, but it would take a tremendous amount of development costs to achieve them.
I guarentee you any game developer, if asked, would say they can only fit about 30% of their intial game design ideas into a game, because designing a game is an iterative process which goes through many stages of concepting, theoretical testing, redesigning and finally practical application. Inevitably you end up with something which is a shadow of its former self, but still falls within the overall concept of the idea.
When you ask a player, what they want in an MMO, they will give you the most grandeious ideas they can think of, and it will always fall short of the players expectations.
It's much easier for a designer to look at analytics and look at the trends of gaming and make decisions based on that, because, well, it's a hell of a lot safer. And investors love nothing more than a sense of their money being 'safe'.
This is why you will see a lot of new ideas actually coming from the Indie market, where most developers are riding their hopes and dreams on making it big with their first release. And more often than not, they fail, but when they succeed, they really succeed.
"The problem with quotes from the Internet is that it's almost impossible to validate their authenticity." - Abraham Lincoln
People in general dont know what they want. Take coffee, if you ask most people what the perfect cup of coffee is like, they mention things like "strong, rich, aromatic", while ordering, drinking and enjoying a weak, sweet nut flavored espresso with cream.
Originally posted by Swiftrevoir Without a novel containing every one of my personal wishes for a game, I would have to say it would have to be an experience that felt like my first MMORPG. I want to feel some magic in my games again. I can tell when a publisher just wants my money as opposed to when they want me to share in their dream of a virtual world. They can have both, but if one is missing I simply feel like I'm being duped by the experience.
Pretty much exactly how I feel. Thats why I am still playing my first mmo.
My first was EQOA :'(. I would still be romping around in Tunaria but sadly it is no more.
People in general dont know what they want. Take coffee, if you ask most people what the perfect cup of coffee is like, they mention things like "strong, rich, aromatic", while ordering, drinking and enjoying a weak, sweet nut flavored espresso with cream.
Flame on!
Yeah, don't ask them what they want, find out what they do. That's my mantra, when I have my analyst hat on. And what do people do in MMOs? They try to level as fast as possible and accumulate loot as fast as possible to the exclusion of everything else. So an MMO needs endless progression coupled with endless loot. The only way anyone has managed to do that so far is with WoW style raiding...
Originally posted by AgentAnarkii No Devs have ever thought to ask this question and actually consider following through with the answers...well at least the good ones. So i'm asking you, in a few short sentences desribe to me what YOU want when it comes to the genre of MMORPGs.
A good game developer is a gamer, so he shouldn't have to ask his customers what they want, he needs to know. The problem with todays industry is that we instead have some cubicle douches bossing everything. It's gone from art and entertainment to buisness. Too much focus on marketing and bullshit.
Besides you can't have the community dictate what you when you are doing creative work, the same way the same suited douchebags shouldn't dictate what you do.
People in general dont know what they want. Take coffee, if you ask most people what the perfect cup of coffee is like, they mention things like "strong, rich, aromatic", while ordering, drinking and enjoying a weak, sweet nut flavored espresso with cream.
Flame on!
Beautiful imagery btw . I know what you mean though, Devs seem to be getting a little insecure. Its understandable though as we make or break a game. But I think we appreciate successful implementations of ideas we didn't expect more than getting exactly what we asked for. Now that I think about it, it works a lot like a Christmas present....and coffee
People in general dont know what they want. Take coffee, if you ask most people what the perfect cup of coffee is like, they mention things like "strong, rich, aromatic", while ordering, drinking and enjoying a weak, sweet nut flavored espresso with cream.
Flame on!
Yeah, don't ask them what they want, find out what they do. That's my mantra, when I have my analyst hat on. And what do people do in MMOs? They try to level as fast as possible and accumulate loot as fast as possible to the exclusion of everything else. So an MMO needs endless progression coupled with endless loot. The only way anyone has managed to do that so far is with WoW style raiding...
The Treadmill Progression system isnt exactly the right decision either, because it ends up alienating both new and old players.
New players feel like theyre playing catch up, and quickly become drained of the whole process, Old players feel like all their work is being made obsolete with future content patches.
A good MMO, in my view, needs to have Lateral Progression, where people can improve without actually raising their power level.
"The problem with quotes from the Internet is that it's almost impossible to validate their authenticity." - Abraham Lincoln
I want to be born rich and hire a team to make the game I tell them to make and the game station it will play on; right after I hire a team of scientists and architects to develop a way to bring all of society to live underground, agriculturists to build green-house sky scrapers to use hydro-ecology to grow crops instead of draining surface soil of all minerals, and another set of medical scientists to cure the disease I have. I want to do this all on an island/continent far far away from politicians who'd try to make a profit off what I accomplished. Shit, I might as well just buy the superman suit while I'm at it, huh? I could ask Danila Polyakov to be my Lois Lane.
1. something new, we already have WoW. 2. no grind 3. no bought might 4. PvP and PvE should be distanced. 5. many side activities like mini games or relaxing skills (may be fishing and mini, farming, safari etc). 6. housing with ability to add fun stuff there and storage for your nice outfits. =D 7. trustful devs. 8. cool lore and story. 9. great graphic and nice sound. 10.many dungeons and group finder. 11.easy and hard mods or servers. 12.lot of looks for avatar and armor, weapon, outfits, I love to be unique. 13.why not new race. 14.why not make us all hybrid class. 15.anything can be more fun then linear progress.
try before buy, even if it's a game to avoid bad surprises. Worst surprises for me: Aion, GW2
"No Devs have ever thought to ask this question and actually consider following through with the answers..."
"im doing this to learn"
Step One - abandon the bittervet talking points.
Step Two - ...
Step Three - Profit
Do they offer "bitter vet" rehab? I'll go.
There are certain queer times and occasions in this strange mixed affair we call life when a man takes this whole universe for a vast practical joke, though the wit thereof he but dimly discerns, and more than suspects that the joke is at nobody's expense but his own. -- Herman Melville
it's not a matter of what players want, the real devs are the players and back in the day games were made by passionate people that wanted to "make" something.
Now, it's more of a business than an art. Developers take a story and mold it into an mmo.
Games like eve , eq, doom, quake etc... those games were innovative , and the developers were "creating" something. Now it's just taking an existing idea and re-creating it. No matter what a dev asks players to put in a game, if it truly isn't new it's not going to have the longevity they want since it really doesn't offer anything outside of the same shell over and over.
So to answer your question, i just want something totally new and different to enjoy.
- big world where to do stuff even if u hit max lvl, not like (lvl 10/ 20 / 40 /cap) this is just sad if u think im finished dont need to see it ever again
- castle siges that do mean somthing (ragnarok online 1) love it (wow ever 2 houers wtf?)
- fast gameplay (quitet alot games an played wow again cuze of that reason)
- puplic quests (wh like)
- long time to hit max lvl (ro1)
- big quests that take time (day/ or even week?)
- no instace farming
- crafting to get good stuff not like ->
- items from every 2. mob
- low drop chances like 0.05%
- more or less usefull items in all lvls (not like oh its lvl 999 its trash im 1000)
Nevermind, I begun to write an essay of my dream mmorpg, but why bother. I cant describe it with just few words so I'll just say that it's nothing like these 1 month heavily story based from-area-to-area themepark quest grinders that you actually finish, or the low budget piss poor bad looking feature-lacking soulless and empty sandbox mmorpgs
People in general dont know what they want. Take coffee, if you ask most people what the perfect cup of coffee is like, they mention things like "strong, rich, aromatic", while ordering, drinking and enjoying a weak, sweet nut flavored espresso with cream.
Flame on!
Well that's what Blizzard did. Vanilla WoW came out, was fairly successful - then blizzard started looking at their data on what players said they wanted vs what players actually did during their game time. Based on how people played their game, they slowly adapted it to match their consumer's desires. That did leave some people unhappy, but it really grew their playerbase by millions over the years.
I say that not only should devs not ask what players want, but make a game and stick to their vision and not adapt it to make it easier for the players to play the way they want. Though, that might not always be the most financially optimal choice for a business to make.
Actually asking and producing what players want is what Funcom is doing with TSW at the moment. Each of the dev's including Joel have forum accounts, which they use to ask and discuss things with the player base. This is why people who still pay for TSW will continue to pay for TSW. we know that the games only gonna get better as it grows, and we know the growth is gonna be something we want. Weather its good or not is completely up to if our ideas pan out well.
Because i can. I'm Hopeful For Every Game, Until the Fan Boys Attack My Games. Then the Knives Come Out. Logic every gamers worst enemy.
Comments
I'm still waiting on The World from .hack//sign.
Get on it devs.
Be the Ultimate Ninja! Play Billy Vs. SNAKEMAN today!
And with only 3 pages, the Devs would have already committed suicide
Played: UO, EQ, WoW, DDO, SWG, AO, CoH, EvE, TR, AoC, GW, GA, Aion, Allods, lots more
Relatively Recently (Re)Played: HL2 (all), Halo (PC, all), Batman:AA; AC, ME, BS, DA, FO3, DS, Doom (all), LFD1&2, KOTOR, Portal 1&2, Blink, Elder Scrolls (all), lots more
Now Playing: None
Hope: None
I want trust in first place.
I wanna trust that company at least half a way, that creates the game i play.
For example, when i was playing Allods, the EU publisher Gala Networks made it a milking machine.
My trust for Gala Network Games (Ireland) is totally gone.
Now, Age of Wushu nearly got me to subscribe but i learned it is pay to win - i was deceived by its first impressions.
Would i have regged to AoW, i would be pretty angry when i see that my subscribtion fee doesnt give me all freedom in game.
Instead i gotta buy this and that and gamble and whatnot ... man i wanna play a game, when i wanna gamble, im going to a casino.
So, it is clearly a trustfull relation between me as customer and the company that makes the game i play.
That is, what players really want.
Then we can talk about the typ of game we want, and it is not another second hand fantasy ...
Hey! Mine wasn't so bad really. Minecraft already has the Hack/Mine mod which brings it halfway to what I wanted! Slap a grid system for leveling like PoE has and I'm set. Notice, I never said the game had to be visually stunning. I think we could all "get" more from our games if we'd just let go of our need to see pretty pictures. Less stress on the hardware from video means, in some ways, more stress you can put on it from systems.
Better systems > Pretty pictures for me.
Epic or fun world which is alive. Freedom in PvP - open world PvP / PK system. By epic world I mean something what is new to MMOs, no ogres, no elfs etc. Its usualy the same. Even GW 2 has very similar world to others. I actualy kinda like TERA world, it looks like from another dimension. Its supposed to be a game, fantasy or sci-fi, so devs should try to create something outside of this world. Of course I want cool bosses, more droped items rather than get gzilion of tokens and buy them - drop gives you surprise, tokens don't.
Once there was a topic from a dev who asked about theme for an MMO. Well, people said something like steam-punk, atomic punk etc. Just themes you don't really see in MMOs. He said, well, we don't want players to go in the world where they don't know anything, they need to get quickly familiar with the world they play in. I say this is crap. I don't want to understand whole world. I want it to be a mystery, something to challenge my brain, my character in game, something different.
It was obvious he goes for money, not for the game. Best dev should do one thing only. Make a game HE / SHE or THEY think, it is worth playing. I think devs should be MMO gamers or former MMO gamers and put theirs ideas in the game. Once I heard one guy who was working at Seinfeld show from beggining and he said that marketing statistics and making show towards them was horrible, show almost ended, they started to do as they want and bam, show was a hit. Too many greedy bastards got into this business, hope they all fail and those who want to create a real thing, they stay. Look at Minecraft, not sure how new it is if it copied something or not, but it IS DIFFERENT. Same with WoW (was different when it started), EvE online, Lineage 2, Planetside 2, Ragnarok online.
Bad games which are similar to thousands others need only one thing, good marketing and mainstream stuff in it. Good games need original ideas, different aproach and your own ideas. Its gonna work out or not. Sometimes I feel that devs listen too much to players. Yes, they should? Don't think so. Who are you going to listen to? WoW ppl? Who always go into new games, cry its not like WoW so its made like WoW and they say, hey, its like WoW, why not play WoW again?
I think devs should let players post their ideas on forums, yes, but they should keep doing theirs ideas with the game and in the same time implement some of those players original and different ideas.
Games just should feel like you are visiting someone elses imagination, not like you are on planet Earth just in different place and time because reality is better than that, but reality is usualy very different from imagination.
Played: Lineage 2,Guild Wars 1 and 2, Age of Conan, Ragnarok Online, LOTRO, World of Warcraft, League of Legends, EvE online
Tried: KAL Online, Face of Mankind, ROSE online
Playing: CS:GO
I want freedom that the genre has lost over the years.
i want it to be enjoyable and fun
and something i can play with friends or meet people ingame and become good battle buddies with them heh XD
There are people who play games and then there are gamers.
http://alzplz.blogspot.com
The problem with asking that question is that Players expectations arent realistic, or worse; rarely balanced.
I could say I wanted a million things in my MMO, but it would take a tremendous amount of development costs to achieve them.
I guarentee you any game developer, if asked, would say they can only fit about 30% of their intial game design ideas into a game, because designing a game is an iterative process which goes through many stages of concepting, theoretical testing, redesigning and finally practical application. Inevitably you end up with something which is a shadow of its former self, but still falls within the overall concept of the idea.
When you ask a player, what they want in an MMO, they will give you the most grandeious ideas they can think of, and it will always fall short of the players expectations.
It's much easier for a designer to look at analytics and look at the trends of gaming and make decisions based on that, because, well, it's a hell of a lot safer. And investors love nothing more than a sense of their money being 'safe'.
This is why you will see a lot of new ideas actually coming from the Indie market, where most developers are riding their hopes and dreams on making it big with their first release. And more often than not, they fail, but when they succeed, they really succeed.
"The problem with quotes from the Internet is that it's almost impossible to validate their authenticity." - Abraham Lincoln
I want a game with opportunities.
I like to play with friends or with my wife. I want log in and ask myself what will I do today.
In many games I have only one choice. like PvP or join a raid.
Devs that dont ask what players want
People in general dont know what they want. Take coffee, if you ask most people what the perfect cup of coffee is like, they mention things like "strong, rich, aromatic", while ordering, drinking and enjoying a weak, sweet nut flavored espresso with cream.
Flame on!
My first was EQOA :'(. I would still be romping around in Tunaria but sadly it is no more.
Yeah, don't ask them what they want, find out what they do. That's my mantra, when I have my analyst hat on. And what do people do in MMOs? They try to level as fast as possible and accumulate loot as fast as possible to the exclusion of everything else. So an MMO needs endless progression coupled with endless loot. The only way anyone has managed to do that so far is with WoW style raiding...
A good game developer is a gamer, so he shouldn't have to ask his customers what they want, he needs to know. The problem with todays industry is that we instead have some cubicle douches bossing everything. It's gone from art and entertainment to buisness. Too much focus on marketing and bullshit.
Besides you can't have the community dictate what you when you are doing creative work, the same way the same suited douchebags shouldn't dictate what you do.
Beautiful imagery btw
. I know what you mean though, Devs seem to be getting a little insecure. Its understandable though as we make or break a game. But I think we appreciate successful implementations of ideas we didn't expect more than getting exactly what we asked for. Now that I think about it, it works a lot like a Christmas present....and coffee 
The Treadmill Progression system isnt exactly the right decision either, because it ends up alienating both new and old players.
New players feel like theyre playing catch up, and quickly become drained of the whole process, Old players feel like all their work is being made obsolete with future content patches.
A good MMO, in my view, needs to have Lateral Progression, where people can improve without actually raising their power level.
"The problem with quotes from the Internet is that it's almost impossible to validate their authenticity." - Abraham Lincoln
I want to be born rich and hire a team to make the game I tell them to make and the game station it will play on; right after I hire a team of scientists and architects to develop a way to bring all of society to live underground, agriculturists to build green-house sky scrapers to use hydro-ecology to grow crops instead of draining surface soil of all minerals, and another set of medical scientists to cure the disease I have. I want to do this all on an island/continent far far away from politicians who'd try to make a profit off what I accomplished. Shit, I might as well just buy the superman suit while I'm at it, huh? I could ask Danila Polyakov to be my Lois Lane.
* reason edit: misspelled a word
I'm not so sure, only may be:
1. something new, we already have WoW.
2. no grind
3. no bought might
4. PvP and PvE should be distanced.
5. many side activities like mini games or relaxing skills (may be fishing and mini, farming, safari etc).
6. housing with ability to add fun stuff there and storage for your nice outfits. =D
7. trustful devs.
8. cool lore and story.
9. great graphic and nice sound.
10.many dungeons and group finder.
11.easy and hard mods or servers.
12.lot of looks for avatar and armor, weapon, outfits, I love to be unique.
13.why not new race.
14.why not make us all hybrid class.
15.anything can be more fun then linear progress.
try before buy, even if it's a game to avoid bad surprises.
Worst surprises for me: Aion, GW2
Step Two - ...
Step Three - Profit
Do they offer "bitter vet" rehab? I'll go.
There are certain queer times and occasions in this strange mixed affair we call life when a man takes this whole universe for a vast practical joke, though the wit thereof he but dimly discerns, and more than suspects that the joke is at nobody's expense but his own.
-- Herman Melville
it's not a matter of what players want, the real devs are the players and back in the day games were made by passionate people that wanted to "make" something.
Now, it's more of a business than an art. Developers take a story and mold it into an mmo.
Games like eve , eq, doom, quake etc... those games were innovative , and the developers were "creating" something. Now it's just taking an existing idea and re-creating it. No matter what a dev asks players to put in a game, if it truly isn't new it's not going to have the longevity they want since it really doesn't offer anything outside of the same shell over and over.
So to answer your question, i just want something totally new and different to enjoy.
- housing that feels like "coming home"
- big world where to do stuff even if u hit max lvl, not like (lvl 10/ 20 / 40 /cap) this is just sad if u think im finished dont need to see it ever again
- castle siges that do mean somthing (ragnarok online 1) love it (wow ever 2 houers wtf?)
- fast gameplay (quitet alot games an played wow again cuze of that reason)
- puplic quests (wh like)
- long time to hit max lvl (ro1)
- big quests that take time (day/ or even week?)
- no instace farming
- crafting to get good stuff not like ->
- items from every 2. mob
- low drop chances like 0.05%
- more or less usefull items in all lvls (not like oh its lvl 999 its trash im 1000)
- pvp from lvl 1
- a world that u can belive
- working anti bot system
- no p2w
- guild member limit
- upgrade system (ro1)
.. guess thats all for now
Well that's what Blizzard did. Vanilla WoW came out, was fairly successful - then blizzard started looking at their data on what players said they wanted vs what players actually did during their game time. Based on how people played their game, they slowly adapted it to match their consumer's desires. That did leave some people unhappy, but it really grew their playerbase by millions over the years.
I say that not only should devs not ask what players want, but make a game and stick to their vision and not adapt it to make it easier for the players to play the way they want. Though, that might not always be the most financially optimal choice for a business to make.
Because i can.
I'm Hopeful For Every Game, Until the Fan Boys Attack My Games. Then the Knives Come Out.
Logic every gamers worst enemy.