We don't need anything new, what we need is to go back to the roots of the MMORPG and remember what made the genre great to begin with. Community.
No, people need to remember that back in the day cell phones didn't exist, nor did twitter or facebook. The idea of playing online with people from around the world and being able to chat with them WAS ACTUALLY NEW.
People aren't playing for that social interaction anymore because they get it a thousand times over elsewhere now. You may want community, but you want it on your own terms. That's a very big difference from back in the day. People literally played 24/7 JUST TO TALK SHIT with people online.
Oh you remember doing this or that in game... but what you really remember was the socialization part. Laughing out load during a Leeroy moment. Cheering when you finally took down a boss. Telling your stories of running naked through the Wetlands as a low level trying to meet up with your friends on the other continent to level with. Talking crap while dueling players outside of Orgrimmar. Sneaking into the opposing factions city to kill their auctioneers, ganking flagged players while they were AFK waiting on a battleground queue. Tales of woe after trying to complete an escort quest... repeatedly... only to find out the reward was literally crap for the effort involved. The battles at Southshore and Nessingwary's camp as players camped other players to incite all out PVP wars. Playing drunk on Friday nights.
None of this required the best gear, best spec, best racials, gold, world firsts, server firsts, max level, mounts, etc. All it required was people wanting to have fun IN SPITE of the game.
It was never the game. It was the birth of social interaction on the internet that drew people in.
No, people need to remember that back in the day cell phones didn't exist, nor did twitter or facebook. The idea of playing online with people from around the world and being able to chat with them WAS ACTUALLY NEW.
People aren't playing for that social interaction anymore because they get it a thousand times over elsewhere now. You may want community, but you want it on your own terms. That's a very big difference from back in the day. People literally played 24/7 JUST TO TALK SHIT with people online.
Oh you remember doing this or that in game... but what you really remember was the socialization part. Laughing out load during a Leeroy moment. Cheering when you finally took down a boss. Telling your stories of running naked through the Wetlands as a low level trying to meet up with your friends on the other continent to level with. Talking crap while dueling players outside of Orgrimmar. Sneaking into the opposing factions city to kill their auctioneers, ganking flagged players while they were AFK waiting on a battleground queue. Tales of woe after trying to complete an escort quest... repeatedly... only to find out the reward was literally crap for the effort involved. The battles at Southshore and Nessingwary's camp as players camped other players to incite all out PVP wars. Playing drunk on Friday nights.
None of this required the best gear, best spec, best racials, gold, world firsts, server firsts, max level, mounts, etc. All it required was people wanting to have fun IN SPITE of the game.
It was never the game. It was the birth of social interaction on the internet that drew people in.
Cellphones didn't exist in 1996? Seriously, even I had one back then and I was a late adaptor. There were no facebook but we did have ICQ and forums already in the early days.
When Wow came out there were plenty of primitive facebook like sites out, I am not sure what was big in the US but here in Sweden Lunarstorm was huge and not that unlike FB but with less features.
Now, it was different in games and here the genre did an impact since it was the first genre you actually made friends in, you played with strangers just as much in Quake 2 but you didn' t chat with them while waiting for your tank outside the dungeon.
Still, I think you are wrong, I was there and as soon as people started to get internet for real in 1995 the social aspect of it started rather fast. MMOs were not an early facebook, other things took that form.
The obsession with new is what killed the genre, as it gave rise to hundreds of derivative games which fragmented the community and made it very hard for the good ones to remain viable. I
Also, some people want MMOs to justify their exorbitant component/device purchases which biases the games.
Much of what people ask for existed in earlier games struggling to survive. Instead of playing them, people are waiting for games in development right now. It's actually quite ironic. It's like the players actually hurt the genre more than the developers.
If we want the genre back to 2005-2008s growth we need something new and different.
Why would "we" need the genre back to 2005-2008s growth? If the genre is marginalized and irrelevant, just play something else.
Heck, that may even be more fun doing something new, rather than playing MMOs with old designs.
All we needed was WoW and EQ2. Players drive that growth by being fickle and dissatisfied with what they were handed. Most of the other games from them are either literally dead, or practically dead.
Players are too fickle, these days. That is why we aren't getting AAA western MMOs. They are too risky because players are too cosmopolitan in a genre that demands stability and belief in the game's development moving forwards.
I could read forums and know that This community isn't worth investing in, because they are too volatile and your game can go from here to zero in a day. It isn't worth it unless you're indie targeting fairly low lowercase benchmarks, crowd funding game development (see Pantheon).
I don't expect Blizzard to develop another MMORPG if they can do what they're planning with OWL, etc.
This is why we have cash shops everywhere. It's almost impossible to do a subscription unless you own some ridiculously popular IP which attracts a stable playerbase. Few developers have that at their disposal.
People often say we need something new and innovative.
First thing I say is " like what ? ". The next thing I would say is " if so, how long would it last ? "
My answer:
Flowing and natural More intelligent AI
What I wanted with GW2 was something that felt like a living world, not a programmed cycle of events in each region.
We need a massive jump in AI or potentially VR(someday).
In the end there are just too many whiners in MMOs that prevent the fun things. WOW tried a few small things like invasions and people leveling complained.
I say get rid of fixed quests and come up with something better and more dynamic.
We don't need anything new, what we need is to go back to the roots of the MMORPG and remember what made the genre great to begin with. Community.
No, people need to remember that back in the day cell phones didn't exist, nor did twitter or facebook. The idea of playing online with people from around the world and being able to chat with them WAS ACTUALLY NEW.
People aren't playing for that social interaction anymore because they get it a thousand times over elsewhere now. You may want community, but you want it on your own terms. That's a very big difference from back in the day. People literally played 24/7 JUST TO TALK SHIT with people online.
Oh you remember doing this or that in game... but what you really remember was the socialization part. Laughing out load during a Leeroy moment. Cheering when you finally took down a boss. Telling your stories of running naked through the Wetlands as a low level trying to meet up with your friends on the other continent to level with. Talking crap while dueling players outside of Orgrimmar. Sneaking into the opposing factions city to kill their auctioneers, ganking flagged players while they were AFK waiting on a battleground queue. Tales of woe after trying to complete an escort quest... repeatedly... only to find out the reward was literally crap for the effort involved. The battles at Southshore and Nessingwary's camp as players camped other players to incite all out PVP wars. Playing drunk on Friday nights.
None of this required the best gear, best spec, best racials, gold, world firsts, server firsts, max level, mounts, etc. All it required was people wanting to have fun IN SPITE of the game.
It was never the game. It was the birth of social interaction on the internet that drew people in.
You say "no", but the bulk of your post say "yes"...... You talk about fun with people, and giving examples !
In the first paragraph, you talk about this is the communication age and in a way people don't need mmorpgs anymore...... I say its better in the communication age. People want a reason to be sociable. More so than ever !
The obsession with new is what killed the genre, as it gave rise to hundreds of derivative games which fragmented the community and made it very hard for the good ones to remain viable. I
nah .. it gave rise to games other than MMOs. There are plenty of big successes. PUBG, Overwatch, healthstone ... LoL a little earlier, even Warframe is a pretty good medium size success.
All are new and viable. Sure, they kill MMORPGs .. but that is the point. People want some new .. that are NOT mmorpgs.
In the first paragraph, you talk about this is the communication age and in a way people don't need mmorpgs anymore...... I say its better in the communication age. People want a reason to be sociable. More so than ever !
They don't need mmorpgs as a reason to be sociable. Don't tell me you don't know about facebook and twitter.
The obsession with new is what killed the genre, as it gave rise to hundreds of derivative games which fragmented the community and made it very hard for the good ones to remain viable. I
nah .. it gave rise to games other than MMOs. There are plenty of big successes. PUBG, Overwatch, healthstone ... LoL a little earlier, even Warframe is a pretty good medium size success.
All are new and viable. Sure, they kill MMORPGs .. but that is the point. People want some new .. that are NOT mmorpgs.
Makes no sense. The people looking for an MMO to play weren’t looking for those other games. Those other games were coming, anyways. Most games are derivative. The only big change was multiplayer elements coming to more genres like ARPGs and FPS games, but that can be seen as a blatantly natural evolution.
For those MMO players, they became too nomadic to foster confidence in western game developers. This is why most big games have come from Asia over the past decade, and many aren’t that popular here.
Most of the MMOs have died off or failed to maintain viable player based (which would seem suitable for new players).
PUBG is an FPS. So is Overwatch, which was a blatant rip off of a game that preceded it. They aren’t terribly different from Unreal Tournament. The content framing is just different. Hearthstone is a card game. You could play bundled Windows games over a network 15-20 years ago. It’s a graphical representation of DND type card games. Natural evolution from physical to digital - like monopoly.
Warframe me is an FPS. We can talk about destiny and division as well.
None of if those are MMORPG games, and while games steal bits and pieces from each other, all of those games you’ve mentioned are pretty obviously direct in which genre they represent.
They are an evolution of decades-old gaming genres, not some new type of game. You’re making no sense.
There is is no incentive to develop a AAA Western MMO. This player base is too volatile, entitled, and fickle. It’s also quite casual, which feeds into those other issues.
This fannase i think will will be beholden to indies for the foreseeable future, unless Blizzard develops a new MMO (which will take years). I see Blizzard trying to make eSports work to unburden themselves from this community, personally.
In the first paragraph, you talk about this is the communication age and in a way people don't need mmorpgs anymore...... I say its better in the communication age. People want a reason to be sociable. More so than ever !
They don't need mmorpgs as a reason to be sociable. Don't tell me you don't know about facebook and twitter.
MMOs have lost the RPG aspect. The current craze is all RTS and FPS. Let's hope it never goes back to TA (Text Adventures). MMORPGs never really advanced the RPG aspects and other forms of MMOs took over. I don't really know if the MMORPG segment of the market can ever have any significant growth until the developers start building tools to enable role-play and methods to reward that.
In any case, I don't believe that the way forward is trying to rejuvenate the past games with modern graphics. The old versions held aloft as a standard of MMORPG gaming are the same games that lost their lucrative edge over the MMORTS and MMOFPS. I believe that New, for the purposes of this discussion, needs to be new ideas promoting the RPG elements in the game. Mechanisms, game systems, rewards and other ideas based on success of RPing in the game. Maybe even do something drastic, like tying Progression to RP skills.
Sure, a game developer would need to step forward and state "this is what RPing is in this game". I don't know if there is a developer that would take such a radical step away from 'what has gone before', and certainly it would require a different breed of investor. It's not likely to happen in my lifetime, or at least before my 172nd birthday!
But to answer the thread question. Yes, games need something new.
FYI -- It really hurt to give @Nariusseldon that Insightful above.
Logic, my dear, merely enables one to be wrong with great authority.
In the first paragraph, you talk about this is the communication age and in a way people don't need mmorpgs anymore...... I say its better in the communication age. People want a reason to be sociable. More so than ever !
They don't need mmorpgs as a reason to be sociable. Don't tell me you don't know about facebook and twitter.
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
There is no question that the MMO community has declined as measured by subscriptions as well as longevity of those subscriptions. World building and interesting game features have been great for many old and new MMOs. So to use an economics analogy the supply is there. So what factors in demand? Consumer tastes (fps MOBAs etc) the income level of those subscribing perhaps, or perhaps as many have said it's the community. People feel like they are buying an inferior product because you don't know anyone you randomly queue with, the fan websites are mostly dead (elitist jerks, rift junkies, that ESO one, for example), and guilds are not what they used to be. So people are jumping games, not playing, or not talking to anyone and playing solo. The "casual gamer" wasn't someone the companies should have been catering to because those tools that destroyed immersion actually undermined their subscriber base. And don't get me started on free to play.
We don't need anything new, what we need is to go back to the roots of the MMORPG and remember what made the genre great to begin with. Community.
No, people need to remember that back in the day cell phones didn't exist, nor did twitter or facebook. The idea of playing online with people from around the world and being able to chat with them WAS ACTUALLY NEW.
People aren't playing for that social interaction anymore because they get it a thousand times over elsewhere now. You may want community, but you want it on your own terms. That's a very big difference from back in the day. People literally played 24/7 JUST TO TALK SHIT with people online.
Oh you remember doing this or that in game... but what you really remember was the socialization part. Laughing out load during a Leeroy moment. Cheering when you finally took down a boss. Telling your stories of running naked through the Wetlands as a low level trying to meet up with your friends on the other continent to level with. Talking crap while dueling players outside of Orgrimmar. Sneaking into the opposing factions city to kill their auctioneers, ganking flagged players while they were AFK waiting on a battleground queue. Tales of woe after trying to complete an escort quest... repeatedly... only to find out the reward was literally crap for the effort involved. The battles at Southshore and Nessingwary's camp as players camped other players to incite all out PVP wars. Playing drunk on Friday nights.
None of this required the best gear, best spec, best racials, gold, world firsts, server firsts, max level, mounts, etc. All it required was people wanting to have fun IN SPITE of the game.
It was never the game. It was the birth of social interaction on the internet that drew people in.
You say "no", but the bulk of your post say "yes"...... You talk about fun with people, and giving examples !
In the first paragraph, you talk about this is the communication age and in a way people don't need mmorpgs anymore...... I say its better in the communication age. People want a reason to be sociable. More so than ever !
No, I spoke of a time in which people were enamored with talking shit online just because it was new to them. They weren't talking strategy, they weren't concerned with accomplishing anything, they just liked the idea of jaw jacking it up about whatever. It's what gave birth to Barren's chat. The game itself had nothing to do with what they really enjoyed, it was merely a catalyst.
These same people wouldn't do any of those things today. They don't care to talk to anyone in game unless it has some direct benefit to them. They group only because they need the body to meet a queue requirement. As soon as said task is complete, they drop them like a hot tamale... often mid-run if that's all they needed them for.
In a nutshell, the people who still play MMOs today aren't the same people who played them back in the day. They aren't playing them for the same reasons. They are playing them for a different reason. They have an objective in mind and don't want anything to get in the way of that objective. They don't care to interrupt their gameplay to discuss the faults of President Trump or laugh about some newb moment they had when they were level 1.
So no, my post doesn't say yes at all. You read it that way because you always read what you want to read and not what is really being said.
The obsession with new is what killed the genre, as it gave rise to hundreds of derivative games which fragmented the community and made it very hard for the good ones to remain viable. I
Also, some people want MMOs to justify their exorbitant component/device purchases which biases the games.
Much of what people ask for existed in earlier games struggling to survive. Instead of playing them, people are waiting for games in development right now. It's actually quite ironic. It's like the players actually hurt the genre more than the developers.
Obsession with new? They keep making the same game with upgraded graphics and lower difficulty over and over... How is that new? It is just the same rebranded crap over and over.
There havn't been much new for a long time, a few of the crowdfunded and indie projects are new but most of them have a very low budget and poor coding.
People did stay a long time with the same game, it is just that they tired of doing the same thing over and over, only less challenging (but prettier). The last thing is a mystery to me, if I want to play the same game over and over they can at least raise the difficulty so it get more interesting, not lower it so things that actually were fun becomes boring.
The genre need a reboot to become interesting again and get out of Wows shadow. Wow did great 10 years ago but it is losing players as much as anything now (even though it started with far more and still have quite a few).
New gameplay & up the difficulty is the way to go, the genre have already tried more of the same over and over. Of course re-releasing something old with modern graphics but the original difficulty wouldn't hurt the genre but it wont work long term.
There is a lot of us missing that old game you could stay in for years and years and still enjoy playing it. I think part of that is the nerfed difficulty but it is as much that you can't keep doing the same thing forever unless you are Sid Meier.
All we needed was WoW and EQ2. Players drive that growth by being fickle and dissatisfied with what they were handed. Most of the other games from them are either literally dead, or practically dead.
Players are too fickle, these days. That is why we aren't getting AAA western MMOs. They are too risky because players are too cosmopolitan in a genre that demands stability and belief in the game's development moving forwards.
I could read forums and know that This community isn't worth investing in, because they are too volatile and your game can go from here to zero in a day. It isn't worth it unless you're indie targeting fairly low lowercase benchmarks, crowd funding game development (see Pantheon).
I don't expect Blizzard to develop another MMORPG if they can do what they're planning with OWL, etc.
This is why we have cash shops everywhere. It's almost impossible to do a subscription unless you own some ridiculously popular IP which attracts a stable playerbase. Few developers have that at their disposal.
Later games have failed to keep people interested, that is sure but blaming the players for it seems a bit harsh.
Most of us that played MMOs in the 90s stayed at the same game for a long while back then but even we stay shorter and shorter in the game today, they aren't really made to last anymore.
Look on EQ, you spent months leveling in it and it was fun, a bit grindy at times but still fun.
Today I hit the endgame after 3 weeks and the endgame is usually terrible. The endgame was bad in EQ as well but it didn't really matter since few people spent much time in it.
People enjoy leveling. They don't enjoy running a few heroics and raids over and over (well, most don't). So they run a character or 2 to max level and then quit.
There is of course the PvP but MMO PvP is usually bad until you hit max level and a lot of the PvP fans wont bother getting there, they play genres like Mobas and FPS where you can enjoy yourself without being useless or grind PvE for 3 weeks before starting to play.
If you as a game dev want to make a game where players stay a long time you can't just give them 3 weeks of the gameplay they enjoy and then stuck them hunting for some rare gear.
Classic themepark were all about slowly gaining power in an open world with some dungeons to speed up the leveling a bit and to give you good gear that lasted a while and made survival easier. Making the same game but way easier and faster to run through does not work.
Either you go back to basics or you make something new. I personally fear that the back to basic train has left but I am hopeful enough to at least put a hundred bucks into Pantheon even if I think it might be far too late.
It is to bad Vanguard was so messed up, it could actually have impacted the genre if they had succedeed with it.
I think if Wow would have released with current mechanics we would have picked EQ2 instead. While Wow was easier (besides the endgame) at launch it was still enough about gaining power at a good pace to be really fun to most players. That hasn't been true for a long time, "miracle patch" or no.
The obsession with new is what killed the genre, as it gave rise to hundreds of derivative games which fragmented the community and made it very hard for the good ones to remain viable. I
nah .. it gave rise to games other than MMOs. There are plenty of big successes. PUBG, Overwatch, healthstone ... LoL a little earlier, even Warframe is a pretty good medium size success.
All are new and viable. Sure, they kill MMORPGs .. but that is the point. People want some new .. that are NOT mmorpgs.
Makes no sense. The people looking for an MMO to play weren’t looking for those other games.
What make no sense is that you still think that gamers are only looking for an MMO to play?
We don't need anything new, what we need is to go back to the roots of the MMORPG and remember what made the genre great to begin with. Community.
No, people need to remember that back in the day cell phones didn't exist, nor did twitter or facebook. The idea of playing online with people from around the world and being able to chat with them WAS ACTUALLY NEW.
People aren't playing for that social interaction anymore because they get it a thousand times over elsewhere now. You may want community, but you want it on your own terms. That's a very big difference from back in the day. People literally played 24/7 JUST TO TALK SHIT with people online.
Oh you remember doing this or that in game... but what you really remember was the socialization part. Laughing out load during a Leeroy moment. Cheering when you finally took down a boss. Telling your stories of running naked through the Wetlands as a low level trying to meet up with your friends on the other continent to level with. Talking crap while dueling players outside of Orgrimmar. Sneaking into the opposing factions city to kill their auctioneers, ganking flagged players while they were AFK waiting on a battleground queue. Tales of woe after trying to complete an escort quest... repeatedly... only to find out the reward was literally crap for the effort involved. The battles at Southshore and Nessingwary's camp as players camped other players to incite all out PVP wars. Playing drunk on Friday nights.
None of this required the best gear, best spec, best racials, gold, world firsts, server firsts, max level, mounts, etc. All it required was people wanting to have fun IN SPITE of the game.
It was never the game. It was the birth of social interaction on the internet that drew people in.
You say "no", but the bulk of your post say "yes"...... You talk about fun with people, and giving examples !
In the first paragraph, you talk about this is the communication age and in a way people don't need mmorpgs anymore...... I say its better in the communication age. People want a reason to be sociable. More so than ever !
No, I spoke of a time in which people were enamored with talking shit online just because it was new to them. They weren't talking strategy, they weren't concerned with accomplishing anything, they just liked the idea of jaw jacking it up about whatever. It's what gave birth to Barren's chat. The game itself had nothing to do with what they really enjoyed, it was merely a catalyst.
These same people wouldn't do any of those things today. They don't care to talk to anyone in game unless it has some direct benefit to them. They group only because they need the body to meet a queue requirement. As soon as said task is complete, they drop them like a hot tamale... often mid-run if that's all they needed them for.
In a nutshell, the people who still play MMOs today aren't the same people who played them back in the day. They aren't playing them for the same reasons. They are playing them for a different reason. They have an objective in mind and don't want anything to get in the way of that objective. They don't care to interrupt their gameplay to discuss the faults of President Trump or laugh about some newb moment they had when they were level 1.
So no, my post doesn't say yes at all. You read it that way because you always read what you want to read and not what is really being said.
Well your examples are bad. That's why I perceived them as positive. Proud moments !
"Cheering when you finally took down a boss" "Sneaking into the opposing factions city to kill their auctioneers" "Telling your stories of running naked through the Wetlands" "The battles at Southshore and Nessingwary's camp as players camped other players to incite all out PVP wars"
These are all examples of creativity......... This was a time where players were given a world to do as you please. Unlike modern WoW where it's a lobby game waiting for a que and talking much more real crap. With the LFD cross realm of today, no one talks to anyone or cares, just a gimmick.
MMOs have lost the RPG aspect. The current craze is all RTS and FPS. Let's hope it never goes back to TA (Text Adventures). MMORPGs never really advanced the RPG aspects and other forms of MMOs took over. I don't really know if the MMORPG segment of the market can ever have any significant growth until the developers start building tools to enable role-play and methods to reward that.
In any case, I don't believe that the way forward is trying to rejuvenate the past games with modern graphics. The old versions held aloft as a standard of MMORPG gaming are the same games that lost their lucrative edge over the MMORTS and MMOFPS. I believe that New, for the purposes of this discussion, needs to be new ideas promoting the RPG elements in the game. Mechanisms, game systems, rewards and other ideas based on success of RPing in the game. Maybe even do something drastic, like tying Progression to RP skills.
Sure, a game developer would need to step forward and state "this is what RPing is in this game". I don't know if there is a developer that would take such a radical step away from 'what has gone before', and certainly it would require a different breed of investor. It's not likely to happen in my lifetime, or at least before my 172nd birthday!
But to answer the thread question. Yes, games need something new.
FYI -- It really hurt to give @Nariusseldon that Insightful above.
Just quietly remove it when no one is looking...oh you already have.
What was missed when RPG went from table top to MMOs? Mainly no GM and no small group of friends that face nearly everything together. Even if you log on with mates, because you are not meeting up to game, you are not all on at the same time, becomes quite difficult.
So the social element is always going to be "looser" even with guilds. Maybe one day we could play with a set of bots, but with friends dropping in an out playing those bots?
Down the line only a sufficiently developed AI is going to solve the GM issue, so that's twenty years away.
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
MMOs have lost the RPG aspect. The current craze is all RTS and FPS. Let's hope it never goes back to TA (Text Adventures). MMORPGs never really advanced the RPG aspects and other forms of MMOs took over. I don't really know if the MMORPG segment of the market can ever have any significant growth until the developers start building tools to enable role-play and methods to reward that.
In any case, I don't believe that the way forward is trying to rejuvenate the past games with modern graphics. The old versions held aloft as a standard of MMORPG gaming are the same games that lost their lucrative edge over the MMORTS and MMOFPS. I believe that New, for the purposes of this discussion, needs to be new ideas promoting the RPG elements in the game. Mechanisms, game systems, rewards and other ideas based on success of RPing in the game. Maybe even do something drastic, like tying Progression to RP skills.
Sure, a game developer would need to step forward and state "this is what RPing is in this game". I don't know if there is a developer that would take such a radical step away from 'what has gone before', and certainly it would require a different breed of investor. It's not likely to happen in my lifetime, or at least before my 172nd birthday!
But to answer the thread question. Yes, games need something new.
FYI -- It really hurt to give @Nariusseldon that Insightful above.
Just quietly remove it when no one is looking...oh you already have.
What was missed when RPG went from table top to MMOs? Mainly no GM and no small group of friends that face nearly everything together. Even if you log on with mates, because you are not meeting up to game, you are not all on at the same time, becomes quite difficult.
So the social element is always going to be "looser" even with guilds. Maybe one day we could play with a set of bots, but with friends dropping in an out playing those bots?
Down the line only a sufficiently developed AI is going to solve the GM issue, so that's twenty years away.
AI isn't an immediate answer, I'll agree with that. I see no evidence that developers are pursuing that option.
What about other possibilities, such as things used in social media, to allow the players to GM each other? Even a simple set of Like/Dislike or In-Char/Out-of-Char buttons to 'rate' another's dialog could be made to work as a pseudo-automated GM. That would buy the developers time to build and perfect that AI they aren't already working on.
The developers have already taken the 'create the encounter' and 'run the encounter' aspects from a GM. Invent a new way for players to input their opinions and be rewarded for their ideas and actions in ways beyond simply 'Kill-it-or-die' mechanics. If a game is going to promote Role-Playing, then it needs to reward Role-Playing, no matter how that is defined.
Logic, my dear, merely enables one to be wrong with great authority.
MMOs have lost the RPG aspect. The current craze is all RTS and FPS. Let's hope it never goes back to TA (Text Adventures). MMORPGs never really advanced the RPG aspects and other forms of MMOs took over. I don't really know if the MMORPG segment of the market can ever have any significant growth until the developers start building tools to enable role-play and methods to reward that.
In any case, I don't believe that the way forward is trying to rejuvenate the past games with modern graphics. The old versions held aloft as a standard of MMORPG gaming are the same games that lost their lucrative edge over the MMORTS and MMOFPS. I believe that New, for the purposes of this discussion, needs to be new ideas promoting the RPG elements in the game. Mechanisms, game systems, rewards and other ideas based on success of RPing in the game. Maybe even do something drastic, like tying Progression to RP skills.
Sure, a game developer would need to step forward and state "this is what RPing is in this game". I don't know if there is a developer that would take such a radical step away from 'what has gone before', and certainly it would require a different breed of investor. It's not likely to happen in my lifetime, or at least before my 172nd birthday!
But to answer the thread question. Yes, games need something new.
FYI -- It really hurt to give @Nariusseldon that Insightful above.
Just quietly remove it when no one is looking...oh you already have.
What was missed when RPG went from table top to MMOs? Mainly no GM and no small group of friends that face nearly everything together. Even if you log on with mates, because you are not meeting up to game, you are not all on at the same time, becomes quite difficult.
So the social element is always going to be "looser" even with guilds. Maybe one day we could play with a set of bots, but with friends dropping in an out playing those bots?
Down the line only a sufficiently developed AI is going to solve the GM issue, so that's twenty years away.
AI isn't an immediate answer, I'll agree with that. I see no evidence that developers are pursuing that option.
What about other possibilities, such as things used in social media, to allow the players to GM each other? Even a simple set of Like/Dislike or In-Char/Out-of-Char buttons to 'rate' another's dialog could be made to work as a pseudo-automated GM. That would buy the developers time to build and perfect that AI they aren't already working on.
The developers have already taken the 'create the encounter' and 'run the encounter' aspects from a GM. Invent a new way for players to input their opinions and be rewarded for their ideas and actions in ways beyond simply 'Kill-it-or-die' mechanics. If a game is going to promote Role-Playing, then it needs to reward Role-Playing, no matter how that is defined.
You do know what Twitter is like? It would be GM by mob rule.
The only way MMOs have succeeded in the past with RP is for roleplayers to recognise the inherent drawbacks of RP in a game online and adapt to it.
I agree with what you are saying, but I see no real solution to this is private servers, where it is only roleplayers and they create there own adventures. I think old Neverwinter still has some going not sure.
Comments
People aren't playing for that social interaction anymore because they get it a thousand times over elsewhere now. You may want community, but you want it on your own terms. That's a very big difference from back in the day. People literally played 24/7 JUST TO TALK SHIT with people online.
Oh you remember doing this or that in game... but what you really remember was the socialization part. Laughing out load during a Leeroy moment. Cheering when you finally took down a boss. Telling your stories of running naked through the Wetlands as a low level trying to meet up with your friends on the other continent to level with. Talking crap while dueling players outside of Orgrimmar. Sneaking into the opposing factions city to kill their auctioneers, ganking flagged players while they were AFK waiting on a battleground queue. Tales of woe after trying to complete an escort quest... repeatedly... only to find out the reward was literally crap for the effort involved. The battles at Southshore and Nessingwary's camp as players camped other players to incite all out PVP wars. Playing drunk on Friday nights.
None of this required the best gear, best spec, best racials, gold, world firsts, server firsts, max level, mounts, etc. All it required was people wanting to have fun IN SPITE of the game.
It was never the game. It was the birth of social interaction on the internet that drew people in.
When Wow came out there were plenty of primitive facebook like sites out, I am not sure what was big in the US but here in Sweden Lunarstorm was huge and not that unlike FB but with less features.
Now, it was different in games and here the genre did an impact since it was the first genre you actually made friends in, you played with strangers just as much in Quake 2 but you didn' t chat with them while waiting for your tank outside the dungeon.
Still, I think you are wrong, I was there and as soon as people started to get internet for real in 1995 the social aspect of it started rather fast. MMOs were not an early facebook, other things took that form.
Why would "we" need the genre back to 2005-2008s growth? If the genre is marginalized and irrelevant, just play something else.
Heck, that may even be more fun doing something new, rather than playing MMOs with old designs.
Also, some people want MMOs to justify their exorbitant component/device purchases which biases the games.
Much of what people ask for existed in earlier games struggling to survive. Instead of playing them, people are waiting for games in development right now. It's actually quite ironic. It's like the players actually hurt the genre more than the developers.
Players are too fickle, these days. That is why we aren't getting AAA western MMOs. They are too risky because players are too cosmopolitan in a genre that demands stability and belief in the game's development moving forwards.
I could read forums and know that This community isn't worth investing in, because they are too volatile and your game can go from here to zero in a day. It isn't worth it unless you're indie targeting fairly low lowercase benchmarks, crowd funding game development (see Pantheon).
I don't expect Blizzard to develop another MMORPG if they can do what they're planning with OWL, etc.
This is why we have cash shops everywhere. It's almost impossible to do a subscription unless you own some ridiculously popular IP which attracts a stable playerbase. Few developers have that at their disposal.
We need a massive jump in AI or potentially VR(someday).
In the end there are just too many whiners in MMOs that prevent the fun things. WOW tried a few small things like invasions and people leveling complained.
I say get rid of fixed quests and come up with something better and more dynamic.
You say "no", but the bulk of your post say "yes"...... You talk about fun with people, and giving examples !
In the first paragraph, you talk about this is the communication age and in a way people don't need mmorpgs anymore...... I say its better in the communication age. People want a reason to be sociable. More so than ever !
All are new and viable. Sure, they kill MMORPGs .. but that is the point. People want some new .. that are NOT mmorpgs.
They don't need mmorpgs as a reason to be sociable. Don't tell me you don't know about facebook and twitter.
For those MMO players, they became too nomadic to foster confidence in western game developers. This is why most big games have come from Asia over the past decade, and many aren’t that popular here.
Most of the MMOs have died off or failed to maintain viable player based (which would seem suitable for new players).
PUBG is an FPS. So is Overwatch, which was a blatant rip off of a game that preceded it. They aren’t terribly different from Unreal Tournament. The content framing is just different. Hearthstone is a card game. You could play bundled Windows games over a network 15-20 years ago. It’s a graphical representation of DND type card games. Natural evolution from physical to digital - like monopoly.
Warframe me is an FPS. We can talk about destiny and division as well.
None of if those are MMORPG games, and while games steal bits and pieces from each other, all of those games you’ve mentioned are pretty obviously direct in which genre they represent.
They are an evolution of decades-old gaming genres, not some new type of game. You’re making no sense.
There is is no incentive to develop a AAA Western MMO. This player base is too volatile, entitled, and fickle. It’s also quite casual, which feeds into those other issues.
This fannase i think will will be beholden to indies for the foreseeable future, unless Blizzard develops a new MMO (which will take years). I see Blizzard trying to make eSports work to unburden themselves from this community, personally.
Face what ?
In any case, I don't believe that the way forward is trying to rejuvenate the past games with modern graphics. The old versions held aloft as a standard of MMORPG gaming are the same games that lost their lucrative edge over the MMORTS and MMOFPS. I believe that New, for the purposes of this discussion, needs to be new ideas promoting the RPG elements in the game. Mechanisms, game systems, rewards and other ideas based on success of RPing in the game. Maybe even do something drastic, like tying Progression to RP skills.
Sure, a game developer would need to step forward and state "this is what RPing is in this game". I don't know if there is a developer that would take such a radical step away from 'what has gone before', and certainly it would require a different breed of investor. It's not likely to happen in my lifetime, or at least before my 172nd birthday!
But to answer the thread question. Yes, games need something new.
FYI -- It really hurt to give @Nariusseldon that Insightful above.
Logic, my dear, merely enables one to be wrong with great authority.
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
These same people wouldn't do any of those things today. They don't care to talk to anyone in game unless it has some direct benefit to them. They group only because they need the body to meet a queue requirement. As soon as said task is complete, they drop them like a hot tamale... often mid-run if that's all they needed them for.
In a nutshell, the people who still play MMOs today aren't the same people who played them back in the day. They aren't playing them for the same reasons. They are playing them for a different reason. They have an objective in mind and don't want anything to get in the way of that objective. They don't care to interrupt their gameplay to discuss the faults of President Trump or laugh about some newb moment they had when they were level 1.
So no, my post doesn't say yes at all. You read it that way because you always read what you want to read and not what is really being said.
There havn't been much new for a long time, a few of the crowdfunded and indie projects are new but most of them have a very low budget and poor coding.
People did stay a long time with the same game, it is just that they tired of doing the same thing over and over, only less challenging (but prettier). The last thing is a mystery to me, if I want to play the same game over and over they can at least raise the difficulty so it get more interesting, not lower it so things that actually were fun becomes boring.
The genre need a reboot to become interesting again and get out of Wows shadow. Wow did great 10 years ago but it is losing players as much as anything now (even though it started with far more and still have quite a few).
New gameplay & up the difficulty is the way to go, the genre have already tried more of the same over and over. Of course re-releasing something old with modern graphics but the original difficulty wouldn't hurt the genre but it wont work long term.
There is a lot of us missing that old game you could stay in for years and years and still enjoy playing it. I think part of that is the nerfed difficulty but it is as much that you can't keep doing the same thing forever unless you are Sid Meier.
Most of us that played MMOs in the 90s stayed at the same game for a long while back then but even we stay shorter and shorter in the game today, they aren't really made to last anymore.
Look on EQ, you spent months leveling in it and it was fun, a bit grindy at times but still fun.
Today I hit the endgame after 3 weeks and the endgame is usually terrible. The endgame was bad in EQ as well but it didn't really matter since few people spent much time in it.
People enjoy leveling. They don't enjoy running a few heroics and raids over and over (well, most don't). So they run a character or 2 to max level and then quit.
There is of course the PvP but MMO PvP is usually bad until you hit max level and a lot of the PvP fans wont bother getting there, they play genres like Mobas and FPS where you can enjoy yourself without being useless or grind PvE for 3 weeks before starting to play.
If you as a game dev want to make a game where players stay a long time you can't just give them 3 weeks of the gameplay they enjoy and then stuck them hunting for some rare gear.
Classic themepark were all about slowly gaining power in an open world with some dungeons to speed up the leveling a bit and to give you good gear that lasted a while and made survival easier. Making the same game but way easier and faster to run through does not work.
Either you go back to basics or you make something new. I personally fear that the back to basic train has left but I am hopeful enough to at least put a hundred bucks into Pantheon even if I think it might be far too late.
It is to bad Vanguard was so messed up, it could actually have impacted the genre if they had succedeed with it.
I think if Wow would have released with current mechanics we would have picked EQ2 instead. While Wow was easier (besides the endgame) at launch it was still enough about gaining power at a good pace to be really fun to most players. That hasn't been true for a long time, "miracle patch" or no.
Well your examples are bad. That's why I perceived them as positive. Proud moments !
"Cheering when you finally took down a boss"
"Sneaking into the opposing factions city to kill their auctioneers"
"Telling your stories of running naked through the Wetlands"
"The battles at Southshore and Nessingwary's camp as players camped other players to incite all out PVP wars"
These are all examples of creativity......... This was a time where players were given a world to do as you please. Unlike modern WoW where it's a lobby game waiting for a que and talking much more real crap. With the LFD cross realm of today, no one talks to anyone or cares, just a gimmick.
ALL mmorpgs now leave ZERO creativity !!!
Just quietly remove it when no one is looking...oh you already have.
What was missed when RPG went from table top to MMOs? Mainly no GM and no small group of friends that face nearly everything together. Even if you log on with mates, because you are not meeting up to game, you are not all on at the same time, becomes quite difficult.
So the social element is always going to be "looser" even with guilds. Maybe one day we could play with a set of bots, but with friends dropping in an out playing those bots?
Down the line only a sufficiently developed AI is going to solve the GM issue, so that's twenty years away.
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
The term often used for them is MMOFPS, which rather gives the game away.
What about other possibilities, such as things used in social media, to allow the players to GM each other? Even a simple set of Like/Dislike or In-Char/Out-of-Char buttons to 'rate' another's dialog could be made to work as a pseudo-automated GM. That would buy the developers time to build and perfect that AI they aren't already working on.
The developers have already taken the 'create the encounter' and 'run the encounter' aspects from a GM. Invent a new way for players to input their opinions and be rewarded for their ideas and actions in ways beyond simply 'Kill-it-or-die' mechanics. If a game is going to promote Role-Playing, then it needs to reward Role-Playing, no matter how that is defined.
Logic, my dear, merely enables one to be wrong with great authority.
You do know what Twitter is like? It would be GM by mob rule.
The only way MMOs have succeeded in the past with RP is for roleplayers to recognise the inherent drawbacks of RP in a game online and adapt to it.
I agree with what you are saying, but I see no real solution to this is private servers, where it is only roleplayers and they create there own adventures. I think old Neverwinter still has some going not sure.