One thing that most newer games don't have much or any of is a real sense of discovery.
Do you remember in some of the older games when you might find an NPC in an odd location with maybe a short quest line that you would have never run into if you hadn't been snooping around? Games don't have much or any content that is outside the beaten path anymore. There are no more "neat" things to find. Modern games have become either linear or at least predictable. Everything you are intended to find is made easy to find.
This is pretty understandable. Content takes time to create so if you are a developer you naturally don't want any wasted effort. You want to lay things out in such a way that people will find all of it and be entertained as completely as possible. The problem is that real worlds are not like this. Real worlds are jumbled and messy and have to be sorted through. If you create worlds this way players stand the real chance of not finding everything that you made for them. You might waste some of your effort.
Developers need to get over it, because you can't create a sense of "real" discovery without the "real" possibility of someone walking right past it. This is why people love Easter eggs so much. They are neat to find and share with others precisely because you could so easily miss them. If the devs want to recapture possibly the neatest aspect of some of the older games they need to be willing to make worlds that are not so crisp and perfect. They need to be willing to make a world that has content that can be missed. This doesn't mean part of a main story needs to be hidden but it does mean that they need to be willing to work on side stories and short quest lines that could be missed because they are in out of the way places. Quest givers that only spawn once in a while.
I want to play a game for a couple of years, level up several characters though the same areas and on my fifth time though I want to discover something that I had never run into before. I want to discover something that makes me say, "Wow, I never knew that was here."
Originally posted by VikingGamer One thing that most newer games don't have much or any of is a real sense of discovery.
Do you remember in some of the older games when you might find an NPC in an odd location with maybe a short quest line that you would have never run into if you hadn't been snooping around? Games don't have much or any content that is outside the beaten path anymore. There are no more "neat" things to find. Modern games have become either linear or at least predictable. Everything you are intended to find is made easy to find.
This is pretty understandable. Content takes time to create so if you are a developer you naturally don't want any wasted effort. You want to lay things out in such a way that people will find all of it and be entertained as completely as possible. The problem is that real worlds are not like this. Real worlds are jumbled and messy and have to be sorted through. If you create worlds this way players stand the real chance of not finding everything that you made for them. You might waste some of your effort.
Developers need to get over it, because you can't create a sense of "real" discovery without the "real" possibility of someone walking right past it. This is why people love Easter eggs so much. They are neat to find and share with others precisely because you could so easily miss them. If the devs want to recapture possibly the neatest aspect of some of the older games they need to be willing to make worlds that are not so crisp and perfect. They need to be willing to make a world that has content that can be missed. This doesn't mean part of a main story needs to be hidden but it does mean that they need to be willing to work on side stories and short quest lines that could be missed because they are in out of the way places. Quest givers that only spawn once in a while.
I want to play a game for a couple of years, level up several characters though the same areas and on my fifth time though I want to discover something that I had never run into before. I want to discover something that makes me say, "Wow, I never knew that was here."
Yea that is a good point. Because many MMO's are so level focused now, or have linear quest progression, you don't see much of that, and I agree, it is desirable for me too.
Its something that present in the Skyrim and GTA5 games, single player sandboxes that just let you leave the story aside and just wander off and see what else you can do.
After all you can only do combat for so long in any game before it becomes tedious.
FFA Nonconsentual Full Loot PvP ...You know you want it!!
Originally posted by VikingGamer One thing that most newer games don't have much or any of is a real sense of discovery.
Do you remember in some of the older games when you might find an NPC in an odd location with maybe a short quest line that you would have never run into if you hadn't been snooping around? Games don't have much or any content that is outside the beaten path anymore. There are no more "neat" things to find. Modern games have become either linear or at least predictable. Everything you are intended to find is made easy to find.
This is pretty understandable. Content takes time to create so if you are a developer you naturally don't want any wasted effort. You want to lay things out in such a way that people will find all of it and be entertained as completely as possible. The problem is that real worlds are not like this. Real worlds are jumbled and messy and have to be sorted through. If you create worlds this way players stand the real chance of not finding everything that you made for them. You might waste some of your effort.
Developers need to get over it, because you can't create a sense of "real" discovery without the "real" possibility of someone walking right past it. This is why people love Easter eggs so much. They are neat to find and share with others precisely because you could so easily miss them. If the devs want to recapture possibly the neatest aspect of some of the older games they need to be willing to make worlds that are not so crisp and perfect. They need to be willing to make a world that has content that can be missed. This doesn't mean part of a main story needs to be hidden but it does mean that they need to be willing to work on side stories and short quest lines that could be missed because they are in out of the way places. Quest givers that only spawn once in a while.
I want to play a game for a couple of years, level up several characters though the same areas and on my fifth time though I want to discover something that I had never run into before. I want to discover something that makes me say, "Wow, I never knew that was here."
Yea that is a good point. Because many MMO's are so level focused now, or have linear quest progression, you don't see much of that, and I agree, it is desirable for me too.
Its something that present in the Skyrim and GTA5 games, single player sandboxes that just let you leave the story aside and just wander off and see what else you can do.
After all you can only do combat for so long in any game before it becomes tedious.
My personal pet peve (witch just makes me one demographic among many) is the focus on gear/char level as the basis for progression.
Well there you have it, so you are telling all of us that what we have now is the best we can expect. Until hardware improves enough to support the massive amount of programming it will take to change games from having dull and lifeless NPC's, to having them behave, at least with some semblance of rational thought.
I am not a programmer but that's kind of what I thought too.
As Kyleran said:
Pity
IT is not a question of hardware/software it is a question of completely opposing desired results
the exact same encounter a one demographic will want a certain result returned, while another will want something completely different. player characters do not come with handy little flags to tell the AI witch demographic they belong too.
as I stated earlier there are games that do exactly what you say you want but since every current developer is chasing the "all demographics" market the ai has to be toned down to match.
Yea yea I get that. But you are basically saying that things cannot change and therefore will not.
I have to disagree about the can not part.
Well everyone seems to think sandbox player driven content is the way to go but I feel that is also going to fail.
Time will tell.
they won't change as long as games try to fit everyone under the same tent. or have you been asleep over the last decade?
and I never once mentioned sandbox nor was I referring to it. that's just one demographic among many
Hmm a little testy aren't we?
Yes I have done a fair bit of sleeping over the last decade. Blah blah blah your statement is tired as well. Yea its all bout catering to everyone, that is the problem with everything. Sure. But what about solutions. You haven't offered anything in that respect.
I only mentioned Open world sandbox because that seems to be the other style of MMO that people feel will revive the genre.
But you seem to have your own agenda here whatever that is.
FFA Nonconsentual Full Loot PvP ...You know you want it!!
The real reason? Cause they're all the same. STO, AoC, LotRO, Rift, SWTOR, they all play virtually the same, and have the same problems that solo centric instanced quest hub grinding games do.
This column is basically saying "Shame on you for not accepting the declining quality of MMOs! You shouldn't lust over the great games of the past and put unrealistic expectations on MMOs that have millions more in budget and manpower than those MMOs that managed to be great!
No I'm sorry. I will never be okay with WoW and its clones. The genre should march forward, not backward.
Exactly correct. And I agree that Bill's tone was immediately noticeable so I skipped most of the article.
Luckily, i don't need you to like me to enjoy video games. -nariusseldon. In F2P I think it's more a case of the game's trying to play the player's. -laserit
I wonder if posters realize that the people who hit level cap so fast are the ones who play a heck of a lot more than most casual players. Almost non-stop it would seem.
MMO's are not single player games, you should have to team up with others early and often.
Don't cater to casuals. If the game is good casuals with no time will play them anyway. If they only have 2-3 hours a night to play, then MMO's are not for them anymore. It's like trying to keep a band together from high school even though you have a full time job, wife, and kids. Stop being selfish and let it go, it's not for you anymore. You can still play but don't expect everyone else in the band to change their life for you.
Enemies should be more clever and relentless (FFXI enemies could smell, hear, and see) this was brilliant because it's not that hard to implement and it gives the enemies more life.
You should be scared to die (KO). If the game is hard enough the fear factor will add much needed excitement. Ok I'm done, time to play something
I think the big investments of the last few years given by games company's trying to take on WoW are going to dry up soon and that mmorpg's have gotten as big as they are ever going to get at the moment. I would like to see the genre taken back to basics and developed in a direction that doesn't try to please everybody and start embracing the niche markets like EvE has. By new developers who have grown up playing the current crop and making the games they want to play rather than what they are told to make by cash hungry publishers who have no idea of the difference between their arse and their elbows. Ahhhhhh but a boy can dream can't he?
As far as I'm concerned MMORPG.com is part of the problem. They always overhype MMOs and make them sound like they are the next revolutionary thing that will change the whole genre... And they never are. They did it with SWTOR, which was one of my biggest disappointments, they did it with TSW, and they did it with Guild Wars 2.
That is why I am not getting excited or hyped for any of the games coming out. Especially not when MMORPG.com overhypes them.
As far as I'm concerned MMORPG.com is part of the problem. They always overhype MMOs and make them sound like they are the next revolutionary thing that will change the whole genre...
Anyone who gets tricked by PR drone speak deserves to be let down.
For every major disappointment, it was clear months and months before launch exactly what the game would be like. Maybe it's just something you pick up over time, as well as the ability to totally ignore MMO review sites.
The real reason? Cause they're all the same. STO, AoC, LotRO, Rift, SWTOR, they all play virtually the same, and have the same problems that solo centric instanced quest hub grinding games do.
This column is basically saying "Shame on you for not accepting the declining quality of MMOs! You shouldn't lust over the great games of the past and put unrealistic expectations on MMOs that have millions more in budget and manpower than those MMOs that managed to be great!
No I'm sorry. I will never be okay with WoW and its clones. The genre should march forward, not backward.
Exactly correct. And I agree that Bill's tone was immediately noticeable so I skipped most of the article.
it's the usually MMORPG.com puff piece, trying to convince everyone "no, the MMos are really great, we swear!" because that's where their money comes from. The one writer who used to speak against the trend got fired for giving SWTOR a low score.
Originally posted by drivendawn I think the reason is you just can't make everyone happy some people like sandbox some newer themepark, some old school themepark. You can't please everyone with your game it's impossible.
Except only one type of game gets made these days, WoW clones. And those don't end up pleasing anyone.
For me, new MMOs just don't hold up to old MMOs. I don't want to play a game on rails where the glowing line directs me to the next quest giver. My 5 year old nephew can play those (hi SWTOR, WoW, GW2, etc). I also don't like games where everybody pretty much has the same experience. Give me an old game like EQ1 where if you play it with 5 different characters, you're going to have 5 totally different experiences in terms of adventures and areas you level up in. I don't need a boatload of quests there to help me turn off my brain and just "do what the guy tells me to do."
I will be interested in seeing what the new MMOs do. EQN has some nice ideas, but it's too MOBA for me as far as my MMOs go. I want something that fights like original EQ1, but updated to today's technology and incorporating some novel ideas that fit in that type of world. For example, the EQN emergent AI, global quests (shouldn't be automatically successful though), and some of the destructibility is great (too much in EQN). I also like more realistic graphics, unlike the cartoony stuff in EQN. Add to that world crafting gameplay like in SWG or even a world marketplace like Eve had.. and I'll be a lifetime subscriber.
The games that have held me the longest so far are EQ1 (10 years), EQ2 (several years), SWG (until NGE) and Eve (still subscribing). I lasted about a week in WoW, GW2, and a number of similar cartoony style on-rails gaming experiences.
It's because we've had over a decade of MMORPGs and now everyone's expectations are higher than they used to be. Most of the time it's TOO ridiculous. Some people just can't sit and enjoy the game itself without picking it apart. Sure, there's hundreds of P2P, F2P, P2W suckiness out there, but when a game is big enough to have thousands of subs/accounts, it's good enough. I'm not much for GW2, but I would play it if I didn't have very many other options. Tera Online, FFXIV, Rift, Aion, WoW, TSW. All good games in their own way and all worth playing. If I could have something added in my MMORPGs, it would be more character customization, races, and starting zones because rerolling through the same initial story progressions is a little monotonous.
Reason MMOs aren't that great any more is they're all the same pretty much, kill this, kill that from quest giver to quest giver and there isn't much in a way of exploring in these modern games. It's came to the point where people are starting to move away from MMOs or going back to the old ones such as EQ, EQ2 AO that are old and which are becoming popular from what I've seen. I may not bother looking at the new Everquest Beta because I'll know that I will find the last 2 more interesting judging from the stuff Sony is showing us, I'm not impressed how they're ruining the Everquest saga, I do hope I'm wrong and I'll eat my own words.
Another proof that MMOs are losing its popularity is the recent FF 14, lots of people were masturbating over this game and now people are leaving, give it another month or 2 and you'll find that people are bored, its starting to happen already.
For those who want to play a "good" MMO I would suggest trying out the old school ones, if they're not your taste then old off for now, won't be any more decent ones for a while.
Originally posted by r3zs1ckn3ss It's because we've had over a decade of MMORPGs and now everyone's expectations are higher than they used to be.
haha, what? No they aren't. My expectations get lower and lower as I realize the Golden Age MMos aren't coming back until publishers are out of the picture.
MMos have less and less features now than they did years ago. If you talk to WoW players about some of the things old MMos had they'd say "No, the tech isn't there, that's not possible!".
Reason MMOs aren't that great any more is they're all the same pretty much, kill this, kill that. It's came to the point where people are starting to move away from MMOs or going back to the old ones such as EQ, EQ2 AO that are old and which are becoming popular from what I've seen. I may not bother looking at the new Everquest Beta because I'll know that I will find the last 2 more interesting judging from the stuff Sony is showing us, I'm not impressed.
Another proof that MMOs are losing its popularity is the recent FF 14, lots of people were masturbating over this game and now people are leaving, give it another month or 2 and you'll find that people are bored, its starting to happen already.
For those who want to play a "good" MMO I would suggest trying out the old school ones, if they're not your taste then old off for now, won't be any more decent ones for a while.
I'm just going to wait for games like Star Citizen and the Repopulation. Games that don't have to depend on the huge companies for money so won't end up having to listen to the company on how to make their MMO. That's honestly my only hope right now because EverQuest Next is looking like Guild Wars 2 with parkour.
It is simply a case of developers making games for profit and without passion for their game.There are other factors like old school producers who can't think outside the box and even if they could,their peers would question the profit/cost before accepting any new ideas.
With the cost of making a really good game so high,there is a very small handful of developers capable of doing it.Those devs are not pushing each other with QUALITY but instead cost saving gimmicks,either telling us how their game is cheaper to play or how they can save money or both.
I feel it will be a long time before any developer jumps to the forefront with a top notch effort,i expect a lot more of the same old,just new marketing gimmicks.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
Reason MMOs aren't that great any more is they're all the same pretty much, kill this, kill that. It's came to the point where people are starting to move away from MMOs or going back to the old ones such as EQ, EQ2 AO that are old and which are becoming popular from what I've seen. I may not bother looking at the new Everquest Beta because I'll know that I will find the last 2 more interesting judging from the stuff Sony is showing us, I'm not impressed.
Another proof that MMOs are losing its popularity is the recent FF 14, lots of people were masturbating over this game and now people are leaving, give it another month or 2 and you'll find that people are bored, its starting to happen already.
For those who want to play a "good" MMO I would suggest trying out the old school ones, if they're not your taste then old off for now, won't be any more decent ones for a while.
I'm just going to wait for games like Star Citizen and the Repopulation. Games that don't have to depend on the huge companies for money so end up having to listen to the company on how to make their MMO. That's honestly my only hope right now because EverQuest Next is looking like Guild Wars 2 with parkour.
Exactly, Guild wars 2 was the only different MMO out there which made a slight difference to the industry but now SoE wants to jump onto the wagon with Anets ideas and slap it onto their Everquest Next, they're ruining EQ's Reputation. .
I think Star Citizen and the Repopulation seem promising and might start off a chain reaction with in the MMO industry, hopefully for the better but if big companies are wanting to make more MMOs they really should make something different and stop making copies of copies and bring up different, unique ideas. Rift for example is an alright game now and has improved BUT when it first launched it was just a quick buck WoW copy and lost players with in few months of release.
Originally posted by drivendawn I think the reason is you just can't make everyone happy some people like sandbox some newer themepark, some old school themepark. You can't please everyone with your game it's impossible.
Except only one type of game gets made these days, WoW clones. And those don't end up pleasing anyone.
Sure whatever you say man.
If someone wanted WoW they'd play WoW.
They're obviously not pleasing anyone, because they're financial failures.
Let's try harder to make what we lovingly call "virtual worlds" actually feel like worlds.
Especially this. This is lacking in many modern MMO that start to feel like clones after other clones. On the other hand GTA Online feels more alive and vibrant then any mmo on the market right now. Stop making clones and start to imagine new worlds that we want to "live" in and go on from there to imagine ways to entertain ourselves in that world and adventures to be enjoyed. I want to feel immersed again instead of arriving in mmo's that have the same checklist of features that all the other mmo's had but lack an imaginative and original scope.
Agreed here! But the vocal majority "don't need no stinkin' worlds!" (One poster comes quickly to mind here.)
Originally posted by Kyleran I agree, no one is ever going to make a game exactly the way "I" want it. but would it hurt to have a few more options than standard theme park #234 and under funded Indy title (theme park or sandbox) #67?I'm just tired of the current options that are out there, and yes, for the record I did try a lot of titles both AAA and Indy and find the fun in them. Ended up spending anywhere from 1 - 3 months in each, and for the game hoppers this is great, goes well with their play style.But for the same reason I read very long novels instead of short stories, I prefer longer, more engaging MMORPGs where I might spend 6 months to 5 years in the same virtual world (perhaps on and off) and as of late, there's been few titles in this design category.Just like you really can't create a game with the perfect blend of PVE and PVP without making tradeoffs somewhere, I don't think you can make a title designed for long term retention and try to make it interesting enough for the short term game players out there at the same time.Developers keep trying, and so far the majority of the designs seem to favor the short term customer, would be nice to see a title or two designed a bit differently.Yeah, I know, it won't sell enough to justify the cost.Pity.
In total agreement here
- Al
Personally the only modern MMORPG trend that annoys me is the idea that MMOs need to be designed in a way to attract people who don't actually like MMOs. Which to me makes about as much sense as someone trying to figure out a way to get vegetarians to eat at their steakhouse. - FARGIN_WAR
I'd say the problem with MMORPGs is pretty simple. MMORPGs barely resemble MMORPGs anymore and this trend has been going on for years.
When you design a largely single player game with a little bit of slapped on grouping and call some of that end game and call the overall thing an MMORPG, you haven't designed an MMORPG, you've designed a glorified single player game.
MMORPGs originally were about challenge, danger, failure meaning something, and about grouping ALL the time. Solo was often either not possible or so woefully inefficient that it was only something you did rarely - kind of like what grouping is for so many modern MMORPG players.
The group vs solo dynamic has completely reversed. MMORPGs used to be all about grouping ALL the time - now they are about solo almost all the time. Grouping is now optional.
The challenge level has completely flipped too. It used to be hard just to do the eary levels. It used to take months to level to cap. Now if players aren't making 5-10 levels a day doing mundane trivial crap they spaz out and have an ADD seizure.
The main thing that changed is the target audience. MMORPGs used to be created for more hardcore RPG fans - or I should say, that's what they ended up attracting - and we loved it. Smart players who thrive on challenge and danger who enjoyed the social side of grouping a lot - and the resulting strong community.
For no good reason MMORPG designers decided they needed to go for "broader appeal" and appeal to "casual gamers" even though MMORPG gameplay wasn't suitable for that. The answer of course, was to mutilate the games and genre. Everything got easier, dumbed down, and the whole genre shifted from grouping to solo.
FFXIV is kind of the summation of this - it's so utterly stripped down, dumbed down, and idiotically easy that it's an insult to the intelligence and the genre. And people love it, or so they say, just IMO, it's the wrong people. When the soloists and people who can barely eat without getting any on the bib love your game...what does that say about your so-called MMORPG?
There was never anything wrong with the original MMORPG formula or games. In fact, most of them are still chugging along and sub-based while the vast majority of MMORPGs with the solo ez-mode style of gameplay are now F2P, limp along, and are a shallow shadow of their intended greatness. But hey, you can sell a couple million units and have a large number of players try your game that everyone considers a failure....that counts for...something...right?
So yeah, we look back to the older MMORPGs and wish things were different - because they are different. MMORPGs aren't made the same any more and some of us wish SOMEBODY would make an MMORPG that was...actually an MMORPG...something with challenge, where failure means something, and where grouping is mandatory - not optional. Soloists, you can play single player games where you belong - k, thanks (you can always hop on to twitter to spew hate for lack of public chat).
When all you're stuck with are bloated and glorified online single player games with minimal and optional grouping, where even when you TRY to play them like old MMORPGs, the games with their speed leveling, ultra easy content, and xp/gear welfare handed out like crazy, these games just don't keep you busy for long. I mean, you can't really group outside of instances in most newer MMORPGs since even just a duo completely overwhelms solo idiot mode content designed for the least common denominator playing the weakest class in the game.
The companies - they shoot themselves. They design these fast playing games. The spend YEARS making single player content players can obliterate in no time. And they can't possibly crank out more content post release fast enough to keep players busy. So once that couple of months of content is exhausted and there's nothing to do, those million+ box sales turn into a MUCH smaller number of people willing to stick around and hope you somehow deliver content. Then your game is F2P, sells out its soul, and is a joke, since F2P MMORPGs are trash.
All MMORPGs rely on progression and the endless gear carrot to keep players around and willing to pay a sub, but when your game is stupid easy and plays stupid fast, players blast thru it way faster than you can ever keep up with as a developer. It's BAD design.
The older MMORPGs had a much slower pace. It took longer to accomplish stuff. Even leveling took months instead of days. Devs had way more time to put content out at a sustainable pace. Most of those games, like EQ, didn't even do content patches - no need, you'd get your yearly xpac and be set for the next year. That kind of thing could never work for the fast food style MMORPGs.
The solution to me isn't to try to innovate new ways for soloists to tug it faster - it's to return the the genre's core - bring back challenge, bring back heavy grouping, and extend the life of the games. Surely game designers are smart enough to come up with some ways to tweak the ancient formulas and innovate more ways to do grouping all the time with minimal solo.
This is why games like FFXIV and soon to be EQN are such profound disappointments to me. FFXI was one of the originals and FFXIV is a joke compared to it. EQ is the mack grand daddy of the genre, and EQN is going to incorporate some potentially amazing ideas like procedurally generated content (potentially infinite "replay" value) yet EQN will amost certainly be all about solo and a slap in the face of its namesake.
Designers need to change their approach. Instead of using WoW as the basis for your game design and moving forward from there into single player gaming, go back to EQ and older MMORPGs and use THEM as your starting point for design. Start with the brutality of an untamed wild, the challenge of simply leveling, the even bigger challenge of dungeons/dungeon zones, and mandatory grouping just to survive and level - and tweak from there.
There never was that many big MMORPGs back in the day, just a handful of the best that we remember. There's lots of room to tweak from THAT point in MMORPG history. Clearly, the many variations on solo idiot mode mostly yielded the same result - play fast, play dumb, players buy in, players bail out early, game goes F2P = fail.
IMO, a big problem is that instead of going ALL the way back to the still viable roots and improving on what was, too many designers are just continuing the evoloution of the solo side of the genre - and that side is the DARK side - it's crap - it's single player gaming, not MMORPG.
Ultimately if casuals don't have the time to play, or if the games are too hard core for some people to handle, that's ok. The MMORPG genre never needed such people to get started, and the gameplay was vastly superior back then even in its roughest possible forms, if some players have to be alientated for MMORPGs to be returned to glory, so be it. I'm not sure why the MMORPG genre decided to be the genre to bend over backwards to try and fail to be the genre that caters to everyone, when most gaming genres stick to their cores.
So yeah, we're always waiting for the next big thing. That's what happens when so-called MMORPGs take 3-5 years to make but are so poorly designed that they end up yielding 3-5 months of content and gameplay, if that. 3-5 years vs 3-5 months leaves a lot of time to wait for the next one.
I didn't even last that long with FFXIV - it's the first premium MMORPG I've ever bought and played where I didn't sub for a few months - there's no point - the game is clearly not worth a sub and you can either be done with it or close to it within the free time. I don't have the numbers but I'd bet that I've subbed for shorter and shorter periods to every MMORPG I've played since WoW. I lasted 6-7 months in Rift (granted, only left it to play SWTOR, not because I'd had enough). Lasted 3-4 months in SWTOR and GW2. Maybe 2 months with TSW. Maybe 1 month total including phase 4 with FFXIV. The more solo oriented MMORPGs get, the less they are worth playing for any length of time. All of these games suffer from way too much solo idiot mode, way too little grouping, way too little endgame, no way for devs to crank out content fast enough (GW2 is different, but it's not really attempting to be an MMORPG, it's a blatant single player/pure solo game).
I suppose some damned dev will one up this and come out with an MMORPG you can finish in 2 weeks, because MMORPG devs just seem to not get it. MMORPGs are not single player games and as long as you design them that way, they will exist that way. Singple player games aren't worth a sub and the only thing special about an MMORPG vs a single player game at this point is that one is online full time, costs a ton more to make, generally has lower quality content than a dedicated single player RPG, and has a lot of people playing it that you'd rather not ever have to encounter.
Premium MMORPGs do not feature built-in cheating via cash for gold pay 2 win. PLAY to win or don't play.
Someone needs to make a game for us hardcore players that want a virtual world to play around in. You wont have as many subscribers as say wow, but just make it cheap with good hardcore pve content. Minecraft has an insane amount of players and some of the worst looking graphics of any game not on an atari. Dont spend $100 million on pretty particle effects, just give us fun gameplay we can adventure with our friends and a lot of content to explore .
Comments
Do you remember in some of the older games when you might find an NPC in an odd location with maybe a short quest line that you would have never run into if you hadn't been snooping around? Games don't have much or any content that is outside the beaten path anymore. There are no more "neat" things to find. Modern games have become either linear or at least predictable. Everything you are intended to find is made easy to find.
This is pretty understandable. Content takes time to create so if you are a developer you naturally don't want any wasted effort. You want to lay things out in such a way that people will find all of it and be entertained as completely as possible. The problem is that real worlds are not like this. Real worlds are jumbled and messy and have to be sorted through. If you create worlds this way players stand the real chance of not finding everything that you made for them. You might waste some of your effort.
Developers need to get over it, because you can't create a sense of "real" discovery without the "real" possibility of someone walking right past it. This is why people love Easter eggs so much. They are neat to find and share with others precisely because you could so easily miss them. If the devs want to recapture possibly the neatest aspect of some of the older games they need to be willing to make worlds that are not so crisp and perfect. They need to be willing to make a world that has content that can be missed. This doesn't mean part of a main story needs to be hidden but it does mean that they need to be willing to work on side stories and short quest lines that could be missed because they are in out of the way places. Quest givers that only spawn once in a while.
I want to play a game for a couple of years, level up several characters though the same areas and on my fifth time though I want to discover something that I had never run into before. I want to discover something that makes me say, "Wow, I never knew that was here."
All die, so die well.
Yea that is a good point. Because many MMO's are so level focused now, or have linear quest progression, you don't see much of that, and I agree, it is desirable for me too.
Its something that present in the Skyrim and GTA5 games, single player sandboxes that just let you leave the story aside and just wander off and see what else you can do.
After all you can only do combat for so long in any game before it becomes tedious.
FFA Nonconsentual Full Loot PvP ...You know you want it!!
My personal pet peve (witch just makes me one demographic among many) is the focus on gear/char level as the basis for progression.
Hmm a little testy aren't we?
Yes I have done a fair bit of sleeping over the last decade. Blah blah blah your statement is tired as well. Yea its all bout catering to everyone, that is the problem with everything. Sure. But what about solutions. You haven't offered anything in that respect.
I only mentioned Open world sandbox because that seems to be the other style of MMO that people feel will revive the genre.
But you seem to have your own agenda here whatever that is.
FFA Nonconsentual Full Loot PvP ...You know you want it!!
Exactly correct. And I agree that Bill's tone was immediately noticeable so I skipped most of the article.
Luckily, i don't need you to like me to enjoy video games. -nariusseldon.
In F2P I think it's more a case of the game's trying to play the player's. -laserit
I wonder if posters realize that the people who hit level cap so fast are the ones who play a heck of a lot more than most casual players. Almost non-stop it would seem.
MMO's are not single player games, you should have to team up with others early and often.
Don't cater to casuals. If the game is good casuals with no time will play them anyway. If they only have 2-3 hours a night to play, then MMO's are not for them anymore. It's like trying to keep a band together from high school even though you have a full time job, wife, and kids. Stop being selfish and let it go, it's not for you anymore. You can still play but don't expect everyone else in the band to change their life for you.
Enemies should be more clever and relentless (FFXI enemies could smell, hear, and see) this was brilliant because it's not that hard to implement and it gives the enemies more life.
You should be scared to die (KO). If the game is hard enough the fear factor will add much needed excitement. Ok I'm done, time to play something
A good read Bill.
I think the big investments of the last few years given by games company's trying to take on WoW are going to dry up soon and that mmorpg's have gotten as big as they are ever going to get at the moment. I would like to see the genre taken back to basics and developed in a direction that doesn't try to please everybody and start embracing the niche markets like EvE has. By new developers who have grown up playing the current crop and making the games they want to play rather than what they are told to make by cash hungry publishers who have no idea of the difference between their arse and their elbows. Ahhhhhh but a boy can dream can't he?
As far as I'm concerned MMORPG.com is part of the problem. They always overhype MMOs and make them sound like they are the next revolutionary thing that will change the whole genre... And they never are. They did it with SWTOR, which was one of my biggest disappointments, they did it with TSW, and they did it with Guild Wars 2.
That is why I am not getting excited or hyped for any of the games coming out. Especially not when MMORPG.com overhypes them.
Smile
Anyone who gets tricked by PR drone speak deserves to be let down.
For every major disappointment, it was clear months and months before launch exactly what the game would be like. Maybe it's just something you pick up over time, as well as the ability to totally ignore MMO review sites.
it's the usually MMORPG.com puff piece, trying to convince everyone "no, the MMos are really great, we swear!" because that's where their money comes from. The one writer who used to speak against the trend got fired for giving SWTOR a low score.
Except only one type of game gets made these days, WoW clones. And those don't end up pleasing anyone.
For me, new MMOs just don't hold up to old MMOs. I don't want to play a game on rails where the glowing line directs me to the next quest giver. My 5 year old nephew can play those (hi SWTOR, WoW, GW2, etc). I also don't like games where everybody pretty much has the same experience. Give me an old game like EQ1 where if you play it with 5 different characters, you're going to have 5 totally different experiences in terms of adventures and areas you level up in. I don't need a boatload of quests there to help me turn off my brain and just "do what the guy tells me to do."
I will be interested in seeing what the new MMOs do. EQN has some nice ideas, but it's too MOBA for me as far as my MMOs go. I want something that fights like original EQ1, but updated to today's technology and incorporating some novel ideas that fit in that type of world. For example, the EQN emergent AI, global quests (shouldn't be automatically successful though), and some of the destructibility is great (too much in EQN). I also like more realistic graphics, unlike the cartoony stuff in EQN. Add to that world crafting gameplay like in SWG or even a world marketplace like Eve had.. and I'll be a lifetime subscriber.
The games that have held me the longest so far are EQ1 (10 years), EQ2 (several years), SWG (until NGE) and Eve (still subscribing). I lasted about a week in WoW, GW2, and a number of similar cartoony style on-rails gaming experiences.
Getting too old for this $&17!
Reason MMOs aren't that great any more is they're all the same pretty much, kill this, kill that from quest giver to quest giver and there isn't much in a way of exploring in these modern games. It's came to the point where people are starting to move away from MMOs or going back to the old ones such as EQ, EQ2 AO that are old and which are becoming popular from what I've seen. I may not bother looking at the new Everquest Beta because I'll know that I will find the last 2 more interesting judging from the stuff Sony is showing us, I'm not impressed how they're ruining the Everquest saga, I do hope I'm wrong and I'll eat my own words.
Another proof that MMOs are losing its popularity is the recent FF 14, lots of people were masturbating over this game and now people are leaving, give it another month or 2 and you'll find that people are bored, its starting to happen already.
For those who want to play a "good" MMO I would suggest trying out the old school ones, if they're not your taste then old off for now, won't be any more decent ones for a while.
haha, what? No they aren't. My expectations get lower and lower as I realize the Golden Age MMos aren't coming back until publishers are out of the picture.
MMos have less and less features now than they did years ago. If you talk to WoW players about some of the things old MMos had they'd say "No, the tech isn't there, that's not possible!".
An MMO without instances? IMPOSSIBLE
400 man sieges? IMPOSSIBLE!
A mob ecology, live events? IMPOSSIBLE!
I'm just going to wait for games like Star Citizen and the Repopulation. Games that don't have to depend on the huge companies for money so won't end up having to listen to the company on how to make their MMO. That's honestly my only hope right now because EverQuest Next is looking like Guild Wars 2 with parkour.
Smile
It is simply a case of developers making games for profit and without passion for their game.There are other factors like old school producers who can't think outside the box and even if they could,their peers would question the profit/cost before accepting any new ideas.
With the cost of making a really good game so high,there is a very small handful of developers capable of doing it.Those devs are not pushing each other with QUALITY but instead cost saving gimmicks,either telling us how their game is cheaper to play or how they can save money or both.
I feel it will be a long time before any developer jumps to the forefront with a top notch effort,i expect a lot more of the same old,just new marketing gimmicks.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
Exactly, Guild wars 2 was the only different MMO out there which made a slight difference to the industry but now SoE wants to jump onto the wagon with Anets ideas and slap it onto their Everquest Next, they're ruining EQ's Reputation. .
I think Star Citizen and the Repopulation seem promising and might start off a chain reaction with in the MMO industry, hopefully for the better but if big companies are wanting to make more MMOs they really should make something different and stop making copies of copies and bring up different, unique ideas. Rift for example is an alright game now and has improved BUT when it first launched it was just a quick buck WoW copy and lost players with in few months of release.
If someone wanted WoW they'd play WoW.
They're obviously not pleasing anyone, because they're financial failures.
- Al
Personally the only modern MMORPG trend that annoys me is the idea that MMOs need to be designed in a way to attract people who don't actually like MMOs. Which to me makes about as much sense as someone trying to figure out a way to get vegetarians to eat at their steakhouse.- FARGIN_WAR
I'd say the problem with MMORPGs is pretty simple. MMORPGs barely resemble MMORPGs anymore and this trend has been going on for years.
When you design a largely single player game with a little bit of slapped on grouping and call some of that end game and call the overall thing an MMORPG, you haven't designed an MMORPG, you've designed a glorified single player game.
MMORPGs originally were about challenge, danger, failure meaning something, and about grouping ALL the time. Solo was often either not possible or so woefully inefficient that it was only something you did rarely - kind of like what grouping is for so many modern MMORPG players.
The group vs solo dynamic has completely reversed. MMORPGs used to be all about grouping ALL the time - now they are about solo almost all the time. Grouping is now optional.
The challenge level has completely flipped too. It used to be hard just to do the eary levels. It used to take months to level to cap. Now if players aren't making 5-10 levels a day doing mundane trivial crap they spaz out and have an ADD seizure.
The main thing that changed is the target audience. MMORPGs used to be created for more hardcore RPG fans - or I should say, that's what they ended up attracting - and we loved it. Smart players who thrive on challenge and danger who enjoyed the social side of grouping a lot - and the resulting strong community.
For no good reason MMORPG designers decided they needed to go for "broader appeal" and appeal to "casual gamers" even though MMORPG gameplay wasn't suitable for that. The answer of course, was to mutilate the games and genre. Everything got easier, dumbed down, and the whole genre shifted from grouping to solo.
FFXIV is kind of the summation of this - it's so utterly stripped down, dumbed down, and idiotically easy that it's an insult to the intelligence and the genre. And people love it, or so they say, just IMO, it's the wrong people. When the soloists and people who can barely eat without getting any on the bib love your game...what does that say about your so-called MMORPG?
There was never anything wrong with the original MMORPG formula or games. In fact, most of them are still chugging along and sub-based while the vast majority of MMORPGs with the solo ez-mode style of gameplay are now F2P, limp along, and are a shallow shadow of their intended greatness. But hey, you can sell a couple million units and have a large number of players try your game that everyone considers a failure....that counts for...something...right?
So yeah, we look back to the older MMORPGs and wish things were different - because they are different. MMORPGs aren't made the same any more and some of us wish SOMEBODY would make an MMORPG that was...actually an MMORPG...something with challenge, where failure means something, and where grouping is mandatory - not optional. Soloists, you can play single player games where you belong - k, thanks (you can always hop on to twitter to spew hate for lack of public chat).
When all you're stuck with are bloated and glorified online single player games with minimal and optional grouping, where even when you TRY to play them like old MMORPGs, the games with their speed leveling, ultra easy content, and xp/gear welfare handed out like crazy, these games just don't keep you busy for long. I mean, you can't really group outside of instances in most newer MMORPGs since even just a duo completely overwhelms solo idiot mode content designed for the least common denominator playing the weakest class in the game.
The companies - they shoot themselves. They design these fast playing games. The spend YEARS making single player content players can obliterate in no time. And they can't possibly crank out more content post release fast enough to keep players busy. So once that couple of months of content is exhausted and there's nothing to do, those million+ box sales turn into a MUCH smaller number of people willing to stick around and hope you somehow deliver content. Then your game is F2P, sells out its soul, and is a joke, since F2P MMORPGs are trash.
All MMORPGs rely on progression and the endless gear carrot to keep players around and willing to pay a sub, but when your game is stupid easy and plays stupid fast, players blast thru it way faster than you can ever keep up with as a developer. It's BAD design.
The older MMORPGs had a much slower pace. It took longer to accomplish stuff. Even leveling took months instead of days. Devs had way more time to put content out at a sustainable pace. Most of those games, like EQ, didn't even do content patches - no need, you'd get your yearly xpac and be set for the next year. That kind of thing could never work for the fast food style MMORPGs.
The solution to me isn't to try to innovate new ways for soloists to tug it faster - it's to return the the genre's core - bring back challenge, bring back heavy grouping, and extend the life of the games. Surely game designers are smart enough to come up with some ways to tweak the ancient formulas and innovate more ways to do grouping all the time with minimal solo.
This is why games like FFXIV and soon to be EQN are such profound disappointments to me. FFXI was one of the originals and FFXIV is a joke compared to it. EQ is the mack grand daddy of the genre, and EQN is going to incorporate some potentially amazing ideas like procedurally generated content (potentially infinite "replay" value) yet EQN will amost certainly be all about solo and a slap in the face of its namesake.
Designers need to change their approach. Instead of using WoW as the basis for your game design and moving forward from there into single player gaming, go back to EQ and older MMORPGs and use THEM as your starting point for design. Start with the brutality of an untamed wild, the challenge of simply leveling, the even bigger challenge of dungeons/dungeon zones, and mandatory grouping just to survive and level - and tweak from there.
There never was that many big MMORPGs back in the day, just a handful of the best that we remember. There's lots of room to tweak from THAT point in MMORPG history. Clearly, the many variations on solo idiot mode mostly yielded the same result - play fast, play dumb, players buy in, players bail out early, game goes F2P = fail.
IMO, a big problem is that instead of going ALL the way back to the still viable roots and improving on what was, too many designers are just continuing the evoloution of the solo side of the genre - and that side is the DARK side - it's crap - it's single player gaming, not MMORPG.
Ultimately if casuals don't have the time to play, or if the games are too hard core for some people to handle, that's ok. The MMORPG genre never needed such people to get started, and the gameplay was vastly superior back then even in its roughest possible forms, if some players have to be alientated for MMORPGs to be returned to glory, so be it. I'm not sure why the MMORPG genre decided to be the genre to bend over backwards to try and fail to be the genre that caters to everyone, when most gaming genres stick to their cores.
So yeah, we're always waiting for the next big thing. That's what happens when so-called MMORPGs take 3-5 years to make but are so poorly designed that they end up yielding 3-5 months of content and gameplay, if that. 3-5 years vs 3-5 months leaves a lot of time to wait for the next one.
I didn't even last that long with FFXIV - it's the first premium MMORPG I've ever bought and played where I didn't sub for a few months - there's no point - the game is clearly not worth a sub and you can either be done with it or close to it within the free time. I don't have the numbers but I'd bet that I've subbed for shorter and shorter periods to every MMORPG I've played since WoW. I lasted 6-7 months in Rift (granted, only left it to play SWTOR, not because I'd had enough). Lasted 3-4 months in SWTOR and GW2. Maybe 2 months with TSW. Maybe 1 month total including phase 4 with FFXIV. The more solo oriented MMORPGs get, the less they are worth playing for any length of time. All of these games suffer from way too much solo idiot mode, way too little grouping, way too little endgame, no way for devs to crank out content fast enough (GW2 is different, but it's not really attempting to be an MMORPG, it's a blatant single player/pure solo game).
I suppose some damned dev will one up this and come out with an MMORPG you can finish in 2 weeks, because MMORPG devs just seem to not get it. MMORPGs are not single player games and as long as you design them that way, they will exist that way. Singple player games aren't worth a sub and the only thing special about an MMORPG vs a single player game at this point is that one is online full time, costs a ton more to make, generally has lower quality content than a dedicated single player RPG, and has a lot of people playing it that you'd rather not ever have to encounter.
Premium MMORPGs do not feature built-in cheating via cash for gold pay 2 win. PLAY to win or don't play.
Not all who wander are lost...