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What is missing from the recent crop of MMORPG's?
LittleBoot
Member Posts: 326
For me it is any sense of depth or complexity, combined with a lack of community. In fact I would summarise it as follows: -
1. Game play has become simplified, and twitch does not make a game harder, it just requires more attention than I can give to an MMO which requires many hours of game play. I have other things I need to be doing.
2. Mechanics are solo-centric; you sit in a hub waiting for an event to pop. All other areas of the map are obsolete once you have passed that level.
3. Levels persist, but in a diluted manner, you can alter your level on a whim or assist others; all sorts of mechanics have been introduced that make levels entirely pointless; yet no-one has had the balls to remove them entirely.
4. I know you should make your own social experience; but this is only part of the story. A game needs to give you a reason to socialise and most modern games do precisely the opposite.
5. The same old tired questing mechanics are rolled out time and time again but given new names (GW2 is a prime example) to try to hide the utter tedium involved in repeating the same old content we have been playing through for years.
6. I could go on...
So what is missing in new MMO's for you?
Comments
Everything has changed. EVERYTHING. The internet, people, how games are made, budgets, etc etc etc...In EQ1 all communication was over chat. Remeber Roger Wilco? That was the first voice chat I used. I didn't use Youtube, forums and wikis to get information, I barely knew how to use the internet.
I played with a 15" screen, basic keyboard and mouse. No Razer Naga or 1080p 120hz 3D widescreen. I bought games in boxes, at game stores and burned on CDs! There were only two MMOs on the market (to my knowledge) Everquest and Asheron's Call.
Challenge that isn't pointlessly incremental or trivial.
I like to hit a brick wall in the quest line and then left to my own devices to overcome it. Do I gear up? Do I level up? Do I team up?
Like you said, games now just seem to make your stats whatever they need to be to play the content. Sooooo pointless.
Path of Exile has my attention right now because of this reason. In Merciless difficulty, things are getting... difficult. Very much so. I have all the options available in gaming though to overcome a tough boss that I might be dealing with.
I can team up.
I can gear up by trading, looting, or crafting better gear.
I can level up my main level or my skill gems.
I can switch skills to something that maybe takes advantage of the boss's weaknesses.
I can just learn to friggin play better.
Any of these paths help me overcome the boss. I tend to do #2 and #3 because I am not much of a twitch player so I'm too lazy to manage 2 aura's, mines, traps, curses etc especially with teammates. Somebody who's quick could achieve the same content at 5-8 levels under me with ease.
So all this isn't rocket science and I can't find it anywhere in MMORPG's.
If ANY dev is listening the one main component missing and SHOULD be number one on the list is an ECO system.Then we need to get the NPC's more involved,problem is that takes code per each and devs right now are not into hard work,they are into cheap lost cost gimmicks.
Anyone else noticed Blizzard all a sudden bombarded the market with games and xpacs right before Christmas?
Point is quality is being tossed right out the window right now,the current trend is very low cost ,low risk ideas that also run very cheaply so it can support f2p.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
its heart , these devs and the games they make now have no heart ...
Devs from the orginal crop of mmos wre doing it for the love of the game, of building a world that lives and breathes for you, to live or die in , true artists that believe in there vision , and they all had success with it..
Like many of the original groundbreakers created this genre, Garriot and Long with UO wanted to create a world to mold "your story" or Brad McQuaid with EQ remember "You are in our World Now " slogan , and you were, it was a dream a vision of love for these guys, a true adventure for them just building it im sure,And Turbine with AC , we were all just blown away by this living World to discover ,explore and die in .. All labors of love , true imagination and creativity , now all the devs use there imagination and creativity to find new and faster ways into your wallet , with cheap heartless money grab games ...
Complexity, Scope, World and Community.
I don't find games are less complex, I just find that my expections keep rising.
Yes, old mechanics are often streamlined or simplified, but that ignores all new content being added.
What I miss most about old MMOs is really something that wasn't so much in the design of those games per se, but in nature of the internet back in those days. That thing was anonymity. The line of connection between your character and real life persona was all but severed, and as a result you really did begin to think of yourself not as the person you are in real life, but as the hero represented in the game, and other people related to your as that hero. The paradox was, in those days, despite the fundamental anonymity of the internet, social interaction was much more of an integral part of the gameplay.
On the other hand, as voice chat, casual gamers, and rampant alts began to flood the genre, and people began to relate to one another NOT primarily through the medium of characters, but instead chose to relate to the person behind the keyboard, the games suddenly and ironically took a definite turn away from social play and began to emphasize the importance of being solo-friendly. It was as if this new ever-present awareness that there is someone behind the keyboard made everyone less inclined to interact with anyone they didn't know. Social gaming began to become more and more confined to guildmates and real life friends and family. You were who you are in real life, playing a character in a game, a character no one wanted to relate to unless they at least had some sense of who you were in real life.
I miss being able to become my avatar hero and having people relate to me through that persona. That was in large part why, for me, the old games were terrifically more immersive than the new. And though the new games have done things to contribute to this erosion of immersion for me, an equal burden lies with the online community of gamers, the influx of casuals, and shifting emphasis in the larger internet culture away from anonymity toward egoic representation and social networking, all of which have influenced moving mmorpg gaming decidedly away from roleplay immersion, in my view.
I hadn't really thought about this before but agree entirely. Also guilds who met in earlier games often migrate en masse and operate a closed door policy.
However, I am rarely with a game long enough for it to matter in recent years.
ArcheAge, Black Desert and Bless videos InporylemQQ Youtube
It is a bit of a shame that everything is defined by its monetary value these days. Even when you buy a house, the price you pay factors in any money you might make should you extend and sell it on; what happened to just having a home?
Obviously games need to make money, but it feels like they are built by the men in suits these days rather than the gamers.
a) lack of replayability. WoW had nearly a decade ago six starting zones to choose from, and you could replay through the content several times without visiting the same zone twice. More modern MMORPGs like Rift got one starting zone per faction, and no choices where to level up, at all. If I play more than one character per faction, I'm forced to go through exactly the same content again.
b) exploration. There is none in most modern MMORPGs. No "where does this path lead to? Let's follow it!", or "there seems to be a city in the far distance, let's check it out!". You just follow one path and that's it.
c) item shop. After five minutes of playing your bank tabs and backpacks are filled up, and you are supposed to pay 20$ to fix that.
d) Fast travel. Too much of it. If 90% of the players can travel to any zone at any time at near instant speed, this will result in empty barren worlds. You could as well play a single player game.
c) Lack of communication. Arrows always pointing you into the right direction, the game sometimes even moving your character automatically to the area where you want to get to. Communication is not necessary anymore. Why talk to other players? There are no questions. This turns the game into a single player game, with just some oddly behaving bots running around.
d) Crafting. Sucks in most MMORPGs.
e) No creativity. A new MMORPG comes up? Let's see. What classes we got? Oh, Warrior with an ability that deals some extra damage, a rogue that can stealth, and some ranged dude with bow and arrow that probably got something to do with animals. Yawn.
Let's play Fallen Earth (blind, 300 episodes)
Let's play Guild Wars 2 (blind, 45 episodes)
It feels that way because that is exactly what is happening.
The problem isn't that games want to make money, if money were the only issue there wouldn't be an issue. The problem is that big business basically has the mindset of an old person, and an old person prefers their money come in a safe and reliable trickle.
Old people don't take risks, they invest their money in safe places and sit back and enjoy what they have, they don't seek more. That is, in a nutshell, precisely the mindset shared by big companies. They know this or that game won't start a revolution in gaming, but it doesn't have to, it just needs to make that small return on their investment and that is enough win so they can continue to enjoy the life of luxury without any drama. Most of the owners of those companies are literally old farts, and the men with suits all work for them, and the game developer geeks all work for the men with suits.
Almost all the problems spring out of the success of World of Warcraft. Don't get me wrong Warcraft had many strong qualities. But the one 'takeaway' that developers had was that 'hand-holding' = money.
Thus in even the best modern MMOs we have excessive handholding which is entirely different then the pre-warcraft MMOs.
This hand holding - it takes away immersion. It takes away community. It takes away any sense of accomplishment the player might get from the MMO. It's all in how it plays out..
For example in EQ there was no 'assurance' that with play time you would reach awesome levels of power. Many players would not - if you didn't make allies, pick the right class, go to the right places you weren't going to reach 'max level' in short order.
There was no 'item' path that guaranteed you access to good gear in the modern MMO there is hand holding - where the developers basically hand folks very high powered gear.
There is no chance of 'trains' or even running into 'very difficult' mobs in your starting areas or while adventuring - everything is laid out for you. Everything is instanced for you so you have manageable levels of difficulty. You can go anywhere very quickly so you don't waste too much time.
This all springs about because World of Warcraft made so much money. I don't see how we can change it or hope for anything different in the short term. I have little doubt that the hand holding helped boost World of Warcraft. But there was more to it then that. WoW was a good game that was more polished, ran more efficiently on the same PC, had a better UI and had higher quality 'theme park' content.
Outside of GW2 - very little of that is being replicated. We are just getting babyfied MMOs with all the simplification and none of the 'virtual world' aspects they were supposed to provide. I personally find that non-mmos play a lot more like MMOs used to play. Something like Skyrim is much closer to EQ then the modern MMO, IMHO.
This is why I am disappointed in EQ next. Its not a lack of change that hurts MMOs it's just an unwillingness to upset any portion of the playing base. By trying to please everyone you end up with a game no one really loves anymore.
What crop? The only recent MMORPG worth mentioning is the steaming pile known as FFXIV, a game that epitomizes everything that's wrong with MMORPG design these days.
What's missing is the MMORPG. The so-called MMORPGs that've been coming out are glorified single player games for dummies with minimal/optional grouping featuring weak group content.
What's missing is the grouping and the challenge, and you won't have community without them because experiencing challenging content together is what forges community - something you won't ever experience in solo idiot mode games.
The best MMORPGs are more hardcore, less casual, time consuming, and things you play intensely. Casual attempts at this only succeed at failing to keep players invested - and that's another thing that hinders community because when you don't see the same people regular and sometimes never see a person again, community isn't happening.
A bunch of intellectual rejects spewing idiocy in public chat isn't community - at least not what I'd consider to be community - and that's about all you get in the more recent MMORPGs - a glorified IM client for kids (and the mentally immature adults) with ADD.
There are some interesting ideas getting kicked around (like for EQN *if* they can come close to delivering on their incredibly big talk and still have something resembling an MMORPG - and finish it while it's still relevant) but a lot of these ideas are about reshaping the genre - and the genre doesn't really need reshaped - it just needs to return to its roots and get away from the idea that it needs to be accessible or casual. MMORPGs at their heart are time consuming games for more hardcore players.
Clearly MMORPGs can be made and be successful without selling out their soul and core to try to be "more accessible" and "more casual friendly" - since the older MMORPGs managed to do this, and in fact, continue to roll and charge subs when all the so-called more accessible games can't retain players or subs and have to sellout and become F2P garbage.
Some of the newer games getting tagged as MMORPGs to me aren't really MMORPGs, they're online games, perhaps with ELEMENTS of MMORPGs. It's not such a bad thing. Variety is good. Different kinds of games and ideas are good. But it kind of sucks if what YOU really want is a quality new MMORPG.
Premium MMORPGs do not feature built-in cheating via cash for gold pay 2 win. PLAY to win or don't play.
Risk.
Not much of a game without it.
I hear you. The thing is, it seems to me that MMOs catering to more hardcore gamers are being made, like Age of Wushu or Dark Fall: Unholy Wars. Yet many hardcore players, myself included, find themselves always returning to AAA games instead. Why do you think that is?
The genre has always lacked complexity. I used to give them the benefit of the doubt since it was a new genre but now it is just getting sad. Pen and Paper RPGs were more complex than what we get and they didn't have the computer to handle the grunt work for you.
You don't find them less complex? Even implementations of current games are less complex than their older versions. WoW included. Look what they did to the Talent System, before you had to make certain choices and had a lot to build to. Now, you get one talent every 15 levels. Alterac Valley used to be pretty complex and would last forever... now? Lets not even compare the 40mans to what we have now...
So yes, games are getting less complex. Hopefully EQNext, Star Citizen, and perhaps ArcheAge will breathe new life into this stale Genre.
"In the immediate future, we have this one, and then weve got another one that is actually going to be so were going to have, what we want to do, is in January, what were targeting to do, this may or may not happen, so you cant hold me to it. But what were targeting to do, is have a fun anniversary to the Ilum shenanigans that happened. An alien race might invade, and they might crash into Ilum and there might be some new activities that happen on the planet." ~Gabe Amatangelo