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May be MMO should take the "massive" out ...
nariusseldon
Member EpicPosts: 27,775
I was playing Ghost Recon Phantom (nice tactical shooter .. first one i played that have good cover mechanics, and actually a slow pace of sniper playstyle is well supported), and it dawn on me that why I don't want "massive" in the interactions of my online games.
GR is more fun to me than PS2 .... why? Because in a smaller map with a smaller group of players ... the experience is much better designed and controlled. I like to play a sniper ... in PS2 .. it can take a long time to even find a place with enemies that you can snipe. Either everyone is rushing ... or 20 snipers are crowding the same spot ... all very non-fun.
GR is different .. there is no crowding because there is no crowd.
Similar, "massive" makes dungeon crawling horrible with camping and easy-mode 100 guys beating down the boss. That is why we now have instanced dungeons, which give MMO dungeon crawling a new lease in life.
Similarly, there is no true stealth gameplay in a persistent open world. Why? Can you imagine 1000 sam fisher crawlling over the same building with the ultimate bad guy to kill?
The solution is simple (and used effective in many other types of online games). Don't be massive in the gameplay (only in the lobby). Control the number of players so it is fun.
FPSes and ARPGs are already doing that explicitly. Now we have new ideas like Destiny where the matching is going to be seamless, so people are taken out to a menu to choose the group. That is another way of getting out of being "massive" although some are still calling Destiny a MMO.
And even open world games like Arkham City and Skyrim. I am glad i am the only one batman in Arkham City and not 1000 batmans running around.
Now I like my gaming experience to have the right number of players (and sometimes only me) but i am sure there are those who want lots of players (heck, some even want CAMPING ... i don't understand why people want to take a number and wait in line .. but hey, that is only me). So this thread is not for them.
It is going to be fun to see what other stuff devs can come up with once they are not bound by the shackled of persistent virtual world with massive number of players.
Comments
I do that mostly ... but many of them (like Marvel Heroes, Destiny, WoT) are classified as MMO anyway. So may be that is the direction "mmo" industry (or at least part of it) is going, and it is fun to discuss.
There are certain queer times and occasions in this strange mixed affair we call life when a man takes this whole universe for a vast practical joke, though the wit thereof he but dimly discerns, and more than suspects that the joke is at nobody's expense but his own.
-- Herman Melville
Lots of games work fine as regular, non-massive multiplayer games. It really depends on the design of the game and the target audience. Nothing wrong with different gaming experiences. Some MMOs would IMO be better off if they'd either embraced the massive part more or dropped it completely.
who is voting? It is not about changing anything ... but about having fun talking about trends, and game design.
It is already happening with Blizz scrapping or rethinking their traditional MMO, and doing something less massive (Hearthstone and their MOBA), Destiny and Division.
Not if the word "massive" now means the number of players you can match with.
There is no part in MMO that specifically say "massive" refers to how many you can play with at the same time. If so, why would a game like GW1 and WoT classified as MMOs?
If that is what it means to you and makes you happy,i think you should be happy.
Enjoy your MMO i think.
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Whatever it is that you like in gaming, there's a genre out there that does it better than MMOs. You can get a more in depth experience without the jerks, bots, and cheaters.
That and switch the M and the O.
Seems like the genre turned into Online Multiplayer instead of a Massively Multiplayer Online.
The acronym was always wrong. No offense to Lord British. But the word Persistent or Persistent World should have been in there some where.
PWORPG: Persistant World Online Role Playing Game
I think there would have been less room for confusion years later. Massive doesn't automatically imply any persistent world or number of players on one map.
You are correct, the term MMO has been too watered down, or perhaps too inclusive of games which are more properly described by more accurate monikers, as in your examples GW1 is a CORPG (ANET's own descriptor) and WoT is clearly a MOBA.
Like someone else mentioned, MMORPG doesn't really work well either, since it is missing the "Persistant" moniker which was typically associated with these games back when the genre was young. No longer seems to apply so much any more.
I do like the idea of a PMORPG, but ...it will never sell.
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Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
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When the term MMORPG was originally coined, I think the "massively" part meant "more than 10 players on the screen at the same time", lol
You may be playing the same game as 10 million other players, but in most MMO's you'll seldom see more than 20 or 30 of those characters on your screen simultaneously. Massive is relative...
This, of course, is true. But the interesting discussion is about WHEN massive is good, and WHEN it should be dropped.
In terms of gameplay
PS2 ... big battle .. massive seems to work here (thought i still prefer instanced level smaller combat gameplay, but i can't deny you can do big battle with massive.
Dungeon crawling ... clearly massive does NOT work. After EQ (with the whole camping thing), *most* dungeon crawlers are either straight CORPG, or instanced in MMO. Doing it massively has so many problems ... a) too many players make the encounter either trivial, or people have to wait, b) cannot do scripting well, c) is not consistent with the traditional pnp RPG of a small group going through a dungeon. This include games like Vindictus, and Warframe ... where the point is pve missions (abate warframe is not a traditional fantasy setting).
Stealth type gameplay ... clearly massive is not suitable. Thus, there are very few stealth (and hacking) elements in MMOs.
Any sort of adventure with stories .. clearly it is not possible to do stories with massive number of players. TOR has to segment players with instances and phasing. Destiny has the newest solution .... you have your own world, but shared it with some random players seamlessly.
The question, of course, is why. The term FPS is never watered down .. because it is broad enough in its origin, and it is a huge successful category.
I suppose MMO has to broaden because in its narrow definition, its success is limited. May be lord british has foresight NOT to include the phrase "persistent world" because if he does ... it will just become very niche, and we won't be talking about it here.
Why wouldn't we discuss a niche game here ?
Almost all MMO's currently running (other than WoW) could be classed as "niche games". Few, if any, of them have even 10% of WoW's players, and most of them don't have a fraction of the players that other top games in different genres have.
The game can be "massive multiplayer", despite you do not have to fight over an every inch of the game world and every mob.
People mistake "massive" for bad design. Not all that surprising on these boards tho...
no no no .. you misunderstood me. I mean ...
If it is all persisent world .. it would have been so niche that I probably would never have joined this forum, and talked about it.