You may not, but the genre was founded on it and I'm pretty sure it's still a large enough audience to justify its continued existence in future MMORPG games.
That's "tradition for tradition's sake." It's not a reason. For open worlds to be worth implementing there has to actually be a rational reason to do so. "Tradition" isn't enough. If tradition was enough, we'd all still think the world was flat because traditionally that's how we thought of things.
In reply to the thread in general:
Designing games with the intention of long-term retention is the only way to have halfway decent short-term retention.
Retention has a significant influence on player count, which can have that same influence on revenue.
Virtually all games follow this long-tail model. It's only a tiny handful of games which act as the exception. I think even saying "Top 10 most popular games at any given time" over sells it, as it's really only like the top 3. Games get old and people stop playing them. That's the nature of game-making.
MMOs are clearly only games with unusually high population in a shared space. From an entirely logical perspective, games like LoL obviously aren't MMOs and any site claiming they are is wrong in the claim. It's understandable why people want data on these popular games -- but just don't call them MMOs.
Those old games and their old ways are still around and making more money than some of the new ones. You do the math.
If you cut out the open world, and did something like warframe, it is no more expensive than a online shooter.
MMOs are not meant to be anything. If so, it would not have abandoned the open world design, and become so solo friendly. It is just another type of game, hoping to make some money.
A "properly designed MMORPG" would retain playerbase, subscription and-or free to play. The reason why today's MMOs do not retain playerbase, is their design.
Agreed to many games with the mmo label are not really mmos IMO, companies are just trying to increase their profit margin with the use of the term which then falsely leads some into thinking real mmos should really be single player games.
MMOs are ment to be something tho. Massively Multiplayer Online. The acronym defines itself ffs. You can't call a 4 player coop massively in any sense of the word.
These threads are like reading someone talking about trains being the same as motorcycles for mass transit. You can not remove the passenger capacity from hundreds down to 2-4 and call it mass transit. Well you could but you would be wrong, just like superdata.
I mean come on superdata lists hearthstone as a MMO.
"You CAN'T buy ships for RL money." - MaxBacon
"classification of games into MMOs is not by rational reasoning" - nariusseldon
Make a game for the niche that will support it for the long term and you will have a real MMO.
Make a game for the vast majority single-player gamers and you will get what we currently have.
MMOS don't have to have single-player game retention rates if you build them fully for the correct audiences. I pretty much exclusively play MMOs unless friends want to play something else. I'd venture to assume the people leaving MMOs enjoy playing other game genres. You don't make an RPG and hope and FPS player plays it!!!! You don't make an FPS and hope an RPG player plays it!!! When you blur the genres together you get a fractured playerbase!
So in the last 10 years there has not been a SINGLE "well designed" MMO?
Do you know how absolutely ridiculous that sounds?
How about you start and tell us what you consider to be a well designed MMORPG that has launched in the last decade?
Don't forget that we are talking specifically about retention (and community, at least I have been, because that is core to retention) here in this thread. What are the well designed MMORPGs in terms of those elements?
And please recognise that I said 'could be argued'.
The vast majority of AAA MMORPGs in the last 10 years are well designed games.
Not going to list them as we know which games those are.
In terms of retention and community?
Please, list a few, because I want know your benchmark.
I updated my post - take Aion, Lotro, Rift, FF14AR and imagine them launching in 2000-2003 timeframe - they would all be hugely successful just as gen 1 MMOs were during that time in terms of retention and community.
Having 5-6 games to chose from compared to 100+ makes a huge ddifference.
It's not game design - it's an entirely different market 2015 and 2003 - night and day.
I couldn't disagree more.
While some of the more recent games might have been successful at a time where there were less options, they still wouldn't have fostered the community or retained players like early games did. They are fundamentally different from the ground up and it baffles me that you cannot see how the modern casual breed of MMORPG isn't a night and day difference from games like UO and Everquest.
And that is quite simply more fawning over old games with the proverbial rose coloured glasses. I really get tired of this attitude. Oh they are night and day difference, that is correct. Old graphics, old grindy gameplay, corpse runs, death penalties, PvP ganking, camping etc.
Yes wonderful. Lets all go back to those days. Oh wait a minute! You can!!
Except hardly anyone does. Oh right, the games changed, didn't they. But of course when a game with some of the same features comes out they invariably go down with the rest.
There is good and bad in both old and new. But lets get away from the drooling over UO and EQ. They weren't that good. They were just new and different at the time. DMKano has it right. There is no magic game design that is going to appeal to all players.
Find a game you like and if you can't well that's too bad. Just gonna have to wait for the old days to roll around again, I guess.
I'm really tired of the attitude of people who very obviously never played classic titles back when and claim that somehow the new generation of MMOs are actually a better, evolved model of mmorpg, while overlooking everything thats actually different and lacking.
Theres nothing rose colored about my statements. The fact remains, new games aren't created with multiplayer or community in mind. They are not virtual worlds that suspend your disbelief. They are not hard or rewarding. "Grindy" is just something kids say when they aren't instantly gratified. Grindy is having to stay in the same places doing the same things without alternatives. There was always sufficient content in older games like EQ that you could explore and progress with, without ever having to stay in the same spot for very long. Its the lack of immersive features like corpse runs, death penalties, open worlds and challenging group-oriented content that have left the players in modern games without a compelling reason to keep logging in.
I never claimed that these features would appeal to all players, but its something that appealed to many players back in the infancy of the internet.
I also still play classic EQ/UO/DAoC via emus and have done so with the vast majority of my free time for a decade. I'm just tired of waiting for game studio to pull their heads out of their asses and figure out that you don't have to "appeal to all players" to make a good, profitable game.
Content was easier to generate when you didn't need quests. Now there's an expectation that players aren't going to just sit there and camp mob spawns all day to level up.
While this is interesting to discuss lets not pretend that the article he quotes has any basis in reality. It is a complete garbage statistic that means absolutely nothing. If it is only talking about MMORPG there is not a viable sample size of F2P MMORPG out there that makes any sense. If it is talking about MMO in general it is including games that have no real relevance to this genre. Basically this article is worthless on every level.
Make a game for the niche that will support it for the long term and you will have a real MMO.
Make a game for the vast majority single-player gamers and you will get what we currently have.
MMOS don't have to have single-player game retention rates if you build them fully for the correct audiences. I pretty much exclusively play MMOs unless friends want to play something else. I'd venture to assume the people leaving MMOs enjoy playing other game genres. You don't make an RPG and hope and FPS player plays it!!!! You don't make an FPS and hope an RPG player plays it!!! When you blur the genres together you get a fractured playerbase!
Well said.
You can build a game worth spending years in or not, there isreally no point in building a game for singleplayer fans, use a huge budget and then be confused that most of them is gone 6 weeks after release.
It is fine to do a game for single player fans but there is a lot of content you really don't need for that. Adding raids, serious crafting and so on is just pointless since there will be way better games for crafters and raiders, jusr focus on the content those soloers like instead.
It is far better to focus on a group completely than making 60% of the game for soloers and give every other group 5-10% content, that really makes no one happy.
And you could as well make solo MMOs B2P since you will have many players for a pretty short time, max it out with an vanity item shop and an expansion now and then.
And then make some MMOs for the rest of the groups as well.
You play until you hit a pay wall then move on to the next F2P MMO. So why do you care? And why should you even have a voice at all? You do not contribute to the industry, aside from taking up data space on servers.
Are there not any free single player games out there for you?
If we all chipped in and donated $15, would you pocket it or put it towards a game?
You can build a game worth spending years in or not, there isreally no point in building a game for singleplayer fans, use a huge budget and then be confused that most of them is gone 6 weeks after release.
It is fine to do a game for single player fans but there is a lot of content you really don't need for that. Adding raids, serious crafting and so on is just pointless since there will be way better games for crafters and raiders, jusr focus on the content those soloers like instead.
It is far better to focus on a group completely than making 60% of the game for soloers and give every other group 5-10% content, that really makes no one happy.
And you could as well make solo MMOs B2P since you will have many players for a pretty short time, max it out with an vanity item shop and an expansion now and then.
And then make some MMOs for the rest of the groups as well.
It's not really well-said, since it isn't backed by any evidence of truth.
The fact is MMORPGs continued to be produced with old-style design for quite a while, but those games lost out to newer-style designed games which were significantly more solo-friendly. Both styles were attempted. One style emerged strongest.
The most common failing from my perspective is failure to produce overall combat (class, roles, controls, monster design, all the parts) better than WOW. There have only been a couple MMORPGs to come close, and it's the #1 reason I end up staying with WOW more than other MMORPGs. Combat is what you spend the majority of your time doing, so if it's not more fun than the last game you played then you're probably not going to stick with that game because you're spending the majority of your time having less fun. So combat is the most common failing nowadays (previously "groups only" was probably the biggest failing, as it's just generally a dangerous direction to take a game.)
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
You play until you hit a pay wall then move on to the next F2P MMO. So why do you care? And why should you even have a voice at all? You do not contribute to the industry, aside from taking up data space on servers.
Are there not any free single player games out there for you?
If we all chipped in and donated $15, would you pocket it or put it towards a game?
Why not? Talking is fun. Are you confused between caring for MMOs vs caring for TALKING about them? There is a difference.
Of course i will pocket it .. unless we are talking about an indie SINGLE PLAYER game.
I'm really tired of the attitude of people who very obviously never played classic titles back when and claim that somehow the new generation of MMOs are actually a better, evolved model of mmorpg, while overlooking everything thats actually different and lacking.
Theres nothing rose colored about my statements. The fact remains, new games aren't created with multiplayer or community in mind. They are not virtual worlds that suspend your disbelief. They are not hard or rewarding. "Grindy" is just something kids say when they aren't instantly gratified. Grindy is having to stay in the same places doing the same things without alternatives. There was always sufficient content in older games like EQ that you could explore and progress with, without ever having to stay in the same spot for very long. Its the lack of immersive features like corpse runs, death penalties, open worlds and challenging group-oriented content that have left the players in modern games without a compelling reason to keep logging in.
I never claimed that these features would appeal to all players, but its something that appealed to many players back in the infancy of the internet.
I also still play classic EQ/UO/DAoC via emus and have done so with the vast majority of my free time for a decade. I'm just tired of waiting for game studio to pull their heads out of their asses and figure out that you don't have to "appeal to all players" to make a good, profitable game.
Content was easier to generate when you didn't need quests. Now there's an expectation that players aren't going to just sit there and camp mob spawns all day to level up.
If camping mob spawns is actually challenging and rewarding, there are plenty of people that will do it. There was also plenty of quests and other meta that made it more interesting, not the least of which was the sense of danger and the bonding of players and the community as they relied heavily on each other to survive and progress.
Those tenets are what made EQ great, and again, I don't expect everyone to enjoy something where the rewards are largely social and ones achievements are a time investment, but there are still many players out there waiting for that experience to return.
If camping mob spawns is actually challenging and rewarding, there are plenty of people that will do it. There was also plenty of quests and other meta that made it more interesting, not the least of which was the sense of danger and the bonding of players and the community as they relied heavily on each other to survive and progress.
Those tenets are what made EQ great, and again, I don't expect everyone to enjoy something where the rewards are largely social and ones achievements are a time investment, but there are still many players out there waiting for that experience to return.
wow .. camping a static spawn, and wait for it while doing nothing but chatting, is fun for some people?
I certainly am not waiting for that boring experience to return, and i highly doubt there are "many" players who do. You have data to back that up, do you?
If camping mob spawns is actually challenging and rewarding, there are plenty of people that will do it. There was also plenty of quests and other meta that made it more interesting, not the least of which was the sense of danger and the bonding of players and the community as they relied heavily on each other to survive and progress.
Those tenets are what made EQ great, and again, I don't expect everyone to enjoy something where the rewards are largely social and ones achievements are a time investment, but there are still many players out there waiting for that experience to return.
wow .. camping a static spawn, and wait for it while doing nothing but chatting, is fun for some people?
I certainly am not waiting for that boring experience to return, and i highly doubt there are "many" players who do. You have data to back that up, do you?
Sorry you missed out on Everquest. Isn't it time for to queue up for an instance?
Sorry you missed out on Everquest. Isn't it time for to queue up for an instance?
I recall WoW's launch features being that the 'spawn camp' was eliminated via 'Instances'.
Guess which one the majority selected between 'Instances / Spawn camp'?
It shows what PvP games are really all about, and no, it's not about more realism and immersion. It's about cowards hiding behind a screen to they can bully other defenseless players without any risk of direct retaliation like there would be if they acted like asshats in "real life". -Jean-Luc_Picard
Life itself is a game. So why shouldn't your game be ruined? - justmemyselfandi
Comments
exactly.
players are not sticking around. Games are not designed for them to stick around. Seems that the market has adapted.
Those old games and their old ways are still around and making more money than some of the new ones. You do the math.
MMOs are ment to be something tho. Massively Multiplayer Online. The acronym defines itself ffs. You can't call a 4 player coop massively in any sense of the word.
These threads are like reading someone talking about trains being the same as motorcycles for mass transit. You can not remove the passenger capacity from hundreds down to 2-4 and call it mass transit. Well you could but you would be wrong, just like superdata.
I mean come on superdata lists hearthstone as a MMO.
"classification of games into MMOs is not by rational reasoning" - nariusseldon
Love Minecraft. And check out my Youtube channel OhCanadaGamer
Try a MUD today at http://www.mudconnect.com/This is where the issues are!
Make a game for the niche that will support it for the long term and you will have a real MMO.
Make a game for the vast majority single-player gamers and you will get what we currently have.
MMOS don't have to have single-player game retention rates if you build them fully for the correct audiences. I pretty much exclusively play MMOs unless friends want to play something else. I'd venture to assume the people leaving MMOs enjoy playing other game genres. You don't make an RPG and hope and FPS player plays it!!!! You don't make an FPS and hope an RPG player plays it!!! When you blur the genres together you get a fractured playerbase!
Maybe the OP should just play single player games? Leave our MMORPGs alone!
Jerk
Content was easier to generate when you didn't need quests. Now there's an expectation that players aren't going to just sit there and camp mob spawns all day to level up.
While this is interesting to discuss lets not pretend that the article he quotes has any basis in reality. It is a complete garbage statistic that means absolutely nothing. If it is only talking about MMORPG there is not a viable sample size of F2P MMORPG out there that makes any sense. If it is talking about MMO in general it is including games that have no real relevance to this genre. Basically this article is worthless on every level.
If by adapted you mean 'got worse' then you're spot on the mark! Well done.
Well said.
You can build a game worth spending years in or not, there isreally no point in building a game for singleplayer fans, use a huge budget and then be confused that most of them is gone 6 weeks after release.
It is fine to do a game for single player fans but there is a lot of content you really don't need for that. Adding raids, serious crafting and so on is just pointless since there will be way better games for crafters and raiders, jusr focus on the content those soloers like instead.
It is far better to focus on a group completely than making 60% of the game for soloers and give every other group 5-10% content, that really makes no one happy.
And you could as well make solo MMOs B2P since you will have many players for a pretty short time, max it out with an vanity item shop and an expansion now and then.
And then make some MMOs for the rest of the groups as well.
Nari, all MMOs are already short-term for you.
You play until you hit a pay wall then move on to the next F2P MMO. So why do you care? And why should you even have a voice at all? You do not contribute to the industry, aside from taking up data space on servers.
Are there not any free single player games out there for you?
If we all chipped in and donated $15, would you pocket it or put it towards a game?
It's not really well-said, since it isn't backed by any evidence of truth.
The fact is MMORPGs continued to be produced with old-style design for quite a while, but those games lost out to newer-style designed games which were significantly more solo-friendly. Both styles were attempted. One style emerged strongest.
The most common failing from my perspective is failure to produce overall combat (class, roles, controls, monster design, all the parts) better than WOW. There have only been a couple MMORPGs to come close, and it's the #1 reason I end up staying with WOW more than other MMORPGs. Combat is what you spend the majority of your time doing, so if it's not more fun than the last game you played then you're probably not going to stick with that game because you're spending the majority of your time having less fun. So combat is the most common failing nowadays (previously "groups only" was probably the biggest failing, as it's just generally a dangerous direction to take a game.)
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
Why not? Talking is fun. Are you confused between caring for MMOs vs caring for TALKING about them? There is a difference.
Of course i will pocket it .. unless we are talking about an indie SINGLE PLAYER game.
"got worse" is subjective. Worse for you .. better for many. Adapting to what most like, and few dislike .. what is the problem?
If camping mob spawns is actually challenging and rewarding, there are plenty of people that will do it. There was also plenty of quests and other meta that made it more interesting, not the least of which was the sense of danger and the bonding of players and the community as they relied heavily on each other to survive and progress.
Those tenets are what made EQ great, and again, I don't expect everyone to enjoy something where the rewards are largely social and ones achievements are a time investment, but there are still many players out there waiting for that experience to return.
wow .. camping a static spawn, and wait for it while doing nothing but chatting, is fun for some people?
I certainly am not waiting for that boring experience to return, and i highly doubt there are "many" players who do. You have data to back that up, do you?
Sorry you missed out on Everquest. Isn't it time for to queue up for an instance?
I recall WoW's launch features being that the 'spawn camp' was eliminated via 'Instances'.
Guess which one the majority selected between 'Instances / Spawn camp'?
It shows what PvP games are really all about, and no, it's not about more realism and immersion. It's about cowards hiding behind a screen to they can bully other defenseless players without any risk of direct retaliation like there would be if they acted like asshats in "real life". -Jean-Luc_Picard
Life itself is a game. So why shouldn't your game be ruined? - justmemyselfandi
I am not sorry.
I camped the SMR in lower guk for 6 hours .. very boring experiences and i could not leave because of a friend there.
After that, no more boring EQ.
In fact, i don't even need to queue instances, i mostly solo runs in D3 and Marvel Heroes, if i want a hack-n-slash game.