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Group Think: Has the MMO Lost Its Unique Selling Point? a General Articles at MMORPG.com
SBFord
Former Associate EditorMember LegendaryPosts: 33,129
Group Think: Has the MMO Lost Its Unique Selling Point? a General Articles at MMORPG.com
Last night, in our MMORPG.com group Slack channel, Gareth Harmer set off a long discussion about the MMORPG, it’s past, present, and future. Namely, he posited: Has the MMO lost its USP (Unique Selling Point)? This is expanding off Ethan Macfie's recent blogpost at MMOGames.com – The Shift from Leveling Skills to Leveling Characters. We all had thoughts to share…
Comments
NONE of these linear questing games are a selling point to me because i don\t care about a level number nor meaningless quests.I also do not care about anything end game because it is SUPPOSE to be a living,continuing plausible world,not some treadmill to get gear and levels.
So rather than LOST he flavor,instead it has steered further away from what a mmo+ROLE playing game should be.
Games are still lacking Eco systems,housing,seasons,weather and instead of "types of"everything is just simple cut n dry attack/damage/defense/armor.We need to see better AI scripting for all npc's.Then we have a whole slew of games trying to use psychology gimmicks like sexism or giant weapons or giant creatures or flying instead of building a game world it is all just a couple gimmicks to make a sale.Some games put more effort into their creator sliders which 90% gets covered by gear anyhow,than the actual game.
So as we speak,i feel game directors,designers,producers dlo NOT look like they put much thought into building a plausible rpg world but instead look like most of the thought went into ,how can we make money.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
It's not the wild wild west any longer. And MMORPGs are the beasts of beasts. Look at a legitimate, well-produced MMORPG from a financial perspective: the cost to develop one is substantial; the risk of failure is extremely high (more so than any other type of game); and the development cycle is long (more so than any other game); and you have to keep it afloat over time.
As an investor, or a company that wants revenue ASAP, why would you want to spend absurd amounts of money on a project that has a high failure rate and takes a long time to return your capital investment? You don't. This is the reason many publishers are shying away from MMORPGs, and why the ones we get are carbon-engine-copies of other games, complete with a cash-shop to simply make a quick buck.
That's the problem with MMORPGs. Let's look at pre-WoW, shall we? Let me give you a few names... Ultima Online, Everquest, Anarchy Online, Shadowbane, Horizons, Dark Age of Camelot, Lineage 1 + 2, Asheron's Call 1 + 2, Star Wars Galaxies... there were many others, yes, but these are some of the most popular West Coast titles. Outside of EQ and UO, and maybe DAoC, you can't say any of the others were raging successes. Actually, many are closed down and were overall losses.
But these were the pioneer titles. Their success was easier to equate into success during the age they were released. So, while SWG or Shadowbane were not huge successes, they still hung around for a while. The competition and market saturation was not present.
Today? We have a MASSIVE influx of market saturation. Who doesn't have an MMO? And are the MMORPGs really MMORPGs by the definition of what those games were? No. We get a batch of crap from TRION, for example: shallow, depthless games masquerading as an MMORPG to make a quick buck off anyone who is stupid enough to play them for a few weeks time.
Then we have the Eastern Asian masses: TERA, Blade and Soul, Aion, ArcheAge.... hollow shells that feature more aesthetics than gameplay, generally full of cash-shops, generally instanced and corridored by design, with multi-channels (not open or persistent worlds). More and more by the year. Black Desert at least was something unique, but it still had that Asian formula that many western gamers struggle with. Not to say they are all bad games, but they lack certain qualities that the MMORPG was aimed at reaching. I wouldn't say any of them are great or innovative games. Asian markets tend to lack innovation---they are quite good at taking what others have done and mirroring it, but they are not great at creating new from scratch. Anyone who lives in China, Singapore, Korea or many of those areas can attest to as much. It's a cultural mindset. I digress...
Anyway. You look at the market today and I can't even count how many MMORPGs are out there. And are they even MMORPGs? Is Star Trek Online an MMORPG? Is Vindictus? Not by my definition, they are not.
An MMORPG to me is what Ultima Online strove to be: a persistent, virtual world where players create characters to do a variety of things: socialize, quest, craft, own houses or property, kill monsters, kill each other, etc. Everquest, with the fancy 3D graphics, swerved that for traditional level-up style play and a game SOLELY focused on combat. Due to the graphics at the time, and the newness, it is what shaped the MMORPG market ... for WoW took what EQ did and improved/innovated it. It's success brought in all the clones to make a buck. We live now in the aftermath of 100000s companies trying to cash in on their success model, either as a quick cash grab or a legitimate game. None have had near the success.
To me, the genre was ruined with Everquest ... at least in terms of what the genre was supposed to be, or what could have been. I want more social, persistent worlds. Worlds where players can do more than just kill things; where gear is not the ultimate point of your existence. But that's me. Most think EQ/WoW is the proper formula. I understand that, but WoW's formula has changed too. It used to be a game where you had to sink a monumental amount of time in it to be good. As gaming culture became more popular and more fast-paced (like western culture due to the internet growth and digital media), WoW shifted their model to make the game more accessible, easier, and faster paced. You can jump on, join some BGs or a dungeon, log off. Travel is fast. Nothing is difficult, not even combat or leveling any longer. You have a chance at good items even if you are not wholly committed. Makes sense from a revenue perspective: more the merrier.
The problem is WoW is old. But, due to the over-saturation of the game market due to its success, the face of the landscape has changed. And now, so has culture and expectation. With solid, WoW-Level MMORPGs requiring intense resources, it's hard for indie publishers to make a rival title with today's graphical expectations unless they have immense funding. Where do they get that? The sky? Nay. From investors. As I said, what investor wants a high risk investment with a low chance for return, and the return staggered over 5+ years? No one. So it makes it hard to get a solid MMORPG funded today, when in the past the failure rate was not as well understood, such as in 2003. That leaves the AAA publishers as the ones with the budget ... but they aren't going to spend the time to develop a game that requires the time and quality investment of a WoW. They want a game done in 2 years, or maybe 3. Not 4-5.
Continued in next post....
So where will the next MMORPG come from? The one of worth? Probably nowhere. We saw Wildstar mirror WoW and fall short. It was even largely hyped... but they didn't even finish the game: lack of textures and voices were missing and never were fixed. What else has come out lately? BDO was Asian Import. Mild success.
Unless there is some vast improvement in innovation or technology, I'm not sure this genre will look as it did with the LARGE successes all others are based on. The EQs, WoWs, UOs, EVEs...
Add to it, you can copy someone else's engine today, release a poor-excuse-of-a-game, and simply add in a cash-shop ... and profit! And quickly! Why? Because there are SO MANY MORE gamers than there were in 2004. And not just gamers--not just young adult male losers like of old--but now EVERYONE plays video games. Kids, elderly, women/children ... so your ability to cash in on an audience has expanded 100-fold, meaning you can make money off someone who isn't as familiar with what an MMORPG is or isn't. Say I'm a young kid, I get into Blade and Soul, I have no idea it really isn't good (I have yet to garner that wisdom or acumen, and I have little to relate it to experience wise) so I think it's great! Oh and there's a nice little pony for 10 bucks! and a pet for 6 bucks! "Mommy!" I yell. "Can I have 16 bucks?" And just like that, they make more profit on a F2P, cash-shop monster than on a monthly subscription model.
Anyway. don't get me started on how F2P and Cash-Shops have ruined the MMORPG market.
Basically, for an MMORPG to succeed, you need a solid dev team who is well-grounded and capable, with a good idea that they don't overshoot, a solid financial backer who won't force rushed deadlines. You also need to offer a monthly subscription plan. Otherwise, you won't ever become the next WoW or anything worth a damn.
That's my opinion ... or rather my observation on today's market, culture, and MMORPGs place in that culture in a rough, not well thought-out, hastily typed nutshell while I avoid my job responsibilities for the day. Thanks for reading!
It wont be for everyone and it doesnt have to be.
Professor Philip
This leads to a game with tons of features, yet all mediocre or worse rather than perfecting a particular few. This is why we see such huge launch numbers for corporate titles and such vast declining player-bases in the months to follow. The continual addition of content/management of existing content of all of these features is long, tedious, easy to neglect, and sometimes impossible. Combined with the normal declining of a developer team size post-launch even more difficult.
That's why I'm excited for some of these indie-developed titles specifically appealing to one type of player-base, like Crowfall and CU for casual and hardcore pvpers.
21 year MMO veteran
PvP Raid Leader
Lover of The Witcher & CD Projekt Red
"We all do the best we can based on life experience, point of view, and our ability to believe in ourselves." - Naropa "We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are." SR Covey
1. More open world gameplay, less instancing
2. Less hectic gameplay, more natural downtime
3. FUN gameplay, including combat and other systems
4. Encourage easy grouping
I'd also like to add "Improving social bonds" which is related to 2 and 4. I agree with all of your points and those are things I look for in games lately anyway.
I must enjoy combat somewhat to enjoy a game and that's always been most important.
I also enjoy games that have the player spending more time in the game world so you're actually living in a virtual world and doing all sorts of fun activities. GW2 and BDO are better at this than most, ArcheAge a bit too and to an extent ESO.
I definitely agree that many games are too hectic lately and that's just not enjoyable for me. I like the slower pace for so many reasons, only one of which is the ability to form relationships. But I remember Wildstar feeling hectic in everything it does - even leveling! The combat was too fast, and the pace was fast going from one activity to another non stop, often with new activities being thrown in your face before being finished the one you were doing. But the UI made it worse. That just feels stressful and not relaxing.
Easy grouping is a hard one to solve because I agree that I prefer tanks and healers, and even full support roles that aren't primary healers. But I think this is where my addition of "improving social bonds" comes in. This is also where GW2 failed really spectacularly. It did a lot of things well, but lack of trinity gameplay along with not needing to group and befriend people to do group activities really made the game lose that stickiness.
I tried (and failed to garner discussion) to make a Reddit thread a few weeks ago on the topic to get some ideas from people on how games can more easily encourage players to form strong social bonds without forcing grouping and other failed mechanics. This is what makes MMO's fun and also what makes players stick around in one game for a long time. But in today's world many gamers need flexibility. Some days we might have a lot of time to play and some we won't, so developers need to find ways to allow us to enjoy group activities in time frame's that we determine - not them. Open world activities is a great way to do this, and it also makes it easier to find tanks and healers if you have several in your guild (that you actually socialize with). But the question is - how do developers encourage social bonds without making them mandatory and time consuming, but instead incentivize it enough to make it easier to do and something the community as a whole works towards?
Here's my kick at the can, and people will hate me. There are a hundred more interesting things I could be doing than leveling my WoW alts!!! Honestly, I used by auto 100 to bump on character, I'm working on my second now, and I'm looking at my level 92 Hunter thinking to myself "Sorry dude! You might never get played!" That's not because I dislike WoW, it's because I can simply no longer justify spending 20-30 hours per character to level them up, nevermind actually gearing them, even WITH World Quests making it so easy to gear.
Honestly, I've said it before and I'll say it again, Destiny got this SO right. It actually got it more right than the vast majority of MMORPGs today. Even The Division does it better than most MMORPGs. I'm really sorry, it's not about dropping auto-grouping or increasing downtime, it's about creating environments conducive to socializing and then actually providing the tools necessary to let these people connect with each other.
That, personally, what I feel the PROBLEM is, is people have little patience for time sinks these days. Again, we can look at Destiny and The Division, both, as examples. Destiny has consistently shot up to the top of the console sales lists each time they release an expansion, despite those expansions being relatively shallow. The Division still sits around the top 50 mark for concurrent players on Steam and has been pretty consistent since launch.
Just my opinion. I don't know what the solution is, but MMORPGs seem to have somehow lost that ability to bring people together, and I think it comes down to the community as much as anything else. It's all about hurrying up to get "finished" only you're on a treadmill lol.
Crazkanuk
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Azarelos - 90 Hunter - Emerald
Durnzig - 90 Paladin - Emerald
Demonicron - 90 Death Knight - Emerald Dream - US
Tankinpain - 90 Monk - Azjol-Nerub - US
Brindell - 90 Warrior - Emerald Dream - US
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(-_-)
I'd veer a little left from this and say that I usually played to become a better player and respect others who could clear exclusive content, not these 3-4-5 different versions of the same thing. Games have always been about money but 10-15 years ago, you could see that devs were gamers first and businessmen second. Competition compromises that and thus we've had so many clones over the past decade. All about quick profits with minimal investment (investment in this case refers to ideas).
Realistically, "Real life" schedules get in the way of many people playing together, but they still want to contribute to the world and build their characters up. I don't think MMOs should focus all their attention and rewards on large concurrent groups, or even groups in general.
MMOs can facilitate groups with proper infrastructure and goals that are most efficiently achieved by groups that provide adequate automated individual rewards (kept out of the hands of "guild leaders" or other biased relationship-based systems using automated systems to reward instead). I do not think the best rewards in the game should come from these group systems. The game is already made easier by playing with other people. You can be carried by a guild in some games, and gear drops in your lap, while soloers struggle for everything they get.
POWgs - Persistent Online World Games - Many players playing the same game in the same world, their actions having an impact on each other (not only when they're playing together).
I know I'd go resource gathering for my chosen community, or clearing out pesky monsters for NPCs, or going after bosses to claim new territory, or deep into enemy territory to weaken their resources. All sorts of "repeatable quests" that seem boring or quest-hub-ish, suddenly have a lot more meaning and reason to grind out - not just getting experience or stuff... you're helping your community in some larger way. In fact, I'd remove the need to activate a "quest" to do these things... and just make the world react to it, and reward your efforts continually. There could be indirect PVE-based PVP utilizing this dynamic, with communities vying for resources and territory.
The Unique Selling Point for MMOs (POWgs) is: persistent worlds that many players exist in.
It would be most rewarding for these games to provide community goals that anybody can contribute to, without directly needing to interact or group up. People should want to group up for content, but not be forced to be in groups to advance their character. Different rewards for different challenges, but all viable.
I am not saying that EQ or DAoC had a secret formula but I still remember making friends and talking about things with each other while letting cooldowns happen or mana bars to fill. It did not feel like if I was not pushing to max then I was doing it wrong. That is just me personally. I know a lot of people who enjoy the ease of things now. I still hope to find an MMORPG that will make me happy but don't expect that to happen.
I want my virtual worlds back
I want to be able to travel to "The Endless Cliffs of Manzan's Spine", drink tea in the Asian inspired land of Shin while cavorting with that Shinese race picked player
I want to travel with the Knights of the Shattered Blade to go take out the giant Aazeoama the Mad who has been pillaging the countryside with his band of orc raiders
I want to swim in the Grass Sea.
Fight Giant Sea Serpents in the Inlet of Forgotten Dreams
Ride atop WingSpan Fish as we travel through the Winding Wastes.
Smoke a pipe with Grimgar the Hunter after we hunted the great SabreBlade
I want to have a house with a farm growing Slumberberries, we put Sabreblade to sleep with those and that's how we were able to beat him
I want to find the easiest path through the Mountains of Woe and sell maps showing people how to find it.
I want to go looking for the Iron Crystal of Naga's Doom in the Tunnels of the Endless Chasm. I want to join a Caravan with that Goldbeard Dwarf, the Elf (I don't think that's an Elf)? Diamonblade Jogo and his trusty Hammerknock mount. I'm from Calabria, the Songhai/Mali Medieval analogue and I wield watermagics and a Soul Hammer. I don't like Hammerknocks as mounts. I prefer my SkyDiver mount DawnBreak instead. Plus he has really beautiful plumage that sparkles in the rain and the sun reflects off of it if you bank right on a sunny day. I had a Hammerknock once. It almost trampled me once after I gave it a bad batch of Shimmergreen.
I want my epic back. Can I have it back please? Can I have game designers who are actually fantasy novel fans who care more about making the world an immersive experience?
What happened to those game designers? When will the world matter again and not be relegated to making 30 minute bite sized quests for someone who should clearly be playing a single player rpg?
Any mmo worth its salt should be like a good prostitute when it comes to its game world- One hell of a faker, and a damn good shaker!
Wanna point out something Ethan said right up front that's very poignant:
(Emphasis added by me)
The two bold portions are very important. An MMO will never present the same level of quality for solo content that a singleplayer game can provide. It's the nature of the beast.
It will never feature a richer small-group PvP feature than a MOBA. It's the nature of the beast.
And gods forbid the genre L4D popularized becomes a mainstream hit on the level of MOBAs- because they will always be able to offer a richer small-group PvE experience than an MMO. It's the nature of the beast.
If MMO developers want to innovate, they need to do so towards the genre's strengths, not away from them. The only true strength the genre has over it's smaller-scoped counterparts is the number of players that are able to interact simultaneously. Notice I, very specifically, say "interact" and not "group." Another good point from the article (I think mentioned by Bill) was that you also need activities that are worthy of the player's time that are slower-paced and more focused on interacting and building relationships between players and player groups (i.e. guilds/alliances) to help foster a familiar community within the game. This also requires that we restrict the number of players able to interact together to a finite number that provides a busy world without reducing the chances of a gamer seeing the same fellow gamer twice to practically nothing. Another route to go here would be to manipulate players into running into the same general groups of players repeatedly. That's a tricky one to implement without putting off your playerbase, however, as the player will balk at the idea as soon as they realize they're being manipulated into becoming "virtual friends" with some folks/groups arbitrarily chosen by the developer through the seeding of the game systems.
Yep.
I'll only add the MMO market has been cannibalized by the exact same thing as western society is suffering from as well "the loud vocal minority", instead of focusing on creative game making with a unique vision we are all being herded by the vocal forum warriors who these mindless developers cave into, just like our society caves into some loud mouth fringe minority group like transgenders.
I think the key to making the perfect MMO is to think of it as a world for visitors to explore and live in as different beings, NOT a game for players to compete against each other and/or rack up points, levels, loot, etc.
City of Heroes provided that about as well as the technology and MMO practice allowed at the time. You provide that sort of virtual place instead of a game, and the socializing and other things that people love will follow. Like the costume contests, and just standing around in Atlas Park discussing things, Pocket D, playing hide-and-seek. Not much point in costume contests when there's not so much variation in characters and costumes, but even with just humans you could allow for a lot more variation in costumes -- but when you make costumes part of the leveling and loot system, rather than a part of the world open to all players... nope.
Personally, I also hate the idea of making all characters "balanced" so that everyone -- at the same level at least -- is an even match in battle for everyone else. But when you're PvP oriented or you have a GAME attitude where THE GOAL is to score POINTS by DEALING DAMAGE, you have to have this "balance" to make everything fair. In a WORLD you can have people with all sorts of different powers, abilities, talents, weapons, gizmos, armor, gotten by different means (buying or crafting at least), and you can have people at the same "level" with different abilities to defeat others, perhaps creating a rock-scissors-paper situation, or people who can't defeat anybody but do things that lead others to want to protect them or keep anybody from wanting to attack them. Can you see how much more interesting and fun that would be? Yes, there could be problems with rogue players, but have a really massive world (or galaxy like No Man's Sky), and if necessary controlled and patrolled areas of it (as in Eve?), and that problem goes away.
Oh, and the crafting -- in a GAME you make crafting "get A, B, and C, by defeating Glorks, Snarks, and Buffles, put them in a furnace and you get a Swooper Sword!" In a virtual WORLD the players have to learn from each other or by studying objects and experimenting with them what properties different things may bring to a potential craft item and what ways there are to combine and alter things. Minecraft has something like that, doesn't it? Same sort of idea goes for "farming" and other non-combat skills. I have had a hard-to-impossible time finding really good dedicated fishing and skiing simulators, too, because they keep having competitive or game-like aspects that totally distract from the realistic, relaxing, immersive qualities I'm looking for.
The other key to having a wonderful world for visitors to live in is to make it truly a sandbox, not an park full of mini-games. And immersive, avoiding small things that remind you it's just a game and aren't really necessary. That's where the persistence comes in, but other things, too -- give all the NPCs a little basic AI, it shouldn't be all that hard or resource-consuming. Let them move around their village or neighborhood and do some things, not just stand in one place like a human-shaped talking sign playing canned messages. Players could hire NPC peasants to do the farming, and have one come at intervals to give a report on how the crops are doing.
... wow, guess I got carried away...
I'm not optimistic about the MMO marketplace since its SO expensive to bring an MMO to market, and then its just a matter of 'how long can we wait to go F2P?' ESO was one of the flagship, big production games of the last few years, and I think it went F2P/B2P after a year or so.
The good news is that there are lot of really good, polished, old MMOs waiting to be discovered. I jump back into Secret Word and am always wowed by their narratives and atmosphere. And its the only game that keeps me challenged. Then I level up a little and I'm reminded that the ability progression is a boring festival of white-american cheese game design.
Besides ESO is already easily the #2 most popular MMORPG of all time (after just 3 years!) Of course there will never be anything like WoW again (in terms of popularity), most of that had to do a lot with luck and timing, as well as Blizzard being a well known gaming company that cared for their playerbase (something like CDPR today). Let's be honest, if WoW released today (updated), it would have never achieved half the success it had back in 2009/2010.
Also FFXIV and GW2 are probably #3 and #4 most popular MMORPGs of all time. So we have 3 MMOs that released in this decade and are already at the top? Is this genre then really in such a bad state? Hell most MMOs pre-WoW achieved 500k players at their best, today a dozen of MMOs easily surpass that.
- No more separate shards. Mega servers are possible and successful (EvE and ESO)
- Risk v Reward. Have the combat and economic challenge mean something. Make the players reputation matter.
These are the 2 things that I think are a must for newer games coming out to have longevity. I also believe they are not to difficult to implement.
- communication/downtime
These go hand and hand and are perceived as important as the 2 above, but much harder to implement.
I know for me downtime used to lead to communication which enhanced community. But now I don't play a game that I am not on Discord (or some VOIP) and I'd wager that many of you are the same. As a result downtime can be tedious and boring and feel unnecessary. I don't need the time to "converse" with my team, I've been doing that. I want to play, not sit.
Also, how many of you alreeady come into a game in a community. There are huge gaming guilds/clans that bring an established base to each game. Interaction with the rest of the player base is cool but for these guilds not really necessary.
It's a conundrum for sure. Socialization is huge. It just doesn't (and to me shouldn't) need to go back to the days of typing. Slowing down game play just for that doesn't work for a lot of us, even maybe the majority, anymore.
Yeah, so...everyone on one world is good. Risk and actions causing my reputation in game to matter, good. Slowing the game down just for socialization when most already are socializing, not so good.