I simply chalk it down to lack of information,knowledge to realize these have all been nothing more than marketing promises and will continue to be so. I assume being away for a bit that the OP has not noticed that seems like every game now is Crowd funded "crappy way to make a well organized mmorpg" as well delivered as unfinished broken,bugged early access games,so NOTHING looks bright for the future at all,well unless you want bugged unfinuished games? MOST of the time the letters RPG are abused,ARPG's use those letters are NOTHING like a rpg should be.
What we have been receiving is a lot of Indie looking budget games,sub par barely 5/10 in most cases.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
the people that keep preaching against all logic that any of these games will cause a new renascence in MMORPG gaming and bring in millions of new, or even old time, gamers, I just can't take seriously.
Yeah, i wouldn't say that for sure. All I am saying is that it looks very exciting to me. MMORPGs are too deeply out of fashion to do anything more than be niche. This won't change for a long time, maybe never. But, tbh, that's ok.
I am just more accepting of bugs and imperfection. I don't have unattainable standards. Having unattainable standards is a sure way to grind yourself into a burnt out cynical wreck, in my experience.
I am just done with the same game with a different skin repeat. Over and over again. The mmorpg never evolved. It just rehashed the same mechanics and gameplay over and over again. I have been there done that for over 20 years with no real change it has just grown stale for me.
See... What we have is one guy earlier in the thread saying that there are no trad mmorpgs upcoming, which there are, and you saying that it's the same old thing over again, which it isn't.
There are plenty of fresh ideas on the table in these upcoming games.
But, it sounds like you are just done with the genre in general, so nothing I am gonna say will chnage that.
What are these new innovations you are talking about? Half of the games people in this thread are looking forward too are going back to old game designs. There is a difference between innovation and gimmicks.
My feelings on the matter have much more to do with my mood than with any gaming reality. I want some of what you're taking, OP
"Social media gives legions of idiots the right to speak when they once only spoke at a bar after a glass of wine, without harming the community ... but now they have the same right to speak as a Nobel Prize winner. It's the invasion of the idiots”
― Umberto Eco
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?” ― CD PROJEKT RED
I dislike the "evolving" argument. Because things always "evolve" in a direction exactly away from what I want or enjoy. I like A, B, and C elements of traditional mmorpgs. I would love them to evolve into A^2, B^2, and C^2, but what happened is elements I liked as a secondary or tertiary supplement when included with A, B, and C (elements D, E, and F) all broke off into their own genres. And they didn't even bother with A, B, or C, or included a little of A, like .00001*A.
Again, that is great for people that enjoy just D or E or F. But I don't want A, B, or C on their own. I also don't want just A, B, and C. I want it all - but better, more complex, more options.
What I see happening to the mmorpg is like the opposite of education. I started early in mmorpgs (UO, EQ, AC, then AO), and each new one gave me more of what I liked - until it started going in reverse. Most players of WoW seemed to be ecstatic when they removed character development and all meaningful player choices. That part of the game they were not interested in - it was an annoyance, something that didn't matter because you just copied whatever the raider putting up the best numbers did and it made the arena harder to balance. So, remove that, then this, then this other thing that confused and was a barrier to nine year old potential players.
That's great for people that don't care. But it is clearly not "evolving." Its devolving. Its regression. Its going from graduate school to grade school. Evolving in gaming terms means making games to including a wider and younger audience, and pandering to the lowest common denominator. Its like starting off reading Tolstoy and Thoreau and then you "evolve" into reading Harry Potter and the Werewolf/Vampire lover lady books. Its a 100% definite regression.
And I'm not saying its bad. Liking Harry Potter and the Werewolf/Vampire team lover books and movies isn't bad. They are super popular because people love them. But it just isn't interesting if you used to have and love Tolstoy and Thoreau and you want more shit like that. And obviously comparing old WoW to Thoreau is ridiculous, but not if the scale is now what we are getting for mmos. Its a pretty solid analogy.
MMORPGs never tried to evolve towards its unique strengths, and we see the result: they generally do a lot of things a little bit worse than those other games that do a little bit less.
That was cool before we got things like survival builders by the dozen; now, there's so many options for the crafting fanatic, why go with the relatively shallow versions in an MMORPG? You can't even build structures in most of them.
If you want large multiplayer battles, games like Battlefield and Fortnite's are creeping onto MMORPG level territory. Yet, instead of trying to separate itself, MMORPG devs decided arena Capture the Flag and Control Point mechanics from FPSs were THE way to go, along with culling a lot of skills to reduce it down and focus more on fast-paced action. Now, why would you play an MMORPG arena battle when you can face off against dozens of others in Fortnite or Battlefield, or even For Honor of you want that medieval feel? They all do action combat better simply because they have honed themselves towards the strength: fast-paced action with responsive player controls. They were never going for massively multiplayer like a real MMORPG, so they didn't develop for it.
MMORPGs have tried to develop for every player but the ones who want what the genre brings that no other can: multiplayer interaction on a massive scale, usually with a virtual world and sides to gather into and to work together and/or face off against other groups. But they can't beat other genres at their own games, and we see how irrelevant the genre has become because of it.
Sorry, it's never been worse. The MMORPG has been dead for quite some time now and I don't see anything really on the horizon that is going to break that. When they started treating their customers as payers and not players is where it all went downhill.
If you want to do a deeper dive into why MMORPGs are so bad just look at the developers who build them. To be blunt, today's generation does not have the skill set nor discipline to build one of these and actually ship it.. in fact the entire industry is plagued not releasing product. I see it every day in the development world I'm in.. screens/dialogs that would have been built in 2 weeks 15 years ago now take a dev team 2 months to build.. chew on that one.
I think the reality is that there are 2 things that have to change..
1. The business model where they spend massive amount of resources on figuring out how to rape players for every penny they can. This has to change, every game spends so much time building cash shops (digital Amazons) to sell shit. I don't think everything gets the amount of effort it takes to build those.
2. Time.. it's going to be a few more years before the millennials age out of game development and a new generation focus on actually wanting to work comes in. Ya, I know that's going to piss a lot of people off and they will claim or it's just a stereotype.. whatever, I live in this and I've never seen a more lazy generation.. ever. That type of thinking cannot build a complex application like a MMORPG.. they can quickly throw up a website that looks bad ass.. but real development, large scale enterprise development that is needed to support these types of games is not achievable to this generation and trust me, that is the real reason why these games are taking so long to develop, and in the end fail to deliver.
Sorry, it's never been worse. The MMORPG has been dead for quite some time now
If you want to do a deeper dive into why MMORPGs are so bad just look at the developers who build them. To be blunt, today's generation does not have...
I think the reality is that there are 2 things that have to change..
1. The business model where they spend massive amount of resources on figuring out how to rape players for every penny they can.
2. Time.. it's going to be a few more years before the millennials age out of game development and a new generation...
Yeah, I normally stop at the get off my lawn 'this generation' stuff. Of course millenials can build and launch great games. Thinking that they can't is a ridiculous mindset.
But, look, I get the monetisation complaints. I was one of the few voices here that was hardline anti cash shop here on mmorpg.com when they and the rot of the F2P model were appearing in western MMORPGs. I was always of the view that they were anti consumer and unethical exploitation, even when the majority of the forum members were 100% on board the hype train of it all and cash shops were being hailed as the saviour of gaming by most. The threads we had arguing this were huge and the pro sub people were a small minority. I agree that cash shops are not ideal and I still won't play a game with loot boxes. I get it, but I also have to say... I tried telling everyone this would all happen years ago and very few listened. At this point I am... Well, mmorpg players made their bed, time to lay in it. But, yes, the current state of monetisation is shitty.
But, I just don't see the upcoming crop of games being overly weighed down by unethical revenues, or suffering from having to put resources into building a cash shop. I don't think the complaint is that justified.
Now, I admit... I toook some time away from mainstream MMORPGs because the whole thing was boring to me, preferring to play classic Everquest, but I have to say... The future looks so bright to me. So many choices from Ashes of Creation to Hytale to watch grow and maybe eventually play.
I think I am back!
Why is the general vibe in the genre so deflated and negative? I don't get it.
remember when people said that Bless Online will totally be awesome and all that jazz?
Remember when people were hyped for Ark?
Please excuse my cynism but talking and promises are cheap.
I am playing Fallen Earth. I got invited to a very nice clan and someone in the clan gave me a great rifle. The game has no classes and the combat can be clunky if you're not used to it and I am pretty dumb at new things. I am old so I learn things slowly. I am almost level 8.
I love the crafting. The fact is you just wander around as it is an open world, it has many good quests and the game is surprisingly deep because of the skill system. Of course I am very low level and I have done a few quests but they have been well written and interesting. Of course being a pack rat is my ultimate downfall.
I know it is an old game, 2009 but hey if I never played it before so it is new to me.
I threw some money at it since I was enjoying it and I want the game to continue and I believe in supporting what you want to succeed and persist especially since I am making an investment of my precious time.
See I take a different stance. I am not jaded or let down by crowdfunding or whatever. I am just done with the same game with a different skin repeat. Over and over again. The mmorpg never evolved. It just rehashed the same mechanics and gameplay over and over again. I have been there done that for over 20 years with no real change it has just grown stale for me. There are just other hybrid model games that have come along and taken over and pushed the mmorpg aside. Millions of prior mmorpg players have left the genre behind as the genre could not keep up and continue to change. Many things in life are cyclical so perhaps the mmorpg will reinvent itself at some point but I hardly think it will resemble what many of us from the golden age would recognize. What we once knew is gone.
This is what made me excited for AoC. It felt like an evolution of the MMO genre. They promised PVE, dungeons, raids, and PVP. Everything I could ever want with new dynamic things that could shake up the MMO genre and now I am scared they will just focus on there BR if it successful.
you mean just like how Epic dropped everything when they saw the succes of the BR mode?
Studios closing down. Major studios struggling financially Mmo devs specifically leaving the industry in droves (most have moved on already)
And yet OP says... future looks bright?
Is this one of those "alternate universe" threads where OP is posting from a parallel universe where the twin towers are still standing and CoH never got shot down?
It still stings the loss of City of Heroes /Villains
Studios closing down. Major studios struggling financially Mmo devs specifically leaving the industry in droves (most have moved on already)
And yet OP says... future looks bright?
Is this one of those "alternate universe" threads where OP is posting from a parallel universe where the twin towers are still standing and CoH never got shot down?
yes, I do. Studios have always shut down, that's just part of the churn of the industry.
I look at the current croop of upcoming games and say, for me, that the future looks bright. Yes.
The indie MMOs are where we may get something different that excites, but wait for the reviews. The genre evolved, gaining some good elements but losing too much on the way.
remember when people said that Bless Online will totally be awesome and all that jazz?
Remember when people were hyped for Ark?
Please excuse my cynism but talking and promises are cheap.
I remember when games waaaaay before those were hyped and failed to deliver. Failed games as a thing didn't start recently.
But, along the way, among all the fails, I have had great games to play and a ton of fun in mmorpgs... If I hadn't, I would have left the genre a long time ago, not being a masochist and all.
The trick is to look at the fun you have had and not just focus on failures, because just seeing the failures kind of twists your perspective until you end up thinking that there is no good in the (gaming) world.
Studios closing down. Major studios struggling financially Mmo devs specifically leaving the industry in droves (most have moved on already)
And yet OP says... future looks bright?
Is this one of those "alternate universe" threads where OP is posting from a parallel universe where the twin towers are still standing and CoH never got shut down?
If what you said was truth then the future looks bright indeed . For the players .
Everything looks great when little is known about it...Those of us that have been around for years have seen MMOs come and go, many with big promise that didn't deliver. Recently, we look no further than the mess Bless is. It was supposed to be great too.
While people keep saying that mainstream gaming is in some type of trouble, I have had a great year playing; God of War, Spider-Man, RDR2, Pillars of Eternity II, Subnautica, Hitman 2, Shadow of the Tomb Raider, and quite a few others.
Sure there has been drama, there has been bad behaviour, sure some studios have closed (and some have opened, as it ever is), but it's largely passed me by beyond being something to gawk at on YT. In the meantime this often proclaimed end of times hasn't been felt by me at all. Games are, IMO, better than ever when looking at them broadly.
As an aside, I think YT 'influencers' have tapped into, and feed, a culture of doom and negativity though because doom, failure, and negativity gets drama views. So many YT gaming channels make everything look much worse than it is, because they know people love to watch a car crash. Though it has value, for sure, YT is kind of a bad influence on gaming culture, tbh. It feeds off and feeds into and amplifies the worst behaviours and mindsets, but... that's a topic for another thread.
But.. I must fit in with the recieved wisdom, I guess... Soo... Doom! Gloom! Doo0o0o0m!
But, this talk of games outside of mmorpgs is off topic and not the point of this thread at all. So i won't be commenting on it past this much.
Everything looks great when little is known about it...Those of us that have been around for years have seen MMOs come and go, many with big promise that didn't deliver. Recently, we look no further than the mess Bless is. It was supposed to be great too.
Dude, I have been on this forum since '04, I have been in mmorpgs since '99, I haven't ever stopped playing the genre. I have done my homework on Pantheon, AoC, and others over the past week. I hardly am a newb or uninformed.
I am sorry Bless let you down, I am glad I missed that particular car crash, but don't try and paint me as some fresh of the boat newb lol
Comments
I assume being away for a bit that the OP has not noticed that seems like every game now is Crowd funded "crappy way to make a well organized mmorpg" as well delivered as unfinished broken,bugged early access games,so NOTHING looks bright for the future at all,well unless you want bugged unfinuished games?
MOST of the time the letters RPG are abused,ARPG's use those letters are NOTHING like a rpg should be.
What we have been receiving is a lot of Indie looking budget games,sub par barely 5/10 in most cases.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
I am just more accepting of bugs and imperfection. I don't have unattainable standards. Having unattainable standards is a sure way to grind yourself into a burnt out cynical wreck, in my experience.
Vault-Tec analysts have concluded that the odds of worldwide nuclear armaggeddon this decade are 17,143,762... to 1.
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?”
― CD PROJEKT RED
Again, that is great for people that enjoy just D or E or F. But I don't want A, B, or C on their own. I also don't want just A, B, and C. I want it all - but better, more complex, more options.
What I see happening to the mmorpg is like the opposite of education. I started early in mmorpgs (UO, EQ, AC, then AO), and each new one gave me more of what I liked - until it started going in reverse. Most players of WoW seemed to be ecstatic when they removed character development and all meaningful player choices. That part of the game they were not interested in - it was an annoyance, something that didn't matter because you just copied whatever the raider putting up the best numbers did and it made the arena harder to balance. So, remove that, then this, then this other thing that confused and was a barrier to nine year old potential players.
That's great for people that don't care. But it is clearly not "evolving." Its devolving. Its regression. Its going from graduate school to grade school. Evolving in gaming terms means making games to including a wider and younger audience, and pandering to the lowest common denominator. Its like starting off reading Tolstoy and Thoreau and then you "evolve" into reading Harry Potter and the Werewolf/Vampire lover lady books. Its a 100% definite regression.
And I'm not saying its bad. Liking Harry Potter and the Werewolf/Vampire team lover books and movies isn't bad. They are super popular because people love them. But it just isn't interesting if you used to have and love Tolstoy and Thoreau and you want more shit like that. And obviously comparing old WoW to Thoreau is ridiculous, but not if the scale is now what we are getting for mmos. Its a pretty solid analogy.
That was cool before we got things like survival builders by the dozen; now, there's so many options for the crafting fanatic, why go with the relatively shallow versions in an MMORPG? You can't even build structures in most of them.
If you want large multiplayer battles, games like Battlefield and Fortnite's are creeping onto MMORPG level territory. Yet, instead of trying to separate itself, MMORPG devs decided arena Capture the Flag and Control Point mechanics from FPSs were THE way to go, along with culling a lot of skills to reduce it down and focus more on fast-paced action. Now, why would you play an MMORPG arena battle when you can face off against dozens of others in Fortnite or Battlefield, or even For Honor of you want that medieval feel? They all do action combat better simply because they have honed themselves towards the strength: fast-paced action with responsive player controls. They were never going for massively multiplayer like a real MMORPG, so they didn't develop for it.
MMORPGs have tried to develop for every player but the ones who want what the genre brings that no other can: multiplayer interaction on a massive scale, usually with a virtual world and sides to gather into and to work together and/or face off against other groups. But they can't beat other genres at their own games, and we see how irrelevant the genre has become because of it.
If you want to do a deeper dive into why MMORPGs are so bad just look at the developers who build them. To be blunt, today's generation does not have the skill set nor discipline to build one of these and actually ship it.. in fact the entire industry is plagued not releasing product. I see it every day in the development world I'm in.. screens/dialogs that would have been built in 2 weeks 15 years ago now take a dev team 2 months to build.. chew on that one.
I think the reality is that there are 2 things that have to change..
1. The business model where they spend massive amount of resources on figuring out how to rape players for every penny they can. This has to change, every game spends so much time building cash shops (digital Amazons) to sell shit. I don't think everything gets the amount of effort it takes to build those.
2. Time.. it's going to be a few more years before the millennials age out of game development and a new generation focus on actually wanting to work comes in. Ya, I know that's going to piss a lot of people off and they will claim or it's just a stereotype.. whatever, I live in this and I've never seen a more lazy generation.. ever. That type of thinking cannot build a complex application like a MMORPG.. they can quickly throw up a website that looks bad ass.. but real development, large scale enterprise development that is needed to support these types of games is not achievable to this generation and trust me, that is the real reason why these games are taking so long to develop, and in the end fail to deliver.
But, look, I get the monetisation complaints. I was one of the few voices here that was hardline anti cash shop here on mmorpg.com when they and the rot of the F2P model were appearing in western MMORPGs. I was always of the view that they were anti consumer and unethical exploitation, even when the majority of the forum members were 100% on board the hype train of it all and cash shops were being hailed as the saviour of gaming by most. The threads we had arguing this were huge and the pro sub people were a small minority. I agree that cash shops are not ideal and I still won't play a game with loot boxes. I get it, but I also have to say... I tried telling everyone this would all happen years ago and very few listened. At this point I am... Well, mmorpg players made their bed, time to lay in it. But, yes, the current state of monetisation is shitty.
But, I just don't see the upcoming crop of games being overly weighed down by unethical revenues, or suffering from having to put resources into building a cash shop. I don't think the complaint is that justified.
I love the crafting. The fact is you just wander around as it is an open world, it has many good quests and the game is surprisingly deep because of the skill system. Of course I am very low level and I have done a few quests but they have been well written and interesting. Of course being a pack rat is my ultimate downfall.
I know it is an old game, 2009 but hey if I never played it before so it is new to me.
I threw some money at it since I was enjoying it and I want the game to continue and I believe in supporting what you want to succeed and persist especially since I am making an investment of my precious time.
I look at the current croop of upcoming games and say, for me, that the future looks bright. Yes.
Can't live in the past forever DM
But, along the way, among all the fails, I have had great games to play and a ton of fun in mmorpgs... If I hadn't, I would have left the genre a long time ago, not being a masochist and all.
Guy posts to say that Ihe is happy and excited for the future.
The rest of the forum posts to say, well... We can't have that.
I am observing a pattern of behaviour in a playful manner.
But, yes, throw this reply on the pile.
Sure there has been drama, there has been bad behaviour, sure some studios have closed (and some have opened, as it ever is), but it's largely passed me by beyond being something to gawk at on YT. In the meantime this often proclaimed end of times hasn't been felt by me at all. Games are, IMO, better than ever when looking at them broadly.
As an aside, I think YT 'influencers' have tapped into, and feed, a culture of doom and negativity though because doom, failure, and negativity gets drama views. So many YT gaming channels make everything look much worse than it is, because they know people love to watch a car crash. Though it has value, for sure, YT is kind of a bad influence on gaming culture, tbh. It feeds off and feeds into and amplifies the worst behaviours and mindsets, but... that's a topic for another thread.
But.. I must fit in with the recieved wisdom, I guess... Soo... Doom! Gloom! Doo0o0o0m!
But, this talk of games outside of mmorpgs is off topic and not the point of this thread at all. So i won't be commenting on it past this much.
I am sorry Bless let you down, I am glad I missed that particular car crash, but don't try and paint me as some fresh of the boat newb lol
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