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Non-combat MMOs, why aren't there more?
Zeroxin
Member UncommonPosts: 2,515
EDIT: Thanks for all the comments guys. Maybe 'non-combat MMO' is too heavy a word... let's go with "creative encounters that don't necessarily require a weapon that removes health bars" MMO.
How's that? Because the reality is, you can still have encounters, but it doesn't have to revolve around healthbar swatting, right? Developers can get creative.
I thought up another MMO idea (just to give you an example); Goonies x World of Warcraft. Instead of having to beat down your opponent with swords, shields and spells and what not, you're actually trying to disable your opponent in order to win the encounter; slick shoes, rocket skateboards, trip wire, and escaping with the loot is an option for "winning" the encounter because you're kids!
I just want a little more creativity in my MMO guys!
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ORIGINAL POST:
Are there any non-combat MMOs out there? I know there are a few. But I feel there is a shortage of good ones and that is a problem. Developers and many players are so focused on combat and skills and spells to the point of over-saturating the MMO market with copies of the same game that only have a slightly different shade. I find that the most wonderful ideas could come from developers stepping out of that mold.
Have you guys ever thought about any cool ideas for MMOs without combat? What do you think would happen if developers actually did move toward no combat or limited combat MMOs? Would the industry be invigorated again? Share your thoughts.
What would a non-combat MMO look like? And what ideas could work? A suggestion I have is a game idea i nicknamed Project J.A.M.I.E. (don't ask me what each of those letter mean). The premise borrows from other indie games and starts off generic; crash-landed pilot on a strange planet, needs to fix ship nothing is working except the power in the ship, his Ai companion and (here's the twist) the cloning machine. Our pilot, Jamie, decides that the only way he's going to get things fixed (and fast) is if he clones himself several times over and sends his clones on missions to make different parts for him to fix the ship (that's where the players come in. They are his clones).
The issue is, he's on a timer, currently the planet he's on is going to pass by the sun, currently keeping it warm but once it moves far enough away from the sun, it will get too frosty for all involved.
Well that's the premise and you can already imagine what can be done with it. These are the kinds of ideas I'd like to see for MMOs. Enough of the "We are doing Full loot Open PvP, it's going to be great!!!" and more "Let's get creative and wild!!"
How's that? Because the reality is, you can still have encounters, but it doesn't have to revolve around healthbar swatting, right? Developers can get creative.
I thought up another MMO idea (just to give you an example); Goonies x World of Warcraft. Instead of having to beat down your opponent with swords, shields and spells and what not, you're actually trying to disable your opponent in order to win the encounter; slick shoes, rocket skateboards, trip wire, and escaping with the loot is an option for "winning" the encounter because you're kids!
I just want a little more creativity in my MMO guys!
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
ORIGINAL POST:
Are there any non-combat MMOs out there? I know there are a few. But I feel there is a shortage of good ones and that is a problem. Developers and many players are so focused on combat and skills and spells to the point of over-saturating the MMO market with copies of the same game that only have a slightly different shade. I find that the most wonderful ideas could come from developers stepping out of that mold.
Have you guys ever thought about any cool ideas for MMOs without combat? What do you think would happen if developers actually did move toward no combat or limited combat MMOs? Would the industry be invigorated again? Share your thoughts.
What would a non-combat MMO look like? And what ideas could work? A suggestion I have is a game idea i nicknamed Project J.A.M.I.E. (don't ask me what each of those letter mean). The premise borrows from other indie games and starts off generic; crash-landed pilot on a strange planet, needs to fix ship nothing is working except the power in the ship, his Ai companion and (here's the twist) the cloning machine. Our pilot, Jamie, decides that the only way he's going to get things fixed (and fast) is if he clones himself several times over and sends his clones on missions to make different parts for him to fix the ship (that's where the players come in. They are his clones).
The issue is, he's on a timer, currently the planet he's on is going to pass by the sun, currently keeping it warm but once it moves far enough away from the sun, it will get too frosty for all involved.
Well that's the premise and you can already imagine what can be done with it. These are the kinds of ideas I'd like to see for MMOs. Enough of the "We are doing Full loot Open PvP, it's going to be great!!!" and more "Let's get creative and wild!!"
This is not a game.
Post edited by Zeroxin on
Comments
While it does have combat, like all other MMO's, it's fully destructible worlds, and open build plan for your home instance or guild hall, are second to none.
The only downside to Trove is that it is Voxel, and that does not sit well with some people.
But if you were looking for a MMO where the crafting, building, and non-combat activities are just as involved as the combat ones, Trove is a game to check out.
Unfortunately nowadays with budgets being so huge, risktaking is not high on the list.
It's certainly doable though, if someone does actually take the risk and finds a way to make these other activities as complex, variable, unpredictable, challenging and fun as combat.
Keep in mind, combat is not just the pewpew, it also branches out into subcategories like maximizing your char efficiency and purposeful speccing into combat skill trees, gearing up and all the collecting, buying, crafting, etc that is part of it, learning all the enemies and their combat styles, strategizing for both solo and group combat, group coordination and group setups, knowing the terrain layout and how to use it to your advantage (usually crucial for pvp), and so on. (there is a lot more you could add)
The devs would have to find other activities that also branch out far in order to have such a huge depth. Combat has more under the hood than most people think.
There are already nicely complex crafting and building systems, that's surely one approach.
I do hope someone cracks the non-combat formula.
In Trove players will spend all kinds of money on patterns, materials, frameworks, and tools like mounts that allow them to harvest or build faster.
So it can be monetized very easy.
I saw that Camelot Unchained had crafting Classes, which, if that is the way things go, crafting might become very competitive in that game, and the more competitive something is, the more you and monetize it.
If A Tale in the Desert had gotten a few million subscribers at its peak, we'd probably have lots of non-combat MMOs by now. But no one wants to copy a game whose peak was a few thousand. That's the only strictly non-combat MMORPG that I can think of off hand.
The next best thing is MMORPGs that do have combat, but have lots of other things to do so that the game doesn't have to be almost entirely about combat if you don't want it to be. The only game I can think of that fits that description and has ever been all that successful is Black Desert, and even that is pretty heavy on combat, especially with the non-consensual PVP.
Most other games that tried for a heavy emphasis on non-combat activities flopped. Maple Story 2 is shutting down about a year and a half after it launched. Puzzle Pirates would have shut down when the company that made it got closed except that some employees got permission from Sega to keep the keep the game running on their own rather than being ordered to pull the plug. Uncharted Waters Online has survived for a long time, but had the Western publisher drop the game and force Tecmo-Koei to find a new publisher repeatedly. Ungood mentions Trove, which does have a good amount of non-combat activities, but I'd think of that as a game that is mostly about combat. And it even then, it wasn't successful enough to keep Trion viable as an independent company.
One might surmise that the problem with MMORPGs that aren't mostly about combat is that they weren't good enough. I say that UWO is the second best game ever made. Ever, any genre, not just MMORPGs. If that kind of quality isn't good enough to be a runaway commercial success that inspires lots of copycats, the problem is the lack of a market, not the lack of quality.
Let's not blame Trove, for Trions problems.
Project entropia you can be non combat, but i wouldnt recommend the game unless you have money and like casions.
You can see my sci-fi/WW2 book recommendations.
I have not played a couple i recently watched and do not even know if there is any combat but you can check for yourself.
Some Russian game called Workers and resources or something like that.
A franchise game ..ANNO 1800 not sure if combat but seems pretty good.
A game i think looks cool/promising Ostriv.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
Last I checked Black Desert is doing well. It's up to you to decide how to play the game. You can find a non combat MMO by doing what you find as fun in a game if there is a possibility of doing it without combat.
You can also do this in Archeage however I would not recommend becoming a trader there because the energy restrictions in that game make it unbearable.
If you cannot find it then make a space for yourself in a game that allows you the freedom to do so.
There's so damn much industrial stuff you can do that it's not funny.
Something to do with fairness and all that.
Anyway, I think it's very easy to mix building games with combat games, As I said, Trove is a great example of this. You don't need to do combat in Trove to build, and you don't need to build to enjoy combat.
But they can blend together very well, as you kill mobs you get trophies you can decorate your Corner Stone with, or your home instance.
You can pick up recipes from mobs and dungeons, and of course, the normal, round around and blow up the landscape for materials and ingredients.
Also they sell a lot of stuff in the store to help crafters. Everything from Harvesting Mounts to building mounts.
However, one of the largest drawbacks of most games is that there are no real crafter classes, everyone plays a combat class and just opts to craft with that class.
In Camelot Unchained, again they have crafting classes listed, so, I will be looking into that to see how that plays out.
Practice doesn't make perfect, practice makes permanent.
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2. making something you want to play
sometimes there is a combination of the two, but in general this is it. People ask, “why do developers make pvp games?” The answer is simple, they like pvp games. You ask, “why are there no non combat mmos?” Because the developers don’t want to make them and not enough people want to play them.
Modern Developers and Game Companies are not made up gamers, they approach game development as a academic or trade professional pursuit akin to psychology, where someone does not need to be crazy to know how to work with or handle people who are. That is what happens when companies become multimillion dollar business, as opposed to some niche product made as a labor of love, like the first MMO's were.
This is why we have so many modern games that seem to be what we call "Check Box" games, where they are checking off what worked, or what it is accepted that players want, and not looking at what makes the game fun from a players perspective.
Often if any feedback on that comes to them, it either comes post launch, or from their QA department.
This might also be why many games are "Launching" earlier in development, because the dev's are not gamers, they don't play these games, as such they have no idea what is actually fun. They look at metrics, mechanics, and chart statistics, as opposed to just getting in and playing the game.
So the notion of "Making something they want to play" is not really a sound stance.
They make PvP games because it's easier in overall development, as the players themselves are the content, and PvP is what sells, if you look at games like Overwatch, LOL, and Fortnight, PvP is where the big money is at.
So I highly doubt any of these Dev's make a PvP game because THEY directly want to play a PvP game or invest any real time into one.
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Godfred's Tomb Trailer: https://youtu.be/-nsXGddj_4w
Original Skyrim: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/109547
Serph toze kindly has started a walk-through. https://youtu.be/UIelCK-lldo
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