One of the things I like about WoW is its customazibility. There have been times when I wasn't happy with an aspect of the interface so I pulled up ConText and coded up something to my liking.
The social interaction is part of it as well, meeting some random people as you journey across the world, getting to know them, growing more powerful with them, and stepping into new and untested content (for us) and having a go at it.
All MMO's should have in-game housing and the ability to customize said house to the standards of such MMO's as Star Wars Galaxies and Ultima(& the Elder Scrolls game, to an extent). Going beyond is always welcomed.
Seriously though, having houses in an MMO just gives me such a drive to grind. I feel like it adds another subgame when implemented correctly, IE guild halls, single houses, able to establish a city with enough area, blah blah blah. It was great getting enough credits in SWG to buy a kickass two story house decorated with armor sets on the walls and guns on the mantle, among other things. I was a Teras Kasi Trandoshan Creature Handler Combat Medic, and I had set up moisture farms all over my estate, so when I needed more medpacks I had all the ingredients resourced to fit my needs. Crafting? My own private house droids and robotic devices can do the job.
Don't get me wrong, the game turned into shit a few weeks later.
That's another thing I would like to see, in SWG you had the option to improve and customize your health packs. I think there were three bars or something? And each type of alterations can be used to sacrifice some type of energy recovery into a different bar. It really makes me want to play again to remember how it was like.
More MMO trash:
I would also want to see a future MMO start out in the stone age, with a genius gameplay mechanic that hides the grind. As more people play and level up they evolve their species(Neanderthal > Cro-magnon > Modern), and they get the options to establish a city or a village with their clan(aka guilds), and as they level up even more(option to donate money, raid villages to upgrade their village), they can start setting up towns and diplomacy(guilds already have the bullshit anyway, so why not make something more of it?) and eventually make a kingdom and a country.(Classes are Hunter/Barbarian/Voodoo or something, and later on it becomes more sophisticated Merchant/Knight/Politician maybe?) Clans should be able to have smaller clans under it's flag. So if you're part of a lone ctrl+alt+del clan and you know you would benefit if you were under the bigger and smarter PA clan, you get the benefits of their hospitality(if they have a big village, discounts and the like maybe?) and a clan that can assist you during pillages and whatnot.
But as you level up and more people start playing the game they can no longer be Neanderthals or Magnon Mans depending on the server's evolution of man.
PVP would be from one server to another, since each server should represent a part of land that they were born on, and depending on their evolutionary status, you could be going against brutes, knights, pirates, whatever. But if your shit gets conquered you have to assimilate to their culture(Weapons merchant killed in your village? Then you have no choice but to abide the prices that the merchants of PAVille has set for their clubs and swords. Economy is craft-based and player driven, NPC's should have little to no participation. Think Ragnarok I guess? But less awesome rare loots drops replaced with awesome craftable items) and choice of architecture until you can make a faction big enough to overthrow whatever NPC might be governing your side of the country.
Maybe MMO's suffer because most of their stuff is driven by just kill kill kill, I wonder if there has been any successful MMO that has created a real user-friendly and deep crafting/political system. All I can think of is SWG, but it got gangbanged.
I want to see players able to establish their own kingdoms and rules(with restrictions, of course), having their own towns that they created and founded with their own unique economy(determined by their location. Need more copper? Gotta make an alliance with Vgcats-chan, or just raid their shit and make them adjust to you)
I just want something like Spore, but not Spore =/
I think MMOs are to a certain degree fun because of the feeling of growth you achieve by playing against other human players. If we were to play the same game offline, I think there are lots of people who would never be motivated to hit the level cap. I've tried out over 12 MMOs, I all got their little boxes sitting around in my room. Last one I tried was Pirates of the Burning Sea, got the pre-order package and everything. Once it launched, I just figured out it was for me .. at all.
MMOs right now are just somehow a big boring grind. The most fun I had out of all my MMO-gaming must've been from Myst Online. It was so simplistic; yet it had an enthralling world and an atmosphere most MMOs cannot even begin to dream of. This is of course, my opinion. I had a brother who didn't do anything else then play World of Warcraft, every single day/hour/minute/second that he could. But now he quits, because he is bored. The end-game stuff is like a job; when I tried doing that I wasn't "dedicated" enough. Which means I wasn't able to be there for every raid, etc. which had me removed from the guilds I tried out at.
It's such a shame they are closing down Myst Online. I'd love to play another MMO that didn't really play like a grindfest. Give me atmosphere, a good community, and I'm there, baby.
When you look at console games you ask yourself "what makes these fun?". There are a variety of factors and many genres. I enjoy FPS but not nearly as much as my cousin. I prefer RPGs because i love a good story and he...pretty much only plays FPS. The closest thing I've seen him play to an RPG is some Korean Hack'n'slash MMO.
The best MMO's are the ones who can hash together all the different experiences people could possibly desire.
Though I'm hashing the two together: Look at EvE and WoW
Short term rewards
· Quests and Missions
Long term rewards
· Raiding, Corp wars/POS
PvP
· Killing people
· Not just killing people: Cutting edge technology in EvE means vicious price wars!
Loot
· Looking cool and kicking ass
Exploration
· New instances, Roid Belts
Economy
· Auction Hall, EvE economy (So complex someone could write a thesis on its history)
Community
· Chatting in Jita or world LFG chat
· Tying into all aspects of every other part of the game
· Creating or belonging to a Guild/Corp where you feel more in control of your destiny because it's a choice and not some 8-5 job you're forced to muck around in to pay for your MMO addiction!
edit:
There's problably about 50 other things missing, but the important thing is that these two MMO's chiefly encompass a variety of play styles though they are incredibly different game styles.
Something more meaningful than "now that I have Armor A, I need Armor B, which should only take me 7 months" The people that seem to stick around the longest are the ones using it as a chat room.
My friends almost quit WoW, and this new patch comes out and sucks them all back in. Now I sit, bitter, playing PA people in Brawl online.
WoW has fun gameplay. There's fun in PvP and there's fun learning raids. The problem is, PvP is like other deathmatch games only with the added bonuses of it sucking until you play enough to get the stats. And PvE is fun a few times and Blizzard is way way WAY too slow pumping out content to keep it fresh.
The real problem with MMORPGs is that you can't generally keep producing content at the rate players tire of it, so you resort to grinds with shiny items coated in purple text. But I play for gameplay, so getting a new item seems incredibly hollow if all I did to get it was run the same dungeon five hundred times.
I also think factions should be decided upon by the players and not forced. EVE is engaging (to me) because of the dynamic player politics and the shifting power of the player corporations. It's not 50/50, or 25/25/25/25, factions come into power and then lose it. WoW feels so static, no battle has any impact on the gameplay environment. The Horde and the Alliance always have control of the same cities, and killing NPCs has no long-term effect. It would be cool if each town had a 'flag' that the Horde and Alliance fought over. Whoever has the flag has control of the town and its resources. Own more towns in a given area and that area becomes friendly territory. Eventually you could push all the way to capital cities.
It would be cool if each town had a 'flag' that the Horde and Alliance fought over. Whoever has the flag has control of the town and its resources. Own more towns in a given area and that area becomes friendly territory. Eventually you could push all the way to capital cities.
This is good until one faction is unable to level at because the world has been taken over by the dominating faction. A weekly reset would be needed, or maybe a buff to exp gain for the losing side when they lose areas.
It would be cool if each town had a 'flag' that the Horde and Alliance fought over. Whoever has the flag has control of the town and its resources. Own more towns in a given area and that area becomes friendly territory. Eventually you could push all the way to capital cities.
This is good until one faction is unable to level at because the world has been taken over by the dominating faction. A weekly reset would be needed, or maybe a buff to exp gain for the losing side when they lose areas.
Common sense dictates that there should be checks and balances in place to insure that something of that nature couldn't happen. A reset or something more subtle, like spawning tougher soldiers more often to eventually drive the attackers out of the town.
The goal is that each side starts at 50/50, but afterwards is never stays that way. One side has an edge at all times, no matter how small. This gives each side a defined goal: either get lost territory back, or keep expanding and get as much territory as you can. It constantly switches between offense and defense, gaining control of new cities and defending those that are under attack. Take Planetside, for example. In one day, a faction can control 2/3rds of a planet, and then the next day they have 1/4th of the planet. It shifts back and forth rapidly to make sure all of the players are driven to keep fighting over the cities.
PvP shouldn't be a 'side dish', so to speak. It should be a constant, a core element of the gameplay. Control of dungeons could be decided by who owns the area, to encourage PvP & PvE players to participate. Players should be able to kill other players and kill monsters with the same spec and equipment instead of having to choose one and spend lots of time and money when switching to the other.
Imo, there are two types of MMOs; sandboxes and theme parks.
A sandbox is a game where developers create the systems, but the players create the game. The fun of the game is the economic, political, and military competition with other groups of players, rather than running some developer-created dungeon. Examples include Star Wars Galaxies, Eve Online, or Asheron's Call on the Darktide server. These games are characterized by robust player-driven economies and chaotic PvP.
A theme park is a game where the developers create a fairly narrowly-defined gameplay experience that the subscribers then play through, just as the developers intended. Examples are World of Warcraft and Everquest. These games are characterized by a raid-centric endgame and and oodles of shiny loot.
The problem with sandboxes is that the game systems are generally pretty boring. Combat in Eve is an absolute snoozefest. It's only exciting because of what's at stake. The problem with theme parks is that they aren't dynamic enough. You're 50th time killing Onyxia is going to be much like your first, and even your first time is going to be exactly like the videos and strategies that you looked at ahead of time.
What we really need is an MMO that combines the level of craftsmanship that we see in the typical theme park with the level of dynamism that we see in the typical sandbox. Something like a World of Warcraft/Eve Online mashup. I won't bore you with my specific design ideas, but I think that's the gist of where an MMO would have to go in the future to dethrone the current kings of the genre.
It would be cool if each town had a 'flag' that the Horde and Alliance fought over. Whoever has the flag has control of the town and its resources. Own more towns in a given area and that area becomes friendly territory. Eventually you could push all the way to capital cities.
This is good until one faction is unable to level at because the world has been taken over by the dominating faction. A weekly reset would be needed, or maybe a buff to exp gain for the losing side when they lose areas.
Common sense dictates that there should be checks and balances in place to insure that something of that nature couldn't happen. A reset or something more subtle, like spawning tougher soldiers more often to eventually drive the attackers out of the town.
The goal is that each side starts at 50/50, but afterwards is never stays that way. One side has an edge at all times, no matter how small. This gives each side a defined goal: either get lost territory back, or keep expanding and get as much territory as you can. It constantly switches between offense and defense, gaining control of new cities and defending those that are under attack. Take Planetside, for example. In one day, a faction can control 2/3rds of a planet, and then the next day they have 1/4th of the planet. It shifts back and forth rapidly to make sure all of the players are driven to keep fighting over the cities.
PvP shouldn't be a 'side dish', so to speak. It should be a constant, a core element of the gameplay. Control of dungeons could be decided by who owns the area, to encourage PvP & PvE players to participate. Players should be able to kill other players and kill monsters with the same spec and equipment instead of having to choose one and spend lots of time and money when switching to the other.
My ideas are similar to this. Ideally, you'd have player-created factions who would divvy up the tasks according to players' inclinations. Some subset of the faction would act as PvP warriors, some subset would act as PvE raiders, and another subset would act as crafters who could synthesize trade goods obtained by raiding into uber loot that could be distributed to everyone.
Player-created factions also help to solve the need for resets. If one side becomes too dominant, then it will only remain so as long as it can divvy up the spoils of victory to the satisfaction of its members. Inevitably, it will fail to do that, and then splinter groups will naturally break off to attempt to conquer and obtain their own resources. The political dynamic across servers could become fascinating.
I played WoW for about two months back in 2006. No social interaction whatsoever, really. I just liked doing the quests and progressing my character. Actually had a lot of fun, but it wasn't my computer so the fun could not continue.
If they made a single-player MMO-type game (and I don't mean like Oblivion, more WoW in style) for 360 or such, I would so buy it.
That doesn't make much sense. Korean MMOs have, from what I've played, been tradtionally loot-light, the majority of your power coming from your stats and abilities.
korodullin on
- The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (2017, colorized)
PvP is not very popular in MMORPGs, though. These are people who prefer co-op to competition.
Got any hard evidence to back it up?
Take any look at old-school UO when Trammel came around, or anything regarding EQ. WoW is the first MMO I've seen since DAoC where the PvP was a success in any large measure and Blizzard's still spent the past four years doing their best to essentially divorce PvP from PvE in almost every capacity. The PvP that is so massively popular in WoW pretty much only exists as a consequence-free Counter-Strike-like diversion.
Granted, that diverson's popularity is starting to eclipse the old "raiding game", but it still makes all those grandiose plans of interweaving PvP objectives with PvE progression seem tacky, dated, and almost certainly doomed to failure.
korodullin on
- The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (2017, colorized)
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RoshinMy backlog can be seen from spaceSwedenRegistered Userregular
edited March 2008
I think I'm older than most of you here (?) and view MMOG's from an old school RPG angle.
The positive aspects of a MMOG for me are:
- Exploration and adventure. Being able to wander around, discover new areas, without too severe restrictions. WoW achieved this for levels 1-30 (roughly). After that, the emphasis was more and more on grinding, getting items, and group play.
- Playing in a world populated with real people. There is a rather distinct difference in playing with people (in a party) and playing alongside with people. I enjoy being able to solo my way through large parts of the game. I don't mind playing with others in a party, but I want to do it when I choose to, not because I have to. Again, WoW did well here for the first half of the game, but not so well after that.
- Customization. You spend a lot of time with your avatars in a MMOG and I like to able to customize them and not look like a clone of everyone else. Not just the appearance, but abilities and characteristics as well. Many MMOG's fall into the "Tank, Nuker, Healer" core class stereotype and it's so utterly boring. Some hybrid classes appear to be a little different, but in reality there's little difference. Personally, I want mystery and surprises. I understand that class balance is important for competitive play, but I couldn't care less about it.
I'm sure someone will pipe up and say "Dewd, you can totally solo your way through all of WoW!". Sure, I can also get to work everyday by bicycling backwards or walking on my hands, but I want it to be a somewhat less frustrating experience.
Currently, I'm totally burned out on WoW. I played it since the betas, but eventually the grind and dumbass community broke me and I will never go back. It got to the point where I was ready to kill if I heard another "gold plz", "n00b!", or "Can I have your stuff?". I play LotRO now, which does really well in most aspects and has a fairly nice community.
The problem that bothers me about most of MMOs is that you're unimportant. You can't really make a name for yourself. You are just someone there who goes through each dungeon, grinds mobs, goes on a few raids, etc. I have always found that aspect unappealing, and of course the grind that goes along with it.
I want an MMO where you're not confined. The game world is the players' world. They build it up and they tear it down. They wage war over territory and cities, and can conquer or destroy. I'm not looking for big space ships. I want ground beneath my feet and a castle in the distance ready for me to crumble to the ground. And no mountain is going to be an barrier for me. It's big and it's open and it doesn't feel like a linear progression.
Of course, every player doesn't have to engage in the giant wars that the player factions engage in. You could be a thief and go make a name for yourself stealing from the coffers of the various player cities, with all buildings having interior for a thief to conquer. Perhaps even a mercenary? There's always something to do, but it's you doing it and it's possible to actually become and feel important in what you do.
I also wouldn't mind combat that isn't a bar of skills at the bottom of the screen. I want combat to be based on player skill and not levels and stats. In other words, I wouldn't mind a game like World War 2 online but new and easier to get into, and actually has a big budget behind it. It wouldn't hurt to have swords instead of guns, too. I like the medieval landscape, what can I say, but I really don't feel too many of them have done it right. I want it to feel dark and gritty and enjoy walking into a pub at night where it becomes more dangerous, maybe get into a bar fight.
Age of Conan does have the territory conquest and that gritty atmosphere and bar fights, so maybe I'll like it, but the world is actually fairly confined, combat is your standard hit a number key and watch him slash affair, and there's plenty of grind to be had.
Dashui on
Xbox Live, PSN & Origin: Vacorsis 3DS: 2638-0037-166
The problem that bothers me about most of MMOs is that you're unimportant. You can't really make a name for yourself. You are just someone there who goes through each dungeon, grinds mobs, goes on a few raids, etc. I have always found that aspect unappealing, and of course the grind that goes along with it. .
Wrongo. There are "celebrities" of varying degrees within mmorpgs. Its even less cool than it sounds (which is pretty uncool).
If you grind the most loots, drop out of school to get High Warlord, troll the forums more than other people, etc, you are an mmo celebrity. Pretty sweet, huh?
The problem that bothers me about most of MMOs is that you're unimportant. You can't really make a name for yourself. You are just someone there who goes through each dungeon, grinds mobs, goes on a few raids, etc. I have always found that aspect unappealing, and of course the grind that goes along with it. .
Wrongo. There are "celebrities" of varying degrees within mmorpgs. Its even less cool than it sounds (which is pretty uncool).
Not really. And if you want to talk about cool MMO "celebrities", check out some Ultima Online or EVE stories. The players are given a great deal of freedom in their world, and they've done some pretty neat things. Granted, in those games, you get a name for yourself by griefing. The freedom essentially amounts to that. What I want and listed above, you can feel important by doing more than just griefing, and there would be a system in place to recognize and display your status, perhaps.
Dashui on
Xbox Live, PSN & Origin: Vacorsis 3DS: 2638-0037-166
The problem that bothers me about most of MMOs is that you're unimportant. You can't really make a name for yourself. You are just someone there who goes through each dungeon, grinds mobs, goes on a few raids, etc. I have always found that aspect unappealing, and of course the grind that goes along with it. .
Wrongo. There are "celebrities" of varying degrees within mmorpgs. Its even less cool than it sounds (which is pretty uncool).
Not really. And if you want to talk about cool MMO "celebrities", check out some Ultima Online or EVE stories. The players are given a great deal of freedom in their world, and they've done some pretty neat things. Granted, in those games, you get a name for yourself by griefing. The freedom essentially amounts to that. What I want and listed above, you can feel important by doing more than just griefing, and there would be a system in place to recognize and display your status, perhaps.
The only notable thing YOU can do in an mmo (by yourself), by the nature of the genre, is to spend more time playing than other players. You can feel accomplishments in single player games because you play at your own pace, and there aren't other people playing 20 hours a day to make your accomplishments look like crap in comparison.
The problem that bothers me about most of MMOs is that you're unimportant. You can't really make a name for yourself. You are just someone there who goes through each dungeon, grinds mobs, goes on a few raids, etc. I have always found that aspect unappealing, and of course the grind that goes along with it. .
Wrongo. There are "celebrities" of varying degrees within mmorpgs. Its even less cool than it sounds (which is pretty uncool).
Not really. And if you want to talk about cool MMO "celebrities", check out some Ultima Online or EVE stories. The players are given a great deal of freedom in their world, and they've done some pretty neat things. Granted, in those games, you get a name for yourself by griefing. The freedom essentially amounts to that. What I want and listed above, you can feel important by doing more than just griefing, and there would be a system in place to recognize and display your status, perhaps.
The only notable thing YOU can do in an mmo (by yourself), by the nature of the genre, is to spend more time playing than other players. You can feel accomplishments in single player games because you play at your own pace, and there aren't other people playing 20 hours a day to make your accomplishments look like crap in comparison.
Which is why this is a thread about what you want in FUTURE MMOs... which is why I'm listing things I want that go around that bullshit. A player who plays more than another won't necessarily be better, because it's not based on levels and stats, but skill and freedom. That's what I want. Someone who only plays for two hours can be just as renowned as someone who plays for more. Granted, people who play more in any game will probably be more recognized, but there won't be such a huge gap.
Damn, man, this isn't necessarily about what is, but what we would like. O_o
Dashui on
Xbox Live, PSN & Origin: Vacorsis 3DS: 2638-0037-166
Without the grind, it would still be the same way. I don't know anything about the hardcore scenes in standard games, but I guarantee the guys who are well known within CS circles, or fighting game circles play their games all day.
If the game is an MMOFPS, for example, the renown players will be playing all day honing their skills. Its just that these skills will be more twitch based.
The only case I can think of that is otherwise, is if the game has a really, really spectacular outlet for player created content. In that case, you could make something unique. In those cases, though, you can bet that griefers with legions of giant penis images will be on the spot.
You really can't win when people are involved, they suck.
DisruptorX2 on
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HenroidMexican kicked from Immigration ThreadCentrism is Racism :3Registered Userregular
The problem that bothers me about most of MMOs is that you're unimportant. You can't really make a name for yourself. You are just someone there who goes through each dungeon, grinds mobs, goes on a few raids, etc. I have always found that aspect unappealing, and of course the grind that goes along with it.
You can make a name for yourself, but it will never be known to the entirety of the playerbase. It'll be among your server population at best.
I played guildwars and loved its set up. Game mechanics were the best and the story was reasonably compelling, with Cutscene rewards for completion of events.
I got bored because I couldn't find a large enough guild in it where multiple people were on at any given time. I enjoyed chatting it up in guildchat as I had done in Everquest.
Guess if future MMO's adopted the GW pricing structure it would be great. I hate paying monthly.
An (official) WoW server with Worldwide PvP where players dropped one or more of the items they were wearing upon death would be so sweet. It would entirely change the dynamics of the game. World PvP would actually be meaningful, and you would get so many more players out there raiding enemy towns etc. Throw in the ability to talk to the other side and bam you got yourself one hot game.
Although I played on a free shard, I loved the PvP in UO. I liked having to closely guard every item I had, being super careful where and when I left town, the little skirmishes that would evolve into massive guild wars after a guildie lost his best items, gate/recalling back to your guild house with a backpack full of your enemies loot - such good fun.
Agent--006 on
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spookymuffin( ° ʖ ° )Puyallup WA Registered Userregular
edited March 2008
I said it a thousand times, and I'll say it again.
GIVE ME A POKEMON MMO.
Give me the chance to go out in the wilderness and raid bushes for cute little creatures to catch with my pokeballs. Make trainer battles possible between actual people, with stats that are posted in each town at the gym. Give me the option of not wearing a gay hat, vest, or backpack. I really can't figure out why Nintendo hasn't grabbed this idea by the balls (heh).
spookymuffin on
PSN: MegaSpooky // 3DS: 3797-6276-7138 Wii U NNID: MegaSpooky
I said it a thousand times, and I'll say it again.
GIVE ME A POKEMON MMO.
Give me the chance to go out in the wilderness and raid bushes for cute little creatures to catch with my pokeballs. Make trainer battles possible between actual people, with stats that are posted in each town at the gym. Give me the option of not wearing a gay hat, vest, or backpack. I really can't figure out why Nintendo hasn't grabbed this idea by the balls (heh).
I've played a lot of MMO's, and a lot of different styles. UO, EQ, DAoC, SWG, RO, WoW, Planetside.. and countless "free" MMO's.
In my experience, there is not set formula that makes an MMO "fun." It all comes down to what the person playing the game enjoys. My two favorites are UO and Wurm.
My favorite part of MMO's is having something that is yours in the game world. I enjoy houses, boats, vehicles, mounts, armor and weapon sets.. things like that. Wurm brought on a new aspect, actually creating things. I loved that you started out with nothing, and it was up to you to create what you needed to survive. The one thing I dislike about Wurm are the bears, spiders, wolves, etc. Remove those, update the graphics, and Wurm would be my ideal MMO.
I've played a lot of MMO's, and a lot of different styles. UO, EQ, DAoC, SWG, RO, WoW, Planetside.. and countless "free" MMO's.
In my experience, there is not set formula that makes an MMO "fun." It all comes down to what the person playing the game enjoys. My two favorites are UO and Wurm.
My favorite part of MMO's is having something that is yours in the game world. I enjoy houses, boats, vehicles, mounts, armor and weapon sets.. things like that. Wurm brought on a new aspect, actually creating things. I loved that you started out with nothing, and it was up to you to create what you needed to survive. The one thing I dislike about Wurm are the bears, spiders, wolves, etc. Remove those, update the graphics, and Wurm would be my ideal MMO.
I'm a bit like that, in that I love having my own stuff in the world. I'm really dissapointed with WoW because of this, I mean all they have to do is add instanced housing like in LotRO. Then you can add housing items to add some variety to loot and the economy.
What we really need is an MMO that combines the level of craftsmanship that we see in the typical theme park with the level of dynamism that we see in the typical sandbox. Something like a World of Warcraft/Eve Online mashup. I won't bore you with my specific design ideas, but I think that's the gist of where an MMO would have to go in the future to dethrone the current kings of the genre.
Something like this is kind of a holy grail for MMOs. Fairly early in SWG's life time, there was a discussion between the devs and players about what the game wanted to do, what the player base really was, and what styles of play the game was actually catering to.
I might as well do a brief summary of the Bartle player types since I'm sure I'll mention them again in this thread if it continues.
Basically way back in the day, people looking at the psychology at work in MUDs picked up on four dominant things players were doing in games. None of them are mutually exclusive and there are players that highly enjoy all four styles, but also plenty that are skewed towards a few areas. It's quite possible to be a highly social player that also really likes PvP.
Achievers are all about character improvement. They're the ones that value leveling up, equipment upgrades, etc. for its own sake and to take on the next challenge. This is the style of play most MMOs you see today cater to. They haven't really deviated all that much from the DikuMUD formula, one of the really popular MUDs that other MUDs were allowed under license to copy code and other stuff from. EQ was influenced by a DikuMUD descendant, other MMOs are influenced by EQ, etc. Pure achievers will kill a tough monster with a powerful item drop and think "Sweet, I just killed the monster and got phat loot."
Killers are about competition. In PvP games, this obviously translates into PvP. It also can translate into stuff like getting up on leaderboards, having better raid progression than the other guilds, and other ePeen stuff. This is one of the simpler categories. Pure killers kill the monster, loot the item, and think "Sweet, I'll use this to do better in PvP."
Socializers are obviously about the social element in MMOs. Despite what many used to think on other games, this does not translate into roleplaying. Many would much rather chat about RL stuff or use funny emotes than, say, type in an English accent about how they're being oppressed and that systems of government established by retrieving a sword from a chick in a lack is inherently violent. The pure socializer kills the monster, loots it, and then brags about it to their friends/guild/general chat.
Explorers are harder to define. They like knowing the game world and knowing the game. They can be fans of seeing all the areas in the game, hunting down scenic overlooks few know about, and seeing new things, or the walking encyclopedias that know where each item drops, or the math fiends that figure out exactly how each and every number you see on the character screen translates into an in game result down to six significant digits. Pure explorers kill the monster and then go back to whatever they were doing before the monster so rudely interrupted them.
SWG was a sandbox design. It had huge draws for socializers. Player run cantinas, hospitals, stores, and cities were common. There were whole classes dedicated to fabricating the clothing underneath armor, hair styles, and buildings. It also catered to the explorers by recreating various locales from Star Wars and awarding badges for visiting them (just don't get too close to the Sarlacc pit . . .). Explorers that enjoyed crafting could spend all the time they wanted hunting down the best resource spots and the best ways to combine them. The problem was that it sucked big time for achievers and wasn't so hot for killers. I'm convinced that half of the reason there were sometimes large pvp battles was because there wasn't anything ELSE worth fighting. This wouldn't be a problem if there were few achievers and killers in the player base, but those two archetypes were the majority of it.
WoW on the other hand heavily caters to achievers, killers, and mechanics explorers at the expense of scenic explorers (less so in the expansion with flying mounts) and socializers. Yes, there's stuff like /dance but a few silly emotes, no matter how well done, is nothing compared to what some other games have done to facilitate character interaction.
Nothing prevents having a stronger social aspect if the game is big enough to have a place for players to set up their own stuff, but creation of areas that scenic explorers like often comes at the expense of area achievers want which can, but not always, come at the expense of content for the killers.
Take any look at old-school UO when Trammel came around, or anything regarding EQ. WoW is the first MMO I've seen since DAoC where the PvP was a success in any large measure and Blizzard's still spent the past four years doing their best to essentially divorce PvP from PvE in almost every capacity. The PvP that is so massively popular in WoW pretty much only exists as a consequence-free Counter-Strike-like diversion.
You're forgetting that WoW has easily attainable awards for PvP in addition to awards only the more skilled and dedicated are likely to see. Unlike in some other games, the consequences in WoW are pretty much always positive. You lose nothing but time even if you get destroyed repeatedly but even an occasional amount of success will lead to rewards. Not only is it easy to get into PvP, but there's plenty of incentive for doing so.
Note that the PvP community has always been more vocal than the other three player bases even when in the minority, hence they often seemed larger than they were. The nature of PvP means that issues like class balance hit them more than other players.
Take any look at old-school UO when Trammel came around, or anything regarding EQ. WoW is the first MMO I've seen since DAoC where the PvP was a success in any large measure and Blizzard's still spent the past four years doing their best to essentially divorce PvP from PvE in almost every capacity. The PvP that is so massively popular in WoW pretty much only exists as a consequence-free Counter-Strike-like diversion.
You're forgetting that WoW has easily attainable awards for PvP in addition to awards only the more skilled and dedicated are likely to see. Unlike in some other games, the consequences in WoW are pretty much always positive. You lose nothing but time even if you get destroyed repeatedly but even an occasional amount of success will lead to rewards. Not only is it easy to get into PvP, but there's plenty of incentive for doing so.
Was that paragraph directed at me, or...? If so, then I'm not forgetting anything, since that was partly my point, if not stated outright. My main point (to Zombiemambo) was that I don't think "high-stakes" UO-style PvP where gear loss, stat loss, or loss of access to areas mainly designed for PVE is going to really fly anymore. At least not in any large capacity (i.e. - a for-play major MMO). EVE is the main exception, but it was built from the ground up for that kind of thing, and due to its nature as a tactical-ish space shooter, it avoids many of the problems more traditional DikuMUD-inspired games have. Even WoW, which started with PvP as a very real facet of the normal leveling gameplay, has gone almost entirely into the isntanced "e-sport" style, with PvP's impact on the game world limited to small token zone events nobody ever really borthers with and occasional ganking by bored 70s waiting for their battleground queues to pop.
korodullin on
- The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (2017, colorized)
This is my personal list of suggestions to the MMO developers in general:
-No invisible walls, give people the freedom to explore even inside the house over there or the bottom of the ocean (making cool giant sea creatures that eat you would be bonus)
-Allow players to contribute to the world by creating player-run cities, merchants or even changing the landscape, also allow said areas to be capture-able in PVP (checks and balances and all that of course)
-Detailed and easy to use map system which is accurate based on changes to the game done by players, hell just make it an expanded minimap with location notes that auto update or can be set in some way globally
-Small niche gameplay like card trading or a political system embedded under the normal gameplay
-Functioning economy/mail system
-Flexable PVP; combine the PVM of Lotro, PVP battlegrounds, world pvp objectives and world pvp item looting of UO together in a bundle of love
-Graveyard runs are not fun, re balance death a different (funner and less autorun) way
-Robust roleplaying system, even non-roleplayers love emotes
-Very customizable UI (this is a command and not a request)
-Detailed character creation
I had a wacky idea and decided to include it:
Varied progression several ways to achieve the "level cap"
Say you start out with a new character and get to level 5 by questing, but now you're bored of questing boars and want a change, jump into "equal PVP instance" where you can gain progression by questing against other players, the catch is your character now has access to everything the other players have access to, making it equal playing grounds. While you're questing in this instance you gain progression for your real character. The quests in this instance would be similar to you're typical FPS game modes like CTF, assault/defend, capture and hold etc, it would be a completely different type of game inside and completely separated from your normal character; other then gaining progression for it.
Was that paragraph directed at me, or...? If so, then I'm not forgetting anything, since that was partly my point, if not stated outright.
There really should be an "in addition to" or something like that somewhere in there. Trying to summarize the Bartle personality types in one post melts the brain a bit.
I'm waiting to see if there's ever an MMO that caters to the explorer type. We have plenty of achiever oriented MMOs, a lot of killer ones, and a few social ones (with Second Life being the big one right now) but there might not be one for the explorers until something like the player-turned-area-maker from the MUD era is put into modern MMOs.
Was that paragraph directed at me, or...? If so, then I'm not forgetting anything, since that was partly my point, if not stated outright.
There really should be an "in addition to" or something like that somewhere in there. Trying to summarize the Bartle personality types in one post melts the brain a bit.
I'm waiting to see if there's ever an MMO that caters to the explorer type. We have plenty of achiever oriented MMOs, a lot of killer ones, and a few social ones (with Second Life being the big one right now) but there might not be one for the explorers until something like the player-turned-area-maker from the MUD era is put into modern MMOs.
Although by no means explorer exclusive, Guild Wars definitely has a ton of scenic moments that you have to really look around to find.
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The social interaction is part of it as well, meeting some random people as you journey across the world, getting to know them, growing more powerful with them, and stepping into new and untested content (for us) and having a go at it.
Seriously though, having houses in an MMO just gives me such a drive to grind. I feel like it adds another subgame when implemented correctly, IE guild halls, single houses, able to establish a city with enough area, blah blah blah. It was great getting enough credits in SWG to buy a kickass two story house decorated with armor sets on the walls and guns on the mantle, among other things. I was a Teras Kasi Trandoshan Creature Handler Combat Medic, and I had set up moisture farms all over my estate, so when I needed more medpacks I had all the ingredients resourced to fit my needs. Crafting? My own private house droids and robotic devices can do the job.
Don't get me wrong, the game turned into shit a few weeks later.
That's another thing I would like to see, in SWG you had the option to improve and customize your health packs. I think there were three bars or something? And each type of alterations can be used to sacrifice some type of energy recovery into a different bar. It really makes me want to play again to remember how it was like.
More MMO trash:
I would also want to see a future MMO start out in the stone age, with a genius gameplay mechanic that hides the grind. As more people play and level up they evolve their species(Neanderthal > Cro-magnon > Modern), and they get the options to establish a city or a village with their clan(aka guilds), and as they level up even more(option to donate money, raid villages to upgrade their village), they can start setting up towns and diplomacy(guilds already have the bullshit anyway, so why not make something more of it?) and eventually make a kingdom and a country.(Classes are Hunter/Barbarian/Voodoo or something, and later on it becomes more sophisticated Merchant/Knight/Politician maybe?) Clans should be able to have smaller clans under it's flag. So if you're part of a lone ctrl+alt+del clan and you know you would benefit if you were under the bigger and smarter PA clan, you get the benefits of their hospitality(if they have a big village, discounts and the like maybe?) and a clan that can assist you during pillages and whatnot.
But as you level up and more people start playing the game they can no longer be Neanderthals or Magnon Mans depending on the server's evolution of man.
PVP would be from one server to another, since each server should represent a part of land that they were born on, and depending on their evolutionary status, you could be going against brutes, knights, pirates, whatever. But if your shit gets conquered you have to assimilate to their culture(Weapons merchant killed in your village? Then you have no choice but to abide the prices that the merchants of PAVille has set for their clubs and swords. Economy is craft-based and player driven, NPC's should have little to no participation. Think Ragnarok I guess? But less awesome rare loots drops replaced with awesome craftable items) and choice of architecture until you can make a faction big enough to overthrow whatever NPC might be governing your side of the country.
Maybe MMO's suffer because most of their stuff is driven by just kill kill kill, I wonder if there has been any successful MMO that has created a real user-friendly and deep crafting/political system. All I can think of is SWG, but it got gangbanged.
I want to see players able to establish their own kingdoms and rules(with restrictions, of course), having their own towns that they created and founded with their own unique economy(determined by their location. Need more copper? Gotta make an alliance with Vgcats-chan, or just raid their shit and make them adjust to you)
I just want something like Spore, but not Spore =/
MMOs right now are just somehow a big boring grind. The most fun I had out of all my MMO-gaming must've been from Myst Online. It was so simplistic; yet it had an enthralling world and an atmosphere most MMOs cannot even begin to dream of. This is of course, my opinion. I had a brother who didn't do anything else then play World of Warcraft, every single day/hour/minute/second that he could. But now he quits, because he is bored. The end-game stuff is like a job; when I tried doing that I wasn't "dedicated" enough. Which means I wasn't able to be there for every raid, etc. which had me removed from the guilds I tried out at.
It's such a shame they are closing down Myst Online. I'd love to play another MMO that didn't really play like a grindfest. Give me atmosphere, a good community, and I'm there, baby.
steam
When you look at console games you ask yourself "what makes these fun?". There are a variety of factors and many genres. I enjoy FPS but not nearly as much as my cousin. I prefer RPGs because i love a good story and he...pretty much only plays FPS. The closest thing I've seen him play to an RPG is some Korean Hack'n'slash MMO.
The best MMO's are the ones who can hash together all the different experiences people could possibly desire.
Though I'm hashing the two together: Look at EvE and WoW
Short term rewards
· Quests and Missions
Long term rewards
· Raiding, Corp wars/POS
PvP
· Killing people
· Not just killing people: Cutting edge technology in EvE means vicious price wars!
Loot
· Looking cool and kicking ass
Exploration
· New instances, Roid Belts
Economy
· Auction Hall, EvE economy (So complex someone could write a thesis on its history)
Community
· Chatting in Jita or world LFG chat
· Tying into all aspects of every other part of the game
· Creating or belonging to a Guild/Corp where you feel more in control of your destiny because it's a choice and not some 8-5 job you're forced to muck around in to pay for your MMO addiction!
edit:
There's problably about 50 other things missing, but the important thing is that these two MMO's chiefly encompass a variety of play styles though they are incredibly different game styles.
Something that actually makes you feel like you are fighting to the death and not just detachedly watching from above clicking random skills.
I never asked for this!
WoW has fun gameplay. There's fun in PvP and there's fun learning raids. The problem is, PvP is like other deathmatch games only with the added bonuses of it sucking until you play enough to get the stats. And PvE is fun a few times and Blizzard is way way WAY too slow pumping out content to keep it fresh.
The real problem with MMORPGs is that you can't generally keep producing content at the rate players tire of it, so you resort to grinds with shiny items coated in purple text. But I play for gameplay, so getting a new item seems incredibly hollow if all I did to get it was run the same dungeon five hundred times.
Common sense dictates that there should be checks and balances in place to insure that something of that nature couldn't happen. A reset or something more subtle, like spawning tougher soldiers more often to eventually drive the attackers out of the town.
The goal is that each side starts at 50/50, but afterwards is never stays that way. One side has an edge at all times, no matter how small. This gives each side a defined goal: either get lost territory back, or keep expanding and get as much territory as you can. It constantly switches between offense and defense, gaining control of new cities and defending those that are under attack. Take Planetside, for example. In one day, a faction can control 2/3rds of a planet, and then the next day they have 1/4th of the planet. It shifts back and forth rapidly to make sure all of the players are driven to keep fighting over the cities.
PvP shouldn't be a 'side dish', so to speak. It should be a constant, a core element of the gameplay. Control of dungeons could be decided by who owns the area, to encourage PvP & PvE players to participate. Players should be able to kill other players and kill monsters with the same spec and equipment instead of having to choose one and spend lots of time and money when switching to the other.
A sandbox is a game where developers create the systems, but the players create the game. The fun of the game is the economic, political, and military competition with other groups of players, rather than running some developer-created dungeon. Examples include Star Wars Galaxies, Eve Online, or Asheron's Call on the Darktide server. These games are characterized by robust player-driven economies and chaotic PvP.
A theme park is a game where the developers create a fairly narrowly-defined gameplay experience that the subscribers then play through, just as the developers intended. Examples are World of Warcraft and Everquest. These games are characterized by a raid-centric endgame and and oodles of shiny loot.
The problem with sandboxes is that the game systems are generally pretty boring. Combat in Eve is an absolute snoozefest. It's only exciting because of what's at stake. The problem with theme parks is that they aren't dynamic enough. You're 50th time killing Onyxia is going to be much like your first, and even your first time is going to be exactly like the videos and strategies that you looked at ahead of time.
What we really need is an MMO that combines the level of craftsmanship that we see in the typical theme park with the level of dynamism that we see in the typical sandbox. Something like a World of Warcraft/Eve Online mashup. I won't bore you with my specific design ideas, but I think that's the gist of where an MMO would have to go in the future to dethrone the current kings of the genre.
Got any hard evidence to back it up?
My ideas are similar to this. Ideally, you'd have player-created factions who would divvy up the tasks according to players' inclinations. Some subset of the faction would act as PvP warriors, some subset would act as PvE raiders, and another subset would act as crafters who could synthesize trade goods obtained by raiding into uber loot that could be distributed to everyone.
Player-created factions also help to solve the need for resets. If one side becomes too dominant, then it will only remain so as long as it can divvy up the spoils of victory to the satisfaction of its members. Inevitably, it will fail to do that, and then splinter groups will naturally break off to attempt to conquer and obtain their own resources. The political dynamic across servers could become fascinating.
If they made a single-player MMO-type game (and I don't mean like Oblivion, more WoW in style) for 360 or such, I would so buy it.
That doesn't make much sense. Korean MMOs have, from what I've played, been tradtionally loot-light, the majority of your power coming from your stats and abilities.
- The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (2017, colorized)
Take any look at old-school UO when Trammel came around, or anything regarding EQ. WoW is the first MMO I've seen since DAoC where the PvP was a success in any large measure and Blizzard's still spent the past four years doing their best to essentially divorce PvP from PvE in almost every capacity. The PvP that is so massively popular in WoW pretty much only exists as a consequence-free Counter-Strike-like diversion.
Granted, that diverson's popularity is starting to eclipse the old "raiding game", but it still makes all those grandiose plans of interweaving PvP objectives with PvE progression seem tacky, dated, and almost certainly doomed to failure.
- The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (2017, colorized)
The positive aspects of a MMOG for me are:
- Exploration and adventure. Being able to wander around, discover new areas, without too severe restrictions. WoW achieved this for levels 1-30 (roughly). After that, the emphasis was more and more on grinding, getting items, and group play.
- Playing in a world populated with real people. There is a rather distinct difference in playing with people (in a party) and playing alongside with people. I enjoy being able to solo my way through large parts of the game. I don't mind playing with others in a party, but I want to do it when I choose to, not because I have to. Again, WoW did well here for the first half of the game, but not so well after that.
- Customization. You spend a lot of time with your avatars in a MMOG and I like to able to customize them and not look like a clone of everyone else. Not just the appearance, but abilities and characteristics as well. Many MMOG's fall into the "Tank, Nuker, Healer" core class stereotype and it's so utterly boring. Some hybrid classes appear to be a little different, but in reality there's little difference. Personally, I want mystery and surprises. I understand that class balance is important for competitive play, but I couldn't care less about it.
I'm sure someone will pipe up and say "Dewd, you can totally solo your way through all of WoW!". Sure, I can also get to work everyday by bicycling backwards or walking on my hands, but I want it to be a somewhat less frustrating experience.
Currently, I'm totally burned out on WoW. I played it since the betas, but eventually the grind and dumbass community broke me and I will never go back. It got to the point where I was ready to kill if I heard another "gold plz", "n00b!", or "Can I have your stuff?". I play LotRO now, which does really well in most aspects and has a fairly nice community.
I want an MMO where you're not confined. The game world is the players' world. They build it up and they tear it down. They wage war over territory and cities, and can conquer or destroy. I'm not looking for big space ships. I want ground beneath my feet and a castle in the distance ready for me to crumble to the ground. And no mountain is going to be an barrier for me. It's big and it's open and it doesn't feel like a linear progression.
Of course, every player doesn't have to engage in the giant wars that the player factions engage in. You could be a thief and go make a name for yourself stealing from the coffers of the various player cities, with all buildings having interior for a thief to conquer. Perhaps even a mercenary? There's always something to do, but it's you doing it and it's possible to actually become and feel important in what you do.
I also wouldn't mind combat that isn't a bar of skills at the bottom of the screen. I want combat to be based on player skill and not levels and stats. In other words, I wouldn't mind a game like World War 2 online but new and easier to get into, and actually has a big budget behind it. It wouldn't hurt to have swords instead of guns, too. I like the medieval landscape, what can I say, but I really don't feel too many of them have done it right. I want it to feel dark and gritty and enjoy walking into a pub at night where it becomes more dangerous, maybe get into a bar fight.
Age of Conan does have the territory conquest and that gritty atmosphere and bar fights, so maybe I'll like it, but the world is actually fairly confined, combat is your standard hit a number key and watch him slash affair, and there's plenty of grind to be had.
Wrongo. There are "celebrities" of varying degrees within mmorpgs. Its even less cool than it sounds (which is pretty uncool).
If you grind the most loots, drop out of school to get High Warlord, troll the forums more than other people, etc, you are an mmo celebrity. Pretty sweet, huh?
Not really. And if you want to talk about cool MMO "celebrities", check out some Ultima Online or EVE stories. The players are given a great deal of freedom in their world, and they've done some pretty neat things. Granted, in those games, you get a name for yourself by griefing. The freedom essentially amounts to that. What I want and listed above, you can feel important by doing more than just griefing, and there would be a system in place to recognize and display your status, perhaps.
The only notable thing YOU can do in an mmo (by yourself), by the nature of the genre, is to spend more time playing than other players. You can feel accomplishments in single player games because you play at your own pace, and there aren't other people playing 20 hours a day to make your accomplishments look like crap in comparison.
Which is why this is a thread about what you want in FUTURE MMOs... which is why I'm listing things I want that go around that bullshit. A player who plays more than another won't necessarily be better, because it's not based on levels and stats, but skill and freedom. That's what I want. Someone who only plays for two hours can be just as renowned as someone who plays for more. Granted, people who play more in any game will probably be more recognized, but there won't be such a huge gap.
Damn, man, this isn't necessarily about what is, but what we would like. O_o
If the game is an MMOFPS, for example, the renown players will be playing all day honing their skills. Its just that these skills will be more twitch based.
The only case I can think of that is otherwise, is if the game has a really, really spectacular outlet for player created content. In that case, you could make something unique. In those cases, though, you can bet that griefers with legions of giant penis images will be on the spot.
You really can't win when people are involved, they suck.
You can make a name for yourself, but it will never be known to the entirety of the playerbase. It'll be among your server population at best.
I got bored because I couldn't find a large enough guild in it where multiple people were on at any given time. I enjoyed chatting it up in guildchat as I had done in Everquest.
Guess if future MMO's adopted the GW pricing structure it would be great. I hate paying monthly.
Although I played on a free shard, I loved the PvP in UO. I liked having to closely guard every item I had, being super careful where and when I left town, the little skirmishes that would evolve into massive guild wars after a guildie lost his best items, gate/recalling back to your guild house with a backpack full of your enemies loot - such good fun.
GIVE ME A POKEMON MMO.
Give me the chance to go out in the wilderness and raid bushes for cute little creatures to catch with my pokeballs. Make trainer battles possible between actual people, with stats that are posted in each town at the gym. Give me the option of not wearing a gay hat, vest, or backpack. I really can't figure out why Nintendo hasn't grabbed this idea by the balls (heh).
Wii U NNID: MegaSpooky
and everyone who uses it too =p
In my experience, there is not set formula that makes an MMO "fun." It all comes down to what the person playing the game enjoys. My two favorites are UO and Wurm.
My favorite part of MMO's is having something that is yours in the game world. I enjoy houses, boats, vehicles, mounts, armor and weapon sets.. things like that. Wurm brought on a new aspect, actually creating things. I loved that you started out with nothing, and it was up to you to create what you needed to survive. The one thing I dislike about Wurm are the bears, spiders, wolves, etc. Remove those, update the graphics, and Wurm would be my ideal MMO.
I'm a bit like that, in that I love having my own stuff in the world. I'm really dissapointed with WoW because of this, I mean all they have to do is add instanced housing like in LotRO. Then you can add housing items to add some variety to loot and the economy.
Me too! I'm going to be playing RO 2 when it comes out. (Ragnarok Online for those of you who...I guess dont know what RO means)
Something like this is kind of a holy grail for MMOs. Fairly early in SWG's life time, there was a discussion between the devs and players about what the game wanted to do, what the player base really was, and what styles of play the game was actually catering to.
I might as well do a brief summary of the Bartle player types since I'm sure I'll mention them again in this thread if it continues.
Basically way back in the day, people looking at the psychology at work in MUDs picked up on four dominant things players were doing in games. None of them are mutually exclusive and there are players that highly enjoy all four styles, but also plenty that are skewed towards a few areas. It's quite possible to be a highly social player that also really likes PvP.
Achievers are all about character improvement. They're the ones that value leveling up, equipment upgrades, etc. for its own sake and to take on the next challenge. This is the style of play most MMOs you see today cater to. They haven't really deviated all that much from the DikuMUD formula, one of the really popular MUDs that other MUDs were allowed under license to copy code and other stuff from. EQ was influenced by a DikuMUD descendant, other MMOs are influenced by EQ, etc. Pure achievers will kill a tough monster with a powerful item drop and think "Sweet, I just killed the monster and got phat loot."
Killers are about competition. In PvP games, this obviously translates into PvP. It also can translate into stuff like getting up on leaderboards, having better raid progression than the other guilds, and other ePeen stuff. This is one of the simpler categories. Pure killers kill the monster, loot the item, and think "Sweet, I'll use this to do better in PvP."
Socializers are obviously about the social element in MMOs. Despite what many used to think on other games, this does not translate into roleplaying. Many would much rather chat about RL stuff or use funny emotes than, say, type in an English accent about how they're being oppressed and that systems of government established by retrieving a sword from a chick in a lack is inherently violent. The pure socializer kills the monster, loots it, and then brags about it to their friends/guild/general chat.
Explorers are harder to define. They like knowing the game world and knowing the game. They can be fans of seeing all the areas in the game, hunting down scenic overlooks few know about, and seeing new things, or the walking encyclopedias that know where each item drops, or the math fiends that figure out exactly how each and every number you see on the character screen translates into an in game result down to six significant digits. Pure explorers kill the monster and then go back to whatever they were doing before the monster so rudely interrupted them.
SWG was a sandbox design. It had huge draws for socializers. Player run cantinas, hospitals, stores, and cities were common. There were whole classes dedicated to fabricating the clothing underneath armor, hair styles, and buildings. It also catered to the explorers by recreating various locales from Star Wars and awarding badges for visiting them (just don't get too close to the Sarlacc pit . . .). Explorers that enjoyed crafting could spend all the time they wanted hunting down the best resource spots and the best ways to combine them. The problem was that it sucked big time for achievers and wasn't so hot for killers. I'm convinced that half of the reason there were sometimes large pvp battles was because there wasn't anything ELSE worth fighting. This wouldn't be a problem if there were few achievers and killers in the player base, but those two archetypes were the majority of it.
WoW on the other hand heavily caters to achievers, killers, and mechanics explorers at the expense of scenic explorers (less so in the expansion with flying mounts) and socializers. Yes, there's stuff like /dance but a few silly emotes, no matter how well done, is nothing compared to what some other games have done to facilitate character interaction.
Nothing prevents having a stronger social aspect if the game is big enough to have a place for players to set up their own stuff, but creation of areas that scenic explorers like often comes at the expense of area achievers want which can, but not always, come at the expense of content for the killers.
You're forgetting that WoW has easily attainable awards for PvP in addition to awards only the more skilled and dedicated are likely to see. Unlike in some other games, the consequences in WoW are pretty much always positive. You lose nothing but time even if you get destroyed repeatedly but even an occasional amount of success will lead to rewards. Not only is it easy to get into PvP, but there's plenty of incentive for doing so.
Note that the PvP community has always been more vocal than the other three player bases even when in the minority, hence they often seemed larger than they were. The nature of PvP means that issues like class balance hit them more than other players.
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Was that paragraph directed at me, or...? If so, then I'm not forgetting anything, since that was partly my point, if not stated outright. My main point (to Zombiemambo) was that I don't think "high-stakes" UO-style PvP where gear loss, stat loss, or loss of access to areas mainly designed for PVE is going to really fly anymore. At least not in any large capacity (i.e. - a for-play major MMO). EVE is the main exception, but it was built from the ground up for that kind of thing, and due to its nature as a tactical-ish space shooter, it avoids many of the problems more traditional DikuMUD-inspired games have. Even WoW, which started with PvP as a very real facet of the normal leveling gameplay, has gone almost entirely into the isntanced "e-sport" style, with PvP's impact on the game world limited to small token zone events nobody ever really borthers with and occasional ganking by bored 70s waiting for their battleground queues to pop.
- The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (2017, colorized)
haha, no. I think you are buying into Blizzard's nonsense.
-No invisible walls, give people the freedom to explore even inside the house over there or the bottom of the ocean (making cool giant sea creatures that eat you would be bonus)
-Allow players to contribute to the world by creating player-run cities, merchants or even changing the landscape, also allow said areas to be capture-able in PVP (checks and balances and all that of course)
-Detailed and easy to use map system which is accurate based on changes to the game done by players, hell just make it an expanded minimap with location notes that auto update or can be set in some way globally
-Small niche gameplay like card trading or a political system embedded under the normal gameplay
-Functioning economy/mail system
-Flexable PVP; combine the PVM of Lotro, PVP battlegrounds, world pvp objectives and world pvp item looting of UO together in a bundle of love
-Graveyard runs are not fun, re balance death a different (funner and less autorun) way
-Robust roleplaying system, even non-roleplayers love emotes
-Very customizable UI (this is a command and not a request)
-Detailed character creation
I had a wacky idea and decided to include it:
Varied progression several ways to achieve the "level cap"
Say you start out with a new character and get to level 5 by questing, but now you're bored of questing boars and want a change, jump into "equal PVP instance" where you can gain progression by questing against other players, the catch is your character now has access to everything the other players have access to, making it equal playing grounds. While you're questing in this instance you gain progression for your real character. The quests in this instance would be similar to you're typical FPS game modes like CTF, assault/defend, capture and hold etc, it would be a completely different type of game inside and completely separated from your normal character; other then gaining progression for it.
that pretty much sums up what i would want
edit: I like that system because you can make your character your own.
i guess darkfall is pretty close to my ideal mmo but thats never going to come out. I remember 3 years ago they said 'guild beta coming soon!'
hasn't come out yet.
There really should be an "in addition to" or something like that somewhere in there. Trying to summarize the Bartle personality types in one post melts the brain a bit.
I'm waiting to see if there's ever an MMO that caters to the explorer type. We have plenty of achiever oriented MMOs, a lot of killer ones, and a few social ones (with Second Life being the big one right now) but there might not be one for the explorers until something like the player-turned-area-maker from the MUD era is put into modern MMOs.
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