The biggest downfall of MMOs is simply a lack of content. I've seen more than a few MMOs put out some great combat system or something, but with all their programmers they forgot to hire a mission writer or something. Too many games get empty after the intro area, or have enough content that you could do it all with half of a single character, let alone their alts which have to do all the same stuff.
They seem to make the same gamble that, once they've launched the game, they can always put out more content later. And it always fails. If 70% of the players leave after the first month, most of them will never come back.
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HenroidMexican kicked from Immigration ThreadCentrism is Racism :3Registered Userregular
edited May 2010
I'm not trying to be an ass in asking this, but can we get more detail in regard to "lack of content" arguments? Like I want to understand what qualifies.
In WoW I felt like it had plenty of content for the most part, except maybe in vanilla - in vanilla I actually had to grind portions of or whole levels here and there to progress. But ever since they refined their game, it was quests and dungeons all the way through for a smooth ride. And while I've never dipped too much into end-game content, the fact that they're always adding to it seems to me that they're not lacking. The only people who could find it lacking are the most strong-hearted devotees.
Another example: City of Villains, I didn't really run out of things to do in my time playing. There were missions that were repeatable, yes, but I only got involved in those if I was getting power leveled like a motherfuck with the guys - specifically for power leveling. Again, though, I didn't see the end-game content. Or even high-leveled.
Basically, any time a player finds themselves just having to grind/streetsweep/endlessly kill random mobs for no other reason than that they've finished all their missions and need to level up some more to get more, something's gone wrong.
And for a high score in the content area, a player should be able to play multiple characters without grinding and by repeating almost nothing. WoW and CoX manage to get you at least 2 by having 2 different sides with their own stuff.
Broad-sweeping generalizations are fun! You're going to have to cite that. The only thing you can say is "some people do not like change, some people do not mind change, some people like change." No identification on which is the stronger presence.
Do I really need to start citing all of the studies, polls, papers, and dissertations that have been done on the topic of change and how most people, or people in general, do not like it? I was quite sure that it was common knowledge that people don't like change on the whole. The numbers of people that do are quite small.
Our prefrontal cortex is a fast and agile computational device that is able to hold multiple threads of logic at once so that we can perform fast calculations. However, it has its limits with working memory in that it can only hold a handful of concepts at once, similar to the RAM in a PC. In addition, it burns lots of high energy glucose (blood sugar), which is expensive for the body to produce. Thus when given lots of information, such as when a change is required, it has a tendency to overload and being directly linked to the amygdala (the emotional center of the brain) that controls our fight-or-flight response, it can cause severe physical and psychological discomfort.
Most people don't like change because they don't like being changed. When change comes into view, fear and resistance developed. Resistance to change is the action taken by individuals and groups when they recognize that the change may threat their interest. Resistance may be active or passive, overt or covert, individual or organized, aggressive or timid.
So we get stiff once in a while. So we have a little fun. What’s wrong with that? This is a free country, isn’t it? I can take my panda any place I want to. And if I wanna buy it a drink, that’s my business.
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HenroidMexican kicked from Immigration ThreadCentrism is Racism :3Registered Userregular
Basically, any time a player finds themselves just having to grind/streetsweep/endlessly kill random mobs for no other reason than that they've finished all their missions and need to level up some more to get more, something's gone wrong.
Okay, that's what I was thinking, and I can agree to it. That's pretty much every Korean-born MMO I've played. I was recently told that Age of Conan has this sort of shit going on as well.
And for a high score in the content area, a player should be able to play multiple characters without grinding and by repeating almost nothing. WoW and CoX manage to get you at least 2 by having 2 different sides with their own stuff.
This part I can't agree with. Expecting to not repeat (most) anything between two or more characters is an unreasonable assessment. I mean come on, how many video games have been built that way? Randomized-dungeon games like Diablo may have different layouts, but it's still the same thing at the core. What you're given, instead, is different characters and different talent tree focuses. Maybe that's a cop-out of having to make a huge plethora of content, or maybe it's just a reasonable amount of work to do.
Broad-sweeping generalizations are fun! You're going to have to cite that. The only thing you can say is "some people do not like change, some people do not mind change, some people like change." No identification on which is the stronger presence.
Do I really need to start citing all of the studies, polls, papers, and dissertations that have been done on the topic of change and how most people, or people in general, do not like it? I was quite sure that it was common knowledge that people don't like change on the whole. The numbers of people that do are quite small.
Our prefrontal cortex is a fast and agile computational device that is able to hold multiple threads of logic at once so that we can perform fast calculations. However, it has its limits with working memory in that it can only hold a handful of concepts at once, similar to the RAM in a PC. In addition, it burns lots of high energy glucose (blood sugar), which is expensive for the body to produce. Thus when given lots of information, such as when a change is required, it has a tendency to overload and being directly linked to the amygdala (the emotional center of the brain) that controls our fight-or-flight response, it can cause severe physical and psychological discomfort.
Most people don't like change because they don't like being changed. When change comes into view, fear and resistance developed. Resistance to change is the action taken by individuals and groups when they recognize that the change may threat their interest. Resistance may be active or passive, overt or covert, individual or organized, aggressive or timid.
Who are those two people? I've never heard of them. Do they have strong reputations in their fields?
Also, ironzerg brings up a good point - sudden, unexpected change is a different beast from carefully planned out and adjusted change.
Edit - And by the way, yes, you really do. :P
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Kevin CristI make the devil hit his kneesand say the 'our father'Registered Userregular
Horizons suffered from some really shady backstabbing going on. The guy who owned the company basically had it stolen out from under him and the guy that stole it gutted the game. That's the reason why Horizons on release was almost nothing like what was promised.
I remember hearing about that. A lot of people thought the design was too much to aim for in those days, which I could understand.
My main problem with MMOs is the combat and how you control your character. Everything is so stiff and automated in a lot of ways. I'd love a MMO that feels like Zelda or God of War. Something you can play with a Gamepad. There are programs that let you use Gamepads with current MMOs, I used one when I played WAR, but the stiffness was still there. You can use voicechat for group play and keep text chat to cities and general channels.
MMORPGs are definitely my favorite genre. I think it's very interesting to see the (still very young) genre evolve. And there is a lot of progress happening in the genre, just look at the way the story-telling has changed over the years for an example. From the "quest-less" games to say the later WoW or Lotro where they try to tell whole story arcs through quests and other means. And of course that's not the only way you can do story in an MMO. That's just what i find so interesting about it, the designers are still trying new things, seeing what works, what doesn't etc.
The fact that we see so many WoW like games at the moment shouldn't come as a surprise of course. Just like every big success everyone wants a piece of the cake, as was the case in most genres before (FPS,RTS,...if you remember Doom or Command&Conquer etc.). But they also copy WoW because they got so many things right with the game, not right for every player and they surely changed the direction of the game over time but it evolved the genre like no other.
There are still lots of design problems left to solve in MMOs not least because these games have a ressource not available to most other titles, the players themselves. Player designed content, a dynamic world, social game mechanics etc. are all things which are mostly unique to the genre and still waiting to be properly handled, even if we saw some interesting ideas in recent titles. For all the innovations out there, remember one thing though, which i think is very important to remember. The fact that MMORPGs are by far the most risky and costly games out there. They require huge investments, in money, technology, man-power, time etc. Just look at all the tech they need for EVE's one world design or the huge WoW server farms. MMOs are still very limited by technological limits but they are evolving, just very carefully for the most part. Which makes it all the more interesting to see new features and innovations in the genre (which are more often seen in smaller titles for several reasons).
To the OP's question: I am very excited about the MMO genre, they are the future of gaming imho, a place where we will see many interesting things, just maybe not as fast as we'd like :P
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HenroidMexican kicked from Immigration ThreadCentrism is Racism :3Registered Userregular
edited May 2010
Can you imagine if more companies were willing to take the risk of even starting an MMO? It's a huge gamble to begin with. More companies trying more new things would mean the genre would refine faster.
Horizons suffered from some really shady backstabbing going on. The guy who owned the company basically had it stolen out from under him and the guy that stole it gutted the game. That's the reason why Horizons on release was almost nothing like what was promised.
I remember hearing about that. A lot of people thought the design was too much to aim for in those days, which I could understand.
My main problem with MMOs is the combat and how you control your character. Everything is so stiff and automated in a lot of ways. I'd love a MMO that feels like Zelda or God of War. Something you can play with a Gamepad. There are programs that let you use Gamepads with current MMOs, I used one when I played WAR, but the stiffness was still there. You can use voicechat for group play and keep text chat to cities and general channels.
Those kinds of MMO's, with more action-y gameplay specifically suited for gamepads seem to be coming from Korea in the near future. Of course, even if they deliver the gameplay they advertise, you can probably count on also getting a load of horrible shit on the side as well.
What WAR did was something called Public Quests, which were essentially three-part quests that were meant to be done by a group of people in the area. At the end, players got a set amount of xp and rewards based on their contribution to the fight---which could be quite good.
The problems were thus:
1. Once you got outside of the starting zones, there were far too many public quests and far too few people to do them, thanks to people being spread out across several zones, plus some being in RvR lakes, and some being in scenarios. This made certain public quests impossible to do. Even at launch this was the case, so imagine how it is now.
2. Contribution (what determined the rewards you got) seemed to be somewhat weird. I'm not sure exactly what it turned out was wrong or messed up with it, but from my vantage point it seemed off somehow and had the unfortunate tendency to discourage people from messing with the PQs they could find enough people to do.
I can't comment on #2, but I have reason to doubt Guild Wars 2 will suffer from #1, because of the phrase I've limed. ANet have stressed that they want GW2 to be soloable and very easy to pick up casually, while also rewarding to play hardcore in groups; thus the scaling difficulty of events according to who's present. We'll have to wait until beta to see if they pull it off well, but (call me a fangirl), I trust them to do a good job. Events will be completely replacing quests, if I understand correctly, so I wouldn't expect the majority of them to be group-focused.
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While you eat, let's have a conversation about the nature of consent.
3. Expectations. People build up every new game to be the next "WoW killer" then when it doesn't complete it's mission, they get upset and do what? Go back to WoW. Along with "WoW killer" expectations, people expect newly minted games to have the same level of content as WoW, a game that has seen 2 xpacs (3rd on the way) and been out for almost 6 years. If that isn't an unrealistic expectation, I don't know what is.
I disagree completely. WoW is on the market. Whatever MMO you release is going to be compared to, and competing with, WoW. Most of your playerbase will either be a WoW player or an Ex-WoW player, barring maybe a well-known license. So if, when you release an MMO, there aren't dungeons throughout the levels, quests so that you never end up grinding, a multitude of high level dungeons and at least 1 raid, you aren't really setting yourself up for a win.
In that regard, way more developers really need to steal the heroic system. That idea was pure genius.
I'd say the whole point is that MMO's need to veer away from the traditional "QUESTS, DUNGEONS, LEVELS" formula they have.
MMO should not be synonymous with "DIKU MUD" which it currently seems to be. Unfortunately both SW:TOR and GW2 seem very traditional in this sense, and they are the only big western MMO's on the way.
I'm not sure you will see them move away from 'levels' that much as this is a feature that is being picked up by a whole host of genres in an attempt to improve longevity. Not the most imaginative way to do so but it works.
EDIT: My take on the whole MMO thing is that I don't mind the genre as it is but most everything lacks a seriously large amount of polish.
I think WoW is really the cause of this. It really hit the market at a weird time, when there was practically nothing else out there, and soaked up everyone who was looking for an MMO to play. Then of course it's Blizzard and they're really good at game design, so they've sustained that momentum.
This creates enormous pressure on every new MMO, because they have to wrench a subscriber base away from an already established and spit-shine-polished game, and hold onto it through the usual MMO growing pains. Publishers also naturally measure the success of their game against WoW, whcih means that new stuff getting the green light winds up trying to compete with WoW on WoW's terms (and losing.) See: LOTRO.
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HenroidMexican kicked from Immigration ThreadCentrism is Racism :3Registered Userregular
I'd say the whole point is that MMO's need to veer away from the traditional "QUESTS, DUNGEONS, LEVELS" formula they have.
MMO should not be synonymous with "DIKU MUD" which it currently seems to be. Unfortunately both SW:TOR and GW2 seem very traditional in this sense, and they are the only big western MMO's on the way.
MMO needs to not be synonymous with MMORPG anymore.
I once teased out an idea for a MechWarrior MMO that would involve huge battleground of people piloting their mechs, still sim-pilot style, across the goddamn galaxy. Clans vs. Innersphere. And what happened? People read as far as "MechWarrior MMO" and argued at me that WoW-style gameplay would kill it.
That was chromehounds. Fun (if limited) game, but not one that really meets the colloquial definition of MMO.
Eat it You Nasty Pig. on
it was the smallest on the list but
Pluto was a planet and I'll never forget
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HenroidMexican kicked from Immigration ThreadCentrism is Racism :3Registered Userregular
edited May 2010
Not attached to a big brand either. I wouldn't mind a Mech Assault styled gameplay as well, it looked way simpler than a sim game and I'd be able to get my Mechwarrior fix. I love big robots.
Speaking of MMO-not-rpgs, how many people played Shattered Galaxy? That shit is still running.
I dunno if the license really mattered all that much, but only because I don't know how much cachet the mechwarrior brand has outside of people who probably know about every mech-related game that comes out anyway. Not that I wouldn't love for a sequel to come out; building mechs and fighting with them was great fun.
Eat it You Nasty Pig. on
it was the smallest on the list but
Pluto was a planet and I'll never forget
One of the biggest flaws in MMO's today, and this has been almost from their inception, is the two-tier gameplay system.
Tier one is "The Grind." Almost every time a new MMO is brought up or someone is introduced to a new one one of the first questions asked is "How's the grind?" The Grind being defined as the leveling process from new character to max level. Everything in that range that the player does ultimately does not matter because the "real game" doesn't start until "end game" in nearly all modern MMO's design philosophies. I imagine it like taking a road trip from one end of the country to the other, where the start point has nothing and the end point is some kind of golden land. Sure the sights may change and one may stop a few times along the way but the destination and what it holds is the real goal.
Then tier two which is the "End Game." That phrase is such an oxymoron as MMO's these days are designed so that the end game is where the game really picks up. The raiding and all the epic content that the players aspire to take part in all starts here. A player has to sink many hours into the game as well as find a guild and such before he or she can even begin to partake in the super-cool epic stuff and be the hero (or villain) they wanted and were promised they could be.
The way I visualize this design is like one of those water towers with the long narrow shaft that bulges out into a bulb at the top with the town's name on it. The shaft of course being the grind: a narrow vertical progression, and the bulb being the end game: more lateral progression through raid content. What I would love to see is all this squished together. Eliminate the grind and the end game by combining it all and allowing players to experience the whole game from day one. I would love to see an MMO developed with the philosophy that a new character is viable for the majority of game content from day one and that the majority of gameplay content being inter-player driven rather than player vs enviroment (raids etc) driven.
People like their characters to progressively grow. The necessity of offering content to all of those characters is what creates the grind. Any veteran of WoW raiding knows that "leveling up" doesn't stop when you hit 80, you just stop being given stylized swooshes for it and get prettier robes instead.
City of Heroes has an interesting solution to this; a higher level character can 'sidekick' a buddy (multiple buddies, now) up to their level so that they can do stuff together. This means that compelling content can be distributed throughout "the grind," but has the side effect of leveling the difficulty curve, too.
Eat it You Nasty Pig. on
it was the smallest on the list but
Pluto was a planet and I'll never forget
I think WoW is really the cause of this. It really hit the market at a weird time, when there was practically nothing else out there, and soaked up everyone who was looking for an MMO to play. Then of course it's Blizzard and they're really good at game design, so they've sustained that momentum.
This creates enormous pressure on every new MMO, because they have to wrench a subscriber base away from an already established and spit-shine-polished game, and hold onto it through the usual MMO growing pains. Publishers also naturally measure the success of their game against WoW, whcih means that new stuff getting the green light winds up trying to compete with WoW on WoW's terms (and losing.) See: LOTRO.
It's definitely true now, but I think that a lot of their initial success was due not just to their own great ideas and great design (to say nothing of having a popular IP) but due to a lot of other companies being fairly short-sighted or just doing a poor job with the games that they released around that time (or that were already released).
Everquest II, I think, was probably the best example of this (released literally two weeks before WoW). And then after WoW came out, the other MMO companies did a fairly terrible job of retaining their userbase. Star Wars Galaxies is probably the best example of a userbase's mass exodus elsewhere. All of this allowed WoW to continue to grow.
I mean, it's not as if there isn't a hunger for new content or for a different game. The huge box sales of things like Warhammer and Age of Conan prove that pretty well. But in many ways, the games felt incomplete, and once someone loses interest in an MMO they're just starting, it's pretty hard to get them back.
Here's a few problems and solutions that I see with MMOs:
1. Dead, stagnant worlds. It's hard to be immersed in a world where the NPCs are just signposts for quests. They don't eat, sleep, move much, whatever. Your PC is just a stat column.
Solution: Look at Fallout 3 as a bare minimum. Perhaps have enemy NPCs move in as hostile tribes that can be wiped out? Plus more unique character creation; need more choices, mayby even a background history to your character.
2. You actions have no meaningful, long-term impact on the world or game. You can kill Thrall in WoW. So what? He respawns in 15 anyways.
Solution: Imagine WoW where you could play Warcraft. Have a wide, open tract of land with mines, places for farmlands ect. Your guild can build actual castles, hire warriors, hire serfs to mine for massive amounts of minerals that you can use to upgrade your kingdom or just sell at the AH.
3. No risk. Victory tastes less sweet when failtrue means nothing.
Solution: Your castle can be burnt to the ground in #2. Rogues can sneak in and assassinate serfs, disrupting your kingdom. Raids can burn buildings.
If I was doing the Fallout MMO; I'd have it cut into 2 sections. One, a traditional Fallout 3 type game. The other, a massive chunk of land wih resources that guilds would want to fight over. Mutant tribes that move in from out of the area on a periodic basis that need to be dealt with. Cities that, if their water/food sources are disrupted, spawn quests to solve these problems or people move away.
Noone, save EvE, has made a living world where your actions can change the world, where what you work for can be destroyed.
On that topic, MMOs need to just shoot for nitches now. Noone is going to out-WoW WoW; focus on PvP or an ongoing storyline that player actions can change or both; imagine an MMO set in the post-imperial Eldar Scrolls world where you can bring order, or massive death, to a province.
Hell, I'm suprised there isn't a porno MMO out by now. You don't even want to consider the expansion packs they could think of. :winky:
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-I owe nothing to Women's Lib.
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BloodshedI smoke my friendsDown to the FilterRegistered Userregular
edited May 2010
Wow brought MMO gaming into the mainstream.
Before that we were a select group of gamers who sat in front of our PC for 8 hours straight, instead of our Playstation or N64. The MMO selection wasn't particularly big and many of the ones out had little to no advertising. All of them had a pretty rough learning curve.
Can you imagine how many players quit EQ after the first hour because they fell of a Kelethin walkway, lost their corpse, then fell off a few more times while searching for their corpse?
The quest-system was almost non-existant. You had to go on a quest to find a quest in EQ, and you probably died a few times along the way, involving several CR's, and time spent searching for someone to bind you in towns along the way.
Now, as the favorite expression goes "Everyone and their mother plays WoW".
What other MMO's have had famous actors and musicians starring in commercials for their game?
Now, its cool to be a gamer. Before, we were fat kids who got picked last in dodgeball, but we could kick your ass in Street Fighter. Now we post screenshots of our feats on Facebook and our friends hit the like button and comment on when they gained that achievement or got their 4-piece bonus from Tier X.
As long as Blizzard continues to provide entertainment than you don't need a $2000 computer for, what need have we for anything else?
Edit: B this I am implying that, as long as the majority of WoW players are satisfied, it is unlikely another MMO will enjoy the same success.
3. No risk. Victory tastes less sweet when failtrue means nothing.
I absolutely cannot disagree with this more. I've played the kick in the balls mmo's (EQ, FF11) and I've played ez-mode ones (lotro, WoW) and the easy ones are 100 times better. Your harsh death penalty does not make not dying feel better, it makes dying a kick in the face. Being able to build a house, only to have some asshole burn it down doesn't make building and maintaining that house more interesting, it means I cancel my account when my house gets burnt down. Camping long spawn time monsters who drop rare loot may make you go fuck yeah when you get it, but every time you think about the time you spent doing that is apretty good reminder of what a giant waste of time it is, especially if you replace that gear (unless you are a weird guy who likes standing in one place for 8 hours or so a day waiting for something to happen, then I guess you had a good time).
Yes, the victory tastes sweeter. I don't think I've ever really felt accomplished in WoW like I did in EQ or FF11. But that is deffinitely a trade-off I will make every time, because I can count on 1 hand the times WoW has made me want to pull my hair out in rage, as opposed to it being a near-daily occurrence in FF11 and once a week minimum in EQ.
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HenroidMexican kicked from Immigration ThreadCentrism is Racism :3Registered Userregular
2. You actions have no meaningful, long-term impact on the world or game. You can kill Thrall in WoW. So what? He respawns in 15 anyways.
And while we're at it, your player only lives once so when you try and do something like assassinate a people's leader and die for it, you learn your lesson!
Do you not understand how unreasonable your request for this is? Thousands of people on a server (out of dozens / hundreds of servers), all wanting to leave an impact on a virtual world permanently?
I hoped MMOs would have evolved more by now. I'm kinda getting tired of the level treadmill design. And questing.
I'd like to see more event driven type play....such that you can just wander around exploring and run into interesting things(battles, monsters attacking towns, bandits, people needing help). The events themselves could be scripted programmed events or something initiated by a player or a consequence of other actions that occurred in the gameworld. It could be as simple as defending a bridge or assaulting a dungeon lair to kill a monster, etc. or as complicated as getting involved with the defending(or attacking) a fortified town.....(an event that might take days or weeks to complete and anyone can join at any time).
I want to be able to modify the gameworld itself. You could limit it to designated areas but I'd like the option to be able to grow crops, set up a mine, build structures(shops, buildings, defenses) or be able to modify existing structures. I'd also want the ability to destroy things(siege warfare). Or be able to set up a dungeon lair ala dungeon keeper and stock it with monsters and traps, etc...which would mean field trips to obtain monsters and new traps and fiendish devices. Allow players to play as the monster! or be the boss mob others fight.
You could open this up to letting the npc's modify the game too. Becoming stronger on their own as they fight others, gaining territory, setting up towns and encampments of their own...or being destroyed(by players or other hostile npcs). I think it would make the world a lot more dynamic and you wouldn't need to rely on quests when things are just happening on their own.
I'd like to see various forms of advancement and play beyond just leveling and gear. Things like Everquest's AA system, Guildwar's thing where you hunt down new skills to learn, WoW's proposed Path of the titans and archaeology systems. I like the idea of exploration and adventuring as a way to unlock and acquire things beyond just gear....new costumes, vanity items, abilities, access to new areas and new types of play.
I'd rather pvp were tiered and completely opt-in. One tier of pvp might offer say...monster play. You don't gain items or loot. You don't lose anything upon death either. Advancement is strictly through unlockable content(new powers, new types of monsters, new areas, etc). You hop into a monster and are put into an area. You are then free to do as you will....wander, put down roots and start building a fortress, attract other monsters and form a group. You might be set down into an outdoor area or perhaps a dungeon that other players are currently working their way through and see how long you can last. The odds will be stacked against you but I think that could be fun.
Another tier of pvp might offer the ability to conquer territory, kingdom building, etc but also the ability to lose territory and see the things you've built be destroyed. When one side has lost completely it resets. People(individuals and groups) are ranked at the end. Checks and balances in place to prevent a pop imbalance from skewing things too much in favor of one side. Kind of like Alterac Valley of old but on a massive scale and designed for the express purpose of kingdom and siege warfare.
Or you could have it so players work towards becoming a demi-god and/or gaining access to other planes of existence(where all the pvp is). You could choose sides(good or bad...whatever form you want it to take...heaven, hell, angels, demons, chaos, order, etc). You could have it set up such that each side has strongholds that can't ultimately be conquered although they can be invaded for a short time. Other areas are designated battlefields where all out conflict can occur so each side can gain territory. Players start off as peons of some sort and work their way up through the ranks gaining power and new forms, etc, more abilities, more stuff under their command and able to control and give orders. As you advance you can start setting up buildings of your own, making your own base, producing units of your own and directing skirmishes. Kind of like an mmo rts but players assuming some of the unit positions alongside npcs and being given more control as they advance.
It shouldn't feel frustrating or like you're being griefed. People should thoroughly enjoy the experience no matter whether they win or not.
Basically, any time a player finds themselves just having to grind/streetsweep/endlessly kill random mobs for no other reason than that they've finished all their missions and need to level up some more to get more, something's gone wrong.
Okay, that's what I was thinking, and I can agree to it. That's pretty much every Korean-born MMO I've played. I was recently told that Age of Conan has this sort of shit going on as well.
And for a high score in the content area, a player should be able to play multiple characters without grinding and by repeating almost nothing. WoW and CoX manage to get you at least 2 by having 2 different sides with their own stuff.
This part I can't agree with. Expecting to not repeat (most) anything between two or more characters is an unreasonable assessment. I mean come on, how many video games have been built that way? Randomized-dungeon games like Diablo may have different layouts, but it's still the same thing at the core. What you're given, instead, is different characters and different talent tree focuses. Maybe that's a cop-out of having to make a huge plethora of content, or maybe it's just a reasonable amount of work to do.
I don't expect it, but it's something it takes to get a high score for content on my list. It's the difference between CoX, which I've played for years and bought an extra alt account for, and LotRO, which is nice but I've only played for a couple of months and with only one real character.
I don't see why it's unreasonable to expect not to have to repeat the same content twice on a second character.
I mean obviously some repetition is going to be unavoidable, but we ought to be trying to avoid it, at least with the introductory/low level content.
I mean, Wow did this with death knights and it was a great decision.
Eat it You Nasty Pig. on
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Pluto was a planet and I'll never forget
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Just_Bri_ThanksSeething with ragefrom a handbasket.Registered User, ClubPAregular
edited May 2010
The concept of repeating content is for games you don't subscribe to play.
Edit: Within reason, of course. I think that one complete progression track per specific character division (like race for games with non-human characters) is sufficient.
Just_Bri_Thanks on
...and when you are done with that; take a folding
chair to Creation and then suplex the Void.
I think EVE has the backbone of what a MMO should be. Your actions affect the world in real ways. Unfortunately, it is considered "spreadsheets in space," and there are a lot of punishing aspects of the game, as well as some things I just don't like (the way you train skills,) but I think that is the heart of what MMOs all should have by way of robust PVP zones.
The multiplayer aspect of the genre creates a "rich get richer" style of joining. If you want to play with your friends, you'll pick the most popular game to play. To get over that bump, you really need to deliver something that will get really large initial subscribers and enough content to carry beyond a few months. That was my major problem with Star Trek. I hit max level, and I felt I did everything in about 2 and a half weeks.
I don't know what WAR did, but it sounds risky. What happens if there are no events going on? Or the events are the wrong level or old-and-done? Or require more players than there are? I know CoX has something similar, almost every zone has a 'zone event'. But most of them are completely ignored, people would rather do their missions. Beating Lusca and some of the others are about impossible because you'll never find enough people to help.
Apologies for necro'ing a page 2 quote, but I didn't see a response to this one. GW2 has made a lot of promises we have yet to see if they can follow through on, but
a) there are supposed to be 1500-1600 events in the game as-is (for point of comparison, there are only a few hundred quests in the original game across three campaigns and an expansion, so the "theory" is that content won't be a problem for some time.
b) not sure about level-gated content, though sidekicking/mentoring a la CoX/EQII will be in the game
c) the events are supposed to dynamically scale, so there won't be issues of too few or too many players to complete a particular event; and there are to be "success" or "failure" states, such as, either beat back bandits before they over-run a town, or fail to do so and then have an event of helping to rebuild the town, etc.
I play EVE mostly and WoW on occasion, played AOC on release.
I always wondered if there was something I was missing out on, apparently not. Have we got any figures on AoC though, seems as if they've experienced some growth since their post-release dissappointment.
The reason you need to have the ability to not have to repeat content is because of the all-too-common problem of certain classes being either a)much harder to play than others or b)being useless in endgame.
This was one of WAR's issues. In a PvP-centric game, they had absolutely atrocious class balance, but you either had to do boring PvE to level or do scenarios hundreds of times. I barely managed to get to 18 before it bored me to tears. I can't imagine going through that and then learning that my character wasn't useful in sieges.
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It's just good to have points in the zone where people naturally gravitate towards, and where there's a bit of action, all the time.
They seem to make the same gamble that, once they've launched the game, they can always put out more content later. And it always fails. If 70% of the players leave after the first month, most of them will never come back.
In WoW I felt like it had plenty of content for the most part, except maybe in vanilla - in vanilla I actually had to grind portions of or whole levels here and there to progress. But ever since they refined their game, it was quests and dungeons all the way through for a smooth ride. And while I've never dipped too much into end-game content, the fact that they're always adding to it seems to me that they're not lacking. The only people who could find it lacking are the most strong-hearted devotees.
Another example: City of Villains, I didn't really run out of things to do in my time playing. There were missions that were repeatable, yes, but I only got involved in those if I was getting power leveled like a motherfuck with the guys - specifically for power leveling. Again, though, I didn't see the end-game content. Or even high-leveled.
And for a high score in the content area, a player should be able to play multiple characters without grinding and by repeating almost nothing. WoW and CoX manage to get you at least 2 by having 2 different sides with their own stuff.
Do I really need to start citing all of the studies, polls, papers, and dissertations that have been done on the topic of change and how most people, or people in general, do not like it? I was quite sure that it was common knowledge that people don't like change on the whole. The numbers of people that do are quite small.
This part I can't agree with. Expecting to not repeat (most) anything between two or more characters is an unreasonable assessment. I mean come on, how many video games have been built that way? Randomized-dungeon games like Diablo may have different layouts, but it's still the same thing at the core. What you're given, instead, is different characters and different talent tree focuses. Maybe that's a cop-out of having to make a huge plethora of content, or maybe it's just a reasonable amount of work to do.
Who are those two people? I've never heard of them. Do they have strong reputations in their fields?
Also, ironzerg brings up a good point - sudden, unexpected change is a different beast from carefully planned out and adjusted change.
Edit - And by the way, yes, you really do. :P
I remember hearing about that. A lot of people thought the design was too much to aim for in those days, which I could understand.
My main problem with MMOs is the combat and how you control your character. Everything is so stiff and automated in a lot of ways. I'd love a MMO that feels like Zelda or God of War. Something you can play with a Gamepad. There are programs that let you use Gamepads with current MMOs, I used one when I played WAR, but the stiffness was still there. You can use voicechat for group play and keep text chat to cities and general channels.
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The fact that we see so many WoW like games at the moment shouldn't come as a surprise of course. Just like every big success everyone wants a piece of the cake, as was the case in most genres before (FPS,RTS,...if you remember Doom or Command&Conquer etc.). But they also copy WoW because they got so many things right with the game, not right for every player and they surely changed the direction of the game over time but it evolved the genre like no other.
There are still lots of design problems left to solve in MMOs not least because these games have a ressource not available to most other titles, the players themselves. Player designed content, a dynamic world, social game mechanics etc. are all things which are mostly unique to the genre and still waiting to be properly handled, even if we saw some interesting ideas in recent titles. For all the innovations out there, remember one thing though, which i think is very important to remember. The fact that MMORPGs are by far the most risky and costly games out there. They require huge investments, in money, technology, man-power, time etc. Just look at all the tech they need for EVE's one world design or the huge WoW server farms. MMOs are still very limited by technological limits but they are evolving, just very carefully for the most part. Which makes it all the more interesting to see new features and innovations in the genre (which are more often seen in smaller titles for several reasons).
To the OP's question: I am very excited about the MMO genre, they are the future of gaming imho, a place where we will see many interesting things, just maybe not as fast as we'd like :P
Those kinds of MMO's, with more action-y gameplay specifically suited for gamepads seem to be coming from Korea in the near future. Of course, even if they deliver the gameplay they advertise, you can probably count on also getting a load of horrible shit on the side as well.
I'm specifically talking about Blade and Soul
But yeah, they are asian projects which means
1 - Animeness
2 - Potential for soulcrushing grinds and other horrible mechanics.
There's also Guild Wars 2 which is a bit more traditional but looks pretty damn cool nonetheless.
I can't comment on #2, but I have reason to doubt Guild Wars 2 will suffer from #1, because of the phrase I've limed. ANet have stressed that they want GW2 to be soloable and very easy to pick up casually, while also rewarding to play hardcore in groups; thus the scaling difficulty of events according to who's present. We'll have to wait until beta to see if they pull it off well, but (call me a fangirl), I trust them to do a good job. Events will be completely replacing quests, if I understand correctly, so I wouldn't expect the majority of them to be group-focused.
I disagree completely. WoW is on the market. Whatever MMO you release is going to be compared to, and competing with, WoW. Most of your playerbase will either be a WoW player or an Ex-WoW player, barring maybe a well-known license. So if, when you release an MMO, there aren't dungeons throughout the levels, quests so that you never end up grinding, a multitude of high level dungeons and at least 1 raid, you aren't really setting yourself up for a win.
In that regard, way more developers really need to steal the heroic system. That idea was pure genius.
LoL: failboattootoot
MMO should not be synonymous with "DIKU MUD" which it currently seems to be. Unfortunately both SW:TOR and GW2 seem very traditional in this sense, and they are the only big western MMO's on the way.
EDIT: My take on the whole MMO thing is that I don't mind the genre as it is but most everything lacks a seriously large amount of polish.
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This creates enormous pressure on every new MMO, because they have to wrench a subscriber base away from an already established and spit-shine-polished game, and hold onto it through the usual MMO growing pains. Publishers also naturally measure the success of their game against WoW, whcih means that new stuff getting the green light winds up trying to compete with WoW on WoW's terms (and losing.) See: LOTRO.
Pluto was a planet and I'll never forget
MMO needs to not be synonymous with MMORPG anymore.
I once teased out an idea for a MechWarrior MMO that would involve huge battleground of people piloting their mechs, still sim-pilot style, across the goddamn galaxy. Clans vs. Innersphere. And what happened? People read as far as "MechWarrior MMO" and argued at me that WoW-style gameplay would kill it.
Fucking WOOSH.
Pluto was a planet and I'll never forget
Speaking of MMO-not-rpgs, how many people played Shattered Galaxy? That shit is still running.
Pluto was a planet and I'll never forget
Tier one is "The Grind." Almost every time a new MMO is brought up or someone is introduced to a new one one of the first questions asked is "How's the grind?" The Grind being defined as the leveling process from new character to max level. Everything in that range that the player does ultimately does not matter because the "real game" doesn't start until "end game" in nearly all modern MMO's design philosophies. I imagine it like taking a road trip from one end of the country to the other, where the start point has nothing and the end point is some kind of golden land. Sure the sights may change and one may stop a few times along the way but the destination and what it holds is the real goal.
Then tier two which is the "End Game." That phrase is such an oxymoron as MMO's these days are designed so that the end game is where the game really picks up. The raiding and all the epic content that the players aspire to take part in all starts here. A player has to sink many hours into the game as well as find a guild and such before he or she can even begin to partake in the super-cool epic stuff and be the hero (or villain) they wanted and were promised they could be.
The way I visualize this design is like one of those water towers with the long narrow shaft that bulges out into a bulb at the top with the town's name on it. The shaft of course being the grind: a narrow vertical progression, and the bulb being the end game: more lateral progression through raid content. What I would love to see is all this squished together. Eliminate the grind and the end game by combining it all and allowing players to experience the whole game from day one. I would love to see an MMO developed with the philosophy that a new character is viable for the majority of game content from day one and that the majority of gameplay content being inter-player driven rather than player vs enviroment (raids etc) driven.
City of Heroes has an interesting solution to this; a higher level character can 'sidekick' a buddy (multiple buddies, now) up to their level so that they can do stuff together. This means that compelling content can be distributed throughout "the grind," but has the side effect of leveling the difficulty curve, too.
Pluto was a planet and I'll never forget
It's definitely true now, but I think that a lot of their initial success was due not just to their own great ideas and great design (to say nothing of having a popular IP) but due to a lot of other companies being fairly short-sighted or just doing a poor job with the games that they released around that time (or that were already released).
Everquest II, I think, was probably the best example of this (released literally two weeks before WoW). And then after WoW came out, the other MMO companies did a fairly terrible job of retaining their userbase. Star Wars Galaxies is probably the best example of a userbase's mass exodus elsewhere. All of this allowed WoW to continue to grow.
I mean, it's not as if there isn't a hunger for new content or for a different game. The huge box sales of things like Warhammer and Age of Conan prove that pretty well. But in many ways, the games felt incomplete, and once someone loses interest in an MMO they're just starting, it's pretty hard to get them back.
1. Dead, stagnant worlds. It's hard to be immersed in a world where the NPCs are just signposts for quests. They don't eat, sleep, move much, whatever. Your PC is just a stat column.
Solution: Look at Fallout 3 as a bare minimum. Perhaps have enemy NPCs move in as hostile tribes that can be wiped out? Plus more unique character creation; need more choices, mayby even a background history to your character.
2. You actions have no meaningful, long-term impact on the world or game. You can kill Thrall in WoW. So what? He respawns in 15 anyways.
Solution: Imagine WoW where you could play Warcraft. Have a wide, open tract of land with mines, places for farmlands ect. Your guild can build actual castles, hire warriors, hire serfs to mine for massive amounts of minerals that you can use to upgrade your kingdom or just sell at the AH.
3. No risk. Victory tastes less sweet when failtrue means nothing.
Solution: Your castle can be burnt to the ground in #2. Rogues can sneak in and assassinate serfs, disrupting your kingdom. Raids can burn buildings.
If I was doing the Fallout MMO; I'd have it cut into 2 sections. One, a traditional Fallout 3 type game. The other, a massive chunk of land wih resources that guilds would want to fight over. Mutant tribes that move in from out of the area on a periodic basis that need to be dealt with. Cities that, if their water/food sources are disrupted, spawn quests to solve these problems or people move away.
Noone, save EvE, has made a living world where your actions can change the world, where what you work for can be destroyed.
On that topic, MMOs need to just shoot for nitches now. Noone is going to out-WoW WoW; focus on PvP or an ongoing storyline that player actions can change or both; imagine an MMO set in the post-imperial Eldar Scrolls world where you can bring order, or massive death, to a province.
Hell, I'm suprised there isn't a porno MMO out by now. You don't even want to consider the expansion packs they could think of. :winky:
Margaret Thatcher
Before that we were a select group of gamers who sat in front of our PC for 8 hours straight, instead of our Playstation or N64. The MMO selection wasn't particularly big and many of the ones out had little to no advertising. All of them had a pretty rough learning curve.
Can you imagine how many players quit EQ after the first hour because they fell of a Kelethin walkway, lost their corpse, then fell off a few more times while searching for their corpse?
The quest-system was almost non-existant. You had to go on a quest to find a quest in EQ, and you probably died a few times along the way, involving several CR's, and time spent searching for someone to bind you in towns along the way.
Now, as the favorite expression goes "Everyone and their mother plays WoW".
What other MMO's have had famous actors and musicians starring in commercials for their game?
Now, its cool to be a gamer. Before, we were fat kids who got picked last in dodgeball, but we could kick your ass in Street Fighter. Now we post screenshots of our feats on Facebook and our friends hit the like button and comment on when they gained that achievement or got their 4-piece bonus from Tier X.
As long as Blizzard continues to provide entertainment than you don't need a $2000 computer for, what need have we for anything else?
Edit: B this I am implying that, as long as the majority of WoW players are satisfied, it is unlikely another MMO will enjoy the same success.
Battletag: Kain#1658
I absolutely cannot disagree with this more. I've played the kick in the balls mmo's (EQ, FF11) and I've played ez-mode ones (lotro, WoW) and the easy ones are 100 times better. Your harsh death penalty does not make not dying feel better, it makes dying a kick in the face. Being able to build a house, only to have some asshole burn it down doesn't make building and maintaining that house more interesting, it means I cancel my account when my house gets burnt down. Camping long spawn time monsters who drop rare loot may make you go fuck yeah when you get it, but every time you think about the time you spent doing that is apretty good reminder of what a giant waste of time it is, especially if you replace that gear (unless you are a weird guy who likes standing in one place for 8 hours or so a day waiting for something to happen, then I guess you had a good time).
Yes, the victory tastes sweeter. I don't think I've ever really felt accomplished in WoW like I did in EQ or FF11. But that is deffinitely a trade-off I will make every time, because I can count on 1 hand the times WoW has made me want to pull my hair out in rage, as opposed to it being a near-daily occurrence in FF11 and once a week minimum in EQ.
LoL: failboattootoot
And while we're at it, your player only lives once so when you try and do something like assassinate a people's leader and die for it, you learn your lesson!
Do you not understand how unreasonable your request for this is? Thousands of people on a server (out of dozens / hundreds of servers), all wanting to leave an impact on a virtual world permanently?
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why do I keep delving
Steam: pandas_gota_gun
I'd like to see more event driven type play....such that you can just wander around exploring and run into interesting things(battles, monsters attacking towns, bandits, people needing help). The events themselves could be scripted programmed events or something initiated by a player or a consequence of other actions that occurred in the gameworld. It could be as simple as defending a bridge or assaulting a dungeon lair to kill a monster, etc. or as complicated as getting involved with the defending(or attacking) a fortified town.....(an event that might take days or weeks to complete and anyone can join at any time).
I want to be able to modify the gameworld itself. You could limit it to designated areas but I'd like the option to be able to grow crops, set up a mine, build structures(shops, buildings, defenses) or be able to modify existing structures. I'd also want the ability to destroy things(siege warfare). Or be able to set up a dungeon lair ala dungeon keeper and stock it with monsters and traps, etc...which would mean field trips to obtain monsters and new traps and fiendish devices. Allow players to play as the monster! or be the boss mob others fight.
You could open this up to letting the npc's modify the game too. Becoming stronger on their own as they fight others, gaining territory, setting up towns and encampments of their own...or being destroyed(by players or other hostile npcs). I think it would make the world a lot more dynamic and you wouldn't need to rely on quests when things are just happening on their own.
I'd like to see various forms of advancement and play beyond just leveling and gear. Things like Everquest's AA system, Guildwar's thing where you hunt down new skills to learn, WoW's proposed Path of the titans and archaeology systems. I like the idea of exploration and adventuring as a way to unlock and acquire things beyond just gear....new costumes, vanity items, abilities, access to new areas and new types of play.
I'd rather pvp were tiered and completely opt-in. One tier of pvp might offer say...monster play. You don't gain items or loot. You don't lose anything upon death either. Advancement is strictly through unlockable content(new powers, new types of monsters, new areas, etc). You hop into a monster and are put into an area. You are then free to do as you will....wander, put down roots and start building a fortress, attract other monsters and form a group. You might be set down into an outdoor area or perhaps a dungeon that other players are currently working their way through and see how long you can last. The odds will be stacked against you but I think that could be fun.
Another tier of pvp might offer the ability to conquer territory, kingdom building, etc but also the ability to lose territory and see the things you've built be destroyed. When one side has lost completely it resets. People(individuals and groups) are ranked at the end. Checks and balances in place to prevent a pop imbalance from skewing things too much in favor of one side. Kind of like Alterac Valley of old but on a massive scale and designed for the express purpose of kingdom and siege warfare.
Or you could have it so players work towards becoming a demi-god and/or gaining access to other planes of existence(where all the pvp is). You could choose sides(good or bad...whatever form you want it to take...heaven, hell, angels, demons, chaos, order, etc). You could have it set up such that each side has strongholds that can't ultimately be conquered although they can be invaded for a short time. Other areas are designated battlefields where all out conflict can occur so each side can gain territory. Players start off as peons of some sort and work their way up through the ranks gaining power and new forms, etc, more abilities, more stuff under their command and able to control and give orders. As you advance you can start setting up buildings of your own, making your own base, producing units of your own and directing skirmishes. Kind of like an mmo rts but players assuming some of the unit positions alongside npcs and being given more control as they advance.
It shouldn't feel frustrating or like you're being griefed. People should thoroughly enjoy the experience no matter whether they win or not.
I don't expect it, but it's something it takes to get a high score for content on my list. It's the difference between CoX, which I've played for years and bought an extra alt account for, and LotRO, which is nice but I've only played for a couple of months and with only one real character.
I mean obviously some repetition is going to be unavoidable, but we ought to be trying to avoid it, at least with the introductory/low level content.
I mean, Wow did this with death knights and it was a great decision.
Pluto was a planet and I'll never forget
Edit: Within reason, of course. I think that one complete progression track per specific character division (like race for games with non-human characters) is sufficient.
chair to Creation and then suplex the Void.
The multiplayer aspect of the genre creates a "rich get richer" style of joining. If you want to play with your friends, you'll pick the most popular game to play. To get over that bump, you really need to deliver something that will get really large initial subscribers and enough content to carry beyond a few months. That was my major problem with Star Trek. I hit max level, and I felt I did everything in about 2 and a half weeks.
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Apologies for necro'ing a page 2 quote, but I didn't see a response to this one. GW2 has made a lot of promises we have yet to see if they can follow through on, but
a) there are supposed to be 1500-1600 events in the game as-is (for point of comparison, there are only a few hundred quests in the original game across three campaigns and an expansion, so the "theory" is that content won't be a problem for some time.
b) not sure about level-gated content, though sidekicking/mentoring a la CoX/EQII will be in the game
c) the events are supposed to dynamically scale, so there won't be issues of too few or too many players to complete a particular event; and there are to be "success" or "failure" states, such as, either beat back bandits before they over-run a town, or fail to do so and then have an event of helping to rebuild the town, etc.
I always wondered if there was something I was missing out on, apparently not. Have we got any figures on AoC though, seems as if they've experienced some growth since their post-release dissappointment.
This was one of WAR's issues. In a PvP-centric game, they had absolutely atrocious class balance, but you either had to do boring PvE to level or do scenarios hundreds of times. I barely managed to get to 18 before it bored me to tears. I can't imagine going through that and then learning that my character wasn't useful in sieges.