The content that is missed by players who are not logged on at the time it's going down will be replaced by new content that results from the events that have, or have not, taken place.
What about the cost to be constantly generating new content? Essentially, you'll be forced to generate new content at the rate of your fastest players, if you want to stay true to your "have lasting impact on the world" mantra.
And assuming you can keep generating this content, what happens when players start to become bored with "another dragon/orc/undead invasion" event?
The reality is, playing with a large group of players should be the cornerstone for creating a dynamic, living world.
If you really want to play a "I'm the hero of the world!" game, then you need to stick to the single player fare. Maybe the real reason no one's been able to duplicate WoW's success is this maddening obsession with creating MMO's that focus on the single player experience, instead of designing a well thought out massively multiplayer game that is actually more fun to play with a large group of players.
How revolutionary would that be? A game where adding more people to the mix inherently makes things more enjoyable. Right now, we seem to be caught in this rut of trying to make things more fun by removing people from the mix, which I see as a fatal flaw to any MMO.
Rather than having a world where you know that the Southwest area in zone X is where you go to farm Green Orcs, the zones should constantly be in flux. One week, a tribe of Orcs might be moving through and pillaging everything in sight, and the players get hired on as mercs to fight the invasion (or, alternatively, join the invaders). The next week, two of the NPC barons in the zone might go to war over a town or a mine and the players can join one side. The week after that, there might be a peasant uprising, with players choosing to help the rebels or the rulers.
Depending on what happens during those events, the zone would change, at least until the next event. So, for example, if one of the aforementioned barons wins the war, his troops would take over the town and anyone who sided with the loser would find that they can no longer go to the town without being attacked by NPC guards.
The game designers could have each zone event work as a trigger for the next one. If the rampaging Orc tribe isn't defeated within a certain amount of time, that triggers an Orc seige event, where they attack the towns in the zone. If the Orcs win that one, then the next event might be a counter-invasion by troops sent by the King. Depending on how that goes, the Orcs either push into the next zone, or get pushed back from the towns. Once they're pushed out of the towns, the next event might be working with the locals to rebuild by gathering resources and the like.
Now, imagine combining this with a faction system where players could choose which groups to work with, and those decisions impacted which side they were on in the invasion or war. I think SWG had a faction system, where if you got your rating with the Tuskens high enough, you could go to their camps without being attacked. Take that another step, and you allow player customization- if you buy chain mail armor from an Orc blacksmith, it's going to look different from the chain mail you buy from a human armourer in a Roman-influenced city. The player with a high Orc tribe standing can't go into the human city, and vice versa.
The current approach in MMO's is that players move from one quest-giver to the next, while the zone around them stays static. What if, instead, the zone is constantly changing around them? Assuming zones remain level-based, you wouldn't need a huge number of events in a given zone- let's say each zone consists of a "chain" of 10-20 events that can happen over time. You'd level out of the zone before it got too stale. And, since the zones aren't static, levelling new characters would be different every time, since you would likely enter a zone each time at a different point in the event chain.
In order to feel like you have an impact, the things your doing need to mean something on a personal level. I mean its all well and good that you are saving "Random Village X" from the dragon but if you have no stake in that village how much effort are you going to put into it? On the reverse side, lets say the village being attacked is destroyed and lets say it was your "place of residence" and all of a sudden your house and items that you grinded out are destroyed? Well that just sucks. I don't know. For me, that kind of immersion is counter to what I want out of a video game.
Trying to duplicate WoW's success by doing everything how WoW isn't doing it is an even worse idea than trying to duplicate WoW's success by doing everything how WoW is doing it.
People don't want to play in a truely dynamic, living world. They might want the illusion of it, but they don't want the real thing. Any game that bases itself on that will inevitably force itself into a niche. The vast majority of the potential base essentially want to play Baldur's Gate on a larger scale with lots of other people, and giving them as close to that as possible is the key to mass success. The key is to seamlessly blend together single and multi-player, making the game fun for someone playing alone and building group dynamics from there.
Instead of losing a house with all your personal items how about after you save the village it becomes a quest hub? Perhaps you gain status with them, access to better items, and can even build the village up and make it larger. If it were wiped out you wouldn't lose any of your gear or personal items but you would feel kind of attached to it after building it up.
The content that is missed by players who are not logged on at the time it's going down will be replaced by new content that results from the events that have, or have not, taken place.
What about the cost to be constantly generating new content? Essentially, you'll be forced to generate new content at the rate of your fastest players, if you want to stay true to your "have lasting impact on the world" mantra.
You know, I genuinely don't know, as I'm not making the games . I have, however, been reading about several games that claim to be trying the above, and they could be full of it, or they could be doing that "something different" that certain players have been clamoring for.
I still don't see how the rate at which players consume events has to mean that devs have to constantly create content. Again, in the example I listed, the game is sub-free, so if people want to leave when the content is finished and come back when more is added, more power to them.
I also don't buy the "this would cost way too much" argument, since the conventional wisdom was always that MMOs had subscriptions because open-world servers cost so much to maintain, when it turns out that 2/3rds of a sub fee goes straight to profit anyway. I think an innovative and smart company can and will find a way to make it work - not that it'll be free, but they won't necessarily have to out-spend Blizzard to do it.
As for the "better off playing single-player games" point, I simply disagree. I do not like single player games; I like playing with close friends/family and sharing a game world with others. Therefore, I play MMOs. However, I will never be in a position to be in a large guild with impact on the world. I'm okay with that, and I don't even need to be a hero to boot! But I still want to play, and my money's as green as anyone's, whether I'm soloing next to someone else soloing, or playing with my S/O, etc. etc.
If you're talking about creating entirely new content....players will consume it faster than it can be generated by a development team. If the content is built into the game in the form of scripted events and npc AI....it can be self sustaining. The question then is how resource intensive such a dynamic, living type of content would be and whether current tech can support it. I'm guessing it would be very intensive and tech isn't up to the job yet.
I'd also like to see more player created content, whether it is building infrastructure in the world (player houses/forts/guild halls, factories etc) or advanced politics (Player created factions/resource control etc) or even better tools for generating special events (gambling, racing, fighting, contests and even quests)
Basically I want EVE but without all the tedious bullshit and preferably with avatars instead of lifeless spaceships.
What about the cost to be constantly generating new content? Essentially, you'll be forced to generate new content at the rate of your fastest players, if you want to stay true to your "have lasting impact on the world" mantra.
And assuming you can keep generating this content, what happens when players start to become bored with "another dragon/orc/undead invasion" event?
You really only need enough content in each zone to make it possible for someone to level out of that zone without having to repeat the content. This event-driven content model doesn't really mean more content, it just means the content is constantly rotating based on player actions. It's meant to do away with how every new character you play has to go through the same quest chains in the same order every time they level. With the event-driven content approach, every time you log in or enter a new zone, the situation in that zone is likely to be different.
There are always going to be logistical limits on the amount of content a game designer can crank out, so developers should give thought on how to keep their finite amount of content fresh.
The reality is, playing with a large group of players should be the cornerstone for creating a dynamic, living world.
I think basing a game around large groups of people doing the same thing at once is a herculean task and leads to certain content being underutilized. In WAR, for example, there were a number of public quests that required a large group of people to complete. Some of them were really cool, but it was difficult to gather enough people at any given time to actually do them, so they ended up being neglected.
If you really want to play a "I'm the hero of the world!" game, then you need to stick to the single player fare. Maybe the real reason no one's been able to duplicate WoW's success is this maddening obsession with creating MMO's that focus on the single player experience, instead of designing a well thought out massively multiplayer game that is actually more fun to play with a large group of players.
How revolutionary would that be? A game where adding more people to the mix inherently makes things more enjoyable. Right now, we seem to be caught in this rut of trying to make things more fun by removing people from the mix, which I see as a fatal flaw to any MMO.
The problem with that approach is that it is going to mean the more enjoyable content will be out of reach for more casual players and those who are not members of a large guild. The goal of game designers should be to make their MMO's more, rather than less, accessible.
Modern Man on
Aetian Jupiter - 41 Gunslinger - The Old Republic
Rigorous Scholarship
Rather than having a world where you know that the Southwest area in zone X is where you go to farm Green Orcs, the zones should constantly be in flux. One week, a tribe of Orcs might be moving through and pillaging everything in sight, and the players get hired on as mercs to fight the invasion (or, alternatively, join the invaders). The next week, two of the NPC barons in the zone might go to war over a town or a mine and the players can join one side. The week after that, there might be a peasant uprising, with players choosing to help the rebels or the rulers.
Depending on what happens during those events, the zone would change, at least until the next event. So, for example, if one of the aforementioned barons wins the war, his troops would take over the town and anyone who sided with the loser would find that they can no longer go to the town without being attacked by NPC guards.
The game designers could have each zone event work as a trigger for the next one. If the rampaging Orc tribe isn't defeated within a certain amount of time, that triggers an Orc seige event, where they attack the towns in the zone. If the Orcs win that one, then the next event might be a counter-invasion by troops sent by the King. Depending on how that goes, the Orcs either push into the next zone, or get pushed back from the towns. Once they're pushed out of the towns, the next event might be working with the locals to rebuild by gathering resources and the like.
Now, imagine combining this with a faction system where players could choose which groups to work with, and those decisions impacted which side they were on in the invasion or war. I think SWG had a faction system, where if you got your rating with the Tuskens high enough, you could go to their camps without being attacked. Take that another step, and you allow player customization- if you buy chain mail armor from an Orc blacksmith, it's going to look different from the chain mail you buy from a human armourer in a Roman-influenced city. The player with a high Orc tribe standing can't go into the human city, and vice versa.
The current approach in MMO's is that players move from one quest-giver to the next, while the zone around them stays static. What if, instead, the zone is constantly changing around them? Assuming zones remain level-based, you wouldn't need a huge number of events in a given zone- let's say each zone consists of a "chain" of 10-20 events that can happen over time. You'd level out of the zone before it got too stale. And, since the zones aren't static, levelling new characters would be different every time, since you would likely enter a zone each time at a different point in the event chain.
I want that
I think a few PAers have attempted to start something similar, in a for profit style system. They've all failed spectacularly, or at least most PAers who've set out to build a game or MMO really have never succeeded.
I'd really like a new theme rather than fantasy. Maybe steampunk, similar to the Thief series. That'd be a neat concept. Not sure if you could build an MMO around it.
bowen on
not a doctor, not a lawyer, examples I use may not be fully researched so don't take out of context plz, don't @ me
Rather than having a world where you know that the Southwest area in zone X is where you go to farm Green Orcs, the zones should constantly be in flux. One week, a tribe of Orcs might be moving through and pillaging everything in sight, and the players get hired on as mercs to fight the invasion (or, alternatively, join the invaders). The next week, two of the NPC barons in the zone might go to war over a town or a mine and the players can join one side. The week after that, there might be a peasant uprising, with players choosing to help the rebels or the rulers.
Depending on what happens during those events, the zone would change, at least until the next event. So, for example, if one of the aforementioned barons wins the war, his troops would take over the town and anyone who sided with the loser would find that they can no longer go to the town without being attacked by NPC guards.
The game designers could have each zone event work as a trigger for the next one. If the rampaging Orc tribe isn't defeated within a certain amount of time, that triggers an Orc seige event, where they attack the towns in the zone. If the Orcs win that one, then the next event might be a counter-invasion by troops sent by the King. Depending on how that goes, the Orcs either push into the next zone, or get pushed back from the towns. Once they're pushed out of the towns, the next event might be working with the locals to rebuild by gathering resources and the like.
Now, imagine combining this with a faction system where players could choose which groups to work with, and those decisions impacted which side they were on in the invasion or war. I think SWG had a faction system, where if you got your rating with the Tuskens high enough, you could go to their camps without being attacked. Take that another step, and you allow player customization- if you buy chain mail armor from an Orc blacksmith, it's going to look different from the chain mail you buy from a human armourer in a Roman-influenced city. The player with a high Orc tribe standing can't go into the human city, and vice versa.
The current approach in MMO's is that players move from one quest-giver to the next, while the zone around them stays static. What if, instead, the zone is constantly changing around them? Assuming zones remain level-based, you wouldn't need a huge number of events in a given zone- let's say each zone consists of a "chain" of 10-20 events that can happen over time. You'd level out of the zone before it got too stale. And, since the zones aren't static, levelling new characters would be different every time, since you would likely enter a zone each time at a different point in the event chain.
I want that
WoW has attempted to do this with their phased content. But, they've given up something in order to achieve that - persistence. That is, when you and your friend walk into the Dragon Wastes, you might look at a town and see two completely different things.
Now, I like your suggestion - that the changes to the world that happen over time happen for everyone. That's fantastic. But, I wonder if there's a cost there as well. For a zone that changes in the manner you suggest, your character would not be the catalyst for those changes. In WoW - and I would imagine, in SW:TOR as well - you are the one who saves the town, and you are the one who causes the Death Knights to roll over the Scarlet Crusade, and so on. In your world, the heroics of your character is diminished.
I suppose there are costs involved, on all ends.
All that being said, I would very much prefer a world that changes over time thanks to the collective action of the players. That really excites me.
First and foremost I want to say MMOs most enduring quality is the population. And while the big boy, WoW, may have become easy mode the population is what keeps me coming back. I have a great set of players that I enjoy raiding with when I get the chance and, to me, that makes the experience worthwhile.
That said, MMOs failed because of the people playing it IMHO. In EQ everything was still new to 99% of the population, there were MMOs before EQ, and so the community grew around the rich environments and monsters. As the game aged the population shifted to its modern state of consume all content as fast as you can. This can be attributed to "phat lewt" syndrome or elitism or whatever you want to link it to, in the end the game became more about the end and not the expierence. People started to see no value in the experiences before the endgame.
This is appearent in single player games as well. For reference I will mention Final Fantasy 13 and its reception on this very forum and around the net. Because of a controlled slow start, one I enjoyed immensly, many lost interest in the overall game. This can also be attributed with want to be elite or get to the phat lewts or whatever. The start to me was not over excessive and actually quite on track with pretty much all prior Final Fantasies in duration and control. For example the world in the old school FF games did not "open up" until after you got the airship. Prior to this point you were pretty much on rails on the overworld map. In FFVI this didnt happen till over 10hours into the game if I remember correctly.
For MMOs the downhill slope hit for EQ around the time when they released the Sleeper's Tomb. This one zone was a "fuck you all" to the old population and the begining of having the "have" and "have nots." Well a further lengthening of the gap. One of the lead designers of WoW,Tigole in EQ, was part of the population that constatly whined at Sony to put in content for the "Elite" player only. Prior to that, at least on my server, you could get almost all of the gear in the game with some luck and a good group of people. After that they added in many more elite only zones. Essentially designing areas to beat the player not for the player to enjoy.
In WoW most here have seen the downfall, or what you could call lack of complexity, as a direct result of the oposite side of the population. This is very nice for the entire population but as things progressed from 40 man to 25 man to 10 man the game got noticably easier. There is still heroics for the hardcore raiders but even those can be zerged sometimes.
In the end people from what I have seen most of the MMO population doesn't want the complexity. They want the end result as fast as they are allowed and Blizzard gave in. This caused the pickle we are in today and well I hope we can get out of it. I would love for the genre to progress farther but everything I have played in the most recent generation of MMOs is just a rehash or reskin of WoW with some crappy extra features to try to draw players over.
I'd really like a new theme rather than fantasy. Maybe steampunk, similar to the Thief series. That'd be a neat concept. Not sure if you could build an MMO around it.
I've often said I'd play a C&C MMO, but with the newer games I dunno anymore
But I'd still love to see a future warfare MMO along the lines of TR, without the suck.
What WoW is attempting to do with phasing is very crude in comparison isn't really dynamic.
I envision this kind of dynamic event content being used to augment or outright replace the quest hub design. It's there to help characters level up. It would be very tricky to set up properly though. The scope and complexity and interaction would take quite a bit more work to develop but I think once done it would be much much more entertaining.
Imagine WoW...you start off in Elwynn but instead of collecting a bunch of quests there is an event going on. Maybe it's obvious or maybe there are npcs that point you in the right direction. As you wander around you find all sorts of interesting things going on which you can participate in. The kobold infested mines actually become an event that you can participate in....and you might need to bring siege weapons to crack it open and root out the kobolds. If not stopped they fortify their position and expand. The gnolls and Hogger would be an event....as they attack the guard tower there. If you don't stop them they take over the tower. If they're not rooted out they fortify and expand, becoming more powerful.
And you're given a multitude of ways to respond and interact with these events. The player's participation affects the outcome and seamlessly folds into other events. Perhaps the players win and move onto Goldshire and Westfall....opening up other events and pushing the Defias back, eventually assaulting the Deadmines. Perhaps they lose and the Defias take Stormwind. And then the players have the option of assaulting Stormwind and retaking it. And then it has to be rebuilt and fortified. Imagine of the Stormwind Harbor was something players had to build....*could* build and add to.
Eventually you'll outlevel an area and move on.
End game....you could have kingdom warfare where players can build up towns, cities, defenses, etc...create a thriving civilization and go to war with others(npc or otherwise). Or you could have player generated content by allowing players to build their own dungeons and populate it and event scripts that attach themselves to this content.....npc monsters coming on their own to join the player and populate his dungeon, etc. And they start working on it, building...expanding...but it's player driven content....players affecting the gameworld and driving the changes on a macroscale at this point and the outcome hinges on what the players do.
As for other genres than fantasy....I'd love a good Mechwarrior or Warhammer 40k MMO.
Don't forget also that lots of people don't really give a shit about a persistent world with events that affect people and so on.
Remember in the zombie plague in the runup to WotLK? By the fourth or fifth day it was easy enough to infect people that our newly re-purposed zombie progression guild was regularly "raiding" stormwind and taking down vital services.*
The whining was so great over people not being able to check their damn auctions for a couple days that the event ended early (which was too bad, I was really excited to see where it was going.)
Lots of people just want to have a relatively safe, nonthreatening shared experience with their friends. And while I'm sure there's a middle ground between WoW and the permanence of say, EVE, I'm not sure it's a place a lot of players actually want to go.
*
Camping the mage tower in stormwind with a force of 20+ zombies that grew every time some poor sod came through from shattrath was one of my favorite moments ever. Before they fixed the bug that let horde and alliance zombies communicate in zombiespeak, we even had some collaborative raids.
Eat it You Nasty Pig. on
it was the smallest on the list but
Pluto was a planet and I'll never forget
Well, there seem to be a couple of cross-purpose design ideas being proposed here; on the one hand, some are suggesting that game developers need to do something vastly different from WoW (either genre shift or game mechanics or some combination of the two) if they ever want to "beat" WoW at its own game - or even attempt to be its equal.
Others are suggesting that changes in pursuit of becoming a healthy (for whatever value of "healthy" one likes) niche title is what's necessary, because nobody can out-WoW WoW.
I'm not sure that any one game developer can have both. So when there are suggestions that "most gamers" want this or most gamers dislike that, I guess what is being said is that it is obvious that most gamers want to play WoW, and whatever WoW implements is what most gamers like.
I think this is where the expressed desire for a world that changes with its players come in. Nobody thinks this will make a game more desirable than WoW (and I hope I am not putting words in anyone's mouth), but we've already established that people who like WoW are playing it. The question is, how different from WoW do people who do not play WoW want their games to be, and how small a niche will they be satisfied with?
If I am reading it right, this thread seems so far to be a combination of people who don't play WoW, or are now looking for something different from WoW, talking about what they'd like to see in their MMOs, and others saying those features won't be popular.
I'd also like to see more player created content, whether it is building infrastructure in the world (player houses/forts/guild halls, factories etc) or advanced politics (Player created factions/resource control etc) or even better tools for generating special events (gambling, racing, fighting, contests and even quests)
Basically I want EVE but without all the tedious bullshit and preferably with avatars instead of lifeless spaceships.
Someone make it happen
You're the only one who seems to get it and aren't thinking inside the "WoW-Box."
Granted when they made that "One million dollar prize for the top pvper" event, it blasted out the ass and I think they never coughed up the money for it... Before letting the game hit the shit-fan.
On the bright side its the only MMO I ever played where I could beat someone to death with a leopard fur glove.
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.
Amusingly, the former owner of Artifact Entertainment (and the architect behind the old pie-in-the-sky race wars version of Horizons) went on to make Alganon, which quite literally copied WoW's UI (among other things) and whose utter market failure prompted shareholders to sack him only to replace him with Derek Smart of all people.
korodullin on
- The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (2017, colorized)
I think a big challenge that a lot of you are overlooking is getting into the MMO after the initial surge is really backbreaking in EVE. Some of those skill levels take weeks to learn. WoW is popular, in large part, because people can jump in whenever. I resub'd to WoW to get all my characters set up for the new expansion. I decided to get a Hunter up, so I could have a good leather crafter in my alt professions set up. I entered as an elf, and Teldrassil was like a barren wasteland. I thought I was playing on a private server. There was nobody to be found. I started crafting all kinds of stuff for the Auction House, and the AH was basically empty. It's on a medium populated server too (Perenolde.) The game has just been around so long that it no longer has the vibrancy of early WoW (even though that was, admittedly, really buggy.)
Pretty sure Icarus had to let go of a ton of developers to the point where some websites were mistakenly saying the the company had gone under completely.
Which is surprising considering the only talk regarding Fallen Earth is how successful it was despite being a low-key release right after big titles like Champions and Aion.
I'd like to see an MMO where players start out as survivors and refugees of a cataclysmic event and there really are no friendly npc's. All services would be provided by other players and resources are realistically placed with realistic amounts used for armor. No more of this harvesting hundreds and hundreds of mats. A suit of armor would require X pounds of metal, which would be smelted from Y pounds of ore.
SkyCaptain on
The RPG Bestiary - Dangerous foes and legendary monsters for D&D 4th Edition
I'd also like to see more player created content, whether it is building infrastructure in the world (player houses/forts/guild halls, factories etc) or advanced politics (Player created factions/resource control etc) or even better tools for generating special events (gambling, racing, fighting, contests and even quests)
Basically I want EVE but without all the tedious bullshit and preferably with avatars instead of lifeless spaceships.
Someone make it happen
You're the only one who seems to get it and aren't thinking inside the "WoW-Box."
What's he getting? Advanced politics and like will kill a game's appeal to the general public, simply because they want to be able to just play the game instead of having to constantly wade through a bunch of other people who may or may not want them to play. Corpse camping limits your ability to play for a few hours. Massive political drama and wars can limit your ability to play for months.
I'd also like to see more player created content, whether it is building infrastructure in the world (player houses/forts/guild halls, factories etc) or advanced politics (Player created factions/resource control etc) or even better tools for generating special events (gambling, racing, fighting, contests and even quests)
Basically I want EVE but without all the tedious bullshit and preferably with avatars instead of lifeless spaceships.
Someone make it happen
You're the only one who seems to get it and aren't thinking inside the "WoW-Box."
What's he getting? Advanced politics and like will kill a game's appeal to the general public, simply because they want to be able to just play the game instead of having to constantly wade through a bunch of other people who may or may not want them to play. Corpse camping limits your ability to play for a few hours. Massive political drama and wars can limit your ability to play for months.
You are gereralizing here. All we know for sure is that EVE is popular, and it is the game with the most advanced bullshit-drama politics around. It is the game with the most advanced player created factions around and the most complicated economical and resource systems around. People get interested in the game because they hear about all the player generated conflicts, and they usually quit because of how dull the actual gameplay is. Like I did, for example.
With this said, EVE is popular, and perhaps the most popular MMO in the western market next to WoW. I think that says something.
Read this classic published example, and it'll highlight just one aspect of what a system like EVEs can bring when it comes to dynamic content; this case being a totally player generated incident which shook the foundations of several "guilds".
I'd really like a new theme rather than fantasy. Maybe steampunk, similar to the Thief series. That'd be a neat concept. Not sure if you could build an MMO around it.
I've often said I'd play a C&C MMO, but with the newer games I dunno anymore
But I'd still love to see a future warfare MMO along the lines of TR, without the suck.
How would it play? FPSMMO, RTSMMO, or typical MMO ?
bowen on
not a doctor, not a lawyer, examples I use may not be fully researched so don't take out of context plz, don't @ me
While EVE's politics are interesting, I don't think there are many games that can work like that---especially considering EVE's brutal learning curve and its' terrible tendency to not explain lots of important game mechanics thoroughly.
I'd also like to see more player created content, whether it is building infrastructure in the world (player houses/forts/guild halls, factories etc) or advanced politics (Player created factions/resource control etc) or even better tools for generating special events (gambling, racing, fighting, contests and even quests)
Basically I want EVE but without all the tedious bullshit and preferably with avatars instead of lifeless spaceships.
Someone make it happen
You're the only one who seems to get it and aren't thinking inside the "WoW-Box."
What's he getting? Advanced politics and like will kill a game's appeal to the general public, simply because they want to be able to just play the game instead of having to constantly wade through a bunch of other people who may or may not want them to play. Corpse camping limits your ability to play for a few hours. Massive political drama and wars can limit your ability to play for months.
You are gereralizing here. All we know for sure is that EVE is popular, and it is the game with the most advanced bullshit-drama politics around. It is the game with the most advanced player created factions around and the most complicated economical and resource systems around. People get interested in the game because they hear about all the player generated conflicts, and they usually quit because of how dull the actual gameplay is. Like I did, for example.
With this said, EVE is popular, and perhaps the most popular MMO in the western market next to WoW. I think that says something.
Read this classic published example, and it'll highlight just one aspect of what a system like EVEs can bring when it comes to dynamic content; this case being a totally player generated incident which shook the foundations of several "guilds".
I won't play a game where that is an unavoidable consequence of game play. I hate forced pvp of any sort and UO gave me an extremely low tolerance for losing my in-game assets to other players.
Well, losing your stuff in EVE does not really mean anything. You lost a battleship? Well, insurance will pay you back most of the money so you'll be able to get right back into the fray if you wish.
It's only if you're in a super-expensive super-rare ship that you really stand to risk losing something valuable, but 90% of the player population do not dabble in that stuff to begin with. Though it is there for those who wish to risk it.
Also, PvP is not forced in EVE, as there are many safezones you can relax in if you wish. It's just that the "empire building" portion of the game takes place in territory where anyone can challenge you.
Well, losing your stuff in EVE does not really mean anything. You lost a battleship? Well, insurance will pay you back most of the money so you'll be able to get right back into the fray if you wish.
It's only if you're in a super-expensive super-rare ship that you really stand to risk losing something valuable, but 90% of the player population do not dabble in that stuff to begin with. Though it is there for those who wish to risk it.
Also, PvP is not forced in EVE, as there are many safezones you can relax in if you wish. It's just that the "empire building" portion of the game takes place in territory where anyone can challenge you.
Whether or not a battleship loss is a big thing depends on a lot of stuff. Firstly, how much money you have to begin with. You do take a hit even after insurance, even if it isn't that much. Second, what kind of modules you have on your ship. All T1 stuff? Trivial to replace. If you had a bunch of t2 mods (or even faction ones)? Not trivial to replace. And to do missions after a certain point practically requires you have t2/faction mods.
But honestly, the worst part isn't the loss of money. It's the time you have to spend traveling back to where you can buy another ship, the time buying each individual part all over again (including travel time to the stations that actually have that part), and fitting it to your ship (and then doing stuff like making sure you have enough ammo, drones, etc.).
That's the annoying bit to me. When I quit I could probably afford to suicide t2 fit BS all day but the time spent having to refit them was an annoying pain in the ass. What this game needs is more pre-built ships.
I won't play a game where that is an unavoidable consequence of game play. I hate forced pvp of any sort and UO gave me an extremely low tolerance for losing my in-game assets to other players.
Well, most of EVE's player-base agrees with you. Something like less than half of the players ever enage in PVP or leave high-security space.
I think it's safe to say that the vast majority of gamers have no interest in a game where they can be forced into PVP.
Modern Man on
Aetian Jupiter - 41 Gunslinger - The Old Republic
Rigorous Scholarship
Well, losing your stuff in EVE does not really mean anything. You lost a battleship? Well, insurance will pay you back most of the money so you'll be able to get right back into the fray if you wish.
It's only if you're in a super-expensive super-rare ship that you really stand to risk losing something valuable, but 90% of the player population do not dabble in that stuff to begin with. Though it is there for those who wish to risk it.
Also, PvP is not forced in EVE, as there are many safezones you can relax in if you wish. It's just that the "empire building" portion of the game takes place in territory where anyone can challenge you.
Ya no. That argument won't fly with me. I've played EvE. It's the same deal as UO. Get killed and spend a bunch of time getting a refit so you can get back to playing. It's annoying. It's doubly annoying when someone else killed you with no way to fight back. The stuff I lost wasn't particularly valuable either. I had the wealth and resources to get back on my feet immediately but it kills the mood and sours my evening. No, I don't like to lose but I can deal it. Being farmed like an npc mob is too much to bare. I'm not gonna be a walking vending machine for someone else.
Having someone steal everything from the corporate hangar and leave me with nothing? Would be like someone breaking into my house in UO and doing the same thing. I quit UO when my house and all the stuff in it was lost. I won't play a game where that's even possible anymore.
And the "empire building" is a large part of the gameplay and happens to make up the larger part of the gameworld in EvE. Sure, I could spend all my time in the "safe" areas of the game....that would be like standing around town all day in UO and never leaving. Sure, there are things you can do there but most of the fun to be had is out in the wilderness. And you can still be attacked and killed in the "safe" areas.
I have zero-tolerance for item loss in games I play, especially to other players. Consequences for death? Ya sure but there's a fine line between a little realism and making people work for it and kicking them sadistically in the crotch.
Now I do enjoy pvp....but on my terms and when I feel in the mood. When I'm not....I don't want to be forced into participating. Things like Wintergrasp and Battlegrounds are more my style but those are too limited in scope for my tastes. I'd prefer something much larger and more complex and completely opt-in.
PvP should just be another ride in the amusement park. It should be something fun to do when I feel like it but there should be other things to do when I don't. If the entire park is nothing but this one type of ride I'm going to get bored of it really quick.
Good thing there is a market where there can be different games that appeal to the tastes of different people. Just because you don't like anything different from the WoW-style amusement park design philosophy doesn't mean there aren't others who are clamoring for something different.
Not all MMO's need to be zero-consequences theme parks and conversely not all of them need to be kick you in the balls for failure sociopathic murder fests either. Just because you don't like something doesn't mean that it isn't a worthwhile endeavor. Different people like different things, and that's perfectly okay.
Good thing there is a market where there can be different games that appeal to the tastes of different people. Just because you don't like anything different from the WoW-style amusement park design philosophy doesn't mean there aren't others who are clamoring for something different.
Not all MMO's need to be zero-consequences theme parks and conversely not all of them need to be kick you in the balls for failure sociopathic murder fests either. Just because you don't like something doesn't mean that it isn't a worthwhile endeavor. Different people like different things, and that's perfectly okay.
All true. I'm just stating what I prefer. And ya, I would like something different too. Blizzard does get a lot of things right with WoW but not everything and the basic playstyle has gotten a little stale. It's time for something new in the market.
I suspect more people would like pvp if it wasn't such a 'kick you in the teeth and stomp on your balls' experience that most games seem to go for.
I, for one, happened to come right out of my carebear shell and adored WAR PvP - scenarios, keep raids, open RvR, all of it. I was never able to even tolerate PvP before WAR, and I've not had any luck finding a comparable PvP experience in the games I've tried since.
Unfortunately, that wasn't all I wanted to do in-game, and WAR's PvE kind of faltered past T2, and crafting was no fun, and Public Quests were underpopulated, and in the end it became easier to just log out. But man, I miss that PvP.
Ya no. That argument won't fly with me. I've played EvE. It's the same deal as UO. Get killed and spend a bunch of time getting a refit so you can get back to playing. It's annoying. It's doubly annoying when someone else killed you with no way to fight back.
The number one rule in Eve Online is absolutely do not fly what you cannot afford to lose. If you're going to pvp or travel in an area where the threat of losing your ship is high, you take the time to buy in bulk and have backup ships stockpiled nearby with full sets of ammo, crystals, whatever you need prepped and ready. I had 25 incursus frigates with full sets of tackling mods and shit just sitting in numerous stations throughout my area of operation. The only downtime I had was travel time.
Having someone steal everything from the corporate hangar and leave me with nothing? Would be like someone breaking into my house in UO and doing the same thing. I quit UO when my house and all the stuff in it was lost. I won't play a game where that's even possible anymore.
Then obviously Eve is not for you and you have no place bitching about such a game being made. Not every game has to accomodate all styles of play.
I have zero-tolerance for item loss in games I play, especially to other players. Consequences for death? Ya sure but there's a fine line between a little realism and making people work for it and kicking them sadistically in the crotch.
Item loss in Eve in inconsequential as long as you play intelligently and prepare ahead of time and follow the number one rule. Any mmo that uses permanent item loss for death should keep that in mind when they determine how difficult it is to refit / re-arm your character.
SkyCaptain on
The RPG Bestiary - Dangerous foes and legendary monsters for D&D 4th Edition
The number one rule in Eve Online is absolutely do not fly what you cannot afford to lose.
Then obviously Eve is not for you and you have no place bitching about such a game being made. Not every game has to accomodate all styles of play.
I know this rule. I've followed it in every game I've ever played that featured item loss.
And obviously EvE is not for me or I'd still be playing it. I don't begrudge others their fun though. EvE did have some stuff I liked but ultimately it just wasn't my cup of tea.
Without the time and money that comes from an established IP, no start up company will make what you guys want.
That brings us to the catch-22 of how do you make enough money to stay afloat until your "super awesome dynamic ground breaking game" is 'complete?'
Probably a fairy-tale redefinition of the business model that a company uses when trying to enter the MMO arena: A LOT of investment up front with low return for the promise of large investment over time.
Without the time and money that comes from an established IP, no start up company will make what you guys want.
That brings us to the catch-22 of how do you make enough money to stay afloat until your "super awesome dynamic ground breaking game" is 'complete?'
Probably a fairy-tale redefinition of the business model that a company uses when trying to enter the MMO arena: A LOT of investment up front with low return for the promise of large investment over time.
...I know, right?
In the case of TOR, EA expects the first year or so of the game's activity to hit 1 million subscribers, or more, and that this is a necessary number in order for them to have this game become economically viable in relation to the millions that they have dumped into it's creation. This is a solitary modern example of a real fairy tale business model, one EA can support but which was thought up by corporate executives and not by actual developers or gamers. Which will most likely fail horribly unless this game pulls something magical out of it's ass.
EA did the same thing with Mythic and WAR. They should know by now that MMOs in a WoW dominated market can't expect to run like that. Most MMOs don't have the resources to throw at this kind of thing, and some still turn out pretty well.
Posts
What about the cost to be constantly generating new content? Essentially, you'll be forced to generate new content at the rate of your fastest players, if you want to stay true to your "have lasting impact on the world" mantra.
And assuming you can keep generating this content, what happens when players start to become bored with "another dragon/orc/undead invasion" event?
The reality is, playing with a large group of players should be the cornerstone for creating a dynamic, living world.
If you really want to play a "I'm the hero of the world!" game, then you need to stick to the single player fare. Maybe the real reason no one's been able to duplicate WoW's success is this maddening obsession with creating MMO's that focus on the single player experience, instead of designing a well thought out massively multiplayer game that is actually more fun to play with a large group of players.
How revolutionary would that be? A game where adding more people to the mix inherently makes things more enjoyable. Right now, we seem to be caught in this rut of trying to make things more fun by removing people from the mix, which I see as a fatal flaw to any MMO.
I want that
People don't want to play in a truely dynamic, living world. They might want the illusion of it, but they don't want the real thing. Any game that bases itself on that will inevitably force itself into a niche. The vast majority of the potential base essentially want to play Baldur's Gate on a larger scale with lots of other people, and giving them as close to that as possible is the key to mass success. The key is to seamlessly blend together single and multi-player, making the game fun for someone playing alone and building group dynamics from there.
You know, I genuinely don't know, as I'm not making the games
I still don't see how the rate at which players consume events has to mean that devs have to constantly create content. Again, in the example I listed, the game is sub-free, so if people want to leave when the content is finished and come back when more is added, more power to them.
I also don't buy the "this would cost way too much" argument, since the conventional wisdom was always that MMOs had subscriptions because open-world servers cost so much to maintain, when it turns out that 2/3rds of a sub fee goes straight to profit anyway. I think an innovative and smart company can and will find a way to make it work - not that it'll be free, but they won't necessarily have to out-spend Blizzard to do it.
As for the "better off playing single-player games" point, I simply disagree. I do not like single player games; I like playing with close friends/family and sharing a game world with others. Therefore, I play MMOs. However, I will never be in a position to be in a large guild with impact on the world. I'm okay with that, and I don't even need to be a hero to boot! But I still want to play, and my money's as green as anyone's, whether I'm soloing next to someone else soloing, or playing with my S/O, etc. etc.
Basically I want EVE but without all the tedious bullshit and preferably with avatars instead of lifeless spaceships.
Someone make it happen
There are always going to be logistical limits on the amount of content a game designer can crank out, so developers should give thought on how to keep their finite amount of content fresh.
I think basing a game around large groups of people doing the same thing at once is a herculean task and leads to certain content being underutilized. In WAR, for example, there were a number of public quests that required a large group of people to complete. Some of them were really cool, but it was difficult to gather enough people at any given time to actually do them, so they ended up being neglected.
The problem with that approach is that it is going to mean the more enjoyable content will be out of reach for more casual players and those who are not members of a large guild. The goal of game designers should be to make their MMO's more, rather than less, accessible.
Rigorous Scholarship
I think a few PAers have attempted to start something similar, in a for profit style system. They've all failed spectacularly, or at least most PAers who've set out to build a game or MMO really have never succeeded.
I'd really like a new theme rather than fantasy. Maybe steampunk, similar to the Thief series. That'd be a neat concept. Not sure if you could build an MMO around it.
WoW has attempted to do this with their phased content. But, they've given up something in order to achieve that - persistence. That is, when you and your friend walk into the Dragon Wastes, you might look at a town and see two completely different things.
Now, I like your suggestion - that the changes to the world that happen over time happen for everyone. That's fantastic. But, I wonder if there's a cost there as well. For a zone that changes in the manner you suggest, your character would not be the catalyst for those changes. In WoW - and I would imagine, in SW:TOR as well - you are the one who saves the town, and you are the one who causes the Death Knights to roll over the Scarlet Crusade, and so on. In your world, the heroics of your character is diminished.
I suppose there are costs involved, on all ends.
All that being said, I would very much prefer a world that changes over time thanks to the collective action of the players. That really excites me.
That said, MMOs failed because of the people playing it IMHO. In EQ everything was still new to 99% of the population, there were MMOs before EQ, and so the community grew around the rich environments and monsters. As the game aged the population shifted to its modern state of consume all content as fast as you can. This can be attributed to "phat lewt" syndrome or elitism or whatever you want to link it to, in the end the game became more about the end and not the expierence. People started to see no value in the experiences before the endgame.
This is appearent in single player games as well. For reference I will mention Final Fantasy 13 and its reception on this very forum and around the net. Because of a controlled slow start, one I enjoyed immensly, many lost interest in the overall game. This can also be attributed with want to be elite or get to the phat lewts or whatever. The start to me was not over excessive and actually quite on track with pretty much all prior Final Fantasies in duration and control. For example the world in the old school FF games did not "open up" until after you got the airship. Prior to this point you were pretty much on rails on the overworld map. In FFVI this didnt happen till over 10hours into the game if I remember correctly.
For MMOs the downhill slope hit for EQ around the time when they released the Sleeper's Tomb. This one zone was a "fuck you all" to the old population and the begining of having the "have" and "have nots." Well a further lengthening of the gap. One of the lead designers of WoW,Tigole in EQ, was part of the population that constatly whined at Sony to put in content for the "Elite" player only. Prior to that, at least on my server, you could get almost all of the gear in the game with some luck and a good group of people. After that they added in many more elite only zones. Essentially designing areas to beat the player not for the player to enjoy.
In WoW most here have seen the downfall, or what you could call lack of complexity, as a direct result of the oposite side of the population. This is very nice for the entire population but as things progressed from 40 man to 25 man to 10 man the game got noticably easier. There is still heroics for the hardcore raiders but even those can be zerged sometimes.
In the end people from what I have seen most of the MMO population doesn't want the complexity. They want the end result as fast as they are allowed and Blizzard gave in. This caused the pickle we are in today and well I hope we can get out of it. I would love for the genre to progress farther but everything I have played in the most recent generation of MMOs is just a rehash or reskin of WoW with some crappy extra features to try to draw players over.
I've often said I'd play a C&C MMO, but with the newer games I dunno anymore
But I'd still love to see a future warfare MMO along the lines of TR, without the suck.
I envision this kind of dynamic event content being used to augment or outright replace the quest hub design. It's there to help characters level up. It would be very tricky to set up properly though. The scope and complexity and interaction would take quite a bit more work to develop but I think once done it would be much much more entertaining.
Imagine WoW...you start off in Elwynn but instead of collecting a bunch of quests there is an event going on. Maybe it's obvious or maybe there are npcs that point you in the right direction. As you wander around you find all sorts of interesting things going on which you can participate in. The kobold infested mines actually become an event that you can participate in....and you might need to bring siege weapons to crack it open and root out the kobolds. If not stopped they fortify their position and expand. The gnolls and Hogger would be an event....as they attack the guard tower there. If you don't stop them they take over the tower. If they're not rooted out they fortify and expand, becoming more powerful.
And you're given a multitude of ways to respond and interact with these events. The player's participation affects the outcome and seamlessly folds into other events. Perhaps the players win and move onto Goldshire and Westfall....opening up other events and pushing the Defias back, eventually assaulting the Deadmines. Perhaps they lose and the Defias take Stormwind. And then the players have the option of assaulting Stormwind and retaking it. And then it has to be rebuilt and fortified. Imagine of the Stormwind Harbor was something players had to build....*could* build and add to.
Eventually you'll outlevel an area and move on.
End game....you could have kingdom warfare where players can build up towns, cities, defenses, etc...create a thriving civilization and go to war with others(npc or otherwise). Or you could have player generated content by allowing players to build their own dungeons and populate it and event scripts that attach themselves to this content.....npc monsters coming on their own to join the player and populate his dungeon, etc. And they start working on it, building...expanding...but it's player driven content....players affecting the gameworld and driving the changes on a macroscale at this point and the outcome hinges on what the players do.
As for other genres than fantasy....I'd love a good Mechwarrior or Warhammer 40k MMO.
Remember in the zombie plague in the runup to WotLK? By the fourth or fifth day it was easy enough to infect people that our newly re-purposed zombie progression guild was regularly "raiding" stormwind and taking down vital services.*
The whining was so great over people not being able to check their damn auctions for a couple days that the event ended early (which was too bad, I was really excited to see where it was going.)
Lots of people just want to have a relatively safe, nonthreatening shared experience with their friends. And while I'm sure there's a middle ground between WoW and the permanence of say, EVE, I'm not sure it's a place a lot of players actually want to go.
*
Pluto was a planet and I'll never forget
Others are suggesting that changes in pursuit of becoming a healthy (for whatever value of "healthy" one likes) niche title is what's necessary, because nobody can out-WoW WoW.
I'm not sure that any one game developer can have both. So when there are suggestions that "most gamers" want this or most gamers dislike that, I guess what is being said is that it is obvious that most gamers want to play WoW, and whatever WoW implements is what most gamers like.
I think this is where the expressed desire for a world that changes with its players come in. Nobody thinks this will make a game more desirable than WoW (and I hope I am not putting words in anyone's mouth), but we've already established that people who like WoW are playing it. The question is, how different from WoW do people who do not play WoW want their games to be, and how small a niche will they be satisfied with?
If I am reading it right, this thread seems so far to be a combination of people who don't play WoW, or are now looking for something different from WoW, talking about what they'd like to see in their MMOs, and others saying those features won't be popular.
You're the only one who seems to get it and aren't thinking inside the "WoW-Box."
Granted when they made that "One million dollar prize for the top pvper" event, it blasted out the ass and I think they never coughed up the money for it... Before letting the game hit the shit-fan.
On the bright side its the only MMO I ever played where I could beat someone to death with a leopard fur glove.
Amusingly, the former owner of Artifact Entertainment (and the architect behind the old pie-in-the-sky race wars version of Horizons) went on to make Alganon, which quite literally copied WoW's UI (among other things) and whose utter market failure prompted shareholders to sack him only to replace him with Derek Smart of all people.
- The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (2017, colorized)
SteamID: devCharles
twitter: https://twitter.com/charlesewise
Which is surprising considering the only talk regarding Fallen Earth is how successful it was despite being a low-key release right after big titles like Champions and Aion.
What's he getting? Advanced politics and like will kill a game's appeal to the general public, simply because they want to be able to just play the game instead of having to constantly wade through a bunch of other people who may or may not want them to play. Corpse camping limits your ability to play for a few hours. Massive political drama and wars can limit your ability to play for months.
You are gereralizing here. All we know for sure is that EVE is popular, and it is the game with the most advanced bullshit-drama politics around. It is the game with the most advanced player created factions around and the most complicated economical and resource systems around. People get interested in the game because they hear about all the player generated conflicts, and they usually quit because of how dull the actual gameplay is. Like I did, for example.
With this said, EVE is popular, and perhaps the most popular MMO in the western market next to WoW. I think that says something.
Read this classic published example, and it'll highlight just one aspect of what a system like EVEs can bring when it comes to dynamic content; this case being a totally player generated incident which shook the foundations of several "guilds".
How would it play? FPSMMO, RTSMMO, or typical MMO ?
I won't play a game where that is an unavoidable consequence of game play. I hate forced pvp of any sort and UO gave me an extremely low tolerance for losing my in-game assets to other players.
It's only if you're in a super-expensive super-rare ship that you really stand to risk losing something valuable, but 90% of the player population do not dabble in that stuff to begin with. Though it is there for those who wish to risk it.
Also, PvP is not forced in EVE, as there are many safezones you can relax in if you wish. It's just that the "empire building" portion of the game takes place in territory where anyone can challenge you.
Whether or not a battleship loss is a big thing depends on a lot of stuff. Firstly, how much money you have to begin with. You do take a hit even after insurance, even if it isn't that much. Second, what kind of modules you have on your ship. All T1 stuff? Trivial to replace. If you had a bunch of t2 mods (or even faction ones)? Not trivial to replace. And to do missions after a certain point practically requires you have t2/faction mods.
But honestly, the worst part isn't the loss of money. It's the time you have to spend traveling back to where you can buy another ship, the time buying each individual part all over again (including travel time to the stations that actually have that part), and fitting it to your ship (and then doing stuff like making sure you have enough ammo, drones, etc.).
That's the annoying bit to me. When I quit I could probably afford to suicide t2 fit BS all day but the time spent having to refit them was an annoying pain in the ass. What this game needs is more pre-built ships.
I think it's safe to say that the vast majority of gamers have no interest in a game where they can be forced into PVP.
Rigorous Scholarship
Ya no. That argument won't fly with me. I've played EvE. It's the same deal as UO. Get killed and spend a bunch of time getting a refit so you can get back to playing. It's annoying. It's doubly annoying when someone else killed you with no way to fight back. The stuff I lost wasn't particularly valuable either. I had the wealth and resources to get back on my feet immediately but it kills the mood and sours my evening. No, I don't like to lose but I can deal it. Being farmed like an npc mob is too much to bare. I'm not gonna be a walking vending machine for someone else.
Having someone steal everything from the corporate hangar and leave me with nothing? Would be like someone breaking into my house in UO and doing the same thing. I quit UO when my house and all the stuff in it was lost. I won't play a game where that's even possible anymore.
And the "empire building" is a large part of the gameplay and happens to make up the larger part of the gameworld in EvE. Sure, I could spend all my time in the "safe" areas of the game....that would be like standing around town all day in UO and never leaving. Sure, there are things you can do there but most of the fun to be had is out in the wilderness. And you can still be attacked and killed in the "safe" areas.
I have zero-tolerance for item loss in games I play, especially to other players. Consequences for death? Ya sure but there's a fine line between a little realism and making people work for it and kicking them sadistically in the crotch.
Now I do enjoy pvp....but on my terms and when I feel in the mood. When I'm not....I don't want to be forced into participating. Things like Wintergrasp and Battlegrounds are more my style but those are too limited in scope for my tastes. I'd prefer something much larger and more complex and completely opt-in.
PvP should just be another ride in the amusement park. It should be something fun to do when I feel like it but there should be other things to do when I don't. If the entire park is nothing but this one type of ride I'm going to get bored of it really quick.
Not all MMO's need to be zero-consequences theme parks and conversely not all of them need to be kick you in the balls for failure sociopathic murder fests either. Just because you don't like something doesn't mean that it isn't a worthwhile endeavor. Different people like different things, and that's perfectly okay.
All true. I'm just stating what I prefer. And ya, I would like something different too. Blizzard does get a lot of things right with WoW but not everything and the basic playstyle has gotten a little stale. It's time for something new in the market.
I suspect more people would like pvp if it wasn't such a 'kick you in the teeth and stomp on your balls' experience that most games seem to go for.
Unfortunately, that wasn't all I wanted to do in-game, and WAR's PvE kind of faltered past T2, and crafting was no fun, and Public Quests were underpopulated, and in the end it became easier to just log out. But man, I miss that PvP.
Then obviously Eve is not for you and you have no place bitching about such a game being made. Not every game has to accomodate all styles of play.
Item loss in Eve in inconsequential as long as you play intelligently and prepare ahead of time and follow the number one rule. Any mmo that uses permanent item loss for death should keep that in mind when they determine how difficult it is to refit / re-arm your character.
I know this rule. I've followed it in every game I've ever played that featured item loss.
And obviously EvE is not for me or I'd still be playing it. I don't begrudge others their fun though. EvE did have some stuff I liked but ultimately it just wasn't my cup of tea.
Without the time and money that comes from an established IP, no start up company will make what you guys want.
That brings us to the catch-22 of how do you make enough money to stay afloat until your "super awesome dynamic ground breaking game" is 'complete?'
Probably a fairy-tale redefinition of the business model that a company uses when trying to enter the MMO arena: A LOT of investment up front with low return for the promise of large investment over time.
...I know, right?
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1OLcAGbXhWIVcl5IziVpG0eKFJS3xi_Sac9kYMkRFvD8/edit?usp=sharing
In the case of TOR, EA expects the first year or so of the game's activity to hit 1 million subscribers, or more, and that this is a necessary number in order for them to have this game become economically viable in relation to the millions that they have dumped into it's creation. This is a solitary modern example of a real fairy tale business model, one EA can support but which was thought up by corporate executives and not by actual developers or gamers. Which will most likely fail horribly unless this game pulls something magical out of it's ass.
EA did the same thing with Mythic and WAR. They should know by now that MMOs in a WoW dominated market can't expect to run like that. Most MMOs don't have the resources to throw at this kind of thing, and some still turn out pretty well.