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What do you think is the biggest problems in MMO's Today?
dannicus
Member UncommonPosts: 99
What do you think are some of the biggest problems in MMO's these days? Please feel free to list anything that you can think of that troubles MMO's , gamers and other people that are involved in MMOs in some way or another.
thanks :-)
Comments
Too much like a video game and too little like a virtual world. The RPG has been taken out of MMORPG.
"The liberties and resulting economic prosperity that YOU take for granted were granted by those "dead guys"
The biggest problem is people playing games they don't like and then complaining about them. If you don't like the game don't play it. Developers don’t listen to your comments on forums, they listen to where you spend your money. So stop complaining and stop paying. And start giving your money to games you actually like.
So the biggest problem is the player base. Mostly the WoW players. They are telling the MMO developers, that is the kind of game they want. And if someone is going to risk 50 – 80 million on a new game, they want to know if it can sell, beforehand. So they look at what sells now and that's WoW.
Personally I'm having a great time with CoX (still) and PotBS. Not to mention many non-mmo games. The more you support games other than WoW, the more diversity we will see in future games, the better future games will be. In other words cancel your WoW subscription and join me over at CoX for a good time.
I think this is certainly a big part of it. Games like WoW (I don't mean to slam it, but it's just the best example) just aren't immersive, even if you try, because the whole game is so focused on leveling up and then grinding gear.
I personally think that the huge focus on gear/items has corrupted MMORPGs. I don't know when the trend first started (eq maybe? uo?), but the idea of a person wearing 25 different pieces of magical gear, each of which enhances the most random and off-the-wall attributes of a person (pants that make you smarter, a crossbow that makes you heal more quickly, etc.) is repugnant to me.
A game like shadowbane handled gear the way I think it should be. A person wore perhaps 4-5 pieces of armor (helmet, chest, legs, arms, gloves) and a couple pieces of other magical gear (rings, necklace), and that was it. Furthermore, there was not a great variety in quality of gear available to someone at "max level". One person near the level cap's gear was most likely at least 80% of the quality of anyone else at the cap.
This not only helped even the playing field when it came to PvP, but if such a thing were implemented in a game with PvE, it would shift the focus of end game away from an endless grind/treadmill for more and more better gear, which just becomes obsolete eventually anyway, with something else. Maybe more focus on immersion in the game world, or alternate paths to success (crafting, exploration, etc. instead of just a PvP and a PvE grind), etc.
Two things...
1) MMOs attract and are designed for achievers. Other personality types that could be interested in this genre are ignored, though the new fad for casual MMOs is a step in the right direction they still suffer from design flaws aimed at achievers, ie levels and clear objective orientated gameplay.
2) MMOs suffer from repetative content or the need to repeat content. There is no excuse for this, if a single player game had the same model for a bad guy from start to finish only slightly bigger or a different color pigment, they would get absolutely slated. And no, MMOs don't have more content, they just have more people using it.
Class imbalance.
Warrior classes doing 500 damage at Point Blank Range and Ranged having the ability to do 2000 damage at an unreachable distance. Not only that caster classes having the ability to cast 50 differant
shield abilities that absorb most of the 500 damage tank classes put out.
Class balance isn't a general issue in all MMOs, it only applies to the ones with classes and their rock paper scissor mentality.
Such an argument at first rings true, but I don't think it stands close inspection.
People mostly don't play games that they don't like. They play games that have aspects which they don't like. I complained about many parts of WoW when I played it. That didn't mean I disliked the game as a whole, or that I didn't have fun when I was playing it, or that I now feel my 15 bucks a month was wasted. It only means that there were certain parts of the game that I felt should have been done differently.
l2macroreflect?
But seriously. QQ. I'm doubtful that there is an MMO out and at all successful right now where a ranged class is unreachable by a melee and able to do 4x the damage a melee can, let alone able to negate melee damage in dozens of different ways supposing the melee ever gets up next to him/her.
Less QQ more pewpew, etc.
What exactly is this mentality? A game with classes?
How exactly does one avoid this mentality? With a skill based game? Wouldn't the skills (or certain combinations of the skills) just become the rocks, papers and scissors then, instead of the classes?
Don't know what MMOs you are playing then. I havn't found one yet where melee range vs caster range damage was equal.
My biggest issue with MMOs today 85 to 95% of the games released are chasing WOW numbers and not concentrating on making a good unique product! There are other gamers out there that don't like the level/ raid type games! We want skill based games and the freedom that comes with skill based games!
The problem?? Read this www.watercoolergames.org/archives/000897.shtml
Shame you didn't actually say anything like that in your first post, eh?
I think I'm just going to give up trying to talk to you.
Absolutely totally agree!
Take the Magic: The Gathering 'What Color Are You?' Quiz.
The social issue.
The money and time people spend on them and how it impacts their lives.
MMO have nothing to do with single player games anymore, they're a social platform that influences people's lives.
Someone has research that and it has to be regulated somehow. Not doing that is the biggest problem atm I feel.
The price.
Most of them aren't good value for money.
Either poor service or lack of content, or even lack of finesse.
Final Fantasy used to be £2.50 a month to subscribe.
Guild Wars is free.
Far worse games than this charge £10 a month and it's a joke. Many of them are games that I would continue my subscription with for longer if the price was competative.
But when I look at games like Eve or Matrix, while I appreciate their service and the hosted servers, I can't help but compare the amount of work that has gone into creating them, to titles such as WoW or Guildwars.
And then I unsubscribe.
Guild Wars has an excelllent pricing scheme. If the devs don't make new content and lots of it, people don't pay them any more money.
This game delivers.
Final Fantasy although an old game, had three expansion packs when they they were charging £2.50. Frankly £2.50 is sum I can just forget about and leave on auto renew.
I could just drop in on the game once month for 3 or 4 hours to see what's up.
The £10 a month games I am always rushing. The sooner I complete the content, the cheaper the game was. The more money I have left to try other games.
I object to time sinks. If you want more of my money, do like Guild Wars does, make me more game.
Then there is games with poor service. The ones where you pay extra for 24 hour tech support, month after month you pay to have a person there to help you if you need one.
And when you do actually need one, when the forums and FAQ aren't enough......the live tech guy emails you a link to the forums and the FAQ and is unable to do more.
Why am I paying for this? (Answer, I'm not. Refund time from Uncle Mastercard).
Charging too much money is my biggest problem with MMO's. Lazy companies that don't do the work but still want the cash.
There are way too many bad deals out there in the land of MMO's. If many of them charged less, they would become good deals again and I would play them for longer. But as it is I grudge them the money when they are offering substantially less work for my money than their competition, or timesinking me to keep me on the hook when the content is thin on the ground.
Making MMOs is a business, so you can't expect many companies to try to break the mold when experience indicates that the mold is what leads to success.
Oh you take that back right now. How could you possibly compare Eve to The Matrix? Sweet Jesus.
And, uh, if you played Eve for more than a couple of hours, it should have dawned on you that the game is more immense than probably anything else on the market right now. WoW may have had more manhours put into its production than Eve has, but Eve is so, so much deeper (and probably expansive, too) than WoW. I haven no experience with GW, so I shouldn't comment, but I'm going to go ahead and assume the same.
Problem with MMO? US! As more and more players is getting to the mmo gene, more and more aspect of the game is being require of the dev. Solo, casual, hardcore players all want a pie of the game, given that we all pay the same amount of money each month.
Another problem is the old school players still stick to the old EQ concept, that if a game that dosent follow that gaming pattern, it will be no fun and non-immersive.
This is bascially an era that old school meets the new players time. So till a gaming company that can meet this both side of game play, we will continue to see unhappiness from most of the players of each side.
RIP Orc Choppa
No player appreciation for those poor souls making an online game for us to enjoy.
Player negativity and desire to have something more and more immersive.
Just be happy with what your getting and enjoy it.
I don't think that the old school players have as much of an impact as you suggest.
I don't know the numbers, but I'm willing to guess that in North America, pre-WoW MMO players probably numbered in the one-two million range, but post-WoW there are several times that many.
And, since the new players pay just as much as the old players, but are more numerous, I'm thinking they have more clout.
Eh, I think your post is full of bad assumptions as a whole. You make a sweeping generalization about old school players (without even defining what they are), and one about newer players (also without a definition of who they are), and then go ahead and assume that old school players like one type of game and new players like a different type. I'm gonna guess that you're way off base.
The biggest problem is lack of realism. Chars don't get hurt or injured. Cities cannot be conquered with fire, blood, falling walls and huge siege machines. Distances are too short and there are no living areas in cities for npc ppl. Also in most cases mob just wander around on the terrain. They should have homes and camps and stuff to. Also players should be able to make fire and camp because its too cold or dangerous to travel at night. At night citie gates should be closed. Other NPC cities would attack eacother and so one.... Well you get the idea.
I'd say the biggest problem is the fact that we are stuck in the Age of Everquest. MMO format has been relatively unchanged since the beginning days, and all signs still point to the genre remaining unchanged. Sure, people come up with some small ideas on how to tweak this or that, but really, all the concepts are the same, and I think that's where our beloved MMO's are struggling the most.
Let's look at World of Warcraft. I know you are tired of hearing about this behemoth of a game, but let's face it: WoW "perfected" the current genre. It polished the "level up, get gear, level up more" concept, to a point where really, nothing more can be done to better the game other than adding more levels. Sure, 10million + people are happy with it, but let's face it: it get's old fast. WoW forums are overloaded with people screaming for balance, new systems, etc., but what people really want is a change.
What the genre needs is a company with an ENORMOUS budget to create a game. The smaller companies making MMO's these days are churning out clone after clone, with minor changes to the system. Companies like Microsoft need to get into the game, and pick a new direction for MMO's. Trust me, if it's not the same old level gaining formula, and it's backed by a large company where failure really isn't an option for them, it will be big. HUGE. Genre changing.
thats my early morning ramble. back to sifting thru f2p garbage =...
Game designers don't need a cookie every time they implement something innovative or otherwise good.
They know they need thick skin.
The price gamers pay for the game originally and for the monthly fee for a game is more than enough appreciation of the work everyone in the creation process puts in, in my opinion. They are doing their job and getting paid for it, why should we, as gamers, go out of our way to pat them on the back for it?
QFT.
Sanbox + a bit of realism would go a long, long ways to winning me over for a new MMO.