Originally posted by arctarus 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.
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.
Yes, that' even a lot, the current player base of those games is low though.
Old EQ concept games only consist of EQ1 and Vanguard now.
EQ has maybe 40k distinct players, and VG had 30K iirc. You know how small that is?
Put them together and it's less than 1% of WoW's player base alone.
Originally posted by h00ligan182 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.
Let's assume this is true. Let's then hope that after WotLK, Blizzard abandons WoW but for some minimal upkeep (preferably without telling anyone this) and tries to do something innovative and original (and brilliant) for an MMO.
Suppose I'll just go play DND or something for the next 6 years.
EQ has maybe 40k distinct players, and VG had 30K iirc. You know how small that is? Put them together and it's less than 1% of WoW's player base alone.
Yeah, they seem to be dying out, for sure.
I believe that back in the day, EQ had a couple hundred thousand subscribers. I was just guessing a millionish based on that, plus the fact that there were quite a few other MMOs around that did ok for a while, and were before WoW (horizons, shadowbane, ao, uo, daoc, ac, etc).
Loss of immersion and freedom in MMOs due to the mainstreaming of WoW and lack of imagination in shitty EA-infested developers.
I have dozens of classic stories on Ultima Online; things you could never dream of doing on WoW. Freedom is the biggest problem, and immersion is a step behind it.
A "classic" story on WoW = "Ya we got ganked by like...5 guys one time when we were doing a gathering quest".
Classic story on UO = Epic, and too long to type out.
Sorry, but the real problem is the loss of freedom. The LAST good MMO released that still had the freedom factor was SWG. Sadly it was destroyed. End of story.
P.S : Can we just....all return to DAoC or UO at one time...? Please...?
Loss of immersion and freedom in MMOs due to the mainstreaming of WoW and lack of imagination in shitty EA-infested developers. I have dozens of classic stories on Ultima Online; things you could never dream of doing on WoW. Freedom is the biggest problem, and immersion is a step behind it. A "classic" story on WoW = "Ya we got ganked by like...5 guys one time when we were doing a gathering quest". Classic story on UO = Epic, and too long to type out. Sorry, but the real problem is the loss of freedom. The LAST good MMO released that still had the freedom factor was SWG. Sadly it was destroyed. End of story.
P.S : Can we just....all return to DAoC or UO at one time...? Please...?
Aye,
Games today are more like a ride than anything. Sure you can walk all over the place, travel here or there, but thats not Freedom. Your handed a series of quests, that no matter how much story is written in the dialog, you just need to know "Go here, kill this, get me 10 of these". Theres no real need to learn anything. Add to that the whole "Me too please!" philosophy where everyone can accomplish everything and the genre just gets more mundane.
There are 3 types of people in the world. 1.) Those who make things happen 2.) Those who watch things happen 3.) And those who wonder "What the %#*& just happened?!"
The problem is the copy and paste mentality out there from the devs. Then again it doesnt matter since the gaming industry is a business and thus devs will try to emulate what is making the most money out there. Making MMOs is very costly and the chances of failure are very high, so as long as people flock to games like WoW by the droves then devs will keep trying to emulate that type of game.
I for one dont have an issue at all, i play EvE and its kept me happy for years. Its not for everyone ofc, but for me it is the pinnacle of gaming.
I do wish someone would make a nice fantasy game that was skill based and mroe realistic. We need more sandbox style games out there. This idea of grind taxes my mind everytime i think of lvs......devs truly need to find a way around making games feel like total grinds. In the end there is no sense of accomplishment....you simply prove to yourself how much time you wasted of your life trying to reach endgame only to find there was more grind and useless content..
Originally posted by baff 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.
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.
Lol.
It's a load of screensavers. How many man hours do you think it took to design each zone?
All the depth is player driven. It's "sandbox", an empty universe.
What have the dev's actually coded, some screenies some ship models, a skill system and an economic system. What's so immense?
CCP are right at the top when it comes to the lazy dev's list.
How long did it take them to finish the tutorial? The tutorial. The very first bit of content in the game. For years everyones opening impression of the game was "omg, they haven't bothered to finish it".
To give you some idea of perspective, Eve is a 1GB installation. WoW is a 10 GB installation. I paid the same for both.
biggest problems: -lack of innovation(+diversity) -disregardment of old school appeals of mmorpgs simply because newer ones have been much better quality -too much grind for the sake of grinds
They want everything till they get what they asked for, then they dont want it that way anymore.
Instead of being constructive when it counts, they will whine and bash a dev team to the point that the devs no longer listen. They are too busy arguing with each other about game X vs game Y while on the forum for game B that what point they were trying to make is lost.
You have uberfans who will agree with bad decisions just in hopes of the haters being ignored. Which leads the devs to believe that thats what the fans want, put it into the game and everyone hates it and no one plays.
You have haters who will whine about how the game is going to "Suck balls" and "GameXYZ is better" instead of just remaining silent and playing GameXYZ.
And you have the people who compare the game in development with other games, not to make constructive points, but to just compare on how successful it will be compared to the other.
Devs have an idea of what to make for a game, and many teams are looking for input from the players on what they feel will make the game more inviting (unless its SOE, they just stick thier fingers in thier ears and yell 'Lalalalalalalalalala' when players try to tell them they are making a mistake) and want constructive input. When a simple thread turns into a player vs player flame fest, the devs just go 'Meh' and stop listening.
There are 3 types of people in the world. 1.) Those who make things happen 2.) Those who watch things happen 3.) And those who wonder "What the %#*& just happened?!"
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.
While what you said is true, I don't see it as a problem.
People like WOW and pay for it. Why is that a problem? It is certainly NOT a problem for them. In fact, i would like MORE games like WOW (may be in a different setting). So I think it is just fun and dandy.
- A derivative of some PnP necessitated gameplay element from the '80s.
- A derivative of a precedent established by EQ/WoW
- A design element intended more to keep players addicted, over them having fun
There's a concept called a "brain bug", where an idea, over time, becomes a ridiculously oversimplified pastiche of the original idea for no reason other than convention. (Regardless of the fact that the origin of the idea was grounded in good reasons.)
Back in the day, we had no choice but to use dice rolls to determine hits and misses, and damage. We needed experience and levels to mark progress. We needed classes to give structure.
Here we are, 20 years later, and WoW is just DnD with a pretty client.
We still kill rats to "level up", even though there's no realistic or logical equivalent. Our success or failure is the decision of an RNG, not our own actions. People still feel that not only should "classes" exist, but they should "Rock Paper Scissor" balance each other.
Why?
Because that's how it's always been? Because that's what MMORPGs are "supposed" to be? (I hear that a lot, it's a pet peeve.) I believe MMOs are firmly stuck in the past, held there by archaic and arbitrary "rules" of design people feel like they must follow for some reason.
Here's a list.
Outdated PnP RPG mechanics:
We have the computational power to simulate accurate hits and misses, model real damage, and more. Why do we insist on having a dice and random number generator fight all our battles? This abstraction was a necessary evil in the old days. It's no longer needed, so why not give the players some real freedom?
Why must we insist on "Rogues beating Mages" and "Mages beating Warriors"? (Remember before BC, when Frost mages could solo warriors with Rank 1 Frostbolt? People said it was fine because of "Rock Paper Scissor".) Why do we want what class we picked at character creation to determine who wins, instead of the players' own actions?
Why even have classes at all? Have fighing skills, and holy spells. Want a paladin? Train swordfighting and learn holy magic.
The Almighty Treadmill:
You kill rats, so you can get stronger to kill goblins. But, your strength relative to the goblins is identical to you vs. the rats! Sound familiar? You spend months raiding X so you're geared enough to raid Y. When you first set foot in Y, you and your X gear are getting owned just like when you first set foot in X in your level 60 quest blues.
Why is this design style so prevelant? Does anybody actually find this fun?
The cynical me believes people don't find it so much fun as addictive. The grind, get gear, level, grind, get gear, level model provides a strong sense of psychological reward, and once you're in that cycle it can be quite hard to escape.
In the moral sense, I don't blame the game developer for making their games "addicting". I believe in personal responsibility, so it's all up to the players to moderate their own playtime.
However as a game player, I am pretty pissed off publishers take the easy way out and would rather addict than entertain us. It'd be like Coke putting... coke in their drink to keep consumers addicted, rather than designing a better drink.
What's the worst part of this? Once you've "beaten" rats, you never go back them. They're useless content to you. Until you're strong enough to fight goblins, they're effectively useless content to you. Nobody goes to Molten Core anymore. Nobody goes to Blackwing Lair anymore. Tempest Keep as content effectively does not exist to someone without the means to get there. Chalk up another casualty to the static world.
Lowest Common Denominator:
Quality vs. quantity is a constant war between business and consumer. They want to attract "the masses", and unfortunately, that means dumbing down your product. That means pandering.
The effects of this mentality can be ridiculous yet harmless (from a gameplay perspective), like putting females in chainmail bikinis.
Or they can be as detrimental as watering down games. Games that provide virtually no challenge, because they have to be easy enough for anyone to play and compete. Games that provide no engaging story, because the masses find "Bring me 10 X livers" acceptable. Games that are static worlds - because each one among the masses is induhvidual! an hero! a speshul snoflake!
There are games, I believe, where the simplistic PnP are mechanics present not just because of simple tradition. They were actively chosen as a means of filtering individual player skill through The Combat System. After all, you can't have a few dominating the many, can you?
And it's not just individual player skill in individual combat. How simple are the group tactics in these games? How simple the guild administration, the logistics, the economy? The latter is pretty much nonexistent. It's like this that competition is stifled, because we wouldn't want anyone losing too much. No, of course not, that would be baaaaaad.
Unfortunately, due to the very nature of business, this factor will always exist. There will always be people whose life goal is to sell you the worst possible product at the best possible price.
But fear not. Is TV entirely mindless dreck? Is there no hope for good books, magazines, and movies? Hell no! Inteliigent fare may not be as popular as "survivor" or "paris hilton does farm animals", but it exists.
I respect Blizzard very much as a games developer. They genuinely try to make the very best games possible - I suppose just like many players are genuinely happy grinding away at their addiction. It'd be irresponsible for Blizzard as a company to not provide this service - making the best "worst" game possible. Blizzard took all the idiotic cliches, the archaic conventions, and made the best game they could using them. I'd be proud.
What does this mean for the rest of us? Well, Blizzard expanded the market. They also eat up nearly all of the market for the "mass" MMO. This, coupled with advancing technology, I feel will both allow and force developers to get a little more creative. Once they figure out they can't beat WoW at its own game, they might have to try something new and hope for a smaller piece of the pie.
Achievement vs. Simulator:
This goes back to my gripe about treadmill grinds. The majority of MMOs today are "achievers", progression based games where the idea is to advance your character, be it in levels, items, ranks or whatever.
This model is great for 2 reasons. First, it fits very well with the "treadmill" concept - you run on the treadmill to "advance", and it never ends. "Never ending" sounds very good to publishers. Second, it also lends itself to the ever present psychological rewards model that makes these games so addicting. Also very good for publishers.
What this means is, the "sim" category of games has fallen by the wayside. I'm not talking about games like Civilization or SimCity, where you're an omnipotent god building the world. In these simulators, you're one of the peons building the world from the ground up. Want to be a general? Better convince the rest of the grunts you're up to the job.
In a sense, it's exactly like Civilization, without the gods and generals. We're all little ants, trying to take over the world. Along the way we'll organize into clans, follow leaders, participate in trade, construct cities, build empires, and wage war.
Unfortunately this type of game is not really compatible with the achievement model that has served the industry so well.
Biggest problem? Tough choice, but a lack of player driven content seems to be high on my list. We want/need to be able to construct and destroy things in the environment.
Then AC, DAoC, Lineage, AO.. all came out spread out the market.
Then the Next Gen released.... EQ2, WoW, Final Fantasy, CoH, Lineage2
and those are just the bigger titles.... if you think of how massive the current market is, you wonder if it will ever stop growing. Before the MMORPG market was hardcore, now it is a mix of hardcore and casual. So developers are trying to cater to both groups and creating crap games. What they need to realise is it is better to try and cater to one group and work for that one goal, then try to play the field.
I see a lot of good in MMOs today. Then again, I'm not a pessemistic, doom and gloom sort of person either.
One problem I do see: A certain forumite mentality that demands the best artistic and creative developers working on a identifiable AAA title spending 100's of millions in development, but creating a niche game that only a few tens of thousands will enjoy. The economic viability of such a game is impossible, yet these forumites want it anyway. Oh, and I forgot to add they want content additions that keep pace with their 40 hour per week gaming time, all for 15 bucks a month (or even better F2P).
_____________________________ Currently Playing: LOTRO; DDO Played: AC2, AO, Auto Assault, CoX, DAoC, DDO, Earth&Beyond, EQ1, EQ2, EVE, Fallen Earth, Jumpgate, Roma Victor, Second Life, SWG, V:SoH, WoW, World War II Online.
Games I'm watching: Infinity: The Quest for Earth, Force of Arms.
Personall, I think grind is the biggest problem. If a game can find something else to do than train, and make it fun, then it will be a good game.
__________________________________________________ In memory of Laura "Taera" Genender. Passed away on Aug/13/08 - Rest In Peace; you will not be forgotten
The big problem with most MMOs today is that they are all (Most) the same. (Design wise.)
Their is no variety. Sure you might have a different story or some different stuff but most are made to grind. Why do I play exteel? Because its different. It isn't a real mmo, but it is different and it isn't a copy of something already popular. WoW already has the grind so if people are going to grind they are going to play WoW. If someone made a copy of runescape, would I play runescape or eternal lands? (rs copy)
I am going to play runescape. Eternal lands is very different but its foundation is so similar to runescape that it isn't even funny. Are WoWlike games going to succeed? Maybe, some will and some won't.
I play Dungeon Runners because its just different. Similar but some how its a nice second game. No more fedex crap that are called quests. The reason I am interested in Darkfall is because its really different. No more WoWlike games trying to kill WoW. Just make something new and amazing for ONCE! I play guild wars because it is not like wow. And because it isn't like all the old mmos.
Too much like a video game and too little like a virtual world. The RPG has been taken out of MMORPG.
Exactly. The problem is that they're all using the Final Fantasy model and that's not an RPG at all, no matter what they put on the box. An RPG, by definition, is a game where you take on a role and play through adventures. Final Fantasy and most MMOs drag you around by the nose through a pre-programmed path that you can't get off of if you want.
You'd think that adding thousands of players would break up the monotony, but it doesn't because they're all doing the same thing too. Well, that or they're trying to kill you. There's no roleplaying whatsoever in any of these so-called MMORPGs.
The biggest problem I have seen with mmos is the limitations. Everything is so limited. Excessive rules, limited character customizations, limited abilities.. the whole thing that you have to create a dozen characters to be able to do everything in the game. I would love a game that had one character that can do anything and everything if they so choose. I hate all the worries about balance.. meh just bring on the fun and nuke the limits!
The biggest problem I have seen with mmos is the limitations. Everything is so limited. Excessive rules, limited character customizations, limited abilities.. the whole thing that you have to create a dozen characters to be able to do everything in the game. I would love a game that had one character that can do anything and everything if they so choose. I hate all the worries about balance.. meh just bring on the fun and nuke the limits!
But, if you could do anything and everything, what would be the point in playing? There would be no lasting appeal. Sure it would be fun for about maybe a day at most, with PvP maybe a month tops. After that, people would move to something else. Community would be non existant, the whole point behind a virtual world would be null.
There are 3 types of people in the world. 1.) Those who make things happen 2.) Those who watch things happen 3.) And those who wonder "What the %#*& just happened?!"
There are several things that i believe must be adressed in the MMO world. Many details in which none of them come at first place. Among them, the followings:
*** The trend is heading too much towards making MMO with a standard multiplayer feel. Instance limiting the amount of people in the same area comes to my mind here. What's the purpose of playing a MMO if you can only affect small areas at a time, like you would do by loading a RTS or FPS map? It's becomes nothing more then a big organized room for multiplayer experience. There is no MMO or persitence element into it, and that's a huge problem in my book.
*** Crafting systems in most past and upcoming block busters is completely overlooked, or thrown in as a second thought. I won't sit here to try and explain developers why the economic part should play such a big role in any persitant world. If they don't understand it, they should work on standard multiplayer game or single player game where everything is loot base. The economy of a persitant world "is a game by itself", that generates game play and reasons to fight for without the need of adding any new content. The lack of good player base economy in our most popular games limit the possibility to dive into their virtual world a great deal. This might satisfy a portion of the player base, but it completely allienates those who wants a deeper experience. And there's no reasons for that because you could keep your standard player who don't like crafting in the game, and offer a solid crafting/economic system without any deterents. But you can't keep the player base who wants deep interaction between each element of the world in a shallow design though. So let's add this to the list of things that "should" be done right from now on.
*** Lack of customization is a killer. There are thousands of ways to give a player the opportunity to customize his character, gear or skills, that there's absolutely no excuses to have thousands of clones running over each other. By removing customization out of the equation, you remove the originality and creativity players can demonstrate. Once again, it penalize those who wants to go deeper, yet it wouldn't penalize those who wants to stay on the surface to provide the more eager player base with an intricated system that would allow you to customize your experience from your Avatar, to your housing and all the gear you're wearing. It's not just about pushing graphics either, it's about having the option of putting your own signature into a game, which adds a lot to the sense of being proud of being part of that game, by adding your color to the rainbow. (You feel much less of a spectator if you have a color that isn't there, rather then just one of the thousand shade of the same color that was drawn for every body.)
I think that sums it up for me. There are plenty of other details that needs to be adressed, but if they follow my recommendation here, developers would already be able to push MMO's to the next level in my book.
Creativity : The ability to transcend traditional ideas, rules, patterns, relationships, or the like, and to create meaningful new ideas, forms, methods or interpretations; using originality, progressiveness, or imagination.
Comments
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.
Yes, that' even a lot, the current player base of those games is low though.Old EQ concept games only consist of EQ1 and Vanguard now.
EQ has maybe 40k distinct players, and VG had 30K iirc. You know how small that is?
Put them together and it's less than 1% of WoW's player base alone.
Let's assume this is true. Let's then hope that after WotLK, Blizzard abandons WoW but for some minimal upkeep (preferably without telling anyone this) and tries to do something innovative and original (and brilliant) for an MMO.
Suppose I'll just go play DND or something for the next 6 years.
Yeah, they seem to be dying out, for sure.
I believe that back in the day, EQ had a couple hundred thousand subscribers. I was just guessing a millionish based on that, plus the fact that there were quite a few other MMOs around that did ok for a while, and were before WoW (horizons, shadowbane, ao, uo, daoc, ac, etc).
Loss of immersion and freedom in MMOs due to the mainstreaming of WoW and lack of imagination in shitty EA-infested developers.
I have dozens of classic stories on Ultima Online; things you could never dream of doing on WoW. Freedom is the biggest problem, and immersion is a step behind it.
A "classic" story on WoW = "Ya we got ganked by like...5 guys one time when we were doing a gathering quest".
Classic story on UO = Epic, and too long to type out.
Sorry, but the real problem is the loss of freedom. The LAST good MMO released that still had the freedom factor was SWG. Sadly it was destroyed. End of story.
P.S : Can we just....all return to DAoC or UO at one time...? Please...?
Games today are more like a ride than anything. Sure you can walk all over the place, travel here or there, but thats not Freedom. Your handed a series of quests, that no matter how much story is written in the dialog, you just need to know "Go here, kill this, get me 10 of these". Theres no real need to learn anything. Add to that the whole "Me too please!" philosophy where everyone can accomplish everything and the genre just gets more mundane.
There are 3 types of people in the world.
1.) Those who make things happen
2.) Those who watch things happen
3.) And those who wonder "What the %#*& just happened?!"
The problem is the copy and paste mentality out there from the devs. Then again it doesnt matter since the gaming industry is a business and thus devs will try to emulate what is making the most money out there. Making MMOs is very costly and the chances of failure are very high, so as long as people flock to games like WoW by the droves then devs will keep trying to emulate that type of game.
I for one dont have an issue at all, i play EvE and its kept me happy for years. Its not for everyone ofc, but for me it is the pinnacle of gaming.
I do wish someone would make a nice fantasy game that was skill based and mroe realistic. We need more sandbox style games out there. This idea of grind taxes my mind everytime i think of lvs......devs truly need to find a way around making games feel like total grinds. In the end there is no sense of accomplishment....you simply prove to yourself how much time you wasted of your life trying to reach endgame only to find there was more grind and useless content..
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.
Lol.It's a load of screensavers. How many man hours do you think it took to design each zone?
All the depth is player driven. It's "sandbox", an empty universe.
What have the dev's actually coded, some screenies some ship models, a skill system and an economic system. What's so immense?
CCP are right at the top when it comes to the lazy dev's list.
How long did it take them to finish the tutorial? The tutorial. The very first bit of content in the game. For years everyones opening impression of the game was "omg, they haven't bothered to finish it".
To give you some idea of perspective, Eve is a 1GB installation. WoW is a 10 GB installation. I paid the same for both.
biggest problems:
-lack of innovation(+diversity)
-disregardment of old school appeals of mmorpgs simply because newer ones have been much better quality
-too much grind for the sake of grinds
Another problem: The Players.
They want everything till they get what they asked for, then they dont want it that way anymore.
Instead of being constructive when it counts, they will whine and bash a dev team to the point that the devs no longer listen. They are too busy arguing with each other about game X vs game Y while on the forum for game B that what point they were trying to make is lost.
You have uberfans who will agree with bad decisions just in hopes of the haters being ignored. Which leads the devs to believe that thats what the fans want, put it into the game and everyone hates it and no one plays.
You have haters who will whine about how the game is going to "Suck balls" and "GameXYZ is better" instead of just remaining silent and playing GameXYZ.
And you have the people who compare the game in development with other games, not to make constructive points, but to just compare on how successful it will be compared to the other.
Devs have an idea of what to make for a game, and many teams are looking for input from the players on what they feel will make the game more inviting (unless its SOE, they just stick thier fingers in thier ears and yell 'Lalalalalalalalalala' when players try to tell them they are making a mistake) and want constructive input. When a simple thread turns into a player vs player flame fest, the devs just go 'Meh' and stop listening.
There are 3 types of people in the world.
1.) Those who make things happen
2.) Those who watch things happen
3.) And those who wonder "What the %#*& just happened?!"
While what you said is true, I don't see it as a problem.
People like WOW and pay for it. Why is that a problem? It is certainly NOT a problem for them. In fact, i would like MORE games like WOW (may be in a different setting). So I think it is just fun and dandy.
Inertia.
Virtually every aspect of the MMORPG is:
- A derivative of some PnP necessitated gameplay element from the '80s.
- A derivative of a precedent established by EQ/WoW
- A design element intended more to keep players addicted, over them having fun
There's a concept called a "brain bug", where an idea, over time, becomes a ridiculously oversimplified pastiche of the original idea for no reason other than convention. (Regardless of the fact that the origin of the idea was grounded in good reasons.)
Back in the day, we had no choice but to use dice rolls to determine hits and misses, and damage. We needed experience and levels to mark progress. We needed classes to give structure.
Here we are, 20 years later, and WoW is just DnD with a pretty client.
We still kill rats to "level up", even though there's no realistic or logical equivalent. Our success or failure is the decision of an RNG, not our own actions. People still feel that not only should "classes" exist, but they should "Rock Paper Scissor" balance each other.
Why?
Because that's how it's always been? Because that's what MMORPGs are "supposed" to be? (I hear that a lot, it's a pet peeve.) I believe MMOs are firmly stuck in the past, held there by archaic and arbitrary "rules" of design people feel like they must follow for some reason.
Here's a list.
Outdated PnP RPG mechanics:
We have the computational power to simulate accurate hits and misses, model real damage, and more. Why do we insist on having a dice and random number generator fight all our battles? This abstraction was a necessary evil in the old days. It's no longer needed, so why not give the players some real freedom?
Why must we insist on "Rogues beating Mages" and "Mages beating Warriors"? (Remember before BC, when Frost mages could solo warriors with Rank 1 Frostbolt? People said it was fine because of "Rock Paper Scissor".) Why do we want what class we picked at character creation to determine who wins, instead of the players' own actions?
Why even have classes at all? Have fighing skills, and holy spells. Want a paladin? Train swordfighting and learn holy magic.
The Almighty Treadmill:
You kill rats, so you can get stronger to kill goblins. But, your strength relative to the goblins is identical to you vs. the rats! Sound familiar? You spend months raiding X so you're geared enough to raid Y. When you first set foot in Y, you and your X gear are getting owned just like when you first set foot in X in your level 60 quest blues.
Why is this design style so prevelant? Does anybody actually find this fun?
The cynical me believes people don't find it so much fun as addictive. The grind, get gear, level, grind, get gear, level model provides a strong sense of psychological reward, and once you're in that cycle it can be quite hard to escape.
In the moral sense, I don't blame the game developer for making their games "addicting". I believe in personal responsibility, so it's all up to the players to moderate their own playtime.
However as a game player, I am pretty pissed off publishers take the easy way out and would rather addict than entertain us. It'd be like Coke putting... coke in their drink to keep consumers addicted, rather than designing a better drink.
What's the worst part of this? Once you've "beaten" rats, you never go back them. They're useless content to you. Until you're strong enough to fight goblins, they're effectively useless content to you. Nobody goes to Molten Core anymore. Nobody goes to Blackwing Lair anymore. Tempest Keep as content effectively does not exist to someone without the means to get there. Chalk up another casualty to the static world.
Lowest Common Denominator:
Quality vs. quantity is a constant war between business and consumer. They want to attract "the masses", and unfortunately, that means dumbing down your product. That means pandering.
The effects of this mentality can be ridiculous yet harmless (from a gameplay perspective), like putting females in chainmail bikinis.
Or they can be as detrimental as watering down games. Games that provide virtually no challenge, because they have to be easy enough for anyone to play and compete. Games that provide no engaging story, because the masses find "Bring me 10 X livers" acceptable. Games that are static worlds - because each one among the masses is induhvidual! an hero! a speshul snoflake!
There are games, I believe, where the simplistic PnP are mechanics present not just because of simple tradition. They were actively chosen as a means of filtering individual player skill through The Combat System. After all, you can't have a few dominating the many, can you?
And it's not just individual player skill in individual combat. How simple are the group tactics in these games? How simple the guild administration, the logistics, the economy? The latter is pretty much nonexistent. It's like this that competition is stifled, because we wouldn't want anyone losing too much. No, of course not, that would be baaaaaad.
Unfortunately, due to the very nature of business, this factor will always exist. There will always be people whose life goal is to sell you the worst possible product at the best possible price.
But fear not. Is TV entirely mindless dreck? Is there no hope for good books, magazines, and movies? Hell no! Inteliigent fare may not be as popular as "survivor" or "paris hilton does farm animals", but it exists.
I respect Blizzard very much as a games developer. They genuinely try to make the very best games possible - I suppose just like many players are genuinely happy grinding away at their addiction. It'd be irresponsible for Blizzard as a company to not provide this service - making the best "worst" game possible. Blizzard took all the idiotic cliches, the archaic conventions, and made the best game they could using them. I'd be proud.
What does this mean for the rest of us? Well, Blizzard expanded the market. They also eat up nearly all of the market for the "mass" MMO. This, coupled with advancing technology, I feel will both allow and force developers to get a little more creative. Once they figure out they can't beat WoW at its own game, they might have to try something new and hope for a smaller piece of the pie.
Achievement vs. Simulator:
This goes back to my gripe about treadmill grinds. The majority of MMOs today are "achievers", progression based games where the idea is to advance your character, be it in levels, items, ranks or whatever.
This model is great for 2 reasons. First, it fits very well with the "treadmill" concept - you run on the treadmill to "advance", and it never ends. "Never ending" sounds very good to publishers. Second, it also lends itself to the ever present psychological rewards model that makes these games so addicting. Also very good for publishers.
What this means is, the "sim" category of games has fallen by the wayside. I'm not talking about games like Civilization or SimCity, where you're an omnipotent god building the world. In these simulators, you're one of the peons building the world from the ground up. Want to be a general? Better convince the rest of the grunts you're up to the job.
In a sense, it's exactly like Civilization, without the gods and generals. We're all little ants, trying to take over the world. Along the way we'll organize into clans, follow leaders, participate in trade, construct cities, build empires, and wage war.
Unfortunately this type of game is not really compatible with the achievement model that has served the industry so well.
Biggest problem? Tough choice, but a lack of player driven content seems to be high on my list. We want/need to be able to construct and destroy things in the environment.
The biggest problems with the MMO Market....
Over-Saturation...
10 Years ago there was 2 MMO.. EQ and UO.
Then AC, DAoC, Lineage, AO.. all came out spread out the market.
Then the Next Gen released.... EQ2, WoW, Final Fantasy, CoH, Lineage2
and those are just the bigger titles.... if you think of how massive the current market is, you wonder if it will ever stop growing. Before the MMORPG market was hardcore, now it is a mix of hardcore and casual. So developers are trying to cater to both groups and creating crap games. What they need to realise is it is better to try and cater to one group and work for that one goal, then try to play the field.
fischsemmel,
So my opinion is differant from yours and I'm a noob? ROFL. You aren't worth talking to because
you don't really want to hear what anybody has to say that doesn't have a cut & paste of your opinion.
I see a lot of good in MMOs today. Then again, I'm not a pessemistic, doom and gloom sort of person either.
One problem I do see: A certain forumite mentality that demands the best artistic and creative developers working on a identifiable AAA title spending 100's of millions in development, but creating a niche game that only a few tens of thousands will enjoy. The economic viability of such a game is impossible, yet these forumites want it anyway. Oh, and I forgot to add they want content additions that keep pace with their 40 hour per week gaming time, all for 15 bucks a month (or even better F2P).
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Currently Playing: LOTRO; DDO
Played: AC2, AO, Auto Assault, CoX, DAoC, DDO, Earth&Beyond, EQ1, EQ2, EVE, Fallen Earth, Jumpgate, Roma Victor, Second Life, SWG, V:SoH, WoW, World War II Online.
Games I'm watching: Infinity: The Quest for Earth, Force of Arms.
Find the Truth: http://www.factcheck.org/
Personall, I think grind is the biggest problem. If a game can find something else to do than train, and make it fun, then it will be a good game.
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In memory of Laura "Taera" Genender. Passed away on Aug/13/08 - Rest In Peace; you will not be forgotten
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The biggest problem with MMOs today is community.
1. Lack of realism (often for no really good apparent reason)
2. Too much focus on repetitive, candy-coated combat
3. Not enough focus on world-building and complex, realistic economics and political aspects.
4. Lack of opportunities for meaningful player-developed content.
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im to lazy too use grammar or punctuation good
The big problem with most MMOs today is that they are all (Most) the same. (Design wise.)
Their is no variety. Sure you might have a different story or some different stuff but most are made to grind. Why do I play exteel? Because its different. It isn't a real mmo, but it is different and it isn't a copy of something already popular. WoW already has the grind so if people are going to grind they are going to play WoW. If someone made a copy of runescape, would I play runescape or eternal lands? (rs copy)
I am going to play runescape. Eternal lands is very different but its foundation is so similar to runescape that it isn't even funny. Are WoWlike games going to succeed? Maybe, some will and some won't.
I play Dungeon Runners because its just different. Similar but some how its a nice second game. No more fedex crap that are called quests. The reason I am interested in Darkfall is because its really different. No more WoWlike games trying to kill WoW. Just make something new and amazing for ONCE! I play guild wars because it is not like wow. And because it isn't like all the old mmos.
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Just a note for extreme wow haters: I am not saying that wow made anything new or something.
You'd think that adding thousands of players would break up the monotony, but it doesn't because they're all doing the same thing too. Well, that or they're trying to kill you. There's no roleplaying whatsoever in any of these so-called MMORPGs.
Played: UO, EQ, WoW, DDO, SWG, AO, CoH, EvE, TR, AoC, GW, GA, Aion, Allods, lots more
Relatively Recently (Re)Played: HL2 (all), Halo (PC, all), Batman:AA; AC, ME, BS, DA, FO3, DS, Doom (all), LFD1&2, KOTOR, Portal 1&2, Blink, Elder Scrolls (all), lots more
Now Playing: None
Hope: None
The biggest problem I have seen with mmos is the limitations. Everything is so limited. Excessive rules, limited character customizations, limited abilities.. the whole thing that you have to create a dozen characters to be able to do everything in the game. I would love a game that had one character that can do anything and everything if they so choose. I hate all the worries about balance.. meh just bring on the fun and nuke the limits!
But, if you could do anything and everything, what would be the point in playing? There would be no lasting appeal. Sure it would be fun for about maybe a day at most, with PvP maybe a month tops. After that, people would move to something else. Community would be non existant, the whole point behind a virtual world would be null.
There are 3 types of people in the world.
1.) Those who make things happen
2.) Those who watch things happen
3.) And those who wonder "What the %#*& just happened?!"
There are several things that i believe must be adressed in the MMO world. Many details in which none of them come at first place. Among them, the followings:
*** The trend is heading too much towards making MMO with a standard multiplayer feel. Instance limiting the amount of people in the same area comes to my mind here. What's the purpose of playing a MMO if you can only affect small areas at a time, like you would do by loading a RTS or FPS map? It's becomes nothing more then a big organized room for multiplayer experience. There is no MMO or persitence element into it, and that's a huge problem in my book.
*** Crafting systems in most past and upcoming block busters is completely overlooked, or thrown in as a second thought. I won't sit here to try and explain developers why the economic part should play such a big role in any persitant world. If they don't understand it, they should work on standard multiplayer game or single player game where everything is loot base. The economy of a persitant world "is a game by itself", that generates game play and reasons to fight for without the need of adding any new content. The lack of good player base economy in our most popular games limit the possibility to dive into their virtual world a great deal. This might satisfy a portion of the player base, but it completely allienates those who wants a deeper experience. And there's no reasons for that because you could keep your standard player who don't like crafting in the game, and offer a solid crafting/economic system without any deterents. But you can't keep the player base who wants deep interaction between each element of the world in a shallow design though. So let's add this to the list of things that "should" be done right from now on.
*** Lack of customization is a killer. There are thousands of ways to give a player the opportunity to customize his character, gear or skills, that there's absolutely no excuses to have thousands of clones running over each other. By removing customization out of the equation, you remove the originality and creativity players can demonstrate. Once again, it penalize those who wants to go deeper, yet it wouldn't penalize those who wants to stay on the surface to provide the more eager player base with an intricated system that would allow you to customize your experience from your Avatar, to your housing and all the gear you're wearing. It's not just about pushing graphics either, it's about having the option of putting your own signature into a game, which adds a lot to the sense of being proud of being part of that game, by adding your color to the rainbow. (You feel much less of a spectator if you have a color that isn't there, rather then just one of the thousand shade of the same color that was drawn for every body.)
I think that sums it up for me. There are plenty of other details that needs to be adressed, but if they follow my recommendation here, developers would already be able to push MMO's to the next level in my book.
Creativity : The ability to transcend traditional ideas, rules, patterns, relationships, or the like, and to create meaningful new ideas, forms, methods or interpretations; using originality, progressiveness, or imagination.