The following is the shortest treatment I could give the subject. I could write a book about this stuff. Please bear in mind that space won't allow more than a glossing over of the primary issues.
For a moment, I ask the readers to take a look from a designer's point of view:
We want and need lots of PAYING clients. Note I did not say players. I said clients.
We have a limited budget, which keeps getting higher each year. Artists, producers, writers, coders, freaking psychologists, marketing, and others are not free. They cost a ton.
Our investors are constantly pestering us to show them the money.
If we use off the rack stuff for graphics / game physics and a back end... then we risk a two-fold problem. 1 is the contract we signed to get the stuff so when it expires they have us by the balls. 2 is sometimes we lose flexibility in what we do.
So if we're in it for the short-haul, we simply grab off the shelf stuff and bolt it together. (Go freakin look at the bolt-ware out there! Several companies have stuff that could have us up and running with a 1 million dollar start-up budget with better graphics than EQ.) This would be like LOTR and DDO.
Initially, we might listen to our game guru until launch, but after launch we want to do what will attract the most players. That is the way we make money after all.
Further, if the paying client list drops too low... we get our ass axed. We don't want that. Really.
Or, worse, we get slapped in chains and row the SOE Dilettante Account boat for eternity. End of game.
So we listen to what the players are whining about. They whine a lot. About everything. And frustratingly, they understand nothing.
PKing is great fun and drives away 9:10 clients if it has any teeth. 5:10 if it doesn't. Half the people at least do not want to be griefed. Create consensual PKing areas and they are ghost towns. PKers don't generally like to PK each other. Understandable since PKers are hyper-adaptive and will pick the best build every time. This leaves just skill that with inevitable lag, is reduced to almost nothing.
They whine endlessly about content that costs us money. Content costs money to produce. Content takes up space on the servers. Content requires balance. New content drives clients to the new areas at the expense of the old; especially if the new content is better.
And content is a finite pool. You think you are a bad ass content designer? (This is what I do, dear readers.) Sit down and design 300 unique zones and don't repeat anything. Don't worry. You won't. The pool of ideas isn't that deep. You'll start shifting concepts around and re-using content. And the players WILL bitch about paying for repeat content.
They whine endlessly about classes vs skill points vs skill trees and all the other hybrids. This is pretty much a no-win situation.
If you give them classes they bitch that class A is better than class B. Inevitably a designer's pet class gets to be a little better than the others and shazam... players bitch and threaten to quit. The investors twist your arm into making the other classes weaker, since making them stronger shortens content life and makes the game less intriguing. And adding more content makes things cost more. And players HATE buying expansions.
If you give them skill points then two things happen (yes, always): 1 a large portion of the crowd will mangle their characters and make them "less than optimal". 2 a small subset of the players (including yours truly *rubs fingernails on shirt and glances at them*) will figure out a "maximized" build. Everyone will flock to this when they create new characters. Or they will bitch ENDLESSLY about having a reset or a number of resets. Once the resets are indefinitely in, you've just set the timer on your termination. The game becomes trivial. (MXO is case in point.)
If you don't give them enough skills (CoX, LOTR, DDO) then the clients don't seem to advance in the game. MMORPGS are a metaphor for their lives. They want to advance. They want to be powerful and crush shit. This is why WoW is so damned popular. The common man can win. And money IS our goal, after all.
It is a psychological fact that people are confused with greater intensity after 3 choices. Give them 20 and they're paralyzed. This is why most new class based games are working with an inverted tree system. Fewer choices. (I personally dislike inverted trees because I'm limiting myself as I go up in power. I lose things.)
In any event, in most MMORPGS, balance is paramount. However... perfect universal balance is perfectly boring. None of the choices make any difference any longer.
If you decide to make some skills more useful in certain circumstances in order to try to outsmart the balance - boredom conundrum, all you do is create MORE screaming users since inevitably some skills are perceived as more-useful. And they are probably right as some content areas will see greater use.
After all, content is going to be used as follows: Gear - XP - Access - Group Availability - Aesthetics.
Which brings us to gear. If you make gear an integral part of the game (EQ or Equipment Quest) inevitably certain things pop up. I only have time here to treat the most dangerous question.
That quandary is crafters. *sigh* Crafters are a pain in the ass. But they are a big part of our player base and we need to cater to them. Make the crafted gear too good, and no one has a reason to adventure save to grab gold. (Which creates a good market for farmers and increases inflation.)
Make the crafted stuff crap, and the crafters complain and leave. (Rightfully so.)
Make the crafted stuff dropped items and the crafters complain (again, rightfully so) that they won't have anything to craft except when they go adventuring. (No, having the adventurers bring stuff back to the players won't work. Their crafter alts will get the stuff or it will be held in guilds to create gear for guilds.) However, crafters are hyper-competitive too and the market is fairly small. Loss leaders are a standard fixture.
Many crafter-trader types are damned good at economics. I know because I STUDIED economics because of MMORPG trading models. Some of our players are going to be smarter than us. Our players as a whole WILL be smarter than we are. That is inevitable.
Plus if you make the gear too plentiful, it becomes more of a minor quest to get that sword of uber-chopping than a nice piece of gear to hold on to. This is boring to the I'm-better-than-you crowd.
And... if the gear doesn't wear out (which ALL players HATE) or if you can't give it to someone else (no drop tags for the win) then the market gets flooded quickly with low and mid level items.
Thusly: cater to the crafters and piss off the players OR cater to the players and piss off the crafters. They are on polar opposites of the equation.
There is no answer to the crafter question either. Not a perfect one.
On to the grouping and raiding question. Groups take a certain amount of time to build. While this is happening, players either sit around or they kill some content. If the content is too good, then most players won't group as solo play is faster. Groups break down, people drop out, a needed class or ability is lost, and so on.
People prefer solo play. But solo play gets boring. However, if one has created a solo play environment, then they won't know how to group when they get to higher levels and/or they have chosen classes based on single PVE class play. This is why warriors get so pissed in most games. Warriors generally suck solo.
Groups only work if there are a goodly number of players and the wait isn't too long. Many games have had their player bases migrate to other games because the play was designed almost wholly around groups and the player base wasn't sufficient. DDO, Vanguard, and EQ2 are 3 games off of the top of my head that have this problem. They all solved it in the most understandable and worst way: they added solo content.
Once you go solo, there is no going back. The entire game has to be made solo. The reasoning is: the longer a character solos up the tree the less likely he/she is to group or be able to group at a later time.
However, on the other side, players tend to arrive in waves and move together up the level tree. At some point some players will be stuck without a group. This makes players quit. This makes bosses unhappy.
And raid content: if we make the content raid based (meaning more people), we tend to put the power in the hands of the few. Guilds are notorious for being insufferable elitist snobs of the highest order. Being in one is an inherent loss-leader situation and many players quit when faced with raid content.
But... the whiners on the boards are people that have raced through the content to the end-game and now want more content. There is no answer to the raid question either, although in my opinion Vanguard failed the most abjectly in their implementation.
Which brings me to the progression model. We have to decide how fast and how difficult we want the progression through the tree. WoW, the current leader, has a relatively fast model of progression to end-game and a light end-game depth. This is probably the best for the 1 year player model. As long as they continue to get new players, they will be the first run game, meaning they will continue to make money for the intermediate term.
Long progression, high difficulty games such as EQ are by their nature headed for extinction. At some point the climb is too great.
Long progression, low difficulty games are out too. These are popularly defined as Grind Games and are popular with the Asian crowd. MXO and AO are popular examples here.
EVE stands alone as a ponzi-type scheme where you simply cannot be better than the core crowd no matter how hard you try. The skill system is purely time based. So I know people that have spent six months logging in, mining enough to buy new skills, setting those skills, and logging out. People still play it, so I guess it works for them currently. They are an anomaly.
However, as players leave the WoW sort of game they tend to want something different, as they have left that game because of boredom. Another WoW clone won't have the same success. A different formula is needed. What that formula is has yet to be seen.
So in closing I have tried to state some of (what I see) the major problems with MMORPG design. I have given no answers as there are none.
Because of brevity I have not been able to address player motivation (gear vs titles vs cookies vs abilities) versus difficulty. I also missed some other fundamental concepts, but this should be enough to give a short idea of the problems. These problems have no answers.
They are a question of balance vs nuance.
Before you attempt to decide what is wrong with MMORPGs today, make sure you aren't trying to kill yourself before you start.
Designers aren't stupid. These days they are HUGE teams of people from diverse walks of life. The polish level of these games is generally high. Certain examples (I'm looking at you Vanguard) excepting.
In any event, please don't take anything I said as either gospel or as an offense against your pet idea. It isn't.
I've had over a decade of playing and programming / development experience, training in psychology, and have walked through dungeons and flown starships (in pnp gaming) for over uh... a quarter of a century as of this writing. Jesus that makes me feel old. And in all that time I understand one thing about gaming... it will continue to be a major part of human consciousness throughout the rest of my lifetime and probably for centuries.
I argue it is a way for humans to express themselves imaginatively on a thousand electronic worlds in a risk-free way for little money. And it is very best value for entertainment going today.
Further it treats the young and the old, male and female, of all races equally; because you can't see them. I have no idea if the person on the other end is fat or slim, young or old, rich or poor. So it creates an egalitarian mindset.
The people. An MMO relies greatly upon its community to make it more than a mere single playerish game. Unless the communtiy puts forth the effort to create a worthwhile environment, the true MMO experience will never be achieved.
limited technology. Right now technology just doesn't exist for having 1000's upon 1000's of players at once fighting in large scale combat without lag. We in the MMO community want and crave stuff that currently cant be done financially. In order to make an MMO it takes A LARGE SUM OF CASH. Unfortunately we in the MMO community are hooked on a genre of video games that takes too much effort to be made well.
Is there an MMO that out there that isn't affected by Xao Ping Wang and their money grubbing macro bots? http://wow.stratics.com/content/features/editorials/mf/ Just say no to ingame money/mob farming.... the site says it all
For me, in the focus of game design, is the immersion and the logical sense. Immersion is related to how can the players feel like the MMO is a living, breathing world instead of just another game (which is why MMO is unique in itself, it shouldn't be just another game). Logical sense is related how each system function in the game world (the PvE, PvP, Economy (crafting and selling/buying, etc), Politic (City planning/building, guilds, etc), and how these systems work within the given stories/lores.
When the focus is in the MMO genre, it's the lack of innovation and lack of variations in system. Due to the success of some MMOs, many of the newer MMO stop trying to bring new things onto the table and keep producing the same gameplay system with difference in theme or lore.
And when the focus is on the effect of the whole video game industry, it's the players. Too many different types of players out there and not enough games to fit them all. Some believe that the MMO has evolved and those who preferred the old systems/gameplays are ones that are left behind, and others just don't know that MMO isn't the game for them. Some believe that the present MMO formats are too "dumb down" and lost the originality of it. In the end, there are too many players into the game of MMO, and each type of gamers trying to voice their wish and what THEY think the MMO should be...
The following is the shortest treatment I could give the subject. I could write a book about this stuff. Please bear in mind that space won't allow more than a glossing over of the primary issues.
lol, i wonder if GM, Microsoft, Apple..etc, etc got to where they are because of those pesky whinning customers..lol, give the gamers what THEY want or go get a job at 7-ll..geesh, talk about a whinner..rofl.
When I said i had "time", i meant virtual time, i got no RL "time" for you.
#1. cookie cutter classes with little to no originality (warrior tank, priest healer) etc. #2 repetitive grinding meant to make you pay more in monthly fees by taking forever to reach endgame #3 enviornments that NEVER CHANGE i.e. picking up rocks, making buildings, pouring water etc. #4 linear gameplay which pushes your character towards a goal.... THAT EVERY OTHER SINGLE CHARACTER DOES #5 limited technology. Right now technology just doesn't exist for having 1000's upon 1000's of players at once fighting in large scale combat without lag. We in the MMO community want and crave stuff that currently cant be done financially. In order to make an MMO it takes A LARGE SUM OF CASH. Unfortunately we in the MMO community are hooked on a genre of video games that takes too much effort to be made well.
I dislike new mmorpgs for the reasons you like them. I hate the fast level times of the games now days. I feel the leveling should be what these games are focused on. They are rpgs after all that should last a long time. I hate quest made for me, they make the game linear. Give me interesting places to explore and monsters to kill and let me make my own adventure with a party.
EQ was more like the MMORPG I want rather than the garbage put forth today. I don't know how anyone could think WoW is grind at all, it is too fast and easy.
The people. An MMO relies greatly upon its community to make it more than a mere single playerish game. Unless the communtiy puts forth the effort to create a worthwhile environment, the true MMO experience will never be achieved.
The game has to have an environment that encourages community growth like EQ did. WoW encourages soloing and being a loner until the end of the freaking game does that seem right? I don't think so. EQ attracted a player that liked to group and socialize. WoW attracted a player that liked soloing with easy leveling. It is the playerbase that chooses your game. You can't please every gamer, it is time to concentrate one type for a certain game. That gamer will be much happier.
The people. An MMO relies greatly upon its community to make it more than a mere single playerish game. Unless the communtiy puts forth the effort to create a worthwhile environment, the true MMO experience will never be achieved.
The game has to have an environment that encourages community growth like EQ did. WoW encourages soloing and being a loner until the end of the freaking game does that seem right? I don't think so. EQ attracted a player that liked to group and socialize. WoW attracted a player that liked soloing with easy leveling. It is the playerbase that chooses your game. You can't please every gamer, it is time to concentrate one type for a certain game. That gamer will be much happier.
YOU are the exact problem!!! WOW is just like EQ, except with better world design, better battle mechanics, better designed classes, more content and a larger variety of ways to go about doing all of it. You're still stuck in old design that forces a specific way of playing on people. Blizzard removed it and let players play the game the way they wanted. Thats supposed to be a really good thing. Choices.
Actually, WOW encourages grouping just as much as in EQ. The big difference is, you're not forced to group. Soloing is ONLY beneficial if the most important thing to you is getting to max level as quickly as possible or you're deprived of time. If story is important, grouping offers access to the best quests in the game. If being social is what you're after grouping is the only real way to get it. If seeing all the best content is a concern, than grouping is recommended in every facet of the game. You want to see the biggest bosses in the game? Gotta group. You want to actually be challenged? Gotta group. You're certainly encouraged to group up on PvP servers. If you want to see the best PvP in the game, you have to group up as well.
WOW doesn't encourage soloing. It just doesn't force grouping. Blizzard made soloing fun, something unheard of in a MMO before WOW. But playing in groups offers a far superior experience in every conceivable way. You're just not forced to do it, thank god. Luckily I prefer grouping whenever possible but the simple choice to do either is what makes WOW such a superior game to something as restricitve as EQ was.
The commuinity in WOW, meaning the people you actually play with on a regular basis, is no different than any other MMO. Since you choose who you play with for the most partm YOU choose how good the community is. Since I played WOW with most of the same people I played UO, EQ, DAOC and a few other MMOs with, the communuty was just as good as anything else out there. Besides, for anyone who couldn't find decent people to play WOW with, it sounds like all the decent players avoided you. NO offense=)
Personally I think community and commitment to a community in an MMORPG are problems and I also think I am one of those that are the problem when it comes to community. I always liked to float around sometimes game to game, more times server to server and even more so toon from toon so I never really established a foundation for being in a stable community of gamers.
Other problems will be the grind and the countless hours to become equipped. I think a community would benifit more if the game was targeted more toward player skills rather than a players compulsiveness to play for hours at a time.
the business aspects of MMORPGs are geared to get players and keep them playing unfortunately to do this the game companies go after a players compulsiveness to play which in turn makes those really good above average players that also want to enjoy many other aspects of their life both on and off the comp NOT play or stay around because they are losing out to players that are willing to give in and play 8,12 hours a day and become unbeatable merely because of the upgrades they get for their time spent.
As far as role playing most people seem to have short attention spans and find it hard to remain in character. I know for myself I don't care for RP but I do get into a games folk lore. Like in WoW I love the lore about Thrall and play blue eyed orc toons just because of that lore but I don't interact in character.
TO me WoW has become much like a visit to the arcade where they reward tickets for game slike skeetball etc.. collect enough tickets you can win some kind of piece of crap toy. I remember in those arcades with people walking around with handfuls of tickets and to me that was much like being a decked out toon in an MMORPG.
Maybe it's just human nature for us people to find way to feel or look better to others and to ourselves? I mean it seems to be the mentality in all aspects of life, politics, religion, sports, fashion, looks, education, work and yes even MMORPGS.
I wonder what life would be like if we people didn't have this mentality? Would we have even been able to survive the test of time this long or would we have died out long ago like the Neatherdal cavemen or would we be in some higher plain of knowledge? hard to say =/
As far as role playing most people seem to have short attention spans and find it hard to remain in character. I know for myself I don't care for RP but I do get into a games folk lore. Like in WoW I love the lore about Thrall and play blue eyed orc toons just because of that lore but I don't interact in character.
Yes, I think there is only a small minority of players who want to 'stay in character' in a purist kind of roleplaying, but I think there are a lot more people who would like to have more interesting game play. Besides character role playing, there are other aspects of table top type games that computer MMORPG games should be able to bring to us players. Wouldn't it be fun to have the kind of adventure where you have to make some decisions that will influence the way your quest unfolds?
This doesn't have to be difficult, or make players do a whole lot of reading. They don't need long attention spans. What if the quest was as simple as 'Escort this wagon safely to town', yet when they get ambushed they find a map to the bandit's hideway. Now they have to decide, stay with the wagon, or go after the bandits? A simple choice, but now I have to role play the character, I have to consider my promise to escort the wagon, yet what if instead I could wipe out the bandits that attack the wagon? Which is better?
This is a simple example of game play choice, there could be much more, and this is what makes for fun games, choice. I hate the fact that everything I do in current MMOs is done the same way by every player, with no choice, no conseqences. That's not role playing, it's just grinding EXP, and dead boring.
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!
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.
Actually, It is the time and money, spent developing a "NEW" mmo experience that stops teh market from producing other than WOW imitators. to develope from scratch a story line ( new ) charter classes ( new) skillz (new) economy ( new) quests, with HOOK, LINE, and SINKERS ( new) takes time and money to make a game from scratch to bring in new ideas and concepts and story line would break your average game company. it si more less of a risk for these gamming company's to remake a game and add some new feature rather than build a game based on new content.
I have a 10 year goal to develope a mmo that si totally different than what is on the market my problem is having extra cash to invest in to a lot of my concept ideas and the techonolgy is nto quit there......
but for a company to make a NEW mmo that is liek table top RPG of old it could make them or break them..
so yea no time soon will u see some one make a game with new ida rather what we will see is mroe of a hey this works let roll wiht it and adde "this new thing" to the content...........
I was playing Roleplaygames beeing in school and I mean the "real life" ones.
After that I liked offline computer games like Baldurs Gate...
I never tried online games and then I tried WoW.
I was disappointed. Ok it is a nice game and it is about leveling and interacting with people but it lacks real roleplay as I am in no way free to create the world. First there are so many servers that it is many games running parallel. Second problem is that people are not creating a world, the build groups to "beat" the world to level up. The don´t look back and the do not change history.
Its more a multiplayer Diablo than a multiplayer Baldurs Gate.
I stopped online roleplaygaming until a friend of mine told me to try EVE.
Firs I did not like it, because it is so unfriendly for beginners to play.
But if you start to understand how it works it gets better.
First you may still maybe have boring missions which you can do or not.
What is the main aspect I really love. It is one server, one world and you are free to do whatever you like.
Like to be a daytrader without leaving a station? Great.
Make you and your group of 10 the most feared pirates? Great as there is only 1 world and you can manage to make yourself a name. Everybody will hunt you. You like to build ships and sell them? Great do so. You can better your skill to manufacture the ships faster and increase your cashflow, but you dont have to. As a fighter playing 10 days you would like to beat somebody playing for 10 years? Maybe...
Players are mostly over 25 (or even older), lots of groups take "old" roleplaygaming very serious and you can get politics-newsletters.
So it may not be a setting like WoW and if you don´t like Space it may not be the right thing for you, but I read all the 9 pages of comments and most of the problems about creating a world, roleplaying and creating a own unique history (without many parallel worlds) ARE solved in EVE or is it that I miss a point.
It is not about how good it is programmed or if it still is to expensive or whatever, it is just about the freedom to to whatever you like to do in a unique world...
All the community has been taken out of games. It's impossible to chat with your group mates during combat and there's little to no downtime. Everything is now simply about how fast you can blitz a dungeon of weak monsters to get to the shiny treasure box at the end and collect your prize. All sort of challenge has been extracted from grouping by making pulling inconsequential, making monsters statistically inferior and by putting absolutely inane limitations into the game world. Gone are the days of a bad pull meaning almost certain death if a crowd control class isn't on the spot; gone is any sense of you having a reputation within the game that you must uphold; gone, too, are classes being varied with a huge skillset and list of abilities.
Sadly, there will never be a market share large enough to warrant a company making a modern game with old-school attributes. Vanguard was the model and still clings to vestiges of its EQ-inheritance, but the light is fading fast, likely to never return.
See Cortanya, posted on 2/29/08 1:18:25 PM, in particular,
"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."
The problem with MMORPG's that they really aren't RGP's. If you thjink about itwhat made RPGing fun was the interaction with the NPC's an getting them to give you info, items and quests. Now, before you say they do that, think about this. What we get is a watered down version of roleplaying, not true roleplaying. The NPC's never say anything different or surprising or even react to what kind of person you are. We should have consequences when we do some good, bad or indifferent. We should have a reputation meter that govern how we will be received by NPC's. I know it would be costly to use actual people, but just imagine a totally immersive world where the NPC's were actual people. They could give misinformation, they could react to the way the person is acting towards them. It would make the replay value tremendous. Even if we can't have the ideal world we should play in something close to it. Move away from the old "RPG" style of gaming and do something innovative.
Nope. That is not a problem. That is their strength. People like hack-n-slash games more than true RPG games. Look at how popular Diablo is.
BTW, reputation *is* used. You can't buy something from a NPC if you reputation is not high enough.
Real RPing is too much trouble. Most players don't even bother to RP with other people. It would be silly to assume they would like to RP with NPCs.
Player appreciation for those poor souls making an online game for us to enjoy. Player negativity as well.
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?
Exactally, payment for a game shows appreciation for what they have created.
Though I did not feel the need to point it out, I am speaking of the players who surf around the forums talking out of thier back ends about the company and the game they are creating for our entertainment.
My biggest problem is the lack of effect one has on the world. Go kill some 'epic' boss in a huge raid... get the drop for one of the thieves in your group... do it again in 3 days when the timer resets so that other theif in your group can get it. Same 'epic' boss... same epic problem.
My biggest problem is the lack of effect one has on the world. Go kill some 'epic' boss in a huge raid... get the drop for one of the thieves in your group... do it again in 3 days when the timer resets so that other theif in your group can get it. Same 'epic' boss... same epic problem.
Why is this a problem? It is the same for books, movies & SP player games. Even PnP RPG is the same if you buy a module and play it. The module stays teh same.
Instances and Zoning!!!! I'm starting a revolution against both of these if anyone would like to join!!
What's wrong with Instances? How would you have believable epic encounters in games without them?
It's unbelievable enough that the same raid boss can be killed thousands or millions of times, only to reappear in the same spot within a few days.
So you think that making it possible for that raid boss to be killed in a thousand different ways, at the same time, by different people, in different dimensions, makes that raid MORE believable?
My biggest problem is the lack of effect one has on the world. Go kill some 'epic' boss in a huge raid... get the drop for one of the thieves in your group... do it again in 3 days when the timer resets so that other theif in your group can get it. Same 'epic' boss... same epic problem.
Why is this a problem? It is the same for books, movies & SP player games. Even PnP RPG is the same if you buy a module and play it. The module stays teh same.
In books, you use your imagination to create your spin on a world someone else imagined to begin with, so you have some freedom in what you are dealing with. In an MMO, the fact that it is visual makes it harder to make your own spin on things. It's easy to imagine a hawk flying over head after a book describes a wilderness scene to you but doesn't mention a hawk. It's hard to imagine a hawk flying overhead in an MMO when you can have your character look up and there isn't a hawk there.
Movies I do believe suffer from a lack of interaction, much like most MMOs.
But what are you talking about with PnP not being affected by the players? Have you ever played a PnP game? Last I checked, players don't like being led around by the nose by a game master who is following a module to the letter. Last I checked, modules are hollow and incomplete if you try to just follow them to the letter. PnP is ALL ABOUT the GM working together with the players to make the world real in their minds, and part of that involves the player's characters being able to effectuate change in their imaginary world.
After playing for a short amount of time, the "newness" factor wears off. I always know where said MOB is going to be. I always know what loot it's going to drop. I always know my major city is safe. There is no real threat in the world, nothing unpredictable or surprising that draws me in.
A funny thing Happened on the way to the forum...
The journey of getting the great gear, of conquering the unconquerable foe... it's the getting there that is lost. Life happens on the way there. But it doesn't in MMO's. The games are built so that it's the endgame goal that matters, the great gear, the epic equipment etc. This drives the grind, which is pure tedium ad nauseam.
Dynamic content, player created content done right and done well, zones that change, spawns that change, having to truly hunt... not just kill. These things would add 'life' to an MMO.
Comments
The following is the shortest treatment I could give the subject. I could write a book about this stuff. Please bear in mind that space won't allow more than a glossing over of the primary issues.
For a moment, I ask the readers to take a look from a designer's point of view:
We want and need lots of PAYING clients. Note I did not say players. I said clients.
We have a limited budget, which keeps getting higher each year. Artists, producers, writers, coders, freaking psychologists, marketing, and others are not free. They cost a ton.
Our investors are constantly pestering us to show them the money.
If we use off the rack stuff for graphics / game physics and a back end... then we risk a two-fold problem. 1 is the contract we signed to get the stuff so when it expires they have us by the balls. 2 is sometimes we lose flexibility in what we do.
So if we're in it for the short-haul, we simply grab off the shelf stuff and bolt it together. (Go freakin look at the bolt-ware out there! Several companies have stuff that could have us up and running with a 1 million dollar start-up budget with better graphics than EQ.) This would be like LOTR and DDO.
Initially, we might listen to our game guru until launch, but after launch we want to do what will attract the most players. That is the way we make money after all.
Further, if the paying client list drops too low... we get our ass axed. We don't want that. Really.
Or, worse, we get slapped in chains and row the SOE Dilettante Account boat for eternity. End of game.
So we listen to what the players are whining about. They whine a lot. About everything. And frustratingly, they understand nothing.
PKing is great fun and drives away 9:10 clients if it has any teeth. 5:10 if it doesn't. Half the people at least do not want to be griefed. Create consensual PKing areas and they are ghost towns. PKers don't generally like to PK each other. Understandable since PKers are hyper-adaptive and will pick the best build every time. This leaves just skill that with inevitable lag, is reduced to almost nothing.
They whine endlessly about content that costs us money. Content costs money to produce. Content takes up space on the servers. Content requires balance. New content drives clients to the new areas at the expense of the old; especially if the new content is better.
And content is a finite pool. You think you are a bad ass content designer? (This is what I do, dear readers.) Sit down and design 300 unique zones and don't repeat anything. Don't worry. You won't. The pool of ideas isn't that deep. You'll start shifting concepts around and re-using content. And the players WILL bitch about paying for repeat content.
They whine endlessly about classes vs skill points vs skill trees and all the other hybrids. This is pretty much a no-win situation.
If you give them classes they bitch that class A is better than class B. Inevitably a designer's pet class gets to be a little better than the others and shazam... players bitch and threaten to quit. The investors twist your arm into making the other classes weaker, since making them stronger shortens content life and makes the game less intriguing. And adding more content makes things cost more. And players HATE buying expansions.
If you give them skill points then two things happen (yes, always): 1 a large portion of the crowd will mangle their characters and make them "less than optimal". 2 a small subset of the players (including yours truly *rubs fingernails on shirt and glances at them*) will figure out a "maximized" build. Everyone will flock to this when they create new characters. Or they will bitch ENDLESSLY about having a reset or a number of resets. Once the resets are indefinitely in, you've just set the timer on your termination. The game becomes trivial. (MXO is case in point.)
If you don't give them enough skills (CoX, LOTR, DDO) then the clients don't seem to advance in the game. MMORPGS are a metaphor for their lives. They want to advance. They want to be powerful and crush shit. This is why WoW is so damned popular. The common man can win. And money IS our goal, after all.
It is a psychological fact that people are confused with greater intensity after 3 choices. Give them 20 and they're paralyzed. This is why most new class based games are working with an inverted tree system. Fewer choices. (I personally dislike inverted trees because I'm limiting myself as I go up in power. I lose things.)
In any event, in most MMORPGS, balance is paramount. However... perfect universal balance is perfectly boring. None of the choices make any difference any longer.
If you decide to make some skills more useful in certain circumstances in order to try to outsmart the balance - boredom conundrum, all you do is create MORE screaming users since inevitably some skills are perceived as more-useful. And they are probably right as some content areas will see greater use.
After all, content is going to be used as follows: Gear - XP - Access - Group Availability - Aesthetics.
Which brings us to gear. If you make gear an integral part of the game (EQ or Equipment Quest) inevitably certain things pop up. I only have time here to treat the most dangerous question.
That quandary is crafters. *sigh* Crafters are a pain in the ass. But they are a big part of our player base and we need to cater to them. Make the crafted gear too good, and no one has a reason to adventure save to grab gold. (Which creates a good market for farmers and increases inflation.)
Make the crafted stuff crap, and the crafters complain and leave. (Rightfully so.)
Make the crafted stuff dropped items and the crafters complain (again, rightfully so) that they won't have anything to craft except when they go adventuring. (No, having the adventurers bring stuff back to the players won't work. Their crafter alts will get the stuff or it will be held in guilds to create gear for guilds.) However, crafters are hyper-competitive too and the market is fairly small. Loss leaders are a standard fixture.
Many crafter-trader types are damned good at economics. I know because I STUDIED economics because of MMORPG trading models. Some of our players are going to be smarter than us. Our players as a whole WILL be smarter than we are. That is inevitable.
Plus if you make the gear too plentiful, it becomes more of a minor quest to get that sword of uber-chopping than a nice piece of gear to hold on to. This is boring to the I'm-better-than-you crowd.
And... if the gear doesn't wear out (which ALL players HATE) or if you can't give it to someone else (no drop tags for the win) then the market gets flooded quickly with low and mid level items.
Thusly: cater to the crafters and piss off the players OR cater to the players and piss off the crafters. They are on polar opposites of the equation.
There is no answer to the crafter question either. Not a perfect one.
On to the grouping and raiding question. Groups take a certain amount of time to build. While this is happening, players either sit around or they kill some content. If the content is too good, then most players won't group as solo play is faster. Groups break down, people drop out, a needed class or ability is lost, and so on.
People prefer solo play. But solo play gets boring. However, if one has created a solo play environment, then they won't know how to group when they get to higher levels and/or they have chosen classes based on single PVE class play. This is why warriors get so pissed in most games. Warriors generally suck solo.
Groups only work if there are a goodly number of players and the wait isn't too long. Many games have had their player bases migrate to other games because the play was designed almost wholly around groups and the player base wasn't sufficient. DDO, Vanguard, and EQ2 are 3 games off of the top of my head that have this problem. They all solved it in the most understandable and worst way: they added solo content.
Once you go solo, there is no going back. The entire game has to be made solo. The reasoning is: the longer a character solos up the tree the less likely he/she is to group or be able to group at a later time.
However, on the other side, players tend to arrive in waves and move together up the level tree. At some point some players will be stuck without a group. This makes players quit. This makes bosses unhappy.
And raid content: if we make the content raid based (meaning more people), we tend to put the power in the hands of the few. Guilds are notorious for being insufferable elitist snobs of the highest order. Being in one is an inherent loss-leader situation and many players quit when faced with raid content.
But... the whiners on the boards are people that have raced through the content to the end-game and now want more content. There is no answer to the raid question either, although in my opinion Vanguard failed the most abjectly in their implementation.
Which brings me to the progression model. We have to decide how fast and how difficult we want the progression through the tree. WoW, the current leader, has a relatively fast model of progression to end-game and a light end-game depth. This is probably the best for the 1 year player model. As long as they continue to get new players, they will be the first run game, meaning they will continue to make money for the intermediate term.
Long progression, high difficulty games such as EQ are by their nature headed for extinction. At some point the climb is too great.
Long progression, low difficulty games are out too. These are popularly defined as Grind Games and are popular with the Asian crowd. MXO and AO are popular examples here.
EVE stands alone as a ponzi-type scheme where you simply cannot be better than the core crowd no matter how hard you try. The skill system is purely time based. So I know people that have spent six months logging in, mining enough to buy new skills, setting those skills, and logging out. People still play it, so I guess it works for them currently. They are an anomaly.
However, as players leave the WoW sort of game they tend to want something different, as they have left that game because of boredom. Another WoW clone won't have the same success. A different formula is needed. What that formula is has yet to be seen.
So in closing I have tried to state some of (what I see) the major problems with MMORPG design. I have given no answers as there are none.
Because of brevity I have not been able to address player motivation (gear vs titles vs cookies vs abilities) versus difficulty. I also missed some other fundamental concepts, but this should be enough to give a short idea of the problems. These problems have no answers.
They are a question of balance vs nuance.
Before you attempt to decide what is wrong with MMORPGs today, make sure you aren't trying to kill yourself before you start.
Designers aren't stupid. These days they are HUGE teams of people from diverse walks of life. The polish level of these games is generally high. Certain examples (I'm looking at you Vanguard) excepting.
In any event, please don't take anything I said as either gospel or as an offense against your pet idea. It isn't.
I've had over a decade of playing and programming / development experience, training in psychology, and have walked through dungeons and flown starships (in pnp gaming) for over uh... a quarter of a century as of this writing. Jesus that makes me feel old. And in all that time I understand one thing about gaming... it will continue to be a major part of human consciousness throughout the rest of my lifetime and probably for centuries.
I argue it is a way for humans to express themselves imaginatively on a thousand electronic worlds in a risk-free way for little money. And it is very best value for entertainment going today.
Further it treats the young and the old, male and female, of all races equally; because you can't see them. I have no idea if the person on the other end is fat or slim, young or old, rich or poor. So it creates an egalitarian mindset.
Bleh. Anyway, you get the idea.
I'm hungry and it is time for my Geritol.
WoW is a blessing, and a curse.
Levels suck. WoW has levels. Therefore all games must have levels.
WoW is loot kill repeat. Therefore all games must be loot kill repeat.
MMORPGs are huge investments, offer huge risks, and the investors all imagine they'll be Blizz kids in Ferraris.
"Show me the money!" indeed.
CH, Jedi, Commando, Smuggler, BH, Scout, Doctor, Chef, BE...yeah, lots of SWG time invested.
Once a denizen of Ahazi
Lmao. Perhaps you should think about hiring servers with hard drives fitted.
(And you were doing so well up until then).
Great post BTW, I enjoyed reading it,
The people. An MMO relies greatly upon its community to make it more than a mere single playerish game. Unless the communtiy puts forth the effort to create a worthwhile environment, the true MMO experience will never be achieved.
#1.
cookie cutter classes with little to no originality (warrior tank, priest healer) etc.
#2
repetitive grinding meant to make you pay more in monthly fees by taking forever to reach endgame
#3
enviornments that NEVER CHANGE i.e. picking up rocks, making buildings, pouring water etc.
#4
linear gameplay which pushes your character towards a goal.... THAT EVERY OTHER SINGLE CHARACTER DOES
#5
limited technology. Right now technology just doesn't exist for having 1000's upon 1000's of players at once fighting in large scale combat without lag. We in the MMO community want and crave stuff that currently cant be done financially. In order to make an MMO it takes A LARGE SUM OF CASH. Unfortunately we in the MMO community are hooked on a genre of video games that takes too much effort to be made well.
Is there an MMO that out there that isn't affected by Xao Ping Wang and their money grubbing macro bots?
http://wow.stratics.com/content/features/editorials/mf/
Just say no to ingame money/mob farming.... the site says it all
What is the biggest problem in MMO's today?
It depends on what you are looking at.
For me, in the focus of game design, is the immersion and the logical sense. Immersion is related to how can the players feel like the MMO is a living, breathing world instead of just another game (which is why MMO is unique in itself, it shouldn't be just another game). Logical sense is related how each system function in the game world (the PvE, PvP, Economy (crafting and selling/buying, etc), Politic (City planning/building, guilds, etc), and how these systems work within the given stories/lores.
When the focus is in the MMO genre, it's the lack of innovation and lack of variations in system. Due to the success of some MMOs, many of the newer MMO stop trying to bring new things onto the table and keep producing the same gameplay system with difference in theme or lore.
And when the focus is on the effect of the whole video game industry, it's the players. Too many different types of players out there and not enough games to fit them all. Some believe that the MMO has evolved and those who preferred the old systems/gameplays are ones that are left behind, and others just don't know that MMO isn't the game for them. Some believe that the present MMO formats are too "dumb down" and lost the originality of it. In the end, there are too many players into the game of MMO, and each type of gamers trying to voice their wish and what THEY think the MMO should be...
Current MMO: FFXIV:ARR
Past MMO: Way too many (P2P and F2P)
The following is the shortest treatment I could give the subject. I could write a book about this stuff. Please bear in mind that space won't allow more than a glossing over of the primary issues.
lol, i wonder if GM, Microsoft, Apple..etc, etc got to where they are because of those pesky whinning customers..lol, give the gamers what THEY want or go get a job at 7-ll..geesh, talk about a whinner..rofl.
When I said i had "time", i meant virtual time, i got no RL "time" for you.
EQ was more like the MMORPG I want rather than the garbage put forth today. I don't know how anyone could think WoW is grind at all, it is too fast and easy.
The game has to have an environment that encourages community growth like EQ did. WoW encourages soloing and being a loner until the end of the freaking game does that seem right? I don't think so. EQ attracted a player that liked to group and socialize. WoW attracted a player that liked soloing with easy leveling. It is the playerbase that chooses your game. You can't please every gamer, it is time to concentrate one type for a certain game. That gamer will be much happier.
The game has to have an environment that encourages community growth like EQ did. WoW encourages soloing and being a loner until the end of the freaking game does that seem right? I don't think so. EQ attracted a player that liked to group and socialize. WoW attracted a player that liked soloing with easy leveling. It is the playerbase that chooses your game. You can't please every gamer, it is time to concentrate one type for a certain game. That gamer will be much happier.
YOU are the exact problem!!! WOW is just like EQ, except with better world design, better battle mechanics, better designed classes, more content and a larger variety of ways to go about doing all of it. You're still stuck in old design that forces a specific way of playing on people. Blizzard removed it and let players play the game the way they wanted. Thats supposed to be a really good thing. Choices.
Actually, WOW encourages grouping just as much as in EQ. The big difference is, you're not forced to group. Soloing is ONLY beneficial if the most important thing to you is getting to max level as quickly as possible or you're deprived of time. If story is important, grouping offers access to the best quests in the game. If being social is what you're after grouping is the only real way to get it. If seeing all the best content is a concern, than grouping is recommended in every facet of the game. You want to see the biggest bosses in the game? Gotta group. You want to actually be challenged? Gotta group. You're certainly encouraged to group up on PvP servers. If you want to see the best PvP in the game, you have to group up as well.
WOW doesn't encourage soloing. It just doesn't force grouping. Blizzard made soloing fun, something unheard of in a MMO before WOW. But playing in groups offers a far superior experience in every conceivable way. You're just not forced to do it, thank god. Luckily I prefer grouping whenever possible but the simple choice to do either is what makes WOW such a superior game to something as restricitve as EQ was.
The commuinity in WOW, meaning the people you actually play with on a regular basis, is no different than any other MMO. Since you choose who you play with for the most partm YOU choose how good the community is. Since I played WOW with most of the same people I played UO, EQ, DAOC and a few other MMOs with, the communuty was just as good as anything else out there. Besides, for anyone who couldn't find decent people to play WOW with, it sounds like all the decent players avoided you. NO offense=)
Personally I think community and commitment to a community in an MMORPG are problems and I also think I am one of those that are the problem when it comes to community. I always liked to float around sometimes game to game, more times server to server and even more so toon from toon so I never really established a foundation for being in a stable community of gamers.
Other problems will be the grind and the countless hours to become equipped. I think a community would benifit more if the game was targeted more toward player skills rather than a players compulsiveness to play for hours at a time.
the business aspects of MMORPGs are geared to get players and keep them playing unfortunately to do this the game companies go after a players compulsiveness to play which in turn makes those really good above average players that also want to enjoy many other aspects of their life both on and off the comp NOT play or stay around because they are losing out to players that are willing to give in and play 8,12 hours a day and become unbeatable merely because of the upgrades they get for their time spent.
As far as role playing most people seem to have short attention spans and find it hard to remain in character. I know for myself I don't care for RP but I do get into a games folk lore. Like in WoW I love the lore about Thrall and play blue eyed orc toons just because of that lore but I don't interact in character.
TO me WoW has become much like a visit to the arcade where they reward tickets for game slike skeetball etc.. collect enough tickets you can win some kind of piece of crap toy. I remember in those arcades with people walking around with handfuls of tickets and to me that was much like being a decked out toon in an MMORPG.
Maybe it's just human nature for us people to find way to feel or look better to others and to ourselves? I mean it seems to be the mentality in all aspects of life, politics, religion, sports, fashion, looks, education, work and yes even MMORPGS.
I wonder what life would be like if we people didn't have this mentality? Would we have even been able to survive the test of time this long or would we have died out long ago like the Neatherdal cavemen or would we be in some higher plain of knowledge? hard to say =/
Yes, I think there is only a small minority of players who want to 'stay in character' in a purist kind of roleplaying, but I think there are a lot more people who would like to have more interesting game play. Besides character role playing, there are other aspects of table top type games that computer MMORPG games should be able to bring to us players. Wouldn't it be fun to have the kind of adventure where you have to make some decisions that will influence the way your quest unfolds?
This doesn't have to be difficult, or make players do a whole lot of reading. They don't need long attention spans. What if the quest was as simple as 'Escort this wagon safely to town', yet when they get ambushed they find a map to the bandit's hideway. Now they have to decide, stay with the wagon, or go after the bandits? A simple choice, but now I have to role play the character, I have to consider my promise to escort the wagon, yet what if instead I could wipe out the bandits that attack the wagon? Which is better?
This is a simple example of game play choice, there could be much more, and this is what makes for fun games, choice. I hate the fact that everything I do in current MMOs is done the same way by every player, with no choice, no conseqences. That's not role playing, it's just grinding EXP, and dead boring.
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.
Actually, It is the time and money, spent developing a "NEW" mmo experience that stops teh market from producing other than WOW imitators. to develope from scratch a story line ( new ) charter classes ( new) skillz (new) economy ( new) quests, with HOOK, LINE, and SINKERS ( new) takes time and money to make a game from scratch to bring in new ideas and concepts and story line would break your average game company. it si more less of a risk for these gamming company's to remake a game and add some new feature rather than build a game based on new content.
I have a 10 year goal to develope a mmo that si totally different than what is on the market my problem is having extra cash to invest in to a lot of my concept ideas and the techonolgy is nto quit there......
but for a company to make a NEW mmo that is liek table top RPG of old it could make them or break them..
so yea no time soon will u see some one make a game with new ida rather what we will see is mroe of a hey this works let roll wiht it and adde "this new thing" to the content...........
Hi @all
I will keep it short.
I was playing Roleplaygames beeing in school and I mean the "real life" ones.
After that I liked offline computer games like Baldurs Gate...
I never tried online games and then I tried WoW.
I was disappointed. Ok it is a nice game and it is about leveling and interacting with people but it lacks real roleplay as I am in no way free to create the world. First there are so many servers that it is many games running parallel. Second problem is that people are not creating a world, the build groups to "beat" the world to level up. The don´t look back and the do not change history.
Its more a multiplayer Diablo than a multiplayer Baldurs Gate.
I stopped online roleplaygaming until a friend of mine told me to try EVE.
Firs I did not like it, because it is so unfriendly for beginners to play.
But if you start to understand how it works it gets better.
First you may still maybe have boring missions which you can do or not.
What is the main aspect I really love. It is one server, one world and you are free to do whatever you like.
Like to be a daytrader without leaving a station? Great.
Make you and your group of 10 the most feared pirates? Great as there is only 1 world and you can manage to make yourself a name. Everybody will hunt you. You like to build ships and sell them? Great do so. You can better your skill to manufacture the ships faster and increase your cashflow, but you dont have to. As a fighter playing 10 days you would like to beat somebody playing for 10 years? Maybe...
Players are mostly over 25 (or even older), lots of groups take "old" roleplaygaming very serious and you can get politics-newsletters.
So it may not be a setting like WoW and if you don´t like Space it may not be the right thing for you, but I read all the 9 pages of comments and most of the problems about creating a world, roleplaying and creating a own unique history (without many parallel worlds) ARE solved in EVE or is it that I miss a point.
It is not about how good it is programmed or if it still is to expensive or whatever, it is just about the freedom to to whatever you like to do in a unique world...
Greets
All the community has been taken out of games. It's impossible to chat with your group mates during combat and there's little to no downtime. Everything is now simply about how fast you can blitz a dungeon of weak monsters to get to the shiny treasure box at the end and collect your prize. All sort of challenge has been extracted from grouping by making pulling inconsequential, making monsters statistically inferior and by putting absolutely inane limitations into the game world. Gone are the days of a bad pull meaning almost certain death if a crowd control class isn't on the spot; gone is any sense of you having a reputation within the game that you must uphold; gone, too, are classes being varied with a huge skillset and list of abilities.
Sadly, there will never be a market share large enough to warrant a company making a modern game with old-school attributes. Vanguard was the model and still clings to vestiges of its EQ-inheritance, but the light is fading fast, likely to never return.
See Cortanya, posted on 2/29/08 1:18:25 PM, in particular,
"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."
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Agree.
Nope. That is not a problem. That is their strength. People like hack-n-slash games more than true RPG games. Look at how popular Diablo is.
BTW, reputation *is* used. You can't buy something from a NPC if you reputation is not high enough.
Real RPing is too much trouble. Most players don't even bother to RP with other people. It would be silly to assume they would like to RP with NPCs.
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?
Exactally, payment for a game shows appreciation for what they have created.
Though I did not feel the need to point it out, I am speaking of the players who surf around the forums talking out of thier back ends about the company and the game they are creating for our entertainment.
the biggest problem is not every MMO works for every OS
My biggest problem is the lack of effect one has on the world. Go kill some 'epic' boss in a huge raid... get the drop for one of the thieves in your group... do it again in 3 days when the timer resets so that other theif in your group can get it. Same 'epic' boss... same epic problem.
Why is this a problem? It is the same for books, movies & SP player games. Even PnP RPG is the same if you buy a module and play it. The module stays teh same.
What's wrong with Instances? How would you have believable epic encounters in games without them?
It's unbelievable enough that the same raid boss can be killed thousands or millions of times, only to reappear in the same spot within a few days.
So you think that making it possible for that raid boss to be killed in a thousand different ways, at the same time, by different people, in different dimensions, makes that raid MORE believable?
I'm at a loss.
Why is this a problem? It is the same for books, movies & SP player games. Even PnP RPG is the same if you buy a module and play it. The module stays teh same.
In books, you use your imagination to create your spin on a world someone else imagined to begin with, so you have some freedom in what you are dealing with. In an MMO, the fact that it is visual makes it harder to make your own spin on things. It's easy to imagine a hawk flying over head after a book describes a wilderness scene to you but doesn't mention a hawk. It's hard to imagine a hawk flying overhead in an MMO when you can have your character look up and there isn't a hawk there.
Movies I do believe suffer from a lack of interaction, much like most MMOs.
But what are you talking about with PnP not being affected by the players? Have you ever played a PnP game? Last I checked, players don't like being led around by the nose by a game master who is following a module to the letter. Last I checked, modules are hollow and incomplete if you try to just follow them to the letter. PnP is ALL ABOUT the GM working together with the players to make the world real in their minds, and part of that involves the player's characters being able to effectuate change in their imaginary world.
Not enough immersion.
The lack of unpredictability in the world.
After playing for a short amount of time, the "newness" factor wears off. I always know where said MOB is going to be. I always know what loot it's going to drop. I always know my major city is safe. There is no real threat in the world, nothing unpredictable or surprising that draws me in.
A funny thing Happened on the way to the forum...
The journey of getting the great gear, of conquering the unconquerable foe... it's the getting there that is lost. Life happens on the way there. But it doesn't in MMO's. The games are built so that it's the endgame goal that matters, the great gear, the epic equipment etc. This drives the grind, which is pure tedium ad nauseam.
Dynamic content, player created content done right and done well, zones that change, spawns that change, having to truly hunt... not just kill. These things would add 'life' to an MMO.