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. Look, there is a certain segment of the PvP population that thinks along these lines: At 16 years old they got together with 4 of their buddies and went down to the local elementary school gym to take on 8 year olds in pickup basketball. They out rebounded, out shot, and out scored the 8 year olds, winning 64 to 8. They then went in to high school the next day and talked smack about how good they were, comparing themselves to the "Fab Five". Until you learn how to deal with players that have this mentality, you will never be able to open up PvP games to the larger PvE market. 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. This mentality is a creation of the developers. You want to place the rabbit in front of the greyhounds so that they run around the track after the rabbit. Then you let them catch the rabbit. Now the greyhounds won't run any more unless you show them a new rabbit. Maybe you should consider using a different rabbit, or not using a rabbit at all? 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. Rock, paper, scissors. Take a walk on the wild side, get away from rock, paper, scissors. There is so much in life that is not rock, paper, scissors. How about no classes, just a cornucopia of skills that players can mix and match in any way to their hearts desire. Let the players create their own classes, kind of like what Chris Taylor did in Dungeon Siege. 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.) Stay away from classes then. Players are trying to optimize their class. Without classes there becomes too many alternatives to optimize. When you combine classes and skills you set the players on the thought process of "what is the best build". As a developer you want to change that mindset into one of "what do I want to build". Once again, as with the greyhound, developers have created this mindset among the players by continually thinking inside the box. 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. So, you changed the model from that Friday night Dungeons and Dragons role playing game in which everyone sat around drinking, socializing, and thinking up demented things, like gang banging a Medusa (how can we get the burlap sack over her head without looking at her, c'mon guys, it's like a Friday nite pickup at the bar). You placed the rabbit on the track in front of the greyhound, and now don't know how to deal with it. Did you every play the Temple of Apshai games, the early Ultima games? They weren't about the level treadmill, they were story driven. You changed the model, and are now caught up in your own change. 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.) Let's look at it another way. In POTBS there are more than 3 choices for ships for my character to have. Okay, so I am paralyzed and can't make an immediate decision. But I don't have to make an immediate decision do I? I can write down the stats, step away from the game, go into the bathroom, and take a nice, long, refreshing dump as I look things over and figure out what works best for me. Who ever said that game decisions have to be made in real time. In EQ 2, when I level while in a group, I never make my stat upgrade decisions, I wait until I can study them. Once again, developers have placed the rabbit on the track for the greyhounds to chase....... After all, content is going to be used as follows: Gear - XP - Access - Group Availability - Aesthetics. Your content leaves out the most important aspect. To paraphrase a General Motors add... "When you turn on your MMORPG, does it return the favor?" Where is the fun? What you have just described is building a game using a cookie cutter checksheet.General Motors used to do this before Bob Lutz came over from Chrysler. They got the Aztek. Now they have the Impala, Malibu, and the CTS. Once again, take a walk on the wild side.... Everything you say here is a criticism of how your client base reacts to the business model developers created. You seem to shift the blame onto your client base, without sitting down and analzing the business model. And, for a defense, your first thought is to say, "But that's what our client's want....Gear-XP-Access-Group-Aesthetics...while ignoring what your clients are telling you, that they want a different business model. You keep offering them a Pontiac Aztek, and blaming them when they say they don't like the looks of it.
Olddaddy, I just continue to build respect for you, man. Nicely put.
On a side note, nice to see I'm not the only one who thought Azteks looked friggen awful.
beta trolls ... leave carnage in their wake ... and never actually play a game long term.... they come in ... cause havoc and confusion with the design feedback and leave the game to suffer in their wake ....
- Dev's must end "public beta's" ... period!! Build, test ... YOUR DESIGN ... tweak in a close beta ... but stick to your design and shut out the whining beta trolls ... they are not getting paid to build a product... DEV's are... have to courage stand up for YOUR vision and take the beating if it sucks ... or stand for the cheers when it succeeds... but stop the beta troll madness!!!
Biggest problem with MMOs these days is the "One Up" that each of the games play with eachother. Like many have allready said, instead of putting something original out there, they copy the FOTM template and "one up" it by adding MORE classes, MORE customzation, MORE items. With each class, stat, and item added, it becomes harder and harder to balance.
The genious of Ultima was its simplicity and open ended design. There was no quest system that guided you along the landscape with training wheels. The simple stat and skill system made balancing less of a headache. The simple itemization system put more weight into player skill and less into itemization in determining victory. The open ended design allowed for player driven content on a ever changing landscape of player run guilds rising and falling.
Itemization is the next one on my list. It blows the whole "risk vs. reward" metric out the water. Games make players dependent on gear/items to PvE or PvP at endgame or max level. Because players are so dependent on said gear/items.....they obviously can't afford to lose them in battle.....giving less reward to the victor and less to risk for the player. Itemization also breeds 3rd party markets for currency to purchase items, giving unfair advantage to who has the biggest pocket book. Lineage 2 is a prime example of this and is more corrupt than any game on the market right now.
There are a lot of other great points that people have made....but when it all boils down to it, the current customer base of MMORPGs will never buy into a system that has less "options" for the sake of balance, has high lvl of risk involved with game play, and where "I Win" gear/items does not guarentee victory. There are a lot of people playing MMORPGs now that were playing console games when you were playing UO or EQ1.....and thats where we are.
MMOs are missing the fun factor. In WoW, once you hit max level, you repeat the process with 'high end content.'
Most of today's MMOs don't deserve to be described by the word 'Massive' in mmo. None of them allows the player to affect the game world AT ALL. Granted, this has its problems but whats the point of a virtual world if you can't really affect it?
MMOs are missing the fun factor. In WoW, once you hit max level, you repeat the process with 'high end content.' Most of today's MMOs don't deserve to be described by the word 'Massive' in mmo. None of them allows the player to affect the game world AT ALL. Granted, this has its problems but whats the point of a virtual world if you can't really affect it?
To consume a large amount of content with the same char which you are attached to?
To consumer said content with a bunch of friends (or strangers)?
I would think that the biggest problem is the complete lack of vision by both the developers and the players. Not only do they both have a tendency to let the squeeky wheel tell them how they should think, but they also fail to allow for any other perspectives but their own.
Developers and some players are always trying to force the playerbase into a specific playstyle. Forced grouping, forced PVP, or whatever, it is ultimately detrimental to the game. Developers should provide an open world and let the playerbase decide how they want to spend their time. These type of games are difficult to create and balance properly, but they are well worth the effort.
"Those who dislike things based only on the fact that they are popular are just as shallow and superficial as those who only like them for the same reason."
Comments
Olddaddy, I just continue to build respect for you, man. Nicely put.On a side note, nice to see I'm not the only one who thought Azteks looked friggen awful.
#1 biggest problem ... BETA TROLLS!!
beta trolls ... leave carnage in their wake ... and never actually play a game long term.... they come in ... cause havoc and confusion with the design feedback and leave the game to suffer in their wake ....
- Dev's must end "public beta's" ... period!! Build, test ... YOUR DESIGN ... tweak in a close beta ... but stick to your design and shut out the whining beta trolls ... they are not getting paid to build a product... DEV's are... have to courage stand up for YOUR vision and take the beating if it sucks ... or stand for the cheers when it succeeds... but stop the beta troll madness!!!
Biggest problem with MMOs these days is the "One Up" that each of the games play with eachother. Like many have allready said, instead of putting something original out there, they copy the FOTM template and "one up" it by adding MORE classes, MORE customzation, MORE items. With each class, stat, and item added, it becomes harder and harder to balance.
The genious of Ultima was its simplicity and open ended design. There was no quest system that guided you along the landscape with training wheels. The simple stat and skill system made balancing less of a headache. The simple itemization system put more weight into player skill and less into itemization in determining victory. The open ended design allowed for player driven content on a ever changing landscape of player run guilds rising and falling.
Itemization is the next one on my list. It blows the whole "risk vs. reward" metric out the water. Games make players dependent on gear/items to PvE or PvP at endgame or max level. Because players are so dependent on said gear/items.....they obviously can't afford to lose them in battle.....giving less reward to the victor and less to risk for the player. Itemization also breeds 3rd party markets for currency to purchase items, giving unfair advantage to who has the biggest pocket book. Lineage 2 is a prime example of this and is more corrupt than any game on the market right now.
There are a lot of other great points that people have made....but when it all boils down to it, the current customer base of MMORPGs will never buy into a system that has less "options" for the sake of balance, has high lvl of risk involved with game play, and where "I Win" gear/items does not guarentee victory. There are a lot of people playing MMORPGs now that were playing console games when you were playing UO or EQ1.....and thats where we are.
MMOs are missing the fun factor. In WoW, once you hit max level, you repeat the process with 'high end content.'
Most of today's MMOs don't deserve to be described by the word 'Massive' in mmo. None of them allows the player to affect the game world AT ALL. Granted, this has its problems but whats the point of a virtual world if you can't really affect it?
levels.. remove levels from games! skill based games ftw
Remember Old School Ultima Online
developers not listening to their community
To consume a large amount of content with the same char which you are attached to?
To consumer said content with a bunch of friends (or strangers)?
I cannot do either in a SP game.
I would think that the biggest problem is the complete lack of vision by both the developers and the players. Not only do they both have a tendency to let the squeeky wheel tell them how they should think, but they also fail to allow for any other perspectives but their own.
Developers and some players are always trying to force the playerbase into a specific playstyle. Forced grouping, forced PVP, or whatever, it is ultimately detrimental to the game. Developers should provide an open world and let the playerbase decide how they want to spend their time. These type of games are difficult to create and balance properly, but they are well worth the effort.
"Those who dislike things based only on the fact that they are popular are just as shallow and superficial as those who only like them for the same reason."