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Not another fantasy MMO!
Dedthom
Member Posts: 541
I see that Mortal online is now listed on MMORPG.com and thought "great! Just what we need is another fantasy MMO!"
What is going on here? When are the sci fi fans going to get some love?
Of all the games listed on this sight 40 are listed as sci fi.
Some of these games are older games, some barely qualify as playable and others barely qualify as sci fi.
When are we going to get a really good sci fi game that is well balanced, has combat that makes sense for modern and futuristic weapons, and has both planetside and space exploration?
When is a company going to take a chance to come out with an MMO that is more then a spaceship sim or more then a cheap rip off of some well known and over done IP?
Of all the games scheduled to be released only a small handful are sci fi. Why won't a big name company back a good sci fi game?
Please don't tell me SWOR is the next great sci fi game, if you notice it is listed as fantasy and that is what it will play like.
AO is great if you like standing six feet from you target shooting one another, and the nano thing is just magic with sci fi names.
Come on where is the realistic vaccum will kill you, gravity on all world isnt 1G, ships can land on those big balls of rock and metal , MMOs?
Has WoW created an enviroment in this industry that has caused devs to only see dollars when spell chucking sword wielding, barely dressed nymphs are involved?
""But Coyote, you could learn! You only prefer keyboard and mouse because that's all you've ever known!" You might say right before you hug a rainforest and walk in sandals to your drum circle where you're trying to raise group consciousness of ladybugs or whatever it is you dirty goddamn hippies do when you're not busy smoking pot and smelling bad."
Coyote's Howling: Death of the Computer
Comments
I love the fantasy theme, but I don't feel like anyone is really doing it right yet
--------------------------
Playing:
FFXIV, TERA, LoL, and HoTS
My Rig:
GPU: GeForce GTX 770, CPU: i7-4790K, Memory: 16 GB RAM
Why should a company invest millions in a sci-fi MMO when no one plays them!
With the exception of EVE, they are all pathetic failures as far as number of players go. Please show me any justification for making a big budget sci-fi MMO?
Though, on the bright side we do have:
I would expect only SWTOR to have any serious number of players, with JGE and ER falling in a long way behind it and the rest being pathetically small.
Anarchy Online isn't really a failure. It's just past its prime. At one time, it was pretty big. I never cared for it, but admittedly it saw some popularity in its day.
If a sci-fi game came out that covered the ground game, or if CCP ever makes true their plans to make a ground game in EVE, I feel the sci-fi crowd will be pretty satisfied for a good long while and that there will be very little room to compete in that market due to the smaller player base.
Still, there is a lot of room for a quality ground based sci-fi. Perhaps the new SW will take that spot.. who knows.
The 3,000 tries at generic fantasy grinders wasn't enough? How many more "visions" are we going to need to endure. Everyone who wants to play this fantasy crap is playing it already. On top of it anyone who is playing this stuff is more then likely playing WoW, seriously why play anything else when it comes to level / class based fantasy grinders?
Look at any other video game genre, its not fantasy that dominates it's modern and assorted SciFi. The problem with the MMO genre is the devs have been superglued to making their version of EQ for 10 years now. Enough already, its time to move and call it a day with the EQ and its bastard offspring WoW. They have the market covered.
Time to move onto some fresh unexplored ideas. The genre is STILL wide open. (I originally wrote that 3 or 4 years ago and it is still true today) because no one has moved on.
We have had what 2 or 3 half hearted attempts at Sci-Si games in the last 5 years vs how many turd fantasy games?
Seriously someone post me a total of the amount of fantasy games launched in the last 5 years. (and I'll show you a list of which 90% of it is crap)
How many more ways can you kill 10 rats? Its time to move on with some creative ideas and some actually interesting worlds. WoW, Vanguard, EQ, EQ2...blah blah blah...its all the same thing. You whack your rats, you level up, you play your endgame.
I also agree that IP's are definitely the WRONG way to go. IP's will never live up to expectations. Don't believe me? Log onto SWG, Matrix, Conan or DDO. IMHO LotR is about the only one that held any ground but its level of success, well, its pretty good...for a fantasy grinder but lets put it this way, they never had a problem with the amount of servers they launched with (10)
You need to learn that a game is not a failure just because you don't like to play it. Whats a failed game? I would suggest that the best yard stick is revenue because that means people are playing the games.
What I like or don't like begins and ends with my contribution to the financial success of a game nothing more nothing less.
There, fixed that up a bit.
Although I somewhat disagree with the "bright side" list. IP's are destine to fail.
You're still wrong. People do play most of those games......games don't last over a year if they're not making money....otherwise, yes they're a failure. Somewhere there is a revenue vs. cost scale which results in profits (not losses).
I bet many of those games have as many subs if not more than EQ1 had at its peak. I think that people think games are dead or suck or a failure because they dont have a Blizzard logo on them.
I dont really like EQ2 but I certainly would not call it a failure. Vanguard's population is low but climbing. DAOC is a gen 1 (1.5? ) mmo and has made more money the last 8++ years.......
come on.
What do you subscribe to right now?
not that it matters what I'm playing but Eve and Vanguard.
Last night I had a dream I was playing UO again but then in my dream I had to page a GM and then I realized I didnt want to anymore.
Well I'm not gonna bash on Vanguard to much as I enjoyed the game myself BUT last I heard they were at the 40-50k sub mark. At launch the game had over 200,000 accounts created. Sigil the original maker went bankrupt and sold the game to SOE who put it on the "station welfare system". Hardly a good example for "why we should get more fantasy games".
Why is it DAoC dead while UO lives on? Mythic killed it with changes. Same for EQ vs AC. Why does one live and one is dead? One didn't change at all.
See where I'm going with this? The age of fantasy is over. Sure you can point at technical reasons many of those games died but the same can be said of the handful of Sci-Fi. Like Tabula Rasa or Face of Mankind where launched in a high quality state? Please. They were technical turds.
The fantasy games that did it best and kept it up are still alive today. The rest is just companies slinging sh*t at the wall hoping something will stick and all they are doing is remaking the same thing over and over with different skins.
Why does EVE continue to grow at a healthy and sustained rate over the last 4 years while its fantasy peers drop like flies? Its overly complex, its slow paced, its punishing and it requires a lot of time.
EDIT
Here is a list of MMORPG's with the genre marked on them. The amount of fantasy MMO's makes your head swim.
www.mmorpg.com/gamelist.cfm
A lot of offline time.
I would like to see more games with a steampunk setting, or post acpocalyptic or alternate history, sci-fi does not really interest me though, too campy even when it is trying not to be.
But I can understand why developers use fantasy so much, unlike other genres which have some logical limitations, fantasy does not because of magic. So it is much easier to explain things like buffs or rezing and teleporting and other things that makes the game convienient. It is also instant variety, use a bow, fire ball, or a shadow bolt, they all are ranged DPS skills but makes you think there is more variety.
As opposed to sci-fi where everyone uses guns and some melee weapons and people are limited by gadgets, unless you really start using some soft science.
Don't you worry little buddy. You're dealing with a man of honor. However, honor requires a higher percentage of profit
The games continue to succeed despite your opinion because people don't share it. You suggest that games are a failure because of your sediment towards them. Np in expressing your opinion but some of you are trying to put forward your opinions as fact and then get puzzled as to why the games are succeeding despite it.
WoW reminds me of Walmart and I try to avoid both places....but despite my opinion on those places people continue to go there.
Well I'm not gonna bash on Vanguard to much as I enjoyed the game myself BUT last I heard they were at the 40-50k sub mark. At launch the game had over 200,000 accounts created. Sigil the original maker went bankrupt and sold the game to SOE who put it on the "station welfare system". Hardly a good example for "why we should get more fantasy games".
Why is it DAoC dead while UO lives on? Mythic killed it with changes. Same for EQ vs AC. Why does one live and one is dead? One didn't change at all.
See where I'm going with this? The age of fantasy is over. Sure you can point at technical reasons many of those games died but the same can be said of the handful of Sci-Fi. Like Tabula Rasa or Face of Mankind where launched in a high quality state? Please. They were technical turds.
The fantasy games that did it best and kept it up are still alive today. The rest is just companies slinging sh*t at the wall hoping something will stick and all they are doing is remaking the same thing over and over with different skins.
Why does EVE continue to grow at a healthy and sustained rate over the last 4 years while its fantasy peers drop like flies? Its overly complex, its slow paced, its punishing and it requires a lot of time.
EDIT
Here is a list of MMORPG's with the genre marked on them. The amount of fantasy MMO's makes your head swim.
www.mmorpg.com/gamelist.cfm
About 250k subs after four years on the market tells me that EVE isn't a very easy or friendly environment towards it's players.
And if you are talking about AoC and WAR then it's a very good reason why those games lost most of their playerbases which I will not get into here.
The games continue to succeed despite your opinion because people don't share it. You suggest that games are a failure because of your sediment towards them. Np in expressing your opinion but some of you are trying to put forward your opinions as fact and then get puzzled as to why the games are succeeding despite it.
WoW reminds me of Walmart and I try to avoid both places....but despite my opinion on those places people continue to go there.
Well I'm not going to play battling epeen with you over it, fact of the matter is WoW dominates the Fantasy MMO market and until devs get away from it, nothing will change.
Fantasy is a frightfully broad term, but it tends to get boiled down to the medieval swords and sorcery much of the time. Other settings, like Superhero-based ones, rely on a similar kind of fantasticalism, but it's a different enough setting that it's commonly glossed over in the Fantasy Vs. Sci-Fi discussions.
There are a ton of settings that don't even get a second look, tossed aside in favor of elves and orcs and dwarves. Alternate history is an interesting one. Just change one thing in the past and press fast forward a few years to find the result. Say you had those fantasy elements way back in the dark ages, what do you think the world would be like in the present day? Say the USA never got involved in WWII and Germany turned most of Europe into an empire, what would a near-future Sci-Fi MMORPG look like? Steampunk is effectively this, with steam-power taking off and the internal combustion engine being all but forgotten. The Victorian Era and the Wild West are other settings that are rarely, if ever, touched upon.
I would absolutely love to see more crativity shown across the board in MMORPG settings, I just don't know how likely that is.
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Playing: Nothing
Played: Champions Online, CoX, STO, PSO, WoW, lots of free-to-play crap
Looking Forward To: DC Universe Online, Blade and Soul
You need to learn that a game is not a failure just because you don't like to play it. Whats a failed game? I would suggest that the best yard stick is revenue because that means people are playing the games.
What I like or don't like begins and ends with my contribution to the financial success of a game nothing more nothing less.
No .. not revenue. It should be profit. In a financial yardstick, Hellgate London & Tabula Rasa are obvious pathetic losers failure.
Well i was suggesting that revenue was an indication of the number of players since the cost of mmos all range from 14 - 20 USD. So despite how the companies spend their money the money they bring in is some indication as to their popularity despite their costs.
....but im no expert.
I think you missed the point of my post, there was a reason I picked number of players as the measuring stick, because it is the only real comparable factor of an MMO.
When you go to the suit with the money and say "I want $30mil to make an MMO, here is my design document" they will ask you for a return on investment, you will then have to prove to them that your product can pay back that $30mil with interest in a finite amount of time.
Now the only way you can possibly work this is to base your figures on existing products in the market place, because if you go "Its never been done before" they will just laugh at you.
So taking that on board, you can cite SWG and EVE as positive examples of sci fi MMOs, though a suit would argue that SWG was only successful because of its license (whether this is true or not). This then leaves you with just EVE and if you are presenting a design based on avatar and ground combat, then you don't really have anything to base it on.
Yet we then look at the other side of the coin which is fantasy, you can cite EQ, EQ2, DAoC, WoW, AoC, WAR, L2, and others as being successful and examples of the return you can make. Whilst you may cry foul about WAR and AoC being in there, it is all about how you play the figures, if I want something impressive to say, I will turn around and say a half finished fantasy MMO with the right concept managed to sell over 400,000 units in the first week (AoC), a finished fantasy MMO with the right concept but inferior execution managed to sell 750,000 units in the first week (WAR). And the market leader has a subscription growth every year since launch leaving it currently at over 11 million subscribers world wide. Now imagine what we can do with our design which learns from the mistakes AoC and WAR made and takes into account the successful features of WoW!
The suit will be impressed by these big figures and your manipulation of them to show the financial return and you will be given your $30mil to start work on your fantasy MMO. This is why we get so many MMOs that follow the WoW pattern, not because the market wants them, but because the suits won't invest that much money in anything that isn't proven.
Now, I'm not saying a sci fi MMO can't be big, SWTOR will be, but I don't think anyone other than LucasArts is willing to invest in a big budget sci fi MMO at this time without any figures from existing MMOs to back up the investment. After SWTOR is out, I fully expect there to be some big sums of money invested in that genre which will hopefully yield at least one AAA title.
Why the hell is it always Sci-Fi vs Fantasy? What's wrong with having both?
The MMORPG genre has room for everything.
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Meow
See: my sig.
The 3,000 tries at generic fantasy grinders wasn't enough? How many more "visions" are we going to need to endure. Everyone who wants to play this fantasy crap is playing it already. On top of it anyone who is playing this stuff is more then likely playing WoW, seriously why play anything else when it comes to level / class based fantasy grinders?
Look at any other video game genre, its not fantasy that dominates it's modern and assorted SciFi. The problem with the MMO genre is the devs have been superglued to making their version of EQ for 10 years now. Enough already, its time to move and call it a day with the EQ and its bastard offspring WoW. They have the market covered.
Time to move onto some fresh unexplored ideas. The genre is STILL wide open. (I originally wrote that 3 or 4 years ago and it is still true today) because no one has moved on.
We have had what 2 or 3 half hearted attempts at Sci-Si games in the last 5 years vs how many turd fantasy games?
Seriously someone post me a total of the amount of fantasy games launched in the last 5 years. (and I'll show you a list of which 90% of it is crap)
How many more ways can you kill 10 rats? Its time to move on with some creative ideas and some actually interesting worlds. WoW, Vanguard, EQ, EQ2...blah blah blah...its all the same thing. You whack your rats, you level up, you play your endgame.
I also agree that IP's are definitely the WRONG way to go. IP's will never live up to expectations. Don't believe me? Log onto SWG, Matrix, Conan or DDO. IMHO LotR is about the only one that held any ground but its level of success, well, its pretty good...for a fantasy grinder but lets put it this way, they never had a problem with the amount of servers they launched with (10)
Look if you don't like the fantasy genre that's fine. Go play your sci fi MMO no need to attack me
I personally love the genre, and I'm not too fond of sci fi or whatever most of the time. Just because so many games have failed with fantasy does not mean I am discouraged! I have played many, many single player fantasy RPG's that were marvelous in my book.
I say there are PLENTY of golden ideas for MMORPGs from non MMO games (that can be used in ones with the fantasy theme) things we haven't even thought of yet, and the MMO I'm thinking of won't have levels.
Now before you go on about me wanting a single player experience or whatever- no. There are plenty of good ideas from other games that can be applied in a way where multiple people can get together and just have FUN!
--------------------------
Playing:
FFXIV, TERA, LoL, and HoTS
My Rig:
GPU: GeForce GTX 770, CPU: i7-4790K, Memory: 16 GB RAM
You sir or ma'am, as the case maybe, of all the posts that have followed my start, some good some bad some just stupid, have hit the nail squarely on the head with this post.
You have answered my question exactly as to why there will not be a big league sci fi MMO. Not in the near future and probably not until the very fabric of the industry changes.
Of course this being said, with the poor performance, I don't like to use the word failure so liberally as other because I feel a MMO has not failed as long as some people find their niche in it, of some of the new fantasy MMOs if a few good sci fi MMOs hit it big then companies may start looking into the genre. Unfortunately I don't think SWOR will be leading the way.
""But Coyote, you could learn! You only prefer keyboard and mouse because that's all you've ever known!" You might say right before you hug a rainforest and walk in sandals to your drum circle where you're trying to raise group consciousness of ladybugs or whatever it is you dirty goddamn hippies do when you're not busy smoking pot and smelling bad."
Coyote's Howling: Death of the Computer
Well, the reality of the situation is the only MMO that is a failure is the one that gets closed down. But I wanted to be dramatic
If WAR can sell 750,000 units then SWTOR can too, add into the mixture that it is Star Wars and that it is BioWare, it will probably sell over a million units. Whether it can hold onto them or not is pretty irrelevant really. Too many people in the industry still look at MMOs like single player games, how much can we make back from initial sale and how much can we reduce costs after release.
This is why I think the Asian development model is better, they aim lower content wise, release earlier and maintain that level of development throughout the life cycle of the game, rather than throwing lots of people at it in development then cutting back to a skeleton crew like the western developers do.
But as a westerner myself, working for a western publisher, I know that convincing them to do anything different is impossible at this time. The only way it will really change is if the person with the money is the one trying to change things and most of the people with the money in the industry these days don't actually know anything about making games.