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Why AOC and WAR failed
tfox2k1
Member Posts: 215
I predicted both AoC and WAR would fail over a year ago, based upon their focus on PVP. Gamers continue to believe PVP can be done properly in an MMO. PVP has to be skill based to be successful, MMO players are not high skill based.
Therefore if you have a real PVP skill based MMO the majority of your player base will be sheep while the rest are the wolves. People don't continue to pay to be sheep. The sheep whine for nerfs, and the developers freak out when the numbers to falling and begin the endless nerf cycle until everyone is one mindless, generic, skillless, zerg.
Guild Wars worked because it was skill based and since you already bought the box who cares if you quit. The expansions kind of changed things a bit in PVP, but mostly the sheep just stayed out of PVP and focused on free PVE.
Eve works, because it is a niche product and its not a orcs and dorks style of pvp, therefore it can be skill based and succeed. Although it does suffer from the same sheep/wolves analogy.
LOTRO has a great idea of PVP. The developers realized they needed the wolves to play monsters so their main characters wouldn't be nerfed into oblivion. The developers also made the best PVE experience to maintain the sheep. Ironically the one major MMO to not focus on PVP delivered the best PVP experience of any current MMO.
I'm a wolf and have tried pvp in an MMO. I'm usually one of the reasons MMO devs nerf their games. Because I get greedy and farm too many sheep. So now when I want to hunt I play FPS games. When I want mindless, socialization, while griding, I play an MMO.
Conclusion. Both WAR and AOC will fail, unless they change their focus on PVP.
Comments
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
I have always said that in a Level / Class based MMO... PvP has no place.
In a level / class based MMO the classes need to be unbalanced. That's the whole beauty of it.
Every class has it's specific role within the PVE content and promotes cooperative and social teamplay.
The only way PVP can work in a MMO is in a sandbox type of MMO that is fully skillbased. No levels, No classes.
You would still get the typical cookie cutter templates that works best in PVP, like it was back in good old SWG. But it didn't really matter. PVP was still much more fun back then.
The beauty of a fully skillbased MMO, is that it's far more easy to actually balance out the combat skill trees.
That is the whole problem of level based / class based MMO's.
You are either a tank, melee DPS, ranged DPS, CC or a Healer. Every class having a specific role for the PVE content.
So in that perspective I agree with the OP that when a developer announces a level / class based MMO and is saying it's going to be a PvP focussed game.... that it's pretty much doomed to fail.
Either the PVP will suck bad.... or the PVE will suck bad... but in reality it usually ends up in both sucking bad.
Cheers
I disagree.
You won't get a very balanced 1v1 system. But in larger battles you could definitely balance it. That's why WoW will never have balanced PvP. They try to focus on small fights and 1v1 rather than balancing on a larger scale.
WAR's idea of balancing around group RvR and then fitting the PvE mechanics into that was a good idea. The execution imo wasn't very good, but the idea is definitely better than balancing around PvE.
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Guys! I'm hopelessly lost in a mountain of mole hills! Them damn moles!
I disagree.
You won't get a very balanced 1v1 system. But in larger battles you could definitely balance it. That's why WoW will never have balanced PvP. They try to focus on small fights and 1v1 rather than balancing on a larger scale.
WAR's idea of balancing around group RvR and then fitting the PvE mechanics into that was a good idea. The execution imo wasn't very good, but the idea is definitely better than balancing around PvE.
You cannot balance classes without compromising either PVP or PVE. That is the whole problem.
You either have to make the system so difficult to split clas balance from PVE and PVP entirely with seperate PVE and PVP skill trees, so you can savely balanced the PVP without affecting PVE and vise versa... but as this is very costly... no one has bothered trying it yet.
OR.... you end up with simplified boring classes that basically pretty much end up the same for the sake of easy balancing, making the gameplay extremely monotone and dull.
Take your pick.
That's why Sandbox type of games wich are fully Skill based, instead of Level/Class based... will have the future.
It just takes a Sandbox MMO to launch and hit the jackpot with decent number of subs... so the other gaming studios wake up and finally see the light!
Cheers
"I'm a wolf and have tried pvp in an MMO. I'm usually one of the reasons MMO devs nerf their games."
Wolves usually hunt in packs. When you have 20 "wolves" ganking one or two lone "sheep", I fail to see how that would take an abundance of skill...
As far as the whole being the reason dev's nerf games...well...
...see my skill points rising there?
That Guild Wars 2 login screen knocked up my wife. Must be the second coming!
I disagree.
You won't get a very balanced 1v1 system. But in larger battles you could definitely balance it. That's why WoW will never have balanced PvP. They try to focus on small fights and 1v1 rather than balancing on a larger scale.
WAR's idea of balancing around group RvR and then fitting the PvE mechanics into that was a good idea. The execution imo wasn't very good, but the idea is definitely better than balancing around PvE.
You cannot balance classes without compromising either PVP or PVE. That is the whole problem.
You either have to make the system so difficult to split clas balance from PVE and PVP entirely with seperate PVE and PVP skill trees, so you can savely balanced the PVP without affecting PVE and vise versa... but as this is very costly... no one has bothered trying it yet.
OR.... you end up with simplified boring classes that basically pretty much end up the same for the sake of easy balancing, making the gameplay extremely monotone and dull.
Take your pick.
That's why Sandbox type of games wich are fully Skill based, instead of Level/Class based... will have the future.
It just takes a Sandbox MMO to launch and hit the jackpot with decent number of subs... so the other gaming studios wake up and see the light!
Cheers
People must have forgotten the whole "Work together" idea. PvP should NOT just be 1v1 battles. It should be ALL classes WORKING TOGETHER. That's the idea behind dungeons and raiding...that's what it should be like in PvP.
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Guys! I'm hopelessly lost in a mountain of mole hills! Them damn moles!
I make the distinction between player vs player combat and what you're talking about. I've always failed to see where the challenge is in engaging a character who is clearly not equipped to handle a pvp situation.
Take Eve miners or UO lumber jacks for example. There is no challenge in defeating these character types yet it gets pegged as player vs player as if the B side of the equation had a chance in the first place.
The OP makes a good point. I consider myself a good PvPer, but playing pvp in an MMO is very frustrating because of the simple fact that there are so many players nowadays that just do not understand teamwork and discipline. Everyone seems to be out for themselves with very little regard for the team/faction they are representing. Nobody even tries to lead warpartys correctly anymore because nobody will listen. And when you do get a good group of players together who know what they are doing and work well together, its just too damn easy when you are going up against players who have no leadership or willingness to cooperate or even participate in many instances.
The good news in all of this is that all the multiplayer FPS are free to play. You still have the same mentalities as in MMOs sometimes, but it really doesn't matter as much, because you can switch teams to even them out; you can change servers if the teams are too easy or too hard. Teamspeak or venrillo actually make sense and don't detract from the RPG aspect (in the case of fantasy MMOs), and most of the time players have equal gear and weapons. The only thing that separates the sheep from the wolves in most FPS is pure skill and experience i.e. map layout and where to pick up weapons and ammo.
Vault-Tec analysts have concluded that the odds of worldwide nuclear armaggeddon this decade are 17,143,762... to 1.
Both these games failed because with the exception of WAR's RvR system (same is DAOC's) both games are pretty much straight WOW clones without the polish or as much content.
This industry isn't going to see another "hit" until it gets past the notion that you can try to copy WOW and for some reason no one will explain adequately, millions of those players (who are no doubt fans of that style) will leave WOW (which is the Cadillac of that style) for their crappy game (more like a Chevette or Ford Pinto).
The lesson the industry needs is that DIFFERENT works. Look at EVE. EVE has quietly risen to #2 to WOW in the US/EU and continues to grow despite being nothing that WOW is and everything that WOW is not.
After playing MMORPG's since 2001, I'm still not sure if PvP has a place in MMO's. The fact is most people just plain suck at PvP, which ruins the experience for not only them as they die continuosly, but for the few good players that die along with them in fustration as the bad players refuse to listen or just don't have the skills to listen. I'm fine with that; it's their money and they deserve to spend it the way they want. My point being is that PvP is unbalanced in every game I've tried and probably won't ever be balanced and still be an interesting game on the PvE side of things.
I too believe PvP is best reserved for FPS games, where you can log in when you want and your main goal is to rack up the most kill counts or the least death counts. However, in games that offer a world over game design, such as the up and coming Darkfall, PvP probably needs to exist to make the world feel more real. I still think the PvP system will be abused in that game and won't be much fun for RPers like me that like PvP in a game to make things real, but we'll see...if the game releases and isn't a failure.
As for class balance, I believe classes SHOULDN"T be balanced in PvE. I really love the way DnD and all its offshoots (KoToR) has done classes for the past few decades. Every class has a strength and a weakness. Every class brings something to the table that another does not. This allows for roles to be filled in a group. Every class also allows for a new play experience as you go through the old content in the game. Things kind of made sense in DnD. Every class could deal dmg and solo well, but every class had a weakness.
My game of choice is WoW right now. I don't exactly believe in the way WoW has done things as far as PvE balance. I never agreed with PvE balance, because quite frankly, some classes should be more powerful than others due to their nature. It just makes sense that a Mage is more powerful than a Warrior, because they can kill you before you get to them. What makes classes in WoW dull sometimes is that every class has skills they can counter basically everything with, which makes choosing a class pointless. For instance, where a Mage should win due to range advantage, they will die when a Warrior charges in and uses a silence maneuver to keep the Mage from casting.
I think WoW is a classic example of balancing classes for PvP, which turned out to make classes more dull in the process for PvE.
I don't even know why I'm replying to this thread, because bottom line, I've accepted the way things are as can be seen by me still being subscribed to an MMO. You learn to live with things you don't like to get things you do like. The good must always outweigh the bad, and in WoW, it does for me.
MMORPG's w/ Max level characters: DAoC, SWG, & WoW
Currently Playing: WAR
Preferred Playstyle: Roleplay/adventurous, in a sandbox game.
Seriously, the reason why it's hard to have a large scale open PvP type battle game as a focus is time and results.
Although there is a segment of the gaming population that likes PvP as a main focus, that segment isn't huge by any stretch. That's why all PvP games have PvE content in them. And all of that segment likes different kinds of PvP not just the same Open RvR type. Eve, Guild Wars, Warhammer and Wow are different kinds of niched pvp. It's a bad premise to assume that if someone just made a large scale Open RvR game that works right, that ALL pvp players will flock to it. That was Mythic's mistake.
The reason WoW's pvp does so well over the years is those battles are usually the amount of time the average player wants to spend killing someone else for most PvP players. The majority of people do not want to kill the same people over and over for 4-8 hours, its just way too much of a time sink with little scenery change. Kill someone in Warhammer, that same guy will be back in your face without real penalty in 20 seconds. That gets old especially if you're spose to be conquering something. This is essentially the PvP version of a mob grind. Just switch a mob for an actual live person you are killing 50X in an hour and what's the difference? There is none. Grind is grind.
People don't give Blizzard enough credit. They think they made simple 1v1 balanced pvp because they weren't smart enough to figure how to make Open RvR work. It's the reverse; they know how most people feel about PvP; they want some kind of feedback at the end of any type of battle and don't wanna spend hours on hours getting it. 30 minutes is usually plenty of time to accomplish this for most folks especially when its not "rock, paper, scissors" but most anyone has a chance against anyone else to some degree. Same amount of time in Guild Wars but they have different twists.
Battling in Open RvR for 4 hours plus, then logging for sleep/work/school with no kind of end result other than Renown points is kind of lame for the typical Pvper. Especially when they log back in and see the objectives haven't changed much since they left. Those epic battles people describe do not apply to everyone in the Pvp crowd, but people always assume it's what everyone is really waiting for.
"TO MICHAEL!"
There isn't any challenge players that hunt gathering characters with no fighting skills are cowards really.
I always find it cool when miners srike back in Eve though, Nothing like stealing from a miner and having a flight of tech two drones come at ya just as you realize the dude has all his shield skills to max.
always nice to see those idiots pop to a group of miners lol.
PLaying: EvE, Ryzom
Waiting For: Earthrise, Perpetuum
Oh, forgot to reply about WAR and AoC. I'm not sure why WAR and AoC failure threads are popping up like crazy, but this has been rehashed a dozen times over already. Some people made some really good points in the last thread that popped up on this yesterday.
There isn't a lot of new people coming into the genre. So what you have is game developers canabalizing players from other games. Currently, WoW is top dog and offers the best gameplay experience for the majority of this pool of players. So, as long as a game developer is going to create a quest based/level game, they are going to fail, unless it can beat WoW or catch WoW on a year where they aren't releasing an expansion. Simply put, WAR and AoC tried to beat WoW on their own turf.
Now this next point can be argued with points in favor for both sides, but simply put, EvE is the only other game that comes to mind that offers something completely different and has the subs to show for it. I cannot stand EvE as a game, because it bores the shit out of me, but I respect the hell out of that game, because it dares to be different. That game continues to gain subscribers as time goes by. It's a slow pace, but atleast the sub. numbers aren't going down like every other game on the market, except for WoW.
I think LoTRO is also successful, because they released at a time when WoW was getting old and no other quest/level based game released in a polished state. LoTRO did released polished and offered a solid, albeit boring game, so it retained subscriptions. I respect Turbine for LoTRO, because they stuck to their guns and took their time to release a polished game. It's not as good as WOW, but it's a nice alternative if you ever get bored of WoW and want to experience a different story.
MMORPG's w/ Max level characters: DAoC, SWG, & WoW
Currently Playing: WAR
Preferred Playstyle: Roleplay/adventurous, in a sandbox game.
Moron
I though I was coming into this thread to read something with substance but to no avail. Perhaps if you expanded more on your analogies and your grieviances we would be able to look at your point of view better but you only scratched the surface and all we can see is saw-dust.
Guildwars had great PvP no doubt, Warhammer had great PVP only thing wrong with it is that it wouldn't last very long unless you have a dedicated guild and even then we all get bored, AoC I cannot vouche for because I quit before I got to see PvP but I can imagine that it was engaging. What I'm trying to say is these games (AoC and WAR) did not fail(or will not fail) because they focused on PvP or because they weren't skill based they failed because they didn't do them in a way that captures the imagination of the player or gives the player some sort of motivating reward to continue playing even when they've hit max level that allows the player to have a goal other than to hit 40 and pummel anything underneath. Eve has that in spades, Guildwars had a story that was a reward in itself each time you completed a mission that lead to a cutscene, WoW....it doesn't have anything special......it just has intense popularity that makes someone who has never played it want to play it.
In other words your thought process is either wrong or not well put together and your wolf/sheep analogy is just....... wow.
This is not a game.
I dont believe WAR has failed so much. Fact is, its loads of fun (for me anyways) . AoC failed but not because of PvP content. I think a lot of players though have to redefine their expectations of a newly released game and stop comparing them to MMOs that have been maturing for 4+ years.
Torrential: DAOC (Pendragon)
Awned: World of Warcraft (Lothar)
Torren: Warhammer Online (Praag)
AoC's failure doesn't require a lot of analysis. Once off Tortage the game sucked. Plain and simple.
I have no opinion on WAR, haven't played it.
Yeah as far as I know both of these games are still around. I don't think OP knows what Fail means. Perhaps he should reread his post to see what fail is, it's chalk full of it.
Hi
Are you sure they failed? How much subscribers are needed to be a successful MMO? I heared that AoC is loved by people who like roleplaying. Maybe its not so gigantic like wow, but its not necessary to be the best to make money.
"Die Vorzüge von gestern sind oft die Fehler von morgen" Anatole France
Sorry but both AoC and WAR have fairly bad PvP. Therefore while your thesis may have merit we won't know until a good PvP game flops.
Some people will say WAR has good PvP, but it billed itself as an RvR game and its RvR has absolutely no strategy or longevity to it, which means it is low quality.
However I am pretty certain the OP is wrong. WAR brought many people who were looing for good RvR and they did enjoy level 1-20. But the bugs/poor performance and the game after level 20 could not keep them. To put it bluntly WAR lacked sucbstance and after the first half of the level curve, when people started looking they saw none.
An RvR fucsed game with substance and decent PvE will do quite well I think. Who would have thunk the makers of the first RvR game would have no idea how to make substantive RvR? But that is what happened.
I am neither nor the wolf or the sheep. I am the human who hunts them both! lol I do agree with the OP that you need a skill based system to balance out PVP.
Why does Lineage and Lineage 2 work? When people talk about MMO's or PvP in MMO's, they always leave out the Lineage series, which aside from WoW are the biggest/most successful MMORPG's ever, and they are 100% PvP based...However their PvP is integrated into the game, its not some on/off switch you activate by talking to a NPC or signing up for an event.
How many people here have actually played DAOC? Can’t comment on how it ended up but the best PvP I have had. LotR has an interesting take on PvP one that works well but is not as satisfying as proper RvR. But as we have seen lately proper RvR is hard to pull off.
OK so I'm trying to understand the OP and I'm wondering if I read this correctly...
PvP in MMOG's doesn't work.... unless of course its an MMOG where it works. Did I read that correctly? Got it thanks clear as mud.
When people only care about leetz geearz and me-me-me rewards, how do you expect them to succeed in a team-focused game?
DAoC = before WoW.
WAR = after WoW.
There's the problem.
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A human and an Elf get captured by Skaven. The rat-men are getting ready to shoot the first hostage with Dwarf-made guns when he yells, "Earthquake!" The naturally nervous Skaven run and hide from the imaginary threat. He escapes. The Skaven regroup and bring out the Elf. Being very smart, the Elf has figured out what to do. When the Skaven get ready to shoot, the Elf, in order to scare them, yells, "Fire!"
Order of the White Border.