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Current MMOs: No longer designed to be played over the long haul?
JGMIII
Member Posts: 1,282
Have MMOs changed? Have MMOs gone from games that held players for years to only holding for 3-6 months until players move to the next game?
Have they gone from Worlds we lived in to Places we visit, like some type of vacation resort?
Are the players responsible for this? yes? no?
Are the MMO companies responsible? Would these companies rather just create games designed for high turn over and rapid box sales instead of core fans that play and pay for 4-5+ years?
It would seem so but that's only my opinion I would like to hear yours.
Playing: EvE, Ryzom
Comments
Or is the primary userbase changing, not so much the games themselves?
In my opinion, probably a bit of both.
Wolfenpride: <--Giant fucking sword syndrome.
Probably cause im trying to compensate for miniscule manhood.
I think it may be due to the "sameness" of MMO's on the market. I have played several in the last year or so and i have yet to find one that im willing to invest months or years into. I was a single player guy until my son in law talked me into WOW. Played some with him but mostly my grandsons. Played WOW the longest of any MMO, just a bit over two years. Played more to play with the boys than due to finding the game spectacular.
MMO's these days are designed for instant gratification.
Instant gratification never provides long term satisfaction.
Any fool can criticize, condemn and complain and most fools do.
Benjamin Franklin
No.
You, I, and others are simply used to MMORPGS now. People new to the genre will still be captivated by them, and stick at one for some time. Those of us who have been playing for a decade know them inside out. We know the underlying mechanics, we know what to expect, for the most part.
Remember when driving your car was fun? Any excuse to go out for a drive. 15 years later it's not so fun, traffic is a chore, the roads are clogged, petrol is expensive.
There is nothing wrong with the mmo industry. There is an amazing choice that simply didn't exist 10 years ago. There are some fantastic quality games on the market with oodles of content. The problem is you.
If you eat nothing but chips you will soon become bored of chips.
Now whether this is good or bad would depend on each persons opinion. People do change with age, Where once someone was a hardcore player, that same person may now be a casual player just looking for a little fun with friends.
No matter what the business, companies adapt to the the changes in the people they are trying to serve.
These are just my opinions though.
Most people don't play MMOs for years. They didn't back in 2000 and they don't now. There was a study right before WOW came out and the churn was around 6-8 months average. Forumgoers are NOT the majority or even a decent representation.
they did.. and tbh its the reason most todays mmo fail, would it be bad launch, or terrible bugs and performance, none of those things actually kill game.. yes you loose about 10% due bugs or crappy launch, i mean you dont exactly quit game after investing it.. cuz some quest dont work.. some class is bit better, or cuz server is down
the fact why most mmo fail after 2 months, cuz they dont have content after those 2 months, the whole catchprase every mmo dev today days , that you login and have action instant, was it 30 mins or hour.. there is plenty of action, it makes me sick
its whole casual market crap, its one of those wow myths , where every american will say wow is the mmo that ruined mmo genre, and introduced everyone and his grandmom to mmo genre, when its only americans who have those commercials, and its only what 15-30% of wow pop is from america is bullcrap
while thats not the point, wow is actuall factor why every game now catters to fast playtime, and whatnot
what most devs dont see, that wow was never like that , yes you could basicly login and do battleground in 30 mins, but thats about it, nor wow was about super duper 1-xx lvl content , it was simple there was nothing exactly ground breaking, it was well done.. polished, and it was fun doing it with others
my post reminds me too much of warhammer, which we know, is wow copy to extend , and it failed on key points, such as mm, those 2 letters, never fitted into war, it was like single player, lan game at best, only first 5 lvls felt like mmorpg, server caps were terrible, 1k ppl, 500 per side, spread out in what 8 locations was it.. ? 4 for each side? or 6, anyway , you get the point
while im pretty sure wow servers had 5k cap from release ( hey i might be wrong ) and have about 10k ( i might be wrong again ) now, and wow was all about endgame
and wow didnt actually do anything for casuals till wotlk, or atleast middle of tbc , and by that time they had what 9-10 mln subs , so once again, mass casualisation ( most of its actually good thing for hc players too, it didnt ruin the game ) wasnt the key thing in getting all the subs
what got them , was content to keep ppl playing, you keep yours 6 mln, you add 2-3 more with another expansions, then same with one more, in the end you keep them all, and boom ur on 11 mln, it wasnt like
oh wow.. 2 months later, its 300 subs, then year altter is 3mln, then again 300 subs.. no
trow me in some half assed quests, polish the game, make it fun, add loads of endgame content, and thats the only way, someone gonna get above 1 mln
questing is most fun at the beggining anyway, there will be no quest line or quest system, that beats the rush while lvling with guildies, exploring new stuff, or just racing to lvl cap, so when you invest so much into few quests, and midgame content, just to realise, you doing it solo, its far from fun
I played MMOs back then And we have an extremely high turn over rate these days.
I don't really care what some study says all I could comment on are my own experiences and games like UO, EQ, AC, DAoC, AO and Even WoW were played much longer then games that released in the last 2-3 years.
I do agree that we're the minority I;ve always said forum goers are like 3-5% of the overall MMO community but I don't see what that has to do with it.
Playing: EvE, Ryzom
Your average MMO forum reader is going to have trouble accepting that, but it's pretty much true. Retention rates have been a relative constant for the past decade.
- RPG Quiz - can you get all 25 right?
- FPS Quiz - how well do you know your shooters?
EvE and Alganon are the two mmo's ithink of that seem to want there players for the long haul.
playing eq2 and two worlds
Nicely said.......
Your average MMO forum reader is going to have trouble accepting that, but it's pretty much true. Retention rates have been a relative constant for the past decade.
When a player starts playing a game they usually put in a good deal of time initially. Why is this? Part of this is due to it just being "new" but the other part is that the player is getting something valuable in return for their time spent in the game. As the game progresses there comes a point where the value per time spent ratio starts to decrease until eventually the player feels their time is more important than to spend playing a game that returns no value.
I think the game developers need to continue to find ways to maintain a high value / time ratio over longer periods of time. I have no illusions that this is an easy problem to solve but until progress is made on this the market will not see significant increases in long term retention.
How do you keep that first 30 days feeling 2 or more years after ship? There seems to be a pretty obvious solution, just not an obvious way to achieve it.
The solution of course is to make sure the players always have something new to experience. Once the player feels like they hit the ceiling or cap then boredom starts to set in as they look for things to do to keep that value/time ratio high. So how do you do that?
Some players may enjoy grinding for a better piece of gear while others just spend their time doing other activities. For some players this keeps that ratio up but for a large body of players they simply cannot find enough interesting things to do to justify the time spent and so they stop playing (usually until the next major content expansion comes out).
So while I do agree that the current retention rate amount MMO players is low I think it has more to do with the games than with the players. Yes some players are just curious and will never remain long term. Some are asked to play by friends/family but wouldn't do so on their own. Once that recruiting player stops playing so do they. Then of course you have the hardcore players that burn through content in periods of days not months and then get bored and quit. The fact is that you have all kinds of players with all kinds of playing habits and interests. That is what makes the problem so difficult to solve.
That way, if he gets angry, he's a mile away and barefoot.
MMOs design objective seems to be changing, instead of being a game based on a persistent character in which you have fun and grow strong according to the time you spend developing it, it's changing to something that is either a fast development, or a development in which money makes the difference, easily shown by the rise of F2P Item Mall MMOs and RMT Powerleveling and Currency selling companies, and they only grow because people support them.
Even though I really hate this way and believe in the traditional sense of games being merely something to have fun as you play it - the fun being in progressing, not in the end of it, nothing can be done when the MMO players of old that were kids and now are adults think they can conquer the games with money instead of the time they used to invest. This even changes the new generations of players that never played old school MMOs such as UO in their beginning that now face games developed around the money-shortcut.
But, yes, MMOs pretty much are changing, and not only in the graphical evolution sense, but also in the focus of the fun.
MMO's these days are designed for instant gratification.
Instant gratification never provides long term satisfaction.
This pretty much explains it
IMO if you dont create huge emersive worlds with plenty of options and things to do it will not hold ppl very long.
Take for instance WAR. Its very shallow in mnay respects to pvp, crafting and being lead form one area to another. This wont translate to long term subs. I cant believe I lasted 4 months on it.
Eve Online has plenty to do: Trading. missioning, pvp, reaerching, manufacturing, mining in a huge universe. When the walk in stations comes out this game will get even larger. Been playing over a year now.
You've simply got to think big and out of the box to hold subs. Unfortunately its not happening in alot of cases.
Played : WOW, LOTRO, COH/COV, EQ2, SWG, and WAR.
Playing EVE Online and AOC.
Wtg for SW:TOR and WOD
I believe the MMO design is just losing its flare to be honest. And maybe not just the MMO genre, but all online genres. Its been stated before that players are just simply getting used to the mechanics, tiny changes to a feature here and there are not keeping our attention, and the recycling of the same old features is just not compelling as they once were when the MMO genre was young and fresh. Graphics can only get so detailed before they become too much like real life. The fantasy genre can only mix and match the basic archetypes so many ways to logically create something even half-ass "new". Don't get me wrong, we all have the "must haves" that must be contained in a game to play it. Features that should by now be a "default" thing with all MMOs.
I will use WoW as an example as its the fondest "End-Game" experience I have had. There are many complaints that encounters are becoming to easy or simplified, but could it be that you are such an experienced MMO player that nothing really seems all that surprising. There are only so many ways to use a randomly generated event with a computer. A computer/program operates on a specific list of instructions to accomplish a task, and throwing in a RNG in there will only change so many things. Scripted events only stay so cool and new for so long, before you no longer have to keep that silence on ventrilo to stay concentrated.
The gamers are just simply too used to the mechanics, the setting, and all of the other features that make up a normal MMO.
This doesn't mean there isnt room for innovation, but there are only so many ways to skin a cat before you are a pretty experienced cat skinner.
This isn't knocking MMO development, its just a point of view on how far the average MMO player has come along with the Genre itself.
I've stated this in your last thread about endgame. Maybe it's why you created this thread, maybe not, but it's a good topic.
I believe the answer is staring us in the face. The proof is already presented to us. MMORPG's have turned into a genre aimed at the casual player. We can see this in almost every design decision, from the leveling curve, to the length of time it takes to accomplish something. UI has been created to streamline functions and make it as easy and intuitive as searching the web. So from my view, I believe MMO's are only designed to last the average player 3-6 months, the hardcore less, and the extremely casual more. I don't see this as a bad thing, because the genre is becoming saturated with other choices, leaving us the ability to play all new releases and return to the old ones when an expansion is released. No longer do we need to feel loyal to one game for 5 years, wondering what we're missing from other games. No longer do we need multiple subscriptions, since we can experience it all in a reasonable amount of time, with plenty of the year left to try other games. As I approach 30 years of age, and my life becomes busy, I cannot help but appreciate the direction the genre is going. But make no mistake, I do remember the good times of my first MMO's. I do remember the time sinks, and the good community it bore. There's still a place for virtual worlds that allow people to simulate real life inside a game, but the stakes are high and any effort put into one would need to be good enough to ensure quality.
This is a good and valid point. This goes for all genres too. All games start to feel the same and no longer capture your attention like they once did. I think the only cure for this is something most gamers don't want to face, and that's a break. Gamers need to take a break from one genre; long enough for them to forget things you took for granted. Maybe the gamer could play another genre; a genre the complete opposite of the one they came from. Or they can simply take a break from gaming and pick it back up the next year when something truely exciting gets their attention.
This is a good and valid point. This goes for all genres too. All games start to feel the same and no longer capture your attention like they once did. I think the only cure for this is something most gamers don't want to face, and that's a break. Gamers need to take a break from one genre; long enough for them to forget things you took for granted. Maybe the gamer could play another genre; a genre the complete opposite of the one they came from. Or they can simply take a break from gaming and pick it back up the next year when something truely exciting gets their attention.
On a further note, I agree with you that maybe the first generation of MMO players should take a long needed break. Now Im not saying the ones that are perfectly fine with the genre and still taken in by its vastness. But we all know there were things to do before we found these gems and there are still things to do if we stopped playing them, I dont think anyone can safely say that gaming is their ONLY interest. So do like I did, sit back, unsub from everything for a while, and simply Watch the genre evolve and change.
Who knows, maybe a year or so down the road a leap in tech will allow for more innovation. Sit and wait. Pick another hobby for a while. See which games rise and which ones fall. Its actually quite interesting, and you will over time learn which ones are worth playing and giving a trial run, or which ones you think you should stay away from.
MMOGs were always designed to have a 4 month shelf life for a regular player. Go back and read any of the designer chats from any MMOG made in the last 15 years.
This is a good and valid point. This goes for all genres too. All games start to feel the same and no longer capture your attention like they once did. I think the only cure for this is something most gamers don't want to face, and that's a break. Gamers need to take a break from one genre; long enough for them to forget things you took for granted. Maybe the gamer could play another genre; a genre the complete opposite of the one they came from. Or they can simply take a break from gaming and pick it back up the next year when something truely exciting gets their attention.
On a further note, I agree with you that maybe the first generation of MMO players should take a long needed break. Now Im not saying the ones that are perfectly fine with the genre and still taken in by its vastness. But we all know there were things to do before we found these gems and there are still things to do if we stopped playing them, I dont think anyone can safely say that gaming is their ONLY interest. So do like I did, sit back, unsub from everything for a while, and simply Watch the genre evolve and change.
Who knows, maybe a year or so down the road a leap in tech will allow for more innovation. Sit and wait. Pick another hobby for a while. See which games rise and which ones fall. Its actually quite interesting, and you will over time learn which ones are worth playing and giving a trial run, or which ones you think you should stay away from.
I agree. I believe that people have just become addicted to the fact that they can play a game nonstop for years, so they buy every mmorpg as it hits the market. People in other genres don't buy every single game that releases; instead, they buy only the games that interest them. MMO gamers should really do the same. They should play the MMO that does satisfy them until it no longer does, then unsub and play no MMORPG until one comes out that they truely are excited about or their last one releases an expansion. But I feel silly telling people what they should do, because it's not my choice and I don't actually care all that much. Its just that you hear this all the time on the forums now, like a bunch of crack addicts that don't know their crack addicts, complaining that no MMORPG satisfies them, that they're all crap.
Except before MMOs, online text-based games were holding people's attention for years and years at a time. I know there was one that I played for more than 15 years, another for around 13 years, and that was the norm for most people on those games. Today, you're lucky if you get a year on a game before you're completely bored and looking for something else to do.
What's going on? Why can't MMOs give you the same sense of community and wonder and excitement that a text-based game could?
Played: UO, EQ, WoW, DDO, SWG, AO, CoH, EvE, TR, AoC, GW, GA, Aion, Allods, lots more
Relatively Recently (Re)Played: HL2 (all), Halo (PC, all), Batman:AA; AC, ME, BS, DA, FO3, DS, Doom (all), LFD1&2, KOTOR, Portal 1&2, Blink, Elder Scrolls (all), lots more
Now Playing: None
Hope: None
No it has not really changed. They are games first. The only reason why EQ or other early MMO holds people for a long time is because there were not many choices.
Now there are always choices. I think a game holding someone interests 3-6 months is already very good, compared to any single player game that last for 10-15 hours.
MMOs are never worlds. They should not be. It is really about consuming content.
People joining MUDs were doing so because their goal was to hang out with, interact with and play games with others. Those are very low priority for most of today's MMO gamers.
- RPG Quiz - can you get all 25 right?
- FPS Quiz - how well do you know your shooters?
Maybe if the developers stopped rehashing the same genre and storyline (I.e., change the name of an area/city/town/etc.. ). Perhaps the trick is not to offer the same rehashed, reused, regurgitated material, but try something new... or at least copy and rehash something that hasn't been beat to the ground. Fantasy (magic worlds) have been done over and over, and perhaps sci-fi worlds or a mix of fantasy and sci-fi storylines might keep players in for the long haul.
To that end, games like Fallen Earth seems to stand out... even though it is a copy of Neocron's world environtment/story, at least they are copying something obscure and rare.
I guess the hardest part is coming up with some world, idea and/or story that is comepletely new. Something that will break the mold. We have to view the video gaming genre as a whole and compare it to the art world. The question then becons, who will be our next Rembrandt, Piccasso, Michael Angelo to break the video gaming genre to the next paradigm shift of thought. We already saw this happen a few times before. Garriot would be considered as bringing a new paradigmn shift in regards to video gaming by bringing us UO, while WoW (like it or hate it) also ushered a paradigmn shift of making MMO's that reached a broad audience the likes of which hasn't been seen before. Now the latest paradimn shift is ushered in by the many f2p MMO's trying to stake a claim in this market, all gunning for position of prosperity and success. Where does that leave us, the gamers?
Let's try to view past empirical evidence and analyse where the artistic fuel for the next gen. paradigmn shift in gaming is heading towards (or appears to be so). We are now, it seems, in the days where the great roman empire(WoW ... and believe me, I hated to admit that but 11mil. subs would constitute this analogy) is being nipped away by the many small, but numerous barbarian tribes (wether it's the Eastern f2p model, or Westere p2p models). Is this a bad thing? Absolutely not, it's a process, an evolution if you will, towards the next paradimn shift. The question remains, who will be our next game producing Genius to usher in the new age?