you kind of forgetting the fun of mmorpg also lays in interacting with fellow players and the guild as a community where people become friends and talk to one another and play together to have fun.u can never find that in a console game and enjoy it for more then a few days of playing at most.
after i play mmorpg i seldom play console games.once u are used to the level of interaction inside a mmo a console does not appeal as much anymore.
its more of finding the right mmo now.and i have high hopes for FFXIV to deliver that.
well the things that are keping MMOs from advancing further are two things:
A) Investors-> they only know what sells, so that what they tell the game companies to make. They will pull funding away if they find an element that might "get sales down" or "discourage buyers" and they only know very little about games or MMOs.
They pressure companies to add stupid things like central auction houses, microtransactions, and character transfers just becuase they might get them more money per month, but those drastically degrade the experience.
If a new edgy company comes along seeking investors that wants to make a breakthrough game, guess what? they cannnot get a decent investor to come along and fund them and NOT tell them to change things. They have to bascially bow down to them to keep the funds coming in. They make the changes to thier games to keep the funding, and when it is released it's only a shadow of what It once was, becuase the investors did not think it would have sold in the orginial state.
network infrstructure->The ISPs are to blame, they never upgrade their networks, specailly in the US, it's pretty sad when someone in estonia or albania or ukraine tells me they have a 40MB connection for 10 dollars a month, when I pay 50 for my 6 MB connection.
I had to beg an plead to get 6 meg connection here.
The aussies can feel me on this one. they have to fight for a 2MB connection down under most of the time. That's pathetic in this day-and-age.
if the damned ISPs would upgrade their networks to the speds we deserve, then MMOs can get better.
most MMO producers/devs have to tone down the actions sent to and from the server to optmise for the crappy connections most have. i would love to have something like Oblivion as an MMO, but guess what? the ISPs are not gonna let us.
This infuriates me and this is a reason I stick to single player games and LAN games. becuase once you play one or two MMOs you've basically played them all.
If I play MMOs for a long time I tend to forget how good single player games can be. Last month I bought both StarTrek Online and Mass Effect 2. I "finished" STO (RA5)" and think that it is not a very good game. But my opinion about STO for sure would not be as bad if I had not played Mass Effect 2 at the same time. They are both similar in some things (you gather your crew etc.). But in the things which are similar I would say STO lacks behind 10-15 years of game development.
I am especialy disappointed with STO because all the things they told about "Episodic content" and how we should feel like we play an episode of star trek. When I play Mass effect 2 I feel 10x more like in an star trek episode then with the "episodic content", it is just another name for "quest" and its like the standard boring mmo quests "textbox -> kill something -> textbox". I told my girlfriend that I could buy "ship models" in game and place it in my quarters and she said "ah like captain picard" because she thought I talk about STO but I talked about mass effect. This is only a little thing, but you play MMOs much longer and if you play them for 1 year (which is not too long) you pay 4x as much as you pay for a singleplayer game. I don't understand why they often do not deliver more then a single player game.
What I miss the most about a a lot of older RPGs was the puzzles that involved a little thinking to solve. One game in particular for its way it did puzzles was the Tomb Raider series, which I loved a lot as a kid. I could see this type of gameplay in a MMO, grant that once someone goes through it there will be a spoiler on how to tackle it, but it would give anyone a chance to try their own hand at it or look over a guide for it. Then again for some puzzles it could be set up in a way that the dungeon is randomly generated and the puzzle twisted in a sense to keep form having a spoiler guide for it.
Aside from that, There needs to be a lot of interactiveness with environments itself. Theres a new game I think in Korea called ArchMage? that uses destructible environments. Not sure to what extent they use them, but I could see destructible environments used in a number of ways in a MMO where puzzles are concerned. Destructible or even constructable environments would greatly help MMOs today from the boredem they face now.
Ok so puzzles and destruct/construct environments, what else could there be? What about more mini style games? Just like the old RPGs where doing smaller games to complete a task would be great to see in more MMOs today. Anything from trying to ski down a mountain with a huge snowball following you or jumping on the back of a mob and riding him through a section of forest with the baddies on your tail, figuring out a encrypted puzzle with a timer ticking down to doomsday if you dont get it solved in time, to just about anything your imagination can construct. Hell even opening Casino style games within a MMO would give players something to do when the questing grind is too much, or when your waiting on friends for a raid. These casino style games could offer up many rewards for the risk you take with in game gold at a chance to win a assortment of prizes.
This are just a few things i can think of atm, but MMOs as a whole these days just simply suck, suck, suck, suck. I have yet to see any real good triple A titles that offer anything different that the last one did. I think Scott hit the nail on the head about his article where art is sacrificed for profits and huge publishers are mainly to blame. To be honest, if there isnt a surge soon of more MMOs that uses the ideas I had given for example, I think Im done with MMOs till someone does decide to step up and start revolutionizing the industry again. Im hoping more Indy developers step up and be able to fill those gaps. If so, ill support them knowing that keeping a huge publisher out of the picture may start the process of true artistry again in the industry!
Originally posted by Liltawen RPGs are very concentrated experiences. 12 hours and it's done. The game designers put everything you need into it-characters,story,progression. With MMOs I think it's largely what you put into it. You design a character,you pick your quest chain. Killing 10 rats is interesting if you make it an interesting adventure. It only becomes boring when you apply an RPG 'leveling-up-to-endgame' mentality to it. Hell, I've spent 12 hours fishing in an MMO. It became a contest because I made it one. I don't want some RPG game designer telling me what to do next and what fun is.
MMOs are only fun if you make them fun. The people you know are very important to your enjoyment, and the way you interact with the game makes it fun. No developer can do with a MMO what can be done in a single player RPG. It cannot be done. This is why it is always better to create a world and give players tools to create "content" for themselves. Good pvp does this well, good lore and incentive to role play does also. You cannot make MMO combat or storytelling as consistently engaging and interactive as a single player game, so you have to make the world itself feel vibrant and real to make it feel right for players.
"Gamers will no longer buy the argument that every MMO requires a subscription fee to offset server and bandwidth costs. It's not true you know it, and they know it." Jeff Strain, co-founder of ArenaNet, 2007
MMO’s are now made for solo players, but how can they possibly compete with an actual solo game? They are trying to be all things to all men and end up looking half baked. They are cast from the WoW template and so are good in terms of the way that template is good, but because of that there is no innovation.
Sense of community is what has been lost. We went from living together in a virtual world to playing single player games where occasionally other players are present. You could be a hero or a villian, a warrior or a tradesman, a statesman or a vagabond. Now you are just anonymous.
Zelda is not a RPG and it's not an Action/RPG either.
Final Fantasy is a RPG and Diablo is an Action/RPG. Zelda is a medieval Action/Adventure game at most, but it's a great game nevertheless. I don't get why fans think it's so important for it to be acknowledged as a RPG.
Few MMO's ever gave me the feeling of achievement after completing a quest or defeating a boss. I'd say my first playthrough on Guild Wars was like that, having your character in the cutscenes and stuff.
Ahh, Zelda. Now that brings back some memories. Long hours, sore thumbs, lost sleep and broken controllers, lol. Now this is a little off topic, but I had to let all of you Zelda fans know about this show if you don't know about it yet. It's called Legend of Neil and I find it rather funny. Note; due to some adult themes, this show maybe unsuitable for younger viewers, no nudity or anything, but not office viewing material.
Single player games have their place, but, their not very sociable, and, imo, are too limited even in their enjoyment, because you can't share any of these achievements with anyone, your not part of anything, and when the game has finished, its all over, very few games, single player games that is, have replay-ability, once its done with, its just another game gathering dust on the shelf. MMO's on the other hand, the better ones at least, are the ones that keep you coming back again, and again, and again, i know there are a good few haters out there, but that is something that Blizzard have managed to capture, to a degree, in WoW, though personally i would say Eve has more of it, but Eve is a space based game that unfortunately, doesnt capture peoples imagination as well as the more fantasy based games do, which is a shame, When players are given the tools to create, they can sometimes achieve incredible things, Eve isnt the only game to have managed this though, SWG before the fall, had one of the most incredible communities i have ever encountered online, and thats the one thing thats missing from single player games, there is no community, and its the one thing that can raise a game from being, just a game, to being .. awesome..
We could hammer this out over about a hundred pages, but I think there are a few major points here.
Combat - It's bad. But, that hasn't really changed. In some ways it has improved a little. Your character has more to do now and is more diverse...which also makes combat feel clunky (trying to juggle 40 quick bars full of skills). Not to mention, with so many skills on cool down you spend most of your time watching the UI and running through the same patterns, rather than reacting to the action.
Risk - A little bit of risk can go a long way towards making things exciting. You don't need horribly punishing death penalties that take away a weeks worth of grinding, just some thing (any thing) to actually make you fear death.
Mystery - Really, this ties in with every thing else and is maybe the biggest change from early MMOs. It's far too easy to know and predict every single element of these games. Static worlds, scripted, instanced encounters, predictable AI...
I liked what you had to say, except for one thing: the "ending" issue. You imply that a game is a single playthru and that's it. Sorry to tell you, but I can't describe how many times I save the Princess in World 8, shot down the invaders from space, and ran the same maze looking for pellets and power up jawbreakers. Over and over. Replayability is a hallmark of the single-player experience, and MMOs only took that to the logical extreme, allowing players to continually experience it in the same session.
What MMOs fail at is too closely mimicing the experience of a DnD style game, with levels, challenge ratings and experience. To take the boring out of the repetition of an event, the event doesn't have to be unique, it has to be continually challenging. Scalability of a locale would fix that. You go in, and everything scales to your 'level', be it character level, adventuring level, skill level, whatever. That way, you have the same challenge whether you're a lowbie, a newb, a pro, or a leet. It's always going to be as challenging as it is supposed to be.
This also eliminates the overgeared, raider-leet end-gamers ability to just go thru and raep content meant for lower level players and inflate the economy unnaturally because the loot drops scale, too, and what drops for them won't be farmable, nor will it be useful to players under the leet's level.
And as a side benefit, there's no more asking what level a certain instance/dungeon is because they scale. It's always the level it needs to be to present a challenge to a player of you level/skill.
Sure there are problems with this system, too, and probably more than a few exploits that would need to be worked out, but as far as addressing the challenge issue, yes, this system works.
Wow, well said about current and past mmo's. They are indeed very lacking and all fall under the same standards too often. The devs really need to come up with new ideas for mmo's, especially environment interaction. Can you imagine the different possiblities and fun a mmo can have if they did that? Instead of you and your party running up to the boss and hitting it or casting magic on it. You can use objects on the field/room to kill or weaken it.
Example: Throwing a spear into the bosses weak point, make a boulder come crashing down on it, or making it fall down a pit temporarily to open a window of opportunity to attack and even kill it.
And this doesn't even have to be just for bosses, other enemies can suffer the same fate. They can even make it into a team play action. Not like you can push a boulder by yourself or distract the boss long enough to throw that spear.
I have that exact same feeling after playing games like Mass Effect, Fable 2; even older games like Oblivion & Morrowind. My next game to get is FFXIII
I do hope that future MMORPGs will learn from the mistakes of the current generation of failures and provide more than just a number-crunching grindfest that lacks any kind of immersion or roleplay.
"Every time I find myself getting wrapped up in a single-player game, I feel that tiredness of the genre creeping in again. I wonder if MMOs will ever be fun again. Heck, sometimes I wonder if they were ever fun in the first place. I wonder if the industry is killing itself, and whether they'll ever care enough to make a change. Like most of you, I come back because MMOs have a unique pull on my gaming habits, a draw that makes them the "game of choice." There's no denying, however, that the genre needs a serious kick start, an injection of fun that's been lost in translation for a long time. Whoever brings it first will be well remembered in our history."
This is exactly how I feel these days, esp the last few months playing single player games more and since the new stuff like CO and STO was especially underwhelming. Not when Dragon Age, ME2, Drakensang II, Venetica and whatever I played was SOOO much more fun.
I think creatively MMOs are indeed dying. Tho not by numbers, they become a fast food sort of mindless mass entertainment and boring for anyone who demands more than a computer version of a sitcom.
People don't ask questions to get answers - they ask questions to show how smart they are. - Dogbert
Sense of community is what has been lost. We went from living together in a virtual world to playing single player games where occasionally other players are present. You could be a hero or a villian, a warrior or a tradesman, a statesman or a vagabond. Now you are just anonymous.
I agree with this as well, With auction houses, instant teleporting to zones, and the need to interact with one another less also is a huge factor. I hate to bring up EQ again, but there were no AHs and you had to rely on a druid or wizard to bring you places, or take the long way there. Little things like that added a lot to the game.
WOW, great read Jaimie!! One of the things you mentioned that can never be captured in the typical MMO with a persistant world is the time to bask in the glory of what you have just accomplished. The only way to approach this in an MMO is through instancing which is still used to a lessor degree. Not the same but close.
Your statement: The death of a villain in an MMO is not final; it's merely a temporary death designated to help a character complete an objective. There is no sense of permanence; I can return to defeat the dragon as many times as I want, and it's the same story, the same fight, the same pattern every time. As the sense of permanence deteriorates, so does the sense of achievement; as repetition sets in, the fun fades. Voila: a recipe for MMO burnout.
In an instanced world (ducks to avoid barbs from the Intanced=cheap crowd) the mobs aren't all repopping constantly. While it can be repeated, you still have the wonderous feeling after a series of battles to complete a mission/quest or vanquishing an area of accomplished something. Just sit for a bit, its ok, you own this place! Not the same as Zelda but close.
Though it is up to the devs to come out with the content, it's up to the consumers to stop buying crappy products and giving them a reason to make more versions of the same old. So long as we keep buying it, they will keep making it.
Old Republic promises to give that linear feel...I'll wait to pass judgment on that one.
It would not be difficult to design a game around the premise of 'once you do it, it is done'. You would only need to incorporate a system for players to interact with others that are at the same position in the story. There's nothing saying that a persistent world cannot look different for every player. It's simply a matter of rethinking design from the ground up. Games originally only looked identical to each person for easier and more efficient processing and bandwidth usage. In today's technological era, they need to scrap these old notions and move on.
It reminds me of the shift from Tileset based games to Bumpmapped games to full-on 3d interactive games. It took years for game devs to realize that they no longer needed to use the old tired method of tileset usage because computers could handle processing and data storage much easier. It took them even longer to realize that they could add interactive and destructible objects on top of bumpmapped terrain.
I wonder how long it will take them to realize the same for game mechanics and story...
On a side note, I've been saying the same things as the OP since WoW first came out. But, people are so blinded by their addiction that they will defend it viciously. Mention that WoW isn't 'the best game ever' to any hardcore player and they will not only disagree, they will attack you violently and personally. This is a sign of addiction, not of admiration.
It's sad really; when you see all these blinded people fumbling mindlessly at something. It's almost as bad as legal addictive drugs: Alcohol, tobacco, etc. These aren't only chemical addictions, they are personality addictions. I challenge every WoW player to step back and think about what they're doing in the game. Think about your accomplishments from the perspective of a story. What have you done that you have not done before? When was the last time you felt a feeling of real accomplishment that wasn't fueled by the need for 'phat lewtz'?
Overall I agree but what I found funny was the first line implies that video games in general have lost there magic but I think the only place that stands true is mmo's, weve reached a stage in video game production where mmo's simply can't afford to keep taking the liberties they do if they in tend to keep growing the genre.
I'll use my choice of mmo's right now as an example,STO the lack of production standard is the most glaring error there and something every game on the market is guilty of, no single mmo I know of has even one single "feature" something that pops out and makes you feel like you are really "into" the game. Mmo's seem to be comprised of some two or three "systems" and there is never any true variation on these systems they just roll out the same stuff over and over again. Most mmo's follow a pattern that after a month of playing you learn and unfortunately mmo's rarely switch it up after that which I think really accounts for why so many games really have such a hard time keeping people after the first month, you really at that point have "experienced" most of what the game has to offer the only question is was it fun enough to keep doing over and over and over again. If mmo producers would throw a swerve in here or there I really think they can help there retention of players.
I want an mmo made with the production standards of say a Grand Theft Auto or a MGS Sons of the Patriots, and to this point no mmo has come close to offering that kind of experience, the most intense feeling I ever got from an mmo was in SWG not so irronically during pvp and it is a feeling I get often from many offline and console games.
but yeah, to call this game Fantastic is like calling Twilight the Godfather of vampire movies....
I agree in the sense that I've stopped spending money on MMOs. I've tried quite a few P2P and none of them seem to fit, even when I think they are very good games (like EVE and Fallen Earth).
MMO gamers have gained a reputation as the kind of fools that are easy to separate from their money. Hence, we have recent game launches such as Allods Online and STO. These two respectively represent the ugly side of the F2P model and P2P model, but both models have an ugly side and this is growing.
So, the first thing that has to happen is MMO gamers have to stop throwing their cash at anything new on the horizon. This includes SWTOR, which I will say despite knowing (a) this will likely fall on deaf ears, and (b) that I need to hear this as much as anyone. I'm really hoping this will be a game that I will buy and enjoy BUT I will force myself to wait for launch and player feedback before buying.
In the meantime I'm quite enjoying a couple of F2P games. MMOs can still be excellent fun by the way. And you can still meet people and build a community. I may try single player games again at some point, but the world of MMOs still seems infinitely more fun to me because of the social aspects. Even when I am soloing I am playing with other people in a sense. I really enjoy grinding by myself but also chatting on guild chat after a tough day.
Nice article. I totally agree with the lack of permanence in MMOs. It's a real immersion breaking and makes the games feel more arcade-like and less immersive.
One thing though; In the description on the front page it says, "Jaime Skelton wrote this article on the magic of video games and what MMOs can do to re-capture it."
At the end all you said is that MMOs need to be more innovative but that goes without saying. You didn't really mention even one specific thing that could be improved. And I think that's the problem with the MMO genre generally. We all look at single player games and all these cool things they can do... but they're all reliant on having just one player in that world. In an MMO they have to make it enjoyable for thousands of people all on one server. And that's the problem right there.
The magical all-consuming MMO will never exist due to the limitations of being in a multiplayer world. The only way to improve immersion is to go the way of World of Warcraft and other games and start using more phasing and instances. However, that separates the community and the world so I think we'll never have both MMO AND full immersion.
MMOs played (In order of how much I've liked them): Star Wars Galaxies, World of Warcraft, Vanguard, City of Villains / Heroes, Guild Wars, Warhammer Online, Age of Conan, Tabula Rasa, Anarchy Online, Ryzom, Final Fantasy XI, Matrix Online, RF Online, Rappelz, Hero Online, Roma Victor
There's still some hope with features like public quests and dynamic PvE ( or what ever Guild Wars 2 is attempting). All it takes is one successful MMO to prove that it can work.
Comments
you kind of forgetting the fun of mmorpg also lays in interacting with fellow players and the guild as a community where people become friends and talk to one another and play together to have fun.u can never find that in a console game and enjoy it for more then a few days of playing at most.
after i play mmorpg i seldom play console games.once u are used to the level of interaction inside a mmo a console does not appeal as much anymore.
its more of finding the right mmo now.and i have high hopes for FFXIV to deliver that.
and Blade & Soul later on ^^
Yeah, I have hopes that CCP's WoDOL and Bioware's TOR fix this much needed issue in MMO's.
well the things that are keping MMOs from advancing further are two things:
A) Investors-> they only know what sells, so that what they tell the game companies to make. They will pull funding away if they find an element that might "get sales down" or "discourage buyers" and they only know very little about games or MMOs.
They pressure companies to add stupid things like central auction houses, microtransactions, and character transfers just becuase they might get them more money per month, but those drastically degrade the experience.
If a new edgy company comes along seeking investors that wants to make a breakthrough game, guess what? they cannnot get a decent investor to come along and fund them and NOT tell them to change things. They have to bascially bow down to them to keep the funds coming in. They make the changes to thier games to keep the funding, and when it is released it's only a shadow of what It once was, becuase the investors did not think it would have sold in the orginial state.
I had to beg an plead to get 6 meg connection here.
The aussies can feel me on this one. they have to fight for a 2MB connection down under most of the time. That's pathetic in this day-and-age.
if the damned ISPs would upgrade their networks to the speds we deserve, then MMOs can get better.
most MMO producers/devs have to tone down the actions sent to and from the server to optmise for the crappy connections most have. i would love to have something like Oblivion as an MMO, but guess what? the ISPs are not gonna let us.
This infuriates me and this is a reason I stick to single player games and LAN games. becuase once you play one or two MMOs you've basically played them all.
If I play MMOs for a long time I tend to forget how good single player games can be. Last month I bought both StarTrek Online and Mass Effect 2. I "finished" STO (RA5)" and think that it is not a very good game. But my opinion about STO for sure would not be as bad if I had not played Mass Effect 2 at the same time. They are both similar in some things (you gather your crew etc.). But in the things which are similar I would say STO lacks behind 10-15 years of game development.
I am especialy disappointed with STO because all the things they told about "Episodic content" and how we should feel like we play an episode of star trek. When I play Mass effect 2 I feel 10x more like in an star trek episode then with the "episodic content", it is just another name for "quest" and its like the standard boring mmo quests "textbox -> kill something -> textbox". I told my girlfriend that I could buy "ship models" in game and place it in my quarters and she said "ah like captain picard" because she thought I talk about STO but I talked about mass effect. This is only a little thing, but you play MMOs much longer and if you play them for 1 year (which is not too long) you pay 4x as much as you pay for a singleplayer game. I don't understand why they often do not deliver more then a single player game.
What I miss the most about a a lot of older RPGs was the puzzles that involved a little thinking to solve. One game in particular for its way it did puzzles was the Tomb Raider series, which I loved a lot as a kid. I could see this type of gameplay in a MMO, grant that once someone goes through it there will be a spoiler on how to tackle it, but it would give anyone a chance to try their own hand at it or look over a guide for it. Then again for some puzzles it could be set up in a way that the dungeon is randomly generated and the puzzle twisted in a sense to keep form having a spoiler guide for it.
Aside from that, There needs to be a lot of interactiveness with environments itself. Theres a new game I think in Korea called ArchMage? that uses destructible environments. Not sure to what extent they use them, but I could see destructible environments used in a number of ways in a MMO where puzzles are concerned. Destructible or even constructable environments would greatly help MMOs today from the boredem they face now.
Ok so puzzles and destruct/construct environments, what else could there be? What about more mini style games? Just like the old RPGs where doing smaller games to complete a task would be great to see in more MMOs today. Anything from trying to ski down a mountain with a huge snowball following you or jumping on the back of a mob and riding him through a section of forest with the baddies on your tail, figuring out a encrypted puzzle with a timer ticking down to doomsday if you dont get it solved in time, to just about anything your imagination can construct. Hell even opening Casino style games within a MMO would give players something to do when the questing grind is too much, or when your waiting on friends for a raid. These casino style games could offer up many rewards for the risk you take with in game gold at a chance to win a assortment of prizes.
This are just a few things i can think of atm, but MMOs as a whole these days just simply suck, suck, suck, suck. I have yet to see any real good triple A titles that offer anything different that the last one did. I think Scott hit the nail on the head about his article where art is sacrificed for profits and huge publishers are mainly to blame. To be honest, if there isnt a surge soon of more MMOs that uses the ideas I had given for example, I think Im done with MMOs till someone does decide to step up and start revolutionizing the industry again. Im hoping more Indy developers step up and be able to fill those gaps. If so, ill support them knowing that keeping a huge publisher out of the picture may start the process of true artistry again in the industry!
MMOs are only fun if you make them fun. The people you know are very important to your enjoyment, and the way you interact with the game makes it fun. No developer can do with a MMO what can be done in a single player RPG. It cannot be done. This is why it is always better to create a world and give players tools to create "content" for themselves. Good pvp does this well, good lore and incentive to role play does also. You cannot make MMO combat or storytelling as consistently engaging and interactive as a single player game, so you have to make the world itself feel vibrant and real to make it feel right for players.
"Gamers will no longer buy the argument that every MMO requires a subscription fee to offset server and bandwidth costs. It's not true you know it, and they know it." Jeff Strain, co-founder of ArenaNet, 2007
WTF? No subscription fee?
MMO’s are now made for solo players, but how can they possibly compete with an actual solo game? They are trying to be all things to all men and end up looking half baked. They are cast from the WoW template and so are good in terms of the way that template is good, but because of that there is no innovation.
Sense of community is what has been lost. We went from living together in a virtual world to playing single player games where occasionally other players are present. You could be a hero or a villian, a warrior or a tradesman, a statesman or a vagabond. Now you are just anonymous.
Zelda is not a RPG and it's not an Action/RPG either.
Final Fantasy is a RPG and Diablo is an Action/RPG. Zelda is a medieval Action/Adventure game at most, but it's a great game nevertheless. I don't get why fans think it's so important for it to be acknowledged as a RPG.
Few MMO's ever gave me the feeling of achievement after completing a quest or defeating a boss. I'd say my first playthrough on Guild Wars was like that, having your character in the cutscenes and stuff.
Obnoxious crap game flamer.
Ahh, Zelda. Now that brings back some memories. Long hours, sore thumbs, lost sleep and broken controllers, lol. Now this is a little off topic, but I had to let all of you Zelda fans know about this show if you don't know about it yet. It's called Legend of Neil and I find it rather funny. Note; due to some adult themes, this show maybe unsuitable for younger viewers, no nudity or anything, but not office viewing material.
www.effinfunny.com/legend-of-neil/seasons
Single player games have their place, but, their not very sociable, and, imo, are too limited even in their enjoyment, because you can't share any of these achievements with anyone, your not part of anything, and when the game has finished, its all over, very few games, single player games that is, have replay-ability, once its done with, its just another game gathering dust on the shelf. MMO's on the other hand, the better ones at least, are the ones that keep you coming back again, and again, and again, i know there are a good few haters out there, but that is something that Blizzard have managed to capture, to a degree, in WoW, though personally i would say Eve has more of it, but Eve is a space based game that unfortunately, doesnt capture peoples imagination as well as the more fantasy based games do, which is a shame, When players are given the tools to create, they can sometimes achieve incredible things, Eve isnt the only game to have managed this though, SWG before the fall, had one of the most incredible communities i have ever encountered online, and thats the one thing thats missing from single player games, there is no community, and its the one thing that can raise a game from being, just a game, to being .. awesome..
Good article and good responses.
We could hammer this out over about a hundred pages, but I think there are a few major points here.
Combat - It's bad. But, that hasn't really changed. In some ways it has improved a little. Your character has more to do now and is more diverse...which also makes combat feel clunky (trying to juggle 40 quick bars full of skills). Not to mention, with so many skills on cool down you spend most of your time watching the UI and running through the same patterns, rather than reacting to the action.
Risk - A little bit of risk can go a long way towards making things exciting. You don't need horribly punishing death penalties that take away a weeks worth of grinding, just some thing (any thing) to actually make you fear death.
Mystery - Really, this ties in with every thing else and is maybe the biggest change from early MMOs. It's far too easy to know and predict every single element of these games. Static worlds, scripted, instanced encounters, predictable AI...
I liked what you had to say, except for one thing: the "ending" issue. You imply that a game is a single playthru and that's it. Sorry to tell you, but I can't describe how many times I save the Princess in World 8, shot down the invaders from space, and ran the same maze looking for pellets and power up jawbreakers. Over and over. Replayability is a hallmark of the single-player experience, and MMOs only took that to the logical extreme, allowing players to continually experience it in the same session.
What MMOs fail at is too closely mimicing the experience of a DnD style game, with levels, challenge ratings and experience. To take the boring out of the repetition of an event, the event doesn't have to be unique, it has to be continually challenging. Scalability of a locale would fix that. You go in, and everything scales to your 'level', be it character level, adventuring level, skill level, whatever. That way, you have the same challenge whether you're a lowbie, a newb, a pro, or a leet. It's always going to be as challenging as it is supposed to be.
This also eliminates the overgeared, raider-leet end-gamers ability to just go thru and raep content meant for lower level players and inflate the economy unnaturally because the loot drops scale, too, and what drops for them won't be farmable, nor will it be useful to players under the leet's level.
And as a side benefit, there's no more asking what level a certain instance/dungeon is because they scale. It's always the level it needs to be to present a challenge to a player of you level/skill.
Sure there are problems with this system, too, and probably more than a few exploits that would need to be worked out, but as far as addressing the challenge issue, yes, this system works.
Wow, well said about current and past mmo's. They are indeed very lacking and all fall under the same standards too often. The devs really need to come up with new ideas for mmo's, especially environment interaction. Can you imagine the different possiblities and fun a mmo can have if they did that? Instead of you and your party running up to the boss and hitting it or casting magic on it. You can use objects on the field/room to kill or weaken it.
Example: Throwing a spear into the bosses weak point, make a boulder come crashing down on it, or making it fall down a pit temporarily to open a window of opportunity to attack and even kill it.
And this doesn't even have to be just for bosses, other enemies can suffer the same fate. They can even make it into a team play action. Not like you can push a boulder by yourself or distract the boss long enough to throw that spear.
I have that exact same feeling after playing games like Mass Effect, Fable 2; even older games like Oblivion & Morrowind. My next game to get is FFXIII
I do hope that future MMORPGs will learn from the mistakes of the current generation of failures and provide more than just a number-crunching grindfest that lacks any kind of immersion or roleplay.
100% agree to the OP. This:
"Every time I find myself getting wrapped up in a single-player game, I feel that tiredness of the genre creeping in again. I wonder if MMOs will ever be fun again. Heck, sometimes I wonder if they were ever fun in the first place. I wonder if the industry is killing itself, and whether they'll ever care enough to make a change. Like most of you, I come back because MMOs have a unique pull on my gaming habits, a draw that makes them the "game of choice." There's no denying, however, that the genre needs a serious kick start, an injection of fun that's been lost in translation for a long time. Whoever brings it first will be well remembered in our history."
This is exactly how I feel these days, esp the last few months playing single player games more and since the new stuff like CO and STO was especially underwhelming. Not when Dragon Age, ME2, Drakensang II, Venetica and whatever I played was SOOO much more fun.
I think creatively MMOs are indeed dying. Tho not by numbers, they become a fast food sort of mindless mass entertainment and boring for anyone who demands more than a computer version of a sitcom.
People don't ask questions to get answers - they ask questions to show how smart they are. - Dogbert
I agree with this as well, With auction houses, instant teleporting to zones, and the need to interact with one another less also is a huge factor. I hate to bring up EQ again, but there were no AHs and you had to rely on a druid or wizard to bring you places, or take the long way there. Little things like that added a lot to the game.
Why can't we do Zelda-esque combat, bosses, dungeons etc. in a MMO?
Just too CPU/Network/Vid/AI intensive for massively multiplayer?
I mean, 3rd person action combat games like Zelda/God of War (to some extent Mass Effect) are ridiculously popular....
WOW, great read Jaimie!! One of the things you mentioned that can never be captured in the typical MMO with a persistant world is the time to bask in the glory of what you have just accomplished. The only way to approach this in an MMO is through instancing which is still used to a lessor degree. Not the same but close.
Your statement: The death of a villain in an MMO is not final; it's merely a temporary death designated to help a character complete an objective. There is no sense of permanence; I can return to defeat the dragon as many times as I want, and it's the same story, the same fight, the same pattern every time. As the sense of permanence deteriorates, so does the sense of achievement; as repetition sets in, the fun fades. Voila: a recipe for MMO burnout.
In an instanced world (ducks to avoid barbs from the Intanced=cheap crowd) the mobs aren't all repopping constantly. While it can be repeated, you still have the wonderous feeling after a series of battles to complete a mission/quest or vanquishing an area of accomplished something. Just sit for a bit, its ok, you own this place! Not the same as Zelda but close.
Hmm..where DID I put Zelda............
Though it is up to the devs to come out with the content, it's up to the consumers to stop buying crappy products and giving them a reason to make more versions of the same old. So long as we keep buying it, they will keep making it.
Old Republic promises to give that linear feel...I'll wait to pass judgment on that one.
It would not be difficult to design a game around the premise of 'once you do it, it is done'. You would only need to incorporate a system for players to interact with others that are at the same position in the story. There's nothing saying that a persistent world cannot look different for every player. It's simply a matter of rethinking design from the ground up. Games originally only looked identical to each person for easier and more efficient processing and bandwidth usage. In today's technological era, they need to scrap these old notions and move on.
It reminds me of the shift from Tileset based games to Bumpmapped games to full-on 3d interactive games. It took years for game devs to realize that they no longer needed to use the old tired method of tileset usage because computers could handle processing and data storage much easier. It took them even longer to realize that they could add interactive and destructible objects on top of bumpmapped terrain.
I wonder how long it will take them to realize the same for game mechanics and story...
On a side note, I've been saying the same things as the OP since WoW first came out. But, people are so blinded by their addiction that they will defend it viciously. Mention that WoW isn't 'the best game ever' to any hardcore player and they will not only disagree, they will attack you violently and personally. This is a sign of addiction, not of admiration.
It's sad really; when you see all these blinded people fumbling mindlessly at something. It's almost as bad as legal addictive drugs: Alcohol, tobacco, etc. These aren't only chemical addictions, they are personality addictions. I challenge every WoW player to step back and think about what they're doing in the game. Think about your accomplishments from the perspective of a story. What have you done that you have not done before? When was the last time you felt a feeling of real accomplishment that wasn't fueled by the need for 'phat lewtz'?
Overall I agree but what I found funny was the first line implies that video games in general have lost there magic but I think the only place that stands true is mmo's, weve reached a stage in video game production where mmo's simply can't afford to keep taking the liberties they do if they in tend to keep growing the genre.
I'll use my choice of mmo's right now as an example,STO the lack of production standard is the most glaring error there and something every game on the market is guilty of, no single mmo I know of has even one single "feature" something that pops out and makes you feel like you are really "into" the game. Mmo's seem to be comprised of some two or three "systems" and there is never any true variation on these systems they just roll out the same stuff over and over again. Most mmo's follow a pattern that after a month of playing you learn and unfortunately mmo's rarely switch it up after that which I think really accounts for why so many games really have such a hard time keeping people after the first month, you really at that point have "experienced" most of what the game has to offer the only question is was it fun enough to keep doing over and over and over again. If mmo producers would throw a swerve in here or there I really think they can help there retention of players.
I want an mmo made with the production standards of say a Grand Theft Auto or a MGS Sons of the Patriots, and to this point no mmo has come close to offering that kind of experience, the most intense feeling I ever got from an mmo was in SWG not so irronically during pvp and it is a feeling I get often from many offline and console games.
but yeah, to call this game Fantastic is like calling Twilight the Godfather of vampire movies....
Nice article Jamie. And welcome to the ever growing horde of jaded mmo gamers. We have been saying this crap since wow's first exp pack lol.
Your right, the industry really does need a kick, but its going to need the devs to wake up.
"Do not fret! Your captain is about to enter Valhalla!" - General Beatrix of Alexandria
"The acquisition of knowledge is of use to the intellect, for nothing can be loved or hated without first being known." - Leo da Vinci
I agree in the sense that I've stopped spending money on MMOs. I've tried quite a few P2P and none of them seem to fit, even when I think they are very good games (like EVE and Fallen Earth).
MMO gamers have gained a reputation as the kind of fools that are easy to separate from their money. Hence, we have recent game launches such as Allods Online and STO. These two respectively represent the ugly side of the F2P model and P2P model, but both models have an ugly side and this is growing.
So, the first thing that has to happen is MMO gamers have to stop throwing their cash at anything new on the horizon. This includes SWTOR, which I will say despite knowing (a) this will likely fall on deaf ears, and (b) that I need to hear this as much as anyone. I'm really hoping this will be a game that I will buy and enjoy BUT I will force myself to wait for launch and player feedback before buying.
In the meantime I'm quite enjoying a couple of F2P games. MMOs can still be excellent fun by the way. And you can still meet people and build a community. I may try single player games again at some point, but the world of MMOs still seems infinitely more fun to me because of the social aspects. Even when I am soloing I am playing with other people in a sense. I really enjoy grinding by myself but also chatting on guild chat after a tough day.
Nice article. I totally agree with the lack of permanence in MMOs. It's a real immersion breaking and makes the games feel more arcade-like and less immersive.
One thing though; In the description on the front page it says, "Jaime Skelton wrote this article on the magic of video games and what MMOs can do to re-capture it."
At the end all you said is that MMOs need to be more innovative but that goes without saying. You didn't really mention even one specific thing that could be improved. And I think that's the problem with the MMO genre generally. We all look at single player games and all these cool things they can do... but they're all reliant on having just one player in that world. In an MMO they have to make it enjoyable for thousands of people all on one server. And that's the problem right there.
The magical all-consuming MMO will never exist due to the limitations of being in a multiplayer world. The only way to improve immersion is to go the way of World of Warcraft and other games and start using more phasing and instances. However, that separates the community and the world so I think we'll never have both MMO AND full immersion.
MMOs played (In order of how much I've liked them): Star Wars Galaxies, World of Warcraft, Vanguard, City of Villains / Heroes, Guild Wars, Warhammer Online, Age of Conan, Tabula Rasa, Anarchy Online, Ryzom, Final Fantasy XI, Matrix Online, RF Online, Rappelz, Hero Online, Roma Victor
There's still some hope with features like public quests and dynamic PvE ( or what ever Guild Wars 2 is attempting). All it takes is one successful MMO to prove that it can work.