That's what I feel most games lack. The quick buck seems to be the goal, not long time customers or a quality product. I prefer a game I can stay with for years, not months...but I feel as if I'm in the minority.
In my opinion. The game itself does not miss anything. It's us, the players changed. People are yelling the game is not fun. But look back the old games they are hard to compete with most of current games on the market. When i have a group of player play together. No matter what, it's fun. There are no perfect games anyway.
If anything the game developer need to improve is community+community+community.
I concur.
How do you do that when these games divide players by levels? Most players get separated.
Which is common .. however some games like EQ2 allow you to mentor others.. This allows the higher level character to "de-level" himself temporary while playing with a lower level friend , etc etc.. MMO devs need to work harder in promoting a community instead of finding game designs that SPLIT people up..
I don't like mentoring. It's not "realistic". I see it as a poor answer to an even poorer game design. Why not have player levels closer together, that solves a lot of problems. The first being that if you make a game with the level grind that requires things like mentoring, then you just made a WoW clone because leveling becomes the foremost thing that everyone will be racing through, at the detriment of all else.
Other problems come in other apsects of social play. Player built cities, suppose they go to war over a resource center. Mentoring doesn't help here, and level gaps hurt a great deal because low level players can't help, they're just canon fodder and that's not fun.
Trade skills, the level gaps make things limited to only that skill "zone". Worthless to others. Not a vibrant economic system, especially for cities and world wide trade.
So I say just get rid of these godlike differences in player abilities.
OH.. I agree.. it's a make shift solution to a design flaw.. EQ2 never had in the beginning but had to add it later to accomidate grouping problems.. I personally dislike higher level toons becoming invincable to lower level toons.. especially if PvP comes into play.. I loved the SWG crafting system.. except the god mode.. which I was quite against and vocal about it.. I always argued.. "Why do master chefs, get a vast advatage of making and selling entry level recipes".. Becoming a master chef means you know more recipes and difficult ones.. not make better entry level ones.. My example.. Do you honestly think you could tell the difference in a Big Mac samwich, one made my Bobby Flay, and one made by a teenager working after school? NO.. That was one of the game breaking problems I had with SWG..
OP is right, there should be some roleplaying MMO around too, something that has more than a few emotes and possibly a little social clothing. But there should also be action MMOs with very little of that, if all MMOs are a certain way less people will have fun.
New games should be fun first, then offer a new gaming experience in a world that feels alive. I hate when I get a new game and it feels like I already played it several times.
Devs should think more about making something they themselves think is really fun instead of just doing exactly the same as everyone else. The same things goes for the music industry BTW.
I really don't buy food and water as much of a worthwhile mechanic. Once you start to go too far that way, you stop having an MMO and start having a simulation. What, every 3 hours, you have to run behind a bush and take a leak? That's kind of stupid. Now while I have no problem with having food or water being a component that makes you recover faster or move faster or whatever, having it be something you have to stop now and then to do or you drop dead is a bit silly.
These are supposed to be games, they are supposed to be fun. If you want to play a simulation, go play something by Will Wright.
Can someone explain to me why people want player housing? I've never understood it. I decided to try it out in Lord of the Rings Online and bought myself a house and.. there it was.. completely unused as I was off playing the game, not wanting to sit in a house which I was already doing in real life.
I really don't get it. If you want a house decorating game then pick up the Sims, it's great for designing houses. If you want an MMO with quests, adventure, dungeons and terrible monsters then.. why do you want a house?
You had to have played UO, that's the only game that has had real player housing in my opinion. If you don't see the appeal of having your own house in this role playing game that you are suppose to be living in I don't know what to say. If you like to just grind monsters it certainly doesn't bother you. It's a very popular feature with many people out there.
Your game has to be designed for real player housing. It's just not something you stick in any game. It would never work in WoW even though I have no problem saying 75% of the 11.5 million would have a house if they could have one. In UO there was crafting of furniture, you could actually physically pick up items in the game world that you could then bring back to the house. There were chests to store stuff in, your entire guild would hang out and utilize all this stuff. And you could place this house anywhere in the world you wanted, sail off to some far off island to place your house, or strategically place it near some of the better parts of the world. A beautifully designed and stocked castle was just as much an end game reward as anything else from any other grind mmorpg.
You would also sit in your house, I'm sure you're very bitter about this too even though people almost rioted in beta because they were going to release the game without it.
I think mmorpgs are missing something like player housing way more. Now that's a real feature that on its own would bring in hundreds of thousands of people who are excited about just that alone. And what it does for the game is infinite.
Can someone explain to me why people want player housing? I've never understood it. I decided to try it out in Lord of the Rings Online and bought myself a house and.. there it was.. completely unused as I was off playing the game, not wanting to sit in a house which I was already doing in real life.
I really don't get it. If you want a house decorating game then pick up the Sims, it's great for designing houses. If you want an MMO with quests, adventure, dungeons and terrible monsters then.. why do you want a house?
Same thing why alot of people want fishing in a game, they want to do things other than hacking monsters all day they want best of both worlds hence the game lives longer when there is more to do than just hacking monsters.
Comments
Longevity.
That's what I feel most games lack. The quick buck seems to be the goal, not long time customers or a quality product. I prefer a game I can stay with for years, not months...but I feel as if I'm in the minority.
I don't like mentoring. It's not "realistic". I see it as a poor answer to an even poorer game design. Why not have player levels closer together, that solves a lot of problems. The first being that if you make a game with the level grind that requires things like mentoring, then you just made a WoW clone because leveling becomes the foremost thing that everyone will be racing through, at the detriment of all else.
Other problems come in other apsects of social play. Player built cities, suppose they go to war over a resource center. Mentoring doesn't help here, and level gaps hurt a great deal because low level players can't help, they're just canon fodder and that's not fun.
Trade skills, the level gaps make things limited to only that skill "zone". Worthless to others. Not a vibrant economic system, especially for cities and world wide trade.
So I say just get rid of these godlike differences in player abilities.
Once upon a time....
OH.. I agree.. it's a make shift solution to a design flaw.. EQ2 never had in the beginning but had to add it later to accomidate grouping problems.. I personally dislike higher level toons becoming invincable to lower level toons.. especially if PvP comes into play.. I loved the SWG crafting system.. except the god mode.. which I was quite against and vocal about it.. I always argued.. "Why do master chefs, get a vast advatage of making and selling entry level recipes".. Becoming a master chef means you know more recipes and difficult ones.. not make better entry level ones.. My example.. Do you honestly think you could tell the difference in a Big Mac samwich, one made my Bobby Flay, and one made by a teenager working after school? NO.. That was one of the game breaking problems I had with SWG..
True.
OP is right, there should be some roleplaying MMO around too, something that has more than a few emotes and possibly a little social clothing. But there should also be action MMOs with very little of that, if all MMOs are a certain way less people will have fun.
New games should be fun first, then offer a new gaming experience in a world that feels alive. I hate when I get a new game and it feels like I already played it several times.
Devs should think more about making something they themselves think is really fun instead of just doing exactly the same as everyone else. The same things goes for the music industry BTW.
I really don't buy food and water as much of a worthwhile mechanic. Once you start to go too far that way, you stop having an MMO and start having a simulation. What, every 3 hours, you have to run behind a bush and take a leak? That's kind of stupid. Now while I have no problem with having food or water being a component that makes you recover faster or move faster or whatever, having it be something you have to stop now and then to do or you drop dead is a bit silly.
These are supposed to be games, they are supposed to be fun. If you want to play a simulation, go play something by Will Wright.
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
You had to have played UO, that's the only game that has had real player housing in my opinion. If you don't see the appeal of having your own house in this role playing game that you are suppose to be living in I don't know what to say. If you like to just grind monsters it certainly doesn't bother you. It's a very popular feature with many people out there.
Your game has to be designed for real player housing. It's just not something you stick in any game. It would never work in WoW even though I have no problem saying 75% of the 11.5 million would have a house if they could have one. In UO there was crafting of furniture, you could actually physically pick up items in the game world that you could then bring back to the house. There were chests to store stuff in, your entire guild would hang out and utilize all this stuff. And you could place this house anywhere in the world you wanted, sail off to some far off island to place your house, or strategically place it near some of the better parts of the world. A beautifully designed and stocked castle was just as much an end game reward as anything else from any other grind mmorpg.
You would also sit in your house, I'm sure you're very bitter about this too even though people almost rioted in beta because they were going to release the game without it.
Same thing why alot of people want fishing in a game, they want to do things other than hacking monsters all day they want best of both worlds hence the game lives longer when there is more to do than just hacking monsters.
If it's not broken, you are not innovating.