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General: Five Ways MMOs Could Be Better
SBFord
Former Associate EditorMember LegendaryPosts: 33,129
Last week, MMORPG.com Lead Writer Bill Murphy focused The List on ways that MMOs could be much, much worse. This week, Bill flips the coin and takes a look at Five Ways MMOs Could Be Better. Check out The List and then leave your List in the comments.
We all like to play armchair designer now and again, so let’s make sure this week is no different. Strap on those thinking caps and let’s delve into our favorite hobby’s weak points. Lord knows we can all find plenty. I mean… just read the forums if you don’t believe me. This is by no means a full list of what MMOs could do better, and instead represents just a few ways I think they could be improved. Please do add in your own thoughts down below. Commence theory-crafting!
Read more of Bill Murphy's The List: Five Ways MMOs Could Be Better.
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Comments
"........tied to some arbitrary $15 rule. "
Amen! One of the things I teach the new people I train at work, is that just because we've always done something one way, doesn't mean it's the best way. Always keep an eye out for better ways of doing things. The same thing applies here, just because 15$ a month is how it's always been, doesn't mean it's the only viable solution for AAA games.
I want a mmorpg where people have gone through misery, have gone through school stuff and actually have had sex even. -sagil
My number one addition would be more out of combat gameplay options, with or without competitive rewards. Ideas include:
Gambling
Darts
Jousting
Archery Competition
Strong-man competion
Ability to craft more than just equipment
Animal raising (raise a horse from birth and it "levels" with you?)
These should all be optional but would add an enhanced dynamic to games. This would be on top of fishing and other "mini-games" that may or may already exist in a given game.
I agree with most of those. Especially the sub fees. In my opinion, Guild Wars1 already prove a GOOD game doesnt need subs. But other devs know what they made was crap so the just depend on addiction rather than entertainment to drain customers via subs. The problem, for them (good for us) is that even WoW players aka mmo-noobs, are starting wake up slowly. And all these greedy bussiness men will realise in about 2 years or so that they wont be able to fool everyone anymore. (until like 10 years from now when everyone thats 2-5 is old enough to start playing their own mmo they'll probably fall for dumb down games).
We need game devs leading the game design again. You can't sit there and tell me that hundreds of people worked on these recent MMOs and they all said to themselves "we've made a great game" . Unless its mass-hystaria, I'm sure some person that thought it would be lucrative to invest in games thinking they could mimic WoW's subs with their bussiness degree thats making stupid choices for the games. Let the game designers make their dream games. Guild Wars 2 seems to be the only one doing that. While Games like SW:ToR seem to be depending on its name saying "hey, we're star wars, you can be a jedi *gasp* or a sith! oooo! oh hey, bioware is working on it. you like their 60 dollar stories they call videogames right?" If I want a story, I'll go buy a book.
As to pricing models, I would like to see more mixed model games. $15/month for heavy usage players, combined with cheaper, limited usage plans that automatically upgrade to $15 for any month you go over the allotment, would be great, IMO. There are a few games I might want to play casual, but I just can't justify $15/month.
I would like the GW2 model, combined with frequent, affordable content packs. Apparently, MMO developers need more incentive to maintain high levels of post launch content creation output. I'd be happy with a game that had a one time Buy to Play charge, then funded continuing development with monthly, purchasable content packs. If frequent zone additions were among the content packs, full expansions could be done away with.
Want to know more about GW2 and why there is so much buzz? Start here: Guild Wars 2 Mass Info for the Uninitiated
You should never EVER set a hard schedule for content releases. It leads to half finished bloat content.
When WoW was released I saw that it had a subscription fee and I immediately looked away because of how ridiculous Sub-fees sound. You spent $60 for the game.....Now you gotta pay $15 a month so you can play it? Screw that. If WoW was B2P i would probably be playing it right now.
I know some of you {mod edit} think sub-fees keep the games running, but how do you explain lotro?
-I am here to perform logic
The adults among us already pay monthly for power (needed for your computer), and internet (needed for doh! the internet and playing online games such as MMORPGs), why should they add another monthly on top of the total costs for being able to play a game?
Great read but I think it would have been better if you had number 5 as "More Logic" rather than "More Realism".
Yes! My recognization to all adults who pay for their house utilities. Their MMO game servers run on an ISP which you pay already! The servers themselves are not pricy at all since my computer alone can hold 32 players (even more) on a dedicated server with only 3mb speed! All I am saying is it doesnt cost crap to have a server run on its own. The only thing that needs to be paid is the ISP monthly fee for its service and the power that runs through it. Small price to pay for a profit that is huge from all the game's buyers. If a game sucks, of course you are at a loss, don't punish the people who play it giving them a sub-fee
-I am here to perform logic
YES! The "social" aspect of gaming is more than just chat channels - it's giving players non-combat activities. This, imo, should be a pilar of new MMO design. There's a reason for Farmville's success.
Good list too Bill!
Virtual reality headset!!!!!!!!!
and TBH i owuld say the genre needs more grind but less repiditive grind.
why i enjoyed warhammer.. just having fun PvPing and , ohh i got up a level. Meh,i l lget new skil later theres greenskins to kill ^^
Your idea's are quite honestly "weak" - nothing that going to capture the imagination of gamers and give them the innovation they are looking for.
1. Less grind - I want to be the "hero" in my own story. What hero grinds?
2. I want to have an effect on my game - I want to make a "difference" I want my playing to make a "difference"
3. Human mobs - Pay students $10.00 an hour be a player controlled boss mobs / npc's - random events/quests
4. Customization - Deep completely open character customization - skills, class, race, abilities.... Let me design my hero - don't lead me by the nose and tell me what I can and can't do.
5. Focus on group content - make the game as social as possible.
Ha, that's decent idea, but I think I'd lean more toward minimum wage to start with and raises for exeptional awesomeness.
Realism should be first and foremost imo
I want nothing morethan a realistic sandbox fantasy world. The important thing is that they do not over-emphasise the mundane when implementing realism
More realism, means you're have more options in how to act, or what to do in-game, which would lead to more variety.
And finally, I want to see games neutralise, or reduce grind by changing the way all mmorpgs in my experience work.
Currently, your actions in-game are not effective if you do them well, but only if you do them often ... and it's this approach that gives birth to the tediousness we all came to call grind
Um, it's been my understanding that sub fees don't just pay for servers & bandwidth but also for continued development and in-game / account support.
Look at something like Champions online, where the F2P player (genuinely F2P, as in has never spent cash in the shop) has no support available. I'm not sure how it works in other F2Ps, but I'd imagine it's a tiered system, if in a Freemium game, you elect to pay a sub, you get support bundled with it.
All very well to look at hardware costs, but when you have a problem in a game and you want it solved, or want to talk to a rep from the company to troubleshoot, you want them to have the people there to help you, right? Those people cost money. Putting them in a call-centre costs money, providing toll-free / reduced toll lines costs money... hence: sub fees.
I'm an adult and I have plenty of bills to pay, I consider €15 a month a pittance for a game that could be entertaining me 24/7 (were I the type to play 24/7) with responsive support when I need it.
I'm really interested to see how ANet plan to provide top-notch customer service based on box sales revenue alone.
Ditch the healer/tank/dps paradigm. Everyone should fight, then heal/res later. Characters in plate with heavy shields should physically keep mobs from squishier players by standing in the way, not by calling the mobs' mothers names.
Make combat more lifelike. Fights should be more about the character's skill and less about how much health he/she/it has. A critical hit with a sword should end the fight. If a 400 pound minotaur smacks a 50 pound gnome with a 25 pound hammer, he should be yelling "fore" as the gnome sails across the room as opposed to just having a number flash over the gnome's head.
Make magic behave like real-life counterparts. A fireball should work like an explosive, lightning should work like an arc of electricity, etc. If I throw a fireball into a small room, everything inside should be dead and burning. In a large room, most occupants should be thrown against the walls and bleeding. A lightning bolt should temporarily incapacitate everyone it hits that isn't grounded - just like a taser. Friendly fire should always be a possibility. Magic is supposed to require great intelligence to use safely.
Make mob appearance count. If I kill a guy in shiny platemail that's waving a flaming sword at me, there better be shiny platemail and a flaming sword on its corpse.
If you have to send me on a quest for animal parts, I expect that there should be the right number of those animal parts on every single corpse. I hate deaf, blind, tongueless, noseless, toothless, gutless, tongueless, skinless, boneless, clawless, tailless, furless wolves that still somehow manage to damage me through my shiny platemail.
Good article, you can also want to inclde that developers need to make sure their games are actually fun to play. Think more like gamers and less like developers.
Personally, I don't mind a monthly fee if they continue to add content. Isn't that what it's all about? I don't think we should pay once and then the artists, designers, etc, are exected to continue working on the game. If they don't, then yes, there shouldn't be a monthly fee.
On the other hand, if there's a monthly fee, THEN I SHOULDN'T HAVE TO PAY $50 FOR THE GAME! DOH!
For me what draws me toward a certain profession is always what you can make aside from gear ( be it small gadget's, toys, vanity pets, mounts, etc) because gear you can always get one way or another.
Raising an animal/partner and that could like in Lineage become a mount would be rather nice. Ofc dev's could take this in a game and push it one step further adding unique skills and support abilities to diferent types of pets.
All the others would depend a bit on what type of game you wanna put them in
Well i have to agree with this up to some point.
1 Having no premade chars causes lack of balance. Therefore it's hard to let go of the usual archtypes
2 If sized mattered, no one would bother to pick a gnome and all would be a huge tauren
3 Make Magic more real is an oximoron. And the friendly fire issue would only be usable in FPS kind of game similar to Elder Scrolls or something similar.
4 Does make sense right? Why is that when you bother killing a creep with an awesome looking armor/sword if you can't strip your target from it's items
5 This is one of the most anoying issues in i don't know how many games.If an animal only drops 1 eye you can always use the excuse "Oh i pierced one of his eyes with a sword" but bones, skin and an endless list of organs and body parts it's impossible for the animal to not have them
In a way this relates to the number 5 of OP : Realism
Too much of it can ruin the fun for players, but so can too little.
Peronally I agree with some of the above comments. However, MMO's come with their own inherent costs: Servers, maintenance, tech support, GM's, new content, patches, etc. Look at fallout NV and see what a company does w/o the monthly fee. Sure they fixed most of the largest bugs but it took months not weeks. There's simply no incentive to keep player playing since they've got most of the money their going to get form you. Its financially impossible for a company to run a MMO on a dialy basis simply from the original $50 fee. You would see service and content go down the tube and the game would die.
Having said that, is $15 a month too much? Dunno. I'm sure its far over operating costs and the big guys like WOW are making a killing. I also ate at MickyDee's today and spent seven bucks on a chicken sand combo. Is a good game worth 2 combos a month, I think so. Then again if the game is riddled with bugs, lack end game content, and have poor customer support, then no it's probably not.
I hate free to play games but I'm also not going to settle for halfbaked, timeconsuming everyone can be awesome, themeparks! Gimme some good games and give you my money!
You are justifying a sub-fee only for a game that actually sucks. Additional content is given in expansion packs arent they? Dont they cost money as well? In-game account support are you serious? Why would anyone need it if the game isnt broken? I'm sorry but GW is still alive and has gotten its money from Stand-alone campaigns. Every major city in GW has a sizable population still. Back then there used to be things called manuals that had troubleshooting tips. If your computer cant run it, upgrade!
The GW2 business model will survive because of the item mall and additional content that will be sold for a price. GW1 has excellent customer support, you usually get a response within 24 hours. Seriously , if you cant wait a day or two for an answer or solution then you have no patience.
-I am here to perform logic
The monthly costs for running a server farm for an MMO are extremely expensive.
First, you are not just paying for "power", you are paying for peak premium power w/ 100% uptime. That means a facility with 2N redundant power systems. So they need two utility feeds, two separate transformers, two seperate diesel generators, two seperate ATS systems, two seperate UPS banks, two separate PDU banks... and then you yourself needs to buy either an ATS or dual powersupply servers in order to take advantage of this. The last thing you want is a power outage to take down your entire network, and possibly burn up or corrupt tens of thousands of dollars worth of servers in the process.
Second, you need premium multi-tiered bandwidth w/ a cap that exceeds your peak requirements. This means that the bandwidth cap needs to be high enough that during your games peak traffic time, you don't oversaturate and bog down. Now, bulk bandwidth suppliers sell bandwidth based upon your peak usage, because your peak usage is the amount of bandwidth they need to have available at any given time. So while you might average, lets say 50MB inbound/ 25MB outbound... because your usage goes up to 150MB around 7pm at night, thats what your going to be charged for. You need a multi-tiered solution because ISPs go down a lot, and you need to to be able to switch from one ISPs route to another seamlessly when that happens (ie if L3 goes down, your traffic automatically switches over to CoX)
Third, you need the space itself, along with a Cooling solution that will keep your server farm from melting. That means a bunch of server cabinets in a cold/hot aisle configuration. So, not only do you need to rent or buy these cabinets and the space to put them in... but you also are also paying the bill on cooling these cabinets. And that cooling solution -has- to be redundant, so that when an HVAC craps out, your whole server farm doesn't melt (or you go offline until the HVAC can be replaced, which might be days) And you might not be aware, but a server farm produces a tremendous amount of heat. So you need a massive cooling system... which requires huge amounts of power to run.
Then you need to worry about the security of your location. Which means Biometrics, controlled access, 24/7 365 surveylence...ect.
Then you need to worry about having a fire system that won't fry all your electronics. Sorry, no sprinkler system.. you need some sort of gas system thats extremely expensive to maintain and build. Ie CO2 extinquishers w/ a FM200 fire suppression system.
Then you need to hire the IT team to do the actual maintenance and hardware replacement on the servers themselves. Not to mention the IT staff to put the network architecture in place in the first place...Cause stuff breaks... especially when you have a lot of it.
It's expensive , very expensive. Even the less successful MMO companies are probably paying well over 10-20k a month. I suspect Blizzard's monthly Colocation bill is in the range of millions.
And servers are not cheap. They are extremely expensive, especially servers capable of running MMOs Your talking tens of thousands of dollars on the low end, to tens of millions for an operation like Blizzard. There is a massive gap in your understanding between what goes into running a dedicated FPS server of 32 people... and what goes into running a server farm capable of handling thousands of users.
Well then I suggest you keep an eye on Guild Wars 2, because of the 5 points you mentioned, GW2 will be handling at least 4 of them. Just like the original, Guild Waars 2 will have little to no compulsory grind since the game world will be full of content in the form of dynamic events and it's these dynamic events that will allow you to effect the world. Also there will be a wealth of customizable options; from creating your own personal backstory, to defining your own playstyle. Along with the standard customizable options (look, race, stats, etc.). Also every single inch of the game is potential group content, even the "personal story", since you can invite a buddy along and it doesn't hurt that they got rid off all the social barriers (kill stealing, mob tagging, ninja looting, spawn camping, etc.)
It's really only that 3rd unrealistic option that Guild Wars 2 won't do, but now that I think about it, it wouldn't be such a bad idea. Just get all those annoying professional gold farmers to control mob bosses, making them tougher and very unpredictable. It would actually work perfectly well with Guild Wars 2's combat system, since the game has a fairly ambiguous aggro mechanic that doesn't really on a tank holding aggro, like most MMOs. Would be an interesting the to see happen.
I completly agree with this column.
5. Totally agree.
4. Totally agree, I would love to play something other then fantasy with magic or "modern" warfare.
3. God no. I would rather have a well made seamless world over 100,000+ people in instance areas and don't say "but EVE does it!" Yeah eve does it but it had many different sectors not a seamless world. Having so many on a server at one time just makes a-holes as they know they will never need you again. It's much better to be a medium/big fish in a small pond then the the nameless tiny fish in an ocean.
2. You say that but everyone I know that played old mmos have great memories of the old games and are just bored by games today that have less "grind". MMOs need grind, of course it can be fun grind but it still needs to be there. If you can get max level in a couple of a week people will just leave games sooner as they will get bored quickly. Not to mention that getting that sword after hours of work is much more memorable then getting it after a 10 minute quest.
1. Sure BtP is great but only one "MMO" uses it, and GW paid for it's self by exps. All the other non subs are pay to have real fun. I like subs, stops people from making trolling accounts, less children play, and cheap a-holes don't play. Also anyone that says $15 a month is "alot" has an I D 10 T error. It's $.50 a day, I don't know of ANY other hobby that is that cheap, but I do agree the flat $15 is just silly and game companies should look at it. (just like the standard $50)
One thing I will companies would stop doing is making MMOs that says/infers that you are THE hero. Not a hero but THE hero. MMOs should be able groups, guilds, raids, warparties, factions, etc... If you looking to be THE hero you should be playing snigle player games.
And yeah I expect flames from solo lovers and casuals.
I will not play a game with a cash shop ever again. A dev job should be to make the game better not make me pay so it sucks less.