Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Quick Links
What does an MMORPG need to succeed?
Jimmydean
Member UncommonPosts: 1,290
I think the first MMORPG that comes out, innovating in ways to get people playing together rather than separating them, will be a huge success.
Level synching so you can play with friends that are lower level and still get a benefit out of it.
Scaling raids / groups to fit group size, rather than trying to build your raid to fit them. Set a min / max for each. Maybe 10 minimum, 40 max. And have the raid scale to you, rather than not being able to raid because one or two people couldnt show up that night, or having to sit people out.
Multi-spec, I like what WoW/Rift have done with this.
NO TWO FACTIONS! Don't split the player base up. If you want PVP, have 3 factions that can fight when they want, or group together when they want.
Either Free server xfers, or a better way to bring friends together if they aren't on the same server. (suggestions?)
Anything else you guys can think of? Or do you think MMORPG developers should still focus on the RPG aspect of the MMO, and wonder why people don't stick around.
Comments
Pretty much everything you mentioned revolves around doing what?
Combat.
We need more real ways to come together and play.
I sit on a man's back, choking him and making him carry me, and yet assure myself and others that I am very sorry for him and wish to ease his lot by all possible means - except by getting off his back.
So you are suggesting what? We come together to... stand around and play patty cake? I don't see what you are getting at.
I don't think MMO need anything particular to succeed. People said MMO can't copy WoW to succeed, LoL and SWTOR did that and succeeded, people said MMO shouldn't be instances, Vindictus is one big instance, and it succeeded. I think a group of good developers make a game succeed, it's not just having a particular thing. What we like probably isn't what everyone else likes.
Things like building a city. Putting together a play or show. Joining a crafting guild that matters. Being part of a sports team. Planting crops, raising livestock. All of these things can be done socially with class dependencies just like combat does. There are so many ways you can come together to achieve a goal in an mmorpg. It doesn't have to always be through swinging a sword.
I sit on a man's back, choking him and making him carry me, and yet assure myself and others that I am very sorry for him and wish to ease his lot by all possible means - except by getting off his back.
All of the features of a decade-old game, with none of the flaws and bleeding edge graphics. All of the flavor of a first-gen MMO, none of the major issues with same. All of the sandboxiness of UO, none of the tedium. And ideally, developed faster and cheaper than any other game in recent history, free to play but not pay to win, and half off the normal box price.
Ideally, multilingual with overseas hardware support, so it can play in the same league as the Big Dog and the sub numbers can be compared on a apples-to-apples basis.
No, we don't expect too much.
Self-pity imprisons us in the walls of our own self-absorption. The whole world shrinks down to the size of our problem, and the more we dwell on it, the smaller we are and the larger the problem seems to grow.
You are being sarcastic but don't be!
If you are willing to accept a downgrade in graphics in order to both save development time and money and allow servers to do more code running and having more players in the same area without lag, you may find that in less than a decade you will have a game with awesome game systems, no cash shops, and subs that are only high enough to cover server costs and work on improving the game. No wasteful shareholder and profit soul suckers. Again graphics may only be ATITD or Wurm level or something.
I understand if you don't believe me but in my capacity as a RINC facilitator I am working on getting it done. Some people are gonna have to nerd up and do some work, but it is going to happen.
Sure, you can easily double the feature list while cutting both time and cost at the same time. Magic blue fairies. So simple, it's amazing that no one's ever thought of it.
Self-pity imprisons us in the walls of our own self-absorption. The whole world shrinks down to the size of our problem, and the more we dwell on it, the smaller we are and the larger the problem seems to grow.
This may be what the next EQ/WOW variant needs to succeed, but this has absolutely nothing to do with what an MMORPG needs to succeed.
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein
"Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
No you can change the feature list.
You can lower the graphics, which in turn allows procedural code in world generation. This allows players powerful creative abilities like you see in minecraft or Wurm for devs and players to use. All of these things cut costs.
You can take out cutscenes and expensive voice acting. No more finely tuned endgame raiding system.
There are dozens of things like this you can do.
They all cut costs as well as time needed to make and run a game and allow all sorts of new sandbox features.
Then you cut out all the money and cost cutting due to trying to make ridiculous WoW and TOR like profits.
Its all about the trade offs you are willing to make.
Do you know how much of your sub fee and box money goes to make content and run the servers? Less than half. What about all that cash shop shit?
I can make a text based browser mmorpg in a year with a feature set like you've never seen all by myself.
Adding more pictures might take me another 6 months to a year depending on how variable and high quality they were.
Upgrading to a 2d game like a more complex version of GameMaker with sprites might take me another 3 years.
Each graphical and physics step practically doubles, triples, quadruples the amount of time.
A low quality tibia or runescape like game may take me as many as 12 years by myself.
Going to UO or ATITD?
24-36 years by myself.
SWTOR or WoW? Probably longer than I will be alive.
Now what if I had 100 people on that? Probably take me 10 or 20 years given the features I want.
But what if I went back to ATITD level stuff? 100 people might get that done in 1-5 years.
Trade offs.
It's difficult to define exactly what 'succeeds', since nothing has succeeded since at least '04, according to this board.
Can't re-release those pre-'03 games, they're hopelessly dated and never, ever worked as well as people remember them working.
Yep, I'm a pessimist tonight; but if this board is used as the judge of quality games, we'll never see a game succeed, ever again. There are too many agendas running at the same time, and they often contradict each other.
Self-pity imprisons us in the walls of our own self-absorption. The whole world shrinks down to the size of our problem, and the more we dwell on it, the smaller we are and the larger the problem seems to grow.
Just cause I happened to have loved this game...
http://www.dragons-gate.com/play/book/races.htm
• SECIAN •
Secians are beautiful, winged creatures, the tiniest of all the races of Aradath.
~V~
OH and I wassposed to contribute to the topic... in order to satisfy the playerbase and the investors in a long term relationship (success might be determined by simply turning a profit or a few hours of fun, but I believe the best MMORPG is the one you never plan to quit)
-players consist of Competitors, Lovers/Haters, Hoarders, Explorers
-new age MMO seeks to combine RPG, RTS, FPS
-box fee + sub fee
~V~
Clown world featuring:
Army of Elvis
Monkey Butlers
Hillbilly hand fishn
A board where everyone is has achieved contentment leaves no puzzle to be solved. For an armchair developer, that would be disastrous
Thats easy: game needs PLAYERS.
Now how to get and keep them, thats the complicated issue. Basically you need to find a spot and attract enough interested people.
Depends on how you define success. These days it seems an MMORPG is successful if it has alot of box sales so in that case all you need to do is to reskin WoW, add some novel feature and ofcourse spend the mandatory 50-100 million to develop it and by the first 2-3 months hope that people have not realised that it is basically a reskinned WoW, so the producers have gotten their investment back and everyone has padded themselves on their backs and can now forget about the game and move on to the next reskinned WoW.
However, for longetivity, the game needs first stop catering to the casual, instant gratification crowd. Make the leveling slow and by slow I dont mean 2-3 months of casual playing to get to the cap, I am talking about maybe a year of casual playing to get to the cap. And the point is that getting to cap should not be the goal but rather the journey there needs to be. So do not create raid content only for the top levels but throughout all levels. So that even though you are not at the cap, you still feel that you are enjoying the game.
Make it so that combat, particulary PvP, is not artifically inflated by level numbers and/or super gear but is primarily decided by your skill as a player, second the skills of your character and then your level/gear. This makes it so that a skillfull player of alot lower level and gear can defeat a poor/lazy higher level person and this results in PvP being viable even though you are not at the level cap.
Then, give people true reason to explore so the gameplay does not only consist of combat. Make it huge and put alot of hidden treasures for people who are willing to explore. This gives yet another way to have longetivity.
Finally make use of the persistant nature of MMORPGs, have PvE mobs actually take over settlements/cities unless the players stop them. Have PvP victories actually mean something, such as controlling good leveling spots and NPC vendors. MMORPGs should be about actions that affect the world, not instanced nonsense that does nothing but give you gear and levels.
But I am dreaming, time to go login to WoW, ehr I mean SW:TOR.
My gaming blog
The definition of a successful MMORPG might vary. Some may say high sales even with a few people, some may say a very high population, while still others may say having a decent number of loyal players.
There's really no shortcut as to how it will succeed since different players want different things. It's just a matter of choosing what you can give to a select population. Oftentimes, when MMOs try to be the best in everything for everyone, it ends up being mediocre.
OP, I think you should go to the Guild Wars 2 forum and check that game out. It addresses every one of your points, some not in the same way, but I think I could argue that they're even going further than some of your ideas.
Here is an insanely long overview of the game and what it's all about. You should probably start here, but also make sure to watch the first video the thread links.
http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/thread/337506/Guild-Wars-2-Mass-info-for-the-uninitiated.html
"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
weekly world event,like one raid pvpve,one world pvp (like outlaws den in nar shadaa swtor),why only once cause it means lot of player like if server time peak is from 6 30 pm to 10 .30 then these event should be timed around those hour server time
one thing i like about asian game most usa corp dont do is they dont have a lot of server at most they ll have one fro usa ,one for eu one for asia etc but they have a lot of channel in said server and you can hop on any channel you want so at every channel always get a prior warning around 30 minute before a gm make an event happen so you are on channel 31 but an even is starting in 30 minute at channel number 4 then you rush to go to said place on that channel to participate to this even
it sound silly but if reward are there gamer will go out of their way to go to those.interestingly this as the side effect of relieveing pressure to some server.like always the same channel are full say .with these even going on in this system you are never in the same channel you are always moving around for these event.i love this system!
back in the day no one gave a sh!t about numbers. now days? BOX SALES. your subscription means nothing.
Independent game companies.
As long as corporations with non-gamer investors and directors are digging their hands in the mix, the industry will continue to focus on tricks, gimmicks, or formulas that can be used to increase revenue rather than innovation, creativity, and a focus on quality over quantity.
the pursuit of profit is why anyone makes a game to begin with so thats not necessarily a bad thing. making games is not a charitable endeavor. these companies are making games they think their consumers want and will spend their money on. so its up to us really. if the games being made are not what you want dont spend your money on them.
Heh , you want innovation in your MMO? Then pray that the Devs stop creating real life graphics and actually put content into their games. It's not that complicated. Seriously nothing is stopping a Dev to release a low graphic MMO with tons of contents and later on improve on graphics. Hell , CCP has done it with EVE-Online.
I don't understand why a MMO needs to be everything at once , look at FF14 how miserably pathetic it is? Ok the graphics are breath taking , but Jesus Christ the gameplay sucks. And that's just one example. Do a bloody MMO with a crap load of content to keep players busy for a long time instead of working on graphics. Look at SWtor another example , people reaching max level in under 2 weeks. THIS AIN't SUPPOSE TO HAPPEN!!! No matter how long you play 24/7 that means under 300 hours of game play to max out is pathetic.
Graphics are sooooooooooo overrated when it comes to a MMORPG , we're not talking about FPS online where your goal is to shoot someone's head off , we're talking about a genre that needs ALOT more then just real life breasts and seeing your reflection off a lake.
(Note: I have been playing Atom Zombie Smasher :P)
What if someone made a zombies MMO game, where all players and characters are... pixels? Just a pixel.
And now, instead of thinking about animations, fx, cutscenes, etc just focus on having a massive scale, mapping a country with cities and rural areas, and a massive number of players, and zombies, all just a pixel each.
I would play that
Amen brother.