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We are the waiting (and I'm tired of it)
RabbiFang
Member Posts: 149
TL; DR - Rant about the current state of MMOs. If you're currently happy with your theme park MMO, this is not for you.
I've been a lurker here at MMORPG.com for as long as I can remember. In that time, I have learned one hugely important fact; I am not alone. MMORPG.com is essentially a home for the homeless; a refuge for those of us that are waiting for that perfect game that never comes.
Don't get me wrong, there are exceptions to the rule. There are hundreds, if not thousands of MMORPG.com readers who have found what they consider to be their perfect game. To those people, I recommend you stop reading, and go back to grinding for gear in (INSERT THEMEPARK GAME NAME HERE). The rest of us are waiting; waiting endlessly for the next game to come along and let us down, only to be followed up by another to come and excrete all over our dreams once again.
I've been playing MMOs for as long as I can remember; certainly all of my late-teen and adult life. I'm not particularly 'hardcore' per-se; I'm 28 years old, married, I run two websites and work for myself from home as a programmer. This does, of course give me a reasonable amount of free time at my PC. FPS games don't cut it for me, and neither do MOBAs. I appreciate both of them for what they are, and actually play them from time to time, too. What I want from a game is simple. I want an MMORPG, in the traditional sense of the term. I want freedom. Freedom from the stresses of daily life, freedom to go anywhere and explore, freedom to fight the guy that's stealing my kills, and freedom to declare war on him and his friends if I should so desire. What I want, is a sandbox, and I am not alone.
My history of MMOs is somewhat sandbox heavy. Back when I was 16 years old, I first discovered Ultima Online, and I played it on a 200Mhz Pentium pile of crap. Still, it ran, and it ran well. I loved that game; it had everything I wanted and a whole lot more. Let's face it though, for the past 8 years (at least), it's looked like crap. I simply had to move on. Nobody wants to play a game that's older than a fair percentage of the members of this forum.
In 2002, I found Neocron. Neocron is a game many of you have probably never heard of, or if you have, you've never experienced its endgame...and what an endgame it was. I played Neocron's endgame for a few years alongside SW:G. It was so far ahead of its time that many of its features went totally un-noticed by the rest of the world, and certainly amongst MMORPG fans. It had multiple factions, inter-faction clan warfare, semi-open PvP, player looting, a punishment system, NPC cops that shot criminals on sight, player housing with full sandbox placement of furniture, drugs which enhanced performance, a huge open world without quests, flying vehicles, ground vehicles, swimming, an epic crafting system and territorial warfare which pitted rival clans against one another for control of outposts which earned revenue. Oh, and one of the best twitch combat systems I've ever had the pleasure of using. /breathe.
I just listed all the functionality of a fantastic, modern, 3D sandbox game. My perfect game. But why did it do so badly? Well, that's simple; semi-incompetent developers (most of which have left the company now) and a lack of funding/advertising. Bugs were simply never fixed, and version 2.0 of the game essentially killed many of the aspects which made it such a fun and interesting game almost a decade ago.
Since the relative death of Neocron's moderate success, I have lurked these forums, seeking out a replacement. When I first came to these forums, like many of you, I was baffled by the staggering amount of MMO games available. Simply put, I was overwhelmed - the perfect game simply HAD to be here. The sad part is, I've bought, downloaded and tried a huge proportion of them, including every major release you can name since WoW in 2003, to SWTOR in 2011. I even bought Darkfall, Mortal Online, Earthrise and Xsyon, hoping that one of these titles might have fill that empty sandbox void that Neocron and Ultima Online left inside of me all those years ago. Sadly, what I got instead was a proverbial bitch slap in the guise of great ideas, poor implementation and often shoddy, unfinished work. Darkfall came the closest for me, but that was utterly ruined by its ridiculous levelling system and grind, which forced people to AFK macro-power-level. THAT SHOULD HAVE BEEN FIXED BY NOW.
So, to my point. I seem to spend far, far more time waiting for the next MMO to come along and disappoint me than I do actually playing MMO games. That's sad, in it self, and says a hell of a lot for an industry which could be so much more than it is right now. Currently, I'm eagerly awaiting Diablo III, Archeage and Planetside 2, and I have a close eye on Tera and TSW. Which of those games will let me down? All of them? three of them? Who knows, but I'm almost certain we'll all be back here in twelve months time, waiting.
Hear me, developers. Stop holding our hands like we're mindless, merry little morons. Stop feeding us linear quest after linear quest, and forcing us to grind dungeons for PvP gear. In fact, forget you ever played WoW and forget everything that it taught you. That's right, everything. Build a virtual world, from scratch that we can play in, and ultimately control as the inhabitants of said world. Is that really too much to ask?
This industry should be full of game companies competing for our business, each trying to entice players away from their current, deserved MMO addiction. What we have in reality is companies feeding us the same old regurgitated crap, time and time again; each of them hoping for a somewhat moderate user retention level so that they can pay their whopping development bills, which were invariably racked up on the wrong areas of game development.
Theme parks, I hate you.
WoW, I hate you.
Devs, you're doing it wrong.
/end cynical rant.
Comments
Have you tried Uncharted Waters Online? It might be the game you're looking for.
Not based on his description of neocron.
There is some merit to the "pay to win" complaints for those who are into sea battles. Getting an NC ship will let you have what is effectively a high level ship at low levels. Other than that, it looks to me like Netmarble is trying to unbalance the game with the item mall, and mostly failing at it. (E.g., we put such and such high level, hard to get item in the item mall... and discovered that the only reason anyone cared about it was that it was high level and hard to get. Was.)
Getting some special shipbuilding permits will give you a huge advantage over people who spend absolutely nothing. But if $10 doesn't get you a lifetime supply of such permits, it will at least last you an awfully long time.
RabbiFang, I'm right there with you. I long for a really good sandbox game. My first sandbox game was Eve Online, and that game was a breath of fresh air compared to the repetiviness of the gameplay I found in WoW.
Well i feel your pain to a certain degree as i'm enjoying STO while i wait for some sandboxy games so i have my eye on these to get my sandbox fix.
The Repopulation
Hopefully this will be a dark horse for 2012,the scope of what the devs are attempting is damn impressive,and the devs pretty much answer any questions on the forums.
Firefly Universe
Just really looked into this as it's a bit of a mystery,but what i can gather is Joss Whedon is going to be consulted every step of the way,also they have a major announcement 29th Feb so fingers crossed for that.Also have a very in depth survey as to how players want the game to develop as this is a open source joint effort across the internet.
That is a good post and i fully agree to it.
Despite the multimillions spent, the genre moves WAY too slow. The core problem is that developers and more so investors do only look back on what worked in the past and try to copy those features, instead of spending their time and money on inventing things that work for the future. I guess in any other industrie the goal is a future-proof product, while MMORPGs are tailored to contain stuff that is prooven to have worked 4 years ago -despite people being tired of it for years already.
No one seems to ever think about how to move the genre forward, but what does the genre already have to be copied for our next game. And although its all just copy+paste, still we face ridiculous development cycles of 4 years+ and i always just laughed it off when in recent years a game got announced to hit the shelves 2015/16 (and announce bankruptcy somewhen in the meantime)
The genre went from progression to stagnation to retrogression. See SWTOR as a prime example. Both the most expensive and the worst MMORPG until today. A few more titles and the genre willl be dead or -like in the very beginning- totally depending on indy-companies to push it again. The problem will be that the market is not going to accept indy titles anymore, spoiled by the numbers of recent (although tanked) blockbusters.
It's not that I disagree with the OP but I just dont see the point of a huge post about it. I guess after being here for as long as I have and reading numerous posts like this I'm becoming cynical about cynical posts. maybe it is just because I know that no matter how well thought out a post is no matter how many valid points are made it all comes down to this.. Investors don't want to risk their money on a AAA sandbox because it has not been proven they can make money. It cant be proven that a AAA sandbox will make money because investors will not fund one. It is a stalemate.
If you want to play a sandbox game, then stop your whining and go play one. There are some good ones out there.
If you want to argue that there aren't any AAA sandbox games, then you'd best define AAA, and explain why three decades of experience and several hundred million dollars in annual revenue doesn't qualify Tecmo-Koei as an AAA developer.
/sign
If nobody is making your dream game, make it yourself.
Making games is hella hard, especially if you are poor.
I never claimed it was easy. But I think that whenever a person is feeling down about the state of worlds out there, it helps to sit down and actually think clearly about the obstacles and scale of work/organization required to make one of these behemoths happen.
If you use good middleware and gnu tools and you sacrifice on art assets and graphics its not actually that hard. Its mostly all about capital. Which is hardly shocking. Everything is about capital.
Well, there is love and stupidity as well, nut yeah those are the powers that rules the earth.
It is hard to find someone funding you if you are unknown and that you want to create a very different game doesn´t really help either...
Heck, Strain went to a bunch of studios when he tried to get funding for class 4 and his earlier games have sold over 15 million (not counting Wow that was his initial idea). They all told him he needed to make a game that was more like Wow for them to fund it until he talked to Microsoft, they just looked on his merits and gave him a truckload of money.
If the guy behind Diablo and Guildwars have that problems to get a funding for a non Wow like game, imagine someone that never made a game before.
If only the 'waiting' actually were subscribing and supporting this industry.
The 'silent' crowd doesn't show up anywhere and companies can not define them or know how many there are.
Preaching over the internet is fine but to put actual $$$, well, make one yourself or support one that's the cloest to your ideal MMO.
Otherwise, why should anyone listen to you?
Gdemami -
Informing people about your thoughts and impressions is not a review, it's a blog.
Firstly, I do support this industry; more so than most I bet. You've clearly not read my post properly. I have purchased pretty much every MMO to be released over the past 5 years, and I am currently subbed to 6, including those closest to that which I consider to be my ideal MMO.
The 'make one yourself' argument is getting old. I'm a Java/PHP developer that develops websites and software for smartphones, I am no game developer. Even if I was, I wouldn't have the time to put into the project with all the side businesses I run.
The fact is, there are always impressive looking games on the horizon, many of which continue to let us down in a big way. The industry looked so bright back in 2002, and here we are, a decade later, still recovering from the WoW effect.
Why should anyone listen to me? Well, why shouldn't they?
I get your point. For the record, I am subbed to:
Neocron, Darkfall, Mortal Online, Face of Mankind and .... Okay I cancelled my other subs. So, 4 it is.
Still, they're all indy studios that have attempted to make a sandbox game.
I like to give everything a try, and sadly that means I have thrown money at theme park games, too, so I also see your point
The hardest part of game design: a solid design, a flexible system
The most expensive part of game design: Art assets
This is the problem for most indie mmos and/or startups.
Getting art-assets is the most time-consuming and expensive part of any game. And visuals sell, its a fact.
I'm making a TCG/CCG atm and my ruleset is done and ready since last year january, but i only have one of 2 decks ready with art assets and i still need to launch with at least one booster.
If you don't work full-time on your project and are ready to fund it from your own pocket, it will take years to get all assets into the game. Even after i've figured out how to streamline asset-creation with various tricks I still spend at least one day on one card (thats one day of free-time, i.e. around 4h).
With modern games this workload tripples or even quadruples. Making just 30 unique character models for NPCs/mobs will already take you around half a year if you are doing it as a hobby, even if you cheat around it with tools like Makehuman for humanoids and buying ready-made environment assets like trees and rocks.
And thats without the UI, sound-design (which will be expected), scripting and prgramming.
Realistically, the only thing you can actually make as a single individual is a MUD, not an MMO.
Its not impossible to create a MMO from scratch on the cheap these days with all the tools out there. i mean just take the guys over at 3d buzz. They sell online videos on programming anything from a 2d space shoter to a full blown in process build from scratch MMO for about 400$.
Now will the MMO you end up building be generic ? you bet! Will the MMO you create be a full blown production value game ? no it wont but it will give you an idea of what all it takes to actualy do something like a MMO or games in general.
I have always though that some high end dev company should go along the way bethesda did with there ES games. Take a game like Darkfall for example. DF is a pretty good game. I really liked it but there were just a few flaws that drove me nuts. The grind, bugs with boats, etc
Now take that game with a Bethesda style construction set like they do for ES. Open it up to where a single person or a group of people for that matter could "rent" a server that they could use the construction kit to create the game the way they wanted it. Kind of like what they did with the Hero engine except with all the assets still in place. Once the server is ready the dev team for that server could launch it and the parent company they rent the server from gets x% of the profits of that server.
If you ask me that would be the way to go in the future as player created content is HUGE right now just look at the dungeon maker in EQ2, and hell even minecraft. The bottom line i dont expect the next great MMO to come from any massive company with a rediculous budget that produces a mediocre AAA title. With the ease of use of the current and future tech. I fully expect a group of friends with lots of spare time and the ability to either buy or make art assets will have the next best thing.
5 years to develope a game is just too long, by the time it is released you don't even want to play it anymore. I wish mmo developement companies would announce a game a year before release. 5 years from announcement to release is a hype killer.
Yes that is exactly what I mean. The part that has nothing to do with the game takes all the resources. I can make an MMO by myself, but it will have crappy art and limited features. Of course I will also have to shell out cash for the networking and systems software because that's a bitch to code.
well UDK is free and you can create a game like TERA if you so wanted , you can also read all the required material on youtube to create your own game ... it's 100% free until you makea certain cash treshold with it.
The real problem isn't that there is a lack of game it's that the expectation of people are so specialized that it's nearly impossible to fill their demands , a good example is the whole pvper hating on pver when the whole concept of mmorpg are based upon npc leveling .... the whole crowd that looks for fps action in the mmorpg is the biggest complainer there ever was because they can't seem to grasp what they are asking for is basically for 3/4 of the population to roleplay npc and let themselves get farmed... You can blame world of roguecraft for that i suppose.
Another thing is that people get so hyped for a game that when they finally receive it it's not anywhere near what they envisioned and are straigth up deceived with it ... Star wars is a very good example of that ( not that it's any good but people believed until the last moment it was gonna be good even tough we all knew deep down it was the macdonald's of the mmo)
Statements like these can only come from a person that has never touched game-design, programming, (3D) graphics design, or sound-design.
You can't even begin to fathom what it takes to create a halfway decent PC game. And by halfway decent i mean playable alpha.
If I had 10 cents every time I joined (on my free time mind you) an interesting game-project my friends wanted to do (or my friends friends cousins roommate) that never even got to the playable alpha stage.
Id have 1 dollar.
The last time I joined one was around 2 years ago, we had everything, engine, programmer, artist, sound-designer, etc.
The "designer" that started the project nowadays works the nightshift at McDonalds, he never got any further than a txt-document with a feature-list.
PS: The ability and spare time is the last concern you need to worry about if you are making a PC game and involve more than 1 person.
It is my personal expierience that for as long as you do not pay a hard sallary or at least per commission, people don't take a "lets make a game"-project seriously at all, and it will never get off the ground, EVER.
Or you will need to find extremely dedicated people that you know on a deep personal level so you can guilt them into actually working on the shit you designed.
Couldnt agree more with this, making a game is way more difficult than creating any other type of media.
I worked in QA for Rockstar North and seen what goes into making a game first hand.
I now work in a University and run Games Development labs and even after 5 years of studying game design / programming / art and so on most of the games the students create are complete trash.
People that think you just buy an engine and some assets and you have a game are deluded.