Motivations vary from person to person, but mine are purpose, ownership, habit and hope.
Purpose: I need something to do that feels worth doing (some people call this "fun").
Ownership: I feel like I own something in the game (it's important to never read the legalese in the EULA as it will only spoil the mood)
Habit: *presses lever*
Hope: I need to feel the game has a future. A developer heartbeat (that avoids using the word "soon"), some sort of priority list, the occassional expression of confidence that the game will be around forever and that there will be other players there (even if I am a hermit, but that's another thread)
Regularly grouping creates better communities and causes you to become familiar with certain players..
So familiar...you begin to call them Friend.
I can't tell you how many lulls in gaming that I only stayed through because I enjoyed the people I was playing with, and further, enjoyed the community.
I made it through the last three months of TOC in WoW only because I genuinely enjoyed the friends I played with.
* that's not at all to say wow's grouping was good, just that the group I found was important to me. So I important that I continued to do raids I loathed.
Spec'ing properly is a gateway drug. 12 Million People have been meter spammed in heroics.
Replay. Encourage alt-itis, plenty of classes, races, piles of character slots, starting areas.
Not coincidentally, that means a lot of 'repeatable' options for player-designed content, too.
But we can assume that the "ultimate" MMO has every feature anyone's ever imagined. Pile em on there, they all encourage players via variety, if nothing else.
The devil is in the details--you can't cram them all in at launch (but we'll never admit it, rawr!), what's going to wait? Concentrate on "replay" before getting "play" right? Enormous error, as we've seen.
I'll go along with "social" (what others are trying to say when they err on 'group-centric'). Game's worn out for me, but I'll keep playing for years if the guild/friends are.
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.
Kyleran: "Now there's the real trick, learning to accept and enjoy a game for what
it offers rather than pass on what might be a great playing experience
because it lacks a few features you prefer."
John Henry Newman: "A man would do nothing if he waited until he could do it so well that no one could find fault."
FreddyNoNose: "A good game needs no defense; a bad game has no defense." "Easily digested content is just as easily forgotten."
LacedOpium: "So the question that begs to be asked is, if you are not interested in
the game mechanics that define the MMORPG genre, then why are you
playing an MMORPG?"
One singular thing that would keep anyone happy period, is this:
A Dynamic World
This would fulfill pretty much everyone's desires, as you allow for everyone to have the ability to change the world around them, and if done correctly, takes the focus of content development off the developers, and allows them to focus on new tools and abilities for their players, as well as more diversity. You can even themepark it a bit, but at the end of the day when the dev-implemented quests are done, people are able to play through the world how they want to.
My blog is a continuing story of what MMO's should be like.
One singular thing that would keep anyone happy period, is this:
A Dynamic World
This would fulfill pretty much everyone's desires, as you allow for everyone to have the ability to change the world around them, and if done correctly, takes the focus of content development off the developers, and allows them to focus on new tools and abilities for their players, as well as more diversity. You can even themepark it a bit, but at the end of the day when the dev-implemented quests are done, people are able to play through the world how they want to.
Unfortunately, that's a disaster in the making unless done very, very carefully. First off, it's not going to make a lot of people happy because a lot of people, like the pro-groupers and the pro-permadeathers, are only going to be happy if they can force their playstyle on everyone else. Unless their playstyle and only their playstyle is allowed, they're miserable.
Secondly, I'm really not comfortable with everyone being able to "change the world". Sure, if it's limited to very small, insignificant things, then fine. Have a house. Put stuff in it. Craft some stuff and sell it. Do whatever you want in your house. But if you start allowing people to create whatever they want out in public areas, it's going to be a disaster. It's one thing for the devs to create a single, focused view, but quite another to allow a thousand people to create a thousand different views. If you have to police it, it's no less work than just letting the devs do it all.
A sense of community. Without it a MMO gets boring fast as it's the only thing that is unique to the genre. Unfortunately to bring it back would mean the end of many solo-centric game play features. If developers give players absolutely no reason to interact they won't and you end up with a shitty single player experience with other players running around.
1. Player's economy - instead of gather X amount of tokens and exchange for everything from NPC
2. Great crafting system (SWG...)
3. Open world and meaningful housing
4. "Climate" - aescethics, music, ambient - see old p2p (SoA) Lotro
5. pro-community and pro-sever-society build mechanics
6. variety in gameplay - valid gameplay as a PvE or PvP player, crafter, explorer / gatherer, trader, etc
7. Less automatization - like no AH, or very high fee or limited to less expensive stuff AH, no auto-magic press-button & be in instance things
8. Harder open world gameplay and steeper learning curve - no faceroll like nowadays
9. Seamless, big gameworld
10. Devs that don't cave in and change whole game dramatically like it frequently happens after 1-2 years
11. No cash shop, other RMT + devs fighting botters & exploiters
-Basically less I am reminded I am playing a game and less whole experience feel like a game - longer I play.
[ PRO-TIP = 'cinematic-like experience like in Swtor feel totally like a game and do NOT immerse me ]
More on-rails, game-like (press button and play PvE & PvP instances) experience - shorter I play usually.
==============
Imho it will be extremly hard to make mmorpg will huge playerbase than will also remain sub / playing-continuesly for really long peroids of time. Strictly speaking about mmorpg, not about other mmos - which are unknown terrain for huge productions.
Mmorpg playerbase - is becoming more and more fragmented, majority of it alrady played mmorpg in the past and have their tastes. It will also stop growing or it will even get smaller - many ppl will go to play other types of mmos or just non-mmo lobby games like MOBA's, etc
Think devs should stop dreaming of millions of players subbed for long-years, at least when we take only NA + EU into account.
If they want long-term - then think realisically about max. 300-500 k subs longterm.
Making casual games 'for everbody' will end up 9/10 times like Swtor, War, AoC, etc
I was going to write a list, but #1 turned out to be such a pivotal concept, I'm going to leave it at that.
1. Emphasis on guilds for multiplayer gameplay. By forcing (encouraging) guild activity it is more likely that players will develop in game relationships (not talking about dating, btw). When such relationships exist and interaction is an everyday occurance, it becomes more difficult for a player to leave the game due to not wanting to be cut off from those relationships.
Ken Fisher - Semi retired old fart Network Administrator, now working in Network Security. I don't Forum PVP. If you feel I've attacked you, it was probably by accident. When I don't understand, I ask. Such is not intended as criticism.
I played Knight Online the longest because it was my first mmorpg, so it was completely new kind of gameplay to me. I can only guess that WoW was first mmo for many players and was also the reason why they played it the longest.
So I will bet on innovation. You are interested for a long time if it is something like nothing before. If it is to similar it will get boring fast, who wants to repeat the same thing over and over.
“It's unwise to pay too much, but it's worse to pay too little. When you pay too much, you lose a little money - that's all. When you pay too little, you sometimes lose everything, because the thing you bought was incapable of doing the thing it was bought to do. The common law of business balance prohibits paying a little and getting a lot - it can't be done. If you deal with the lowest bidder, it is well to add something for the risk you run, and if you do that you will have enough to pay for something better.”
My character(s). *Give me MANY options in creating my character, not the lesser of 5 or 6 evils. *Give my characters depth and meaning. *Give them a world to live in. *Give them things to do and reasons for being there. *Let my character explore and test tings out. *Let him learn not every mob can be beaten easily. *Give him skills and abilities to help him grow into a hero. *Let my character make a home in the world. Give him a base of operations, a place of rest, a place to put his "stuff." (Not a bank.) *Let the world react to my character and what he has done, or not done.
- Al
Personally the only modern MMORPG trend that annoys me is the idea that MMOs need to be designed in a way to attract people who don't actually like MMOs. Which to me makes about as much sense as someone trying to figure out a way to get vegetarians to eat at their steakhouse. - FARGIN_WAR
Perhaps the question should have been phrased "what things encourge people to stay that don't discourage them from playing in the first place"?
(a few of the suggestions I see here as ways to encourage people to stay are on my personal quit-on-sight list)
This will be diffrent for diffrent people.
There is no more one 'universal' list of 'what things encourage people to stay that don't disencourage them from playing in first place'.
Even if for example 10 ppl here would agree on that kind of list, there would be people out there for which those would be "quit-on-sight" list.
Going safe will not appease anyone and will make people quit mmorpg fast and going for certain solutions to keep part of playerbase for longer will make other part of playerbase to insta-quit or not even start.
Sometimes things exclude themself and it is just impossible to compromise or balance things out.
Besides mmorpg players are much less prone to compromise on certain thing now that in for example 2006.
Seriously, I can't be the only one who doesn't give a damn what my character looks like, can I? I play in first-person. I hardly ever see my character. I don't care what my armor looks like, only what it does. It's entirely irrelevant to me.
Personally the only modern MMORPG trend that annoys me is the idea that MMOs need to be designed in a way to attract people who don't actually like MMOs. Which to me makes about as much sense as someone trying to figure out a way to get vegetarians to eat at their steakhouse. - FARGIN_WAR
I'm not playing to connect with a character, I'm playing a game. I don't play Halo to feel a connection to Master Chief. If I want to roleplay, I'll sit down around a table with a bunch of friends and do so.
Even if for example 10 ppl here would agree on that kind of list, there would be people out there for which those would be "quit-on-sight" list.
But isn't that an important part of the equation?
I agree with you that you can't satisfy everyone and that trying to please everyone can end up pleasing nobody, but I think that's more important in finding your niche in the first place. Once you have people actually playing your game (even if they aren't the audience you originally intended to attract) and are talking about retention, then I tend to believe that a publisher is smarter to aim for being inoffensive. If you choose to consciously alienate half your players, you have to be very sure the other half are going to spend enough to make up the difference.
I'm not playing to connect with a character, I'm playing a game. I don't play Halo to feel a connection to Master Chief. If I want to roleplay, I'll sit down around a table with a bunch of friends and do so.
If you want zero RP I suggest you don't play mmoRPGs anymore.
A connection with your character is the very least of RP and pretty basic in an MMORPG.
Comments
Motivations vary from person to person, but mine are purpose, ownership, habit and hope.
Purpose: I need something to do that feels worth doing (some people call this "fun").
Ownership: I feel like I own something in the game (it's important to never read the legalese in the EULA as it will only spoil the mood)
Habit: *presses lever*
Hope: I need to feel the game has a future. A developer heartbeat (that avoids using the word "soon"), some sort of priority list, the occassional expression of confidence that the game will be around forever and that there will be other players there (even if I am a hermit, but that's another thread)
Group-centric play.
Regularly grouping creates better communities and causes you to become familiar with certain players..
So familiar...you begin to call them Friend.
I can't tell you how many lulls in gaming that I only stayed through because I enjoyed the people I was playing with, and further, enjoyed the community.
I made it through the last three months of TOC in WoW only because I genuinely enjoyed the friends I played with.
* that's not at all to say wow's grouping was good, just that the group I found was important to me. So I important that I continued to do raids I loathed.
Spec'ing properly is a gateway drug.
12 Million People have been meter spammed in heroics.
Replay. Encourage alt-itis, plenty of classes, races, piles of character slots, starting areas.
Not coincidentally, that means a lot of 'repeatable' options for player-designed content, too.
But we can assume that the "ultimate" MMO has every feature anyone's ever imagined. Pile em on there, they all encourage players via variety, if nothing else.
The devil is in the details--you can't cram them all in at launch (but we'll never admit it, rawr!), what's going to wait? Concentrate on "replay" before getting "play" right? Enormous error, as we've seen.
I'll go along with "social" (what others are trying to say when they err on 'group-centric'). Game's worn out for me, but I'll keep playing for years if the guild/friends are.
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.
PvP and frequent content updates?
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been -Wayne Gretzky
Minigames should be used a lot more. Not just characters doing fun ingame events but something as simple as card games in the local tavern.
Epic Music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vAigCvelkhQ&list=PLo9FRw1AkDuQLEz7Gvvaz3ideB2NpFtT1
https://archive.org/details/softwarelibrary_msdos?&sort=-downloads&page=1
Kyleran: "Now there's the real trick, learning to accept and enjoy a game for what it offers rather than pass on what might be a great playing experience because it lacks a few features you prefer."
John Henry Newman: "A man would do nothing if he waited until he could do it so well that no one could find fault."
FreddyNoNose: "A good game needs no defense; a bad game has no defense." "Easily digested content is just as easily forgotten."
LacedOpium: "So the question that begs to be asked is, if you are not interested in the game mechanics that define the MMORPG genre, then why are you playing an MMORPG?"
One singular thing that would keep anyone happy period, is this:
A Dynamic World
This would fulfill pretty much everyone's desires, as you allow for everyone to have the ability to change the world around them, and if done correctly, takes the focus of content development off the developers, and allows them to focus on new tools and abilities for their players, as well as more diversity. You can even themepark it a bit, but at the end of the day when the dev-implemented quests are done, people are able to play through the world how they want to.
My blog is a continuing story of what MMO's should be like.
Unfortunately, that's a disaster in the making unless done very, very carefully. First off, it's not going to make a lot of people happy because a lot of people, like the pro-groupers and the pro-permadeathers, are only going to be happy if they can force their playstyle on everyone else. Unless their playstyle and only their playstyle is allowed, they're miserable.
Secondly, I'm really not comfortable with everyone being able to "change the world". Sure, if it's limited to very small, insignificant things, then fine. Have a house. Put stuff in it. Craft some stuff and sell it. Do whatever you want in your house. But if you start allowing people to create whatever they want out in public areas, it's going to be a disaster. It's one thing for the devs to create a single, focused view, but quite another to allow a thousand people to create a thousand different views. If you have to police it, it's no less work than just letting the devs do it all.
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
A sense of community. Without it a MMO gets boring fast as it's the only thing that is unique to the genre. Unfortunately to bring it back would mean the end of many solo-centric game play features. If developers give players absolutely no reason to interact they won't and you end up with a shitty single player experience with other players running around.
Bren
while(horse==dead)
{
beat();
}
The real question is why "encouring players to sub longer" matters at all.
Most MMOs are F2P and there is no subs anymore.
I also don't see any wrong to have players unsub when there is no more content, and re-sub when new content comes out.
There are plenty of MMOs (and other games out there), it is not like players will be bored without playing their chosen MMO.
Speak only for myself:
1. Player's economy - instead of gather X amount of tokens and exchange for everything from NPC
2. Great crafting system (SWG...)
3. Open world and meaningful housing
4. "Climate" - aescethics, music, ambient - see old p2p (SoA) Lotro
5. pro-community and pro-sever-society build mechanics
6. variety in gameplay - valid gameplay as a PvE or PvP player, crafter, explorer / gatherer, trader, etc
7. Less automatization - like no AH, or very high fee or limited to less expensive stuff AH, no auto-magic press-button & be in instance things
8. Harder open world gameplay and steeper learning curve - no faceroll like nowadays
9. Seamless, big gameworld
10. Devs that don't cave in and change whole game dramatically like it frequently happens after 1-2 years
11. No cash shop, other RMT + devs fighting botters & exploiters
-Basically less I am reminded I am playing a game and less whole experience feel like a game - longer I play.
[ PRO-TIP = 'cinematic-like experience like in Swtor feel totally like a game and do NOT immerse me ]
More on-rails, game-like (press button and play PvE & PvP instances) experience - shorter I play usually.
==============
Imho it will be extremly hard to make mmorpg will huge playerbase than will also remain sub / playing-continuesly for really long peroids of time. Strictly speaking about mmorpg, not about other mmos - which are unknown terrain for huge productions.
Mmorpg playerbase - is becoming more and more fragmented, majority of it alrady played mmorpg in the past and have their tastes. It will also stop growing or it will even get smaller - many ppl will go to play other types of mmos or just non-mmo lobby games like MOBA's, etc
Think devs should stop dreaming of millions of players subbed for long-years, at least when we take only NA + EU into account.
If they want long-term - then think realisically about max. 300-500 k subs longterm.
Making casual games 'for everbody' will end up 9/10 times like Swtor, War, AoC, etc
I was going to write a list, but #1 turned out to be such a pivotal concept, I'm going to leave it at that.
1. Emphasis on guilds for multiplayer gameplay. By forcing (encouraging) guild activity it is more likely that players will develop in game relationships (not talking about dating, btw). When such relationships exist and interaction is an everyday occurance, it becomes more difficult for a player to leave the game due to not wanting to be cut off from those relationships.
I played Knight Online the longest because it was my first mmorpg, so it was completely new kind of gameplay to me. I can only guess that WoW was first mmo for many players and was also the reason why they played it the longest.
So I will bet on innovation. You are interested for a long time if it is something like nothing before. If it is to similar it will get boring fast, who wants to repeat the same thing over and over.
Perhaps the question should have been phrased "what things encourge people to stay that don't discourage them from playing in the first place"?
(a few of the suggestions I see here as ways to encourage people to stay are on my personal quit-on-sight list)
Enjoyable
Friends/community
Purpose
multiple aspects of the game to play
--John Ruskin
My character(s).
*Give me MANY options in creating my character, not the lesser of 5 or 6 evils.
*Give my characters depth and meaning.
*Give them a world to live in.
*Give them things to do and reasons for being there.
*Let my character explore and test tings out.
*Let him learn not every mob can be beaten easily.
*Give him skills and abilities to help him grow into a hero.
*Let my character make a home in the world. Give him a base of operations, a place of rest, a place to put his "stuff." (Not a bank.)
*Let the world react to my character and what he has done, or not done.
- Al
Personally the only modern MMORPG trend that annoys me is the idea that MMOs need to be designed in a way to attract people who don't actually like MMOs. Which to me makes about as much sense as someone trying to figure out a way to get vegetarians to eat at their steakhouse.- FARGIN_WAR
This will be diffrent for diffrent people.
There is no more one 'universal' list of 'what things encourage people to stay that don't disencourage them from playing in first place'.
Even if for example 10 ppl here would agree on that kind of list, there would be people out there for which those would be "quit-on-sight" list.
Going safe will not appease anyone and will make people quit mmorpg fast and going for certain solutions to keep part of playerbase for longer will make other part of playerbase to insta-quit or not even start.
Sometimes things exclude themself and it is just impossible to compromise or balance things out.
Besides mmorpg players are much less prone to compromise on certain thing now that in for example 2006.
Seriously, I can't be the only one who doesn't give a damn what my character looks like, can I? I play in first-person. I hardly ever see my character. I don't care what my armor looks like, only what it does. It's entirely irrelevant to me.
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
See, I play in 3rd person
- Al
Personally the only modern MMORPG trend that annoys me is the idea that MMOs need to be designed in a way to attract people who don't actually like MMOs. Which to me makes about as much sense as someone trying to figure out a way to get vegetarians to eat at their steakhouse.- FARGIN_WAR
I would say in-depth gameplay that allows the player different options.
Polished Class Design/Combat Mechanics. A lot of replay value comes from this.
World Content with in-depth lore. Stunning graphics and places where it would take several alts to explore the whole world.
Intricate crafting mechanics with a player made economy.
But I think one of the most important thing is community.
Given a choice between first and third person, I never, ever play third person.
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
a sense of connection to their character.
I'm not playing to connect with a character, I'm playing a game. I don't play Halo to feel a connection to Master Chief. If I want to roleplay, I'll sit down around a table with a bunch of friends and do so.
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
But isn't that an important part of the equation?
I agree with you that you can't satisfy everyone and that trying to please everyone can end up pleasing nobody, but I think that's more important in finding your niche in the first place. Once you have people actually playing your game (even if they aren't the audience you originally intended to attract) and are talking about retention, then I tend to believe that a publisher is smarter to aim for being inoffensive. If you choose to consciously alienate half your players, you have to be very sure the other half are going to spend enough to make up the difference.
If you want zero RP I suggest you don't play mmoRPGs anymore.
A connection with your character is the very least of RP and pretty basic in an MMORPG.