1 - Questing Hubs - Having the game revolve around Quests. I want to find stuff and explore for it and be rewarding for doing so. Not so difficult to ask.
2 - Unoriginal. If 10 MMOs released next year 9 would be your typical fantasy.
3 - No depth. None, this falls in line with being linear.
4 - PvP is usually awful. People claim there aren't a ton of PvP people and all this jazz.. Well, design a game for us and I bet you'd be suprised.
5 - Lack of customization. Some do it better, however, why am I so restricted how I look in an mmoRPG with thousands of other players, and you want to limit my customisation? Sounds logical.
6 - The type of players. Unfortunately, if you want to admit it or not WoW basically turned the MMO genre from underground in a sense to pop music mainstream garbage. Not a concidence most MMOs since WoW have sucked, yet most the ones prior were better. I think most would agree unless you started on WoW. It introduced your FPS players among your single role player players. MMO players used to be kind of their own "breed". Hard to explain.
7 - Mentality of players. Players want to win in an MMO. Ok..I guess? That's the mentality anyway. It's not about the journey anymore, and even when the journey ends since it's so linear there is nothing else left to do.
8 - Mentality of the Devs. Market their ass off, make a game that can pass, get your cash grab on, go F2P and cut costs and move on.
9 - Social aspect. Nobody talks to eachother, no reason to with way games are set up now really though. This is the problem. Give us tools, a real world, something where people tend to be social or want to be social. This is sorely lacking. I remember player ran events in UO..much fun.
I could go on and on but the day we stop breaking sales records with crap like Halo and D3 we are going to keep getting jammed in the rear.
1. Companies getting too greedy about something that is actually an art and requires, you know, talent, effort, and other crazy things like tha.
2. Stagnation in variety, too many copy-cat MMO's, too much close-minded thinking, too much trying to cater to players.
3. Bad management of the community aspect - i.e., generating competition, promoting min-maxing, splitting up of interests, and other community-destroying tendencies.
The only way to create such amount of content is to authomatically generate it - like placing lots of same mobs everywhere.
Similar content is boring.
thats why I strongly believe new aged MMORPGs should feature Dungeon/Raid making tools, that are advanced enough, yet simple to use, so that players can make and share their own ideas with the community and basically make their own AA level content without having to constantly wait for developers to do everything.
The only way to create such amount of content is to authomatically generate it - like placing lots of same mobs everywhere.
Similar content is boring.
thats why I strongly believe new aged MMORPGs should feature Dungeon/Raid making tools, that are advanced enough, yet simple to use, so that players can make and share their own ideas with the community and basically make their own AA level content without having to constantly wait for developers to do everything.
And you'll get an amazing amount of complete and utter crap. Amongst those a couple of gems will be present, but generally those missions will be complete and utter crap. You'll need a lot of staff to sift through them.
1. They are not worth playing. Many games release with lackluster mechanics, interfaces or in depth combat system. Whether it's poorly named class systems, lack of character customization, generic questing, or lacking endgame - most games cannot offer a great experience to keep customers playing. I myself refuse to play a game with poorly named classes, sluggish combat or gender locked characters. I also refuse to play a game where core gameplay is withheld due to a f2p transition. Games must be fun - this is something I feel modern MMO developers seem to forget.
2. Lack of vision. The developers do not risk developing in depth features that would make their game worth playing, and as such the game fails to gain a large amount of attention. This lack of vision also infects how customer support deals with customers, the depth and frequency of updates, and the business model. The flipside to feature lacking games are games that overdo it. There are some games that try too hard to be new and force players to play a game with a clunky combat system and alien controls.
3. The Business Model. Developers must realize that having a pay to play business model is not sustainable and that wrestling consumers away from a potentially 5+ commitment to another game is not a good idea. Additionally, developers believe that taking a previously subscription based game and monetizing every aspect of it is a gaming saving motion. In my opinion, while it may be good for revenue it in fact destroys the game culture. The answer is having a buy-to-play game, with an endless and limited free trial to bring in customers. It's vitally important to not withhold key mechanics that are selling points in these trials.
Originally posted by Grahor Originally posted by MMOExposedOriginally posted by GrahorMmorpgs need to have "huge amount of content".The only way to create such amount of content is to authomatically generate it - like placing lots of same mobs everywhere.Similar content is boring.
thats why I strongly believe new aged MMORPGs should feature Dungeon/Raid making tools, that are advanced enough, yet simple to use, so that players can make and share their own ideas with the community and basically make their own AA level content without having to constantly wait for developers to do everything.And you'll get an amazing amount of complete and utter crap. Amongst those a couple of gems will be present, but generally those missions will be complete and utter crap. You'll need a lot of staff to sift through them.
limit submissions to 1 per month but allow editing anytime. implement rating systems. it would probably be best to "sanction" loot based on how many people finish the player dungeon. If everyone 1 shots everything it drops all greens with an occasional blue .. if only 1% finishes it .. it drops a lot of purple .. something like that.
theres plenty of things you can pencil out for a system like this .. would take a pretty good dev team to make it work tho.
LFD tools are great for cramming people into content, but quality > quantity. I am, usually on the sandbox .. more "hardcore" side of things, but I also do just want to have fun. So lighten up already
2) The are designing themepark MMo around old Themepark model, instead of the new generation MMO gamers, which dont like Leveling anymore, and they dont like Quest anymore.
3) Developers are leaving out features that allow players to make things such as dungeon creator, and monster creator and other creation tools in the game. This allow players to continue to have fun by making new things, even when they have done all the developer made content already, which is always finite per patch.
you have to admit, a game 1/2 as good as vanilla wow would be 100x better than anything we've seen since.
Naw. It would get ripped apart by the Gamer Grapevine Press.
Vanilla WoW had remarkably little content, particularly raiding content, and only added PvP content well after release. Think that game would survive long enough for PvP or the Raids to get added to the game nowadays? And those early hardware issues? You think the cruxifictions for D3 were bad?
The torches would come out, the manifestos would be written, and the Voice of Opposition (plenty loud in 2004) would crack the decibel meters in 2012.
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.
Naw. It would get ripped apart by the Gamer Grapevine Press.
Vanilla WoW had remarkably little content, particularly raiding content, and only added PvP content well after release. Think that game would survive long enough for PvP or the Raids to get added to the game nowadays? And those early hardware issues? You think the cruxifictions for D3 were bad?
The torches would come out, the manifestos would be written, and the Voice of Opposition (plenty loud in 2004) would crack the decibel meters in 2012.
Heh, yeah. Didn't the servers crash something like every 45min-2hours? WoW wasn't pretty when it released.
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been-Wayne Gretzky
Heh, yeah. Didn't the servers crash something like every 45min-2hours? WoW wasn't pretty when it released.
Not adding to the urban myths about it; whatever you hear about server stability in 2004, it's either exaggerated or understated, depending which myth the author is selling at that moment.
But yes, we'd never forgive a modern game that crashed that frequently. Or the length of time (honestly not Blizzard's fault) it took to rectify--had to wait for the manufacturer to catch up to sharp peak in server hardware demand, that part actually did happen.
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.
That's easy, and I don't need 3 reasons. There's only one.
MARKET DILLUTION!
When WoW released, there were a handful of marginally popular MMOs. Now? There's a ton. And the production levels have increased dramatically. Every new MMO measures itself against WoW! No wonder they all fail when the investors realise it isn't going to hit a bazillion subs! The genre is plain out of customers, and doing an awful job of getting more.
Add to that, there are now even more things to do with your leisure time than there were when WoW was released.
iPhones weren't around. Farmville wasn't around. Consoles were kind of awful, and had almost zero online capability. It was 2001!
Different story now. Now, there's way more stuff competing for your spare time.
If competition for your liesure time has ramped up, but available customers haven't grown fast enough to keep pace, then startups will fail over and over until another "Perfect Storm" of luck and product quality comes along to redifine the genre yet again.
I see it as simpler; we can only see the massive conversion of console gamers, housewives, and opening far east markets that created WoW happen once in our lifetimes.
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.
I see it as simpler; we can only see the massive conversion of console gamers, housewives, and opening far east markets that created WoW happen once in our lifetimes.
I dont see it like that.
the way I see it, is that the majority of these MMO gamers now days started playing MMOs with a older MMO. So the new car smell is gone in the genre. once that New Fresh Scent wears off, people dont see the same features as good anymore.
look at Vanilla WoW for example. So many WoW fans love it. But if a game like Vanilla WoW were released today it would flop, simple because MMO gamers now days arent interested in Leveling and Quest grinding, and exploring. they Want to skip out on the nonsense stuff and get to the real deal.
Too many games are released relatively unpolished and unfinished as if designers still don't understand the 80/20 rule. Which becomes their downfall pretty quickly. Long loading times, bugs that get you stuck, the game crashing just when things get exciting, I've seen it all too often.
2. End game
One of the things most games do wrong imo. From endless gear grind in wow, pvp grind in war, silly accomplishments .. I never understood why games don't introduce lots of mini games, lotteries to get rich, mount racing, local trading, chess and so on. Trade and crafting is usually very simple and hardly worth playing for. Endless PvP gear grind isn't all that fun either.
But why not have all those together to cater all kinds of players without them having the feeling of being left out and having people tell them "they don't understand what the game is all about"? Casual players and fanatics, new and veteran players, there must be a way to make them feel part of it and have reasons to play and feel rewarded for whatever they fancy doing.
And no, "sandbox" isn't the answer to everything - because you're still limited to what the tools you're handed allow you to do.
3. Immersion
People like to be immersed in a game. Designers should try to avoid it to make a game feel like a mechanical, repetitive thing. We can split it into several categories.
The first is character custiomisation. Things like character and gear customisation - and a way to show it, like in cutscenes. As my poll (see signature) proves, players generally think your looks (including gear) are very important. Still a lot of game companies limit you to a very limited number of options. No fat characters or only skimpy clothes for females, no length adjustment, only one voice .. I could on for a while. And look at point 2. Why not give all kinds of players ways to distiguish themselves with vanity items, options to actually show that you're a rich (wo)man, a gladiator, a protector of the realm, a dungeon crawler, brilliant crafter or minigame champion?
The second is immersion into the world. A compelling storyline that draws you right into the game. Give players a feeling they're part of something. Personally I love cutscenes. Yes, gorgeous graphics are a nice feature but also a little overrated imo. Groundmist out of which things crawl to you, dark and sinister atmospheres, whatever takes to surprise and draw you into the RP feel.
Third and last is social immersion. Give guilds (or companies or whatever you want to call it) options to play together, to distinguish by means of tabards, logo's, a guild village, a meaning, a collective goal, a feeling of belonging. If you can never play together with your friends because the travel time is too long or the level differences are too big, it takes away from your game experience. What's the use of "mmo" when you can't ever play together and have nothing to share with your friends and guildies?!
I think if game developers would keep these things in mind they'd attract - and keep - a lot more players.
Well here is again, that ever popular topic that deep down asks the question, "Why don't they make MMOs with the features I like?" Of course every one has suggestions that they are sure would result in financial success however that belief is based mostly on hunches rather than on any hard evidence. Unfortunately with 50 million on the line developers have little choice but to provide the standard model and hope their unique variants will be enough to carve a place in the marketplace for their game.
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
Title should be "why mmoRPG's fail left right and center"
Why?
1. Many (most?) mmorpg customers want to play only fast instanced automated / matchmaked gameplay and don't want to level, explore or cooperate with other players outside instances.
2. Now those players have alternative. Multiplayer lobby online games with some small mmo / persistance elements like WoT or MOBA games. + huge amount of games like that incoming in next months- years.
3. Those players that actually enjoy more or less seamlessness, questing, building their character, interdependability and experience with smaller or bigger % of so called 'virtual worlds' experience - don't have titles for themself.
4. New trend to make mmorpg very personal story-heavy solo experience - that kind of experience is finite. Story-ends = gameplay ends for big % of players. Road to fast fail.
LMFAO at the people who come on this thread and say "SHUDDAP MMO'S ARE MAKING TONNES OF MONEY."
Do you see how funny and sad that is?
Newsflash: A gamers version of a success should not be how much money the DEVELOPER is making. It should be whether the game is fun.
IMO. When a game drops a large majority of its playerbase soon after release, the players have found the game to be lacking and ultimately not fun. The people who stick around? Sure they enjoy it and Im happy for them, but a portion of that enjoyment for those that stick around is going to be from a sense of achievement coupled with an addictive personality and a person who doesn't want to give up a month or twos effort.
So yea game developers, on the whole, are going to make money hand over fist. Especially when movement amongst MMO gamers in the MMO universe is so fluid and everytime someone subs for a month or buys a shiny flying-pony or legendary sword of Agememnon, thats money in the devs hands that quickly builds up as willing(or are we now just plain stupid and gullible) gamers look for the game that fits.
On the whole, we are finding it hard to find the game that fits. Hence my thread.
I love snails. I love every kinda snail. I just want to hug them all, but I cant. Cant hug every snail.
Originally posted by azmundaiyou have to admit, a game 1/2 as good as vanilla wow would be 100x better than anything we've seen since.
Naw. It would get ripped apart by the Gamer Grapevine Press.
Vanilla WoW had remarkably little content, particularly raiding content, and only added PvP content well after release. Think that game would survive long enough for PvP or the Raids to get added to the game nowadays? And those early hardware issues? You think the cruxifictions for D3 were bad?
The torches would come out, the manifestos would be written, and the Voice of Opposition (plenty loud in 2004) would crack the decibel meters in 2012.
i see your point .. but it took me months to be ready for raiding, as opposed to the ~3 weeks .. games offer these days. maybe that was just me .. cant really say. dont remember.
LFD tools are great for cramming people into content, but quality > quantity. I am, usually on the sandbox .. more "hardcore" side of things, but I also do just want to have fun. So lighten up already
Originally posted by Kyleran Well here is again, that ever popular topic that deep down asks the question, "Why don't they make MMOs with the features I like?" Of course every one has suggestions that they are sure would result in financial success however that belief is based mostly on hunches rather than on any hard evidence. Unfortunately with 50 million on the line developers have little choice but to provide the standard model and hope their unique variants will be enough to carve a place in the marketplace for their game.
Why does a developer have to put that much money on the line? People are having a lot of fun with games with lower end graphics etc.
Oh right...they put 50 million "on the line" because they hope to make WoW millions in return.
So is it the "poor developers" just trying to make a living? Or is it the greedy short sighted developers trying to make their next big cash cow?
I love snails. I love every kinda snail. I just want to hug them all, but I cant. Cant hug every snail.
LMFAO at the people who come on this thread and say "SHUDDAP MMO'S ARE MAKING TONNES OF MONEY."
Do you see how funny and sad that is?
Newsflash: A gamers version of a success should not be how much money the DEVELOPER is making. It should be whether the game is fun.
IMO. When a game drops a large majority of its playerbase soon after release, the players have found the game to be lacking and ultimately not fun. The people who stick around? Sure they enjoy it and Im happy for them, but a portion of that enjoyment for those that stick around is going to be from a sense of achievement coupled with an addictive personality and a person who doesn't want to give up a month or twos effort.
So yea game developers, on the whole, are going to make money hand over fist. Especially when movement amongst MMO gamers in the MMO universe is so fluid and everytime someone subs for a month or buys a shiny flying-pony or legendary sword of Agememnon, thats money in the devs hands that quickly builds up as willing(or are we now just plain stupid and gullible) gamers look for the game that fits.
On the whole, we are finding it hard to find the game that fits. Hence my thread.
Ah, so you represent 'gamers' then?
All of the gamers? WOW!
Whether something is 'fun' to you or not is not really relevant here as most gamers are voting with their $$$ by buying these MMOs.
And as a person in the gaming industry, I don't give a cent if someone likes what I make. It is whether they will 'buy' what I make.
Gdemami - Informing people about your thoughts and impressions is not a review, it's a blog.
Comments
What do you guys think of The Grid, though?
http://codeelf.com/games/grid/
They say once you reach 10 wizards, that's it, but is it? I mean... there's still the entire Grid to conquer.
Where do we begin?
1 - Questing Hubs - Having the game revolve around Quests. I want to find stuff and explore for it and be rewarding for doing so. Not so difficult to ask.
2 - Unoriginal. If 10 MMOs released next year 9 would be your typical fantasy.
3 - No depth. None, this falls in line with being linear.
4 - PvP is usually awful. People claim there aren't a ton of PvP people and all this jazz.. Well, design a game for us and I bet you'd be suprised.
5 - Lack of customization. Some do it better, however, why am I so restricted how I look in an mmoRPG with thousands of other players, and you want to limit my customisation? Sounds logical.
6 - The type of players. Unfortunately, if you want to admit it or not WoW basically turned the MMO genre from underground in a sense to pop music mainstream garbage. Not a concidence most MMOs since WoW have sucked, yet most the ones prior were better. I think most would agree unless you started on WoW. It introduced your FPS players among your single role player players. MMO players used to be kind of their own "breed". Hard to explain.
7 - Mentality of players. Players want to win in an MMO. Ok..I guess? That's the mentality anyway. It's not about the journey anymore, and even when the journey ends since it's so linear there is nothing else left to do.
8 - Mentality of the Devs. Market their ass off, make a game that can pass, get your cash grab on, go F2P and cut costs and move on.
9 - Social aspect. Nobody talks to eachother, no reason to with way games are set up now really though. This is the problem. Give us tools, a real world, something where people tend to be social or want to be social. This is sorely lacking. I remember player ran events in UO..much fun.
I could go on and on but the day we stop breaking sales records with crap like Halo and D3 we are going to keep getting jammed in the rear.
1. Companies getting too greedy about something that is actually an art and requires, you know, talent, effort, and other crazy things like tha.
2. Stagnation in variety, too many copy-cat MMO's, too much close-minded thinking, too much trying to cater to players.
3. Bad management of the community aspect - i.e., generating competition, promoting min-maxing, splitting up of interests, and other community-destroying tendencies.
HUH? show me a mmorpg game with zero innovation since 1999
Philosophy of MMO Game Design
Mmorpgs need to have "huge amount of content".
The only way to create such amount of content is to authomatically generate it - like placing lots of same mobs everywhere.
Similar content is boring.
thats why I strongly believe new aged MMORPGs should feature Dungeon/Raid making tools, that are advanced enough, yet simple to use, so that players can make and share their own ideas with the community and basically make their own AA level content without having to constantly wait for developers to do everything.
Philosophy of MMO Game Design
And you'll get an amazing amount of complete and utter crap. Amongst those a couple of gems will be present, but generally those missions will be complete and utter crap. You'll need a lot of staff to sift through them.
1. They are not worth playing. Many games release with lackluster mechanics, interfaces or in depth combat system. Whether it's poorly named class systems, lack of character customization, generic questing, or lacking endgame - most games cannot offer a great experience to keep customers playing. I myself refuse to play a game with poorly named classes, sluggish combat or gender locked characters. I also refuse to play a game where core gameplay is withheld due to a f2p transition. Games must be fun - this is something I feel modern MMO developers seem to forget.
2. Lack of vision. The developers do not risk developing in depth features that would make their game worth playing, and as such the game fails to gain a large amount of attention. This lack of vision also infects how customer support deals with customers, the depth and frequency of updates, and the business model. The flipside to feature lacking games are games that overdo it. There are some games that try too hard to be new and force players to play a game with a clunky combat system and alien controls.
3. The Business Model. Developers must realize that having a pay to play business model is not sustainable and that wrestling consumers away from a potentially 5+ commitment to another game is not a good idea. Additionally, developers believe that taking a previously subscription based game and monetizing every aspect of it is a gaming saving motion. In my opinion, while it may be good for revenue it in fact destroys the game culture. The answer is having a buy-to-play game, with an endless and limited free trial to bring in customers. It's vitally important to not withhold key mechanics that are selling points in these trials.
And you'll get an amazing amount of complete and utter crap. Amongst those a couple of gems will be present, but generally those missions will be complete and utter crap. You'll need a lot of staff to sift through them.
limit submissions to 1 per month but allow editing anytime. implement rating systems. it would probably be best to "sanction" loot based on how many people finish the player dungeon. If everyone 1 shots everything it drops all greens with an occasional blue .. if only 1% finishes it .. it drops a lot of purple .. something like that.
theres plenty of things you can pencil out for a system like this .. would take a pretty good dev team to make it work tho.
LFD tools are great for cramming people into content, but quality > quantity.
I am, usually on the sandbox .. more "hardcore" side of things, but I also do just want to have fun. So lighten up already
1)They release unfinished
2) The are designing themepark MMo around old Themepark model, instead of the new generation MMO gamers, which dont like Leveling anymore, and they dont like Quest anymore.
3) Developers are leaving out features that allow players to make things such as dungeon creator, and monster creator and other creation tools in the game. This allow players to continue to have fun by making new things, even when they have done all the developer made content already, which is always finite per patch.
Philosophy of MMO Game Design
Naw. It would get ripped apart by the Gamer Grapevine Press.
Vanilla WoW had remarkably little content, particularly raiding content, and only added PvP content well after release. Think that game would survive long enough for PvP or the Raids to get added to the game nowadays? And those early hardware issues? You think the cruxifictions for D3 were bad?
The torches would come out, the manifestos would be written, and the Voice of Opposition (plenty loud in 2004) would crack the decibel meters in 2012.
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.
Heh, yeah. Didn't the servers crash something like every 45min-2hours? WoW wasn't pretty when it released.
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been -Wayne Gretzky
Not adding to the urban myths about it; whatever you hear about server stability in 2004, it's either exaggerated or understated, depending which myth the author is selling at that moment.
But yes, we'd never forgive a modern game that crashed that frequently. Or the length of time (honestly not Blizzard's fault) it took to rectify--had to wait for the manufacturer to catch up to sharp peak in server hardware demand, that part actually did happen.
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.
Why do MMOs fail?
That's easy, and I don't need 3 reasons. There's only one.
MARKET DILLUTION!
When WoW released, there were a handful of marginally popular MMOs. Now? There's a ton. And the production levels have increased dramatically. Every new MMO measures itself against WoW! No wonder they all fail when the investors realise it isn't going to hit a bazillion subs! The genre is plain out of customers, and doing an awful job of getting more.
Add to that, there are now even more things to do with your leisure time than there were when WoW was released.
iPhones weren't around. Farmville wasn't around. Consoles were kind of awful, and had almost zero online capability. It was 2001!
Different story now. Now, there's way more stuff competing for your spare time.
If competition for your liesure time has ramped up, but available customers haven't grown fast enough to keep pace, then startups will fail over and over until another "Perfect Storm" of luck and product quality comes along to redifine the genre yet again.
Linearity, games instead of worlds, and short sighted goals.
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.
I see it as simpler; we can only see the massive conversion of console gamers, housewives, and opening far east markets that created WoW happen once in our lifetimes.
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.
I dont see it like that.
the way I see it, is that the majority of these MMO gamers now days started playing MMOs with a older MMO. So the new car smell is gone in the genre. once that New Fresh Scent wears off, people dont see the same features as good anymore.
look at Vanilla WoW for example. So many WoW fans love it. But if a game like Vanilla WoW were released today it would flop, simple because MMO gamers now days arent interested in Leveling and Quest grinding, and exploring. they Want to skip out on the nonsense stuff and get to the real deal.
its a new mindset. new Mindset = new Generation.
Philosophy of MMO Game Design
Already read a few quite good answers.
My 3 issues (in no particular order):
1. Bugs and crashes
Too many games are released relatively unpolished and unfinished as if designers still don't understand the 80/20 rule. Which becomes their downfall pretty quickly. Long loading times, bugs that get you stuck, the game crashing just when things get exciting, I've seen it all too often.
2. End game
One of the things most games do wrong imo. From endless gear grind in wow, pvp grind in war, silly accomplishments .. I never understood why games don't introduce lots of mini games, lotteries to get rich, mount racing, local trading, chess and so on. Trade and crafting is usually very simple and hardly worth playing for. Endless PvP gear grind isn't all that fun either.
But why not have all those together to cater all kinds of players without them having the feeling of being left out and having people tell them "they don't understand what the game is all about"? Casual players and fanatics, new and veteran players, there must be a way to make them feel part of it and have reasons to play and feel rewarded for whatever they fancy doing.
And no, "sandbox" isn't the answer to everything - because you're still limited to what the tools you're handed allow you to do.
3. Immersion
People like to be immersed in a game. Designers should try to avoid it to make a game feel like a mechanical, repetitive thing. We can split it into several categories.
The first is character custiomisation. Things like character and gear customisation - and a way to show it, like in cutscenes. As my poll (see signature) proves, players generally think your looks (including gear) are very important. Still a lot of game companies limit you to a very limited number of options. No fat characters or only skimpy clothes for females, no length adjustment, only one voice .. I could on for a while. And look at point 2. Why not give all kinds of players ways to distiguish themselves with vanity items, options to actually show that you're a rich (wo)man, a gladiator, a protector of the realm, a dungeon crawler, brilliant crafter or minigame champion?
The second is immersion into the world. A compelling storyline that draws you right into the game. Give players a feeling they're part of something. Personally I love cutscenes. Yes, gorgeous graphics are a nice feature but also a little overrated imo. Groundmist out of which things crawl to you, dark and sinister atmospheres, whatever takes to surprise and draw you into the RP feel.
Third and last is social immersion. Give guilds (or companies or whatever you want to call it) options to play together, to distinguish by means of tabards, logo's, a guild village, a meaning, a collective goal, a feeling of belonging. If you can never play together with your friends because the travel time is too long or the level differences are too big, it takes away from your game experience. What's the use of "mmo" when you can't ever play together and have nothing to share with your friends and guildies?!
I think if game developers would keep these things in mind they'd attract - and keep - a lot more players.
Cast your vote: The importance of character customisation
How are MMOs failing?
World of Tanks is making how much $$ per month again?
Some MMOs succeed and some fail but overall, MMO genre revenue is growing.
And I'm not even including MOBA style games which are growing faster than MMOs ever did.
From a financial point of view, the MMO market is doing very well. (fact)
Gdemami -
Informing people about your thoughts and impressions is not a review, it's a blog.
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
Title should be "why mmoRPG's fail left right and center"
Why?
1. Many (most?) mmorpg customers want to play only fast instanced automated / matchmaked gameplay and don't want to level, explore or cooperate with other players outside instances.
2. Now those players have alternative. Multiplayer lobby online games with some small mmo / persistance elements like WoT or MOBA games. + huge amount of games like that incoming in next months- years.
3. Those players that actually enjoy more or less seamlessness, questing, building their character, interdependability and experience with smaller or bigger % of so called 'virtual worlds' experience - don't have titles for themself.
4. New trend to make mmorpg very personal story-heavy solo experience - that kind of experience is finite. Story-ends = gameplay ends for big % of players. Road to fast fail.
5. Overall oversaturation of the market.
LMFAO at the people who come on this thread and say "SHUDDAP MMO'S ARE MAKING TONNES OF MONEY."
Do you see how funny and sad that is?
Newsflash: A gamers version of a success should not be how much money the DEVELOPER is making. It should be whether the game is fun.
IMO. When a game drops a large majority of its playerbase soon after release, the players have found the game to be lacking and ultimately not fun. The people who stick around? Sure they enjoy it and Im happy for them, but a portion of that enjoyment for those that stick around is going to be from a sense of achievement coupled with an addictive personality and a person who doesn't want to give up a month or twos effort.
So yea game developers, on the whole, are going to make money hand over fist. Especially when movement amongst MMO gamers in the MMO universe is so fluid and everytime someone subs for a month or buys a shiny flying-pony or legendary sword of Agememnon, thats money in the devs hands that quickly builds up as willing(or are we now just plain stupid and gullible) gamers look for the game that fits.
On the whole, we are finding it hard to find the game that fits. Hence my thread.
I love snails.
I love every kinda snail.
I just want to hug them all, but I cant.
Cant hug every snail.
i see your point .. but it took me months to be ready for raiding, as opposed to the ~3 weeks .. games offer these days. maybe that was just me .. cant really say. dont remember.
LFD tools are great for cramming people into content, but quality > quantity.
I am, usually on the sandbox .. more "hardcore" side of things, but I also do just want to have fun. So lighten up already
Why does a developer have to put that much money on the line? People are having a lot of fun with games with lower end graphics etc.
Oh right...they put 50 million "on the line" because they hope to make WoW millions in return.
So is it the "poor developers" just trying to make a living? Or is it the greedy short sighted developers trying to make their next big cash cow?
I love snails.
I love every kinda snail.
I just want to hug them all, but I cant.
Cant hug every snail.
Ah, so you represent 'gamers' then?
All of the gamers? WOW!
Whether something is 'fun' to you or not is not really relevant here as most gamers are voting with their $$$ by buying these MMOs.
And as a person in the gaming industry, I don't give a cent if someone likes what I make. It is whether they will 'buy' what I make.
Gdemami -
Informing people about your thoughts and impressions is not a review, it's a blog.