That analogy is wrong. People go to a movie theatre to see a movie in a "theatre setting". They do not go there specificly to be surrounded by other people. In fact, I believe most people would like it if they could watch the movie with noone else in the theatre. People expect to watch movies with other people because they cannot afford to rent the theatre just for themselves and their friends. People will go to an earlier or later screening specificly because they expect fewer people to be there.
Yeh. I go to a movie theater for a big screen, IMAX, and sound system that i don't own. Whether there is people in the theater with me, is irrelevant. In fact, i often go on SAT Mornign when there is less crowd.
Yeah, but you've been defending these modern day MMOs, when so many other players have been leaving them. Just as most people don't make an effort to go to less crowded movies. Obviously.
Edit to add: Maybe there are better analogies, though. How about a Star Wars convention? Or a medieval fair?
You need to drop the movie theatre analogy . Many people make an effort to go to 'less crowded' movies. My sister regularly goes to an out-of-the-way theatre to see independant movies with limited distribution and those don't attract much of a crowd. Movie viewing is primarily about personal taste in movies and has very little with how many otehr people are in the theatre with you.
I like instances because they more closely give me the 'classic PnP RPG' experience. Large bustling game worlds are nice but ultimately I am only going to interact with a few people at a time no matter what I am doing in a MMORG.
I agree that most players just want to kill stuff. But my opinion is that in an MMO, they want to do so inside a world. The meaning to them is being nasty, among all these other massive numbers of players. They can just kill stuff in any game, why are they in an MMO? To be doing it, but in a world full of others.
So too are players who like to trade and play economics. It's all those other players, doing it within that massively social sphere.
And what about forming communities? Guilds are just a start, and many players want to be part of a guild. But you can do that on a web site outside the game. How many players want "politics"? But gamey design, something that functions like a card game for example, isn't really politics. Many players do want politics in their games, and to be meaningful and connected to the rest of the game. PvP, trades, economics, player built cities! Is there any doubts here?
And even those who just want to kill stuff seem likely to want to do so inside a game world that has all of the above inclusive. It gives them more meaning to their "thing", and a good "world" game should enhance that by design. As with each and every aspect of it.
In practice, all "the world" takes away attention from their "thing", because "the thing" could always be made better, and attention to "the thing" has a lot better returns for the developer's effort. These games are still made with finite resources afterall.
I can look at some of these sandboxes and see that vast majority of them are just bad games. Some outright horrible! That is why they don't sell. That is why there are no funds for them. Because the developers focus on everything, usually unimportant little detail here and there.
Another cautionary tale should be sandbox titles where the game is essentially the same as it has been for the last decade or so, but then they add these gimmicks in which are supposed to make it different and new. This one startup had the most generic, lame MMO idea ever with some added gimmicks here and there one of which was to type in magic words on the chat window to "powerful spells". C'mon...
Sandbox developers, the "world developers", just suck at "the thing". They focus on the world stuff while "the thing" is neglected. No one will enjoy your world if the game sucks. That is why game should always, always, always be the main focus.
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been-Wayne Gretzky
Yeah, but you've been defending these modern day MMOs, when so many other players have been leaving them. Just as most people don't make an effort to go to less crowded movies. Obviously.
Edit to add: Maybe there are better analogies, though. How about a Star Wars convention? Or a medieval fair?
I don't go to do anything because there are other people around, I do things because they are fun. In fact, I'm more apt to skip events that are overcrowded. Take, for example, San Diego Comicon. I went to it for about 30 years straight. Now, it's so overcrowded, it isn't fun so I don't go anymore. Move it to a much bigger venue or reduce the crowds and I'll go again.
I agree that most players just want to kill stuff. But my opinion is that in an MMO, they want to do so inside a world. The meaning to them is being nasty, among all these other massive numbers of players. They can just kill stuff in any game, why are they in an MMO? To be doing it, but in a world full of others.
So too are players who like to trade and play economics. It's all those other players, doing it within that massively social sphere.
And what about forming communities? Guilds are just a start, and many players want to be part of a guild. But you can do that on a web site outside the game. How many players want "politics"? But gamey design, something that functions like a card game for example, isn't really politics. Many players do want politics in their games, and to be meaningful and connected to the rest of the game. PvP, trades, economics, player built cities! Is there any doubts here?
And even those who just want to kill stuff seem likely to want to do so inside a game world that has all of the above inclusive. It gives them more meaning to their "thing", and a good "world" game should enhance that by design. As with each and every aspect of it.
In practice, all "the world" takes away attention from their "thing", because "the thing" could always be made better, and attention to "the thing" has a lot better returns for the developer's effort. These games are still made with finite resources afterall.
I can look at some of these sandboxes and see that vast majority of them are just bad games. Some outright horrible! That is why they don't sell. That is why there are no funds for them. Because the developers focus on everything, usually unimportant little detail here and there.
Another cautionary tale should be sandbox titles where the game is essentially the same as it has been for the last decade or so, but then they add these gimmicks in which are supposed to make it different and new. This one startup had the most generic, lame MMO idea ever with some added gimmicks here and there one of which was to type in magic words on the chat window to "powerful spells". C'mon...
Sandbox developers, the "world developers", just suck at "the thing". They focus on the world stuff while "the thing" is neglected. No one will enjoy your world if the game sucks. That is why game should always, always, always be the main focus.
Heh, here we are again. The same baseless argument that Sandbox games made horribly because they didn't have funding means that a good Sandbox game can't be made with proper funding, so they'll never get that sort of funding.
Yeah, that makes sense.
And you are assuming that Sandbox games should be made with nothing interesting and fun in them.
But I'm not going to argue with you guys, you and narriuseldon and whoever else might be waging this little war of yours against any posts about Sandbox designs. You guys are always there, in force, with multiple and constant posts, aren't you? By the way, what ever happened to Axehilt? He was another one who seems to have just dissappeared lately.
Ya see, I don't care. It's your industry, it's failing. No skin off my back. I've found other things to do, and I can live without an MMO to play. It's just sort of a shame that the business is out there waiting, but you all simply won't open your eyes and see it. I don't know why, but I'm beyond caring about it.
That analogy is wrong. People go to a movie theatre to see a movie in a "theatre setting". They do not go there specificly to be surrounded by other people. In fact, I believe most people would like it if they could watch the movie with noone else in the theatre. People expect to watch movies with other people because they cannot afford to rent the theatre just for themselves and their friends. People will go to an earlier or later screening specificly because they expect fewer people to be there.
Yeh. I go to a movie theater for a big screen, IMAX, and sound system that i don't own. Whether there is people in the theater with me, is irrelevant. In fact, i often go on SAT Mornign when there is less crowd.
Yeah, but you've been defending these modern day MMOs, when so many other players have been leaving them. Just as most people don't make an effort to go to less crowded movies. Obviously.
Edit to add: Maybe there are better analogies, though. How about a Star Wars convention? Or a medieval fair?
You need to drop the movie theatre analogy . Many people make an effort to go to 'less crowded' movies. My sister regularly goes to an out-of-the-way theatre to see independant movies with limited distribution and those don't attract much of a crowd. Movie viewing is primarily about personal taste in movies and has very little with how many otehr people are in the theatre with you.
I like instances because they more closely give me the 'classic PnP RPG' experience. Large bustling game worlds are nice but ultimately I am only going to interact with a few people at a time no matter what I am doing in a MMORG.
Fine, consider it dropped. Dropped like an MMO Themepark account.
I do not like analogies. They never work as intended on internet forums. I think I saw it work once in all the years that I've been posting here. But that's just a pet peeve of mine.
Another personal opinion - I like both game centric and world centric designs, but I want a developer to commit to one or the other. I've enjoyed both types of games and both types of MMORPG. Currently, I'm playing a world centric mmorpg because all the game centric mmorpg have gone with a quest hub design that it turns out I hate. So it's single player games and an open world sandbox for me.
Anyway, I still think everything in this thread comes down to money. The cost of producing a game compared to the return on that investment.
If you look at the scale of the money thrown at games, you will see a consistent pattern. More money is thrown at game centric mmorpg. This might have something to do with WoW, but there are other game centric mmorpg that have been successful and made a killing. The same can't be said of world centric mmorpg, not on the same scale as the game centric mmorpg. The market for world centric games exists, but it's small in comparison to the market for game centric games. This limits development on world centric games...which is probably why they are all currently obsessed with PvP. Not enough people are writing them.
Get the cost for producing an MMORPG in general down, and you'll see all this talk of social systems and world interactions become relevant because people will get to experience them on a more regular basis. Somebody will write Fallout 3 as an MMORPG (but with a slightly different IP). Somebody will write a decent investment MMORPG or something similar. Right now, it's just too expensive for that kind of stuff to happen.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
First of all.. i could have posted this response in your thread, but i didnt want to derail it.
Theoretically you are right, you can mix a lot of ideas and approaches from both worlds into one game. But a few systems are contradicting.
Raid/Gear Loot/Gear progression vs. working ingame community/crafting gear
You cant have both. Either the best gear comes from Raids and you give your Game gear progression or the best/top class gear comes from crafting with no or limited gear progression comes from crafting, and withit supply and demand and a virtual economy arise.
A compromise may be, that you cut out the gear progression and give something else for Raids or that the gear from Raids will have a limit to it.. but i dont know if a lot of Raiders/themepark player would like it that way.
Vertical Progression/Gated content vs. more horizontal progression and flat content(flat vertical progression)
Progression is one key stone of rpg playing. But how you progress, and how you build up your world is vastly different. There are some good reasons for themeparks to have a huge vertical progression and gated content, and there are different reasons for it:
a) Your content is limited reusable anyway, not a lot lost if your gate your content on rails
b) gated content separated players, separated with it player density. Less server load/graphic load, or at least more controlled server/graphic load. (including zoning and/or phasing for more or less the same reasons, and the not so huge trade off in a theme park game
Whether it’s intentional or not, there’s a host of powerful psychology effects that levels as currently implemented give, and it’s not all about Skinner Boxes:
The aforementioned random reinforcement: you don’t know exactly when you’ll skill up, so you keep doing whatever gave you a little bit of reward
What Robert Cialdini might call “the commitment fallacy” — once you have a few, you figure you’re in for the ride and may as well finish off the ladder. People don’t tend to like leaving things half-done.
Another powerful tool of influence: social validation. Levels are publicly displayed, and serve as a significant social marker of status. And humans are hardwired to seek status and validation.
The “gated community” effect. It’s been observed many many times that people want what they haven’t got. Just as clubs will intentionally create lines outside a door to drive traffic, and just as it’s a time-honored technique of retail and carnies to hire a claque of folks to make the business seem popular, exclusivity in online games is a powerful motivator. Levels effectively put content behind a velvet rope, which just makes us want to get inside.
Finally, one of the most compelling aspects of levels is the lure of power. Levels promise increments to a player’s health, their damage per second, and so on. People like feeling more powerful — it’s not social validation, it’s the game system itself giving them validation.
In a sandbox environment you will have problems with deep vertical progression and gated content. Because
a) Your world/content is thought to reuse, to change, to interact. It is not one time used content in comparsion to themepark games, with it you would lose a lot, if you would gate your content and separate your community.
b) Sandbox games live because of the "one world" feeling, if you separate your world through gated content/huge vertical progression you would lose this
Problem: Technical problem of a seamless world, and the technical problem of crowded hot spots. Both zoning and even more phasing/instancing will hurt your game a lot.(which would be one technical solution often used in themeparks)
Of course, you could make a compromise here, too. But in one way or the other you will hurt the one or the other part of your community.
Resume:
And there would be a few more points, which dont fit well together from themepark and sandbox gaming. So you have to sacrify one or the other thing. You can of course include a lot of the advantages of themeparks in sandboxes or the other way around, but in both cases you will lose something from the other spectrum.
But, ultimatly, there is no reason not to do it and let all boundaries behind you and just create something completely new, with the advantages of both worlds, which might be actually good. But you cant merge them and satify both to 100%.
Edit: missed the not in my Resume. And as reply to the post below, i agree with you. But as i said both will have to suffer some, you cant have everything from both without sacrifice something.
I very much appreciate the time and thought you put into this response - it is an vast improvement over the standard 'it can't be done' crowd.
I found your points incisive, relevant and logical.
I would however like to point out what I think are the key issues which change the ball park on your points and thus your conlcusions.
There is no inherent contradiction between gear progression gained by crafting or looting - the one that exists currently is by design choice alone and choices can be changed of course. You claim that 'you can't have both', but I really don't beleive this is so. As a game designer - just fine tune the time and effort required in both to acheive a 'top tier' set and make them equivalent. The differentiating factor will then be skins and the method used to get there. There is by the way no reason not to allow solo progression to top tier - but to balance the effort required in gathering matts and crafting them or gathering numbers of players for raiding this should take longer to acheive as it is a solo effort. Furthermore - allow some dye capabilities and style choices which allow for mix and match sets without the appearance or stats being obviously exclusive and you create a hybrid progression curve which allows for a player to get there with whatever mix of play they want.
On the issue of vertical progression - the reason verticle progression exists is because of two primary reasons - it is easy to program... and it's 'always' been done this way. I am sure if I was to hop in a time machine and go back to the 70's and kill Gary Gygax then levelled systems wouldn't exist - but I would probably feel bad about it afterwards - he was quite a nice guy really!
Skill based progression and progression within an envelope - i.e. both verticle and horizontal requires more effort to create. This means it isn't often done and thus games where non-repeatability of out-levelled content is a common and major issue. GW2 got around this in a levelled system functionally but didn't get the rewards right - so it didn't work out so well - pity. However, if you create a progression envelope where the highest levels of skill are gained on a curved progression - more and more effort for less and less progression until cap, and combine this with 'sideways' progression with meaningful benefits then the amount of effort required, and therefore the longevity (for that kind of player) becomes good. As the progression is curved - more casual players acheive 80% of what the hard core guys do in a fraction of the time - but the hard core get their edge - without it making open world PvP a one sided slaughterfest.
Curved progression (and by this as should have clarified - an intially linear progression into a later reverse exponential curve) allows for all the reinforcements you speak of without the hard core gamers getting so far ahead of the average player they are untouchable.
There is no need to seperate a world into gated boxes for progression management purposes. Neither do changes or interractions make this so. I would love to divulge here - but lets just say I have thought of a way to have zones adapt as players interract but in a way which is manageable and allows low power players to be involved right next to high power ones - not to mention a consequences system which is also adaptive - simply and understandably - I call it my 'Areas' idea and it comes from my involvement professioanlly with GIS software. I intend to have a chat with a dev or two before I talk about that more openly, but I can assure you it is possible. Hell, I even came up with a way that high level play would enable greater low level play and visa versa - all in the same zones. It is elegantly simple.
The technical problem of a seamless world is a persistent one and really a moot point. However, if you push the technology and zone only when necessary due to this, fairly large areas are encompassable as a seemless whole. I find this to be of lesser importance compared to making a world living and breathing. But suffice to say my 'Areas' idea about dynamic zones, consequence systems and challenge management fit with a seamless or zoned world.
I really don't think the level of compromise you speak of would be necessary, although I note that even with the ones you highlight, it should still be tried.
Another personal opinion - I like both game centric and world centric designs, but I want a developer to commit to one or the other. I've enjoyed both types of games and both types of MMORPG. Currently, I'm playing a world centric mmorpg because all the game centric mmorpg have gone with a quest hub design that it turns out I hate. So it's single player games and an open world sandbox for me.
I will push one step further. A good game is a game that focus. Very few devs are good at doing many things. The games that i like are invariably focus on making the core gameplay well, instead of trying to become everything (except may be WOW ... even WOW, i feel it is better in instanced dungeoning, and the other stuff is not done as well).
That is why, I like online ARPG. No world, just focus on class base combat/abilities and progression. Or MOBA, just focus on arena pvp. Or something like Planetside 2 ... Halo combat in a big zone .. no crafting, no questing, a bit of progression.
That is why i think i will like Marvel Heroes (but of course i reserve judgment til i try it). Just Diablo style combat with Marvel characters.
Another personal opinion - I like both game centric and world centric designs, but I want a developer to commit to one or the other. I've enjoyed both types of games and both types of MMORPG. Currently, I'm playing a world centric mmorpg because all the game centric mmorpg have gone with a quest hub design that it turns out I hate. So it's single player games and an open world sandbox for me.
I will push one step further. A good game is a game that focus. Very few devs are good at doing many things. The games that i like are invariably focus on making the core gameplay well, instead of trying to become everything (except may be WOW ... even WOW, i feel it is better in instanced dungeoning, and the other stuff is not done as well).
That is why, I like online ARPG. No world, just focus on class base combat/abilities and progression. Or MOBA, just focus on arena pvp. Or something like Planetside 2 ... Halo combat in a big zone .. no crafting, no questing, a bit of progression.
That is why i think i will like Marvel Heroes (but of course i reserve judgment til i try it). Just Diablo style combat with Marvel characters.
And they will attract only people that share that focus.
The question is not many vs few the question is several vs one or two if pvp is involved, because that is how far it went.
These days we have only people raiding and doing dungeons (raiding mini) for tokens, that is all there is, which i personally find disappointing, even "gamish" games (to use your terms) like TF 2 offer several forms of play with different goals.
I dont understand why all the bickering over this. Just have both!
If you dont want to take part in something, just dont. Doesnt mean you cant have your little slice of linear maps being led around on a leash while the game offers a wide open world for those that want it.
Its better to have it and never use it than to not have it and want to try it or use it.
Like crafting, i dont see why so many are against it. Just dont freaking craft. but to obmit it because you feel it isnt important. IT IS SELFISH!!!!
Or player housing. If you dont want a damn house dont get one. But dont try to pass your linear play style onto all mmo's.
An open world doesnt hurt anyone, have a limited and heavily lacking of mmo features in a game does hurt a lot of people.
I want my crafting, my housing, my pve, my pvp, my player content, my big fat open world. If you like being linear with no creativity and being led around being told what to do instead of making your own path......... you can still play in my world. Ill boss you around from time to time
Just dropping in to say that I have been followingthe discussion, there are many good replies many good points made, some I agree with some I do nto but all seem good nevertheless. I found the discussion on curved progression and gated content interesting too.
I have not much to add at this time, except maybe, that technical solutions exist, technical know how is not an issue either. I am sure any modern Dev team today has the technical know-how on how to make a world MMO. Where the doubts reside is in terms of gameplay and functionality.
I remember back in UO new players will start their characters and often ask "what is the goal of the game", "what is there to do next" and similar questions. I would personally always spend time answering these questions, and then they would go "That is so cool, thanks" and of they went Adventuring and having fun...I would often meetthese players few months later and they would share their adventures and fun.
It was all part of the World experience, and how the player's role is as important as the game itself in such an MMO.
- Duke Suraknar - Order of the Silver Star, OSS
ESKA, Playing MMORPG's since Ultima Online 1997 - Order of the Silver Serpent, Atlantic Shard
Yeah why do you guys want to play something different, or to try for something better in MMO's? Why are you not accepting the banal, regurgitated pap that passes as a MMO these days and loving it?
Please don’t come onto these forums anymore with these wacky ideas, you might make the punters, I mean the players restless. They might actually want a MMO which does not look like a console solo RPG clone. Where would the gaming industry be then?
Lets all get back to our wonderful theme parks and stop thinking these dangerous heretical thoughts!
Just dropping in to say that I have been followingthe discussion, there are many good replies many good points made, some I agree with some I do nto but all seem good nevertheless. I found the discussion on curved progression and gated content interesting too.
I have not much to add at this time, except maybe, that technical solutions exist, technical know how is not an issue either. I am sure any modern Dev team today has the technical know-how on how to make a world MMO. Where the doubts reside is in terms of gameplay and functionality.
I remember back in UO new players will start their characters and often ask "what is the goal of the game", "what is there to do next" and similar questions. I would personally always spend time answering these questions, and then they would go "That is so cool, thanks" and of they went Adventuring and having fun...I would often meetthese players few months later and they would share their adventures and fun.
It was all part of the World experience, and how the player's role is as important as the game itself in such an MMO.
Single player games have purpose, there is always an Major Plot line that begins and ends, the goal in SRPG is to get to the end.
Elder Scrolls series expanded on it, they added Exploration in the mix, made the whole purpose of the game to be discovering Side Quests that doesn't affect the Main Plot.
MMO in my opinion was suppose to be Open Ended, where it never end, lasts for years as the Game World gets larger. I started playing MMO because it was said to be Thousands of SRPG in one, that when one story ends, another opens up, and you get to use your same character over and over again to conquer the challenges shown to you.
There will always be people against having an Virtual World, but think about it, those that escapes to the Virtual World, are there to escape the Real World. Understand that not everyone's lives are that great. Just open up any page of the news paper or watch some News channels. What we call a waste of time, to many it just might save their sanity and humanity.
Life is a Maze, so make sure you bring your GPS incase you get lost in it.
I dont understand why all the bickering over this. Just have both!
If you dont want to take part in something, just dont. Doesnt mean you cant have your little slice of linear maps being led around on a leash while the game offers a wide open world for those that want it.
Its better to have it and never use it than to not have it and want to try it or use it.
Like crafting, i dont see why so many are against it. Just dont freaking craft. but to obmit it because you feel it isnt important. IT IS SELFISH!!!!
Or player housing. If you dont want a damn house dont get one. But dont try to pass your linear play style onto all mmo's.
An open world doesnt hurt anyone, have a limited and heavily lacking of mmo features in a game does hurt a lot of people.
I want my crafting, my housing, my pve, my pvp, my player content, my big fat open world. If you like being linear with no creativity and being led around being told what to do instead of making your own path......... you can still play in my world. Ill boss you around from time to time
I will dust off my tin foil hat and say, that it is the achievment of what wow has become that makes this nearly impossible.
Most of people who played wow or a game very similar to it will assume that any activity that is not the "main" activity falls into two categories, prerequisite to the main activity (you cannot enter this dungeon without CRAFTING this key with your grandmaster fishing ) or mandatory in the main activity due to some op stuff (you have to be engineer to have grenades to have adequate dps), there is no middle ground for them. That the tradeskill or questing can have the prerequisite "reward" on level 40 from 100 not 100 from 100, and that crafting can take long after that level 40 and thus offer rewards on the level of the current dungeon without some raiding tokens involved and withouut being OP escapes them.
Thus they argue against, noone likes to have to do something what he dislikes for too long, even if he likes the rewards very much.
And lets not forget the usual stuff, bop system, players doing the job of developers by being concerned that some area is visited just by 5% people (maybe we should discontinue shamans, they had 6% population for years), players blaming each other instead the devs...
Originally posted by Banaghran Originally posted by nariusseldonOriginally posted by lizardbonesAnother personal opinion - I like both game centric and world centric designs, but I want a developer to commit to one or the other. I've enjoyed both types of games and both types of MMORPG. Currently, I'm playing a world centric mmorpg because all the game centric mmorpg have gone with a quest hub design that it turns out I hate. So it's single player games and an open world sandbox for me.
I will push one step further. A good game is a game that focus. Very few devs are good at doing many things. The games that i like are invariably focus on making the core gameplay well, instead of trying to become everything (except may be WOW ... even WOW, i feel it is better in instanced dungeoning, and the other stuff is not done as well).That is why, I like online ARPG. No world, just focus on class base combat/abilities and progression. Or MOBA, just focus on arena pvp. Or something like Planetside 2 ... Halo combat in a big zone .. no crafting, no questing, a bit of progression.That is why i think i will like Marvel Heroes (but of course i reserve judgment til i try it). Just Diablo style combat with Marvel characters.And they will attract only people that share that focus.
The question is not many vs few the question is several vs one or two if pvp is involved, because that is how far it went.
These days we have only people raiding and doing dungeons (raiding mini) for tokens, that is all there is, which i personally find disappointing, even "gamish" games (to use your terms) like TF 2 offer several forms of play with different goals.
Flame on!
They'll attract a wide variety of people with their advertising and colorful boxes. They'll keep the people who share that focus. Which is what they're doing now. WoW keeps the people who raid. Eve keeps the people who do whatever it is people do in Eve. Minecraft keeps the people who build. The developers who don't focus on something, like Bioware and EA did with Star Wars, have a hard time keeping people.
If the leveling portion of a game is linear, make it the best linear leveling game that it can be. Don't try to dress is up by adding quest hubs sending people out to the spokes of the quest wheel. If your leveling game is the quest hub style, for the love of Cthulhu, don't try to dress it up with stories and cut scenes. Give people their quest objectives and let them mow through them as quickly as possible. If the end game is repetitive raiding or repetitive instanced PvP, make it the best repetitive raiding or repetitive instanced PvP it can be. Focus people, focus!
Anyway, I'm not against developers trying something new and I'm certainly not against mixing worlds with games. It just doesn't seem like developers have the tools, resources and knowledge to do this well. Maybe when they don't have to spend time developing their tools in order to develop their games it'll work. Just doesn't seem to be working right now.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
They'll attract a wide variety of people with their advertising and colorful boxes. They'll keep the people who share that focus. Which is what they're doing now. WoW keeps the people who raid. Eve keeps the people who do whatever it is people do in Eve. Minecraft keeps the people who build. The developers who don't focus on something, like Bioware and EA did with Star Wars, have a hard time keeping people.
If the leveling portion of a game is linear, make it the best linear leveling game that it can be. Don't try to dress is up by adding quest hubs sending people out to the spokes of the quest wheel. If your leveling game is the quest hub style, for the love of Cthulhu, don't try to dress it up with stories and cut scenes. Give people their quest objectives and let them mow through them as quickly as possible. If the end game is repetitive raiding or repetitive instanced PvP, make it the best repetitive raiding or repetitive instanced PvP it can be. Focus people, focus!
Anyway, I'm not against developers trying something new and I'm certainly not against mixing worlds with games. It just doesn't seem like developers have the tools, resources and knowledge to do this well. Maybe when they don't have to spend time developing their tools in order to develop their games it'll work. Just doesn't seem to be working right now.
They are no keeping the people, if they would, we would be having much less of these conversations, wow stagnated and even lost players since it became all about raiding back in the end of 2008, that is what we usually forget, that whether we like it or not, the majority of people got lost in the rest of the game, not raiding, it went so far that gc and friends actually started talking about players which "like to prepare", meaning tradeskills and other stuff.
Trion also focused on raiding and raid-like events, and where are they? 200k subs? Even runescape (which i am mentioning far too often these days, maybe it is time for the annual 6 month session again, maybe i finally get mining to 99), after TWICE overhauling the trade and economy system with disastrous results keeps around 2 million people entertained, from which 500k-1m actually pay for it.
In general, as a game concept thing, personally i think taking a mmorpg and trying to perfect a facet too much at the expense of the rest of the game is a recipe for disaster, you know, suddenly being in competition with mobas, fps and arcade games, which are completely the facet, and thus much better at it?
They are no keeping the people, if they would, we would be having much less of these conversations, wow stagnated and even lost players since it became all about raiding back in the end of 2008, that is what we usually forget, that whether we like it or not, the majority of people got lost in the rest of the game, not raiding, it went so far that gc and friends actually started talking about players which "like to prepare", meaning tradeskills and other stuff.
Trion also focused on raiding and raid-like events, and where are they? 200k subs? Even runescape (which i am mentioning far too often these days, maybe it is time for the annual 6 month session again, maybe i finally get mining to 99), after TWICE overhauling the trade and economy system with disastrous results keeps around 2 million people entertained, from which 500k-1m actually pay for it.
In general, as a game concept thing, personally i think taking a mmorpg and trying to perfect a facet too much at the expense of the rest of the game is a recipe for disaster, you know, suddenly being in competition with mobas, fps and arcade games, which are completely the facet, and thus much better at it?
Flame on!
These conversations are started by a handful of disgruntled old bittervets again and again. Its really not a conversation at all.
Marketing lets you reach your target audience quickly, after that, there is no other way but down. This is the natural way of things, I don't know why people are so fixated about stagnation, they can't grow forever and steady decline is rather normal until you release new content.
Trying to do a little bit of everything and nothing well certainly isn't working either. I would much rather play a game that focuses on a handful of things but does them well than play a game that does many things, but none of them well.
Good combat is the best selling feature there is. Everything else should be secondary if you're aiming for mass market appeal. It is just wishful thinking to say that economy and other less important features would propel a game to mass market success.
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been-Wayne Gretzky
Heh, here we are again. The same baseless argument that Sandbox games made horribly because they didn't have funding means that a good Sandbox game can't be made with proper funding, so they'll never get that sort of funding.
Yeah, that makes sense.
And you are assuming that Sandbox games should be made with nothing interesting and fun in them.
But I'm not going to argue with you guys, you and narriuseldon and whoever else might be waging this little war of yours against any posts about Sandbox designs. You guys are always there, in force, with multiple and constant posts, aren't you? By the way, what ever happened to Axehilt? He was another one who seems to have just dissappeared lately.
Ya see, I don't care. It's your industry, it's failing. No skin off my back. I've found other things to do, and I can live without an MMO to play. It's just sort of a shame that the business is out there waiting, but you all simply won't open your eyes and see it. I don't know why, but I'm beyond caring about it.
You're stance is childish. Like the industry is failing because you aren't playing - or because you say so. Even if it was failing it wouldn't be skin off my back either. You have to hit a peak at some point, because you can't grow forever. You talk like any plateau is the end of the world, when it was bound to happen at some point.
Axehilt was one of the few sane posters here, and he actually works in the game industry so he knows what he's talking about. His words should carry some weight. I don't know why he hasn't posted in a while though. He may have just gotten fed up arguing with the ignorant, the fools, the fanatics and the armchair generals.
You spend way too much effort to arguing what should and shouldn't be. Narius and I just tell how things are. It is useless to try and uphold what MMOs should be about when what almost everyone ever cares about is: Are they having fun or not? They couldn't give a fuck how well this and that fulfils your arbitrary criteria for a "true MMO". The whole notion is laughable.
There is no "true MMO". Things change constantly. The market is not the same as it was ten years ago. We are not the same as ten years ago. You either accept it or you can whine about it in the forums. Either way its not my problem. The genre is not going to die when you stop playing.
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been-Wayne Gretzky
These conversations are started by a handful of disgruntled old bittervets again and again. Its really not a conversation at all.
Marketing lets you reach your target audience quickly, after that, there is no other way but down. This is the natural way of things, I don't know why people are so fixated about stagnation, they can't grow forever and steady decline is rather normal until you release new content.
Trying to do a little bit of everything and nothing well certainly isn't working either. I would much rather play a game that focuses on a handful of things but does them well than play a game that does many things, but none of them well.
Good combat is the best selling feature there is. Everything else should be secondary if you're aiming for mass market appeal. It is just wishful thinking to say that economy and other less important features would propel a game to mass market success.
"Marketing lets you reach your target audience quickly, after that, there is no other way but down."
Which 5 buck issue of "Get rich quick!" did this profound economical knowledge originate from?
We are very far away from the concept of dream advertising where everyone is in the position to get info about everything he MIGHT be interested, whether he wants or not.
Another personal opinion - I like both game centric and world centric designs, but I want a developer to commit to one or the other. I've enjoyed both types of games and both types of MMORPG. Currently, I'm playing a world centric mmorpg because all the game centric mmorpg have gone with a quest hub design that it turns out I hate. So it's single player games and an open world sandbox for me.
I will push one step further. A good game is a game that focus. Very few devs are good at doing many things. The games that i like are invariably focus on making the core gameplay well, instead of trying to become everything (except may be WOW ... even WOW, i feel it is better in instanced dungeoning, and the other stuff is not done as well).
That is why, I like online ARPG. No world, just focus on class base combat/abilities and progression. Or MOBA, just focus on arena pvp. Or something like Planetside 2 ... Halo combat in a big zone .. no crafting, no questing, a bit of progression.
That is why i think i will like Marvel Heroes (but of course i reserve judgment til i try it). Just Diablo style combat with Marvel characters.
And they will attract only people that share that focus.
The question is not many vs few the question is several vs one or two if pvp is involved, because that is how far it went.
These days we have only people raiding and doing dungeons (raiding mini) for tokens, that is all there is, which i personally find disappointing, even "gamish" games (to use your terms) like TF 2 offer several forms of play with different goals.
Flame on!
And some focus, like action combat, has a large audience. So there is no harm in attracting those people, as long as you get a large shre of them.
I disagree that "just doing dungeons for tokens" ... is disappointing. It depends on the combat abilities and mechanics. Look at D3, or any ARPG ... it is just killing mobs for loot, and no other goal. But different classes play very differently. There are many builds, and so essientially the variety is not in goals, but in how you fight.
That .. is a totally legit type of variety.
Another example is PS2. You just kill player on the other side (and yes, there is some capturing but essentially killing is the focus). Also a singular goal. But you can doing it by sniping, rockets, vehicles and many different ways.
They are no keeping the people, if they would, we would be having much less of these conversations, wow stagnated and even lost players since it became all about raiding back in the end of 2008, that is what we usually forget, that whether we like it or not, the majority of people got lost in the rest of the game, not raiding, it went so far that gc and friends actually started talking about players which "like to prepare", meaning tradeskills and other stuff.
Trion also focused on raiding and raid-like events, and where are they? 200k subs? Even runescape (which i am mentioning far too often these days, maybe it is time for the annual 6 month session again, maybe i finally get mining to 99), after TWICE overhauling the trade and economy system with disastrous results keeps around 2 million people entertained, from which 500k-1m actually pay for it.
In general, as a game concept thing, personally i think taking a mmorpg and trying to perfect a facet too much at the expense of the rest of the game is a recipe for disaster, you know, suddenly being in competition with mobas, fps and arcade games, which are completely the facet, and thus much better at it?
Flame on!
These conversations are started by a handful of disgruntled old bittervets again and again. Its really not a conversation at all.
Marketing lets you reach your target audience quickly, after that, there is no other way but down. This is the natural way of things, I don't know why people are so fixated about stagnation, they can't grow forever and steady decline is rather normal until you release new content.
Trying to do a little bit of everything and nothing well certainly isn't working either. I would much rather play a game that focuses on a handful of things but does them well than play a game that does many things, but none of them well.
Good combat is the best selling feature there is. Everything else should be secondary if you're aiming for mass market appeal. It is just wishful thinking to say that economy and other less important features would propel a game to mass market success.
And thats the reason games die after just a few months after release. There is no longevity nor reason to keep the players going. Waiting around for weeks/months for new content you can do in a day is not my idea of fun or good. Having a wide open mmo with all the features keep players content and offer them to make their own path.
Sure you have your handful of diehards, but in the end with declining population most games just dont live up to anything.
Then they blame their crappy game that no one likes on subscriptions and turn it F2P. Yeah seems to be working well.
Newer console rpg's offer more than modern day mmo's.....why is that? Pretty sad you can get from lvl 1 to max level in 3 days and then cry on the forums the game sucks and there is nothing to do. Horrible that mmo companies start to put hours of content in their features now (thats a single player rpg thing).
Games of today are bad and rushed, no creativity, no design to keep the gamers content, and no features. So yeah it would be nice to see some older style games return and try their luck. Considering every mmo today copied their content and features from older games (even WOW).
But we are in luck several sandboxes with older style mechanics are on the horizon, i bet you see a shift in mmo dev's game making soon enough
And how does having a true epic mmo with all the features harm your game play? Having limits surely hurts mine.
Just cant believe how linear our community has become to accept these garbage mmo's of today
And the red part..........lol....... funny considering majority of the posters here want better mmo's. About 3 of you keep attacking their opinions Just saying.
Originally posted by Banaghran Originally posted by lizardbonesThey'll attract a wide variety of people with their advertising and colorful boxes. They'll keep the people who share that focus. Which is what they're doing now. WoW keeps the people who raid. Eve keeps the people who do whatever it is people do in Eve. Minecraft keeps the people who build. The developers who don't focus on something, like Bioware and EA did with Star Wars, have a hard time keeping people. If the leveling portion of a game is linear, make it the best linear leveling game that it can be. Don't try to dress is up by adding quest hubs sending people out to the spokes of the quest wheel. If your leveling game is the quest hub style, for the love of Cthulhu, don't try to dress it up with stories and cut scenes. Give people their quest objectives and let them mow through them as quickly as possible. If the end game is repetitive raiding or repetitive instanced PvP, make it the best repetitive raiding or repetitive instanced PvP it can be. Focus people, focus! Anyway, I'm not against developers trying something new and I'm certainly not against mixing worlds with games. It just doesn't seem like developers have the tools, resources and knowledge to do this well. Maybe when they don't have to spend time developing their tools in order to develop their games it'll work. Just doesn't seem to be working right now.
They are no keeping the people, if they would, we would be having much less of these conversations, wow stagnated and even lost players since it became all about raiding back in the end of 2008, that is what we usually forget, that whether we like it or not, the majority of people got lost in the rest of the game, not raiding, it went so far that gc and friends actually started talking about players which "like to prepare", meaning tradeskills and other stuff.
Trion also focused on raiding and raid-like events, and where are they? 200k subs? Even runescape (which i am mentioning far too often these days, maybe it is time for the annual 6 month session again, maybe i finally get mining to 99), after TWICE overhauling the trade and economy system with disastrous results keeps around 2 million people entertained, from which 500k-1m actually pay for it.
In general, as a game concept thing, personally i think taking a mmorpg and trying to perfect a facet too much at the expense of the rest of the game is a recipe for disaster, you know, suddenly being in competition with mobas, fps and arcade games, which are completely the facet, and thus much better at it?
Flame on!
I think the discussion is getting ready to go in a circle.
The choice is to get a bunch of players right off the bat, knowing you're going to lose most of them, or get very few players right off the bat, and gamble on building a large player base over a long period of time. Given those two choices, is it surprising that more games get made than worlds?
The choice for developers isn't really between building a game and building a world, it's between building a game with a minimal world and building a game with a well developed world. It's so expensive that developers can barely afford what it costs now. Increasing the cost on something that won't attract people seems risky, when the people already being attracted by the game aren't necessarily interested in well developed worlds.
The development costs have to drop to make games with well developed worlds viable.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
They are no keeping the people, if they would, we would be having much less of these conversations, wow stagnated and even lost players since it became all about raiding back in the end of 2008, that is what we usually forget, that whether we like it or not, the majority of people got lost in the rest of the game, not raiding, it went so far that gc and friends actually started talking about players which "like to prepare", meaning tradeskills and other stuff.
Of course they are. WOW is still consistently at the top with 10M (which increased back from 9M) players. LOL is big. WOT is successful. Even D3 is pretty higher on xfire.
And we are having this conversation because a small bunch of old timers are ranting the lack of virtual worlds while millions are just playing games.
In general, as a game concept thing, personally i think taking a mmorpg and trying to perfect a facet too much at the expense of the rest of the game is a recipe for disaster, you know, suddenly being in competition with mobas, fps and arcade games, which are completely the facet, and thus much better at it?
Flame on!
That is the point. Not compete with MOBA and ARPGs .. BECOME MOBA and ARPGs. I totally will play a good instanced dungeon game with no world and a lobby.
They are no keeping the people, if they would, we would be having much less of these conversations, wow stagnated and even lost players since it became all about raiding back in the end of 2008, that is what we usually forget, that whether we like it or not, the majority of people got lost in the rest of the game, not raiding, it went so far that gc and friends actually started talking about players which "like to prepare", meaning tradeskills and other stuff.
Of course they are. WOW is still consistently at the top with 10M (which increased back from 9M) players. LOL is big. WOT is successful. Even D3 is pretty higher on xfire.
And we are having this conversation because a small bunch of old timers are ranting the lack of virtual worlds while millions are just playing games.
In general, as a game concept thing, personally i think taking a mmorpg and trying to perfect a facet too much at the expense of the rest of the game is a recipe for disaster, you know, suddenly being in competition with mobas, fps and arcade games, which are completely the facet, and thus much better at it?
Flame on!
That is the point. Not compete with MOBA and ARPGs .. BECOME MOBA and ARPGs. I totally will play a good instanced dungeon game with no world and a lobby.
Would you play a good virtual world?
Why is it always one thing and only one thing only? Can't we have good lobby games, good themeparks and good virtual worlds?
Am I the only person who likes different types of game structures?
The thing is; we have good lobby games. We have good themeparks. But as far as virtual worlds, not many and not many that are good.
OP is right with one correction, imo:
We don't need anymore 'games', we need some more virtual worlds.
And we are having this conversation because a small bunch of old timers are ranting the lack of virtual worlds while millions are just playing games.
Yeah, and I'm sure the only people who enjoy sandboxes come here to post.
Lol.
"Censorship is never over for those who have experienced it. It is a brand on the imagination that affects the individual who has suffered it, forever." - Noam Chomsky
Comments
You need to drop the movie theatre analogy
. Many people make an effort to go to 'less crowded' movies. My sister regularly goes to an out-of-the-way theatre to see independant movies with limited distribution and those don't attract much of a crowd. Movie viewing is primarily about personal taste in movies and has very little with how many otehr people are in the theatre with you.
I like instances because they more closely give me the 'classic PnP RPG' experience. Large bustling game worlds are nice but ultimately I am only going to interact with a few people at a time no matter what I am doing in a MMORG.
In practice, all "the world" takes away attention from their "thing", because "the thing" could always be made better, and attention to "the thing" has a lot better returns for the developer's effort. These games are still made with finite resources afterall.
I can look at some of these sandboxes and see that vast majority of them are just bad games. Some outright horrible! That is why they don't sell. That is why there are no funds for them. Because the developers focus on everything, usually unimportant little detail here and there.
Another cautionary tale should be sandbox titles where the game is essentially the same as it has been for the last decade or so, but then they add these gimmicks in which are supposed to make it different and new. This one startup had the most generic, lame MMO idea ever with some added gimmicks here and there one of which was to type in magic words on the chat window to "powerful spells". C'mon...
Sandbox developers, the "world developers", just suck at "the thing". They focus on the world stuff while "the thing" is neglected. No one will enjoy your world if the game sucks. That is why game should always, always, always be the main focus.
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been -Wayne Gretzky
I don't go to do anything because there are other people around, I do things because they are fun. In fact, I'm more apt to skip events that are overcrowded. Take, for example, San Diego Comicon. I went to it for about 30 years straight. Now, it's so overcrowded, it isn't fun so I don't go anymore. Move it to a much bigger venue or reduce the crowds and I'll go again.
Same goes with movies, same goes with MMOs.
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
Heh, here we are again. The same baseless argument that Sandbox games made horribly because they didn't have funding means that a good Sandbox game can't be made with proper funding, so they'll never get that sort of funding.
Yeah, that makes sense.
And you are assuming that Sandbox games should be made with nothing interesting and fun in them.
But I'm not going to argue with you guys, you and narriuseldon and whoever else might be waging this little war of yours against any posts about Sandbox designs. You guys are always there, in force, with multiple and constant posts, aren't you? By the way, what ever happened to Axehilt? He was another one who seems to have just dissappeared lately.
Ya see, I don't care. It's your industry, it's failing. No skin off my back. I've found other things to do, and I can live without an MMO to play. It's just sort of a shame that the business is out there waiting, but you all simply won't open your eyes and see it. I don't know why, but I'm beyond caring about it.
Once upon a time....
Fine, consider it dropped. Dropped like an MMO Themepark account.
Once upon a time....
I do not like analogies. They never work as intended on internet forums. I think I saw it work once in all the years that I've been posting here. But that's just a pet peeve of mine.
Another personal opinion - I like both game centric and world centric designs, but I want a developer to commit to one or the other. I've enjoyed both types of games and both types of MMORPG. Currently, I'm playing a world centric mmorpg because all the game centric mmorpg have gone with a quest hub design that it turns out I hate. So it's single player games and an open world sandbox for me.
Anyway, I still think everything in this thread comes down to money. The cost of producing a game compared to the return on that investment.
If you look at the scale of the money thrown at games, you will see a consistent pattern. More money is thrown at game centric mmorpg. This might have something to do with WoW, but there are other game centric mmorpg that have been successful and made a killing. The same can't be said of world centric mmorpg, not on the same scale as the game centric mmorpg. The market for world centric games exists, but it's small in comparison to the market for game centric games. This limits development on world centric games...which is probably why they are all currently obsessed with PvP. Not enough people are writing them.
Get the cost for producing an MMORPG in general down, and you'll see all this talk of social systems and world interactions become relevant because people will get to experience them on a more regular basis. Somebody will write Fallout 3 as an MMORPG (but with a slightly different IP). Somebody will write a decent investment MMORPG or something similar. Right now, it's just too expensive for that kind of stuff to happen.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
I very much appreciate the time and thought you put into this response - it is an vast improvement over the standard 'it can't be done' crowd.
I found your points incisive, relevant and logical.
I would however like to point out what I think are the key issues which change the ball park on your points and thus your conlcusions.
There is no inherent contradiction between gear progression gained by crafting or looting - the one that exists currently is by design choice alone and choices can be changed of course. You claim that 'you can't have both', but I really don't beleive this is so. As a game designer - just fine tune the time and effort required in both to acheive a 'top tier' set and make them equivalent. The differentiating factor will then be skins and the method used to get there. There is by the way no reason not to allow solo progression to top tier - but to balance the effort required in gathering matts and crafting them or gathering numbers of players for raiding this should take longer to acheive as it is a solo effort. Furthermore - allow some dye capabilities and style choices which allow for mix and match sets without the appearance or stats being obviously exclusive and you create a hybrid progression curve which allows for a player to get there with whatever mix of play they want.
On the issue of vertical progression - the reason verticle progression exists is because of two primary reasons - it is easy to program... and it's 'always' been done this way. I am sure if I was to hop in a time machine and go back to the 70's and kill Gary Gygax then levelled systems wouldn't exist - but I would probably feel bad about it afterwards - he was quite a nice guy really!
Skill based progression and progression within an envelope - i.e. both verticle and horizontal requires more effort to create. This means it isn't often done and thus games where non-repeatability of out-levelled content is a common and major issue. GW2 got around this in a levelled system functionally but didn't get the rewards right - so it didn't work out so well - pity. However, if you create a progression envelope where the highest levels of skill are gained on a curved progression - more and more effort for less and less progression until cap, and combine this with 'sideways' progression with meaningful benefits then the amount of effort required, and therefore the longevity (for that kind of player) becomes good. As the progression is curved - more casual players acheive 80% of what the hard core guys do in a fraction of the time - but the hard core get their edge - without it making open world PvP a one sided slaughterfest.
Curved progression (and by this as should have clarified - an intially linear progression into a later reverse exponential curve) allows for all the reinforcements you speak of without the hard core gamers getting so far ahead of the average player they are untouchable.
There is no need to seperate a world into gated boxes for progression management purposes. Neither do changes or interractions make this so. I would love to divulge here - but lets just say I have thought of a way to have zones adapt as players interract but in a way which is manageable and allows low power players to be involved right next to high power ones - not to mention a consequences system which is also adaptive - simply and understandably - I call it my 'Areas' idea and it comes from my involvement professioanlly with GIS software. I intend to have a chat with a dev or two before I talk about that more openly, but I can assure you it is possible. Hell, I even came up with a way that high level play would enable greater low level play and visa versa - all in the same zones. It is elegantly simple.
The technical problem of a seamless world is a persistent one and really a moot point. However, if you push the technology and zone only when necessary due to this, fairly large areas are encompassable as a seemless whole. I find this to be of lesser importance compared to making a world living and breathing. But suffice to say my 'Areas' idea about dynamic zones, consequence systems and challenge management fit with a seamless or zoned world.
I really don't think the level of compromise you speak of would be necessary, although I note that even with the ones you highlight, it should still be tried.
I agree!
I will push one step further. A good game is a game that focus. Very few devs are good at doing many things. The games that i like are invariably focus on making the core gameplay well, instead of trying to become everything (except may be WOW ... even WOW, i feel it is better in instanced dungeoning, and the other stuff is not done as well).
That is why, I like online ARPG. No world, just focus on class base combat/abilities and progression. Or MOBA, just focus on arena pvp. Or something like Planetside 2 ... Halo combat in a big zone .. no crafting, no questing, a bit of progression.
That is why i think i will like Marvel Heroes (but of course i reserve judgment til i try it). Just Diablo style combat with Marvel characters.
And they will attract only people that share that focus.
The question is not many vs few the question is several vs one or two if pvp is involved, because that is how far it went.
These days we have only people raiding and doing dungeons (raiding mini) for tokens, that is all there is, which i personally find disappointing, even "gamish" games (to use your terms) like TF 2 offer several forms of play with different goals.
Flame on!
I dont understand why all the bickering over this. Just have both!
If you dont want to take part in something, just dont. Doesnt mean you cant have your little slice of linear maps being led around on a leash while the game offers a wide open world for those that want it.
Its better to have it and never use it than to not have it and want to try it or use it.
Like crafting, i dont see why so many are against it. Just dont freaking craft. but to obmit it because you feel it isnt important. IT IS SELFISH!!!!
Or player housing. If you dont want a damn house dont get one. But dont try to pass your linear play style onto all mmo's.
An open world doesnt hurt anyone, have a limited and heavily lacking of mmo features in a game does hurt a lot of people.
I want my crafting, my housing, my pve, my pvp, my player content, my big fat open world. If you like being linear with no creativity and being led around being told what to do instead of making your own path......... you can still play in my world. Ill boss you around from time to time
Just dropping in to say that I have been followingthe discussion, there are many good replies many good points made, some I agree with some I do nto but all seem good nevertheless. I found the discussion on curved progression and gated content interesting too.
I have not much to add at this time, except maybe, that technical solutions exist, technical know how is not an issue either. I am sure any modern Dev team today has the technical know-how on how to make a world MMO. Where the doubts reside is in terms of gameplay and functionality.
I remember back in UO new players will start their characters and often ask "what is the goal of the game", "what is there to do next" and similar questions. I would personally always spend time answering these questions, and then they would go "That is so cool, thanks" and of they went Adventuring and having fun...I would often meetthese players few months later and they would share their adventures and fun.
It was all part of the World experience, and how the player's role is as important as the game itself in such an MMO.
Order of the Silver Star, OSS
ESKA, Playing MMORPG's since Ultima Online 1997 - Order of the Silver Serpent, Atlantic Shard
Yeah why do you guys want to play something different, or to try for something better in MMO's? Why are you not accepting the banal, regurgitated pap that passes as a MMO these days and loving it?
Please don’t come onto these forums anymore with these wacky ideas, you might make the punters, I mean the players restless. They might actually want a MMO which does not look like a console solo RPG clone. Where would the gaming industry be then?
Lets all get back to our wonderful theme parks and stop thinking these dangerous heretical thoughts!
Single player games have purpose, there is always an Major Plot line that begins and ends, the goal in SRPG is to get to the end.
Elder Scrolls series expanded on it, they added Exploration in the mix, made the whole purpose of the game to be discovering Side Quests that doesn't affect the Main Plot.
MMO in my opinion was suppose to be Open Ended, where it never end, lasts for years as the Game World gets larger. I started playing MMO because it was said to be Thousands of SRPG in one, that when one story ends, another opens up, and you get to use your same character over and over again to conquer the challenges shown to you.
There will always be people against having an Virtual World, but think about it, those that escapes to the Virtual World, are there to escape the Real World. Understand that not everyone's lives are that great. Just open up any page of the news paper or watch some News channels. What we call a waste of time, to many it just might save their sanity and humanity.
Life is a Maze, so make sure you bring your GPS incase you get lost in it.
I will dust off my tin foil hat and say, that it is the achievment of what wow has become that makes this nearly impossible.
Most of people who played wow or a game very similar to it will assume that any activity that is not the "main" activity falls into two categories, prerequisite to the main activity (you cannot enter this dungeon without CRAFTING this key with your grandmaster fishing
) or mandatory in the main activity due to some op stuff (you have to be engineer to have grenades to have adequate dps), there is no middle ground for them. That the tradeskill or questing can have the prerequisite "reward" on level 40 from 100 not 100 from 100, and that crafting can take long after that level 40 and thus offer rewards on the level of the current dungeon without some raiding tokens involved and withouut being OP escapes them.
Thus they argue against, noone likes to have to do something what he dislikes for too long, even if he likes the rewards very much.
And lets not forget the usual stuff, bop system, players doing the job of developers by being concerned that some area is visited just by 5% people (maybe we should discontinue shamans, they had 6% population for years), players blaming each other instead the devs...
Flame on!
And they will attract only people that share that focus.
The question is not many vs few the question is several vs one or two if pvp is involved, because that is how far it went.
These days we have only people raiding and doing dungeons (raiding mini) for tokens, that is all there is, which i personally find disappointing, even "gamish" games (to use your terms) like TF 2 offer several forms of play with different goals.
Flame on!
They'll attract a wide variety of people with their advertising and colorful boxes. They'll keep the people who share that focus. Which is what they're doing now. WoW keeps the people who raid. Eve keeps the people who do whatever it is people do in Eve. Minecraft keeps the people who build. The developers who don't focus on something, like Bioware and EA did with Star Wars, have a hard time keeping people.
If the leveling portion of a game is linear, make it the best linear leveling game that it can be. Don't try to dress is up by adding quest hubs sending people out to the spokes of the quest wheel. If your leveling game is the quest hub style, for the love of Cthulhu, don't try to dress it up with stories and cut scenes. Give people their quest objectives and let them mow through them as quickly as possible. If the end game is repetitive raiding or repetitive instanced PvP, make it the best repetitive raiding or repetitive instanced PvP it can be. Focus people, focus!
Anyway, I'm not against developers trying something new and I'm certainly not against mixing worlds with games. It just doesn't seem like developers have the tools, resources and knowledge to do this well. Maybe when they don't have to spend time developing their tools in order to develop their games it'll work. Just doesn't seem to be working right now.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
They are no keeping the people, if they would, we would be having much less of these conversations, wow stagnated and even lost players since it became all about raiding back in the end of 2008, that is what we usually forget, that whether we like it or not, the majority of people got lost in the rest of the game, not raiding, it went so far that gc and friends actually started talking about players which "like to prepare", meaning tradeskills and other stuff.
Trion also focused on raiding and raid-like events, and where are they? 200k subs? Even runescape (which i am mentioning far too often these days, maybe it is time for the annual 6 month session again, maybe i finally get mining to 99), after TWICE overhauling the trade and economy system with disastrous results keeps around 2 million people entertained, from which 500k-1m actually pay for it.
In general, as a game concept thing, personally i think taking a mmorpg and trying to perfect a facet too much at the expense of the rest of the game is a recipe for disaster, you know, suddenly being in competition with mobas, fps and arcade games, which are completely the facet, and thus much better at it?
Flame on!
These conversations are started by a handful of disgruntled old bittervets again and again. Its really not a conversation at all.
Marketing lets you reach your target audience quickly, after that, there is no other way but down. This is the natural way of things, I don't know why people are so fixated about stagnation, they can't grow forever and steady decline is rather normal until you release new content.
Trying to do a little bit of everything and nothing well certainly isn't working either. I would much rather play a game that focuses on a handful of things but does them well than play a game that does many things, but none of them well.
Good combat is the best selling feature there is. Everything else should be secondary if you're aiming for mass market appeal. It is just wishful thinking to say that economy and other less important features would propel a game to mass market success.
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been -Wayne Gretzky
You're stance is childish. Like the industry is failing because you aren't playing - or because you say so. Even if it was failing it wouldn't be skin off my back either. You have to hit a peak at some point, because you can't grow forever. You talk like any plateau is the end of the world, when it was bound to happen at some point.
Axehilt was one of the few sane posters here, and he actually works in the game industry so he knows what he's talking about. His words should carry some weight. I don't know why he hasn't posted in a while though. He may have just gotten fed up arguing with the ignorant, the fools, the fanatics and the armchair generals.
You spend way too much effort to arguing what should and shouldn't be. Narius and I just tell how things are. It is useless to try and uphold what MMOs should be about when what almost everyone ever cares about is: Are they having fun or not? They couldn't give a fuck how well this and that fulfils your arbitrary criteria for a "true MMO". The whole notion is laughable.
There is no "true MMO". Things change constantly. The market is not the same as it was ten years ago. We are not the same as ten years ago. You either accept it or you can whine about it in the forums. Either way its not my problem. The genre is not going to die when you stop playing.
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been -Wayne Gretzky
"Marketing lets you reach your target audience quickly, after that, there is no other way but down."
Which 5 buck issue of "Get rich quick!" did this profound economical knowledge originate from?
We are very far away from the concept of dream advertising where everyone is in the position to get info about everything he MIGHT be interested, whether he wants or not.
Flame on!
And some focus, like action combat, has a large audience. So there is no harm in attracting those people, as long as you get a large shre of them.
I disagree that "just doing dungeons for tokens" ... is disappointing. It depends on the combat abilities and mechanics. Look at D3, or any ARPG ... it is just killing mobs for loot, and no other goal. But different classes play very differently. There are many builds, and so essientially the variety is not in goals, but in how you fight.
That .. is a totally legit type of variety.
Another example is PS2. You just kill player on the other side (and yes, there is some capturing but essentially killing is the focus). Also a singular goal. But you can doing it by sniping, rockets, vehicles and many different ways.
And thats the reason games die after just a few months after release. There is no longevity nor reason to keep the players going. Waiting around for weeks/months for new content you can do in a day is not my idea of fun or good. Having a wide open mmo with all the features keep players content and offer them to make their own path.
Sure you have your handful of diehards, but in the end with declining population most games just dont live up to anything.
Then they blame their crappy game that no one likes on subscriptions and turn it F2P. Yeah seems to be working well.
Newer console rpg's offer more than modern day mmo's.....why is that? Pretty sad you can get from lvl 1 to max level in 3 days and then cry on the forums the game sucks and there is nothing to do. Horrible that mmo companies start to put hours of content in their features now (thats a single player rpg thing).
Games of today are bad and rushed, no creativity, no design to keep the gamers content, and no features. So yeah it would be nice to see some older style games return and try their luck. Considering every mmo today copied their content and features from older games (even WOW).
But we are in luck several sandboxes with older style mechanics are on the horizon, i bet you see a shift in mmo dev's game making soon enough
And how does having a true epic mmo with all the features harm your game play? Having limits surely hurts mine.
Just cant believe how linear our community has become to accept these garbage mmo's of today
And the red part..........lol....... funny considering majority of the posters here want better mmo's. About 3 of you keep attacking their opinions
Just saying.
Trion also focused on raiding and raid-like events, and where are they? 200k subs? Even runescape (which i am mentioning far too often these days, maybe it is time for the annual 6 month session again, maybe i finally get mining to 99), after TWICE overhauling the trade and economy system with disastrous results keeps around 2 million people entertained, from which 500k-1m actually pay for it.
In general, as a game concept thing, personally i think taking a mmorpg and trying to perfect a facet too much at the expense of the rest of the game is a recipe for disaster, you know, suddenly being in competition with mobas, fps and arcade games, which are completely the facet, and thus much better at it?
Flame on!
I think the discussion is getting ready to go in a circle.
The choice is to get a bunch of players right off the bat, knowing you're going to lose most of them, or get very few players right off the bat, and gamble on building a large player base over a long period of time. Given those two choices, is it surprising that more games get made than worlds?
The choice for developers isn't really between building a game and building a world, it's between building a game with a minimal world and building a game with a well developed world. It's so expensive that developers can barely afford what it costs now. Increasing the cost on something that won't attract people seems risky, when the people already being attracted by the game aren't necessarily interested in well developed worlds.
The development costs have to drop to make games with well developed worlds viable.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
Would you play a good virtual world?
Why is it always one thing and only one thing only? Can't we have good lobby games, good themeparks and good virtual worlds?
Am I the only person who likes different types of game structures?
The thing is; we have good lobby games. We have good themeparks. But as far as virtual worlds, not many and not many that are good.
OP is right with one correction, imo:
We don't need anymore 'games', we need some more virtual worlds.
Yeah, and I'm sure the only people who enjoy sandboxes come here to post.
Lol.
"Censorship is never over for those who have experienced it. It is a brand on the imagination that affects the individual who has suffered it, forever." - Noam Chomsky