To your second sentance, duh. And that is a central component to sandbox, it is one reason why people like sandbox. It just happens to share that feature with spg.
In that case, SP games do it much better. There is no need for a sandbox. Just play Dishonored, for example. The whole world respond to nothing but you.
IMO they don't. MMO's offer more variety than spg, they allow me to group when I feel like which doesn't happen in spg, other people offer more randomness and a different environment than spg.
We are talking about a sandbox. This has nothign specific about a sandbox.
If you want to play with others, just play an ONLINE MP RPG. You don't need a MMO for that. In fact, if you want the world to respond to you, MMO is a pretty bad choice.
Tell me, in which MMO, the world will change for you? Not even Eve.
Once again there are a great many specific things about a sandbox.
Atitd changes. In some ways Istaria used to change. In any game that has territory control the world changes, so Eve has this so yes the world changes, as does darkfall.
But you can't kill a NPC, and he/she stayed death. You can't change the terrain, like blowing up a castle, and it stayed blown up.
Territory control is really nothing special. Even games like Transformer has it in the MP mode.
Housing has never been an MMO feature I've had any strong feelings about. I get that it adds depth and color to the world just like fishing, cooking, etc. do, but I could care less for the safe comfy fluffy places these tend to be.
Make it a defensible and attackable guild base and I'm all over that. That is the type of "housing" that integrates well into gameplay for me. These safe, instanced places where people can spend time decorating etc.... could care less.
"Social media gives legions of idiots the right to speak when they once only spoke at a bar after a glass of wine, without harming the community ... but now they have the same right to speak as a Nobel Prize winner. It's the invasion of the idiots”
― Umberto Eco
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?” ― CD PROJEKT RED
To your second sentance, duh. And that is a central component to sandbox, it is one reason why people like sandbox. It just happens to share that feature with spg.
In that case, SP games do it much better. There is no need for a sandbox. Just play Dishonored, for example. The whole world respond to nothing but you.
IMO they don't. MMO's offer more variety than spg, they allow me to group when I feel like which doesn't happen in spg, other people offer more randomness and a different environment than spg.
We are talking about a sandbox. This has nothign specific about a sandbox.
If you want to play with others, just play an ONLINE MP RPG. You don't need a MMO for that. In fact, if you want the world to respond to you, MMO is a pretty bad choice.
Tell me, in which MMO, the world will change for you? Not even Eve.
Once again there are a great many specific things about a sandbox.
Atitd changes. In some ways Istaria used to change. In any game that has territory control the world changes, so Eve has this so yes the world changes, as does darkfall.
But you can't kill a NPC, and he/she stayed death. You can't change the terrain, like blowing up a castle, and it stayed blown up.
Territory control is really nothing special. Even games like Transformer has it in the MP mode.
Killing an NPC, or changing terrain is not the only way to affect a change in the world. Thats why I didn't mention it, there are other ways to change the world. Buildings do this, territory control does this. In AtiTD the story only evolves when the players meet specific conditiongs.
I never stated territory control is special, I stated it is one way to change the world.
Just because you don't like it doesn't mean it is bad.
Killing an NPC, or changing terrain is not the only way to affect a change in the world. Thats why I didn't mention it, there are other ways to change the world. Buildings do this, territory control does this. In AtiTD the story only evolves when the players meet specific conditiongs.
I never stated territory control is special, I stated it is one way to change the world.
So still, since SP games have more ways to change the world, it is doing much better than MMO in the department of "world response to you".
If you talk about only one way ... of course every game can do that. Changing the appearance of your toon is changeing a small part of the "world" since you are part of it.
The point is that MMO is not that good in this department. Sandbox or not.
For proof if peeps want more than combat in a game look back to the orginal SWG. There you had peeps playing non combat characters such as full time crafters, entertainers, doctors, housing, ship interiors, town polticans, etc. Look at all the games that have/had housing in them and see how much time and effort many did decorating them. Unless your strickly a first person shooter type guy, having more than combat is a necessity in the longivity of the game in my opinion. You could also look at this post for proof peeps are interested in more complete MMO's lol!
My best experiences for actually playing a game for more than 3 months is one that brings a sense of community and belonging. I have no problem with killing to level up my character, but at the high end there better be more than just killing to get better gear so I can kill the same stuff at a higher setting. that is just lame and why I think so many leave the games in 3 months. The better games had a reason to stick around such as meaningful realm warfare and enough fluff to keep you interested in continueing to the next expansion.
My list of the best MMO's for longivity
DAoC- for its realm pride and meaningful RvR, crafting and housing
SWG- Unlimited play style, housing, ships, non- combat roles, player towns, crafting/gathering, Pet raising
STO- developement of crew, bridge crew members, ships
For proof if peeps want more than combat in a game look back to the orginal SWG. There you had peeps playing non combat characters such as full time crafters, entertainers, doctors, housing, ship interiors, town polticans, etc. Look at all the games that have/had housing in them and see how much time and effort many did decorating them. Unless your strickly a first person shooter type guy, having more than combat is a necessity in the longivity of the game in my opinion. You could also look at this post for proof peeps are interested in more complete MMO's lol!
My best experiences for actually playing a game for more than 3 months is one that brings a sense of community and belonging. I have no problem with killing to level up my character, but at the high end there better be more than just killing to get better gear so I can kill the same stuff at a higher setting. that is just lame and why I think so many leave the games in 3 months. The better games had a reason to stick around such as meaningful realm warfare and enough fluff to keep you interested in continueing to the next expansion.
My list of the best MMO's for longivity
DAoC- for its realm pride and meaningful RvR, crafting and housing
SWG- Unlimited play style, housing, ships, non- combat roles, player towns, crafting/gathering, Pet raising
STO- developement of crew, bridge crew members, ships
So you give us a list of games that either are not popular at all, or were killed by WoW as proof that those concepts should return? Dafuq?
I did battle with ignorance today, and ignorance won.
To exercise power costs effort and demands courage. That is why so many fail to assert rights to which they are perfectly entitled - because a right is a kind of power but they are too lazy or too cowardly to exercise it. The virtues which cloak these faults are called patience and forbearance.
Lets be honest no game can come close to WoW's numbers so using that as justification isn't realistic. Other than WoW those games have or had subscription numbers that rival any numbers in popular games produced now. Both SWG (which had over 200k subscritions before NG) and DAoC who had a good subscription base before their ToA expansion ruined the game (at least in many of our opinions), had loyal fans who played the game for an extended period of time. Not like most games developed today where you lose the player base in 3 months time.
There really isn't any downside to having other stuff besides combat in your game. Are thses games that just have combat in them superior in quality or longivity? I think the answer is a big fat no!
Lets be honest no game can come close to WoW's numbers so using that as justification isn't realistic. Other than WoW those games have or had subscription numbers that rival any numbers in popular games produced now. Both SWG (which had over 200k subscritions before NG) and DAoC who had a good subscription base before their ToA expansion ruined the game (at least in many of our opinions), had loyal fans who played the game for an extended period of time. Not like most games developed today where you lose the player base in 3 months time.
There really isn't any downside to having other stuff besides combat in your game. Are thses games that just have combat in them superior in quality or longivity? I think the answer is a big fat no!
First, get it right. WoW rather clearly killed Swg. Right after Eq2/Wow launched Galaxies started losing 5+% of its playerbase every month. That is what prompted the Cu+Nge. Also, If Tao as you say "killed" Daoc then why did it retain solid subs after that point, but you see a dramatic drop off starting immediately after Wow was released? Your read on the market is simply wrong. There are many many times more games, that are much easier to access, and are of much higher quality then there were 10 years ago. Coupled with drastically changing attitudes (wiki and youtube usage especially) and its pretty clear what factors have changed how gamers play, and what they play.
And yes, there is a downside. Its terribly expensive and takes forever (if it ever does at all) to break even on. A dungeon will break even long before a house ever will. A quest doubly so. That is your cost. Its the same reason why your new favorite tv show gets canceled.
I did battle with ignorance today, and ignorance won.
To exercise power costs effort and demands courage. That is why so many fail to assert rights to which they are perfectly entitled - because a right is a kind of power but they are too lazy or too cowardly to exercise it. The virtues which cloak these faults are called patience and forbearance.
Guys your missing the big picture here, having those things in the games hasn't made the meat and potatoe combat any weaker because of split resources. Just look at the newer releases that had none of these built in them, total crap for the most part. My examples showed good production releases that didn't skimp on the combat part but were able to bring forth non combat stuff to make the game more enjoyable. Whether we agree or not on What made DAoC and SWG go defunct really doesn't have much bearing on the fact the non-combat roles made for a more complete MMO experience. What MMO's have you played for years on as I have on these? I could include EQ but that really was becauseit was the first real MMO I played and I had more spare time than brains back than lol. Is there an example of a game that included non combat stuff that the content was ruined because of insufficient funding due to that extra content? I'm thinking there must be one somewhere as there is a ton of MMO's released but I think we can agree it isn't the norm. Seems to me the ones released with the extra content tend to be the better produced MMO's.
Originally posted by buegur Guys your missing the big picture here, having those things in the games hasn't made the meat and potatoe combat any weaker because of split resources. Just look at the newer releases that had none of these built in them, total crap for the most part. My examples showed good production releases that didn't skimp on the combat part but were able to bring forth non combat stuff to make the game more enjoyable. Whether we agree or not on What made DAoC and SWG go defunct really doesn't have much bearing on the fact the non-combat roles made for a more complete MMO experience. What MMO's have you played for years on as I have on these? I could include EQ but that really was becauseit was the first real MMO I played and I had more spare time than brains back than lol. Is there an example of a game that included non combat stuff that the content was ruined because of insufficient funding due to that extra content? I'm thinking there must be one somewhere as there is a ton of MMO's released but I think we can agree it isn't the norm. Seems to me the ones released with the extra content tend to be the better produced MMO's.
Having access to more resources is nowhwere near the same thing as better produced. And yes, you can point at Rifts latest expension as a classic case of shoving resources into housing (because it was BEGGED for and rather clearly not having resources to pour into questing, or even really combat. The entire expansion felt pretty unfinished, except for that beloved housing part, that very few use and is not keeping players around. I would also disagree with you that what made those other games defunct matters a great deal. The Cu+Nge was an attempt to fix what was widely considered to be the largest problem with the game. Was it foolish of them, yes, but that was primairly because they did not take their existing playerbase into consideration. Instead the market has done the smart thing and just not catered to you at all really because its not profitable.
I did battle with ignorance today, and ignorance won.
To exercise power costs effort and demands courage. That is why so many fail to assert rights to which they are perfectly entitled - because a right is a kind of power but they are too lazy or too cowardly to exercise it. The virtues which cloak these faults are called patience and forbearance.
I played Rift when it first came out and made a couple of characters to the end level. I thought their combat was fine and enjoyed the skills I had for my various characters, but like most new MMO's they lost me at the end game...too boring. I think I lasted 6 months and still think the game was fine but had no hook to keep me interested in it. If they are adding non combat hooks to the game in a new expansion it will be interesting to see how that effects their player base in the long run. The problem with the newer games is they are fun to level in but at the high end lack purpose and soul. The way Rift was designed I'm not sure what an expansion could do to fix that. I really doubt that the included housing really had an effect on the expansions resources though, it probably would of included whatever material they included just without the housing. I'm guessing they included the housing based on player requests and that helps validate what I've been suggesting all along.
If you are on the side of no housing, and are all worked up about it, I have to question your motives. There is no clear link to fluff causing the failure of games, there is an assumption of causality given the historical success and failure of titles which really definitively shows nothing.
The decision to oppose these features must be borne of some imagined task that the programmer-posters are too lazy to complete (what if I get a job and they Make me create housing !), or elitist twitch gamers who cannot stand even the thought of players having fun doing something other than combat activities. Either way this is exclusivist behavior.
You should be saying, "yeah put houses in, I don't like it, but I'm a big tent guy."
Are you saying that there is plenty of fluff but people don't see it?
No, people see it, just the majority are not interested in it as anything resembling a main form of play. As much as the op and his segment wish to believe fluff has not gone anywhere. Tsw and Rift are both FULL of fluff, it has not stopped either of them falling into obscurity. Rift playerbase now is at similar levels to what it was pre expansion. If fluff keeps players around than retension should be much higher since the launch of its Dimensions, especially after the "huge" contest they ran to promote it. At best fluff keeps the lifesupport population happy, like it did for Swg after WoW took all of its subs.
Perhaps it's because roleplayers want relevant fluff that doesn't get nerfed patch after patch after patch until the fluff becomes irrelevant?(ie. pub15/16 in UO)
That means when you grow a garden you can grow stuff that other players need, like mats for alchemy, cooking, home deco, even twine for rope to keep your boat/ship from drifting away.
Taming is another thing that needs to be relevant, pets are cute, sometimes, but most want to be able to train their pets to assist them in some way, whether that be in fighting or detecting treasure troves or whatever.
Housing also needs a purpose beyond just being a house.
Being able to make items that allow you to do your crafting in your house, forges, anvils, looms, spinning wheels, ovens, alchemy tables, etc are very helpful as well as the ability to display your "trophies" or wares or even just your creativity in design.
Also, being able to have vendors on the doorstep of your home or able to make your home into a shop, or a library with collections of items/books/runes etc are usually appreciated by players that don't really have the same interest in doing all that crafting or gathering but can utilize what you have done provides not only relevence but also a sense of community in that you need each other to make it a whole experience.
Playing card games or adding casinos is fun for awhile but is definitely just fluff, unless the devs make it relevant by perhaps making the prizes something you can use in the rest of the game and the currency to play them a goldsink(which is not always appreciated by those who like the mini-game side of things but haven't yet reached the wealthy status of those who have already learned how to work the system for riches, making it a definite balancing act).
If you are on the side of no housing, and are all worked up about it, I have to question your motives. There is no clear link to fluff causing the failure of games, there is an assumtion of causaility given the historical success and failure of titles which really definitively shows nothing.
How about if i am on the side of "housing is meh, i don't care one way or the other"?
If you are on the side of no housing, and are all worked up about it, I have to question your motives. There is no clear link to fluff causing the failure of games, there is an assumption of causality given the historical success and failure of titles which really definitively shows nothing.
How about if i am on the side of "housing is meh, i don't care one way or the other"?
I think that is a perfectly legitimate stance that has the virtue of not attempting to stifle the enjoyment of others.
Are you saying that there is plenty of fluff but people don't see it?
No, people see it, just the majority are not interested in it as anything resembling a main form of play. As much as the op and his segment wish to believe fluff has not gone anywhere. Tsw and Rift are both FULL of fluff, it has not stopped either of them falling into obscurity. Rift playerbase now is at similar levels to what it was pre expansion. If fluff keeps players around than retension should be much higher since the launch of its Dimensions, especially after the "huge" contest they ran to promote it. At best fluff keeps the lifesupport population happy, like it did for Swg after WoW took all of its subs.
Perhaps it's because roleplayers want relevant fluff that doesn't get nerfed patch after patch after patch until the fluff becomes irrelevant?(ie. pub15/16 in UO)
That means when you grow a garden you can grow stuff that other players need, like mats for alchemy, cooking, home deco, even twine for rope to keep your boat/ship from drifting away.
Taming is another thing that needs to be relevant, pets are cute, sometimes, but most want to be able to train their pets to assist them in some way, whether that be in fighting or detecting treasure troves or whatever.
Housing also needs a purpose beyond just being a house.
Being able to make items that allow you to do your crafting in your house, forges, anvils, looms, spinning wheels, ovens, alchemy tables, etc are very helpful as well as the ability to display your "trophies" or wares or even just your creativity in design.
Also, being able to have vendors on the doorstep of your home or able to make your home into a shop, or a library with collections of items/books/runes etc are usually appreciated by players that don't really have the same interest in doing all that crafting or gathering but can utilize what you have done provides not only relevence but also a sense of community in that you need each other to make it a whole experience.
Playing card games or adding casinos is fun for awhile but is definitely just fluff, unless the devs make it relevant by perhaps making the prizes something you can use in the rest of the game and the currency to play them a goldsink(which is not always appreciated by those who like the mini-game side of things but haven't yet reached the wealthy status of those who have already learned how to work the system for riches, making it a definite balancing act).
Except that whole issue of as soon as you make it "relevent" it becomes a must have for anyone (read, the majority) who feel bad if they are not playing reasonably effecient. Take the farmville simulator Blizzard has tacked into WoW. Its the best source of cooking equipment, and one of the best forms of collecting rep. I do not want to log into WoW to play Farmville for an hour. You can draw similar statements with Eq2 and housing. In my time in Eq2 having to constantly return to my house because they decided to make housing "relevent" soured me on housing in pretty much every game since. I am getting a touch of it back from Skyrim, but that is entirely because of modded content that is blatent cheating considering the base game though.
As for mini games I really do not understand the attitude. Mmorpg != Wii Sports. They are not "lets see how many games we can cram together!" as your sort seems to view them. As stated above, I do not log into WoW to play Pokemon, Plants Vs Zombies and Farmville. I get it, many people to gravitate to those things, but why the hell would you pay a subscription for it? Its not even really more convient! That trend is a large part of the very reason why I no longer play WoW. None of those systems are even anywhere close as good as the original games.
Originally posted by ignore_me
If you are on the side of no housing, and are all worked up about it, I have to question your motives. There is no clear link to fluff causing the failure of games, there is an assumption of causality given the historical success and failure of titles which really definitively shows nothing.
The decision to oppose these features must be borne of some imagined task that the programmer-posters are too lazy to complete (what if I get a job and they Make me create housing !), or elitist twitch gamers who cannot stand even the thought of players having fun doing something other than combat activities. Either way this is exclusivist behavior.
You should be saying, "yeah put houses in, I don't like it, but I'm a big tent guy."
Clear link to fluff causing failure, no. Clear link to fluff only prolonging the "life support" cycle of mmo life, yes. It is rather clear that housing/rp/minigames do not retain subs in any significant numbers, nor does it increase sales. However I would posit that the immediate opportunity cost of creating such content does in fact hurt the game. If 5 people are tasked with creating housing, and it takes them a month and that housing only effects 10% of the population in any significant way I see it as a failure of the producer. Those same 5 could have just as easily made a quest, which 70% of the pop would see, or fixed a couple bugs etc etc. If it does not help, it hurts.
I did battle with ignorance today, and ignorance won.
To exercise power costs effort and demands courage. That is why so many fail to assert rights to which they are perfectly entitled - because a right is a kind of power but they are too lazy or too cowardly to exercise it. The virtues which cloak these faults are called patience and forbearance.
If you are on the side of no housing, and are all worked up about it, I have to question your motives. There is no clear link to fluff causing the failure of games, there is an assumption of causality given the historical success and failure of titles which really definitively shows nothing.
The decision to oppose these features must be borne of some imagined task that the programmer-posters are too lazy to complete (what if I get a job and they Make me create housing !), or elitist twitch gamers who cannot stand even the thought of players having fun doing something other than combat activities. Either way this is exclusivist behavior.
You should be saying, "yeah put houses in, I don't like it, but I'm a big tent guy."
I'm thinking content locusts who are worried they won't get their feeding tube of progression content. I have no sympathy for folks who get to cap at a third of the time of everyone else, plough through end-game and then start demanding more, especially at the expense of other playstyles. It's akin to watching a binge-eater, but at least the binge-eater has the common sense to blame himself.
If you are on the side of no housing, and are all worked up about it, I have to question your motives. There is no clear link to fluff causing the failure of games, there is an assumption of causality given the historical success and failure of titles which really definitively shows nothing.
How about if i am on the side of "housing is meh, i don't care one way or the other"?
I think that is a perfectly legitimate stance that has the virtue of not attempting to stifle the enjoyment of others.
I doubt anyone can seriously stifle the enjoyment of others. Even if i touted the evil of fluff with thousand words essays (not that i believe in that) here, no game development will change by 0.1% because of that.
I highly doubt this forum has any impact on actual game design. It is just a place for people to discuss, rand, flame, and pass time.
Games these days? Most of them have trouble even giving combat content away, let alone sell access to it for $15 a month.
Fluff these days? Well, that's what subsidizes the combat content.
Those who are going to complain that the needs of the achievement and loot lobby outweigh the need for fluff to sell are going to have to show how throwing countless of dollars and man-hours into feeding the achievement and loot beast is going to pay off. Because from everything I've seen in this industry in the last couple of years, feeding the achievement and loot machine is more of a revenue expense than a revenue generator.
__________________________ "Its sad when people use religion to feel superior, its even worse to see people using a video game to do it." --Arcken
"...when it comes to pimping EVE I have little restraints." --Hellmar, CEO of CCP.
"It's like they took a gun, put it to their nugget sack and pulled the trigger over and over again, each time telling us how great it was that they were shooting themselves in the balls." --Exar_Kun on SWG's NGE
Clear link to fluff causing failure, no. Clear link to fluff only prolonging the "life support" cycle of mmo life, yes. It is rather clear that housing/rp/minigames do not retain subs in any significant numbers, nor does it increase sales. However I would posit that the immediate opportunity cost of creating such content does in fact hurt the game. If 5 people are tasked with creating housing, and it takes them a month and that housing only effects 10% of the population in any significant way I see it as a failure of the producer. Those same 5 could have just as easily made a quest, which 70% of the pop would see, or fixed a couple bugs etc etc. If it does not help, it hurts.
I don't think fixing bugs is a combat or non-combat problem. Nobody likes bugs, but who is going to fund the bug fixers?
It sure won't be the combat crowd. With free to play, the combat crowd isn't paying much anymore. It's the players who are concerned with more than combat content who are paying the way in the item store.
See, creating a quest does nothing to solve retention and revenue issues. All it does is give a day's worth of novelty--at great expense--to a demographic which, the evidence shows, neither funds the games nor remains loyal to the games.
There is a reason game publishers turn to fluff to prolong the life cycle of an MMO: because the evidence clearly shows that combat content is incapable of prolonging the life cycle. For the amount of time and revenue necessary to give a player one weekend of new content, developers can create a multitude of cosmetic and entertaining virtual upgrades in their item stores. Combat content is so worthless, they can't even give it away. Where it was once sold at a premium, it's now given away for free.
Fluff, on the other hand, sells. And it's also cheap to produce. It requires no special coding. It creates no balance issues. It requires no playtesting. It incurs no gripes from veteran combat players who can't accept change.
Besides, you act as if combat is itself is a unified demographic. But you only care for a minority of end-game, hardcore achievers who comprise a very few (10% or less). If you create something which requires an elite cadre all hooked up to voicechat, then the content is catering to a small few. Not only that, but that sort of endgame content is, by nature of the parameters, only ever accessable to an elite few. And as soon as they do the quest? Well, they are left with the same problem, come to the forums and give the game bad PR ("That last quest sucked, the game is too easy") just as if the quest were never there at all.
Creating content that's accessable to everyone is also problematic. Because it is only valid if you are a new player and has yet to get through to maximum level. Once you get past the level, the quest is useless, just as if the quest was never there at all.
This is why the games no longer find the argument of combat players credible. All they do is park themselves at the monitor with Doritos and Mountain Dew, play for three weeks non-stop, complete everything, and compain that "this game sucked." They aren't good for anything other than launch month.
__________________________ "Its sad when people use religion to feel superior, its even worse to see people using a video game to do it." --Arcken
"...when it comes to pimping EVE I have little restraints." --Hellmar, CEO of CCP.
"It's like they took a gun, put it to their nugget sack and pulled the trigger over and over again, each time telling us how great it was that they were shooting themselves in the balls." --Exar_Kun on SWG's NGE
Perhaps it's because roleplayers want relevant fluff that doesn't get nerfed patch after patch after patch until the fluff becomes irrelevant?(ie. pub15/16 in UO)
That means when you grow a garden you can grow stuff that other players need, like mats for alchemy, cooking, home deco, even twine for rope to keep your boat/ship from drifting away.
Taming is another thing that needs to be relevant, pets are cute, sometimes, but most want to be able to train their pets to assist them in some way, whether that be in fighting or detecting treasure troves or whatever.
Housing also needs a purpose beyond just being a house.
Being able to make items that allow you to do your crafting in your house, forges, anvils, looms, spinning wheels, ovens, alchemy tables, etc are very helpful as well as the ability to display your "trophies" or wares or even just your creativity in design.
Also, being able to have vendors on the doorstep of your home or able to make your home into a shop, or a library with collections of items/books/runes etc are usually appreciated by players that don't really have the same interest in doing all that crafting or gathering but can utilize what you have done provides not only relevence but also a sense of community in that you need each other to make it a whole experience.
Playing card games or adding casinos is fun for awhile but is definitely just fluff, unless the devs make it relevant by perhaps making the prizes something you can use in the rest of the game and the currency to play them a goldsink(which is not always appreciated by those who like the mini-game side of things but haven't yet reached the wealthy status of those who have already learned how to work the system for riches, making it a definite balancing act).
Except that whole issue of as soon as you make it "relevent" it becomes a must have for anyone (read, the majority) who feel bad if they are not playing reasonably effecient. Take the farmville simulator Blizzard has tacked into WoW. Its the best source of cooking equipment, and one of the best forms of collecting rep. I do not want to log into WoW to play Farmville for an hour. You can draw similar statements with Eq2 and housing. In my time in Eq2 having to constantly return to my house because they decided to make housing "relevent" soured me on housing in pretty much every game since. I am getting a touch of it back from Skyrim, but that is entirely because of modded content that is blatent cheating considering the base game though.
As for mini games I really do not understand the attitude. Mmorpg != Wii Sports. They are not "lets see how many games we can cram together!" as your sort seems to view them. As stated above, I do not log into WoW to play Pokemon, Plants Vs Zombies and Farmville. I get it, many people to gravitate to those things, but why the hell would you pay a subscription for it? Its not even really more convient! That trend is a large part of the very reason why I no longer play WoW. None of those systems are even anywhere close as good as the original games.
Originally posted by ignore_me
If you are on the side of no housing, and are all worked up about it, I have to question your motives. There is no clear link to fluff causing the failure of games, there is an assumption of causality given the historical success and failure of titles which really definitively shows nothing.
The decision to oppose these features must be borne of some imagined task that the programmer-posters are too lazy to complete (what if I get a job and they Make me create housing !), or elitist twitch gamers who cannot stand even the thought of players having fun doing something other than combat activities. Either way this is exclusivist behavior.
You should be saying, "yeah put houses in, I don't like it, but I'm a big tent guy."
Clear link to fluff causing failure, no. Clear link to fluff only prolonging the "life support" cycle of mmo life, yes. It is rather clear that housing/rp/minigames do not retain subs in any significant numbers, nor does it increase sales. However I would posit that the immediate opportunity cost of creating such content does in fact hurt the game. If 5 people are tasked with creating housing, and it takes them a month and that housing only effects 10% of the population in any significant way I see it as a failure of the producer. Those same 5 could have just as easily made a quest, which 70% of the pop would see, or fixed a couple bugs etc etc. If it does not help, it hurts.
In other words, because you don't enjoy that kind of gameplay because you're not "that sort" of player, you don't want it in your game, especially if it gives "that sort" of player that you're not, relevancy?
MMORPGs were based on many players roleplaying a character in the same world and to make it sync, each having their own role to play in it.
So the fighters fought and collected loot(mats etc) that they then sold to crafters that then were able to make l33t gear for those fighters and the other activities like fishing, cooking, taming, alchemy etc all had roles to both support and benefit from each other as well.
Healing potions, food for stamina, helpful companions(packhorses, tamed fighting beasts, mounts), carpenters/bowyers to build useful and not so useful items for both fighters and crafters, the list goes on and on.
That's a virtual world where all game "sorts" had a place and a role to fill, that's what many rpgers miss and is apparently not the kind of "game" some players want to play but instead of accepting that and playing the games meant for their "sort" they want to change mmorpgs into just their particular preference of gameplay( fps, rts, bgs, etc).
Most rpgers are more than open to having some of that kind of gameplay in their virtual worlds, just not the be all and end all of them.
Re your assertion that fluff does not increase sales, using my own experience and the opinions of the three gamers in my household, you're wrong. If a game has no "fluff", we don't buy it, that's three sales lost.
Comments
But you can't kill a NPC, and he/she stayed death. You can't change the terrain, like blowing up a castle, and it stayed blown up.
Territory control is really nothing special. Even games like Transformer has it in the MP mode.
Housing has never been an MMO feature I've had any strong feelings about. I get that it adds depth and color to the world just like fishing, cooking, etc. do, but I could care less for the safe comfy fluffy places these tend to be.
Make it a defensible and attackable guild base and I'm all over that. That is the type of "housing" that integrates well into gameplay for me. These safe, instanced places where people can spend time decorating etc.... could care less.
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?”
― CD PROJEKT RED
Killing an NPC, or changing terrain is not the only way to affect a change in the world. Thats why I didn't mention it, there are other ways to change the world. Buildings do this, territory control does this. In AtiTD the story only evolves when the players meet specific conditiongs.
I never stated territory control is special, I stated it is one way to change the world.
So still, since SP games have more ways to change the world, it is doing much better than MMO in the department of "world response to you".
If you talk about only one way ... of course every game can do that. Changing the appearance of your toon is changeing a small part of the "world" since you are part of it.
The point is that MMO is not that good in this department. Sandbox or not.
And as stated before MMOS offer more variety and much more engaging content because of other people.
more variety ... depends on how you count. Is there more variety in world scenario in a MMO compared to SKYRIM? Depends.
Because of other people? You don't need a MMO for that either. There are lots of non-MMO online games.
For proof if peeps want more than combat in a game look back to the orginal SWG. There you had peeps playing non combat characters such as full time crafters, entertainers, doctors, housing, ship interiors, town polticans, etc. Look at all the games that have/had housing in them and see how much time and effort many did decorating them. Unless your strickly a first person shooter type guy, having more than combat is a necessity in the longivity of the game in my opinion. You could also look at this post for proof peeps are interested in more complete MMO's lol!
My best experiences for actually playing a game for more than 3 months is one that brings a sense of community and belonging. I have no problem with killing to level up my character, but at the high end there better be more than just killing to get better gear so I can kill the same stuff at a higher setting. that is just lame and why I think so many leave the games in 3 months. The better games had a reason to stick around such as meaningful realm warfare and enough fluff to keep you interested in continueing to the next expansion.
My list of the best MMO's for longivity
DAoC- for its realm pride and meaningful RvR, crafting and housing
SWG- Unlimited play style, housing, ships, non- combat roles, player towns, crafting/gathering, Pet raising
STO- developement of crew, bridge crew members, ships
So you give us a list of games that either are not popular at all, or were killed by WoW as proof that those concepts should return? Dafuq?
I did battle with ignorance today, and ignorance won.
To exercise power costs effort and demands courage. That is why so many fail to assert rights to which they are perfectly entitled - because a right is a kind of power but they are too lazy or too cowardly to exercise it. The virtues which cloak these faults are called patience and forbearance.
Lets be honest no game can come close to WoW's numbers so using that as justification isn't realistic. Other than WoW those games have or had subscription numbers that rival any numbers in popular games produced now. Both SWG (which had over 200k subscritions before NG) and DAoC who had a good subscription base before their ToA expansion ruined the game (at least in many of our opinions), had loyal fans who played the game for an extended period of time. Not like most games developed today where you lose the player base in 3 months time.
There really isn't any downside to having other stuff besides combat in your game. Are thses games that just have combat in them superior in quality or longivity? I think the answer is a big fat no!
First, get it right. WoW rather clearly killed Swg. Right after Eq2/Wow launched Galaxies started losing 5+% of its playerbase every month. That is what prompted the Cu+Nge. Also, If Tao as you say "killed" Daoc then why did it retain solid subs after that point, but you see a dramatic drop off starting immediately after Wow was released? Your read on the market is simply wrong. There are many many times more games, that are much easier to access, and are of much higher quality then there were 10 years ago. Coupled with drastically changing attitudes (wiki and youtube usage especially) and its pretty clear what factors have changed how gamers play, and what they play.
And yes, there is a downside. Its terribly expensive and takes forever (if it ever does at all) to break even on. A dungeon will break even long before a house ever will. A quest doubly so. That is your cost. Its the same reason why your new favorite tv show gets canceled.
I did battle with ignorance today, and ignorance won.
To exercise power costs effort and demands courage. That is why so many fail to assert rights to which they are perfectly entitled - because a right is a kind of power but they are too lazy or too cowardly to exercise it. The virtues which cloak these faults are called patience and forbearance.
Of course not, if
a) these other stuff is not in the way of enjoying combat, and
b) combat is not sacrified because resources are shifted else where.
Don't you think a game is better doing few things well, rather than doing a lot of thing mediocrely?
Having access to more resources is nowhwere near the same thing as better produced. And yes, you can point at Rifts latest expension as a classic case of shoving resources into housing (because it was BEGGED for and rather clearly not having resources to pour into questing, or even really combat. The entire expansion felt pretty unfinished, except for that beloved housing part, that very few use and is not keeping players around. I would also disagree with you that what made those other games defunct matters a great deal. The Cu+Nge was an attempt to fix what was widely considered to be the largest problem with the game. Was it foolish of them, yes, but that was primairly because they did not take their existing playerbase into consideration. Instead the market has done the smart thing and just not catered to you at all really because its not profitable.
I did battle with ignorance today, and ignorance won.
To exercise power costs effort and demands courage. That is why so many fail to assert rights to which they are perfectly entitled - because a right is a kind of power but they are too lazy or too cowardly to exercise it. The virtues which cloak these faults are called patience and forbearance.
If you are on the side of no housing, and are all worked up about it, I have to question your motives. There is no clear link to fluff causing the failure of games, there is an assumption of causality given the historical success and failure of titles which really definitively shows nothing.
The decision to oppose these features must be borne of some imagined task that the programmer-posters are too lazy to complete (what if I get a job and they Make me create housing !), or elitist twitch gamers who cannot stand even the thought of players having fun doing something other than combat activities. Either way this is exclusivist behavior.
You should be saying, "yeah put houses in, I don't like it, but I'm a big tent guy."
Survivor of the great MMORPG Famine of 2011
Perhaps it's because roleplayers want relevant fluff that doesn't get nerfed patch after patch after patch until the fluff becomes irrelevant?(ie. pub15/16 in UO)
That means when you grow a garden you can grow stuff that other players need, like mats for alchemy, cooking, home deco, even twine for rope to keep your boat/ship from drifting away.
Taming is another thing that needs to be relevant, pets are cute, sometimes, but most want to be able to train their pets to assist them in some way, whether that be in fighting or detecting treasure troves or whatever.
Housing also needs a purpose beyond just being a house.
Being able to make items that allow you to do your crafting in your house, forges, anvils, looms, spinning wheels, ovens, alchemy tables, etc are very helpful as well as the ability to display your "trophies" or wares or even just your creativity in design.
Also, being able to have vendors on the doorstep of your home or able to make your home into a shop, or a library with collections of items/books/runes etc are usually appreciated by players that don't really have the same interest in doing all that crafting or gathering but can utilize what you have done provides not only relevence but also a sense of community in that you need each other to make it a whole experience.
Playing card games or adding casinos is fun for awhile but is definitely just fluff, unless the devs make it relevant by perhaps making the prizes something you can use in the rest of the game and the currency to play them a goldsink(which is not always appreciated by those who like the mini-game side of things but haven't yet reached the wealthy status of those who have already learned how to work the system for riches, making it a definite balancing act).
How about if i am on the side of "housing is meh, i don't care one way or the other"?
I think that is a perfectly legitimate stance that has the virtue of not attempting to stifle the enjoyment of others.
Survivor of the great MMORPG Famine of 2011
Except that whole issue of as soon as you make it "relevent" it becomes a must have for anyone (read, the majority) who feel bad if they are not playing reasonably effecient. Take the farmville simulator Blizzard has tacked into WoW. Its the best source of cooking equipment, and one of the best forms of collecting rep. I do not want to log into WoW to play Farmville for an hour. You can draw similar statements with Eq2 and housing. In my time in Eq2 having to constantly return to my house because they decided to make housing "relevent" soured me on housing in pretty much every game since. I am getting a touch of it back from Skyrim, but that is entirely because of modded content that is blatent cheating considering the base game though.
As for mini games I really do not understand the attitude. Mmorpg != Wii Sports. They are not "lets see how many games we can cram together!" as your sort seems to view them. As stated above, I do not log into WoW to play Pokemon, Plants Vs Zombies and Farmville. I get it, many people to gravitate to those things, but why the hell would you pay a subscription for it? Its not even really more convient! That trend is a large part of the very reason why I no longer play WoW. None of those systems are even anywhere close as good as the original games.
Clear link to fluff causing failure, no. Clear link to fluff only prolonging the "life support" cycle of mmo life, yes. It is rather clear that housing/rp/minigames do not retain subs in any significant numbers, nor does it increase sales. However I would posit that the immediate opportunity cost of creating such content does in fact hurt the game. If 5 people are tasked with creating housing, and it takes them a month and that housing only effects 10% of the population in any significant way I see it as a failure of the producer. Those same 5 could have just as easily made a quest, which 70% of the pop would see, or fixed a couple bugs etc etc. If it does not help, it hurts.
I did battle with ignorance today, and ignorance won.
To exercise power costs effort and demands courage. That is why so many fail to assert rights to which they are perfectly entitled - because a right is a kind of power but they are too lazy or too cowardly to exercise it. The virtues which cloak these faults are called patience and forbearance.
I'm thinking content locusts who are worried they won't get their feeding tube of progression content. I have no sympathy for folks who get to cap at a third of the time of everyone else, plough through end-game and then start demanding more, especially at the expense of other playstyles. It's akin to watching a binge-eater, but at least the binge-eater has the common sense to blame himself.
I doubt anyone can seriously stifle the enjoyment of others. Even if i touted the evil of fluff with thousand words essays (not that i believe in that) here, no game development will change by 0.1% because of that.
I highly doubt this forum has any impact on actual game design. It is just a place for people to discuss, rand, flame, and pass time.
Games these days? Most of them have trouble even giving combat content away, let alone sell access to it for $15 a month.
Fluff these days? Well, that's what subsidizes the combat content.
Those who are going to complain that the needs of the achievement and loot lobby outweigh the need for fluff to sell are going to have to show how throwing countless of dollars and man-hours into feeding the achievement and loot beast is going to pay off. Because from everything I've seen in this industry in the last couple of years, feeding the achievement and loot machine is more of a revenue expense than a revenue generator.
__________________________
"Its sad when people use religion to feel superior, its even worse to see people using a video game to do it."
--Arcken
"...when it comes to pimping EVE I have little restraints."
--Hellmar, CEO of CCP.
"It's like they took a gun, put it to their nugget sack and pulled the trigger over and over again, each time telling us how great it was that they were shooting themselves in the balls."
--Exar_Kun on SWG's NGE
I don't think fixing bugs is a combat or non-combat problem. Nobody likes bugs, but who is going to fund the bug fixers?
It sure won't be the combat crowd. With free to play, the combat crowd isn't paying much anymore. It's the players who are concerned with more than combat content who are paying the way in the item store.
See, creating a quest does nothing to solve retention and revenue issues. All it does is give a day's worth of novelty--at great expense--to a demographic which, the evidence shows, neither funds the games nor remains loyal to the games.
There is a reason game publishers turn to fluff to prolong the life cycle of an MMO: because the evidence clearly shows that combat content is incapable of prolonging the life cycle. For the amount of time and revenue necessary to give a player one weekend of new content, developers can create a multitude of cosmetic and entertaining virtual upgrades in their item stores. Combat content is so worthless, they can't even give it away. Where it was once sold at a premium, it's now given away for free.
Fluff, on the other hand, sells. And it's also cheap to produce. It requires no special coding. It creates no balance issues. It requires no playtesting. It incurs no gripes from veteran combat players who can't accept change.
Besides, you act as if combat is itself is a unified demographic. But you only care for a minority of end-game, hardcore achievers who comprise a very few (10% or less). If you create something which requires an elite cadre all hooked up to voicechat, then the content is catering to a small few. Not only that, but that sort of endgame content is, by nature of the parameters, only ever accessable to an elite few. And as soon as they do the quest? Well, they are left with the same problem, come to the forums and give the game bad PR ("That last quest sucked, the game is too easy") just as if the quest were never there at all.
Creating content that's accessable to everyone is also problematic. Because it is only valid if you are a new player and has yet to get through to maximum level. Once you get past the level, the quest is useless, just as if the quest was never there at all.
This is why the games no longer find the argument of combat players credible. All they do is park themselves at the monitor with Doritos and Mountain Dew, play for three weeks non-stop, complete everything, and compain that "this game sucked." They aren't good for anything other than launch month.
__________________________
"Its sad when people use religion to feel superior, its even worse to see people using a video game to do it."
--Arcken
"...when it comes to pimping EVE I have little restraints."
--Hellmar, CEO of CCP.
"It's like they took a gun, put it to their nugget sack and pulled the trigger over and over again, each time telling us how great it was that they were shooting themselves in the balls."
--Exar_Kun on SWG's NGE
In other words, because you don't enjoy that kind of gameplay because you're not "that sort" of player, you don't want it in your game, especially if it gives "that sort" of player that you're not, relevancy?
MMORPGs were based on many players roleplaying a character in the same world and to make it sync, each having their own role to play in it.
So the fighters fought and collected loot(mats etc) that they then sold to crafters that then were able to make l33t gear for those fighters and the other activities like fishing, cooking, taming, alchemy etc all had roles to both support and benefit from each other as well.
Healing potions, food for stamina, helpful companions(packhorses, tamed fighting beasts, mounts), carpenters/bowyers to build useful and not so useful items for both fighters and crafters, the list goes on and on.
That's a virtual world where all game "sorts" had a place and a role to fill, that's what many rpgers miss and is apparently not the kind of "game" some players want to play but instead of accepting that and playing the games meant for their "sort" they want to change mmorpgs into just their particular preference of gameplay( fps, rts, bgs, etc).
Most rpgers are more than open to having some of that kind of gameplay in their virtual worlds, just not the be all and end all of them.
Re your assertion that fluff does not increase sales, using my own experience and the opinions of the three gamers in my household, you're wrong. If a game has no "fluff", we don't buy it, that's three sales lost.