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Are we ready for a "Premium Class" MMO for specific niche audience?
IstrebiteI
Member Posts: 266
Greetings.
Gonna be a long post, so bear with me, or quit reading now if you don't like long posts. Thanks!
There is a widespread acknowledgement about how communities in MMOs are awful, there are constantly posts on this matter (just now there's a front page post on Rift). People complain how F2P is ruining community, but even P2P games sometimes have problems (like, WoW is brought as an example). When a new "GRAND" MMO, like GW2, or Rift or Tera or Secret World or SWTOR appears on the market, and by GRAND I mean that the game seriously "aims" at achieving a number of players similar or at least reasonably comparable to WoW, so, when a new BIG one appears, they always focus either on their IP and lore, or on their game mechanics.
- "Come on baby, you're going to be able to play as Luke or Han Solo or Bobba Fett lookalike, hang out in cantina, play pazaak, have your own spaceship with your own crew..." (ya I know they didn't add pazaak.. FFS!).
- "This is srs bsns, you are playing in a modern world, your quests are not some BS kill 10 rats, but you will study and pursue urban legends, you will have magic and firearms at your disposal, etc etc".
- "This is what you've all been waiting for - 3 sided PVP, whole game focused on PVP, huge scale PVP, did I mention PeeVeePee?, and absolutely NO place for whimps or carebears, this is hardcore zone, man!"
- "Our game has a unique system where you build your own class out of 4 archetypes - you can be a melee hunter or a ranged rogue, and so on and so forth, just mix and match by your own recepie!"
- "Our game mechanics are revolutionary, we have no trinity or quests, you will encounter a truly dynamic world where your choices matter, and be able to group up with whoever you want!"
Whichever it is, they want to show the player "in our game you will be able to do THIS". And if they ever want to show their commitment to supporting the game, which noone often tells about because we know that if MMO doesn't live up to expectations, it often won't get good support and updates either, but still, if they do, they say "oh and there's content yet to come, X times a year we will release a major patch, new quests, enemies, events and morem so you'll never be bored".
However, no game I've seen really tried to tackle the topic of Community. You never see "In this game we will strive to create the best gaming experience possible in a positive community never seen before in an MMORPG" or similar lines. You see "we will have 10X more than our competitor of (tits, butts, pedo races, polygons, pvp scale, pve scale, unique items, unique activities, etc)" but you never see "moderators, GMs, support personel" on this list!
But isn't this what people actually crave for? Every MMO player knows that community is what the games really are about. Of course, when game mechanics are poor, when there's nothing to do, when botting or hacking is rampant, or when game is just a boring grind, the game will not keep players interested for long. But even a medicore game is fun with friends! TotalBiscuit explains this very nicely in his videos - you can't rate multiplayer game as good game if you enjoyed it with friends because EVERYTHING IS GOOD WITH FRIENDS. Watch Mangaminx /w friends playing Prop Hunt, Terrorists, Contagion or Speedrunners - even a game with mind-numbing simple mechanicsis can be ridiculously fun with friends!
And whatever MMO you have good memories of, you remember mostly social aspects of it - how you had a spontaneous 100-man raid on enemy city, or how you fought a boss creature someone kited into your city from the other side of the world, or how someone gifted you a random huge sum of gold, or how you all congratulated a server player who achieved something tremendous, or how you just raided typical PVE or PVP encounters with your guild.
I have those memories of World of Warcraft and Runescape - of times when we as a whole server (WoW, Earthen Ring EU Alliance) gathered and celebrated a person's achievement of Exalted with Timbermaw (huge grind back in those days), or how I created a PVP channel on a RP-PVP server and greatly improved the state of PVP premades on our whole server, or how I learned to command people and lead AV premades from a very skilled leader, and then after several months people would just spam me "plz Hissatsu make an AV premade", or how we with some random strangeres tricked noobs into entering a room with respawning high level hostile warlock in the tower near starting city in Runescape, or how we chatted while catching lobsters on a remote island.
But yeah, my point is, there is obvious demand for an MMORPG which will actually focus on social side of the problem of "how do we keep player playing our game". And it may be bold to say it, but I think if game provides at least some selection of activities to do - if its engame isn't just farm 2 dungeons then farm 2 different dungeons - then if the community is pleasant, if you meet people you WANT to meet again and adventure with, then people will stay loyal to the game! Because after all, a LOT and I belive literally A LOT of people play MMORPGs in order to have a "second life" - to have an avatar who is a hero, who goes on epic journeys and great adventures, who rescues damsels in distress and fights dragons, and who shares stories of past achievements with buddies. And top reason for leaving an MMO so far is "no content" or "no interest in doing content" - people left GW2 because there was no carrot-on-a-stick equipment grind, left SWTOR because there was no endgame, etc. However, any game has limited content! Designers can dish out new levels and dungeons, but it is still limited content!
Community, however, can provide unlimited amount of content! Because in the end, everything we do is interaction with people. We read books because we want to interact with the author - learn about him, how he percieves world or what his thoughts are. When we play a level, we interact with game designers, sound effects crew, animators, artists and programmers. And so on. You can create content for your game by paying your crew to dish out new stuff, or you can let community do it for you, if your provide a nessecary framework.
Best example is, of course, Minecraft, where majority of the "content" is community-driven, but even in say, WoW, on our RP-PVP server (Sporeggar EU) we had community events like 1v1 tournaments that happened in special places where there was Free-for-all mode enabled, we had funerals and celebrations, we had STUFF happen not because it's coded in the game, but because community did it.
And then, discarding community created "content", you just want to come back into your virutal world and meet good people. People you establish bonds with - people you like to play with. People you want to meet! If you make friends playing the game, you play the game for friends, and lack of "new content" or interesting game mechanics isn't something as detrimental to your experience anymore. You may have done this dungeon 1000 times in your life, but it would still be a pleasant experience to teach your friend about it - how to avoid traps, how to beat bosses, how to find secret treasure, and so on. Or you may organise an RP event and revitalise otherwise barren and already fully explored region.
There only needs to be a framework for players to do this - and it's enough, community will do the restI mean, back in the days of DOS, people played same game with same "content" for ages and it was neverending fun - look @ games like DOOM. You didn't need artificial hooks like gear or stat or weapon grinds, because you had FRIENDS!
So, community is so important in MMOs, but MMOs ignore them? No game makes effort to police the realms dedicated to RP and remove those who violate the guidelines. No game has rules that state "if you have toxic behavior, if you whine, grief, shittalk or abuse game mechanics, you're not welcome here" and actually upholds them (they may ban most extreme cases bu that's it). No game ever attempted to build itself on positive community, or even try to give incentitives to be positive (I mean, GW2 came closest to this by tuning their game mechanics so that helping kill a mob or ressing is always benefitial to you, and gathering nodes are personal, so that everybody around you is your friend). I undestand that building your game on community is like building on quicksand - you can never be sure, you can misjudge or miscalculate when it comes to people very easilly, and that's why games try to focus on "objective" stuff like content, mechanics and so on. But when there's demand, there should be offer, right? Isn't this the law of the market?
I think, there is an audience ready for community-focused MMO, is there not? Right now, today, a reasonable amount of seasoned MMO vets want a game where an RP server would actually mean RP server, and person who tries to do anal/yomum jokes in the chat will get expelled after three strikes? Where gold seller or hacker or griefer or exploiter is banned immediately, within minutes, because there's a person or more than one person hired for each intsance of the game world to watch for how people behave? Where toxic players are removed from the game community, their remaining sub fee reimbursed, with a letter like "We don't want your likes in our game, because you ruin other people's fun".
And I don't mean community-driven (like, a game where community creates content, influences gamedesign decisions, votes on stuff, makes mods that game authors then include into core game etc.) but I do mean community-focused, meaning the game selling point will not be "content like no rival MMO has", not it will be "pvp/pve like no rival MMO has", nor it will be "dynamic world you've never seen before" nor "revolution in game mechanics" - its selling point will be "positive community you've never seen before, a world you'll want to come back because there are awesome people there!" This game would be something like a Premium, Elite social club, like in real life there are clubs or restaurants with face control and strict guidelines and rules, so that everybody who's admitted could have fun in an atmosphere they prefer to relax in. It would of course not be F2P, it would probably even have a twice or more expensive sub than other games on the market (like, 30$ or similar sub fee).
Question is, are we, as a community, ready for such a "Premium Class" MMO? Do we have enough people who would pay premium for a game which is not a revolution in dynamicity of the world, game mechanics, scope of PVP or other stuff, wihich doesn't try to rival WoW in terms of amount of content available, not tries to boast an IP as popular as Star Wars, but instead, while offering well-known robust game mechanics, quest systems and reasonable amount of game world to explore and events to participate in, focuses on creating the best community possible, a community that each player is proud to be a part of, where griefers and trolls are expelled and shittalk in chat is nonexistant.
I think, we are?
Thanks for your attention!
Comments
Communtiy rises organically out of your game. If someone created a game that had a very strong dedicated hardcore crowd playing it - that featured alot of forced interaction (IE to say you needed other people - specifc people not just warm bodies) then it would have a good community.
I have heard that lotro has a good community and I believe Wildstar will as well. What we dont need is a 'rule based' community where the game has 'minders' to keep everyone in line (which seems to be what you are asking for). That costs way to much money for way to little benefit.
Unfortunately for developers they can't control the player base. There's no guarentee that the community you describe will develop after the game launches so it's kind of impossible for the devs to advertise it. Maybe a year down the line after this community had a chance to develop and grow it could be included in post release advertising.
The other problem I see is how you get this player base to form the community you describe when so many different groups of players want so many different things from their MMO. Is it going to have PvP or not? Will it be FFA or instanced? Is there a gear treadmill? Does it look good? Etc etc. The list goes on forever because we all have our own ideas on what the ideal MMO is.
Sounds great in theory but I think it would be a nightmare to try and implement it.
I think developers can improve community quality simply by bringing back the need to have a good reputation into the game. I clearly remember, in the past, most players would worry about having a good name because it would have a big impact on their game experience.
You don't need to socialize or develop good relations anymore which brings out the worst in people with regard to community relations.
Heres my opinion...
Honestly, I like the fact that people bitch and moan, and grief, and belittle people. Someone once said that you really learn what type of a person someone is online. And its true. If your a terrible, whiney little prick it'll show.
Why do I like this? Because it shows you how people truly are.
Removing people who give you crap is a bad life lesson.
I would much rather know if someone on my server is an open racist instead of hiding it because he'll be kicked.
So what do you do? You implement a system that makes it so their bad behavior will only hurt them.
How? You remove Dungeon Finders and the like.
Once a griefer has shown everyone he's an ass no one will ginvite or party with him because he has a rep for being annoying.
He will no longer be able to progress and his only option will be to change or gtfo.
Remove instancing, make players compete with each other over content, make the content challenging. Nothing kills community more than everyone living in their own little 6 to 20 man worlds all day.
Let players drive the content and allow the world to change based on what the players are doing.
EQ Next is my one hope for the genre atm because they seem to get that this is what MMOs need.
GW2 isn't a very good example of creating community btw. Usually when you stop and res someone you get a thanks and just keep moving on. Making it so friendly to work together actually hurts community. When both of us can just tear into a fight and get full experience what is the incentive for me to actually group. I've played GW2 quite a while now and haven't made any real friends in it. EQ, DAOC and SB did decent jobs of allowing you to build communities, current MMORPG really don't.
If you can package and distribute and environment that guarentees drama-free interaction, I would recommend setting aside game development and go into marriage counselling.