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15 Things I Really Want In An MMO
seacow1g
Member UncommonPosts: 266
List of things I want in an MMO:
1)Robust player housing; not just with many decoration options but interactable too!
2)Robust character customization(not just looks but also different races altogether, don't want to just be human/humanoid). And ingame alerations like haircuts to change the style/color, workouts or binge-eating to change your body type etc. This also should definitely include armor/weapons customization; I want to be able to color my armor (at a cost of resources/money of course), put designs into it etc. There should be a limit to this so that armor/weapons are still distinguishable but I want to at least be able to put little custom tweaks to them. Also don't limit the armor and weapons designs to one art style; some people like large pauldrons and flashy stuff ala WoW and some like more realistic armor ala Elder Scrolls or EQ. The game should include a full array of artstyles in each of the armor tiers. Why should there be only one best armor/weapon in each tier? I say have a variety of equal strength items with varying designs and let people choose what they like. Horizontal progression games like max-level GW2 is like that but vertical progression mmo's could do it too.
3)Whatever races/classes DO exist need to be fully fleshed out. Playing as each individual race should feel different than the others (their experience and how they interact with the game and how the game world interacts with them should be different). Classes should also be the same way. I'd rather have less classes with more playstyle options available to them and each class interact with the world very differently then have a bunch of classes that adventure in exactly the same way. Why does a mage have to kill the same number of wolves as the warrior to get stronger? Why would a thief/assassin go around helping villagers to progress? Classes should be doing activities that are suited to their profession to get stronger/ more skillful. Not all of them doing the same things all of the time. That's not unique, creative or immersive.
4)Crafting should be both meaningful and skillbased. Make crafting items involve minigames that improve the quality of items created based on the quality of materials AND the minigame skill level from the player; only the most devoted, experienced and concentrated players can craft the best possible items. *Edit: Please read the comments in the following pages that I've been making to elaborate on this part, "minigames" may not be the best choice of word for what I envision.
5)Aside from gathering/crafting, include other activities with non-combat related progression and find ways to reward players for their progression other than simply increasing the strength of their character. Things like mount breeding, monster battles, strategy minigames, farming, fishing minigames, tracking/hunting minigames, debates/politics/lore-history minigames.
6)Include quality of life hassles in the game both to enhance a sense of realism and to reward players that engage in non-combat activities. I.e. having to eat food occasionally to reward farmers, gatherers or cooks. Having to feed, tame and/or bond with your pets if you're a hunter type. Have to buy or craft ammo if you're a gun user. Have to brew or buy poisons if you're a rogue type etc. (I know WoW used to have many of these hassles in classic WoW and honestly I miss them. Sure it doesn't appeal to the casual crowd but it definitely appeals to players that want an immersive MMO experience; these are supposed to be virtual WORLDS. Not just virtual run from area to area killing stuff and gathering stuff for quests).
7)Not such streamlined questing; areas of all levels should include very dangerous locations/monsters. Sure there should be some kind of visual/audio/ or lore-reinforced queues that ventures to these locales may be insane. But players shouldn't just be able to mindlessly run around in a zone and expect everything to be within their level range. I want to think twice about exploring caves or dark woods or troll camps or spiders nests etc etc.
8)As an addendum to not such streamlined questing: get rid of questgiver markers. Sure let the game have a clean quest interface but it shouldn't be so straightforward as to who you should be talking to and who you shouldn't; games like the Elder Scrolls series show that there are much cleverer ways of letting people know that an NPC has a task they want you to undertake.
9)Enough with the teleports and fast travel; I love for my MMO's to have options to decrease travel times like transportation hubs (ferries, zeppelins, caravans, trains, trams w/e), mounts, some limited teleportation (either stationary or player created but at a large cost), heck even flying mounts (though there should be some kind of upkeep associated with having that level of convenience) but I HATE everyone just being able to teleport willy-nilly all over the world ala GW2. You don't have to go all lazy like that to make travel more convenient. If the world is properly designed and transportation options are properly allocated you don't have to resign to some lazy teleport system and encourage people to never look twice at the same locales in your gameworld. Taking 30 minutes to get to a major city or dungeon? Unacceptable imo. Instant teleport all over the place? Also unacceptable imo. I want a happy medium; any important hub in the gameworld should take an average of 10 minutes of travel time to get to.
10)Encourage exploration and creative adventuring; I love jumping puzzles, hidden bits of lore etc. Hell why not even make creative use of the terrain beneficial in PVE/PVP? Why not make access to certain dungeons limited to people that can beat certain platforming challenges? Why not even make platforming and puzzles part of the dungeons themselves? Also what about underwater, high elevation or hot locale exploration? Not only should there BE things to explore in these places, but there should be inherent danger and preparation required in doing it; and I'm not talking just about including tough NPCs (though they can be there too). You should be able to easily drown, fall, burn or get lost etc. if you are not careful
11)Integrate MOBA-style mechanics into structured PVP: Everyone starts the same strength at the start of the match but can boost/alter their abilities, strengths and weaknesses as the match progresses based on their performance and also make it objective based. It can be done; just look at Smite to get an idea of how it could look in an MMO battleground. *Edit: Please read the comments I've made on this subject in the following pages to fully understand what I'm talking about.
12)Make the overall package more challenging. I agree that there should be activities for all skill levels in the game but 90% of it shouldn't be a faceroll grindfest. I want to be engaged and challenged by my game; not just in some arbitrary endgame "raid" but in also in adventures of varying types. And don't confuse challenging with dysfunctional; A good game should have a well laid out and functioning interface, controls and should not be bug-ridden. Any challenge should be by design and not as a by-product of shoddy code, pacing or dysfunctional design. Challenge should be about choices (in skills to use, positioning, items equipped, preparation, coordination, timing, understanding of the mechanics etc.) and not about having to struggle with crappy camera angles, overcoming bugs or complicated keybindings.
13)I don't want old content to be made obsolete by new content. This can be remedied by either having more horizontal progression or by making old content necessary to be completed in order to be strong enough to take part in new content. I have no problem with toning down the difficulty of old content to make it easier for less skilled players to complete it and progress, but I don't agree with making it obsolete altogether. These are adventures that EVERYONE should experience at some point; and as long as players keep playing and trying eventually they will experience it. I'm not a fan of having the entire community working on the same content at the same time; that just feels unrealistic and silly. Honestly that was the nail in the coffin for me back when I was playing WoW (and yes I played MMO's before WoW too, like EQ, EQ II, SWG and FFXI). Making content obsolete in old expansions was bad enough, but in Wrath of the Lich King when they not only made hardcore and normal mode raids and dungeons...but they ALSO released easy dungeons that gave comparable loot to the previous tier raids to get players up to speed for the newest raids, that was when I quit playing WoW forever (after beating HM Lich King of course 
). Sure they probably did it to help people making alts as well but honestly I'd rather make every class available to 1 character (ala FFXIV) rather than embrace that garbage.
14)NOT FREE TO PLAY. Give people longer trials, make it buy to play, hell if the development scope is large enough then just make it free to download but subscription based and give players an option to earn gametime by playing (like EVE or Wildstar is planning on doing) but do NOT make it free to play/microtransaction. I want an immersive world and I want to know that I get access to all of it for a set price that I can find agreeable. Having to make decisions about what content, items etc. I want to buy rather than earn it all (or some of it) with my gameplay is just crap gameplay mechanics for me. It want to pay for the whole game and earn everything I have in-game myself, anything less is distracting and unimmersive for me.
15)And lastly extend the scope of social interaction too....like allow characters to get married, hug, kiss or hold hands (nothing too sexual but just enough to show affection).
In the end my major concern with MMO's is that they are so MASSIVE in size but not large enough in scope. I'd glad give up over half of that virtual real estate for a more interactive, engaging and varied experience. MMO's should take a lesson from games like GTA V. Though the setting and content for that game are not very wholesome, the principles of city design, world design and quest design are worthy to take note of. That game is not only large in size, it's very broad in scope too. A game that I'm paying a subscription for should be like that, not just giving me more gear or levels to grind out.
Comments
I have to agree to all of your 15 Points... with maybe the exception of your MOBA pvp battleground.. and even that would be at least interesting.. but i do have some other demands from pvp. (but thats me)
Overall interesting is, that all of your demands could fit well into Themepark or Sandbox MMO, and both could also fit well into pvp centered or pve centered MMOs.. with other words all of your demands are reasonable for more or less any MMO gamer.. at least imho. I am curious if someone will argue against one of your points, and what point it will be, and how they will argue.
Yes I find it very reasonable too (though I'm biased lol). The point is I've thought alot about what drew me to MMO's in the first place. When I was a teenager and someone told me about them I was like: "What? I can create a character to look how I like?Equip gear on him how I like? I have multiple classes/playstyles to choose from? I have a large world to explore? I can cook? I can mine? I can do all this in a world with other people? etc etc etc". My point is at least for me the reason I got into MMO's as opposed to anything else is because I could do so many difference things all in the scope of one game. It really proposed the possibility of an adventurous virtual life. I was hoping that developers would expand on the scope of their games, give players even more ways to interact with the game worlds rather than just rehash the same things over again with better graphics or continue to refine just one or two aspect of the gameplay without adding anything truly new.
My whole point about the MOBA battlegrounds is the fact that one of the biggest complaints about battlegrounds in MMOs is that they are not truly skill based. 90% of it is a progression grind and when you do get the best gear then you spend most of your time pwning players that may actually be more skilled than you but have less gear. Even Arenas fall victim to this but less so due to a ranking system. I'm sure a better system could exist but I do like the way MOBAs bypass all these issue and create a nice competitive experience. I'd love to take my virtual avatar into a game system like that and truly compete to be one of the best, not on a handful of pre-created characters but on my own unique self-created character (this is something that MOBA's CANNOT deliver on).
I agree with most of these points. I would also add the desire for a political system and meaningful PVP where territory was permanently gained and lost. Two games I helped Kickstart; Pathfinder Online and Shroud of the Avatar are promising a lot of these features and there is also ArcheAge and Everquest:Next on the horizon promising a lot of this stuff. I don't know if a mass market "persistent RPG" can ever succeed. The market seem to say that we roleplayers are in the minority of MMO players but I definitely could see a game with these features being successful in a niche sense as long as they didn't get too ambitious with things like gfx and voice acting.
Well that's the thing, although I love pretty stuff like graphics and the like that's not what I need. I've spent way more time in the past year playing LoL, Terraria, Mincraft, Rogue Legacy and Civ 4 than I have anything else. These title are not the prettiest but I still like them alot. Gameplay trumps graphics IMO. Though obviously if a game with all of the features I mentioned AND good graphics was made I certainly wouldn't be complaining
A more interesting set of things than I'd thought it would be. I'd probably give a world designed like this a try.
One of the things I note from this list is that you are combining a lot of physical action skill as significant game elements. Minigames, platforming etc. Some people don't care for certain types of game activities. I get cranky when a game advertised as an infantry shooter forces me into a role as tank commander or fighter pilot. If I wanted those sorts of things, I'd be playing them. Making crafting rely on action based game elements makes it troublesome for folks that want to craft, but don't have the reflexes.
I dislike platforming. Not the kind of game element I will seek out. And some people just aren't set up for the eye-hand coordination. Gating content based on that is problematic, imo. Now, if only one party in your group had to do it, to gain the power to Open the Way for the entire party....that might be a different thing.
There should be a game-wide amount of knowledge of How Things Work. If you are not an alien colonists crash landing on a new world, you should have an innate knowledge of a bit of how things are. If you live in (or have visited for long enough) a village, you should know the internalized understanding of the local area: Here there are mountains, forests over there, this area is safe, that area is dangerous and filled with monsters, the old gold mines were off in that direction, etc. You should also know where all the legit local merchants are located, etc. That might include who's got jobs available.
Using Guild Wars 2 as an example, the devs got consistent feedback from the betatesters that they couldn't find the NPCs with missions available easily. They intended there to be no indicators (and you can still turn that all off at the map level if you wish), but real world feedback changed that.
If you are holding out for the perfect game, the only game you play will be the waiting one.
I combine alot of action skills because these are things that many (thought not all players like). Think of like Mario RPG for the SNES. One of the features that set it apart from other RPG's at the time was timing input on skills to get max effect and also platforming in alot of the zones. These features made the game not only popular, but a classic! I'm not saying the game world should only have these things or overly use them. But I do think they should be included for variety and skill challenge. The crafting minigames is an extension of just that; the lower levels of crafting could be done by just about anyone, the medium ones too, but I would like the truly devoted crafters to be rewarded for their efforts and it not be just a grind. I'd like for it to set the good crafters apart from the casual ones and give it a system so even the good ones are always having to give their best efforts. I dislike grinds and don't think they are a good system for rewarding player commitment, I much prefer skill gating instead. How it is actually implemented and designed is up to the developers, I would just like to see a system that is based on skill and commitment rather than getting materials and mixing the crap up 100 times (with little to no involvement from the player). I want engagement and reward for commitment, that is all.
I like your list.
Regarding #11 and having MOBA stuff is kinda outside the MMO realm: Hence M.O.B.A. Smite look interesting, but personally, If I want to play a MOBA, i'll play LoL or DoTA. Firefall was interesting in this regard. I liked the simplicity and consistency of the frames and ability casting. As for putting it into a full blown MMO, seems like you'd have to slack off on the rest of your list to fit it all together.
As for the rest of your list, have you taken a look at the rebooted development of Trials of Ascension? It pretty much has 80-90% of what you've listed as core features. or Pathfinder Online for that matter. If you're looking for something to fill a need, there's games out there that have this stuff, but they all have their own way of implementing them.
I fully concur with your conclusion that games lose sight of scope when getting big. Scope is what keeps games alive and interesting.
If my undead panda's don't get you...
Yes I agree if you want to play a MOBA you should play a MOBA. But MMO's can offer something MOBA's cannot: the ability to play in a balanced competitive battle arena with a character of your creation that also lives and interacts with players in a virtual world outside of it. My point is, if MMO's want to look at ways to improve their organized PvP, they should look to systems like the kinds MOBA's have in place. Just because it's a different genre doesn't mean they can't take things from eachother while offering something unique of their own; and MMO's can certainly do that.
I've just watched the SMITE gameplay trailer twice now and it's an interesting concept. I get what you see in it.
Now the question in my mind is this: What do you want developers to take from it?
If my undead panda's don't get you...
Battlegrounds and Arenas are already separate from the rest of the game and not seamless, yet many MMO's include them and many play them/enjoy them but they can be done better. If MOBA's are any indication they can be done ALOT better and could create a true place for MMORPG's in Esports. Imagine playing tournaments with YOUR character and competing for the gold rather than a premade one from a list?
Point taken. Yeah, I agree with this being on your list. I don't think it should be a critical feature, or a litmus-test, but I agree that an MMO with this in it would be interesting to see. Good point.
If my undead panda's don't get you...
I would definitely hate a crafting system where I was limited because I couldn't master some stupid twitch-based minigame. I probably would avoid a game just for that actually. I think you can make crafting intellectually stimulating without making it rely on twitch skills. Figuring out and modifying recipes, having many different things you can craft and many different resources to gather. Some games have done crafting well. Most just don't bother, I guess because "combine A with B to get C and do it 500 times" is an easier system to implement.
I really don't understand this way of thinking. You like combat in MMO's don't you? You like positioning yourself, interrupting spellcasts, doing skill rotations properly, reacting to your surroundings etc etc right? These things are based on equal parts twitch mechanics as well as knowledge of the game and preparation. It's not as twitch based as say like a fighter, and instead takes advantage of strategy, knowledge and preparation to complement it. Why can't crafting be just like that? People see crafting as something they do to enhance the "fun" stuff i.e. fighting. You don't just collect the right group composition with the right gear and the correct skills and automatically beat the boss. You have to EXECUTE with all these elements too to get rewarded and that is fun!
But why can't we take the things that make fighting fun and apply it to everything else? If you can master the skills to be a good crafter it becomes rewarding (because not everyone can do it) as WELL as engaging and that's what MMO's should aim for. I don't want crafting to be just something you do to enhance the engaging activities, I want the crafting to be engaging as well. I want it to be a game in and of itself. And if you don't like the crafting game? Well that's fine because it's there for crafters! This is an MMO and there should be plenty of other stuff to do (if its any good).
Actually I much prefer interesting hotbar combat(with a lot of different and varied skills and effects) or some other system to twitch-based combat in MMOs. Part of this I suppose is that my reflexes aren't very good so having to rely too much on twitch skills lessens my enjoyment of a game and frustrates me.
I also believe though that an RPG is about playing a character and building up their skills. There are plenty of videogames which you can play to show off your twitch skills. RPGs should allow you to play whatever kind of character you want regardless of personal limitations.
My point is, a portion of your playerbase is probably going to hate your twitch-based minigames, and since what you are describing is already a pretty niche MMO concept why would you want to limit it further?
To my knowledge there is not a single MMORPG that doesn't require any form of twitch skill at all. Whether it is positioning, timing a taunt, a heal, mana management, skill rotations, pulling and positioning the boss, getting out of AoE, clearing minions or w/e. All these combat systems require twitch combat to some degree or another. And it's necessary to make it engaging. You don't see any MMORPG's with a combat system like FF5 do you? I'm sure there could be but that's not what I want.. When it comes to combat I've seen plenty of interesting attempts by many MMORPGs.
What I haven't seen at all are any attempts to make other activities in the game just as engaging, and I'd like to see more of that. if you ever enjoyed combat in EQ, WoW, GW2, AoC, SWG, DAOC or any of the myriad other MMORPG titles that have come out then surely you can see the potential in requiring similar coordination from other ingame activities. I don't want my MMO to be like Street Fighter, I do however want greater scope and engagement. There's only so much you can refine one system, this is supposed to be a virtual world. Refine how we interact with everything, not just one game element. That's what I want.
I'd be willing to give it a try I suppose. It would depend on the specifics I suppose and just how much twitch skill was required as well as the depth of the system in other ways (if it's just a simplistic twitch game to replace simplistic A+B=C crafting, no thanks. Age of Wushu does have minigames in their crafting system although it is based on Bejweled games like that rather than twitch games. Still more engaging than typical MMO crafting though.
ditto that is what I want,I cant understand why the developers don't deliver .
maybe they thought we are going to want to play the same old formula like world of warcraft cause so many I will not call them idiots that's their taste and that is the biggest mmo.
Sad thing is when WoW first came out I felt like they were going in the right direction. It was more casual for sure, but it still had a lot of elements to it that made it feel like a living world. They should have expanded on those things, gave more depth to the existing systems and continued to deliver an accessible polished product to their customers. Instead they trimmed away what they considered to be all the "fat" and left us with an empty, casual, one-dimensional carrot on a stick game and inspired everyone else to follow suit.
I liked having to do druid specific questlines on my druid. I liked having to feed my bear and keep him happy on my hunter. I liked cooking a meal over a campfire. I liked having to harvest souls on my warlock to create soulgems. I liked rolling an Forsaken simply because I could breathe underwater so much longer than anyone else. I LOVED rolling a human, or an elf, or an Orc or a Forsaken and having totally different quest lines, stories to follow and regions to explore as I levelled up that only intertwined with others if I wanted to go to a different continent.
Why they did away with all that? Convenience for sure, convenience for the players and convenience for themselves. But I feel like alot of the soul of the world was lost in that. When I ask for more content out of my games, I'm not asking for more quest hubs or a different format to quests, I'm asking for more engagement in my moment to moment gameplay. Why does one interaction with the world feel engaging and another doesn't? I could cook on a fire...cool. Hey WoW here's an idea, why not make me actually time the cooking of the steak so that I don't over/under cook it like Monster Hunter? It's a little change and may not be super deep but you add little features like that to the world over time and eventually you got one super beefy game.
Interesting post. A complete mix of things I could care less about, agree with vehemently and things that I completely hate. Odd to see that kind of mix in a post like this.
Care to expand on that? I'd like to know what you love, hate, couldn't care less about. In the end this is just a list of things I really want but I don't expect everyone to care about the same things that I do.
Well I don't want to go point to point but I will just categorize them.
Don't care - 1,2,3,8,13,15
Hate - 4 (meaningful yeah, skill based no thanks), 11,14
Agree - 5 (though no thanks on mini games, part of the full world), 6,7,9,10,12.
This is probably too simplistic since some of them are more of a mixed bag but still usually if someone gives 15 ideas for an MMO I tend to agree or disagree more than this, not be in the middle so much.
Here are my 15 things.
1) Keep us in the main world as much as possible, instancing is bad for games.
2) Allow us to affect the main world long term, not just for 5 minutes at a time like in GW2.
3) Make spawn points dynamic, killing the same 8 static spawns over and over is just bad gameplay.
4) PvP servers! Sorry but I currently play GW2 and it just kills the game not having PvP sprinkled in with my PvE.
5) Open world dungeons! Don't make me find the perfect full group to do any group content.
6) No downleveling! GW2's system is a complete failure to me. If I outlevel something I can crush it.
7) Real character customization in PvE and PvP.
8) no more mini games, make the real game good enough and you don't need silly mini games.
9) No more personal stories. If You make the game well you don't need this at all. If I can change the big picture I don't need some pre written story.
10) Challenging content. If I get 2 mobs on a pull and I'm alone I should be worried.
11) Crafting that matters. It is hard to max but is rewarding if you take the treck. Crafting should not be worth it unless you commit to it fully.
12) Racial skills that matter, don't be so afraid of balance that you make everyone feel the same.
13) Non linear questing! This has become an epidemic in the genre. If you are going to base the game on quests you can't just go hub to hub.
14) Slow down leveling. THe journey is way more important than the end point.
15) Non raid based end game, sorry but killing big mob to kill bigger mob to get gear to kill bigger mob as an end game is just totally awful.
Everyone's entitled to their opinion. The things that we like/want are completely subjective. I'm not gonna disagree with anything in particular that you guys are asking for but I honestly don't like the way you are thinking about this. It seems you guys want a more polished and focused experience with different tweaks to already existing mechanics and gamesystems rather than a broadening of the scope of our MMO's.
The main element that I'm asking for is for more attention to be paid towards broadening the scope of our experiences in game and how we can interact with the gameworld. Robust housing can do that, engaging crafting and other activities can do that, improving our social interaction options can do that. Adding more depth to the way we adventure other than by polishing just the combat can also do that.
Ender's desires in my opinion are too focused on the kinds of experiences MMO developers are already putting all/most of their resources into. I don't think it's necessary for one player to like every activity in a game to find the MMO enjoyable, but rather there should be a number of deep and engaging activities to choose from that can appeal to multiple types of players.