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Is this Genre ripe for another Hardcore MMORPG?
Jimmydean
Member UncommonPosts: 1,290
Question in the title.
I honestly think it may be time. The usual argument against these types of MMORPGs is that there are far more casual players than hardcores, which is absolutely correct. However, I think it's time to look at the market share. Every other month it seems another huge MMO with the exact same premise but set in a different world is being released.
Recent/Near Future releases include: FFXIV: ARR, TESO, Wildstar, and the WoW Expansion.
What do these all have in common? They are all built to draw in the casual crowd over all else. That's 4 different "new" games pulling all on the same pool of players, and that's not even considering the current distribution of that player set within games such as LOTRO, GW2, SWTOR, and so on.
On the contrast, a Hardcore MMORPG would be only competing with near ancient games. What was the last truly difficult MMORPG we got, Eve? EQ Players are a committed bunch, but even that game is beginning to jump the shark hoping to get a share of the casual market - a market spread so thin it's no wonder they can't sustain.
With the recent release and reception of Dark Souls 2 I think people are coming around to wanting their games to be engaging, difficult, and thought provoking.
This type of game would absolutely exclude some players. I won't deny it, if you want the entire game to be soloable and to attain the absolutely best gear in a raid finder group - this type of game probably wouldn't fit your playstyle. That's ok. Not every game has to cater to every type of player.
So I guess the real question is : is the casual market so much bigger that it can sustain the 100s of MMORPGs that keep pulling at the same player pool? Or is it maybe time for a Hardcore MMORPG to pull from the significantly smaller pool of players that aren't spread anywhere near as thin?
Comments
I think you are sightly misinterpreting the success off Dark Souls. Dark Souls is a hard game first and foremost. It provides a good challenge and a good adventure. Hardcore MMORPGs on the other hand simply demand attendance not skill: It takes ages to do anything, but it is rarely anything hard.
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been -Wayne Gretzky
It doesn't have to be that way. EQ for instance. Ever try to split Triplets in NTOV? Pull the wings in Vex Thal? Pull the Coirnav Event in PoWater? Etc...
Granted my scope is limited to the class I played (Monk), I'm sure Warriors and Enchanters and Clerics all had their versions of difficulty.
Every single pull got my heart beating because I knew if I messed up my job it would make a direct impact on the rest of the raid.
Sometimes difficulty can also be about management, planning, and strategy. Hardcore guilds in EQ ran like well oiled machines. 72 player raids were set to go at exactly the start time, people listened to directions and performed their roles flawlessly. It was very easy to tell which guilds had the better players, whether it be class mechanics or overall raid / social skills.
Point is, hardcore games are not necessarily hard nor are more casual friendly games necessarily easy.
Compared to other games, MMORPGs are pretty damn easy - the old and the new. If a game gets too easy, I'm not interested. I play most of my games on hardest settings. I need to die every once and awhile to know that I'm pushing my limits. I don't want to spend hours upon hours to recover those losses. I want to take risks, not avoid them.
Hardcore games are just too damn arduous. Too much effort for so little returns.
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been -Wayne Gretzky
Either way won't affect me personally. I don't play hardcore games anymore.
Hardcore is by definition usually a game where perma-death is present, or a game that is by design one that takes copious amounts of time to accomplish things.
In both cases, if a game like this were to re-emerge it needs to be developed from the start with the expectations that not many people are going to play it. Graphics engines and design are expensive, so if you have a game that's only going to draw maybe 10-20k people, you're not going to have the budget to design a full 1080p game. I bring up graphics because this is typically what leaves a first impression on people these days.
I think what Mark Jacobs raised through Kickstarter and through private investment is about what it'd take to get his game going for the amount of people that showed interest in it. Star Citizen is a bit of a phenomenon though - it started at over 30k people chipping in 2 million dollars and has exploded into something that has raised 40 million dollars from 400k people. The difference being Camelot is a game that has been there and done that, it's just getting an upgrade. Star Citizen sounds like a fairly new concept and as much as the word "innovation" is thrown around here, it sounds like people are looking for something new and are hoping this might be the game to do it.
I had fun once, it was terrible.
I'll agree with you, but for some reason people wont accept the game was pretty hard because of a lot of different factors. Time and patience were just one of the contributing factors. As you pointed out it wasn't easy to pull/split mobs. Getting adds in EQ meant death in many cases. Using all your skills at the right time wasn't that easy. If it was there wouldn't have been so many people having difficulty in group.
Better yet .. make all the playable zones instances, and you can choose your difficulty before entering it.
If you really want the game to be a MMORPG, keep a city zone as a lobby.