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"The Decline Of MMOs"
AlBQuirky
Member EpicPosts: 7,432
Ran across an interesting article by Professor Richard Bartle, from May, 2013. This is in PDF format and quite insightful (inciteful? lol). Give it a perusal and share your thoughts.
- Al
Personally the only modern MMORPG trend that annoys me is the idea that MMOs need to be designed in a way to attract people who don't actually like MMOs. Which to me makes about as much sense as someone trying to figure out a way to get vegetarians to eat at their steakhouse.- FARGIN_WAR
Comments
That's a great read, thanks for the link.
Always very interesting to see what the big names in the industry think of the state of affairs.
There is a decline, but it is not clear to me that there is any fix. May be it will go like the point-n-click adventure and the whole industry become smaller. But this is interesting:
and quote ...
"However, most of those players will be spending their time in 4-6 person instances – it’s irrelevant to them how many other players there are in the wider game. There’s no need for an MMO to be able to support 10,000 simultaneous players per shard"
May be the solution is to make other types of online games, and forget about "proper" MMOs. Just call other games MMOs .. it is not like this has never happen before.
Developers should read stuff like this more, so that they could fix their mistakes.
The concept of MMORPG hasnt changed, its just lobby games started calling themselves an MMORPG.
This stuff makes my head hurt...we already had games like neverwinter nights that supported up to 99 players, Then we transitioned to mmorpgs which support thousands..
Seems like were going back in time...
TSW - AoC - Aion - WOW - EVE - Fallen Earth - Co - Rift - || XNA C# Java Development
After glancing it over, I didn't find myself agreeing with much of anything in it. Only thing I could agree with was that developers should be allowed to take risks; however, I understand why developers don't want to (since so much money is involved).
I also see that most of the references in the article come from himself which is rather awkward, I think. Also, he used the word "clone" which greatly cheapened the piece. In my eyes at least.
All in all, I don't think this guy has any better grasp on the genre than anyone else. He could be any poster here.
EDIT: And "the Bartle test" and his hypothesis on different "gamer types" is more or less hogwash.
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been -Wayne Gretzky
I liked some of his ideas and would like to see virtual worlds again, but as he pointed out some ideas might not work today.
For instance I liked being able to drop something on the ground or trade it with whoever I wanted to, but I'm not sure that is possible now. Too many people would quickly abuse it to cause problems like dropping an obscene amount of items on the ground.
I believe another part of MMOs that made them great was the classes being so different. Some of them were only good in a group, some mostly good solo, and others a bit of both. In a game with PvP this will never work well. All the skills/abilities of different classes have to be made fairly bland so that there is balance in everything. There are no utility spells in elder scrolls online. Everyone can sneak. The funny thing is that the developers probably didn't look much at class balance at the time and that's part of what made them magic. They didn't say this is going to be a group class or this is going to be a solo class. It just ended up that way. I don't think that can happen again. Developers wouldn't allow it.
We will probably never see a successful MMO again that is just text based. I realize he is suggesting to actually implement things on a visual level, but I think there was again something special about relying heavily on text in a game. It's much more immersive to not be talking via voice chat. It's also great to have descriptions of surroundings and to be able to actually read what NPCs are thinking. The combat was slow enough in old games that you could talk via text. Again I don't believe players today would be patient enough for this type of thing.
I don't agree with his idea to split people up into segments of 250 players. I would like to see everyone in the same world. I don't think 250 is enough to make it feel like a real/busy world.
The biggest problem is that I don't think you can recapture this old school model. I believe part of the reason those games were able to exist with so few restrictions and so much freedom is because people were ignorant of the worlds and were just running around learning something new. On the flip side fast forward to today and there are gold farmers and achievers waiting to exploit any loophole to maximum effect. There are more people looking to ruin experiences of other players then ever before. The main problem is that we can't see a game with the freedom that we would like.
I would still like to see it tried, but it will never be the same because of the restrictions that need to be in place. (bind on equip, (level restricted items). It seems there is a restriction on everything in MMOs today.
Its an interesting read but I don't see the decline of MMOs.
Rift, guild wars 2, neverwinter, ff14arr are all monetary successful. The f2p version of swtor is monetary successful. He lists the secret world as a positive example where companies innovate, and completely ignores the fact that the secret world was a massive flop. People in general ignored a game like age of wushu, so clearly people don't look for innovation.
Elder scrolls online had 5 millions signing up for beta test, so it shows that people aren't willing to abandon the themepark model just yet and its bound to be monetary successful (and universally hated). Those that didn't like eso is bound to jump on wildstar and everquest next.
We do see multiple directions in MMO's. Elder scrolls online leans heavy on questing, in fact a huge part of their endgame is just more questing while PvP is trying to step back to daoc. Wildstar steps back 10 years and bring back big raids to the MMO game while it focuses a lot on variations of instanced PvP. Everquest next is about the changing world. You could also add destiny, although its hard to know if it will be a full fledged MMO with a persistent world or if it will be a corpg like guild wars 1.
If we look at the games developed in asia you have the themepark in bless, the sandbox in black desert, and mmo-arpg/rts in kingdom under fire 2.
This isn't a genre in decline, its a genre with financial possibilities.
I would expect articles like that coming from websites like mmorpg.com, instead of their constant positive spin on all games pre-release (unless it's comign from an indiestudio) or PR interviews avoiding the hot questions.
The concept itself is changed when players accepted lobby games to be called MMORPG, and actually believe that's how MMORPG actually is.
New MMOs bore me to no end. How devs pretend to have players in their games for over 3 months with lackluster worlds and story? And don't get me started with the breed of neglected-of-meds crybabies that play them.
/back to modded Skyrim
"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience"
CS Lewis
"Have your MMOs actually end for individual players. Players are playing MMOs as a journey to self-understanding."
Are you kidding me. This is a single player game function. MMOs should not end. If you don't want raiding I get that, but that is not the same as reroll.
I read through what he wrote and the one thing was confirmed is that what is wrong with the industry is the people in the industry.
--John Ruskin
Good read and verifies even debates I have been in today here in these forums.
Thank God I never became a butterfly!
Life IS Feudal
These things are always the self fulfilling prophecy type reads. If you already agreed with his opinion you'll nod and say see this is the truth as I have always said it.
If you disagree you'll still disagree because it really is just an opinion piece because the decline he speaks of is a type of game not the actual genre.
You won't be able to tell the difference between 250 players in a small zone or a big world with more players.
Even this site listed MOBAs, D3 and PoE as MMORPGs. It is just a label.
In fact, if lobby games are what is popular, make lobby games instead. You can see more lobby elements in MMORPGs (starting with wow LFD) precisely because of this.
This site can start calling cats dogs, won't change the fact dogs are not cats. It is definitely more than just a label, it represents the idea of a certain style game, let those others keep to theirs such as MOBA, or ARPG.
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
-This.
I think the next (and best) evolution will be the 'private server' type game. Games such as Morrowind or Skyrim with some multiplayer capability similar to the original GW where the 'world' is a private instance and you can invite friends.
I remember testing the morrowind multiplayer mod- It never did work properly but the idea itself was simply amazing.
We could have full sandbox type worlds with real C&C, destructable and buildable assets killable NPCs etc..etc.. And the ability to invite our friends to the world...
-MMORPGs are dead (and have been) and I am not even exactly sure what we have right now. We certainly have multiplayer games, they are massive, but RPG's they are not...More like hack-n-slash button mashers and memory games with gear grind.
I think the genre will continue to decline save for some small indies, until (as you have stated) we get games akin to multiplayer skyrim and such.
You can tell the difference. If there were 250 people spread across a big world you wouldn't see hardly anyone when traveling around it. If everyone was in the same world you would constantly be encountering other people. It's a huge difference. I use to see what seemed like more than 250 people in one zone in Everquest.
What has been lost is the group play where you as an individual are valuable. New MMORPG's are so dumbed down that any 12 year old can pick it up, cheap shot you, and scream L2PNOOB. People are asses because they can just use a different server, Or because grouping is cross server, or because the game is free and they just don't care.
Where is the difficulty? Where is the need for dedication to a class when all the classes are faceroll equivalents?
WoW used to have some pretty high skill level dungeons when it was released. Now it is all faceroll, and all the companies are following suit.
The companies that make MMO's are only interested in the bottom line whatever the cost. There is very few developers that will take less to give more. They get their money and go on vacation till the next MMO needs to be made. The era of decade lasting MMO's I fear is lost forever.
Not enough people are interested in the social aspect of grouping with friends anymore, at least in the percentages that will influence a developer to gamble on it. With the casual crowd the true gamers are doomed.
Overall, I pretty much agreed with his views. There were some that had me raising an eyebrow, like the quote nariusseldon pulled from it, but overall, I think it was a good review of where MMORPGs started and where MMOs are today.
Many of his points were spot on, in my opinion.
- Al
Personally the only modern MMORPG trend that annoys me is the idea that MMOs need to be designed in a way to attract people who don't actually like MMOs. Which to me makes about as much sense as someone trying to figure out a way to get vegetarians to eat at their steakhouse.- FARGIN_WAR