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The impossible task of creating the next great mmorpg.
jacktors
Member UncommonPosts: 180
Did you ever think that it is just impossible to create one MMORPG that satisfies every type of playstyle at once? We can sit here arguing which game out now or in the past is the best MMORPG. But gaming style has so much to do with that opinion. Currently I play ESO, which fits my playstyle the most out of all the MMORPG's on the market. But that does not mean that it is the only game I will play. Nor does it mean that I will choose to replace it with the next great MMORPG coming down the pipe. Many people here will completely disagree with my opinion of what makes up a good game, as I will disagree with many of you. That does not make either of us the authority on which games out there are good, or suck.
It all goes back to playstyle. I would guess that game developers must have a tough time trying to please so many different individual customers at the same time. There are so many different types of content that can make up a MMORPG, and most directly conflict with opposing game styles. For example, some people like open world pvp, where another group feel that it will cause too much griefing. And yet, some wouldn't mind a combination of open world pvp with rulesets. That is just one example of the problems game developers face every day trying to please their customers. It all comes down to creating a game and trying to add as much content as possible that will please the largest group of subscribers.
Look at Guild Wars 2. Arenanet did everything they possibly could to steer away from gear treadmills and trinity type classes. Well, they certainly created a pretty successful game. But there are plenty of people out there that have either not played the game or quit because of this type of content. Personally, I played for about 6 months. I had fun for a while, but eventually I got bored with the game. I ran out of content that i personally enjoy in an MMORPG.
Now you have Wildstar, a game that has decided to go full throttle with hardcore raiding. I give them credit for going after this crowd. They have created a sci-fi space mmorpg that should attract many WOW type gamers. Time will tell if they will attract enough customers to stay successful.
What would you recommend in an MMORPG as far as content, that you think could satisfy the masses, without alienating large MMORPG gamers? This is what I would choose:
1. Open world/ Seamless lands with the only instances being dungeons and caves...etc.
2. Housing, instanced in neighborhoods the way DAoC has. But to be built from the bottom up, crafted from the raw materiels found in the game world.
3. Open world PVP... 3 faction warfare. But with a pvp switch for those who choose not to partake. If you do not like pvp, then you do not have to be subject to being griefed. PVP dungeons, Duel system within the game. Plus a game wide Arena for the best groups to fight it out for prizes. Starter zones are the only areas with no pvp.
4. A class system like Archage or ESO, where there is a lot of customization.
5. A rich combat system that adds blocking/dodging/... Action oriented, which adds some strategy instead of button mashing.
6. Sandbox type crafting system where the best armor/weapons come from the players. But the rare raw materials must be found out in the world. But not only in group dungeons/raids. They can be found in pvp, exploration, or dungeon/raiding, as to satisfy all game styles. Also, a 1 to 5 rarity system on gear where it is possible but not probable to create legendary type named gear through the crafting system.
7. Horizontal and vertical rich content, including voice acted questing, a good variety of dungeons for all levels, hidden caves and jumping puzzles with achievements and treasure chests. Many hidden, off the beaten path nooks and areas to find and explore. Daily achievements and quests that reward the player. World bosses that randomly spawn in open land. Artifact hunting with rewards...
8. Many different races, completely different depending on which faction you are part of. Factions cannot speak to each other (different languages), as in DAoC. You can only quest in your own land, but you can raid enemy lands.
9. Servers or realms, so you have your realm pride with ongoing pvp with the same people/enemies. No megaserver crap. Kill announcements so you know who the badasses are.
That is my list. I know that a lot of this content comes from DaoC. It was a great game back in 2005, but the graphics are very dated. I tried going back, but I couldn't play such a dated game after playing games in 2014.
Comments
Trying to please everyone is exactly why MMos have been shit for 10 years. Appealing to the casual audience/the WoW audience leads nowhere.
No MMO is going to get WoW numbers ever again, because it was a fluke.
Older MMos got their stable numbers by releasing good games to core audiences. Eve does the same thing, and its no surprise that it is STILL gaining in subs.
That all being said, the older MMOs had way more features and appealed to be way more people than these half assed WoW clones ever do. Especially DAoC which had near perfect design.
I think what's also been missing is data to show there's a sizable enough audience for that. If you've got numbers that show that type of game is needed, hook a dev up, bro.
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein
"Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
I feel the next great mmorpg needs to actually push some type of boundary.
i.e. 20-30 faction warfare that can be conqured/lead by players.
I winced when I read the OP say "Did you ever think that it is just impossible to create one MMORPG that satisfies every type of playstyle at once?" Why would you create a MMO like that? Anyone with taste will realize it's terrible.
Then I got to where he advocated for instanced dungeons and I couldn't go on. I wont play it.
As one poster said - why not fix existing ones?
Next great MMO is impossible. Just because:
1. It has to be PvE only , since many players wants PvE
2. It has to be PvP only, since other players wants PvP
3. It has to be easy mode
4. It has to be hardcore
5. It has to have trinity, because many love it
6. It has to have no trinity, because others hate it
7. It has to be P2P only
8. It has to be F2P only
9. It has to have DLC
10. It has to have no DLC
11. As many quests as possible, because we love questing
12. No quests, we are tired from them
13. Voice over, since it rules
14. No voice over, it does not add much
15. Themepark only
16. Sandbox only
...and so on, and so on. No MMO would satisfy needs of majority of players. What could happen - that old games being reshaped, becoming more specialised. A good example could be Istaria: it is a good game (no quest markers on map, some dangerous territories even for multiclassed lvl.100), yet it is with small population, outdated graphic engine. Instead of creating new game - a serious investment into existing one and you may win (since you already have loyal players).
http://www.mmoblogg.wordpress.com
I think the next big wave of MMOs will be ones where the world can be customized by the owner.
Remember Neverwinter Nights? Not the MMO but the games that came before, you could build your world, create quests, place monsters and other players could come to your game and try your world out. That's what it's going to be like. There will be thousands of MMOs each with their own rules that you can pick from. Then the problem will be how to pick the best one for you out off all the crap.
http://gnomophobia.com
To add a different slant to the discussion I would say the main, and really only, thing the next great MMO needs is to imbue a sense of purpose in it's players.
Now, what purpose is exactly differs by player (and mood), so it's not an easy thing to pin down, and indeed many facsimiles exist in MMOs today, from gear and reputation grinds, to quests, to PvP arena rankings. However we are used to all these things now, we know what they are, where they lead and what is missing; namely a true (or as true as you can get from an artificial world) sense of purpose that drives us. Sure we will still go back to them from time to time absent some alternative, but ultimately they are hollow, and the more our awareness of this grows the more 'burnt out' we feel.
I'm not sure what the next truly great MMO will look like, what rule systems it will have, what combat, PVP, crafting systems, etc. it will have, but I am sure it will have some way of offering purpose to it's players that we have not seen before.
Except for the millions that played those MMos pre 2004, and the 500k that are playing Eve right now...
If anything, market data shows there's no audience for themepark MMos, as they all crash and burn almost right away.
It's not difficult to see. It's more about "We want a piece of the pie" rather than "We don't know how to make something different and extraordinary". Perhaps both.
It's all about money. Why bother taking the extra time and money to make something for everyone, when they can make something quicker and start making money sooner? By extension start turning out DLC and other schemes to make more money. Why start from scratch when you can follow a template that is producing results. Why spend more time trying to make things work all around when you don't need to. The clones are all relative. The differences are spins to appear different when the underlying idea is the same.
The only attempts to take things somewhere new is in the idea that it will be big. Thus far, none really have. It is not impossible to to make something that can fit everyone in, just not practical in terms of money.
@Lithuanian ;
All those things can be mixed together without much harm.
It's not that it's impossible, it's finding the balance, which is hard,
Theses are the things I noticed from my time from playing MMO's Since 2004. Crafting, Character Customization, PvE, PvP, and Developer/Publisher. A lot of people like to craft, many like slaying monsters, many like slaying other players and depending on the developer/publisher can determine how good they do. Point in case. One of the main reasons Blizzard is successful is because we probably played one of their games, Warcraft, Starcraft or Diablo. So they build a relationship with the consumer and they have good Marketing Strategy. So when WoW got released we knew what type of quality the game was going to be, and today it's still going strong.
If i was to develop a game I would need to know who my audience is. Crafters, PvE players and PvP players.
Crafting has to be simple but complex. GW2 has a good crafting system but it's tedious, WoW has a simple crafting but can't do much. ESO has good crafting. you can make bland armor, use various motifs to change the style and add traits to it or craft sets of armor. So in my MMO the crafting will have to be simple to understand, have a large scope of possibilities for the player to do. ESO,WoW,FFXIV,GW2 and SWG had/have good gathering. It's either a first come first serve, or it's instance to you or you flung down a harvester and checked on it in a few hours. I can't take a stance on this but I would say I like the First come, first serve option.
PvE this is the meat of most MMO's. What can you do to be different. We are accustomed to "!", we see "!" we go running to see how many X we got to kill or dung piles we got to sweep through. Kill X, Gather X gets boring after a while. GW2 had it to you could Kill X, Gather X, or Fix X or Save X, or talk to X people. SW:TOR and ESO has it in a fashion of telling your character story, with side questing to draw you into the story. I feel a Mixture of Story telling/GW2 questing is a good blend, but then you run into "Dungeons" and "Raids". I like 5 man Dungeons and 10 Man raids, but they need to be challenging, and creative and fun and make you mad when you fail on the 1%. I will say I love Dragons Dogma of fighting creatures bigger then you, that would be interesting to see, Also I would have it so that Elemental damage would do X2,Half, Nil/Heal the intended target. Water Spell on a Fire creature would do X2 damage, were as Fire on Fire would heal the creature.
PvP is another thing that is a Hate/Love relationship. I Would have a Capture and Hold PvP, Capture the Flag PvP, and Alterc Valley like PvP, but I would do a twist on siege pvp. I would have the cities be able to be sacked and/or occupied, not killing quest givers, and all shops would charge more for items, and more for repairs, and it would last for 5 days, on the last day, the players can opt take back their city or take the opposing city.
So to make a MMO isn't impossible, is like I said finding that balance. What draws in players. SWG and COX had awesome character emotes, and visual and chat emotes, when you LOL, your character laughed and did a visual, if you said "I'm Pissed" you're chat would say XXXX speaks with a venomous tongue "I'm Pissed."
So it's not impossible but rather finding all the good things from the MMO's taking those ideas and mashing them together. I would go into greater detail but it's late here.
You mentioned if you were to make a game you would need to know who your target audience is.
For the mmos out atm, who is their target? Rather, what is their target.
Also, with the countless number of people and games and ideas, etc etc. Balance or building a game where most can be happy about it, would have already been done if it weren't being stopped by something.
Hmm.. did you read that post? ReallyNow10 sugguested a game like Vanguard. Loko suggested that there is not a huge enough player base for a game like Vanguard(as Vanguard already proved somewhat). And then you talk about EvE and the failure of themeparks?
Heck.. most "failed" simplified WoW clone themeparks got more players than Vanguard, and do have a bigger audience.. just not to for a huge success with a production value of $100 millionen+ as SWTOR, ESO and Wildstar suggest.. but all of them do have EvE numbers and a lot more than Vanguard ever got. Would they get as many players with less production value? Most probably not. But more than Vanguard? Most probably yes.. hardcore players are a minority. And that's coming from a more hardcore player(though more pvp hardcore in my case than pve).
Edit:
@Topic: In my humble optinion you can't please all. Look for your audience, analyse how many player could be interested for such a game, base your development budget around that number, and make the best possible game for that audience.. and you may catch afterwards more player than expected.
I'd like to see people stop trying to create the "next great MMO" (which will always turn into some watered down WoW clone because trying to please everyone is really hard.) WoW is an anomaly. A lot of its success was down to timing and unique marketing opportunities. Every other game released since suggests that companies may lust for 10 million subs but 1 million is probably about the max a game that isn't WoW can hope to draw in. So why not identify one segment of the market and try to satisfy that better than any other game?
The target audience is more mainly the Buy to play with a cash shop, Free to Play or Pay to play. GW2 is a nice B2P, it's free and you can use real $ to upgrade or buy vanity items.
Most F2P games I've played are just boring and many have Play 2 Win shops. Only F2P game I like so far and have no problem spending real $ on is Marvel Heroes.
Then you got pay to play. SW:TOR ( teeters between F2P and P2P, it's "Free to play" but you're so limited in what you can do you might as well sub so you can actually enjoy the game) WoW, FFXIV:ARR and ESO. Are you willing to pay the $15 a month to enjoy a game, or are you willing to spend $ on a P2W game. then what kind of game is it. is it a grieving only game like Day Z and H1Z1, or is it a World of Warcraft like (PvE with PvP).
I will concur with what you said about balance, the ctrl+x didn't cut and paste your post
, but yes it would have been done, sadly it probably won't happen in my life time.
Companies do not make MORPG's any more, they make interactive movies and cal them MMORPG's. Somewhere along the line MMORPG's became follow the quest bread crumbs to level appropriate paint by the numbers dungeons and pre scripted encounters to the endlgame grind mill of doing the same raids repeatedly to out fit yourself and you guildies with the lates raid gear so you can toss it all when the new raid gets patched in and repeat for the latest flavor of the month gear.
No bad choices can be made, no consequences for bad choices to the point that a brain damaged monkey can be a winner in today's games. I use the word games loosely. More likevideo storybooks since in a game you can win or lose, in these so called MMORPG's you just click through a limited array of choices none of which really affect the outcome. Paint by the numbers and keep the colors inside the lines and all wil be well
I miss DAoC
LOL, look around you my friend... how many old buildings get fixed as opposed to either being leveled or built anew? It's the nature of our throw away society to expect something new and shiny every couple of months... I mean really, how many incarnations of a cell phone does one need? They just keep replacing them endlessly. And so it is, for MMOs. Play, forget, move along.
I think the next great MMO is going to end up being one on a surprising platform - the console.
Something that really bucks many of the MMO traditions in order to "fit" on the console, and ends up creating something unique and new with real staying power.
There are a couple of contenders like Destiny and The Division, but they are trapped in shooter conventions and are both sci-fi.
Supposedly ESO is still coming to XB1/PS4, FFXIV is already on PS4 along with Planetside, and now Neverwinter is coming to XB1.
I think it is just the start.
It may just be the right time, in the right environment for a console-exclusive MMORPG - not a "shared world shooter" or PC port but a real, fantasy RPG epic for console.
At least in the West, I think the East already has a big hit with Dragon Quest X - which may or may not be coming to the West.
I do have a feeling the first true console fantasy MMO is going to come from the East.
Anarchy Online is the only game I'd want to see fixed up so I could play again. And that was always a niche game.
Meanwhile, I'm dabbling in Everquest Landmark and waiting on a good sandpark or sandbox with no forced PvP to release. If PVE players would quit buying PvP games out of desperation (only to be promptly driven out by the gankers) maybe we'd have one by now. A lot of different playstyles can coexist, but forced PvP is only for PvPers. The vast majority of PvE players are never going to enjoy it.
I am convinced there is only one way to eliminate these grave evils, namely through the establishment of a socialist economy, accompanied by an educational system which would be oriented toward social goals.
~Albert Einstein
Its almost like MMO players are actively looking for new reasons to exclude others. Its like they actually want their community to dwindle and shrink to the point of extinction.
Old school MMO players keep lamenting how good the community was in old MMOs like EQ and how bad the community is in newer MMOs but fail to realize they are part of the problem with MMO communities.
Bad Spock is probably right and the next big MMO will be on console. Mainly because the PC MMO gamers wont touch it.
Nice straw man. Vanguard had very few players for very specific reasons. Game design was not one of them. It was the game design that made it such a well loved and passionate game for so many people. it was other factors that kept people from playing.
Most failed themeparks do not even touch the numbers old MMOs peaked at.
I can't remember which game it is (someone here will know), but I thought it was a fascinating approach to PVP.
In a city, you were safe. The further you ventured from the city, the less patrolled it was by kingdom guards and you were in greater danger of PVP.
Those who regularly attacked other players gained notoriety, or bad karma, or sumthin'. When they entered a city, if the guards recognized them they would attempt to subdue and imprison the PKer. The PKer had 2 options; stand and fight or flee the city.
If they choose to stand and fight, the game's AI would continue to spawn increasingly powerful guards until the villains were subdued and jailed. They could win their release by paying a hefty fine to the kingdom.
PK'ing could reap big rewards, but it also came at a cost. So any player could do PVP if they wanted to, but they also had a reasonable expectation that doing so could lead to big trouble. The word "Outlaw" would take on real meaning.
I would imagine that should the player decide to turn over a new leaf, the hidden variable that kept track of that character's notoriety slowly decreased over time. Eventually, they could enter a city unmolested by guards.
This approached seemed fair and more realistic to me.
My computer beats me in Strip Poker, but doesn't stand a chance against my Kick Boxing! >: D 3