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  • QuirhidQuirhid Member UncommonPosts: 6,230
    Originally posted by Amaranthar
    Originally posted by Quirhid
     

     

    What's messy about the flags I mentioned?

    • You want to PvP in a war, you sign up.
    • If you're in Pixie Land, and if you pick their wild flowers, you flag to Pixies and can be attacked. If they do attack you they flag PvP+ to your guildmates/group, who in turn onlt flag PvP+ if they attack the Pixies.
    It could be designed messy, or not. Why assume it WILL BE?
     
    The benefit is that it brings PvP to the world at large and can have meaning to the world. Conquer territory, stop someone from accomplishing a task, etc.
     
    Battle grounds are pretty meaningless except for points in a separate game of leader boards. Yeah, a game can do that, or they can choose to make the game feel more meaningful by doing what I'm suggesting. There's various ways to go, and each one goes to the kind of game as a whole.
     
     

    They are messy because you need to think of ways how you get flagged, how you get unflagged and neutral intervention such as healing, body blocking, scouting and possibly maneuvering before they set themselves as flagged and attack you. You want to deal with all that? Can you make all that robust and intuitive? I don't think you can. That is why they are messy.

    You want PvP areas to play a role in your game world? Set frontier areas to "contested" and allow PvP in them. Shift the frontier whenever areas are conquered.

    Other than that, battlegrounds are fun. Nothing matters beyond that.

    I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been -Wayne Gretzky

  • Darkfalz89Darkfalz89 Member UncommonPosts: 581
    Originally posted by DMKano
    Originally posted by Kayyd
    Originally posted by DMKano
    Originally posted by Tokken

     


    Originally posted by Krimzin
    Video is spot on.
    I will never have the feeling again of going from Qeynos to Freeport at level 6. The absolute terror I felt on that journey has not been replicated in 16 yrs of MMO Gaming. I've played every major MMO title since EQ always looking for that feeling, but never finding it. Don't get me wrong, There have been some good games.. Just no "Great" ones.

     

    Recently I am back among the masses looking for something to play. Trolling around MMORPG and other gaming sites, looking for my next fix.

    The only game on the horizon that holds any interest for me atm is Pantheon. Whether it comes to pass or not is yet to be seen. Until then, I wander aimlessly.


     

    This ^^ Exactly. I feel the same way. I loved the run from Qeynos to Freeport at lvl 6.... and the fear for the baddies of the world.

    Looking forward to Pantheon, for sure!

     

    I am going to just say it

    You will never get this feeling back.

    I am looking forward to Pantheon too - but it won't bring the same feeling back no matter how good it is.

    The only way to get this feeling back would be to erase previous memories and experience MMORPGs as something fresh and new.

    don't believe me? 

    Go try P99 - you can do the same run and the feeling won't be back eventhough it's the SAME game, why - we've all changed.

    I am playing Project 1999, and it is a lot of fun, more than any of the current crop, so you couldn't be more wrong. And, I am looking forward to Pantheon because they do seem to understand their target audience, and it's me.

    Read what I said - did I say P99 is not fun? I am playing it too and it is fun.

    What I am saying is you won't recapture "the same" feeling - yes you might have fun, but you wont experience the same level of euphoria or awe like you had the first time.

    Now there are some folks with memory disorders that would experience the same intensity of feelings because they lack any recollection of playing it previously - I am not talking about these edge cases. Nor am I talking about people that have other disorders to where they can't feel much of anything - no excitement - to them the game would be the same always.

     

     

    I'm going to assume by "the same" feeling you mean from any other MMO again or from "that mmo you branded home?" Regardless its a interesting way of looking at things, it makes me rethink what those feelings mean if it happens again. Now that I think of it, prior to WAR I haven't really played PvP in MMO's outside of doing BG's and some Open world in my brief WoW tourism ventures. I was deeply invested in FFXI around the time WoW launched, and I seem to remember it had a comparably worse, if not similar botched launch to FFXI's launch in Japan (fortunately the Japanese players played the paid beta test and we received the game along with its first expansion which fixed a lot of woes). Because of this I didn't really give a poke at WoW until well after the end of BC, and Start of WoTLK (which I hear the game was like a fine wine in that era) I didn't quite know why but the game's PvP didn't grip me, as well as the game itself. 

    For my friend DaOC was his first MMO and while we both played WAR together, all he would say is that DaOC was all this and a large bag of your flavoured chips and a 2 Liter of your favorite neckbeard beverage. That always did make me double take the whole WAR experience, but the last year of WAR he did say while RvR had more purpose in DaOC due to relics and balance due to 3 factions; he still had the same feels again. Is this merely coincidence on my part because I played a MMO so radically different from the other that it gave the feels, or were those MMOs  just the last shipment of your favorite Guru energy drink before they changed the ingredients and the flavor was never the same again? Its a question that has a different answer for every person here that continue their search. By pure intrigue alone I will continue my search to see if there will come another MMO to challenge the tried and tested formula, in which then I can put this burning question to rest. 

    Some of us continue our search, but some of use re-root ourselves into our original "home" for some of us that home may have been forgotten and abandoned to cease to exist. I was running through the Valkrum dunes today with our fledgling FFXI adventurer and we were exping old school. We had some NPC's with us to supplement the lack of real players, and the changes in exp and pacing were different but I still enjoyed myself. I looked at the familiar landscape, my other veteran FFXI player who had one to many beers stood in the dingy that washed upon the dunes shore and delegated his status as captain. We found a notorious monster (A level 20+ battering ram while we all were level 10) along the perilous adventure to the dunes and with great difficulty we mustered enough strength to pull of a skillchain to do enough damage to kill it before we bit the dust. At that point I realized, in a time of great uncertainty where FFXI is to receive its last 3 expansions to go on life support a year from now. I realized despite that I still enjoyed the game the same way I did 10 years ago, it been a while since I experienced the game in this way but its still here; untouched to the passing of time. And it will continue to be there for many more years and adventures following. 

    To those who still have that feeling, why let go of it just because some day it will cease to exist? Why not just sit down and enjoy it for what it is, all the while you sleep with one eye open for another MMO to bring that feeling back. There is very little reason to belittle and judge those of us that don't have the luxury I do, there is nothing necessarily wrong with wanted something more than a guaranteed formula. 

  • BascolaBascola Member UncommonPosts: 425
    Originally posted by Darkfalz89

    Some of us continue our search, but some of use re-root ourselves into our original "home" for some of us that home may have been forgotten and abandoned to cease to exist. I was running through the Valkrum dunes today with our fledgling FFXI adventurer and we were exping old school. We had some NPC's with us to supplement the lack of real players, and the changes in exp and pacing were different but I still enjoyed myself. I looked at the familiar landscape, my other veteran FFXI player who had one to many beers stood in the dingy that washed upon the dunes shore and delegated his status as captain. We found a notorious monster (A level 20+ battering ram while we all were level 10) along the perilous adventure to the dunes and with great difficulty we mustered enough strength to pull of a skillchain to do enough damage to kill it before we bit the dust. At that point I realized, in a time of great uncertainty where FFXI is to receive its last 3 expansions to go on life support a year from now. I realized despite that I still enjoyed the game the same way I did 10 years ago, it been a while since I experienced the game in this way but its still here; untouched to the passing of time. And it will continue to be there for many more years and adventures following. 

    To those who still have that feeling, why let go of it just because some day it will cease to exist? Why not just sit down and enjoy it for what it is, all the while you sleep with one eye open for another MMO to bring that feeling back. There is very little reason to belittle and judge those of us that don't have the luxury I do, there is nothing necessarily wrong with wanted something more than a guaranteed formula. 

    Still playing FFXI here and we still do old school exp parties because they are fun. They are difficult and you need to make the best of the limited abilities you have. They still surprise me because no fight is the same. People keep saying the parties where a grind, but where they really? I have so many fond memories of parties, wipes, near death miraculous recoveries and drama with asshole players. Yeah, they where friggin fun!

    Grinding quests is however ZERO fun. Nothing about it is fun at all. Dungeon grinding, is not fun, doing the same boss over and over and over is not fun because they are so predictable you can do it in your sleep. Yes i am looking at you FFXIV.

    For me the feeling still exists in those old games. Not a single new game gave me that feeling ever again and that is not because i am nostalgic, it is because none of them has what it takes to be a good multiplayer experience..

    With their dungeon finders, they are the chatroulette of the games world. Shallow and stupid.

  • Vermillion_RaventhalVermillion_Raventhal Member EpicPosts: 4,198
    Originally posted by Quirhid
    Originally posted by Lyrian

    I think MMOs now are a question of ROI. Because all the 'features' need to be up to an X standard, that will cost Y money. So we need to make sure our product will get Z amount of subscribers/sales/etc. This is why we have a common similarity between all the games, it's a proven concept and people accept gradual small change - rather than large sweeping ones.

    In order to have the next generation of innovation, I believe we need to look back towards the literal foundations of so many of these games.

    Table top. For me that means Dungeons and Dragons. For those of you in the know, Dungeons and dragons has a metric fuckton of written material and content. You have creatures, locations, magic, technology, planes, gods. It is virtually endless. That 'endless' feeling needs to somehow be translated into an MMO, it needs to give the world meaning. Look at any of the D&D universes. They are intricate and complex worlds that are changing on a day to day basis.

    What I feel needs to change in the next batch or set of MMOs is the mindset behind it. Right now MMOs are largely on rails, solely story driven. The developer controls the pace and style of the story and pushes people along when they are ready, not when the player wants it. The mindset has to change from the developers being the storyteller, to being a stage master. Move away from the static and set things we have today. If a player misses something, then it's gone, done. Much like real life, you snooze you lose.

    If one player wants to become a mayor of a town, there should be a way to do that. If a player wants to build a portal to another realm, there should be a way to do that. If a player wants to sit and craft all day long, there should be a way to do that. You can say this will be prey to scope creep, likely it will! This wouldn't be an easy idea to design, you are creating a world after all.

    Impossible demands. Whenever a player misses content, it is wasted manhours on the part of the developer. There is no way a dev can churn out content for people to enjoy for months AND miss a bunch at the same time. Not to mention some people want parallel content and optional paths, optional careers.

    "A massive undertaking" would be an understatement for such a project. It would also be incredibly risky because of the money required. Who would even fund such a monstrosity, and what should they expect from their investment?

     

    But you are falling into the feature creep the video was talking about.  Part of the problem is how developers are creating content.  The feature quest hubs are overdone.  Its takes manpower and game space to fill the world with the level treadmill.  Most new games are only quest hubs on rails with no other open world space.   Quest hubs are one of the biggest reasons most MMORPG's for the past 10 years feel the same.  As time goes on they've taken away more and more of the adventure of questing and turned it into pure time sink and put some lore makeup on it.  

     

    It would be risky to make a different type of MMORPG.  Yes.  But its been done before and I am certain creation of content for quest hubs are one of the biggest cost MMORPG's have.  Hence why many of the kickstarter games aren't making questhubs.

  • cheyanecheyane Member LegendaryPosts: 9,407

    Everything that guy said is spot on but I cannot see a solution . I really do not see us not doing this for the next ten years. I am playing Wildstar again and yes it is the same old thing but if I do not play that I would be playing ESO or back to FFXIV ARR. I cannot see myself not playing an MMORPG. 

     

    I think it is impossible to solve but if they do solve it I shall be the first person to congratulate the game developers that does manage it.

    Garrus Signature
  • QuirhidQuirhid Member UncommonPosts: 6,230
    Originally posted by Rhoklaw
    Originally posted by Jean-Luc_Picard
    Originally posted by Axehilt

    The problem is WOW set a very high bar and did things right, and nobody else even met the bar.

    WoW is indeed the "king" because it has both: the incredibly detailed world, AND the fantastic gameplay.

    WoW is only the king because game developers / distributors continuously make completely asinine decisions. Take ArcheAge for instance. Sure, it's a Korean game and maybe Trion had ZERO choice in whether to implement the cash shop or not. However, had ArcheAge been a subscription only game, much like it was in Founder's Alpha phase, it would have trampled WoW's success along with all other MMO's on the market. ArcheAge at launch offered more game features that meshed so well together than any other MMO that they never would have stood a chance. Now, I think of ArcheAge as one of the biggest game flops in MMO history in regards to what it could have been.

    Really? I thought ArcheAge was more of the same old same old. Few friends of mine bought it and went through the whole experience in a week and said its got nothing special going for it. Nothing that would make it stand out.

    I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been -Wayne Gretzky

  • AmarantharAmaranthar Member EpicPosts: 5,852
    Originally posted by Quirhid
    Originally posted by Amaranthar
    Originally posted by Quirhid
     

     

    What's messy about the flags I mentioned?

    • You want to PvP in a war, you sign up.
    • If you're in Pixie Land, and if you pick their wild flowers, you flag to Pixies and can be attacked. If they do attack you they flag PvP+ to your guildmates/group, who in turn onlt flag PvP+ if they attack the Pixies.
    It could be designed messy, or not. Why assume it WILL BE?
     
    The benefit is that it brings PvP to the world at large and can have meaning to the world. Conquer territory, stop someone from accomplishing a task, etc.
     
    Battle grounds are pretty meaningless except for points in a separate game of leader boards. Yeah, a game can do that, or they can choose to make the game feel more meaningful by doing what I'm suggesting. There's various ways to go, and each one goes to the kind of game as a whole.
     
     

    They are messy because you need to think of ways how you get flagged, how you get unflagged and neutral intervention such as healing, body blocking, scouting and possibly maneuvering before they set themselves as flagged and attack you. You want to deal with all that? Can you make all that robust and intuitive? I don't think you can. That is why they are messy.

    You want PvP areas to play a role in your game world? Set frontier areas to "contested" and allow PvP in them. Shift the frontier whenever areas are conquered.

    Other than that, battlegrounds are fun. Nothing matters beyond that.

    I get the sense that you are just looking for excuses to not do this. That's OK, I understand you are a Themepark gamer, but for the many who do want to go a different way for their MMOs this has real possibilities. There's not one objection you raised that can't easily be dealt with, and hasn't been done before.

    • Flagged and unflagged I just did
    • Neutral intervention such as healing: If you heal a friend in PvP it sets you as PvP+ too (done in UO but a "bug" undid it)
    • Body blocking (by neutrals): Only allow blocking for PvP+. Most games don't block because of the other issues as we know.
    • Scouting and maneuvering before going PvP: Of course, why not? Big issue here in games protecting players from themselves. If you do the "crime", be aware of your circumstances and surroundings. Or have backup. All part of a game like this, and no one who doesn't want PvP has to "do the crime" in the first place. Maybe I should add that the object of the crime should not be only available through said "crime".
    • Is there anything unintuitive in any of that? Only for those who want to play and win blindfolded, I guess.
    You could have come up with these answers if you wanted to.

    Once upon a time....

  • AmarantharAmaranthar Member EpicPosts: 5,852
    Originally posted by Vermillion_Raventhal
    Originally posted by Quirhid
    Originally posted by Lyrian

    I think MMOs now are a question of ROI. Because all the 'features' need to be up to an X standard, that will cost Y money. So we need to make sure our product will get Z amount of subscribers/sales/etc. This is why we have a common similarity between all the games, it's a proven concept and people accept gradual small change - rather than large sweeping ones.

    In order to have the next generation of innovation, I believe we need to look back towards the literal foundations of so many of these games.

    Table top. For me that means Dungeons and Dragons. For those of you in the know, Dungeons and dragons has a metric fuckton of written material and content. You have creatures, locations, magic, technology, planes, gods. It is virtually endless. That 'endless' feeling needs to somehow be translated into an MMO, it needs to give the world meaning. Look at any of the D&D universes. They are intricate and complex worlds that are changing on a day to day basis.

    What I feel needs to change in the next batch or set of MMOs is the mindset behind it. Right now MMOs are largely on rails, solely story driven. The developer controls the pace and style of the story and pushes people along when they are ready, not when the player wants it. The mindset has to change from the developers being the storyteller, to being a stage master. Move away from the static and set things we have today. If a player misses something, then it's gone, done. Much like real life, you snooze you lose.

    If one player wants to become a mayor of a town, there should be a way to do that. If a player wants to build a portal to another realm, there should be a way to do that. If a player wants to sit and craft all day long, there should be a way to do that. You can say this will be prey to scope creep, likely it will! This wouldn't be an easy idea to design, you are creating a world after all.

    Impossible demands. Whenever a player misses content, it is wasted manhours on the part of the developer. There is no way a dev can churn out content for people to enjoy for months AND miss a bunch at the same time. Not to mention some people want parallel content and optional paths, optional careers.

    "A massive undertaking" would be an understatement for such a project. It would also be incredibly risky because of the money required. Who would even fund such a monstrosity, and what should they expect from their investment?

     

    But you are falling into the feature creep the video was talking about.  Part of the problem is how developers are creating content.  The feature quest hubs are overdone.  Its takes manpower and game space to fill the world with the level treadmill.  Most new games are only quest hubs on rails with no other open world space.   Quest hubs are one of the biggest reasons most MMORPG's for the past 10 years feel the same.  As time goes on they've taken away more and more of the adventure of questing and turned it into pure time sink and put some lore makeup on it.  

     

    It would be risky to make a different type of MMORPG.  Yes.  But its been done before and I am certain creation of content for quest hubs are one of the biggest cost MMORPG's have.  Hence why many of the kickstarter games aren't making questhubs.

    Yep. Take all the time and effort of building the great quests and their dungeons/ruins/locations and invest that time into even better dungeons(etc.) full of interesting things and interactivity and the AI that makes MOBs feel more real.

    Instead of questing by numbers, players make their own quests, goals, and seek their own pleasure.

    And Quirhid's wrong. Players miss content all the time by choices they make. But more importantly, in my opinion, having some content that only some players "discover" make the other players "want", which is a driver in playing the game. Ta'hell with gamers that want everything handed to them, that's a big problem with MMOs these days.

    Once upon a time....

  • evilizedevilized Member UncommonPosts: 576

    oh look, it's this thread again.

     

    the genre is falling into indie developers creating niche games that "aren't for everyone". this is a good thing. the budgets are smaller (crowfall being made for $6 mil or so) so there's less vested and fewer interested parties meaning some real innovation can start to happen again. in 2 years we'll be in the 2nd renaissance of the MMO genre and we should have some new and interesting things at our fingertips. 

     

    as for the (few) people in this thread that are constantly saying things are impossible and will never work, if everyone thought like that you wouldn't have a magic box that gives you access to pretty much any information you'd ever want to know sitting neatly on your desk or lap. if someone wants to do something badly enough, they figure out a way to do it. that's innovation and that's what we are all looking for. a game doesn't need a combat "rotation" to be considered an MMO... that's just one way of doing things; sky's the limit.

     

    I'll leave you with a quote from another forum...

     

    Originally posted by Gordon Walton

    Another interesting thing to note is that the push for bigger audiences leads directly to more "accessible" experiences.  (that's code for directed experiences, that are more forgiving, less intense games which cater a broader group of players).  There are plenty of big companies out there making those types of games (and plenty of  players who want them).

    We are specifically making our game for players who will like the kind of experience we will create, not trying to cast a wide net to get a mass market audience.  We want the folks who will appreciate an intense gaming experience with real risk, winning *and* losing.  While we want as many players who are engaged in our game as possible, we won't need millions of players to make our game work.

    So our game won't be for everyone, and we certainly don't want people playing who aren't enjoying the experience.  This is supposed to be an activity we experience as fun after all!

     

    This.

    This right here is exactly where I see the market heading over the next 5 or so years.

    MMORPG's are dying due to the stagnation created by a certain other game and its monetarily focused developer. Bigger is better and biggest is best, the slogan that studios and publishers have lived and (more notably) died by since 2004. WoW was a fluke, it hit at the right moment in time (high speed internet more widely available, computers becoming affordable, the first digital generation hitting their mid/late teens and having disposable income to spend, social networking kicking off, etc) with the right promises and the right demographic and its success will never be able to be duplicated. The industry has spent the last 10 years trying to grab hold of a massive audience like WoW did but with little success and sadly failure after failure in the MMORPG space has soured big investors on the prospect of ever being able to make money. What does this mean? It means that you will never see anything other than a slightly off kilter version of *the* successful formula come from any major studio (although there is one possible exception on the horizon).

    Small companies are the future of the MMORPG genre. Companies that don't want 10 million subs and aren't spending $50 million dollars on voice acting. Keep the overhead low and keep your project within spec so you can make a good profit on a modest game that's actually fun to play for whatever niche you are aiming at. You can't please everybody, it's impossible; when you try, you end up with something like a corporate logo ... it can't be flashy or fun because that may offend somebody, it has to be bland so it doesn't generate any sort of feeling at all.

     

  • LobotomistLobotomist Member EpicPosts: 5,981

    Yep...thing most of us know and have experienced.

    I am afraid it is too late, this genre is dead now...



  • AmarantharAmaranthar Member EpicPosts: 5,852
    Originally posted by Lobotomist

    Yep...thing most of us know and have experienced.

    I am afraid it is too late, this genre is dead now...

    It was inevitable. But that doesn't mean it's over. RPGs have died and come back ...what?...two, three times? Same thing for MMOs.

    Players get tired of the same old stuff after a while. Sales drop to unsustainable levels. Then there's a revival, usually based on something more advanced. That's always been based on tech, but I wonder what that tech might lead to. More Sandboxxy games? Look at the current Voxels being used. That's a tech advancement that is leading MMOs to be more Sandboxxy in that particular part of game design.

    I think AI advancements will help a lot.

    The biggest problem is that game producers come from a background in SP games and know quest driven, levelling design. It's not easy to put together a team where a good portion of them don't have an absolute faith in Themepark as "the way to make games". Once it dies down (like at present), and a purge happens due to lack of productions, there's hope that a new effort might change all that.

    It would really help if game companies start making SP games (similar to Skyrim) that feel more like a Sandbox World where the players have freedom from directed content and can build their own houses, form their own goals, etc., like what we want in a change from the status quo.

    Of course producers could avoid that purge, and the lack of sales, by going there now. There's been plenty of hints over years that it's the way to go. Look at Skyrim and players loving the freedom. And remember games like Balder's Gate where players complained in masses about the inability to go "off path".

    Once upon a time....

  • aesperusaesperus Member UncommonPosts: 5,135

    A good video, which touches on a lot of good points, but primarily misses a couple key ones. For starters, he never even really hints at a solution. He says 'we need to capture that feeling again', which is something that is obvious to most developers, but is much easier said than done. It's that lightning in a bottle. We want to obtain it, but actually pulling it off is pretty damn tough. In addition to this he talks about feature bloat and needing more virtual worlds. Well, you can't have a virtual world w/ just a textured map. It needs to be populated, and it needs to have features. Furthermore, the more games you have that are virtual worlds, the more they will have similar features. This is part of what defines the genre. It's why all platformers have you constantly jumping on blocks. It's why all racing games have you driving something. A large part of what makes a genre is the defining features (or gameplay) that makes all games within that same genre similar.

    I see a lot of people pointing to WoW as the success standard, but I see very few people actually understanding WHY WoW was such a big success. Was it a great game? Yes. But that alone is not enough to make a game success. Hasn't been for some time, and it certainly isn't true now. There are plenty of examples of good games that either don't do well, or aren't as popular as some of their counterparts. The problems that we have seen since WoW, existed during & before WoW's release. It's just because so obvious by this point that we can't ignore it. So what made WoW so successful? It was that perfect combo of 'good game + great timing + huge untapped audience + friends'. They combined all 3. Even people who weren't really into the game play it because there friends got hooked. And it was the first game to bring millions of new players into the genre practically overnight.

    So lets talk about the issues.

    1) Feature bloat is an accurate issue. There are numerous features in these games that we DONT need. But we've convinced ourselves that we do. We don't need quest hubs, or gear grinds, or vertical progression. But enough of us are hooked on those things that they've become necessary.

    2) Canned content. It's easier to make quality content if a seasoned developer makes it, but it's impossible to make enough of such content to keep up w/ popular demand. The other option is user-generated content, which can be great or terrible, it's a complete roll of the dice. There needs to be more games that properly balance the two. Delivering quality content, but allowing tools for players to make their own during the gaps.

    3) ROI / Production costs. MMOs are some of the most expensive games to make (not counting games that go out of their way to bloat their budget on expensive licenses, celebrities, and trailers). Much of that comes down to the nature of how much needs to go into a game to be an MMO (because they are easily the most feature-heavy), but that's only part of it. The big issue is:

    4) Player expectations. We demand so much from these games. And it's fine to hold a game or genre you love up to a higher standard, but much of what we demand are contributing to the problems this genre is facing. We demand features that don't help make the play experience better. We constantly push for game play that only has short-term value. We continuously refuse to approach the few mmos that are trying something different like new experiences. Instead we always compare them to older games (primarily WoW) and complain when they don't add up.

    The solution:

    We are actually starting to see some games coming down the pipe that are doing things differently. Started roughly around when GW2 came out and has been building since. Keep in mind how long it takes just to get an MMO from concept to release (it's getting faster, but around WoW's time it was close to a decade). Things are changing, what we need to do (as players) is give these newer games that are trying to do things differently a fair chance. Try and approach them like new experiences, and not like WoW v 10. There is more diversity in this genre than I think a lot of people realize.

  • ragz45ragz45 Member UncommonPosts: 810
    Voice is really familiar... I can't place it though....
  • Darkfalz89Darkfalz89 Member UncommonPosts: 581
    Originally posted by Vermillion_Raventhal
    Originally posted by Quirhid
    Originally posted by Lyrian

    I think MMOs now are a question of ROI. Because all the 'features' need to be up to an X standard, that will cost Y money. So we need to make sure our product will get Z amount of subscribers/sales/etc. This is why we have a common similarity between all the games, it's a proven concept and people accept gradual small change - rather than large sweeping ones.

    In order to have the next generation of innovation, I believe we need to look back towards the literal foundations of so many of these games.

    Table top. For me that means Dungeons and Dragons. For those of you in the know, Dungeons and dragons has a metric fuckton of written material and content. You have creatures, locations, magic, technology, planes, gods. It is virtually endless. That 'endless' feeling needs to somehow be translated into an MMO, it needs to give the world meaning. Look at any of the D&D universes. They are intricate and complex worlds that are changing on a day to day basis.

    What I feel needs to change in the next batch or set of MMOs is the mindset behind it. Right now MMOs are largely on rails, solely story driven. The developer controls the pace and style of the story and pushes people along when they are ready, not when the player wants it. The mindset has to change from the developers being the storyteller, to being a stage master. Move away from the static and set things we have today. If a player misses something, then it's gone, done. Much like real life, you snooze you lose.

    If one player wants to become a mayor of a town, there should be a way to do that. If a player wants to build a portal to another realm, there should be a way to do that. If a player wants to sit and craft all day long, there should be a way to do that. You can say this will be prey to scope creep, likely it will! This wouldn't be an easy idea to design, you are creating a world after all.

    Impossible demands. Whenever a player misses content, it is wasted manhours on the part of the developer. There is no way a dev can churn out content for people to enjoy for months AND miss a bunch at the same time. Not to mention some people want parallel content and optional paths, optional careers.

    "A massive undertaking" would be an understatement for such a project. It would also be incredibly risky because of the money required. Who would even fund such a monstrosity, and what should they expect from their investment?

     

    But you are falling into the feature creep the video was talking about.  Part of the problem is how developers are creating content.  The feature quest hubs are overdone.  Its takes manpower and game space to fill the world with the level treadmill.  Most new games are only quest hubs on rails with no other open world space.   Quest hubs are one of the biggest reasons most MMORPG's for the past 10 years feel the same.  As time goes on they've taken away more and more of the adventure of questing and turned it into pure time sink and put some lore makeup on it.  

     

    It would be risky to make a different type of MMORPG.  Yes.  But its been done before and I am certain creation of content for quest hubs are one of the biggest cost MMORPG's have.  Hence why many of the kickstarter games aren't making questhubs.

    Or one could create a game largely based on player interaction on world building and just slowly tack on features as you go? I think I recall a game called Gloria Victis doing such a thing?

  • Darkfalz89Darkfalz89 Member UncommonPosts: 581
    Originally posted by Lobotomist

    Yep...thing most of us know and have experienced.

    I am afraid it is too late, this genre is dead now...

    As I mentioned, some games still allow you to experience that but once again this experience is different for each person. That being said there are those who wander and still seek that holy grail, I don't feel that just giving up is the right course of action. Like many have said there seems to be a possible recession that may flush the content creep a bit to at least give of something a little bit more niche.

  • QuirhidQuirhid Member UncommonPosts: 6,230
    Originally posted by Amaranthar
    Originally posted by Quirhid
     

    I get the sense that you are just looking for excuses to not do this. That's OK, I understand you are a Themepark gamer, but for the many who do want to go a different way for their MMOs this has real possibilities. There's not one objection you raised that can't easily be dealt with, and hasn't been done before.

    • Flagged and unflagged I just did
    • Neutral intervention such as healing: If you heal a friend in PvP it sets you as PvP+ too (done in UO but a "bug" undid it)
    • Body blocking (by neutrals): Only allow blocking for PvP+. Most games don't block because of the other issues as we know.
    • Scouting and maneuvering before going PvP: Of course, why not? Big issue here in games protecting players from themselves. If you do the "crime", be aware of your circumstances and surroundings. Or have backup. All part of a game like this, and no one who doesn't want PvP has to "do the crime" in the first place. Maybe I should add that the object of the crime should not be only available through said "crime".
    • Is there anything unintuitive in any of that? Only for those who want to play and win blindfolded, I guess.
    You could have come up with these answers if you wanted to.

    Or you might put timers on when entering or exiting flagged mode... I know. I am not looking for solutions or making excuses. Its about the extra work you have to put in to make it even bearable. The additional rules and exceptions which make it more and more complicated. And even after all that, I have yet to see a good flagging system and yours doesn't sound like it has any leg up on anything I've experienced or heard of so far.

    Neutral intervention alone is a big turnoff and you're just basically saying "deal with it". And its not just the "criminals" who suffer from it. It affects everyone who wants to PvP. Neutral scouting alone takes away the concept of fog of war completely. That's a huge chunk of strategy taken away right there. You should spend more time thinking what your system costs. How do you justify the bad and the extra work that come with this?

    Or are you infact biased towards PvE and don't care if the PvP kinda sucks in your game? (Don't take the bait. I just had to put it there cause you called me a "themepark gamer".)

    I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been -Wayne Gretzky

  • QuirhidQuirhid Member UncommonPosts: 6,230
    Originally posted by Amaranthar
    Originally posted by Vermillion_Raventhal
    Originally posted by Quirhid
     

     

    But you are falling into the feature creep the video was talking about.  Part of the problem is how developers are creating content.  The feature quest hubs are overdone.  Its takes manpower and game space to fill the world with the level treadmill.  Most new games are only quest hubs on rails with no other open world space.   Quest hubs are one of the biggest reasons most MMORPG's for the past 10 years feel the same.  As time goes on they've taken away more and more of the adventure of questing and turned it into pure time sink and put some lore makeup on it.  

     

    It would be risky to make a different type of MMORPG.  Yes.  But its been done before and I am certain creation of content for quest hubs are one of the biggest cost MMORPG's have.  Hence why many of the kickstarter games aren't making questhubs.

    Yep. Take all the time and effort of building the great quests and their dungeons/ruins/locations and invest that time into even better dungeons(etc.) full of interesting things and interactivity and the AI that makes MOBs feel more real.

    Instead of questing by numbers, players make their own quests, goals, and seek their own pleasure.

    And Quirhid's wrong. Players miss content all the time by choices they make. But more importantly, in my opinion, having some content that only some players "discover" make the other players "want", which is a driver in playing the game. Ta'hell with gamers that want everything handed to them, that's a big problem with MMOs these days.

    I didn't say players don't miss content. Of course they do. Its just that generally it should be avoided, because, again, it is wasted manhours.

    Its the same thing with balance. If you spend time making 10 classes for the game you wish players would use all 10. Not just the best 3. And the players don't appreciate the game having just 3 viable classes either.

    I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been -Wayne Gretzky

  • Darkfalz89Darkfalz89 Member UncommonPosts: 581
    Originally posted by aesperus

    A good video, which touches on a lot of good points, but primarily misses a couple key ones. For starters, he never even really hints at a solution. He says 'we need to capture that feeling again', which is something that is obvious to most developers, but is much easier said than done. It's that lightning in a bottle. We want to obtain it, but actually pulling it off is pretty damn tough. In addition to this he talks about feature bloat and needing more virtual worlds. Well, you can't have a virtual world w/ just a textured map. It needs to be populated, and it needs to have features. Furthermore, the more games you have that are virtual worlds, the more they will have similar features. This is part of what defines the genre. It's why all platformers have you constantly jumping on blocks. It's why all racing games have you driving something. A large part of what makes a genre is the defining features (or gameplay) that makes all games within that same genre similar.

    I see a lot of people pointing to WoW as the success standard, but I see very few people actually understanding WHY WoW was such a big success. Was it a great game? Yes. But that alone is not enough to make a game success. Hasn't been for some time, and it certainly isn't true now. There are plenty of examples of good games that either don't do well, or aren't as popular as some of their counterparts. The problems that we have seen since WoW, existed during & before WoW's release. It's just because so obvious by this point that we can't ignore it. So what made WoW so successful? It was that perfect combo of 'good game + great timing + huge untapped audience + friends'. They combined all 3. Even people who weren't really into the game play it because there friends got hooked. And it was the first game to bring millions of new players into the genre practically overnight.

    So lets talk about the issues.

    1) Feature bloat is an accurate issue. There are numerous features in these games that we DONT need. But we've convinced ourselves that we do. We don't need quest hubs, or gear grinds, or vertical progression. But enough of us are hooked on those things that they've become necessary.

    2) Canned content. It's easier to make quality content if a seasoned developer makes it, but it's impossible to make enough of such content to keep up w/ popular demand. The other option is user-generated content, which can be great or terrible, it's a complete roll of the dice. There needs to be more games that properly balance the two. Delivering quality content, but allowing tools for players to make their own during the gaps.

    3) ROI / Production costs. MMOs are some of the most expensive games to make (not counting games that go out of their way to bloat their budget on expensive licenses, celebrities, and trailers). Much of that comes down to the nature of how much needs to go into a game to be an MMO (because they are easily the most feature-heavy), but that's only part of it. The big issue is:

    4) Player expectations. We demand so much from these games. And it's fine to hold a game or genre you love up to a higher standard, but much of what we demand are contributing to the problems this genre is facing. We demand features that don't help make the play experience better. We constantly push for game play that only has short-term value. We continuously refuse to approach the few mmos that are trying something different like new experiences. Instead we always compare them to older games (primarily WoW) and complain when they don't add up.

    The solution:

    We are actually starting to see some games coming down the pipe that are doing things differently. Started roughly around when GW2 came out and has been building since. Keep in mind how long it takes just to get an MMO from concept to release (it's getting faster, but around WoW's time it was close to a decade). Things are changing, what we need to do (as players) is give these newer games that are trying to do things differently a fair chance. Try and approach them like new experiences, and not like WoW v 10. There is more diversity in this genre than I think a lot of people realize.

    Absolutely agree, I'll be honest  I took some small breaks from FFXI and WAR between major content patches and expansions for FFXI. Just because you take a break and try something else doesn't mean you gave up on said game. I know when enough of a player base does this it can really hurt the games ability to keep churning out content, but for starters MMO's need to do a better job of giving players some tools at launch to keep busy with while the developer makes more content. The issue is that MMO players are so fickle that if their WoW v10 expectations aren't met they leave and never look back. Giving a game a chance and throwing down some money to try it from time to time is enough I feel.

    Looking at EQN as a great example of player tools, giving us a amazing voxel editor to allow us to make large cities, and while not all of them make it into the game per se some of the better designs will. This alone gives players some incentive to create and not to mention explore and find other things to do. Games that hold your hand and lead you through a maze of quest hubs by yourself to max level to only to find out the endgame hasn't been ready is a lot of how the past 10 years for us has gone. 

  • QuirhidQuirhid Member UncommonPosts: 6,230
    Originally posted by Vermillion_Raventhal
    Originally posted by Quirhid
     

    But you are falling into the feature creep the video was talking about.  Part of the problem is how developers are creating content.  The feature quest hubs are overdone.  Its takes manpower and game space to fill the world with the level treadmill.  Most new games are only quest hubs on rails with no other open world space.   Quest hubs are one of the biggest reasons most MMORPG's for the past 10 years feel the same.  As time goes on they've taken away more and more of the adventure of questing and turned it into pure time sink and put some lore makeup on it.  

     

    It would be risky to make a different type of MMORPG.  Yes.  But its been done before and I am certain creation of content for quest hubs are one of the biggest cost MMORPG's have.  Hence why many of the kickstarter games aren't making questhubs.

    Well, they might be overdone and you could do them a lot differently. Trouble is, what alternatives do we have? I heard making one dynamic event in GW2 took 10 times the work it takes making one traditional quest. I don't doubt DDO style instances are laborious to make as well. Yeah, quality takes time, effort and money.

    On the other side of the spectrum, you want to churn out a lot of generic quests you end up with Vanguard basically. But quest content is also the biggest money maker as far as I know. And combat specifically, but combat has been the best seller in games since forever.

    Why kickstarter games don't make "questhubs" is because they cannot possibly compete with the big names in the market. It would be suicide. Indie devs don't have a choice; they have to do things differently to survive. Hence, that's where you'll see the most innovation come out too.

    Then again, if AAA developers actually lost money by going after the WoW niche, we might see more innovation from the AAA developers too. And there have been several "OK"-attempts like Secret World or Guild Wars 2. Don't think that there's no innovation in the mainstream just because there hasn't been a hit yet. Devs are trying.

    I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been -Wayne Gretzky

  • AmarantharAmaranthar Member EpicPosts: 5,852
    Originally posted by Quirhid
    Originally posted by Amaranthar
    Originally posted by Quirhid
     

    I get the sense that you are just looking for excuses to not do this. That's OK, I understand you are a Themepark gamer, but for the many who do want to go a different way for their MMOs this has real possibilities. There's not one objection you raised that can't easily be dealt with, and hasn't been done before.

    • Flagged and unflagged I just did
    • Neutral intervention such as healing: If you heal a friend in PvP it sets you as PvP+ too (done in UO but a "bug" undid it)
    • Body blocking (by neutrals): Only allow blocking for PvP+. Most games don't block because of the other issues as we know.
    • Scouting and maneuvering before going PvP: Of course, why not? Big issue here in games protecting players from themselves. If you do the "crime", be aware of your circumstances and surroundings. Or have backup. All part of a game like this, and no one who doesn't want PvP has to "do the crime" in the first place. Maybe I should add that the object of the crime should not be only available through said "crime".
    • Is there anything unintuitive in any of that? Only for those who want to play and win blindfolded, I guess.
    You could have come up with these answers if you wanted to.

    Or you might put timers on when entering or exiting flagged mode... I know. I am not looking for solutions or making excuses. Its about the extra work you have to put in to make it even bearable. The additional rules and exceptions which make it more and more complicated. And even after all that, I have yet to see a good flagging system and yours doesn't sound like it has any leg up on anything I've experienced or heard of so far.

    Neutral intervention alone is a big turnoff and you're just basically saying "deal with it". And its not just the "criminals" who suffer from it. It affects everyone who wants to PvP. Neutral scouting alone takes away the concept of fog of war completely. That's a huge chunk of strategy taken away right there. You should spend more time thinking what your system costs. How do you justify the bad and the extra work that come with this?

    Or are you infact biased towards PvE and don't care if the PvP kinda sucks in your game? (Don't take the bait. I just had to put it there cause you called me a "themepark gamer".)

    No, I'd very much like "good PvP". What I don't like is rampant ganking that destroys a game's player base and leaves it a war game. That just destroys the whole "world" concept that I and I think most others want.

    I don't see your complaints against a system like this. But to each his own. I think it would make for a much more interesting game world and social interaction.

    On that neutral scouting issue you have, keep in mind that this idea was strictly for "criminal" activity, not warfare. As I said earlier, for wars players would enlist. Then they'd be in PvP mode against all enemies from the start. Your issue with this is that neutral players can act as scouts without risk, I say it doesn't matter because whether you can kill them or not they still forward the information. And in real life war, people always use such sources for intel gathering too.

    So if you want to perform a secret wartime mission, use stealth skills and don't let anyone see you.

     

    Once upon a time....

  • AmarantharAmaranthar Member EpicPosts: 5,852
    Originally posted by Quirhid
    Originally posted by Amaranthar
    Originally posted by Vermillion_Raventhal
    Originally posted by Quirhid
     

     

    But you are falling into the feature creep the video was talking about.  Part of the problem is how developers are creating content.  The feature quest hubs are overdone.  Its takes manpower and game space to fill the world with the level treadmill.  Most new games are only quest hubs on rails with no other open world space.   Quest hubs are one of the biggest reasons most MMORPG's for the past 10 years feel the same.  As time goes on they've taken away more and more of the adventure of questing and turned it into pure time sink and put some lore makeup on it.  

     

    It would be risky to make a different type of MMORPG.  Yes.  But its been done before and I am certain creation of content for quest hubs are one of the biggest cost MMORPG's have.  Hence why many of the kickstarter games aren't making questhubs.

    Yep. Take all the time and effort of building the great quests and their dungeons/ruins/locations and invest that time into even better dungeons(etc.) full of interesting things and interactivity and the AI that makes MOBs feel more real.

    Instead of questing by numbers, players make their own quests, goals, and seek their own pleasure.

    And Quirhid's wrong. Players miss content all the time by choices they make. But more importantly, in my opinion, having some content that only some players "discover" make the other players "want", which is a driver in playing the game. Ta'hell with gamers that want everything handed to them, that's a big problem with MMOs these days.

    I didn't say players don't miss content. Of course they do. Its just that generally it should be avoided, because, again, it is wasted manhours.

    Its the same thing with balance. If you spend time making 10 classes for the game you wish players would use all 10. Not just the best 3. And the players don't appreciate the game having just 3 viable classes either.

    I disagree with the idea that content ALL players can't use is wasted. You have that in any game. There's a wide range of skills that are restricted to one class or another, or not advanced in the case of a skill based game per individual.

    I think your main point is related to the last one? That useless classes are a waste? Of course. Don't make useless classes. But on the other hand, if a particular class used by only 1% of the player base adds to the game overall, adds depth for the rest of the players, I'm not sure that's entirely "useless" to the game as a whole.

    I'd prefer a skill based system with class options based on skill requirements/restrictions myself.

    Once upon a time....

  • KiyorisKiyoris Member RarePosts: 2,130

    There are way too many MMO, way too many people developing MMO who have no idea what they're doing, and too many game developers.

     

    EQ was a great game.

    FFXI and XIV are decent.

    WoW was a decent game, easy, accessible, but decent.

     

    All the rest of the MMO I tried, GW2, Tera, ArcheAge, Black Desert, etc, they are SO SO SO SO bad.  Such easy, forgettable, games without communities.

  • AmarantharAmaranthar Member EpicPosts: 5,852
    Originally posted by Quirhid
    Originally posted by Vermillion_Raventhal
    Originally posted by Quirhid
     

    But you are falling into the feature creep the video was talking about.  Part of the problem is how developers are creating content.  The feature quest hubs are overdone.  Its takes manpower and game space to fill the world with the level treadmill.  Most new games are only quest hubs on rails with no other open world space.   Quest hubs are one of the biggest reasons most MMORPG's for the past 10 years feel the same.  As time goes on they've taken away more and more of the adventure of questing and turned it into pure time sink and put some lore makeup on it.  

     

    It would be risky to make a different type of MMORPG.  Yes.  But its been done before and I am certain creation of content for quest hubs are one of the biggest cost MMORPG's have.  Hence why many of the kickstarter games aren't making questhubs.

    Well, they might be overdone and you could do them a lot differently. Trouble is, what alternatives do we have? I heard making one dynamic event in GW2 took 10 times the work it takes making one traditional quest. I don't doubt DDO style instances are laborious to make as well. Yeah, quality takes time, effort and money.

    On the other side of the spectrum, you want to churn out a lot of generic quests you end up with Vanguard basically. But quest content is also the biggest money maker as far as I know. And combat specifically, but combat has been the best seller in games since forever.

    Why kickstarter games don't make "questhubs" is because they cannot possibly compete with the big names in the market. It would be suicide. Indie devs don't have a choice; they have to do things differently to survive. Hence, that's where you'll see the most innovation come out too.

    Then again, if AAA developers actually lost money by going after the WoW niche, we might see more innovation from the AAA developers too. And there have been several "OK"-attempts like Secret World or Guild Wars 2. Don't think that there's no innovation in the mainstream just because there hasn't been a hit yet. Devs are trying.

    The problem with innovation in the mainstream is that it's locked in with what gamers are getting tired of. Directed questing and generally gamey content, lack of the feeling of a free-to-choose-course in a direction-by-level world.

    Until they change that, while innovation can help, it doesn't really solve the primary issue.

     

    Once upon a time....

  • AmarantharAmaranthar Member EpicPosts: 5,852
    Originally posted by Kiyoris

    There are way too many MMO, way too many people developing MMO who have no idea what they're doing, and too many game developers.

     

    EQ was a great game.

    FFXI and XIV are decent.

    WoW was a decent game, easy, accessible, but decent.

     

    All the rest of the MMO I tried, GW2, Tera, Black Desert, etc, they are SO SO SO SO bad.  Such easy, forgettable, games without communities.

    EQ had problems stemming from their level grind and directed content. Lots of players waiting in line.

    Did you have any issue with being directed from zone to zone? "Linear" content? And part of the same question, do you think it would have been a better game if the increases in power/capability would have been much smaller so that the world opened up much more to players and removed most of that "linear" direction?

    Once upon a time....

  • QuirhidQuirhid Member UncommonPosts: 6,230
    Originally posted by Amaranthar
    Originally posted by Quirhid
     

    The problem with innovation in the mainstream is that it's locked in with what gamers are getting tired of. Directed questing and generally gamey content, lack of the feeling of a free-to-choose-course in a direction-by-level world.

    Until they change that, while innovation can help, it doesn't really solve the primary issue.

    But people like questing and gamey content. There's little you can do to change that.

    I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been -Wayne Gretzky

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