What are the main factors that cause disappointment with an MMO?

d_20

I edited the original question in the title and the post to make it not a troll bait thread. I guess the original was potentially too pointed.

davcha

Let me guess... SWG ?

d_20

davcha said:

Let me guess... SWG ?

No. I never played it until the last week before they announced they were closing it. I did the free trial only.

Agent_Joseph

none, yet  ,but one incoming I think 

Squishydew

Edit: Oh wow, way for me to not read the title properly

I guess what I'm trying to say in my faulty post below, is that what disappointed me was not being loyal to the previous product, besides that i think most MMO disappointment stems from the fact that all MMO's feel so incredibly similar, there is very little variety on offer when trying a new mmo.

(-Post i made when not reading title properly below-)
Definitely Guild wars 2, not that i disliked the game, i played it for a couple of months, but guild wars 1 was just so much better ( Personal opinion ofcourse! ) i was so excited knowing a sequal was coming, but guild wars 2 was nothing like It's predecessor.   

Some things it did better sure, but the weapon tied limited skills, complete removal of healers and tanks and boring dungeon content just killed it for me.  

Also, WvWvW felt completely pointless, but i havent played in quite some time now, so maybe thats all changed.

d_20

From my own experience, it would be high expectations. No surprise there, I guess. I will save more specific factors till later.

Kyleran

d_20 said:

From my own experience, it would be high expectations. No surprise there, I guess. I will save more specific factors till later.

I'd go further and say unrealistic expectations, always hoping the "next game" will be the magic savior for either yourself or everyone else always leads to disillusionment and anger when the title can't live up to the dream.

Watch when SC launches, while many will like it, a large number of folks will hate on it incessantly because it's missing something they wanted.

Albatroes

Personally, I feel that not having server unity and social consequences have made MMOs pretty disappointing. By server unity, I mean events been bound to the server, so like grouping, hunting etc. As for social consequence, I mean people can act like jerks and the possibility of you running into that person due to the lack of server unity in most games will be slim. Now sure there are some games with megaservers, but this ties in closely to a more personalized opinion of why I dont like many MMOs, and that's the separation of characters and classes. I've played FFXI for a third of my life so I'm a bit biased on how I like my class systems even though I quit about 2 years ago, meaning I'm still used to doing everything on one toon. Having 1 toon per class doesn't allow me to 'bond' (weird term I know) with my character and I tend to treat the characters as crafting unit rather than a 'main' character. Anyway, going back to server consequence, people can troll all day because they have multiple characters for stuff so their 'main' will never be impacted because they will either not do the troll acts on that character or if they do, they can just move servers without a steep penalty that XI used to have of waiting 90 days between transfers.

Bloodaxes

For me mostly when developers think we are retarded and have to dumb down things.

kitarad

I have watched many threads that pop up after a new game is released and I noticed this trend of complaining about every single aspect of a game until you complain yourself into a position where you can no longer justify playing it. It is like a hole you dig for yourself while standing in it and as you dig you become more entrenched and soon you are forced to believe some of the exaggerated complaints and pretty soon you question why you are even playing it.


I think we have lost the ability to simply enjoy anything not just games without focusing on what is wrong. We do not celebrate the right we just focus on the wrong. Everyone is generally unhappy with anything when you come to a game with this mentality naturally you're going to destroy any hope that you might like or heaven forbid enjoy it.

Innocence we once had is forever lost we will never again be happy to just play and I am just as guilty of this as the next guy but while many games do deserve some scorn we are heaping them rather heavily on some others that don't. Every game will not shock and awe you any more because you are 'old hats' what you need to do is look for a happy medium .

So the answer is our own unreasonable expectations in most cases.

Pepeq

Number 1 factor is the developers selling the game with our nostalgia in mind.  They know we want to recapture our youth, so they sell us what we want to hear.  In the end it's like buying an endless void... no matter how much you think you're getting it back, it's only an illusion which is quickly crushed.

Adamantine

I was pretty annoyed when Vanguard shut down.

So I would say "shutting down" is the most major factor of disappointment of any MMO you like to play.

Second biggest disappointment is when a player you played a lot with leaves the game. Not really something the developers can do about.

Third biggest disappointment I can remember was Akande the butcher from the griffon quest in Vanguard. Oh my god was that guy awful. I tried to kill him for WEEKS. I never found out what the special trick about that mob is. So we only could outdps him, really. Most of the time we just wiped and wiped and wiped.

Zarkin86

1. themepark
2. tab target
3. instances (lobby game at endgame raids blah)

Zarkin86

Vardahoth said:

It's all in my sig.

Dude, awesome video. I watched it once. You are so right. only sucks that i didnt found mmos around that time. just look at L2 open world and compare it to todays themeparks.

josko9

1. Sandbox (I'm yet to see a decent one)
2. Tab-targetting combat (it's 2015 dammit)
3. Cartoony graphics (ew)
4. Not fully voiced quests (again 2015)
5. Garbage quests and story (99% MMOs today)
6. Structured PvP (Arena is fine)
7. No Solo Endgame that equals Group Endgame
8. Vertical Progression
9. Anime/Eastern Theme
10. MMOs rated ESRB Teen (13+)

Adamantine

josko9 said:

1. Sandbox (I'm yet to see a decent one)
2. Tab-targetting combat (it's 2015 dammit)
3. Cartoony graphics (ew)
4. Not fully voiced quests (again 2015)
5. Garbage quests and story (99% MMOs today)
6. Structured PvP (Arena is fine)
7. No Solo Endgame that equals Group Endgame
8. Vertical Progression
9. Anime/Eastern Theme
10. MMOs rated ESRB Teen (13+)

1. Sandbox elements are nice, the more the better. No gaming on rails please. A good blend of sandbox and themepark elements like Vanguard is best.

2. Tab-Targetting is an absolute musthave. I dont want a reflex based game. I want a thinking based game. Give me tons of abilities and make it hard to choose the best one to use next.

3. Depends upon the style. I dont like WoW / cheap style, but Lineage 2 / stylized / Manga would be fine with me.

4. Uuuuh ... Okay, I'll try to attempt to care. Trying... still trying ... nope. Sorry, I just dont give a rats ass about fully voiced quests. Why the heck would that matter ?

5. Oh, but NOW you demand quality ? Your previous points sounded VERY different.

6. Ugh. Seriously ? Arena ? Boooooooooooooooooooooring !!! Give me real Lineage 2 castle sieges, now thats a real adrenaline rush !

7. How about no "endgame" in the first place. Make maxlevel something thats very hard to archieve. And start the actual game at level 1, not at maxlevel, will you please.

8. Another request for quality.

9. Sounds like you agree with me in #3.

10. Dont really care about rating.

d_20

GrayImpact said:

Edit: Oh wow, way for me to not read the title properly

Actually, I edited the title, so you probably read it correctly the first time.

Beatnik59

Routine...the number one factor is routine.

The feeling that the game is just rote, predictable routine can explain a lot in this industry...from churn and burn, to the appeal of the item store, to the malaise we all have.

Sadly enough, the things that we used to do to make the game break from the routine (roleplay, PvP, creative play) have all been either drummed out or abandoned as core reasons to play these things.  And if I were a developer, there would be good reasons to drum out or abandon them.

Because if a player cannot break the routine monotony on his own, then he'll have to go to the pay store in order to buy something that'll break the routine.

nariusseldon

Isn't that pretty simple .. just like all other games or entertainment .. it is not fun to me. 

d_20

I see a few people saying that it is mainly the player's expectations which lead to disappointment. Of course, I agree and have said so, from my own experience. But is this 100% true all the time?

Can we assume that nothing has ever been "oversold" or "hyped"?

Also, from my own experience, I feel that my being disappointed with Warhammer Online and Age of Conan, for example, were not all my fault. Yes, I had high expectations. They were still disappointing products when they released and I bought them. But can we still put all the blame for disappointment on person who bought the game?

There is sometimes a gap between what we reasonably expect and what we get.

FomaldehydeJim

Over-hype and under-delivery.

ArChWind

I find some of these a bit confusing because you show innovations and people balk at them. As for what drove me away was expecting a virtual world yet getting some game with a grind to the next carrot.

VengeSunsoar

At d20 all disappointments are the result of unmet expectations, in this case player  expectations. Those expectations may have been influenced by hype and or statements by the devs. 

Xeno.phon

For me its:

Global cool down timers
Lack of immersive gameplay mechanisms like player housing or poorly made maps
Publishers
Promises not being kept on launch
Poorly coordinated launches
Monthly sub fee's for substandard games
WOW clones... and WOW
Click 1-5 to win style MMO
Paywalls
Toxic Communities
Shallow gameplay that is obviously just trying to cover up a cash grab game
Too Easy

Unfortunately my list covers about every mmo out today, the last MMO I truly enjoyed was probably ff11 and Vanguard SoH... though vanguard was a kind of guilty pleasure. I started the game at launch and fell in love with it. After Brad sold us all out and his programmers nuked the code the game was an absolute mess... but I still had love for it. Also loved Tabula Rasa, before Lord Dickish abandoned it to go to space.

The only thing worse than a bad developer, is a developer that can make a great game and destroy it with their ego and or greed.

waynejr2

VengeSunsoar said:

At d20 all disappointments are the result of unmet expectations, in this case player  expectations. Those expectations may have been influenced by hype and or statements by the devs. 

The devs may say stupid things but expectations are what the players create in their own minds.  Don't buy the hype and trust but verify.   If the dev say the game will be full of Mega-{fill in the blank}, don't expect it until you see it in real game play.  As consumers, we shouldn't be lemmings.

We need to ask real hard questions from the companies.  We need game websites to ask these questions as well. 

As consumers, we need to verify if feature-X is something they hope to get in vs they have actually coded, tested and played feature-x in the current up to date version of their game.

I know that is asking too much of gamers.  Currently there is a benefit they can talk about the hyped 'feature' and when it doesn't happen, they get hours of entertainment playing the disappointed victim.

Adamantine

FomaldehydeJim said:

Over-hype and under-delivery.

IMHO over-hype is not avoidable.

Because thats what reporters etc do, not the devs.

I heard so often from people who expected game X to have feature Y when nobody from the company themselves has ever promised that. It was just speculation from somebody else.