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What Element of Traditional MMOs Do You Not Want To See Anymore?
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Something Awful this way comes.
"We all do the best we can based on life experience, point of view, and our ability to believe in ourselves." - Naropa "We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are." SR Covey
"The knowledge of the theory of logic has no tendency whatever to make men good reasoners." - Thomas B. Macaulay
"The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge." - Daniel J. Boorstin
Epic Music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vAigCvelkhQ&list=PLo9FRw1AkDuQLEz7Gvvaz3ideB2NpFtT1
https://archive.org/details/softwarelibrary_msdos?&sort=-downloads&page=1
Kyleran: "Now there's the real trick, learning to accept and enjoy a game for what it offers rather than pass on what might be a great playing experience because it lacks a few features you prefer."
John Henry Newman: "A man would do nothing if he waited until he could do it so well that no one could find fault."
FreddyNoNose: "A good game needs no defense; a bad game has no defense." "Easily digested content is just as easily forgotten."
LacedOpium: "So the question that begs to be asked is, if you are not interested in the game mechanics that define the MMORPG genre, then why are you playing an MMORPG?"
Games that revolve around players interacting with one another and NPC beings/creatures in a virtual world.. And the attempts to make the world seem alive and aid in suspension of disbelief through the creation of more sophisticated and workable AI tech have been very few and limited.
거북이는 목을 내밀 때 안 움직입니다
~I am Many~
- losing items in death
- daily quests
- click to move
- all sort of rewards for login in, hitting 5 more levels, etc. that gives you stuff out of nowhere.
- auto pathing
- sparkling objects + too informative mini-map
- queueable content what-so-ever
- automated level up (automated stat distribution, skills coming to hotbar automatically, etc.)
- AoE loot
- references to item shop in UI
EXP Loss
PVP Looting
I am good with Gear Decay which over time will break my gear. I am cool with that as long as I can repair it like I did with UO. The gear does not break right away but it does break.
"We all do the best we can based on life experience, point of view, and our ability to believe in ourselves." - Naropa "We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are." SR Covey
거북이는 목을 내밀 때 안 움직입니다
I don't know where this idea that RPGs stick to some formulaic "Holy Trinity" comes from but the MMORPG certainly didn't take that concept from it's RPG roots.
-Bots
Mandatory long linear quest chains that consist of "kill X number of monsters and report back to a npc for reward" over and over again until max level.
After the first few it gets really boring.
Classes (especially race and/or gender locked ones).
Make all skills and items available to everyone and let players make their own custom builds. If you want to be a mage with a battleaxe you should totally be able to do that.
Useless crafting systems.
Either make crafted items useful to other players or just don't bother putting crafting in the game. Nobody wants to gather tons of materials, make thousands of useless junk items to rank up to the top tier of a craft only to find out the items they make are too weak and nobody will ever buy or use them for anything.
Ugly helmets, mismatched armor, skimpy metal bikini armors, and/or gigantic tacky-looking shoulderpads.
I think this one speaks for itself. We all want to look good after all. And armor that looks like it can actually protect you would be nice.
Fixed/automatic character progression (stat placement)
I think this goes along with my dislike of classes. Games that make all the stats for your class raise the same way for everyone automatically make classes even worse.
Focus on twitch-based combat over building your character.
To me, an RPG is about guiding your character from the beginning to the endgame and seeing them get better along the way. Having combat rely too heavily on the player's own ability to press buttons quickly takes away from that. Some games your character could have maxed out stats and still be terrible if you, the player, can't aim or click fast enough. Can't we just leave the FPS and 'hack n' slash' game mechanics to those kinds of games? I'm sure there are better ways to make a game interesting to new players than an out of place action combat system. I'm not saying it should only be click monster and watch your character hit it until it dies. I'm just saying there should be a limit on how much of the player's own speed and skill with button pushing becomes a factor in their character's combat effectiveness.
Toxic communities
There isn't much a company can do to prevent this but it is something I wish modern games didn't have.
Making the game easily soloable
The point of a massive multiplayer game is to play with other people. If you can solo everything there is no incentive to do that. That is one thing that can change to help prevent the toxic communities. Players without any sort of positive interactions with other players tend to be hostile toward one another. A MMO without player interaction is just a single player game that happens to have other people in it.
Meaningless death penalties (or no death penalty)
When death becomes nothing to worry about there is a problem. Players should have something to lose: something to risk when fighting. You should be afraid to die. Death should be something players try to avoid at all costs. To do that there has to be real penalties. Maybe not as harsh as permadeath but some kind of real penalty should be there to make someone think twice about running into a boss room unprepared.
Forced PVP
Not everyone likes PVP. Especially while trying to complete a PVE quest. There can be both PVP and PVE on the same server if done right. Like having optional flags or PVP zones that are not part of any PVE quests (unlike ArcheAge when you turn lvl 30ish and you constantly get ganked by several max level jerks while trying to do your quests). Hardcore PVP should be kept to a designated PVP server full of like-minded players who all enjoy that sort of thing. Also, gaining special overpowered items via PVP that don't have an equal item obtainable by PVE isn't right either.
Easy/predictable bosses
With all the advancements in artificial intelligence there should be no reason for bosses to still do the same things over and over the same exact way every time. Giving a boss 3 billion HP just makes it take longer to kill and does not make it harder in any way. Putting a time limit on said boss just reserves it for the top damage dealing parties only (usually cash shop buyers with OP cash shop gear). Bosses with a little adaptive AI would be nice.
...I could go on but this is already a long list so I'll stop there.
Just say no.
Bots
Ai-less dumb mobs
Open world being faceroll
Hordes of mobs standing around
Dailies
Time-sink gameplay (who put more time repeating simple tasks/grinds wins)
Exploits taking weeks or months to fix, while still being turned on instead of turned off till fixed
Lack of cohesion
Bad story / design
Log-in rewards
Matchmaking Teleporting "stay in a city&wait in queue" tool & design
Seriously list could go on and on. MMORPG long standing problems are almost endless. Very little of MMORPG fundamental problems was fixed since their dawn in late 90s/early 00s.
By closely linking character progression to quests, you're killing off massive amounts of player freedom. In almost every MMO of the last decade, the quickest / best way to level has been grinding quests. It sucks. The stories are derivative and boring. The quests themselves are just minor variations on the same old shit. I absolutely hate it.
So, I say remove all XP from questing. That would mean a return to mob grinding as the quickest way to level which I know some would hate, but the quests would still be there for those who want the stories (and rewards) from questing. For those of us who hate questing, we would be able to head out into the world and make our own way again. I know we can technically still do that now, but the amount of XP you get in comparison to quests is so low that its not worth it.
2) Massive Vertical Progression
I know vertical progression is such a common RPG thing that its unlikely to go away, but it directly opposes the massively-multiplayer objective. vertical progression makes 99% of the content obsolete (thus reducing replayability and increasing boredom, not to mention being a waste of resources) but more importantly, the power gaps segregate the community.
MMOs are about other people. Being massively-multiplayer is the unique selling point, something that cannot be found anywhere else. But, by creating power gaps through vertical progression, you are splitting up your playerbase and preventing them from playing together. You create the "haves" and the "have nots" which is just silly. Your ability to beat content should be based on skill, not gear / level.
Horizontal progression is the answer (or at least horizontal at endgame). Very few RPGs have horizontal progression and even fewer do it well, but if it's done well then it is such a superior progression mechanic for MMOs.
3) Separation of PvP and PvE Players
A caveat: PvP should be consensual at all times. Beyond that, I hate the segregation of pvp and pve players. We're all one playerbase, playing the same game so why keep us separated? Human history has shown us that segregation is an extremely negative thing to implement, yet devs keep doing it. Proper old school MMOs didn't segregate, but the "traditional" themepark always seems to do so. I hate it, it serves no purpose but to make development harder and please a few carebears.
So, stop separating the playerbase. Virtually all PvPers I've ever played with also do PvE. Most PvErs I've ever played with also PvP (though, very infrequently). Get us interacting again, working together, hanging out together, trading with one another, offering advice etc. Both sides can learn from one another and have fun together.
EQ1, EQ2, SWG, SWTOR, GW, GW2 CoH, CoV, FFXI, WoW, CO, War,TSW and a slew of free trials and beta tests
I just don't like how some games are built to be a themepark and don't attempt to immerse you in a world. Look at FFXIV vs FFXI. The older one actually has a more lively environment, with lots of wildlife and animated scenery. Not many MMOs actually have that now imo. ESO is the only recent one I can say has that in my experience.
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