Why Don't MMOS stick with systems long term more?

Abimor

So I am not a game developer I am actually a licensed psychologist so some things I just do not understand about game development but some things developers do especially on mmos game features are weird. This is what I'm talking about Lotro is the game I have played the most so maybe other games are not the same although I did play swg until I got married. 
Lotro has the skirmish system which when it first launched as this huge new thing I was not that interested in it at first. It did have some cool features and you could use the vendors to get some good crafting or class items you needed if you couldn't get a group to get them so that was nice for solo players. Then they started adding some pretty good group skirmishes that were actually really fun and I really enjoyed and so I think so did a lot of people. Then they just never did anything much with it after that first few updates. The system still works and you can use it to level and can select the level of diffuculty and do things in it but its pretty neglected now. I think the last one added was volume three book one o think. 
I guess I just never understood why they put so much into a new feature and then never really do anything with it in the future whatever that feature is.
is this because only new shiny things move the needle for expansions or just a lack of resources? Sometimes it makes sense mounted combat only being in rohan was fine. They have updated the legendary item feature over the years to get it where it is at now a much better place. But some features they add in one expansion and are never heard from again I have always wondered why.
Is this pretty common in other games where the new thing is just moved on from when the next new thing comes into being?    

Dibdabs

Probably not enough people are sufficiently interested in a game feature for the company to throw more time and money at it.  Back in the dim and distant days when I played LotR, for example, I never bothered with any of that and nor did my 3 friends who played.

cameltosis

For the skirmish system in LotRO in particular, I just don't think it really achieved what Turbine wanted it to.

LotRO had been suffering for years from a solo focus. The game was originally group focused, but because the game was built around vertical progression, 6 months after launch new players just couldn't find groups any more. So, Turbine started removing group content, and when designing new zones they went nearly fully solo.

This worked in that new players could now reach the level cap completely solo: there were no roadblocks that caused them to quit.

The downside was that you had a whole lot of players reaching endgame that had no clue how to play their class well. LotRO had one of the deepest combat systems of any MMORPG, it took genuine skill to play well. But, new players had to make a massive jump from casual solo content, to really challenging group content, and it just didn't work. In addition, the community suffered. New players were no longer in the habit of grouping up and chatting to other people.

Skirmishes were Turbine's attempt to solve some of these problems.

The fact that they scaled with level, group size and difficulty was supposed to make grouping up to do them much easier. Leveling players were supposed to try them solo, then duo, then start looking for larger groups. They were supposed to learn how to play their roles properly in an easy environment so that when they reached endgame they could make the switch to proper dungeons and raids.

That didn't happen.

Most people just did them solo. Most people just did the skirmishes they were forced to do for epic quests, and then did some grinding for the special currency.

The skirmishes weren't hard enough for endgame players, nor were the rewards for larger group sizes worth the extra effort required.

Turbine did eventually morph the skirmish system into the Epic Battles system, but that didn't work either.

Now, im not denying that the skirmish system was functional and worked. It did. Skirmishes ran smoothly, scaled properly, and had good variety. It just didn't achieve what Turbine wanted with regards to the community, and the community didn't really like them much. For most of us, it became nothing more than another irritating currency we had to grind.

Abimor

cameltosis said:

For the skirmish system in LotRO in particular, I just don't think it really achieved what Turbine wanted it to.

LotRO had been suffering for years from a solo focus. The game was originally group focused, but because the game was built around vertical progression, 6 months after launch new players just couldn't find groups any more. So, Turbine started removing group content, and when designing new zones they went nearly fully solo.

This worked in that new players could now reach the level cap completely solo: there were no roadblocks that caused them to quit.

The downside was that you had a whole lot of players reaching endgame that had no clue how to play their class well. LotRO had one of the deepest combat systems of any MMORPG, it took genuine skill to play well. But, new players had to make a massive jump from casual solo content, to really challenging group content, and it just didn't work. In addition, the community suffered. New players were no longer in the habit of grouping up and chatting to other people.

Skirmishes were Turbine's attempt to solve some of these problems.

The fact that they scaled with level, group size and difficulty was supposed to make grouping up to do them much easier. Leveling players were supposed to try them solo, then duo, then start looking for larger groups. They were supposed to learn how to play their roles properly in an easy environment so that when they reached endgame they could make the switch to proper dungeons and raids.

That didn't happen.

Most people just did them solo. Most people just did the skirmishes they were forced to do for epic quests, and then did some grinding for the special currency.

The skirmishes weren't hard enough for endgame players, nor were the rewards for larger group sizes worth the extra effort required.

Turbine did eventually morph the skirmish system into the Epic Battles system, but that didn't work either.

Now, im not denying that the skirmish system was functional and worked. It did. Skirmishes ran smoothly, scaled properly, and had good variety. It just didn't achieve what Turbine wanted with regards to the community, and the community didn't really like them much. For most of us, it became nothing more than another irritating currency we had to grind.

as a long time player I agree that the skirmishes system in particular wasn't really well received for grouping people at first in fact the books that require them are down right annoying to this day. I will say the duo stuff for skirmishes was awesome but I have my wife and we play together a bunch so that was awesome. 
one of the things it lead to and was a ton of fun were those survive  as long  as you can' group encounters with h wave after wave. it would get crazy fast and I think to me was some of the funnest group content because you could get in with a kin group and see what you could do with ever increasing difficulty. I wish they would've kept that up better
the delving duo stuff is ok but not as good as the skirmishes were. they do do so a lot trio stuff I wish that stuff was down scalable down to two but sometimes you have to have three for switches and things. 

cameltosis

Abimor said:

cameltosis said:

 

as a long time player I agree that the skirmishes system in particular wasn't really well received for grouping people at first in fact the books that require them are down right annoying to this day. I will say the duo stuff for skirmishes was awesome but I have my wife and we play together a bunch so that was awesome. 
one of the things it lead to and was a ton of fun were those survive  as long  as you can' group encounters with h wave after wave. it would get crazy fast and I think to me was some of the funnest group content because you could get in with a kin group and see what you could do with ever increasing difficulty. I wish they would've kept that up better
the delving duo stuff is ok but not as good as the skirmishes were. they do do so a lot trio stuff I wish that stuff was down scalable down to two but sometimes you have to have three for switches and things. 

This is good to hear, and I certainly had some fun times in skirmishes myself.

I was running a guild when Mirkwood and skirmishes dropped, and we used to use skirmishes as nice social events, rather than anything more serious. We'd get 24 of us together and then just blast through a bunch of skirmishes in an evening. They were quite fun and social, though easy for us.

Also remember the background to skirmishes. They launched with F2P, so Turbine were expecting a large influx of players who weren't that interested in the game. They wanted content that was easy to join and play through, because that is what Turbine thought F2P players wanted.

Abimor

cameltosis said:

Abimor said:

cameltosis said:

 

as a long time player I agree that the skirmishes system in particular wasn't really well received for grouping people at first in fact the books that require them are down right annoying to this day. I will say the duo stuff for skirmishes was awesome but I have my wife and we play together a bunch so that was awesome. 
one of the things it lead to and was a ton of fun were those survive  as long  as you can' group encounters with h wave after wave. it would get crazy fast and I think to me was some of the funnest group content because you could get in with a kin group and see what you could do with ever increasing difficulty. I wish they would've kept that up better
the delving duo stuff is ok but not as good as the skirmishes were. they do do so a lot trio stuff I wish that stuff was down scalable down to two but sometimes you have to have three for switches and things. 

This is good to hear, and I certainly had some fun times in skirmishes myself.

I was running a guild when Mirkwood and skirmishes dropped, and we used to use skirmishes as nice social events, rather than anything more serious. We'd get 24 of us together and then just blast through a bunch of skirmishes in an evening. They were quite fun and social, though easy for us.

Also remember the background to skirmishes. They launched with F2P, so Turbine were expecting a large influx of players who weren't that interested in the game. They wanted content that was easy to join and play through, because that is what Turbine thought F2P players wanted.

Oh I remember I think what you said lets build a bunch of costly stuff for players that don't even care about the game. Chasing that next best thing is the plight of human kind.      

Ungood

I can't help you with LotRO, but I will say, Anet/GW2 is abominable with this kind of bullshit.

Like every Expansion and LW update they put in some new fancy ass system only to abandon the whole fucking thing next update!

Oh Look, we are Shitcanning Dungeons for Fractals.. because that will allow us to implement instance dungeon content better. Oh look here is some Dragon Response Missions while we watch Fractals rot into the Abyss!

I swear whoever is at the helm in that game is just a Skritt in a Suit! 

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Abimor

templarga said:

Blizzard WOW devs talked about this during Blizzcon yesterday. I forgot the word they used for it but its the idea for systems to hang around for a while and not reinventing the wheel every expansion. An example is the dynamic flying used in Dragonflight will not apply to regular mounts moving forward. Its not just a one and done system for that expansion.

I am all for this. Games drive me crazy with the thinking. I think a lot has to do with "the new shiny". I would be interested if gamers like new shinnies or like consistency. It would make for an interesting study.

I will have to go and try to find that. I have no issue with new stuff thats great it is just you invest in a system enjoy it and then its like abondanware after that. For certain features it makes sense like the mounted combat in lotro not being everywhere.  

Ralphie2449

Make an mmo with 3-4 different systems and keep releasing expansions that just use the same systems.

It gets boring and stale, repetitive design does not help at keeping players long term, something new is always needed hence why borrowed power was invented.

Of course the gamers TM are screaming about how much they hate borrowed power and then they are screaming why nobody plays the game but the addicts left.

Innovation is vital in mmos for long term engagement, at the same time, you cant keep adding new systems forever otherwise it leads to bloat.

Ungood

Ralphie2449 said:

Make an mmo with 3-4 different systems and keep releasing expansions that just use the same systems.

It gets boring and stale, repetitive design does not help at keeping players long term, something new is always needed hence why borrowed power was invented.

Of course the gamers TM are screaming about how much they hate borrowed power and then they are screaming why nobody plays the game but the addicts left.

Innovation is vital in mmos for long term engagement, at the same time, you cant keep adding new systems forever otherwise it leads to bloat.

Yah, but, it's super annoying when the Developer is like "We are putting in this system to make things easier going forward"

Case in point, with Legendary Journey system in GW2. "We are putting in this system to make it easier for players to get precursors for legendary weapons" 

And then turn around halfway through the expansion, and be like "Oops, we discovered that we are not going to do that anymore"

And they are like "We are making Fractals the GoTo for Instance content because it will allow us to add content to it easier"

They Put out a fuckton of living world content that could be used in Fractals, but does not use any of it. Instead they make custom Dragon Response Missions and take 3 years to make some bullshit custom fractal that is buggy as shit, as opposed to using any of the content that they said was the whole point of fractals.

Like.. you know... what the hell.