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So it continues
Distopia
Member EpicPosts: 21,183
Over the last 24 or so months give or take a few either way. Just about every type of MMO you can think of has released. Anything from old school to hybrid you name it it has released. From AOC to STO the games that have released have covered just about any playstyle you can think of. What is the deal all of them have received the same reaction from the overall community. They all "suck", what is going on? Is this not an MMO crowd that visits this site?
Say what you will about any individual game, this is something bigger than that. Far bigger, when WOW is the only game still getting mass players. Something is seriously wrong in this genre. Maybe WOW is it, it's all this genre is ever going to amount to. Either way you have to consider WOW was not WOW when it released. It was something far smaller, with far less features. This is how MMO's evolve, take it or leave it. There's nothing that's going to change that obviously, if there was it would have happened by now.
Lets review a list of recent titles.
AOC
WAR
Aion
Darkfall
Fallen Earth
Tabula Rasa
STO
CO
I'm sure I'm forgetting some, anyway you get the picture.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
Comments
You can't build a palace on a crappy foundation, just ain't gonna happen. Until MMO makers focus on depth, quality and immersion first, the product is always going to be shallow with little lasting appeal. But why would they change when people still dish out cash for crap?
Why build a Ferrari when you can build a Pinto, call it a Ferrari, and sell it for the same price?
"Censorship is never over for those who have experienced it. It is a brand on the imagination that affects the individual who has suffered it, forever." - Noam Chomsky
Immersion is something that touches the individual not the masses, you have to first have an interest in being immersed. That can vary from feature to feature and mechanic to mechanic. Some get enthralled by graphics others by lore/story, some others by open features or sandbox play. That my friend is hard to perceive given the odds running against you in immersing everyone in your game.
Take a game like Fallen Earth IMO a very good foundation to build on and expand. The same could be said about WAR to an extent or AOC. Given your own expectations and preference. I can't say this is the reason every game is failing, there is bound to be more behind such failure.
I think a big problem is once you've played an MMO you've basically played them all. By that I mean there are certain things to expect an MMO to have and most have them to some extent. Why switch when you are enjoying your current game, to just level out in something similar to what you're playing? They are after all meant to be played long term, not switched between every other week. Though it would seem some play them in this manner.
I respectfully disagree this is the overall problem .
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
The picuture I get is that games are releasing too early without the core feature set and level of polish that the player base is expecting
WOW did spoil many people, and like it or not, a new game is going to have to be pretty solid (LoTRO did it right btw) and other games will have to learn to emulate those kinds of launches.
Odds are pretty good Blizzards future MMORPG's will also release in a pretty good state of polish and the game will probably be yet another big hit.
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
These are not solely games. They are also political systems. Most of these developers do not realize this and it is the biggest source of failure.
You can't just release some MMO when you think it seems fun and then hope there are enough people who think its fun to buy it and make a profit.
The population of the game will talk to each other. Even fan boys will notice stuff that is off. The player population's perception of things is incredibly important. Also the non-player's perception of things is also important for getting new players.
MMOs have to be socially solid. They have to be something where not only YOU would enjoy but that you think OTHER people would enjoy it. When asked to evaluate an MMO, almost every honest person will instinctively evaluate in a more general sense because it is a social enterprise.
This is one of the problems with Cryptic as a development house. They did it with CO and I think it will happen with STO. They just release when they think its pretty fun and decent. Then they get ripped apart and ridiculed socially.
You put something out to people individually that is fine and you can get away with a high rejection rate.
You put something out in the public square and you get a high rejection rate then THAT BECOMES THE TRUTH FOR EVERYONE. Even people who would have liked it will avoid it because by putting things in that public forum you have basically created a situation where the crowd, or sometimes the mob, will vastly influence decisions.
And I am not making this up either. This is the entire basis of the original base Google algorithm. Its called the "wisdom of the crowd". Basically it works on the assumption that something that a lot of people are talking about (ie. in internet terms linking to) will probably be of interest. Note: that does not mean good or bad, just of interest. In the case of Google this works out well because people are usually looking for things "of interest". In the case of MMOs maybe not so much because people inherently bring value judgements and emotions into it. But that does not matter because in the end every single one of us is hard wired to pay some head to "the wisdom of the crowd", even if sometimes its foolish.
It is fine to be a niche game, that most people say: "I would not play it but I can see it being successful as a niche game." Thus EvE succeeds. It is not alright to have people say "This could have been a niche game but its UI sucks and the end game is pretty much crap".
You do not need to create a game everyone LIKES. You MUST create game that is not ridiculed. Many (probably most) people do not find EvE fun, but they respect it. It does get ridiculed, everything does, but not that much and even non-players will come in and defend against the dumb ridicule. When people ridicule Champions Online for not having much of some content or bad grouping mechanics or Cryptic for changing powers willy-nilly like they smoke meth before they came in that day. The people who like the game can't really defend that. Same thing happened with AoC (but even worse because of promises not delivered). These games then get social stigmas attached and even people who might find them fun won't bother with them.
This is the nature of placing yourself completely in the public square. It is the nature of businesses like restaurants and bars and movies. And the game developers do not realize it and they release that are not just able to be ridiculed, but in many case many people feel as if THEY MUST ridicule them to be honest. That they do people a disservice if they did not state the UI sucks or something.
This is also why some foreign markets react seemingly radically different to some games. It is because of what is acceptable in the public square for that country or social context.
Each release in the past few years had an a major aspect of it that did in fact truly deserve a heavy heaping of ridicule. Some people say the communities have gotten worse and that haters abound. This is not fully true. People are simply more comfortable with the genre and what it offers, and when we separate out the stupid trolls, there are simply more people who understand that some of these aspects are not acceptable.
And this is what happens when people see unacceptable things in a public forum. You get booed, the old Bronx Cheer. Whether its some baseball player committing and error and fumbling the ball or if its AOC saying they have siege and DX10 at release and then not having it. These things provoke ridicule and that will provoke a social stigma.
A single player game would get good or bad reviews. But that is all there is to it. Not necessarily a whisper campaign helping or hurting it. That can happen. Some games success has been by word of mouth. But in general all things sold individually can have their flaws much more exposed. An MMO will always have a whisper campaign going on, probably multiple ones. It is the nature of the beast.
You cannot make an MMO that is seriously ridiculed to the point that the ridicule becomes accepted. This is the death of that MMO or any social endeavor. You can call it honor or face or whatever. But there is a reason people used to kill each other over this stuff. Some games, like WoW, are consistently ridiculed and generally about similar things. But that ridicule is not taken seriously or the game is too established for it to matter much without a large portion of the playing population also picking up that idea.
The main difference there is that Blizzard can never allow the ridicule to become fully accepted and since they are dominant that is much easier. Again this is a social thing and dominance is important for social acceptance, people will naturally believe that some ridicule is simply an attempt by "haters" to pull down the dominant entity. And this is not fully wrong as people will do this without even realizing because secretly they want to be dominant and would rather have no one dominant to keep the field open because even though they may not get that dominant position they at least have hope if the top man is pulled down. But most MMOs and the companies behind them are not dominant when they release. That is one advantage Blizzard had they were a big and more importantly, respected, name when WoW released then WoW got a lot of subs it was clearly dominant thus gaining an inherent buffer against ridicule, while also attracting more ridicule.
This is the nature of the public square. Demogouges, ridicule, dominance. These are political endeavors. It is a nasty business. Go in armed for bear and understanding that or you will get torn apart.
In end it says very little about the games themselves as the equation for single player game sales is not in play.
In my opinion some of the blame has to lie with the current MMO playerbase. We arent exactly the most patient or forgiving people. That being said, development doesnt stop at launch, but a game still needs to be of commercial quality on release to build off of in the months or years following. MMO companys need retention, but the way they are being developed currently isnt doing the job.
The picuture I get is that games are releasing too early without the core feature set and level of polish that the player base is expecting
WOW did spoil many people, and like it or not, a new game is going to have to be pretty solid (LoTRO did it right btw) and other games will have to learn to emulate those kinds of launches.
Odds are pretty good Blizzards future MMORPG's will also release in a pretty good state of polish and the game will probably be yet another big hit.
Of course each game I listed has problems or at least had them. How different is that than say EVE, AO, SWG (early on of course) and so many others? It's not that the games are any more buggy than they have been in the past, something changed between 04 and now. Players no longer accept growing with the development of a game. I guess we perceived it different in the past, because today it's called paying to beta.
Don't get me wrong individually those games had their fair share of annoyances. However Aion didn't have those problems and still received the same kind of backlash, a most disappointing game award as well.
I think the desigh has to change drastically for any future MMO to reach true success.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
I'm with the OP's covert thinking behind this thread; everyone's expectations are just too high.
I remember playing Devil May Cry and loving the fast-paced action play, but the moment an MMO comes out in the same vein people will complain about how grindy it is. This will never end either, I think many people are just fed up with MMOs and keep asking for more, only to hop game to game and say "ewwww, gimme more sir".
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See this guy here supports my point. He is phrasing things in a way that intuitively and instinctively express what is really going on.
Why did he say "palace" instead of "house". Houses are private and small and usually somewhat imperfect. Palace are large, public, they must appear perfect (although they are not) and shiny. They are SYMBOLS to their people. Similiarly they show the greater knowledge of the customer base. Similarly look at some of the other words used; "depth" and "immersion" these things are heavily dependent on symbols and social atmosphere and not really game mechanics. In fact certain implementations of these symbols have been terrible game mechanics, yet the reason this is still a problem is the developers lack of understanding of these symbols and therefore their inability to come up with appropriate game mechanics for them. They have thought this is about practical and simulation stuff. Its not. Its about people.
Most likely they understand that the fucked up group aggro Champions Online had at release is a foundational problem. Thus this person could easily have played CO and trashed it as having fundamental issues and not only would that be cogent but he would probably feel like it is his duty to inform people the game has such fundamental issues. Even though he conceivably might have found basis of the game fun (I doubt that is true for this particular poster, but as an example it is useful). Thus what you will get is a large number of people stating Champions Online has a fundamental problem, and a large number of people who understand what that means. And even if when they played the alone that would be fine. When they think about it in its social context their buying decision is vastly changed, because there are many people like this around and it weighs on them. It is no longer about whether a single person will have fun, it has become about persuasion. And some of this persuasion is not even really about people having an axe to grind. Even people who are inclined to like the game will have to admit to themselves that not only is a there a real flaw, but due to their knowledge of the genre that it is a fundamental flaw.
And who wants to be a part of a social endeavor that is fundamentally flawed? Especially when the ones who truly direct the endeavor, the developers, don't seem to realize this. The developers are not developers. They are leaders. Alot of this is about leadership. When you lose confidence in the leaders you will despair about the game because its not a game, its a social endeavor.
And thus this person, as is the way with a large number of people, inutively picks up on this. The features of these games, they way they are treated by the leaders, the developers, are symbols. What did it say to people when AOC held up sieges are huge and important and then they barely even worked? That symbolic failure reverberated on many levels. It was devastating. It was more than just a lie. I showed they were not serious. It showed they were not competent. It showed many things. Many inferences got made. That was a point of judgement. A point at which that game was ostrasized. Banished. Socially punished. That does not mean it can't redeem itself but that is a long hard road.
If this were a single player game this person would maybe not be this demanding. They would pay a few bucks for something they thought was fun but somewhat shallow. Put it into the context of an MMO and things change. Even a F2P one will change. It has very little to do with money even. It is mostly social.
You do not make a beautiful palace and cover it in dog shit. Technically the palace is just as sound and the inside may be completely awesome. But if you cover a palace in dog shit. Its worthless, because a palace is a symbol to those outside. Worse than worthless, you will be viewed as incompetent or insane.
This poster intuitively understands what most of these developer don't. They are essentially creating something like a palace. Not only must it be liveable, but it must also be a social symbol. As is the case with most intuitions it is not fully fleshed out and the obvious conclusion is leapt to, that they made a bad foundation or something. This is the case with some. For some other the problem was not the foundation. In fact he is making the same mistake these developers make. They think they create a good foundation and that is all they need as it is the key element everything else rests on. Unfortuntely no, because a palace is more than just a building.
This is a challenge many developers also fail to address they are dealing with customers who know what they are talking about and yet don't. What this person thinks is the foundation is different than what a developer will think, because the developers tend to be more functional and clearly this person is already dealing with the idea that the "foundation" is also social things like atmosphere. This word itself is misleading to people who are not understanding the idea itself. To this poster by foundation he means the nature of the thing itself. He has already leaped ahead to the understanding that covering a palace in dog shit is functionally the same as having a bad foundation, in both case you might well condemn the building. Something that this creation MUST have. To the developer foundation means things like a good engine and good class design, the stuff the game is built on the structure of it. This is the nature of an intuitive understanding of things there are many leaps of which people are not fully aware.
Essentially many customers understand the genre better than the developers on an intuitive level. This is actually normal. People who DO something generally develop a better intuitive understanding of something than people who THINK about that thing. Yet both parties believe they are speaking the same language and about the same thing. But are passing each other like two ships in the night, not quite on the same page.
These things are more than simple software enterprises where certain features may or may not meet some deadline. Some features and the way you sell them will become social symbols. And that is playing with dynamite. They don't realize they are playing with dynamite. They could be a great success, or a cult leader, or they might get burned at the stake as a witch. But they will not be just some guy who made a game and sold it. They don't realize what people are saying when they make statements like the above poster. They think they created a solid foundation; for a game or maybe even a small group or maybe even a guild. But in reality they have created a social enclave with all the gossip and symbols and what not. All the petty bullshit and all the potential nobility of such things is part and parcel of it. The fact of the matter is things like gossip have pulled down great leaders. And they pull down these games. Lack of leadership, lying, etc these things have all destroyed various great leaders even though their armies or countries were fundamentally sound. And that is because they simply did not realize or lost sight that these things ARE part of the army or country or MMO.
In the end they are doing dumb things that you would never actually do socially. You do not go out in a tuxedo and walk around with your zipper open and your dick hanging out and think its perfectly alright. "Dude, um, your schlong is hanging out". "Naw man its ok I got this sweet tux on." That is what MMO devs have been doing. But they think they are just hanging at home with boxer shorts on or hanging out with some friend wearing a ratty pair of sweatpants and its all fine. Its not all fine because whether they realize it or not that is not what they are doing. And there are a lot of people like the above poster who are telling them that but they do not understand.
MMORPGs have become too much about potential customers than actual customers. I think that it's not so much the developer's fault, but the fault of those above them calling the shots.
Older mmorpgs were excellent games, because they were living and breathing worlds. Take Asheron's Call for example. There wasn't much to do outside of killing stuff and limited crafting. Over time, Turbine added to their ongoing story arch and with that they also added some very memorable quests. The NPC's didn't have !'s over their heads either. The Town Criers gave crytpic hints as to what was going on in the world, but you either had to explore the world or read a fan site to find the latest quests. When I played AC, I wasn't concerned about reaching end game, or max level, because the game itself was a journey and was fun.
Asheron's Call 2 wasn't about exploration. It was about getting to max level to partake in some limited End Game content until they added a virtually limitless leveling system. However, quests were more or less handed to you and were tracked. The story archs were shallow, and the game felt more like a game and less like a world.
WoW built upon the idea of AC2 and the other positives of many of the existing mmorpgs of the time. They added a lot of polish and with the WarCraft/Blizzard name attached, the game became an instant success. WoW wasn't as themeparky to begin with, but as the game went on, the dev team made things more efficient. Both because of player demand and because of something called money.
WoW is funding pretty much every other project for Blizzard now.
Too many greedy folks who control the cash want their own WoW like cash cow. What they fail to realize is that you can't copy the success that WoW has. You have to generate an equivalent success with a different product. Secondly, they have to realize that in order to generate a WoW like success, that it's going to cost a lot of money and take a lot of time. Far too many mmorpgs as of late are being released with the pre-WoW mentality of just getting the game out and building upon it and hoping to make a profit.
The other issue is that these games are way overhyped. If these idiots would just shut the hell up and let the game be judged upon it's merits and not upon the failed promises, their games would be better received.
All these games suffer from min/max domination in one form or another.
I already accept responsibility that the game I chose to begin the genre with, Asherons Call 2, suffered from min/maxing.
Heck, even the EQ2 advertisement on this site shows how min/max has infiltrated.
Max the Fun
Min the Grind
People want a choice to play the game not the mechanics.
The mechanics have taken over. Players and devs share in this doom.
More examples of how min/maxing have destroyed the genre:
The everlasting need for +stat on gear, faction bars, faction items, and ET cetera. (Redeploy the grind from level to these monstrosities)
Life bars in the thousands of health/HP instead of lower D&D levels. (If I wanted to play with mathematics, I'd stay with vectors and logarithms in the real world)
Guides on the internet people expect you to read aka know the area before you run it. (Destroys exploration)
Rush the run. (Destroys exploration, immersion especially when reading a quest, and socializing)
AC2 Player RIP Final Death Jan 31st 2017
Refugee of Auberean
Refugee of Dereth
I hope you realize that you've just given the companies the go-ahead to suppress alternative dialogue.
While they do own the game and servers, you can't necessarily sign away your rights.
In the extreme this is like granting someone rights to commit crimes because it's on private property.
People have left this site because mods have been over zealous in maintaining positive coverage for their advertisers. This is why you see mention of the escapist forums. AoC even had mods do controversial things, in game and the official forum that hurt its stigma. Middle Earth Online under Vevendi, before it became LOTRO, had mod crackdowns and people started turning away from it too. (I was one who left that forum but did try LOTRO)
I think you're trying to reach a middle ground but companies and sites can take this to an extreme.
AC2 Player RIP Final Death Jan 31st 2017
Refugee of Auberean
Refugee of Dereth
No offense but it did have elements of exploration.
Treasure hunts
Search for resources (Later update took away seeing resources immediately)
Winding roads (yes it suffered from portals for quick transport)
Rushing to Chaos Portal, end game, and through quests is a min-max trait. (Most efficient way to "X")
I enjoyed the cutscenes after vaults, reading about what happened to Asheron, the heroes of the other factions, and why Dereth needed heroes.
I think the game was ahead of its time for what it offered.
Lastly, I think it encouraged socializing with bartering before the consignment rebuilding event.
AC2 Player RIP Final Death Jan 31st 2017
Refugee of Auberean
Refugee of Dereth