We need more quality mmos and less quantity. You take a long look at the game list on this site and if you can pick out 10 quality mmos then you get a gold medal. The mmo genre has become more of a money making philosophy than making a great game philosophy. There is only a small handful of devlopers that make me confifdent in buying their games each year.
We need more quality mmos and less quantity. You take a long look at the game list on this site and if you can pick out 10 quality mmos then you get a gold medal. The mmo genre has become more of a money making philosophy than making a great game philosophy. There is only a small handful of devlopers that make me confifdent in buying their games each year.
This is a forum perception only. Please reference my sig.
---------- "Anyone posting on this forum is not an average user, and there for any opinions about the game are going to be overly critical compared to an average users opinions." - Me
"Hello person posting on a site specifically for MMO's in a thread on a sub forum specifically for a particular game talking about meta features and making comparisons to other titles in the genre, and their meta features.
its all the spoonfed playerbases faults anyways. If everyone wants to be able to solo all the time then don't expect good meaningful pve. If everyone wants to be able to get all the gear super easy and fast, then don't expect good PvE. Oh and PvP? You can't have PvP and good PvE its been proven time and time again. Balancing for PvP makes PvE lame cause everyone has to be everything so that PvP is balanced. PvE suffers from this greatly. Again look at FFxi, no PvP and Forced grouping = good PvE
This. FFXI has much slower combat than most 'popular' MMOs yet it arguably has the most in-depth and 'fun' system out there.
I'll also point out that the Korean developers are making huge strides with the genre atm. They're distinctly turning more towards action/platform games, dropping targetting altogether and making combat a much more active affair, very similarly to Zelda in many respects. Western players probably still won't like these games because they'll likely still cling to the fundamentals of Korean MMOs - grind grind grind. But I'm hoping devs over here try to incorporate the new combat mechanics the Koreans are trying.
All I can speak for is myself and my tastes. What is missing is challenge and community. Everquest did a lot of things right and of course quite a few things wrong.
One of the things I would like to see from Everquest in today's MMO is the danger factor brought back to the game. This can be in many forms like death penalty, outdoor environment, etc.
The next thing I would like to see is more public dungeons. This is one of the many ways to create community. I met so many new people in dungeons who later became friends.
I feel the game should have a crafted economy with decay. The gear should not be the main focus of the game. A crafted economy creates community if you get rid of the EVIL Auction House.
What we need is player cities with personal business vendors to sell our wares. This again creates community.
Death penalty. Today's death penalty is a joke and needs to be reworked. This ties in to the danger factory that is missing in today's MMO.
We need a more open world not a funnel from point A to Z.
Another game that we should copy some things from is Star Wars Galaxies. IMHO this was the number one game that created community that I ever played. A lot of the discussion from above is some game play from Star Wars Galaxies.
A few things that come to mind is player camps in the wilds, taverns with player characters that entertain and give many types of buffs, crafting shops to sell wares. mini games like multi player poker, black jack, etc.
With that said I feel were starting to see a turn of events lately. All the new gamers that were brought in by wow that had the fast food mentality are now getting tired of McDonalds and catching up to us that had out grown it a long time ago.
I've banged on about this before but I'll try and be concise this time. There are two things which would make a massive difference if factored into the design of an mmo:
1) When considering the game world, factor in more elements than players and monsters. Even terrain is barely a factor in the mechanics of most game-worlds. Make other hazards, moving landscapes, player-created items etc a major part of the game design, so that each part revolves around the others, and you might finally have something other than: Player-kills monster-gets treasure.
Consider the rogue in WoW: It was created to fulfill all the interesting necessities of an rpg world, such as detecting and removing traps, picking locks and scouting ahead. I watched as all these interesting elements were eroded away until you had at last a dps class almost indistinguishable from the others. Why did it happen? No attention was given to anything other than the class' combat abilities, which meant that the other world features withered and fell off, a little like the extinction of species reducing biodiversity. The players and designers are both at fault for letting it come to that.
2) Randomize: I'm talking about randomizing more than just combat dice rolls and loot drops. With rare exceptions, why is this as far as designers go? Is it will, or ego, or is it just too hard for them? Randomizing of major game features is the only way to guarantee a non-repetitive experience. It has to be done well; A combination of hand-designed, and randomized components, and randomized-components-within-components will make all the difference. Been to this dungeon before? Players will still have to be careful because the trap will not be in the same place it was last time. And its a different type of trap. And its in the middle of a group of monsters this time. Etc...
Good article, MMOs are not only easy today, they lack innovation and never forces the players to think.
Arenanets dynamic world and Biowares focus on story might help the genre but we need a combat system that is more flexible.
Bosses with random abilities and stats is another possibility to force the players to think that would also add something to the game, it might sometimes make the fights harder but it is easy to make and with many options it would be harder to just check out how you kill the boss on wiki.
MMOs could learn a lot of things from pen and paper RPGs, both about combat and about character development.
I may just never understand. Why even play the game if you know exactly what mobs gonna be where what quest your gonna do what loot your gonna get and who your gonna do it with? Not to mention the implied fact that you will win. It is, as we call in mathematics, a solved problem. The fun is in UNcertainty.
Maybe peoples lives are already so uncertain they just want something they can depend on?
MMORPG's are no longer about MMO nor RPG, but about single player experiences wrapped up in a multipler existance. Gone are the games like Asheron's Call, EverQuest and Dark Age of Camelot that actually pulled people together in a unique way that made a player yearn for more of the same. World of Warcraft is actually trying to remedy that with the dungeon finder system, but this is not enough.
We need renovation of the game mechanics as a whole and not just part of it. We need developers to look beyond what was done and make it better and better. We need deeper quest. We need whole, seamless worlds to explore. We need them to pay attention to the small details of a game and not just the big things. We need new game mechanics that break the current class and level system that has pretty much stagnated this genre since day one.
Some day someone will create a perisitent online world that uses new game mechanics, new combat system, allows a player to really get into their character like never before. I just hope it comes out long before I care any more.
I think the games are way too easy, but i blame that on the players, it's practically what they've asked for. Players just want to get to endgame as fast as they possibly can. There is no rp in an mmorpg. Hardly anybody ever reads a quest, they just scroll to the bottom to see just how many rats they got kill and take off.
All most people care about is the pvp. And thats fine but why do game dev's waste their time making big games. They should just have one area and let everybody start at lvl 50 or whatever and let them go at it.
The funniest thing is when a new mmorpg comes out, 3 weeks later someone has already reached endgame and is complaining about lack of endgame content. They dont play the games to enjoy it, they just treat it like a competition to reach endgame first.
2) Randomize: I'm talking about randomizing more than just combat dice rolls and loot drops. With rare exceptions, why is this as far as designers go? Is it will, or ego, or is it just too hard for them? Randomizing of major game features is the only way to guarantee a non-repetitive experience. It has to be done well; A combination of hand-designed, and randomized components, and randomized-components-within-components will make all the difference. Been to this dungeon before? Players will still have to be careful because the trap will not be in the same place it was last time. And its a different type of trap. And its in the middle of a group of monsters this time. Etc...
I don't think randomisation as in make it random, more random, and most random is the way to go, as a mean to spice up the environment it is a viable tool however as means to an end it might as well be a dead end. What mmos need is dynamics, mechanics that allow to create avalanches yet also tools to controll and guide those avalanches.
That is one thing that makes sandbox games interesting, the potential each player has to start an avalanche as well as the potential each player has to stop an avalanche.
To me it seems the more players are boasting on what needs to be in the "next greatest MMORPG" the more they just perpetuate the mediocre cycle of gameplay. Lest we not forget, Zelda was created by a developer too. The Elder Scrolls, the Halo series, Ratchet and Clank, Mario Kart; All these games were created and based upon a few very simple principles that created an abstract challenging and exciting gameplay choice for players regardless of playstyle.
The "catch all" phenomenon that MMO developers employ when creating games is still new in terms of its genre-life-span, but it seems to be progressing at a much slower rate.
To categorize the problems with MMOs in general, you have to take into account more than just a stale genre. The players are stale. The platform is abnormally diverse. They aren't programming for a single system, they are programming for variations of many different systems. They are dealing with a volatile social network of entitled enthusiasts each trying to shape the game into their own. They have to constantly fight for market share in the shadow of other games promising a revenue that will never be guaranteed.
Either way you look at it, the MMO genre right now is a gamble. Noone can guarantee what will be popular next, and no developer wants to risk the chance of waning subscriptions or popularity, so they make the mistake of listening to forum proponents and keyboard-knuckle scrapers, thinking that employing their ideas along with time tested gameplay mechanics will yield the most effective results. Gone are the days an MMO developer can utilize their own creative genius to create something worth playing. Instead we get left with underfunded pipe dreams, and rushed *proposed* high revenue generators, in hopes that one of them might do something right for once. The genre is becoming sickening.
This article touches on the basic reasons why MMORPGs were a niche market for so long while other video game genres sold millions.
'Pulling out from the bag of tricks' of other video game genres is the same as simply making MMORPGs more fun. And by fun, that means the mainstream gamer definition of fun. The kind of fun you get playing God of War or Baldur's Gate or Resident Evil or any such successful games. Not the hardcore, old-school MMORPG player definition of 'fun' which is outlined in all the flaws listed the article.
Old-school players endured all those flaws in previous MMORPGs. Old-school players PAID for games full of those flaws and that convinced developers that they could make a profit with those flaws rather than *fixing* them. So those flaws became tradition in MMORPGs that last to this day.
And becasue of that any modern MMORPG that actually tries to use that bag of tricks from other video games will be derided by those same old school MMORPG players as not being a true MMORPG and ruining the genre.
Frankly, the genre needs to do exactly what this article proposes and look toward other genres to see how to evolve and actually become as much fun and appealing as those games are to mainstream gamers. Maybe if old school MMORPGs like Ultima Online and Everquest had tried to do that earlier, there never would have been the need for this kind of article in the first place.
I got the same feeling as in the article while playing Ys VII The Oath in Felghana (with an english patch because it's a japanese game)
And although bosses are terribly hard even on normal and can make you angry with their patterns and make you die and retry the fights several times after you beat it you want another awesome fight :P
I had a similar experience recently when I borrowed a copy of Collossus from a friend. It was the first single player I had played in almost 5 years besides Guitar Hero and I can't say that I have had more fun with any other game in the last decade. It surprised me that a dated game on a dated system made my weekend. At first I thought an MMO would instantly go gold if it could capture even a fraction of the fun I had playing that game but realized we may never see such a game because people want to feel like a winner without having done much to deserve it.
People have been tricked into believing that you don't actually have to win anything to feel like a winner. Playing WOW reminded me of playing one of two slot machines. The first one is called 'dungeon with a GS less than you have'. This is the one most people play. You put in your time/money, pull the lever and watch the flashing lights. You've paid the price, put in the effort but the house usually wins and you get nothing. The other machine is called 'dungeon with a higher GS than you have'. This one is EXACTLY like the other one but now you get the awesome, gut wrenching tension of hoping some jackass doesn't trip over the cord mid pull and reward you with the pleasure of trying again. Either you play the no effort machine with little risks, little effort and very little chance at reward or you play the machine with slightly more risks, slightly more effort and very little chance at reward. The rewards you do finally get will never equal the time you had to put into getting them and when you've finally got every prize that machine has to offer? You get to move over to the next set of machines that look only slightly different but have the exact same mechanics, the same risks, the same effort and the still super awesome chance to win nothing at all.
I understand why you get nothing 99% of the time, its because you don't have to put any effort into it so you don't deserve anything in return. To me, saying 'I WIN!' when you get a dead boss with no effort and nothing in return is the same thing as saying 'I WIN NOTHING'. People don't games like video poker to win, they play for the prospect of the chance at maybe winning. Why do you think there are more people playing Farmville than there are Twitter accounts? Because people would rather put in almost no effort for the eventuality of maybe getting something in return.
Todays mmo devs did this to themselves. In choosing to make mmos solo centric they pulled the wool from the eyes of the mmo gamer. At the start of the mmo genre our games were nothing but big worlds filled with mobs of varying difficulty. It was pretty simple yet through social interactions the terrible content was masked. Now that every game let you solo easily we now notice the horrid fetch quests, the grinds, the lack of a good story. Now we put these games up against single player adventures.
Oh well, These devs deserve the criticism.
Something like that.
I'll say that there once was a time when I thought I could never go back to single player games. After playing mmorpg's the single player games felt so empty and lifeless.
But now mmo's are so solo centric and lacking in any kind of player interactions that they feel dead too. So it's a choice between a lifeless game with a crappy single player experience (mmo) or a lifeless game with a better single player experience (the true single player game). Hmm, which will I choose?
The reason MMORPGs aren't fun is because they're designed for mass amounts of players once they reach the end level.
It has to seriously be looked at and redesigned because of the reasons given in this article AND because end game raiding is only based on a stratified method of choosing players (guilds). If developers would use a random and/or systematic approach to picking players for end game raiding, it would then become a truly massively multiplayer experience.
World of Warcraft has a new systematic approach to joining 5 man content called the Dungeon Finder. It worked wonders for the 5 man content. The Blizzard developers then chose to leave the Dungeon Finder out of raid content. I believe this happened because of the huge misconception that is hurting the MMORPG community:
The MMORPG community think people who don't know each other can't coordinate in games. That it has to be a guild or voice chat coordinated effort. This is 100% wrong.
As for the leveling experience, that's another story. As another user pointed out, it's very solo centric. I remember Dark Age of Camelot in the first year after its launch was very group centric in order to survive and level up. It made the game incredibly hard and challenging; but players still attempted to solo for the thrill, so there's a balance between solo and group gameplay in MMORPGs.
Dark Age of Camelot was also criticised in its early days for having insane down times in which you had to wait 5-10 minutes for a player's health to regenerate without the use of a healer. Mana too. Thus, we have World of Warcraft which introduced 30 second 100% health food and potions.
MMORPGs are still quite new. It takes a long time to make just one. They're huge. I imagine in 10-20 years we'll have these problems figured out.
I think a large issue here is the word "skill" and the difficulty involved in defining it. For non-MMO titles and particularly non-RPG titles, it's not as hard because most of those games involve a significant amount of twitch. No matter what kind of game you're playing, you have to take stock of the situation, decide on a course of action, and then successfully execute that action. If you can do these three things quickly and consistently with a high degree of success, you are considered to have skill. If you happen to be playing a real-time strategy game, you may engage in these observations and actions over the course of several minutes. In a first-person shooter, it's probably more like a few seconds, and in a fighting game every single instant requires your attention and reflexive response.
But in the genre that MMOs are based off of (console RPGs or pencil-n-paper RPGs, take your pick), there's no twitch involved at all. You've got all day to make observations and decide on a course of action if you need it. Likewise, no hand-eye coordination is required, so the execution part of the skill trio is not present. All you do is observe what is going on, and decide what to do next. "Skill" comes purely from being a good decision maker. Understanding all of your options, understanding your situation, and predicting which action will have the best effect is all that matters.
MMOs are a step removed from that — the combat is real-time so you do not have the luxury of thinking for minutes about what to do. But they're not twitch games either. When it comes to MMOs, where does the skill lie? What makes an MMO encounter "hard"? Unfortunately, most of it comes down to preparation. It's unacceptable for an MMO combat to come down to twitch skills, and it sucks to have it come down to luck (you lose if the enemy uses this skill twice in a row, you win if it doesn't), so ultimately the game MUST allow you to win if you know what to do and are prepared to do it. Be this level. Invite these classes. Bring these pots and scrolls. Hotkey this ability. When this happens, do this. When that happens, do that. Victory. If you lose, it must be because you weren't prepared and didn't know what to do and when. If you lost because your reflexes weren't good enough, most would consider that a failure on the developers' part for requiring twitch skills. If you lost because you were unlucky, again, developers' fault and sucky game.
And what makes this all a crapshoot is that you are 100% expected to be prepared for whatever you're about to get yourself into. The makers of Zelda assume that you're going into each dungeon and each fight completely blind, and they so they require no advance preparation... only good observation, decisions, and reflexes. (If you're prepared because you're reading a guide as you play, that's not their concern; you're just ruining your own experience.) The makers of MMOs must assume the exact opposite: that you are going into each dungeon and each fight fully prepared with the knowledge and resources required to beat it. Your party members demand no less of you either. This is why it's so difficult to meaningfully put "hard" (and therefore genuinely rewarding) PvE encounters into MMOs; the only measure of skill is whether you have had someone explain how to beat it, and the developers must fully expect that you have already done that.
Even though I don't know enough UnrealScript do actually make anything close to a game yet and my knowledge of UE3 is still very limited, I still have a general knowledge of how I'd pull the following off due to working in other languages... even if they were basic.
Even though the fact it's payware hasn't gotten me to try it, Spellborn made something very interesting possible from what I heard. When merging MMO and FPS and including real time combat while not creating an innovative way to pull it off, you're likely to have a dead game on your hands due to lag. There's ways around this... like using peer to peer connections-- something fairly easy to do in an instanced area. In a big, open world however, it can turn into a nightmare real fast unless you can open and close connections without the burp that in instanced games, is known as entry lag. The alternative is to just have everything go through the server first-- it also stops hackers more effectively, but also is more than capable of doubling your ping. In a fun, hack and slash game where you do more than cast lock-on fireballs at people, this can lead to alot of angry players. Currently, I'm contemplating a solution for the entry lag issue with peer to peer connections without compromising a connection to the server as well to monitor actions. The hacking issue would also need some overthinking done to it...
As for the interface itself... I don't know what in it hasn't been done before. You point and click from a first or third person prospective with fancy crosshairs telling you where your bullet, arrow, or ball of flaming gas will go. Stats apply accordingly... except now, it's a moving bullet that follows a pattern-- not an amination that's strictly for effect. Also the hit rating stat and crit stats would need to be taken out... maybe... or replaced with a devistating-effect option since criticals in general in action games are just headshots.
As for the monster issue, where bosses respawn... there really isn't a plausible workaround for it outside of instancing. WoW did it seamlessly in WoTLK, but it was still instancing. My take would be to use instancing... scarcely and only when absolutely needed. Like... if you're facing a boss that's at the end of a 10 quest chain or a zone boss or something bigger than the terrorizing imp that stole Johnny's wallet. Likewise, group quests should be entirely optional-- about half of the story bosses should be soloable. As for quests themselves, making them all commit to a large story without tightly constraining the playerbase to a linear story without spending way too much time on a quest system seems impossible too.
As someone who firmly believes a good pistoleer can take down a rocketeer twice his level if he really is good enough... stats, though should stay, would need to be done in such that they don't overcome gameplay. Getting to that point, however... I'm afraid the easiest way to do so would be with constant testing and tweaking. From my experience... with the unreal engine, that isn't as easy as it seems. Hopefully UE4 is different when it comes out.
People that put themselves above others put me in a bad mood. http://www.surrealtwilight.com/index.php ^Has nothing to do with that retarded Vampire Novel Series, I swear!^
Best explained. I started MMOing before they were big, Fighter Ace and alot of large scale WW2 sims, a game 10-six came about which was an around the clock game. You had to protect what was yours 24/7 one way or another.
Then came DAOC my first fantasy based MMO. I found it cool to gain power with every level be it combat styles or spells. My goal was to catch those whose level made them unbeatable by me in a PVP scenario. My goal was not to necessarily be better but to be on even ground. After many , many hours of mindless grinding i achieved max level, Epic armor which was as good as you could get and into the fight i went.
I met 100s of friends in the grind game. Most times unintentional. We all just needed help from one another. It was the way of things. Helping each other be it strangers or not. The alure of the game was leveling, becoming just a little more powerful then a friend or foe . At max level we could just PVP. What a blast that was. What made it even better was the social element behind it all. The comraderie of it all. The competitive element.
Eventually the social element post WOW fell out. It still isn't there anymore so we kill bears, we quest endlessly for gear , rinse and repeat only this time there is no social environment. The social environment is what keeps people playing with the game interest is completely extinct. You can log into any modern day game and not a soul will speak to you just because they need you to help them advance because they don't need anybody.
So I'm gameless, I have no interest or intention of EVER playing another kill and quest MMO. I want to log in , go PVP on an even playing field and just have fun. Nothing more, nothing less. I'm past earning my place. I'm looking for an actual intellectual gaming experience. I'm looking for a game that puts community first above all even the game. I'm beyond burn out of the typical MMO as we know it. I'm officially retired until a title is released that can offer me the experience PVP wise right out of the box that i so desire.
Todays mmo devs did this to themselves. In choosing to make mmos solo centric they pulled the wool from the eyes of the mmo gamer. At the start of the mmo genre our games were nothing but big worlds filled with mobs of varying difficulty. It was pretty simple yet through social interactions the terrible content was masked. Now that every game let you solo easily we now notice the horrid fetch quests, the grinds, the lack of a good story. Now we put these games up against single player adventures.
Oh well, These devs deserve the criticism.
Something like that.
I'll say that there once was a time when I thought I could never go back to single player games. After playing mmorpg's the single player games felt so empty and lifeless.
But now mmo's are so solo centric and lacking in any kind of player interactions that they feel dead too. So it's a choice between a lifeless game with a crappy single player experience (mmo) or a lifeless game with a better single player experience (the true single player game). Hmm, which will I choose?
I just don't understand it.
For me the two features mmos had that kept me playing instead of single player games were Social interaction and Character advancement. Single player games could not touch these aspects.
So I don't get why today's mmos would forgo the majority of social interaction and make a mmo solo centric. Playing with hundreds of other people is a mmos thing. Yet now these games are feeling like watered down single player rpgs.
Before anyone tells me its because people have lives. the older mmos let us solo also. They did a great job of making a game accessible for the solo minded player yet making it attractive to play with other people. It was balanced.
As an example Saga of Ryzom does this. I can solo the entire time but if i teamed up i would have a much easier time through less downtime, more Xp per hour and the actual conversation moving things along.
That's how mmos should be, I don't think the devs get it.
Extremely well thought out article! You echoed my sediments spot on. While MMOs are my game of choice, I get the same deja vu every time I play another new one.
I'm hoping SW:TOR changes that, but who knows if it will....
I also found this a great article. I myself have been playing MMOs since the start of EQ. They certainly have lost something. I played Mass Effect and Mass Effect 2 recently because a friend told me to.. Best choice ive made in a long time. GREAT games. Awesome story in both. ME was epic.
I think back to EQ1. I still think a new version of that style of game WOULD be popular. It was the only MMO that i can remember feeling i accomplished something. Camping a mob for 8 hours waiting for it to spawn may not be the most fun, but I do remember when he did spawn, and i killed him how happy i was.
I agree there is no sense of danger in games anymore either. You dont see level 40 sand giants walking around in an area made for the 10-20 range. Or how about camping the Animals in Runes of Kunark with people constanly keeping an eye on the Dragoons that could come kill you at anytime. I know my heart was pumping many times running my butt to the zone line.
I dont know what MMOs can do really. Im pretty burnt out on them all myself. Im sticking with my solo player games till i hear something promising. Dragon Age is next on my list. Im hoping the story is as good and Biowares Mass Effect games
Comments
We need more quality mmos and less quantity. You take a long look at the game list on this site and if you can pick out 10 quality mmos then you get a gold medal. The mmo genre has become more of a money making philosophy than making a great game philosophy. There is only a small handful of devlopers that make me confifdent in buying their games each year.
This is a forum perception only. Please reference my sig.
----------
"Anyone posting on this forum is not an average user, and there for any opinions about the game are going to be overly critical compared to an average users opinions." - Me
"No, your wrong.." - Random user #123
"Hello person posting on a site specifically for MMO's in a thread on a sub forum specifically for a particular game talking about meta features and making comparisons to other titles in the genre, and their meta features.
How are you?" -Me
This. FFXI has much slower combat than most 'popular' MMOs yet it arguably has the most in-depth and 'fun' system out there.
I'll also point out that the Korean developers are making huge strides with the genre atm. They're distinctly turning more towards action/platform games, dropping targetting altogether and making combat a much more active affair, very similarly to Zelda in many respects. Western players probably still won't like these games because they'll likely still cling to the fundamentals of Korean MMOs - grind grind grind. But I'm hoping devs over here try to incorporate the new combat mechanics the Koreans are trying.
All I can say is after 10 years, I am playin Civ4 and CivRev. Hope springs eternal, but I need to have some fun in between.
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Rose-lipped maidens,
Light-foot lads...
All I can speak for is myself and my tastes. What is missing is challenge and community. Everquest did a lot of things right and of course quite a few things wrong.
One of the things I would like to see from Everquest in today's MMO is the danger factor brought back to the game. This can be in many forms like death penalty, outdoor environment, etc.
The next thing I would like to see is more public dungeons. This is one of the many ways to create community. I met so many new people in dungeons who later became friends.
I feel the game should have a crafted economy with decay. The gear should not be the main focus of the game. A crafted economy creates community if you get rid of the EVIL Auction House.
What we need is player cities with personal business vendors to sell our wares. This again creates community.
Death penalty. Today's death penalty is a joke and needs to be reworked. This ties in to the danger factory that is missing in today's MMO.
We need a more open world not a funnel from point A to Z.
Another game that we should copy some things from is Star Wars Galaxies. IMHO this was the number one game that created community that I ever played. A lot of the discussion from above is some game play from Star Wars Galaxies.
A few things that come to mind is player camps in the wilds, taverns with player characters that entertain and give many types of buffs, crafting shops to sell wares. mini games like multi player poker, black jack, etc.
With that said I feel were starting to see a turn of events lately. All the new gamers that were brought in by wow that had the fast food mentality are now getting tired of McDonalds and catching up to us that had out grown it a long time ago.
I've banged on about this before but I'll try and be concise this time. There are two things which would make a massive difference if factored into the design of an mmo:
1) When considering the game world, factor in more elements than players and monsters. Even terrain is barely a factor in the mechanics of most game-worlds. Make other hazards, moving landscapes, player-created items etc a major part of the game design, so that each part revolves around the others, and you might finally have something other than: Player-kills monster-gets treasure.
Consider the rogue in WoW: It was created to fulfill all the interesting necessities of an rpg world, such as detecting and removing traps, picking locks and scouting ahead. I watched as all these interesting elements were eroded away until you had at last a dps class almost indistinguishable from the others. Why did it happen? No attention was given to anything other than the class' combat abilities, which meant that the other world features withered and fell off, a little like the extinction of species reducing biodiversity. The players and designers are both at fault for letting it come to that.
2) Randomize: I'm talking about randomizing more than just combat dice rolls and loot drops. With rare exceptions, why is this as far as designers go? Is it will, or ego, or is it just too hard for them? Randomizing of major game features is the only way to guarantee a non-repetitive experience. It has to be done well; A combination of hand-designed, and randomized components, and randomized-components-within-components will make all the difference. Been to this dungeon before? Players will still have to be careful because the trap will not be in the same place it was last time. And its a different type of trap. And its in the middle of a group of monsters this time. Etc...
Good article, MMOs are not only easy today, they lack innovation and never forces the players to think.
Arenanets dynamic world and Biowares focus on story might help the genre but we need a combat system that is more flexible.
Bosses with random abilities and stats is another possibility to force the players to think that would also add something to the game, it might sometimes make the fights harder but it is easy to make and with many options it would be harder to just check out how you kill the boss on wiki.
MMOs could learn a lot of things from pen and paper RPGs, both about combat and about character development.
I may just never understand. Why even play the game if you know exactly what mobs gonna be where what quest your gonna do what loot your gonna get and who your gonna do it with? Not to mention the implied fact that you will win. It is, as we call in mathematics, a solved problem. The fun is in UNcertainty.
Maybe peoples lives are already so uncertain they just want something they can depend on?
My take.
MMORPG's are no longer about MMO nor RPG, but about single player experiences wrapped up in a multipler existance. Gone are the games like Asheron's Call, EverQuest and Dark Age of Camelot that actually pulled people together in a unique way that made a player yearn for more of the same. World of Warcraft is actually trying to remedy that with the dungeon finder system, but this is not enough.
We need renovation of the game mechanics as a whole and not just part of it. We need developers to look beyond what was done and make it better and better. We need deeper quest. We need whole, seamless worlds to explore. We need them to pay attention to the small details of a game and not just the big things. We need new game mechanics that break the current class and level system that has pretty much stagnated this genre since day one.
Some day someone will create a perisitent online world that uses new game mechanics, new combat system, allows a player to really get into their character like never before. I just hope it comes out long before I care any more.
I think the games are way too easy, but i blame that on the players, it's practically what they've asked for. Players just want to get to endgame as fast as they possibly can. There is no rp in an mmorpg. Hardly anybody ever reads a quest, they just scroll to the bottom to see just how many rats they got kill and take off.
All most people care about is the pvp. And thats fine but why do game dev's waste their time making big games. They should just have one area and let everybody start at lvl 50 or whatever and let them go at it.
The funniest thing is when a new mmorpg comes out, 3 weeks later someone has already reached endgame and is complaining about lack of endgame content. They dont play the games to enjoy it, they just treat it like a competition to reach endgame first.
I don't think randomisation as in make it random, more random, and most random is the way to go, as a mean to spice up the environment it is a viable tool however as means to an end it might as well be a dead end. What mmos need is dynamics, mechanics that allow to create avalanches yet also tools to controll and guide those avalanches.
That is one thing that makes sandbox games interesting, the potential each player has to start an avalanche as well as the potential each player has to stop an avalanche.
To me it seems the more players are boasting on what needs to be in the "next greatest MMORPG" the more they just perpetuate the mediocre cycle of gameplay. Lest we not forget, Zelda was created by a developer too. The Elder Scrolls, the Halo series, Ratchet and Clank, Mario Kart; All these games were created and based upon a few very simple principles that created an abstract challenging and exciting gameplay choice for players regardless of playstyle.
The "catch all" phenomenon that MMO developers employ when creating games is still new in terms of its genre-life-span, but it seems to be progressing at a much slower rate.
To categorize the problems with MMOs in general, you have to take into account more than just a stale genre. The players are stale. The platform is abnormally diverse. They aren't programming for a single system, they are programming for variations of many different systems. They are dealing with a volatile social network of entitled enthusiasts each trying to shape the game into their own. They have to constantly fight for market share in the shadow of other games promising a revenue that will never be guaranteed.
Either way you look at it, the MMO genre right now is a gamble. Noone can guarantee what will be popular next, and no developer wants to risk the chance of waning subscriptions or popularity, so they make the mistake of listening to forum proponents and keyboard-knuckle scrapers, thinking that employing their ideas along with time tested gameplay mechanics will yield the most effective results. Gone are the days an MMO developer can utilize their own creative genius to create something worth playing. Instead we get left with underfunded pipe dreams, and rushed *proposed* high revenue generators, in hopes that one of them might do something right for once. The genre is becoming sickening.
This article touches on the basic reasons why MMORPGs were a niche market for so long while other video game genres sold millions.
'Pulling out from the bag of tricks' of other video game genres is the same as simply making MMORPGs more fun. And by fun, that means the mainstream gamer definition of fun. The kind of fun you get playing God of War or Baldur's Gate or Resident Evil or any such successful games. Not the hardcore, old-school MMORPG player definition of 'fun' which is outlined in all the flaws listed the article.
Old-school players endured all those flaws in previous MMORPGs. Old-school players PAID for games full of those flaws and that convinced developers that they could make a profit with those flaws rather than *fixing* them. So those flaws became tradition in MMORPGs that last to this day.
And becasue of that any modern MMORPG that actually tries to use that bag of tricks from other video games will be derided by those same old school MMORPG players as not being a true MMORPG and ruining the genre.
Frankly, the genre needs to do exactly what this article proposes and look toward other genres to see how to evolve and actually become as much fun and appealing as those games are to mainstream gamers. Maybe if old school MMORPGs like Ultima Online and Everquest had tried to do that earlier, there never would have been the need for this kind of article in the first place.
I got the same feeling as in the article while playing Ys VII The Oath in Felghana (with an english patch because it's a japanese game)
And although bosses are terribly hard even on normal and can make you angry with their patterns and make you die and retry the fights several times after you beat it you want another awesome fight :P
I had a similar experience recently when I borrowed a copy of Collossus from a friend. It was the first single player I had played in almost 5 years besides Guitar Hero and I can't say that I have had more fun with any other game in the last decade. It surprised me that a dated game on a dated system made my weekend. At first I thought an MMO would instantly go gold if it could capture even a fraction of the fun I had playing that game but realized we may never see such a game because people want to feel like a winner without having done much to deserve it.
People have been tricked into believing that you don't actually have to win anything to feel like a winner. Playing WOW reminded me of playing one of two slot machines. The first one is called 'dungeon with a GS less than you have'. This is the one most people play. You put in your time/money, pull the lever and watch the flashing lights. You've paid the price, put in the effort but the house usually wins and you get nothing. The other machine is called 'dungeon with a higher GS than you have'. This one is EXACTLY like the other one but now you get the awesome, gut wrenching tension of hoping some jackass doesn't trip over the cord mid pull and reward you with the pleasure of trying again. Either you play the no effort machine with little risks, little effort and very little chance at reward or you play the machine with slightly more risks, slightly more effort and very little chance at reward. The rewards you do finally get will never equal the time you had to put into getting them and when you've finally got every prize that machine has to offer? You get to move over to the next set of machines that look only slightly different but have the exact same mechanics, the same risks, the same effort and the still super awesome chance to win nothing at all.
I understand why you get nothing 99% of the time, its because you don't have to put any effort into it so you don't deserve anything in return. To me, saying 'I WIN!' when you get a dead boss with no effort and nothing in return is the same thing as saying 'I WIN NOTHING'. People don't games like video poker to win, they play for the prospect of the chance at maybe winning. Why do you think there are more people playing Farmville than there are Twitter accounts? Because people would rather put in almost no effort for the eventuality of maybe getting something in return.
Something like that.
I'll say that there once was a time when I thought I could never go back to single player games. After playing mmorpg's the single player games felt so empty and lifeless.
But now mmo's are so solo centric and lacking in any kind of player interactions that they feel dead too. So it's a choice between a lifeless game with a crappy single player experience (mmo) or a lifeless game with a better single player experience (the true single player game). Hmm, which will I choose?
Good column!
The reason MMORPGs aren't fun is because they're designed for mass amounts of players once they reach the end level.
It has to seriously be looked at and redesigned because of the reasons given in this article AND because end game raiding is only based on a stratified method of choosing players (guilds). If developers would use a random and/or systematic approach to picking players for end game raiding, it would then become a truly massively multiplayer experience.
World of Warcraft has a new systematic approach to joining 5 man content called the Dungeon Finder. It worked wonders for the 5 man content. The Blizzard developers then chose to leave the Dungeon Finder out of raid content. I believe this happened because of the huge misconception that is hurting the MMORPG community:
The MMORPG community think people who don't know each other can't coordinate in games. That it has to be a guild or voice chat coordinated effort. This is 100% wrong.
As for the leveling experience, that's another story. As another user pointed out, it's very solo centric. I remember Dark Age of Camelot in the first year after its launch was very group centric in order to survive and level up. It made the game incredibly hard and challenging; but players still attempted to solo for the thrill, so there's a balance between solo and group gameplay in MMORPGs.
Dark Age of Camelot was also criticised in its early days for having insane down times in which you had to wait 5-10 minutes for a player's health to regenerate without the use of a healer. Mana too. Thus, we have World of Warcraft which introduced 30 second 100% health food and potions.
MMORPGs are still quite new. It takes a long time to make just one. They're huge. I imagine in 10-20 years we'll have these problems figured out.
I think a large issue here is the word "skill" and the difficulty involved in defining it. For non-MMO titles and particularly non-RPG titles, it's not as hard because most of those games involve a significant amount of twitch. No matter what kind of game you're playing, you have to take stock of the situation, decide on a course of action, and then successfully execute that action. If you can do these three things quickly and consistently with a high degree of success, you are considered to have skill. If you happen to be playing a real-time strategy game, you may engage in these observations and actions over the course of several minutes. In a first-person shooter, it's probably more like a few seconds, and in a fighting game every single instant requires your attention and reflexive response.
But in the genre that MMOs are based off of (console RPGs or pencil-n-paper RPGs, take your pick), there's no twitch involved at all. You've got all day to make observations and decide on a course of action if you need it. Likewise, no hand-eye coordination is required, so the execution part of the skill trio is not present. All you do is observe what is going on, and decide what to do next. "Skill" comes purely from being a good decision maker. Understanding all of your options, understanding your situation, and predicting which action will have the best effect is all that matters.
MMOs are a step removed from that — the combat is real-time so you do not have the luxury of thinking for minutes about what to do. But they're not twitch games either. When it comes to MMOs, where does the skill lie? What makes an MMO encounter "hard"? Unfortunately, most of it comes down to preparation. It's unacceptable for an MMO combat to come down to twitch skills, and it sucks to have it come down to luck (you lose if the enemy uses this skill twice in a row, you win if it doesn't), so ultimately the game MUST allow you to win if you know what to do and are prepared to do it. Be this level. Invite these classes. Bring these pots and scrolls. Hotkey this ability. When this happens, do this. When that happens, do that. Victory. If you lose, it must be because you weren't prepared and didn't know what to do and when. If you lost because your reflexes weren't good enough, most would consider that a failure on the developers' part for requiring twitch skills. If you lost because you were unlucky, again, developers' fault and sucky game.
And what makes this all a crapshoot is that you are 100% expected to be prepared for whatever you're about to get yourself into. The makers of Zelda assume that you're going into each dungeon and each fight completely blind, and they so they require no advance preparation... only good observation, decisions, and reflexes. (If you're prepared because you're reading a guide as you play, that's not their concern; you're just ruining your own experience.) The makers of MMOs must assume the exact opposite: that you are going into each dungeon and each fight fully prepared with the knowledge and resources required to beat it. Your party members demand no less of you either. This is why it's so difficult to meaningfully put "hard" (and therefore genuinely rewarding) PvE encounters into MMOs; the only measure of skill is whether you have had someone explain how to beat it, and the developers must fully expect that you have already done that.
Even though I don't know enough UnrealScript do actually make anything close to a game yet and my knowledge of UE3 is still very limited, I still have a general knowledge of how I'd pull the following off due to working in other languages... even if they were basic.
Even though the fact it's payware hasn't gotten me to try it, Spellborn made something very interesting possible from what I heard. When merging MMO and FPS and including real time combat while not creating an innovative way to pull it off, you're likely to have a dead game on your hands due to lag. There's ways around this... like using peer to peer connections-- something fairly easy to do in an instanced area. In a big, open world however, it can turn into a nightmare real fast unless you can open and close connections without the burp that in instanced games, is known as entry lag. The alternative is to just have everything go through the server first-- it also stops hackers more effectively, but also is more than capable of doubling your ping. In a fun, hack and slash game where you do more than cast lock-on fireballs at people, this can lead to alot of angry players. Currently, I'm contemplating a solution for the entry lag issue with peer to peer connections without compromising a connection to the server as well to monitor actions. The hacking issue would also need some overthinking done to it...
As for the interface itself... I don't know what in it hasn't been done before. You point and click from a first or third person prospective with fancy crosshairs telling you where your bullet, arrow, or ball of flaming gas will go. Stats apply accordingly... except now, it's a moving bullet that follows a pattern-- not an amination that's strictly for effect. Also the hit rating stat and crit stats would need to be taken out... maybe... or replaced with a devistating-effect option since criticals in general in action games are just headshots.
As for the monster issue, where bosses respawn... there really isn't a plausible workaround for it outside of instancing. WoW did it seamlessly in WoTLK, but it was still instancing. My take would be to use instancing... scarcely and only when absolutely needed. Like... if you're facing a boss that's at the end of a 10 quest chain or a zone boss or something bigger than the terrorizing imp that stole Johnny's wallet. Likewise, group quests should be entirely optional-- about half of the story bosses should be soloable. As for quests themselves, making them all commit to a large story without tightly constraining the playerbase to a linear story without spending way too much time on a quest system seems impossible too.
As someone who firmly believes a good pistoleer can take down a rocketeer twice his level if he really is good enough... stats, though should stay, would need to be done in such that they don't overcome gameplay. Getting to that point, however... I'm afraid the easiest way to do so would be with constant testing and tweaking. From my experience... with the unreal engine, that isn't as easy as it seems. Hopefully UE4 is different when it comes out.
People that put themselves above others put me in a bad mood.
http://www.surrealtwilight.com/index.php
^Has nothing to do with that retarded Vampire Novel Series, I swear!^
Best explained. I started MMOing before they were big, Fighter Ace and alot of large scale WW2 sims, a game 10-six came about which was an around the clock game. You had to protect what was yours 24/7 one way or another.
Then came DAOC my first fantasy based MMO. I found it cool to gain power with every level be it combat styles or spells. My goal was to catch those whose level made them unbeatable by me in a PVP scenario. My goal was not to necessarily be better but to be on even ground. After many , many hours of mindless grinding i achieved max level, Epic armor which was as good as you could get and into the fight i went.
I met 100s of friends in the grind game. Most times unintentional. We all just needed help from one another. It was the way of things. Helping each other be it strangers or not. The alure of the game was leveling, becoming just a little more powerful then a friend or foe . At max level we could just PVP. What a blast that was. What made it even better was the social element behind it all. The comraderie of it all. The competitive element.
Eventually the social element post WOW fell out. It still isn't there anymore so we kill bears, we quest endlessly for gear , rinse and repeat only this time there is no social environment. The social environment is what keeps people playing with the game interest is completely extinct. You can log into any modern day game and not a soul will speak to you just because they need you to help them advance because they don't need anybody.
So I'm gameless, I have no interest or intention of EVER playing another kill and quest MMO. I want to log in , go PVP on an even playing field and just have fun. Nothing more, nothing less. I'm past earning my place. I'm looking for an actual intellectual gaming experience. I'm looking for a game that puts community first above all even the game. I'm beyond burn out of the typical MMO as we know it. I'm officially retired until a title is released that can offer me the experience PVP wise right out of the box that i so desire.
Something like that.
I'll say that there once was a time when I thought I could never go back to single player games. After playing mmorpg's the single player games felt so empty and lifeless.
But now mmo's are so solo centric and lacking in any kind of player interactions that they feel dead too. So it's a choice between a lifeless game with a crappy single player experience (mmo) or a lifeless game with a better single player experience (the true single player game). Hmm, which will I choose?
I just don't understand it.
For me the two features mmos had that kept me playing instead of single player games were Social interaction and Character advancement. Single player games could not touch these aspects.
So I don't get why today's mmos would forgo the majority of social interaction and make a mmo solo centric. Playing with hundreds of other people is a mmos thing. Yet now these games are feeling like watered down single player rpgs.
Before anyone tells me its because people have lives. the older mmos let us solo also. They did a great job of making a game accessible for the solo minded player yet making it attractive to play with other people. It was balanced.
As an example Saga of Ryzom does this. I can solo the entire time but if i teamed up i would have a much easier time through less downtime, more Xp per hour and the actual conversation moving things along.
That's how mmos should be, I don't think the devs get it.
Playing: Rift, LotRO
Waiting on: GW2, BP
Final Fantasy XIV.
Break the mold.
Extremely well thought out article! You echoed my sediments spot on. While MMOs are my game of choice, I get the same deja vu every time I play another new one.
I'm hoping SW:TOR changes that, but who knows if it will....
Thank you for sharing !
I also found this a great article. I myself have been playing MMOs since the start of EQ. They certainly have lost something. I played Mass Effect and Mass Effect 2 recently because a friend told me to.. Best choice ive made in a long time. GREAT games. Awesome story in both. ME was epic.
I think back to EQ1. I still think a new version of that style of game WOULD be popular. It was the only MMO that i can remember feeling i accomplished something. Camping a mob for 8 hours waiting for it to spawn may not be the most fun, but I do remember when he did spawn, and i killed him how happy i was.
I agree there is no sense of danger in games anymore either. You dont see level 40 sand giants walking around in an area made for the 10-20 range. Or how about camping the Animals in Runes of Kunark with people constanly keeping an eye on the Dragoons that could come kill you at anytime. I know my heart was pumping many times running my butt to the zone line.
I dont know what MMOs can do really. Im pretty burnt out on them all myself. Im sticking with my solo player games till i hear something promising. Dragon Age is next on my list. Im hoping the story is as good and Biowares Mass Effect games
Right on - I all the games I've played are great but I simply get bored within a couple of weeks......... Now I'm looking for Zelda