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I don't get it...
Koujow
Member Posts: 25
As I continue my seemingly eternal search for an MMO that I truly enjoy, a thought came to me.
The MMO genre of games and it's player base are a strange one. I search the forums constantly and read reviews from multiple sources for games before I try them and a major repeating concern came up. We MMO players generally do not seem to be pleased by the MMO environment. With the release of new games, we constantly clamor for new and original ideas and gameplay, yet we never receive it. But we also continue playing. On every forum and a great number of reviews that I have read, major concerns are always the same. How does X work? Does it have Y? It plays like Z? (Fit XYZ with any desired MMO term) and we seem to demand these things yet hate them at the same time.
Grind vs no grind? They always either have too much or too little.
PvP vs PvE? Too much of either and the other won't come to play.
Gear vs Skill? Whats the point of that epic item if a lvl 1 can kill you? Don't do anything until lvl 1,000,000 because everyone will kill you
Sandbox or Theme park? ...I could write an entire post just on that...
As I already said, I am always on a quest for an MMO that I enjoy and will play for a long period of time, be it f2p or p2p, but the first major problem I have with MMOs is that I don't know what I want and I kind of think that we don't know what we want either. I feel kind of bad because every new MMO in development seems like it is pulled back and forth by every player because they want this but not that, which another player does want.
So unsure about this subject I am that I don't even know how to finish it beyond... Thoughts? Opinions?
Playing: Heroes of Three Kingdoms
Played: WoW, DDO, Second Life, Diablo II,
Tried free trial: LoTR, Fallen Earth, EvE, Champions Online,
Comments
new MMOs need to take the sub cost back down again. maybe to 5$ a month.
Philosophy of MMO Game Design
Would appear the average MMO gamer is a "13 year old boy coming into puberty, that understanding nothing, knows nothing, and is confused while being impressed by the shinny new lights (new MMOs)." When we have what we thought we wanted , turns out we did not know what we wanted in the first place.
I no longer look for a specifice set of things in a MMO any more. Fun, is the only requirement I hold to now. If its fun to me, I am happy to give my $14.99 in exchanged for some quality entertainment. Atleast what I feel is quality entertainment at the time.
I think I know what your getting at. MMO players will continue to pay the asking price for the lowest quality devs can supply and still turn a profit. As long as gamers will pay for inferior products there will be a large selection of such provided.
WOW isnt great because it has 12 million players. WOW has 12 million players because its great.
I think that MMO's should really consider getting back to basics. Take a look at MUD's.. (Multi User Dungeons). These things are STILL around and have been since early 90's. These things are TEXT based. Heh. There has to be a reason for it.
It's funny how different people have different opinions on...EVERYTHING...isn't it?
Eh, that is the nature of the entertainment industry. That is also why choosing to make a game will always be viable to just about anyone. There is an almost infinite amount of niches to tailor to, if you care to try.
Creators want their games to cater to the most amount of players, so they are finding the sweet spot. The game that caters to the largest amount of people is going to be so well "balanced" on every spectrum, how can it be anything but average? Unfortunately for players, it makes economic sense to keep it that way. Unlike most other mediums, there is not a cheap way to do an independent title, so we don't see a lot of creativity. It's the hardest kind of game to make - it's not like movies, where anyone with a camera and some good writing skills can put together something mindblowing in less than a year. Since big money is more or less required, the market is going to be driven by big money ideals.
So yes, the entire mmorpg genre is quite an anomaly. You basically need to attract players of quite disparate desires in order to populate a working world, but the paradox is, players of different needs don't tend to coexist well. With an online shooter for instance, there may be haters, but the haters won't actually play the game, or bring down the experience for those who like it. In an mmo, the "haters" will continue to play, because there is something there for them as well. There will just be those aspects of the game that they complain about.
No wonder there is always so much complaining
Part of it is the inherent lower quality of MMOs as a result of how they're made and the subscription model they use.
Part of it is that if you ask a million+ players any opinion-based question you're gonna get a lot of disagreements. With 1m+ players playing games, expecting them to all be on the same page regarding each nuance of MMORPGs is unreasonable.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
what has the final say on quality of a game, not you not me, but the person paying and playing.
If that player pays and plays, it is quality enough for him/her. It need not be ground breaking, it is just a game, much like poker chess or basketball or whatever.
It may be inferior product in your eyes, but who except you cares for your judgement.
as long as there are enough buyers for a certain game, that game provider will maintain its services, trying to belittle other's preference based on your own preference is meaningless.
that essentially is what I love free market for, I can play what I like and ignore what the others think about my choice, those wise guys can stay on their side of the fence and play the wise man grumbling game. I do not need them to lecture me on what is good for me.
Or in some cases , you have people that are never happy with anything and are always bored and basically like to bitch and complain. You see alot of those people here.
Best describe what i want in a mmo is first freedom and no holdhands.
Then a world similar to what ive experience back in 2002 when i first enter morrowind but with todays grafhical standards offcorse.
Then it must be sandbox with open zoneless world with no instance and no loadscreens if posible.
Good pvp free for all and best is with full loot.
First steps in Darkfall beta i thought man this game looks alot like morrowind when exploring only much better i was hooked:)
So i followed Darkfall for years and even tho it was not entirely what i thought it would be it come closest to what i want in mmo and Darkfall is my mmo so far.
Games played:AC1-Darktide'99-2000-AC2-Darktide/dawnsong2003-2005,Lineage2-2005-2006 and now Darkfall-2009.....
In between WoW few months AoC few months and some f2p also all very short few weeks.
$12.99 is fine by me and I don't think that some of the older MMORPGs are worth $14.99 anymore.
EverQuest one and two should be $12.99 a month and so should Age of Conan and Warhammer Online.
Ultima Online and Dark Age of Camelot should probably be $9.99 or perhaps even $7.99 but five dollars thats way too low.
All those memories will be lost in time, like tears in the rain.
This is a good point.. MMOs definitely should entice people with lower subs.. not sure why they don't.
It's like when they raise the price of the monthly cost they just refuse to drop the price as the player base dwindles and let it go so far to server shut down or free to play with a cash shop.
I really believe that the upper management of those companies just aren't too bright and/or that they are just too greedy for their own good.
All those memories will be lost in time, like tears in the rain.
The OP is right. As new MMOs get developed and launched, we see a lot of the same cycles. People playing MMOs seem to have a love-hate relationship with them. They are hooked on the game play on one level but unhappy with it on another level.
I suspect the reason we see this happening is that MMOs take a huge amount of money to develop these days. Companies are therefore reluctant to innovate too much because the risk of a failed innovation can be disastrous. Players keep looking for innovation but can't find it, so then fall back to "OK well if you're going to do the same old thing at least do it WELL," and sadly many companies don't do that either, putting out half-finished games that are full of bugs and incomplete, again, because of the cost.
I'm not sure if there is a good solution at this point until someone spends money, innovates, does it well, and is successful. I'm thinking we may see that with either GW2 or TOR but it remains to be seen if all their hype is just hype or if they can actually execute. We've all been down the hype road and been burned a lot before.
C
I doubt changing the monthly fee by a few bucks is really going to change people's minds about subscribing. WoW could be $5 a month and I still wouldn't play it because I simply don't care for that game. On the other hand, I wouldn't care if my favorite MMO charged $20 per month. It would still be inexpensive entertainment.
I DO think that older MMOs might consider trying introductory rates for new players before going F2P with an RMT. Free client download and $5/month for the first three months might entice more people to give that questionable MMO a chance. The early parts of the game would enjoy a population boost like a F2P, but long-term subscribers shouldn't be as upset as if the game went F2P. Although some people will quit after three months and maybe perpetually play the lower price intro months with multiple accounts, they will be abandoning the characters they build after three months. The goal would be to hook new players with the intro rate and get them to sign up at normal prices. If they like the game, they probably will. If they don't like the game, they probably wont want to play for $5/month or as a F2P with RMT either.
To the OP:
If you don't know what it is you want in a game, there are 4 steps to figuring it out.
First you have to figure out your order of importance for following aspects of an mmo (I'm listing them in my own order of importance):
Gameplay. Aim based or target based, pvp or pve, theme park or sandbox, etc.
Community. Including customer support.
Setting. Fantasy vs sci fi, what types of climates and cultures, storyline, etc.
Graphics. (self explanitory)
Once you know your order of importance for those things, you're ready for step two. Figure out which specific details of the aspect that is most important to you do you care about.
Step Three is then to decide between all available options of the details of that aspect.
Step 4 is to repeat steps 1 through 3 for the other 3 aspects, in your order of importance.
Once you know what you want, a good idea would be to identify the things that aren't controllable (like never running into jerks) and cross those things off your list of specifications.
OP: The issue is a basic one: compromise. There's lots of stylistic differences in MMO's: pve vs pvp, sandbox vs themepark, level based vs skill based, and so on. Game companies, in trying to appeal to the widest possible audience (and make the most money) compromise, parts of this and some of that. But any time you do that, there will inevitably be folks who are unhappy with whatever balance they game strikes.
Sure, they can avoid that by making a "pure" game, pve ONLY, or sandbox style ONLY. That way folks that don't like that aspect will simply avoid the game entirely and won't complain how they tried it and were disappointed. The problem with that is you willingly reduce your pool of potential customers. And even then some parts of your target audience won't like the game, for whatever reason.
The Moving Finger writes, and, having writ,
Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,
Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it.
~Omar Khayyam
Actually, I think I do know what I want in an MMORPG and could document it quite well.
Thing is, most everyone else would have a different list (no matter how slightly) and the problem for developers is how to incoporate most of what I want, along with most of what everyone else wants, w/o having so many compromises that none of us are really happy. (and they don't go broke in developing it).
Now the simple solution is to narrow the focus of the game down to a small niche of players who are like-minded, however that means a small target market which doesn't work well when trying to get someone to take the risk to develop the game.
Investors want as large a target market as possible, so I'm not likely to ever find a game that truely suits my tastes. (but I will be more of the exception than the rule I suspect).
While I can hope to oneday see a game more to my liking (think DAOC 2) its not realistic for me to actually expect one to ever really be developed to suit my tastes.
So I have a choice, either enjoy the parts of the games that are being offered for the what they have (and not focus on what they lack) even if they are not ideal, or.... quit playing.
"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