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What MMO's miss nowadays...
Roman291
Member UncommonPosts: 104
I think all new MMORPG's are missing nowadays is the most important element in RPG's: Role Playing.
I am not talking about acting the character in the chat windows.
I'm talking about the physical aspect of being the character, like hunger, and hydration.
What do you think? And what do you think new MMO's are missing?
Comments
they're missing fun.
Hunger and Dehydration would probably just get on my nerves as another thing I just have to worry about that doesn't have much of an affect on game play.
I think MMOs are missing the factor of giving players a sense of individuality.
Hunger and hydration hmm. Well in EQ you had to eat but I can't believe 1 person out of the 500k subcribers was playing because of it. It might be nice to have if it wasn't a hassle which the majority of your player base might see it as.
I think mmorpgs are missing something like player housing way more. Now that's a real feature that on its own would bring in hundreds of thousands of people who are excited about just that alone. And what it does for the game is infinite.
I don't think hunger and hydration are really the way to go, but I will agree that MMO's of late seriously lack immersion.
I believe a lot of mmo's miss a vision. When you first read the announcement of a new game, you think woah that game has nice features. But during the development the companies are too afraid to do something different, they might not get enough funding or they are worried about selling enough copies.
In a rare occasion when a game succeeds a launch with a large enough playerbase, devs tend to dump down the difficulty of the game, so more people can play it. Or they are starting to increase the rewards. Oh you have played for five minutes our game, here accept these tokens and turn them in to receive über loot.
I really hope that devs stick to their vision and do not give in to the urge to reach a large crowd by making concessions.
I really think they are missing immersion.The only game where i felt a sense of awe in was Dark and Light.It was buggy,unfinished yet it was immersive cause of it's huge world and music.I could truely get lost in the game as well.Take a wrong baloon transport or ride the wrong dragon transport.
So my answer is Immersion.
I think MMO's are missing fairness. At max level I do not want to be completly outclassed by someone who has had time to get shinier gear than me.
MMO's should be about skill, not time. Take Guild Wars for example - all max levels can have the same gear and skills - it comes down to how they are employed. Better gear is just aesthetically better and thats fine.
I want MMO's that are not gear based.
MMO's therefore are missing alternate motivations to massive glowing shoulder pads.
Can someone explain to me why people want player housing? I've never understood it. I decided to try it out in Lord of the Rings Online and bought myself a house and.. there it was.. completely unused as I was off playing the game, not wanting to sit in a house which I was already doing in real life.
I really don't get it. If you want a house decorating game then pick up the Sims, it's great for designing houses. If you want an MMO with quests, adventure, dungeons and terrible monsters then.. why do you want a house?
In my opinion. The game itself does not miss anything. It's us, the players changed. People are yelling the game is not fun. But look back the old games they are hard to compete with most of current games on the market. When i have a group of player play together. No matter what, it's fun. There are no perfect games anyway.
If anything the game developer need to improve is community+community+community.
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I feel that MMO's Today miss a sense of adventure. To many today just have no risk. You repeat the same redundent tasks in order to become 'better'. I do believe stuff like hydration and hunger could play a part of making a game more diverse. But one of the main reasons I started playing mmo's back in the days of UO was because of those 'epic' moments which you retell to your friends many a time. I believe players like the feeling of overcoming all odds and winning, part of this is having more risk involved all the time. Most MMO's Death Penalties are utterly laughable and the consqeuences for dying are near to none. Also in most MMO's today theres no motovation to just explore the world, its always going A to B. With more incentives for exploration and harshers DPs, I believe you would actually see people adventuring in parties through the wilderness of games and this is what I think MMOs are missing.
Interesting comment because of the underlying factors.
Question, haven't you ever wanted to defeat some tough mob with a cool looking weapon and hang that weapon on your wall as a trophy? But can you do that in a level grind game without losing meaning due to levelling far past any meaning for it? Of course, there "end game". You might find some trophies there. There's rare items that look very cool that you might collect. Or you might design some altar to the stars or some such thing, or to a deity.
I don't know what LoTRO had available, so that might answer your question.
Once upon a time....
That is still very much a Sims approach to housing. It becomes just something that you make look cool so you can look at it or show off to others for 'epeen' value. It makes housing completely useless to those who do not care about stuff like that.
If you want housing to be a more 'active' part of the gameplay experience, you need it to have more practical applications in the game. If housing lets you setup workshops, mines, kitchens, etc that you can then let other players access it becomes an activity hub that brings players together.
Well, yes. Isn't that expected? Maybe LoTRO doesn't offer that. But UO had the best housing system, and you could do all of that. Guilds had houses where players logged into out out at, held meetings, and placed forges, looms, etc. that were required for making things.
There were many sorts of uses for houses in UO. There was the famous first ever player run tavern where roleplayers met to chat, roleplay, and run events, where they had players actually working shifts to serve patrons.
There were many trade centers, where an owning player would set up NPC vendors for friends and guildmates and associates to sell many wears.
There were the famous Mage Towers, one on each shard in years gone by, where mages practiced their skills and traded tactics and knowledge.
There were libraries, since UO was a worldly game with both game books and player written books you could open and read.
There were even brothels, some roleplayer and some...ummm...for real?!
This should all be not only expected, but demanded, by players, in my opinion.
to add a few more:
There were player run auction houses for rare items and other things of great value. These were far more interesting as players actually bid, in game, for items up for sale, one at a time. It was interesting watching who bid what, and where things ended.
There were rune libraries. In UO players could mark runes for teleportaion use, but first you had to get there. These libraries were collections of these runes for players to use to get around the world quickly.
There were trainign centers, with training dummies for weapon skills, pick-pocket dips to train up thieving skills, and other means to train up skills. They often had books there to explain how or what to do with certain skills.
Once upon a time....
EQ2 has most of that too.. The sandbox features were awesome.. I loved the items we could hang on walls as decorations, and having a bookcase that allows you to display all the books you have acquired.. Especially the Player made books.. OMG.. This one player, who plays a rodent, writes books from a rat's perspective... The one about, "Da Makeing of Cheez" is funny as hell.. This is ROLE playing at it's finest
Companies just can't make things like that with the same meaning. But they can give us the "tools" to do it with. I've read and seen many things from players that either cracked me up or left me wondering how someone came up with that idea.
Once upon a time....
I concur.
Vault-Tec analysts have concluded that the odds of worldwide nuclear armaggeddon this decade are 17,143,762... to 1.
How do you do that when these games divide players by levels? Most players get separated.
Once upon a time....
Which is common .. however some games like EQ2 allow you to mentor others.. This allows the higher level character to "de-level" himself temporary while playing with a lower level friend , etc etc.. MMO devs need to work harder in promoting a community instead of finding game designs that SPLIT people up..
Virtual World
Community
Player identity
Meaningful crafting
Customization
Purpose / Impact
Accountability
Dynamic gamescape
Players can make and impact on the game world
Player towns
Housing
Facilities
Respawn point
Shops
MOB 'extinction' / 'growth'
Resource 'extinction' / 'growth'
Game world evolves over time in meaningful ways
Seasons
MOB 'extinction' / 'growth'
Resource 'extinction' / 'growth'
I could go on, but, well... you get the idea.
Stop that.. some mega game developer might read that and go blind.. LOL
Which ironically everything I've listed has been in prior games , some containing most if not all of these features... 6+ years ago.
Hard to say these elements are "missing" when they've rarely been a significant part of RPGs (heck, even the tabletop ones!)
Games (even tabletop ones) are about interesting decisions and interactions. And while I suppose there are ways to make hunger interesting (see Haven & Hearth) it's a little tougher than some of the other types of decisions a developer can offer players because it tends to inherently be less interesting.
As for what new MMOs actually are missing, I'd go with a vague answer of "significantly new game mechanics". Unless a game twists the formula enough, each new game will seem like the last one. The problem of course is that developing new mechanics is much harder than copying preexisting ones. Of course if you copy a preexisting formula but fail to do it at least as good as prior games then you won't have brought anything to the table either.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
Axe.. not sure if you know or remember.. but EQ1 dealt with hunger and thirst perfectly.. Food and Drink have an effect on how fast you regenerate health and mana / stamina.. However, those games didn't have "instant" health/mana regen with a click like WoW.. So regen was a stat you had to pay attention to.. If you went without food and drink in EQ1 as a tank, your stamina would suffer to the point your attacks would be super slow..
Ah, well it's still odd to call it a "missing" feature if it's that rare (even with EQ1, that's only 2 games out of 40+ MMOs I know of where hunger plays a substantive role.)
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
I used to have fun just playing mmos...
Now it's about getting to the level cap as fast as possible. People don't indulge in the little things, which get pushed aside because of the level cap race.
Actually in LotRO, I do enjoy just playing. But I still feel like it's way too story driven. I think the players should be the story or stories should be "found" and not carried through.