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Gaming community desperately seeks quality mmo experience
MAUL0r
Member Posts: 16
I'm talking to you, game designers, and you developers, and you too artists.
Seeking the following:
- gigantic, open environments with lots of room to stretch our legs and explore.
- comprehensive crafting system.
- player-driven economy.
- pvp that has a purpose.
- if you must have factions, MORE THAN 2 PLEASE. Good vs. Evil is not only cliche'd, it's terrible for an mmo experience.
- freedom to make mistakes... we're not babies, let us die, let us spec completely weird ways and regret it.
- classic art style. We don't need to have a giant rotating chain-saw-sword-guitar to feel good about ourselves...
- a questing system that does not insult our intelligence. Make questing difficult, but worth the effort. We want to feel like our character has had a personal goal in life, and it is the driving force in his "story". We don't want to murder innocent flora and fauna for the amusement of some random npc... we want there to be a real purpose to every quest we undertake.
- dynamic world events, dynamic loot... you know what? just try to be more dynamic wherever possible. Nothing we do should feel spoon-fed or repetitive.
- give us new content at least once every 6months. I don't mean a full-on expansion, but give us a new dungeon, a new explorable zone, SOMETHING to add diversity to the world over time.
- we want housing. I shouldn't have to explain why, but I will because so many games ignore this feature. We want a place to call home within our world, it makes the world seem more like an actual world... are we to believe that there are 1000s of people running around homeless? We want to be able to decorate our house, store stuff in our house, and display trophies of our adventures.
- we want an intuitive, and customizable interface. Not just the look, but custom layouts and addons as well.
- we want a fluid control system, that makes us feel free to jump and run and climb in the world.
- we want gameplay that requires skills, not luck, or bugging out to succeed. Don't just make something impossible because it's the last piece of content in the game and you don't want people to finish it.
- we want a variety of races that have their own unique cultures, advantages, and pitfalls. [edit: added this one to the list, thanks arakail!]
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Now, I know there have been games that have met some or almost all of these requirements, but there seems to be less and less choices out there for people who want a really in-depth experience, and more games that cater to the "casual player" which is game-design-speak for "so easy a caveman could do it". This is a call to action for game devs to get back to the wild wild west approach to mmos that really made us fall in love with a game.
What other features would you say game devs need to be focusing on for future games? Add to the discussion! Let's see if we can't make those designers' ears perk up a little.
Comments
Very well said! These are exactly the aspects that I wish newer games would implement.
I'd also like to see a variety of races/species, each with their own unique starting areas, homelands, and beginning experiences. Everquest, before its various expansions, is a good example of what I'm talking about. Starting out as a dwarf was almost like playing a whole different game than starting out as a troll.
Lastly, I wish developers would be willing to sacrifice balance for variety. Make some classes, races, and skills more suited to combat or spellcasting, whereas others are better at non-combative tasks and activities. Be extremely cautious about nerfing and allow the lore itself to justify differences between classes/races/skills.
A game that met these condtions (or even the majority of them) would certainly attract my attention!
i support this initiative 100%.
unfortunately for us though, developers and marketers alike believe that such experience entails "too much reading; much too much".
A quality, universal list. I approve.
You are right on just about everything but it all boils down to not only the enourmous expense of recruiting devs & years to produce a mmorpg but also the high ongoing costs associated with advertising, support & promotion.
So many of the larger mmorpg producers have had their fingers burnt & never land up recouperatiing these enormous costs that they are no longer prepared to invest the time or have the money to do it.
There are still one or two exceptions mainly from the few companies that are still making good profits from existing mmos but the curent economic climate has made mmo investor/producers much more risk adverse imo.
That's all so true! i agree on this list!
Yes! Agreed on all points.
But is there anybody in the up and up that will actually ever see this thread and take note of it?
Is there a publisher that is willing to throw down the cash to support it?
It's a sad gaming world, but you never know. We might get lucky one day.
I support this initiative as well
I totally agree with your points, but that is mainly because I am a niche gamer when it comes to MMORPG and know those points don't really atract the majority who developers believe bring in the biggest amount of revenue.
Unfortunately only indie houses have the danglers to try these things now, so its almost a given that if this list were fulfilled it would release lacking in production quality. I'd love to see everything listed happen from a AAA developer though.
OP, I like your list. If I could add anything, it would be an in depth system for construction, building cities and adding art (statues, guardens, etc.) and a political system to run such things to really enhance the social end of thing. I'd add trade systems and shipping/caravans.
I'd make the social politics and building system flexible enough that if some players wanted, they could build a temple complex, monestaries, Mage centers(fantasy) or Science centers (sci-fi), or any other type of idea they want to come up with, as long as it stays within the game's atmosphere.
The biggest question is how to make it all work in the game's structure. We've been talking about that a lot, hopefully Devs could get some ideas so such a game doesn't evolve into another zoned level grind which we have plenty of now. That's if any Devs with the wherewithall ever read what we are saying. I sort of doubt that, they seem quite snug within their own fraternity where they think they know best.
Once upon a time....
There's been a lot of posts like this recently, but this is one of the best.
I'd be interested.
The same list I have!
Only DAoC comes close to that list. but Sadly, DAoC grown old and now unbalance PvE with horrible class design (why do they still allow buffbots?).
I don't see any new mmo that going to replace DAoC experince for awhile. Where are the 3 factions mmos!
--
"Any free people have the right to choose how it wants to be govern thats the essence of democracy. It's sad when America has chosen for the stability and consistency of a dictatorship and doing it democratically" -utnow
gw2 will have server vs server vs server the closest thing i can think of...and i do hope it will live up to DAoC(ohh how i miss the good old days)
I agree 100% but I would add something to that list:
- FFA PVP full-loot. Now we have risk vs reward and an adrenaline rush.
- Realistic mob AI that makes me feel like I am fighting a real creature.
- Unpredictable gaming session. I want to log in with one intension but randomly get stirred up in events and unexpectedly become part of some larger epic experience or learn a sad but valuable lesson about failure.
- Hard. I want the game that I play to be hard so that I can challenge myself.
Put all that together with your list and we have Darkfall.
I wish that I could say that there is something coming out with more potential to become everything I want but I really think that there is going to be a lot more clones and running from NPC to NPC and questing for your next level in your instanced box somewhere.
There definitely needs to be more games like what you describe and I really hope that we get the technology someday to have a lag-free open world with top notch graphics and instance-free but unfortunately if you are asking for instance-free in the current MMO market than you have to settle with less top-notch graphics and more lag and problems with a small community to support it.
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some great discussion has been generated by this! Thanks to everyone who has contributed.
To those who don't think it's plausible: It's absolutely plausible. DAoC meets 80% of those requirements (questing and user interface are not up to par), and it still manages to have an engine that supports lots of great features graphically.
What is everyone's thoughts on player collision in games?
While I like the idea in theory, I think the mmos that I've seen use it end up having the most problems with lag and crashing. Collision means A LOT more information being tracked by the server and clients involved. Not only are x,y,z locations being constantly updated, but now you have each of those locations transmitting who/what they're colliding with... and in a massively multiplayer environment, when enough players clash at the same time and start bumping around each other, the server tends to tank HARD. Is collision something you feel developers need to work hard on refining and stabilizing in today's market? Many people say it's important for organized PvP, but I contend that it is not (just my opinion).
I agree 500%, this is a great post, great points, glad someone took the time to tell these game designers how to make a game and what we as gamers want, GREAT job MAUL0r1!
Great ideas bro,
Why not just start up some kind of team or plan to have a team to brainstorm your wondrous ideas and initiate the work on your effort to come up with a system that is foolproof fair for an MMO community. In my opinion from what i believe developers try to do is make everything so easy including the core of the game because they would careless of how the their dedicated system of rules work and care more for a crowd that cant tell the difference between an apple or orange. Ironically, in example to the notorious Warhammer Online, the ones just as smart as the developers cheat their system since it is already too easy, while the ones unable to tell a difference point, pout, cry, then leave. Disregarding the mistake, the developers continue to make the shit easy...then the cycle of unfairness continues. Little do they realize that they lose more than what they gain and "easy" is not the way out of their sales deficit.
Maul- I was on vent and caught the link, that is my say, what i wanted to tell was my incapability to travel to cali but i really wanna go when i am financially stable. I'll be around, been playing on another server w/a friend as order.
DISCLAIMER- I AM COSTA RICAN AND ENGLISH IS MY SECOND LANGUAGE :-)
http://redztk.com/
Basically we need Lineage 2 with less of a grind, better controls and some quests, and that would suit everything the OP is asing for
Hopefully TERA can be that, but it looks like they are dumbing/watering it down as much as they can, personally I don't hold much stock in it, I like it less the more I read into it.
Give Mortal Online another 6 months and you will have 50% of that...
"No they are not charity. That is where the whales come in. (I play for free. Whales pays.) Devs get a business. That is how it works."
-Nariusseldon
Lots of good games out there.
What's needed is a gaming community that desperately needs to stop whining.
Play the games now, give feedback to companies making games down the pipeline.
Realize that there's certain aspects of MMOs that'll always be in MMOs. No one's going to like all of it, the games are tailored to be a shotgun blast of this and that around a few core mechanics.
Lots of stand alone games with really exciting online features with great communities out there to try too.
Also the exact opposite of what you want in a game appeals to roughly 1000 other people. Your 14.99 or 10 dollars here and there just can't compete against a tried and true market.
I kill other players because they're smarter than AI, sometimes.
One key area I think is missing is the addition of social-based activities outside of combat. Concepts such as gambling (allowing characters to sit down at a tavern and play dice, cards, darts, etc with their hard earned gold), tournaments (jousting, archery, etc), performance that provides benefits/amusement (remember SWG's dancing/musician system), and other non-combat reasons/mechanisms to encourage social interaction.
Add in some type of farming/pet raising/etc system that encourages periodic (but not necessarily extensive) logging in to maintain/grow something in conjunction with a robust crafting system.
Look at what people love about social online games and integrate them into a MMO to provide an ever deeper experience that transcends dungeon crawling and dragon slaying (while also including those, of course!).
Asheron call 1 is similair to this, but turbine drove it into the ground.. I still find that to be my favorite MMO of all time period.
I like to see a MMO with perma death... I like to see a western MMO, and not because of Red Dead, I been wanting this for over 10years.. Red dead made it that I wanted it even more.. That it can be done.,.
I love to see hangings with perma death.. because your broke to many laws..
Aika meets 60% of these requirements.
"A trembling hand does not thrust the blade true." - Artemis Enteri
I dissagree..
There hasn't been one decent MMORPG released in since SWG... and before that Everquest, DAOC and Ultima Online have all been ruined by the WoW dollar...! It's a friggen pandemic that newbies are unable to even see, or recognise because they have no clue what happened to the industry in 2004..
"No they are not charity. That is where the whales come in. (I play for free. Whales pays.) Devs get a business. That is how it works."
-Nariusseldon
Yeah, you know, years ago it was common for players to ask for things like breeding pets. Real common. These days you don't see much of that, not nearly like it used to be. Becuase the games these days just don't make you think in those terms.
Once upon a time....