They 'go wrong' by letting sites like this one build up their games to the point where people are disappointed when they play.
Had you not posted this on the same day that the MMORPG.com staff posted the reviews that they did, you might have had a point.
Well as of this same day the game has already been released, bought and played. You conveniently left out the part of my post where i said "when it came out only then did we hear of the problems". They point out the problems because people already know them. It's not like we needed their OK to admit that something was wrong.
They build up the games to a potential that can be nothing but a disappointment when you finally get to play them.
MMOs fail because there is hardly any innovation. The entire genre is stagnating. No matter which AAA mmo I try, it feels like I have played it a dozen times before.
On the other gand, you got smaller indie games that have a lot of "potential". Unfortunately, they never reach that potential or the level of hype they sometimes generate.
GW2 is the only that will probably get it right. At least one game to look forward to in 2011...
MMO's are failing now because they now have a reputation for releasing unfinished and lacking in content. Consumers are finally clueing in and not buying what the publishers are feeding them (via sites like this one).
WoW is the number 1 most successful MMO for a bunch of reasons, but it's my firm belief that WoW was so well recieved because it launched with a very high level of polish (when compared to other products of the day).
Publishers are only now starting to realize that it's in their best interest in the long run to release a finished product (see the recent news about TOR being pushed back) . They can no longer operate under the assumption that they can launch and then release a 'hail mary' patch somewhere down the line (which has been a very popular tactic in recent years).
People say these forums, and many other game forums, are too full of negativity. I don't agree. They are negative because the people here (and on other game forums) have been sold snake oil over and over again and are sick of it.
Where do MMO's go wrong? They are very rarely released in a finished polished state, with content worth paying for.
well more or less everyone here forget to mention one imho major reason why MMOs ho wrong: us - the players.
most of the players are too focused on visual ("come on, this doesnt have better graphic that game X which is 4 years old!") and audio ("what?!?!!? it doesnt have full voiceover? EPIC FAIL!?!?!!11"), that there are forcing developers to spend insane amount of time and money on that.
what does it mean? that developers are forced to seek outside investors, who in turn force them to focus on "easy to sell" features ("thats what most of the players wants, so focus on that, it will sell the game") and to toss away anything that could be risky (not to mention, that the press from investors (and overall from financial side) is the main reason why most mmorpgs are released unifinished).
P.S. and no, i am not talking about "those damned casual players who destroyed mmorpgs for us, hardcores" (as if there was something wrong with casual play for relaxation). i am a big fan of sandbox games, so i do ,among other things, spend a lot of time reading different forum threads about them. they have highest concentration of so called (by themself) "hardcore mmorpg players", but guess what? i think there are really good/interesting sandbox games out there (more or less all of them are indie ones), but hey - what do i read in those forum threads most? thats right "hardcore mmorpg player's" cry over how crappy is audiovisual side of those games.
There's a concept in game design called player agency. Essentially it describes the amount of freedom players have to approach content in a game. But as the gaming industry has matured, developers have becme more control-freaks. They seem to need to control every aspect of your character -- afraid of exploits, RMTs, min-maxers, and a whole host of other bugaboos.
Early EQ used to have a lot of player agency. Players could chain magic spells together to create unforseen effects (kiting is one example). They could gather 20+ people together to defeat a difficult foe (this is how 'raiding' started, as an exploit in EQ). They could choose the suckiest class and race combination, and upon reaching high level be revered for being so unique.
Now, everything is result-oriented. You can't chain spells together in creative ways...spells are now discrete, limited, numbers in a predictive combination. Raids are now scripted, and need precise, choreographed moves to complete. And class/race combinations are decided for you by the all-knowing developer, because you really don't want to play the Erudite Paladin. And why would you play the suckiest class/race combination when the developers have engineered the outcome of quests so precisely that you need to take the best combinations to succeed.
Developers have trapped themselves in a self-fulfilling prophecy. They are so obsessed with control, that it's taking the fun out of the games. I once had a conversation with a Dev of LOTRO. He was lamenting the fact that the expanded, opened landscape areas around Bree saw so little player traffic. To him it was evidence that players don't really want more freedom. I pointed out that his game holds players hand from the start -- isn't it any wonder that a game that teaches dependancy on the system, should then fail at providing more freedom? He had no response.
And as long as I'm talking about LOTRO, let's give a simple example of player agency: Ranged attack. In DDO, it is perfectly legal to perch and pick off foes from a position from which they can't reach you. But in LOTRO, this same tactic triggers an exploit. The same company, two different systems. In fact, DDO goes a long way in capturing the spirit of player agency throughout the game. Of course what kills this experience is the highly instanced nature of its world.
But to be honest, few games offer any meaningful degree of player agency. One last qualifier to the idea of player agency. It doesn't mean open world pvp, nor does it mean elimination of quests. It simply means giving players as many ways to approach content as possible.
So to the developers reading this (likely none), I say this: Let go the levers of control!
What turns me off on an MMO is a bad community. World of Warcraft is a prime example of it.
When I sit down and play an MMO, I don't want to be forced to use another program to enjoy it. I don't want to have to rely on hearing screechy kids or elitist 'hardcores'.
I am of course talking about ventrilo. Before I left WoW again, I actually had someone say that I couldn't tank Tol Barad (after they forced me to join the group no less) unless I logged on vent.
Their reason? 'becuz therez a point where the tankz haz to swap'. My only reply was 'so, say swap? S W A P. Four letters. You hardly need to move your fingers.'
If one can't type between global cooldowns or click while they're typing, they shouldn't be playing the game.
Another thing that constantly turns me off toward MMOs, and again, this is aimed at the community- Constant screaming and whining about a class or skill being supposedly overpowered because they died to it. This has become the constant in WoW. Everyone thinks, 'oh I can't possibly die. It's never because that in this situation, I did something wrong and they did something right'. It's always 'OP OP OP'.
Lastly, I don't like games to be too much of a grindfest. I enjoy questing, I enjoy grinding on occasion, but when I have to put weeks of my life to just get one piece of entry level gear in a profession that was aimed toward the common player, there's a problem.
I like the questing system we've currently got. Kill X, fetch Y, click on Z. It's old, it works, and it's better than going through a whole convoluted mess to get a small sliver of experience.
Now that I'm thinking about it...Graphics are nice, but not necessary. If you're going to make a graphically strong MMO, make sure that your 'low' option is low. Give me the ability to turn off a bunch of textures while still leaving effects on the ground that hurt or slow me.
Since the recent graphical updates of World of Warcraft, my performance has been a little stunted. Not much, but what was once 60 FPS in the overcrowded Dalaran has now become a 20-30 in Stormwind. I'm not playing a console shooter or something, I'm playing a massively multiplayer online roleplaying game. It needs to appeal to middle end computers aswell.
It's really simple to me. I want to live in a world not go on a ride at magic mountain. A few things have really killed it for me over the last few years.
1: The outdoor pve environment has become mind numbing to easy.
I have to disagree with all three of Mister Fuller's points on MMO failures.
Point one is the case of having a slow and un-epic start to the game, where you kill minor enemies like rats and goblins. Question: what MMOs actually fail for this reason? This is a very common thing to have in an MMO, isn't it? I don't know of very many where within the first couple hours of gameplay, you get to battle giants and dragons. More importantly, I don't know of any MMO players who would quit a game based on the fact that they couldn't single-handedly topple an army of golems led by a mad archmage bent on world domination by the end of their first day of play. Even if having to start off on spiders and snakes is annoying for some, that's a far cry from calling it one of the major reasons that MMOs fail.
In fact, I wouldn't want to play a game that starts you off too soon with complex fights with impressive enemies because there'd be nowhere to build to from there. And as far as story is concerned, the world feels fake if you're expected to accept the fact that you, a total novice, are being depended upon for dragon-wrangling and matters of national importance when you are literally surrounded on all sides at all times by thousands of other players who are much more powerful than you. Long story short, complaining about starting off killing mud rats makes sense for a single-player game but not as much sense for a massively multiplayer persistant world.
Point two is almost too vague to disagree with. "Support your community" is not self-explanatory. But the gist of the paragraph seems to be less about community and more about addressing player complaints. While it's true that a game can bomb because the developers won't change things that people hate about it, the solution is not for the game makers to listen to what the majority of their players are saying. The majority of MMO players want WoW. Since only Blizzard can actually make a WoW worth playing, all the devs who cave to their playerbase's complaints end up pleasing nobody. The solution is for developers to have a strong vision for their game from the outset, build a game that caters to a subset of the MMO playerbase, and IGNORE the howling of butthurt subscribers who can't live with the fact that some games aren't tailor-made for them. It's amazing that there are still people who think that an ideal MMO can be made by a committee of MMO players, if only the hopelessly dumb developers would listen to them.
Point three also seems to have very little to do with why actual MMOs fail. If an Eastern MMO created for an Eastern audience is released to the Western market and does poorly, can you really say that it's an epic failure? No, it's still doing just fine in its home country. If this accusation of Epic Failure is aimed at games that are designed specifically to cater to both audiences, you'd better explain a little more clearly what those Eastern and Western preferences are. Or can't you think of anything negative to say about Western tastes? "Grind-fest" isn't what I'd call a neutral term. This seems like a thinly-veiled way of saying that western games are better because there's less grinding, and you'd appreciate it if our market wasn't tainted with games that aim for a compromise.
Boring combat:If I wanted to hit 2 buttons and win then I would be playing a turn based game, give me something at least a little dynamic.
Forced repetition: I get it, killing 20 rats will net me faction points towards gear but the fact of the matter is I don't care about killing rats because its insignificant and feels like the questgiver is wasting my time.
Leveling as a chore: WTF? I play an RPG for the story and world, not for endless fetch quests followed by a gear treadmill.
Forced grouping: Some people like this, that is fine. I however like the idea of a world that is truly alive with people where interaction is merely a part of the world and not something forced on you.
100 skills on my bar: I don't know why MMOs do this, it makes no sense. By max level an entire bar is loaded with skills that can be casted. This just makes the game needlessly complex and a lot of the skills are there to simply up the number. Make a small number of skills that have many uses and are never useless.
This thread has had more interest for me than all of the games I have played in the last month.
For me, the killers are:
1. grinding, especially random drop quest with very little chance of getting required items.
2. he who pays the most, wins
3. selling epic weapons (see point 2)
4. crafting sucks, when you have to buy item mall stuff (especially when the item mall things do not actually raise your chance of success)
5. pvp could be good, but not when some prick 50 levels higher than you, raids a low level area and kills you with 1 hit.
6. lack of variety, kill 200 of the same monster or collect 200 (random drop) items.
There are lots of ways to improve the games, but developers will NOT listen.
For example:
1. there is more than one race, class etc. why force the player to spend all the budget on just one char, when they could be exploring the other options as well.
2. dndo has puzzels in some quests, which are a great idea (pity the mechanics prevent you from healing you char till you get to a rest spot, and hp pots are useless(too expensive for too little reward), also transforming the grind into repeating that same quests, SUCKS, not just killing the same monster over and over, but killing the same set of monsters over and over)
3. make item mall stuff actually worth buying, having a 3 hour xp bonus for what ever price, is just milking money out of the players. a low cost xp bonus should last at least a day, and this should not include time when the player is not online.
I could go on and on, but as developers are not likely to read this, let alone act on it, it is pointless to continue...
While the topic is certainly worth discussing the answers the author provided seem completely out of touch both with gamers and with the gaming industry. One can safely say that not a single MMO has ever failed due to the reasons mentioned in the article.
I maintain this List of Sandbox MMORPGs. Please post or send PM for corrections and suggestions.
While the topic is certainly worth discussing the answers the author provided seem completely out of touch both with gamers and with the gaming industry. One can safely say that not a single MMO has ever failed due to the reasons mentioned in the article.
I had a similar reaction as well. He's entitled to his opinion, but I don't think solving the issues he mentions will in anyway revitalize the MMO industry.
And perhaps that's the problem. So many so-called experts, from journalists to bloggers to the devs themselves, just don't seem able to identify the problem let alone advance a solution.
I spent 20 minutes typing the way in which I see developers fail. Then I read Dredphyre's post a couple of posts up, and thought "Gee, I think they've nailed a lot of aspects". There's a time and a place for hand-holding. A 'wanna be successful MMO' is not it. YOU the Developers try to market these games as MMO RPGs. In actual fact they're MMO pre-written stories. A story has a time and a place, it helps develop the lore within a game. But the ultimate play style and path should be left up to an individual player. Provide us with an element of choice in quests, particularly the primary story-line. We're all happy to reach the same place eventually, but a lot of us would like to be able to do it differently to the next guy (or gal).
I can't necessarily blame developers though. The modern casual gamer (under the age of 16) is so focussed on 'power-gaming'. Its all about wanting the strongest class that can beat the crap out of the next guy and obliterate solo mobs quicker than they can click their mouse. Do you want to know one of the biggest reasons this has occurred - and again this is my opinion:
The majority of people want to level relatively quickly - its a sad fact. But lets remember, these games are not RPGs any more. They're just a player acting out a pre-determined sequence of events of a story - really nothing exciting about it, and no real reason to get excited. So much of the modern MMO has drifted toward the grind. EVERY single quest is the same in that it involves grinding mobs. The quicker you can grind mobs, the quicker you will level. It seems pretty basic, but this seems to be driving MMOs in the wrong direciton, and players into the wrong mindset.
Additionally, if we consider each kill to provide a player with a sense of achievement, the quicker you kill a mob, the quicker you receive your 'hit of achievement'. When each mob takes at least 30 seconds to kill, things start to get dull. Whats more is, a player is unable to take on more than 1 mob at a time. If they do, things become too difficult and they die. Has no developer considered a slight reduction in power (and hence xp received) to mobs in order to allow a player to submerge themselves in an epic battle and take on 5, 6, 7, or even 10 mobs at once? This could potentially satisfy the power gamers who want to obliterate their opponents, but allow people who wish to use a role-play class (that may not be as powerful) and take on just a few mobs at a time. It will also allow better players to apply some interesting mob management and crowd control techniques when they decide to take on 20 mobs at once (as opposed to 2 or 3 that a brave gamer in the current mindset of developers could take on).
Thanks to such tight control on how a player can battle, each battle is exactly the same. That's thousands of kills per player carried out in exactly the same manner. I don't know about you, but I'm yawning already.
A couple of other points below:
Crafting: Look at what Vanguard did (sorry, I was a fan). Item crafting should reward those willing to put in the effort. The most difficult and time consuming crafted items should be on-par with raid gear, or better (considering in Vanguard, a top level crafter would have put in months + of crafting time to be able to craft such an item). But don't make crafting a simple one-click and your done type event. I liked having to obtain crafting items, and legendary crafting items that provided crafting boosts. . Perhpas combine in a way of crafting transort as well: be it air, land or sea.
Skills/spells/feats whatever you want to call them - utilise Feat Trees: Allow customisation! Don't let every cleric, or every warrior, or every sorcerer or whatever the class may be have exactly the same abilities and powers. This is something I loved in AoC, the ability to spec differently - and have been pleased to see it take a different route in the Beta of RIFT as well.
I prefer persistent worlds, but understand the benefits of Instances as well. I think both have a purpose and should be used accordingly. Sometimes, your group just wants to grind a dungeon for gear. Other times, it may be interesting to have guild groups come up against each other in a high level dungeon and battle it out for the right to raid a dungeon. I think its important to have both (if you want your MMO to be popular with all walks of life - the hard core gamer, and the casual gamer). This allows a place for hard core guilds and social guilds alike.
Graphics: For me personally, I have a rig that would blow a US Navy aircraft carrier out of the water. I love to immerse myself in a beatifully detailed world. Trees, grass, shadows, detailed armour, characters and monsters. Realistic water effects, weather effects, rains, tornadoes whatever it may be. Don't stop creating detailed worlds. BUT, a lot of gamers and RP fans are not like me. Remember, low graphic options are supposed to allow a lower or mid end computer to run the game. When there's no difference in the processing power required to run low or Ultra graphic settings, then perahps rethink the way the game has been coded.
Call me cynical, but I don't think developers really care what a gamer wants - and are unlikely to pick up on any of our points raised in this forum. They just care about making some cash and selling a product they think the market wants. It seems as if a developer fails to make something the market wants, well tough luck. Its all that's available so the mentality of "You will play it, and you will like it" kicks in.
I may not ever see an MMORPG that I would give a 10/10 (at least in my life time) but I feel better for having been given the opportunity to rant.
The everything must die mentality. Really the only way to be successful in your game is to slaughter shit from sun up to sun down.
Seriously this is what you think of non combat features? Do you even like non combat features?
Holy trinity. REALLY OMFG can we try something different people. If you can't manage to make a skill based game can we at least get some decent customizable characters?
Failure means not trying anything new or innovative... I suspect the theme park is on its road to failure right now. At some point these sad games will hold nobody's attention, if only we had a fast forward through this period of online gaming history.
The introduction of more realistic and persistence worlds that actually contain the elements of a living breathing world would save a lot of MMO's.. and some original thought.
The everything must die mentality. Really the only way to be successful in your game is to slaughter shit from sun up to sun down.
Seriously this is what you think of non combat features? Do you even like non combat features?
Holy trinity. REALLY OMFG can we try something different people. If you can't manage to make a skill based game can we at least get some decent customizable characters?
Give me a world, with the pvp setting of daoc, the living world of ultima, the quests of everquest with todays technology, a mature art style (no comicstyle with ridiculous overdone mean armors) some nice non combat activites, also a nice amount of erotic, bring back meaningfull riddles and puzzles, exploring, rejuvenate crafting and take SWG and the best other economy games as examples and merge all that into a versatile world of different regions with different settings of interactivity and security and keep pvp and pve seperated in the high order regions and let it be chaos in the low order regions and do not force players to participate or even visit each region but offer the Oportunity to do so.
Then maybe its a good mmo again...
"Torquemada... do not implore him for compassion. Torquemada... do not beg him for forgiveness. Torquemada... do not ask him for mercy. Let's face it, you can't Torquemada anything!"
Stop being copies of copies as has been said many times. Be creative create pride in whatever side or faction or realm the player decides to play. I enjoyed DAOC for that, sure it had lots of issues but it instilled realm pride in away that no other mmo has for me, most mmo's want replayability, when I think they should focus on making a player want to continue playing the caracter they create. Give players a reason to pvp and they will want to. I also belive that crafted items should be as good or better than dungeon raid item that are hard to get, also I think that a player should be able to craft items that are to the level of thier character, not as in most mmo's now where any item you craft while leveling is below the character that crafted it.
1. The people who makes these games are not gamers at heart. They are people who are only passionate about making money.
This is completely false. You're thinking more along the lines of investors...and there's nothing wrong with wanting a good ROI.
I'm glad somebody pointed this out. Reading through the posts and I don't think enough people understand just how expensive it is to create a software product such as a game. Then on top of that to add continued support & development indefinitely.
Comments
MMO's go wrong by assuming it's players have no imagination, and the ones who do, don't want to use it.
And maybe they are right, maybe the imaginitive creative types are the under dogs, but we want something to play too.
PLAY WURM ONLINE!! www.wurmonline.com
Well as of this same day the game has already been released, bought and played. You conveniently left out the part of my post where i said "when it came out only then did we hear of the problems". They point out the problems because people already know them. It's not like we needed their OK to admit that something was wrong.
They build up the games to a potential that can be nothing but a disappointment when you finally get to play them.
MMOs fail because there is hardly any innovation. The entire genre is stagnating. No matter which AAA mmo I try, it feels like I have played it a dozen times before.
On the other gand, you got smaller indie games that have a lot of "potential". Unfortunately, they never reach that potential or the level of hype they sometimes generate.
GW2 is the only that will probably get it right. At least one game to look forward to in 2011...
Hype train -> Reality
MMO's are failing now because they now have a reputation for releasing unfinished and lacking in content. Consumers are finally clueing in and not buying what the publishers are feeding them (via sites like this one).
WoW is the number 1 most successful MMO for a bunch of reasons, but it's my firm belief that WoW was so well recieved because it launched with a very high level of polish (when compared to other products of the day).
Publishers are only now starting to realize that it's in their best interest in the long run to release a finished product (see the recent news about TOR being pushed back) . They can no longer operate under the assumption that they can launch and then release a 'hail mary' patch somewhere down the line (which has been a very popular tactic in recent years).
People say these forums, and many other game forums, are too full of negativity. I don't agree. They are negative because the people here (and on other game forums) have been sold snake oil over and over again and are sick of it.
Where do MMO's go wrong? They are very rarely released in a finished polished state, with content worth paying for.
well more or less everyone here forget to mention one imho major reason why MMOs ho wrong: us - the players.
most of the players are too focused on visual ("come on, this doesnt have better graphic that game X which is 4 years old!") and audio ("what?!?!!? it doesnt have full voiceover? EPIC FAIL!?!?!!11"), that there are forcing developers to spend insane amount of time and money on that.
what does it mean? that developers are forced to seek outside investors, who in turn force them to focus on "easy to sell" features ("thats what most of the players wants, so focus on that, it will sell the game") and to toss away anything that could be risky (not to mention, that the press from investors (and overall from financial side) is the main reason why most mmorpgs are released unifinished).
P.S. and no, i am not talking about "those damned casual players who destroyed mmorpgs for us, hardcores" (as if there was something wrong with casual play for relaxation). i am a big fan of sandbox games, so i do ,among other things, spend a lot of time reading different forum threads about them. they have highest concentration of so called (by themself) "hardcore mmorpg players", but guess what? i think there are really good/interesting sandbox games out there (more or less all of them are indie ones), but hey - what do i read in those forum threads most? thats right "hardcore mmorpg player's" cry over how crappy is audiovisual side of those games.
There's a concept in game design called player agency. Essentially it describes the amount of freedom players have to approach content in a game. But as the gaming industry has matured, developers have becme more control-freaks. They seem to need to control every aspect of your character -- afraid of exploits, RMTs, min-maxers, and a whole host of other bugaboos.
Early EQ used to have a lot of player agency. Players could chain magic spells together to create unforseen effects (kiting is one example). They could gather 20+ people together to defeat a difficult foe (this is how 'raiding' started, as an exploit in EQ). They could choose the suckiest class and race combination, and upon reaching high level be revered for being so unique.
Now, everything is result-oriented. You can't chain spells together in creative ways...spells are now discrete, limited, numbers in a predictive combination. Raids are now scripted, and need precise, choreographed moves to complete. And class/race combinations are decided for you by the all-knowing developer, because you really don't want to play the Erudite Paladin. And why would you play the suckiest class/race combination when the developers have engineered the outcome of quests so precisely that you need to take the best combinations to succeed.
Developers have trapped themselves in a self-fulfilling prophecy. They are so obsessed with control, that it's taking the fun out of the games. I once had a conversation with a Dev of LOTRO. He was lamenting the fact that the expanded, opened landscape areas around Bree saw so little player traffic. To him it was evidence that players don't really want more freedom. I pointed out that his game holds players hand from the start -- isn't it any wonder that a game that teaches dependancy on the system, should then fail at providing more freedom? He had no response.
And as long as I'm talking about LOTRO, let's give a simple example of player agency: Ranged attack. In DDO, it is perfectly legal to perch and pick off foes from a position from which they can't reach you. But in LOTRO, this same tactic triggers an exploit. The same company, two different systems. In fact, DDO goes a long way in capturing the spirit of player agency throughout the game. Of course what kills this experience is the highly instanced nature of its world.
But to be honest, few games offer any meaningful degree of player agency. One last qualifier to the idea of player agency. It doesn't mean open world pvp, nor does it mean elimination of quests. It simply means giving players as many ways to approach content as possible.
So to the developers reading this (likely none), I say this: Let go the levers of control!
What turns me off on an MMO is a bad community. World of Warcraft is a prime example of it.
When I sit down and play an MMO, I don't want to be forced to use another program to enjoy it. I don't want to have to rely on hearing screechy kids or elitist 'hardcores'.
I am of course talking about ventrilo. Before I left WoW again, I actually had someone say that I couldn't tank Tol Barad (after they forced me to join the group no less) unless I logged on vent.
Their reason? 'becuz therez a point where the tankz haz to swap'. My only reply was 'so, say swap? S W A P. Four letters. You hardly need to move your fingers.'
If one can't type between global cooldowns or click while they're typing, they shouldn't be playing the game.
Another thing that constantly turns me off toward MMOs, and again, this is aimed at the community- Constant screaming and whining about a class or skill being supposedly overpowered because they died to it. This has become the constant in WoW. Everyone thinks, 'oh I can't possibly die. It's never because that in this situation, I did something wrong and they did something right'. It's always 'OP OP OP'.
Lastly, I don't like games to be too much of a grindfest. I enjoy questing, I enjoy grinding on occasion, but when I have to put weeks of my life to just get one piece of entry level gear in a profession that was aimed toward the common player, there's a problem.
I like the questing system we've currently got. Kill X, fetch Y, click on Z. It's old, it works, and it's better than going through a whole convoluted mess to get a small sliver of experience.
Now that I'm thinking about it...Graphics are nice, but not necessary. If you're going to make a graphically strong MMO, make sure that your 'low' option is low. Give me the ability to turn off a bunch of textures while still leaving effects on the ground that hurt or slow me.
Since the recent graphical updates of World of Warcraft, my performance has been a little stunted. Not much, but what was once 60 FPS in the overcrowded Dalaran has now become a 20-30 in Stormwind. I'm not playing a console shooter or something, I'm playing a massively multiplayer online roleplaying game. It needs to appeal to middle end computers aswell.
Grr. Would desperately love an edit button so I could put two line breaks so my post looks readable.
oh, nice post Dredphyre. I can definately agree with that as another aspect of why new MMOs go wrong.
It's really simple to me. I want to live in a world not go on a ride at magic mountain. A few things have really killed it for me over the last few years.
1: The outdoor pve environment has become mind numbing to easy.
2: Crafting has taken a back seat to gear grind.
3: Housing has vanished for the most part.
4: Auction House
5: Instances every where you turn.
I have to disagree with all three of Mister Fuller's points on MMO failures.
Point one is the case of having a slow and un-epic start to the game, where you kill minor enemies like rats and goblins. Question: what MMOs actually fail for this reason? This is a very common thing to have in an MMO, isn't it? I don't know of very many where within the first couple hours of gameplay, you get to battle giants and dragons. More importantly, I don't know of any MMO players who would quit a game based on the fact that they couldn't single-handedly topple an army of golems led by a mad archmage bent on world domination by the end of their first day of play. Even if having to start off on spiders and snakes is annoying for some, that's a far cry from calling it one of the major reasons that MMOs fail.
In fact, I wouldn't want to play a game that starts you off too soon with complex fights with impressive enemies because there'd be nowhere to build to from there. And as far as story is concerned, the world feels fake if you're expected to accept the fact that you, a total novice, are being depended upon for dragon-wrangling and matters of national importance when you are literally surrounded on all sides at all times by thousands of other players who are much more powerful than you. Long story short, complaining about starting off killing mud rats makes sense for a single-player game but not as much sense for a massively multiplayer persistant world.
Point two is almost too vague to disagree with. "Support your community" is not self-explanatory. But the gist of the paragraph seems to be less about community and more about addressing player complaints. While it's true that a game can bomb because the developers won't change things that people hate about it, the solution is not for the game makers to listen to what the majority of their players are saying. The majority of MMO players want WoW. Since only Blizzard can actually make a WoW worth playing, all the devs who cave to their playerbase's complaints end up pleasing nobody. The solution is for developers to have a strong vision for their game from the outset, build a game that caters to a subset of the MMO playerbase, and IGNORE the howling of butthurt subscribers who can't live with the fact that some games aren't tailor-made for them. It's amazing that there are still people who think that an ideal MMO can be made by a committee of MMO players, if only the hopelessly dumb developers would listen to them.
Point three also seems to have very little to do with why actual MMOs fail. If an Eastern MMO created for an Eastern audience is released to the Western market and does poorly, can you really say that it's an epic failure? No, it's still doing just fine in its home country. If this accusation of Epic Failure is aimed at games that are designed specifically to cater to both audiences, you'd better explain a little more clearly what those Eastern and Western preferences are. Or can't you think of anything negative to say about Western tastes? "Grind-fest" isn't what I'd call a neutral term. This seems like a thinly-veiled way of saying that western games are better because there's less grinding, and you'd appreciate it if our market wasn't tainted with games that aim for a compromise.
This is easy. I'm tired of quite a few things:
Boring combat:If I wanted to hit 2 buttons and win then I would be playing a turn based game, give me something at least a little dynamic.
Forced repetition: I get it, killing 20 rats will net me faction points towards gear but the fact of the matter is I don't care about killing rats because its insignificant and feels like the questgiver is wasting my time.
Leveling as a chore: WTF? I play an RPG for the story and world, not for endless fetch quests followed by a gear treadmill.
Forced grouping: Some people like this, that is fine. I however like the idea of a world that is truly alive with people where interaction is merely a part of the world and not something forced on you.
100 skills on my bar: I don't know why MMOs do this, it makes no sense. By max level an entire bar is loaded with skills that can be casted. This just makes the game needlessly complex and a lot of the skills are there to simply up the number. Make a small number of skills that have many uses and are never useless.
Whiteblade, I see two contradicting statements in your post.
How can you 'be bored with only 2 buttons' and then complain about 'having a lot more complex skills'?
This thread has had more interest for me than all of the games I have played in the last month.
For me, the killers are:
1. grinding, especially random drop quest with very little chance of getting required items.
2. he who pays the most, wins
3. selling epic weapons (see point 2)
4. crafting sucks, when you have to buy item mall stuff (especially when the item mall things do not actually raise your chance of success)
5. pvp could be good, but not when some prick 50 levels higher than you, raids a low level area and kills you with 1 hit.
6. lack of variety, kill 200 of the same monster or collect 200 (random drop) items.
There are lots of ways to improve the games, but developers will NOT listen.
For example:
1. there is more than one race, class etc. why force the player to spend all the budget on just one char, when they could be exploring the other options as well.
2. dndo has puzzels in some quests, which are a great idea (pity the mechanics prevent you from healing you char till you get to a rest spot, and hp pots are useless(too expensive for too little reward), also transforming the grind into repeating that same quests, SUCKS, not just killing the same monster over and over, but killing the same set of monsters over and over)
3. make item mall stuff actually worth buying, having a 3 hour xp bonus for what ever price, is just milking money out of the players. a low cost xp bonus should last at least a day, and this should not include time when the player is not online.
I could go on and on, but as developers are not likely to read this, let alone act on it, it is pointless to continue...
"I am taking a break from my TERA column this week..."
... there's a weekly Tera column? didn't realize there was that much interest in a single game.
Sorry, but that's a very bad article.
While the topic is certainly worth discussing the answers the author provided seem completely out of touch both with gamers and with the gaming industry. One can safely say that not a single MMO has ever failed due to the reasons mentioned in the article.
I maintain this List of Sandbox MMORPGs. Please post or send PM for corrections and suggestions.
When they try to class balance for PvP and ruin the PvE side of the house.
I had a similar reaction as well. He's entitled to his opinion, but I don't think solving the issues he mentions will in anyway revitalize the MMO industry.
And perhaps that's the problem. So many so-called experts, from journalists to bloggers to the devs themselves, just don't seem able to identify the problem let alone advance a solution.
I spent 20 minutes typing the way in which I see developers fail. Then I read Dredphyre's post a couple of posts up, and thought "Gee, I think they've nailed a lot of aspects". There's a time and a place for hand-holding. A 'wanna be successful MMO' is not it. YOU the Developers try to market these games as MMO RPGs. In actual fact they're MMO pre-written stories. A story has a time and a place, it helps develop the lore within a game. But the ultimate play style and path should be left up to an individual player. Provide us with an element of choice in quests, particularly the primary story-line. We're all happy to reach the same place eventually, but a lot of us would like to be able to do it differently to the next guy (or gal).
I can't necessarily blame developers though. The modern casual gamer (under the age of 16) is so focussed on 'power-gaming'. Its all about wanting the strongest class that can beat the crap out of the next guy and obliterate solo mobs quicker than they can click their mouse. Do you want to know one of the biggest reasons this has occurred - and again this is my opinion:
The majority of people want to level relatively quickly - its a sad fact. But lets remember, these games are not RPGs any more. They're just a player acting out a pre-determined sequence of events of a story - really nothing exciting about it, and no real reason to get excited. So much of the modern MMO has drifted toward the grind. EVERY single quest is the same in that it involves grinding mobs. The quicker you can grind mobs, the quicker you will level. It seems pretty basic, but this seems to be driving MMOs in the wrong direciton, and players into the wrong mindset.
Additionally, if we consider each kill to provide a player with a sense of achievement, the quicker you kill a mob, the quicker you receive your 'hit of achievement'. When each mob takes at least 30 seconds to kill, things start to get dull. Whats more is, a player is unable to take on more than 1 mob at a time. If they do, things become too difficult and they die. Has no developer considered a slight reduction in power (and hence xp received) to mobs in order to allow a player to submerge themselves in an epic battle and take on 5, 6, 7, or even 10 mobs at once? This could potentially satisfy the power gamers who want to obliterate their opponents, but allow people who wish to use a role-play class (that may not be as powerful) and take on just a few mobs at a time. It will also allow better players to apply some interesting mob management and crowd control techniques when they decide to take on 20 mobs at once (as opposed to 2 or 3 that a brave gamer in the current mindset of developers could take on).
Thanks to such tight control on how a player can battle, each battle is exactly the same. That's thousands of kills per player carried out in exactly the same manner. I don't know about you, but I'm yawning already.
A couple of other points below:
Crafting: Look at what Vanguard did (sorry, I was a fan). Item crafting should reward those willing to put in the effort. The most difficult and time consuming crafted items should be on-par with raid gear, or better (considering in Vanguard, a top level crafter would have put in months + of crafting time to be able to craft such an item). But don't make crafting a simple one-click and your done type event. I liked having to obtain crafting items, and legendary crafting items that provided crafting boosts. . Perhpas combine in a way of crafting transort as well: be it air, land or sea.
Skills/spells/feats whatever you want to call them - utilise Feat Trees: Allow customisation! Don't let every cleric, or every warrior, or every sorcerer or whatever the class may be have exactly the same abilities and powers. This is something I loved in AoC, the ability to spec differently - and have been pleased to see it take a different route in the Beta of RIFT as well.
I prefer persistent worlds, but understand the benefits of Instances as well. I think both have a purpose and should be used accordingly. Sometimes, your group just wants to grind a dungeon for gear. Other times, it may be interesting to have guild groups come up against each other in a high level dungeon and battle it out for the right to raid a dungeon. I think its important to have both (if you want your MMO to be popular with all walks of life - the hard core gamer, and the casual gamer). This allows a place for hard core guilds and social guilds alike.
Graphics: For me personally, I have a rig that would blow a US Navy aircraft carrier out of the water. I love to immerse myself in a beatifully detailed world. Trees, grass, shadows, detailed armour, characters and monsters. Realistic water effects, weather effects, rains, tornadoes whatever it may be. Don't stop creating detailed worlds. BUT, a lot of gamers and RP fans are not like me. Remember, low graphic options are supposed to allow a lower or mid end computer to run the game. When there's no difference in the processing power required to run low or Ultra graphic settings, then perahps rethink the way the game has been coded.
Call me cynical, but I don't think developers really care what a gamer wants - and are unlikely to pick up on any of our points raised in this forum. They just care about making some cash and selling a product they think the market wants. It seems as if a developer fails to make something the market wants, well tough luck. Its all that's available so the mentality of "You will play it, and you will like it" kicks in.
I may not ever see an MMORPG that I would give a 10/10 (at least in my life time) but I feel better for having been given the opportunity to rant.
For me MMO are blah because:
The everything must die mentality. Really the only way to be successful in your game is to slaughter shit from sun up to sun down.
Seriously this is what you think of non combat features? Do you even like non combat features?
Holy trinity. REALLY OMFG can we try something different people. If you can't manage to make a skill based game can we at least get some decent customizable characters?
Failure means not trying anything new or innovative... I suspect the theme park is on its road to failure right now. At some point these sad games will hold nobody's attention, if only we had a fast forward through this period of online gaming history.
The introduction of more realistic and persistence worlds that actually contain the elements of a living breathing world would save a lot of MMO's.. and some original thought.
I agree with you completely.
Well, they fail for 1000 reasons.
Give me a world, with the pvp setting of daoc, the living world of ultima, the quests of everquest with todays technology, a mature art style (no comicstyle with ridiculous overdone mean armors) some nice non combat activites, also a nice amount of erotic, bring back meaningfull riddles and puzzles, exploring, rejuvenate crafting and take SWG and the best other economy games as examples and merge all that into a versatile world of different regions with different settings of interactivity and security and keep pvp and pve seperated in the high order regions and let it be chaos in the low order regions and do not force players to participate or even visit each region but offer the Oportunity to do so.
Then maybe its a good mmo again...
"Torquemada... do not implore him for compassion. Torquemada... do not beg him for forgiveness. Torquemada... do not ask him for mercy. Let's face it, you can't Torquemada anything!"
MWO Music Video - What does the Mech say: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FF6HYNqCDLI
Johnny Cash - The Man Comes Around: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y0x2iwK0BKM
Stop being copies of copies as has been said many times. Be creative create pride in whatever side or faction or realm the player decides to play. I enjoyed DAOC for that, sure it had lots of issues but it instilled realm pride in away that no other mmo has for me, most mmo's want replayability, when I think they should focus on making a player want to continue playing the caracter they create. Give players a reason to pvp and they will want to. I also belive that crafted items should be as good or better than dungeon raid item that are hard to get, also I think that a player should be able to craft items that are to the level of thier character, not as in most mmo's now where any item you craft while leveling is below the character that crafted it.
I'm glad somebody pointed this out. Reading through the posts and I don't think enough people understand just how expensive it is to create a software product such as a game. Then on top of that to add continued support & development indefinitely.