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Aspects MMORPG's should have?
Nekkuro
Member Posts: 162
What Aspects do you look for in an MMORPG?
Here are mine:
Expansive and Persistant Open World
Open worlds are what help amplify the "RPG" feel. A wide range of locations and persistancy is what makes an MMO world feel immersive and realistic. I absolutely hate playing confining MMO's. Even if their production quality is top notch, a strictly dungeon based MMORPG can get extremely claustraphobic. (I'm looking at you, Vindictus). An expansive world helps you feel like you're part of a much bigger picture. I want an MMORPG with the thought "If you can see it, you can go there" in mind. Away with invisible walls or path restrictions. If I see a mountain and I want to climb it, who are you to tell me I'm not allowed?
World PVP/ Pking/ Outdoor PVP Content
Some would disagree with me and tell me this is actually bad for an MMORPG environment. I'd like to disagree. In an MMORPG, the less restrictions, the better. The more freedom, the stronger the MMORPG environment. Okay fine. In towns and other densly populated areas, there should be PVP freezones. That's arguable. However, in the wild, you're out of your element. Anything should be able to happen. It encourages traveling with a party and having a sense of awareness at all times.
Fun and Exciting combat
No exchanging blows back and forth, no Click-and-Wait style fighting. I'm tired of double clicking an enemy just so my guy runs up to it and starts smacking it with a sword or fires magic missiles while I watch. I'm not a fan of skill rotations, it gets extremely repetitive. I want to be able to string together combos to my liking. I want the ability to dodge my enemies attacks and vise-versa. I want to actually have to aim when I use a bow like an FPS instead of it auto-locking on to my target.
Comments
There is one simple aspect that all MMO's should have. They should all realize that not one MMO can please everyone, MMO's need to understand that they are closer to a niche genre than they realize.
I wish they would realize that.
I'm so tired of every MMO trying to knock it out of the box and go for WoWs #s by throwing away everything a lot of us loved about the genre before every new game got fast fooded. 1 billion served with a crappy easy game or 500,000 served with a rich quality experience. I'll take the latter. Unfortunately bucks before brilliance is the way of the world now.
I like more RPG with my MMORPGs. Vanguard and LoTRO are my two favorites in terms of features. The more options and the larger and more varied the world, the better.
Which brings me to the first one on my list: While I do tend to play on pvp servers in games where zerg guilds cannot completely lock down all interesting content, I understand and sympathize with people who do not enjoy any form of pvp, and any game with sufficient funding and population should please both types of player. Better yet, where possible, have spacious, open worlds with both pvp and pve zones so that players who are sometimes in the mood to pvp and sometimes in the mood to be left in peace to pve don't have to swap characters and servers depending on what they feel like that day.
My next must-have aspect is a complex, rich MMO world with siege mechanics, a complex economy, class or skill allocation variety that takes more than 12 IQ points and five minutes to master, in depth crafting, player and guild housing or better yet player and guild farms and cities, with room in the world for a pure crafter, and room for a pure solo pvper, with room for a pure group pvper, and with room for solo and group players who only pve or who like both pve and pvp, with room for both hermits and would-be politicians. I want to see an MMO world with room for traders, and with room for people who neither fight nor create anything used or consumed in combat, and with room for small groups of players, and also massive guilds and guild alliances. This is difficult to do and no MMO dev has created a world like this yet, but if MMO devs want to keep making money off MMO players, tney'll eventually figure it out.
I'm becoming very intolerant of exploiters. I simply can't shrug it off when I see it anymore. I want them banned, permanently, from whatever game I'm playing. There is too much greed in the MMO corporate culture. Too often the exploiters, gold farmers, gold buyers, botters, and overall rule breakers get away with repeated violations of the game rules because companies do not want to lose sub money and anger their customers. And too often their rule-following customers slip quietly away to some other game without ever saying why, rather than put up with the end result of that permissiveness.
Oh well, that's asking for a lot, especially the part about putting all those different types of players into the same game world, then keeping them from ruining each other's fun by doing what they want to do the way they want to do it. But a game like that would be one I could stick around in for many years.
I am convinced there is only one way to eliminate these grave evils, namely through the establishment of a socialist economy, accompanied by an educational system which would be oriented toward social goals.
~Albert Einstein
If an MMORPG is designed around a laundry list of features that some bigwig believes an MMORPG "should" have, rather than around what fits in with the other stuff in the game, then the game is going to be terrible.
I have to wholeheartedly agree with you. I've loved games that were hardcore PvP and I've loved games that were 100% PvE, but these games were designed with making a good game in mind, not about which features X game had that make it sucessful.
I agree. The industry needs more creativity and imagination right now. Not to say that you don't need some things which are common sense.
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Kyleran: "Now there's the real trick, learning to accept and enjoy a game for what it offers rather than pass on what might be a great playing experience because it lacks a few features you prefer."
John Henry Newman: "A man would do nothing if he waited until he could do it so well that no one could find fault."
FreddyNoNose: "A good game needs no defense; a bad game has no defense." "Easily digested content is just as easily forgotten."
LacedOpium: "So the question that begs to be asked is, if you are not interested in the game mechanics that define the MMORPG genre, then why are you playing an MMORPG?"
You're looking at this in a much too deep perspective.
These are general aspects I would like to see in an MMORPG. Disregard "what fits in with other stuff in the gane".
Or simply use these aspects as a foundation and fit in the "other stuff" around it.
Expanding and mutating world.
PvP-free world play
Fun and exciting non-combat
The game you describe was released ten years ago. Its title was Dark Age of Camelot and in its day was the most challenging and fun MMO I have ever played.
Its graphics became dated, Its UI became dated and the developers pretty much abandoned it, letting the player base dwindle from over 100K subscribers to a mere thousand or so.
What a shame that this happened. What a shame that they let it happen. What a shame that other developers have not picked up the concept or tried to remake it.
DAoC had nothing to envy WoW and if the developers had been smart, and given it some TLC, they would still have 100K + subscribers. Killing the goose that lays the golden egg seems to be a popular flaw among developers.
The only aspects a good MMORPG needs is to be fun, massively multiplayer, and have a persistent world (though, even that could be agrued).
But which is worse - a bigwig with a list or a committee of developers each adding an item to a list?
Alas, the definition of "fun" is fuzzy and subjective.
So? You can't make a MMO that appeals to EVERYONE. Knowing your target audience is important.
Expansive and Persistant Open World
I completely agree with this one here, and I've been itching for a world that isn't "Zoned-off" like levels in an arcade game. I'd like to be able to point in one direction, and go off in that direction and /explore/. Exploring is short-changed in most MMOs that I see today in favor of a more mainstreamed EXP-crunching level fest where the only objective is to get to the end levels where the "real game" begins.
Having really only played Asheron's Call, I can't speak for EQ or DAoC, etc. but there's an example of an open and free world, corner to corner, with no mountains that couldn't be crossed if you looked hard enough for a way up and around them. Most of the fun I have is just running off and exploring the world the developers set up for us. Makes me feel like I'm finding places no one else has been to before simply because it's off in the middle of nowhere.
World PVP/ Pking/ Outdoor PVP Content
I'm about 90% PvE, and 10% PvP, but I understand that there is a vast majority of people who thrive on the PvP functions of MMOs, because you're fighting real people! Takes more skill than a few monsters.
However, let it become the main primary focus of the game (I.E. grinding in raids, getting loot to dominate in PvP) and then things start to suffer on the RPG side of MMORPGs and it turns more into an action game.
Outdoor PVP is the comfortable alternative that makes the world that much more exciting and isn't pinned down by just an arena fight. I think it'd be pretty cool to have open-world PvP combined with the world of the PvE players like myself. Only, the way I'd consider going about that is to simply just choose whether or not you want your character to be a PvP or PvE from character-creation (I.E. PvP characters can be targeted by other PvP characters, the free-game Open World PvP, while PvE characters cannot be targeted nor can target PvP characters.) You could probably allow an in-game switch to PK status, and back again if you wanted, granted it was regulated enough to prevent "suprise" ganking.
Details about how the PvP in an open world should be set up can be explained by someone else. I don't think about that stuff.
Fun and Exciting combat
I think Tera has the right idea here (sounds like what you want), combing the combat of games like Oblivion and such, with the "free targeting", but I think it's short-changed. I'd love to bring back the weakness mechanics of Asheron's Call, where you have Physical weaknesses (Slashing, Bludgeoning, Piercing) and elemental weakness as well (Fire, Ice, Acid, etc.) Coupled with the "High, Mid, Low" weak-point mindset of AC as well.
An example, you have a humanoid-creature that has a full suit of heavy armor, but wears no leg guards, only some leather. With the armor, he's well protected from most physical attacks, but his legs will easily fall to the creature's natural weakness, piercing. You also have a bit of fire on that dagger of yours, but those leather leggings have a high resistance to fire. However, his helmet does not.
So you have a few choices, either attack him in the legs with physical damage, or the head, with elemental damage. What makes Tera's system work so well with this, is that you'd have to physically aim for the legs or the head. This makes the game much more interesting, since you have to think about each battle from a strategic point of view, thinking about the weaknesses, and the areas where those creatures are weak (That golem won't get touched by my sword, but my acid mace will bring it to it's knees.)
I hate games where swords that are on fire can bring down a magma golem. I mean, really?
I could add way more to what aspects make an MMO great, but my post is already a huge wall of text so...
tl;dr - AGREED WITH OP
Housing
transportation,might need to feed that pet or fuel that vehiccle.
food
weather
time/night/day
aging/death
physics
tools/crafting...nothing in game should appear out of thin air,nor should npcs stock what is never made by the games players.
Combat/Ai/pvp/justice,law system.
Mobs that roam freely,an eco system.........Realistic mobs,i mean no powerful lil bunnies and weak giants.
An ever evolving/advancing game world,it should never be stuck in the year 1500 forever.
A monetary/trading system.Clothes/weapons.
gardening/planting.
NPC's that actually act like real world people as well as a politics system.
I feel at this point in time,technology is there to include 3D graphics in every game asd well as decent animations.I also feel most every game should now have realsitic looking materials,example meatal,cloth,wood ect ect.
Race,this is a huge one,i feel most games take race for granted and do it cheap,everyone ends up with the same qualities to start the game.
I feel EVERY game should have a class system or some form of hybrid system.This way you can actually say what type of player you are,not just some jack of all.
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While I did try DAOC, it was years after it launched because I was enamored of Anarchy Online for a long time and missed out on both SWG and DAOC (also partly because both would have required a new computer, my system at the time was a hand-me-down that barely ran AO). Even though DAOC's UI just really bugged me both times I trialed the game later (and in addition the first time I trialed it my computer still wasn't good enough and so gameplay was incredibly annoying), I still regret missing out on its heyday, and I regret missing out on SWG pre-NGE, too. 100k subs sounds like a healthy number, not sure what SWG had before Sony mucked that up, but in both cases, I get the impression the companies involved were chasing the WoW $$$, which was a purely stupid but kind of understandable thing to do. It must have been crazy those first couple of years after WoW got really big, all those game companies looking at their games and wondering why couldn't they hit those numbers.
The end result of chasing Blizzard's success has been a fantastic failure, though. Shallow themeparks everywhere, most far shallower than WoW, and then these guys wonder why they can't retain players. And on top of that, we've all lost our wide-eyed wonder, we aren't new to the MMO rodeo anymore, so if anything, we're much harder to please than we were six or seven years ago.
I am convinced there is only one way to eliminate these grave evils, namely through the establishment of a socialist economy, accompanied by an educational system which would be oriented toward social goals.
~Albert Einstein
1. Interesting Setting/Story
I really do love fantasy, but I just can't feel any interest in the 397140 Version of elves, dwarfes and obligatory cuddly small people. Doesn't help if the storyline is "you're the only hero (ignore the 2384027 other player please) somewhere out there is mr x and he is evil sooo let's defeat him by giving you 32052 Quests to kill Monster a-z 20 times".
2. Big World
I'm just the explorer kind, I love to see the most obscure and isolated places noone ever visits.
3. New Ideas
I still love many of the old concepts and imo we would never have to make combat more "action orientated" but I would love to see a solution to the "persistant world = static world" problem or someone finally really trying to support the social aspect of MMOs. Nearly everyone knows, that one of the main reasons player stay in MMORPGs for years, even if the content gets boring, is the community they have there, still noone seems to really care about that part. We usually get to create a guild and with it our own chatchannel and if we're lucky can bulid a guildhouse/castle, but that's about it.
If feature X doesn't fit the game you're building, then the important thing is to say, fine, we won't have feature X. I don't care if it's an executive or a committee of people who makes that decision. But it needs to be made. Don't try to duct tape on features that don't work.
What I mainly look for in a new game is something interesting that I haven't already played before. If I've already played a few games with some particular list of features, then I don't want to play yet another one that plays about the same as the previous games, unless perhaps the previous games were abject failures for one reason or another and the new game can fix the old problems.