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The Great MMO Decline and The Rise of Profitable Mediocrity
patient32
Member UncommonPosts: 96
This has probably been discussed by many others, but I figure nothing will ever change unless enough people demand that change.
Modern MMOs are a different "Entity" from older MMOs.
Developers, witness the money to be made and, eager to jump on the profit-earning bandwagon, realise that they don't have to put loads of time into developing a great MMO, with a great story and great ideas and mechanics - for these things require effort and luck - it's not definite that these things will come - or work.
Shiny graphics and the so called "cookie-cutter" mechanics however CAN be churned out with inevitability. Which makes these endeavours financially viable.
The problem, sadly, is that most MMOs are designed to be throwaway things and most players treat them that way.
A game is churned out, it's bought or paid for, for a couple of months and then the game is discarded. The players aren't entirely happy, but they paid for and played the game and then moved on.
The developers, though, are entirely happy, in that they earned enough money back from their investment to deem the game a success... And so they move on to the next, to repeat the cycle.
Churn something out... Garner enough interest to earn back what they invested and hopefully a bit of profit and repeat.
This, it seems, is just modern life and modern business.
Why put in effort creating something amazing.. When you can just make several mediocre things and earn money that way.
I'm not insulting the players, nor am I insulting the developers. It's just the way it is.
So long as the players are paying for a game for a couple of months and then moving on to another game... Things will never change.
Who knows though..... Maybe one day some developer will try to make the best game they possibly can make... And I guess I'll see you all there, in whatever gameworld that may be.
"It's like a finger pointing away to the moon... Don't concentrate on the finger or you'll miss all the heavenly glory" (Bruce Lee)
(Insert your favourite mmo here): ......And behold, a pale horse.... And a million hellishly bad mmos followed with it.
Comments
You got it confused.
Older MMOs are worse games, for many (including me). Hence the devs respond to the market and make it better for them. You think otherwise only because you have a different preference.
I wouldn't use the word "amazing" ... but if players want throwaway short term entertainment in MMOs, is there any reason not to give it to them?
I share that view on these Days Mmorpgs .I think im kinda done spending cash on them after about 10 years of consantly paying 80bucks or more for new AAA mmorpgs with quest hubs and mediocrity that hold my interest about 1month im kinda done with the genre per se.
It all just got too meaningless too easy and soloable. Instead of being a Mmo. Payday 2 does a much better job at being a Mmo and it even isnt one.
its all about collector editions bonus items sellage + cash shops are coming these days. Milking the cow instead of creating a good game.
sadly there ppls that like this 1 month crapfest of mmorpgs dang i wish there was one game that could hold my attention for more then 1 year again ..but with all the easygoing candydropping stupid click n follow arrows needed quest hubbing stuff out there that wont happen.
This game mechanic is just sad.
OP is a little off. The orginal MMOs were pretty terrible, but the idea of playing online with 1000s of other players was like a dream for those of us that grew up playing Theif, or Ultima 4 and stuff like that.
Think about this.. for about the first 5 years of it´s existence.. Ultima Online featured nothing but auto-swing melee attacks. You simply got into combat stance and got close to your target, and then stayed within melee range and watching your auto-attacks fire off. In the first five years of UO, almost every mage used two spells, explode and ebolt... and if you pvp´d, most of them carried a Hally. I don´t know if it is still true, but for the first 6 years of UO, your ingame movement speed was dictated by your internet connection. Think about that in a game that features full-loot open-world PVP. If you had an ping of 50ms.. you could run circles around someone with a ping of 300ms. Now throw in the fact that at that time, a large percentage of players were still playing on dial-up.
The early MMOs were great because they took away that crappy ´end´ feeling of single player RPGs. It is the reason I started playing UO, because it was amazing to think that after 30 hours, I did not come up to a ´victory´ screen that meant my characters were done adventuring.
And one of the biggest problems, and I have seen this as a developer, is that if you try to make something different, you will constantly have people trying to get you to ease your game into being a WOW-clone. Look at how many games that were basically forced by their active player to add stuff like a LFG tool. The only way you can have a game that does not have most of WOW features is to not have forums. If you have forums, they will be absolutely swarming with negativity about things you didn´t add to your game that WOW has. There is no right answer, if you add the things that WOW has, you get called a WOW-clone, if you don´t add them, you are unprofessional and amateur.
The other issue is funding. Unless you are self-funding, you are going to have to sell our game to someone who is giving you a lot of money. People with a lot of money are going to want to see how giving you money can make them more money... and you aren´t going to do that without citing WOW. You start trying to pitch some indie or breath-takingly new concept, they are just going to look at the 100s of other indie games that have 10,000 players. Nobody is going to give you money to make a AAA title that is not similar to WOW, and now they aren´t even going to do that because of the last 5 years.
There are PLENTY of games out there exactly like you are talking about. But you will call them unprofessional and never find them because they can´t afford to advertise.
people are just never satisfied.
even if they make a game like the old days, people still won't play it. People are expecting better graphic with the same context of old games.
and people always blame bad patches to why those old games fail. The thing is they have to put out patches to keep people playing, maybe the game studio just isn't good enough to put out good enough patches to keep players.
Exactly this...
From a gameplay stand point, world design, etc.. etc,, etc,, They were barren with long treks of nothingness, game-play was as uninspired as it can get, it was the novelty of it all that was great. Seeing that massive ball of red run through a town was fun. Games today have a lot more in terms of design, features, and implementation, gameplay is also a lot stronger. Can't take anyone serious who doesn't see this. That doesn't mean they're not missing some things of past games, like player dependency and forced grouping.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
Look people can discuss, scream and threaten as much as they want on forums and other online sites about games & development. They can send letters & emails to the companies as often as the want about games. The bottom line is this...as long as people keep buying, yes buying these games then they will keep making them no matter how much of a clone they are.
Why? Money. Stop buying these games and maybe they will start to listen. Of course it could have another effect...stop buying these games and they could just stop making them. It is a tough situation, but money talks and that is going to be about the only way to get things to change.
Well said. It's a shame so few people take this to heart.
I've got a feevah, and the only prescription... is more cowbell.
I tend to be a skeptic and even a cynic at times but even I don't think modern MMO devs intentionally try to release mediocre products instead of giving their best effort. Nor do I think that these games are designed to be thrown away after the first few months. Common sense tells us otherwise, actually, when you look at how many long-in-the-tooth titles we have still floating around, still making money for their publishers and devs.
Common sense also dictates the reason why MMOs are the way they are today. Nobody invests tens of millions in designing an MMO for it to be niche; big budgets mean little room for risk. This is paralleled throughout all of gaming. It's no wonder that indie games are turning back to retro or simplified graphics; that's essentially the only way they can keep costs down while still satisfying modern audience's graphics fetish.
It's no wonder that a publisher is anxious to earn as much of their investment back immediately after going 5 or more years waiting for their MMO to launch. Impatient investors want returns ASAP.
The notion of developers moving from one successful MMO right onto the next one is simply not borne out of reality. With a very, very few exceptions, most developers can barely support the one flagship MMO they have. The only way they can branch out is if they are also publishers but, guess what, a publisher's job is to publish so there's zero surprise they are always looking to the next game and frontier.
Despite the disclaimers I think it's inherently insulting to suggest that a professional in any capacity prefers for their work to be mediocre. Or that individuals would rather play mediocre games than good ones. The fact is that crowdfunding does a good job of taking the temperature of the masses on this issue of reviving ye olde timey MMOing and though the jury is still out I have a strong sense that posters will have to look for new place to lay blame than at the feet of "lazy" developers, "greedy" publishers, and "clueless" gamers.
This ^^^
Just look at the numbers. Obviously a lot more people like WoW than EQ or UO. A lot more people like LoL (and WoT) than EQ or UO.
It is not an accident that devs are moving away from the old persistant world everyone in the same zone type design.
Yea, and we can just totally ignore the fact that, as a medium for communication, the internet's user base vastly expanded in the years following EQ and UO, EQ having essentially laid the framework for WoW to be the runaway success it became.
the point isn't how great wow is or why it's successful .The point is everyone that disagrees with you isn't a fool. Some people do actually enjoy these games and may even be smarter than you or I. It's called a choice and people are making it. It sucks that not everyone makes the one you want but ffs pull up your big boy pants and deal with it.
Many of us have just had to "deal with" not seeing a release that really speaks to us for what is almost a decade now (since vanilla WoW). Continuing to say absolutely nothing only further diminishes any chance we have of prompting developers (read AAA developers) to pursue features and systems that were enjoyable in the past, but have since gone to way of the dodo.
Regardless, I never said people who disagree are fools, but its blatantly obvious, to me at least, that the casual focus mmo has a plethora of support which doesn't seem to be going anywhere. Why shouldn't people who prefer older games support that style of gaming, a style which many of us enjoyed?
This thread isn't about that. This thread is about the decline of good mmos because people are too stupid to know what's good for them. Not really what you seem to be saying in your post.
If you and gamers like you want games made the way you want, you have to support the ones who are trying. That means indi developers ( unfortunatly to some ) It means you're going to have to put down the AAA graphics and go back to games that look a lot like EQ did and spend enough money playing those types of games until you perk the interest of a big developer. Asking/telling on forums is about as effective as a petition. Any idiot can sign one of those but it doesn't mean they're going to spend money once it happens.
I didn't start the thread and was really only responding to Nariuss comment. While I agree with alot of what the OP is trying to convey, I don't believe the problem stems from people being "too stupid to know what's good for them" and never stated anything even remotely along those lines. However, the old games/systems might have a better chance of resurgence if newer gamers had a chance to be exposed to them. From my perspective, mmorpg games of today all tend to follow, and further dilute, the WoW/EQ formula.
On a side note, it's kinda silly you assume I/others haven't tried the indie mmorpgs and found them lacking (original Darkfall comes to mind). I won't support such poorly handled, shoddily constructed products and don't believe I should have to in order to communicate my interest to prospective development teams.
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Hah! Not very well, as I'm sure you realize, but sometimes you just gotta let it out. Recall I said many of us have been searching for nearly a decade w/o an mmo to really call home. It was no exaggeration. Along that same vein, look at my post count. I've tried to keep my ranting/whining down to the bare minimum during my time here.
Rants tend to make everyone step away. Lots of enthusiastic ideas draw people in
Older MMORPG's were not terrible games. They were a product of their time and good for there times. Its like saying old games period were bad because they don't hold up to the times.
While I prefer modern games playability I despise most of what their about. I love many of the ideas only found in older games. Why can't we have both?
I would say that while I don't agree with everything he said the genre has been for the past decade about reaching that holy grail of WoW good, bad and ugly.
I'd beg to differ there were some great games coming out between 02 and 04 in terms of game-play. MMO's have always been behind the curve in this regard as compared to other genres at any given time, but that gap is much smaller today as tech and engines improve. Between 97 and 2004 MMO game-play was highly archaic, prime example being something like DAOC, there are many games from the era on that still feel fluid and passable, it certainly isn't one of them.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson