Since WoW came out these have been introduced or tried in the genre:
Removal of holy trinity
Action Combat
Cutscenes on quests
Bot wrangling with Chronoscrolls/PLEX/CREDD
Flex Raids
Normalized PvP gear
Mega servers
Non-linear questing
Dynamic world events
World vs World vs World pvp
Player housing
Guild housing
Sieges
Probably a lot more I'm not thinking of
What innovation are you looking for that has not been tried. Or do you require only the ones you like to be packaged into one game?
...and that's a pretty pathetic list of innovation for 10 years. Think of how much tech in general has changed since 2004. Also take player housing off the list. Ultima Online had that long before WoW (perhaps guild housing as well I'm not sure) and DAOC was 2001 so you can take WvWvW and sieges off that list as well.
Since WoW came out these have been introduced or tried in the genre:
Removal of holy trinity
Action Combat
Cutscenes on quests
Bot wrangling with Chronoscrolls/PLEX/CREDD
Flex Raids
Normalized PvP gear
Mega servers
Non-linear questing
Dynamic world events
World vs World vs World pvp
Player housing
Guild housing
Sieges
Probably a lot more I'm not thinking of
What innovation are you looking for that has not been tried. Or do you require only the ones you like to be packaged into one game?
...and that's a pretty pathetic list of innovation for 10 years. Think of how much tech in general has changed since 2004. Also take player housing off the list. Ultima Online had that long before WoW (perhaps guild housing as well I'm not sure) and DAOC was 2001 so you can take WvWvW and sieges off that list as well.
Fair enough, so what do you suggest they try next.
I can fly higher than an aeroplane. And I have the voice of a thousand hurricanes. Hurt - Wars
Since WoW came out these have been introduced or tried in the genre:
Removal of holy trinity
Action Combat
Cutscenes on quests
Bot wrangling with Chronoscrolls/PLEX/CREDD
Flex Raids
Normalized PvP gear
Mega servers
Non-linear questing
Dynamic world events
World vs World vs World pvp
Player housing
Guild housing
Sieges
Probably a lot more I'm not thinking of
What innovation are you looking for that has not been tried. Or do you require only the ones you like to be packaged into one game?
...and that's a pretty pathetic list of innovation for 10 years. Think of how much tech in general has changed since 2004. Also take player housing off the list. Ultima Online had that long before WoW (perhaps guild housing as well I'm not sure) and DAOC was 2001 so you can take WvWvW and sieges off that list as well.
I am all for innovation as long as it isn't just for the sake of it. But when people like you say all innovations so far have been 'pathetic' it always makes me wonder 'that hey maybe these people have some amazing ideas'.
I would very much like to hear your ideas so that maybe devs can learn a thing or two here.
Fair enough, so what do you suggest they try next.
There are lots of things the could try. Just look at the recently crowdfunded games for a lot of innovative ideas. Problem is the people with the real money either don't want to take any risks or have some innovative systems but then ruin them with bad cash shop mechanics (looking at you ArcheAge). EQ Next *may* be different but we'll have to wait and see.
1. Have no challenge except for raids 2. Have no real socialization 3. Require too much interaction
Games require more coordination (clicking/mouse moving) but less cognitive ability/social skill.
Not interested.
Luckily, i don't need you to like me to enjoy video games. -nariusseldon. In F2P I think it's more a case of the game's trying to play the player's. -laserit
Doom and gloom again. Suck it up, choose a game and make it happen. If you can't then probably you are right and you need to move on. You wanted to logout within the first minute, but how can you check out everything that is new the game has to offer without a thorough chance?
The problem with the genre isn't the games so much as it is flooded with choices, to many imho. No one puts the effort into anything before they move on and complain about what they just left.
Are you talking about the developers or the players?
I hate when people say a Sandbox MMO wouldn't work in today's market.
Let's take RPGs for a second. What is the most played RPG on Steam. Skyrim. A 3 year old open world sandbox RPG. A game with hundreds of hours of content and incredible replay value. And a modding community like no other.
Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor which is a much newer RPG , got very good reviews, but more action oriented with more linear gameplay and way less content (40 hours or so) is not even in the top 20 on Steam.
I think this pretty much tells the story. MMO gamers want a Triple AAA Sandbox MMORPG. Why are developers not giving us what we want?
Easier to copy every other themepark MMO then develop something new and original. People are dumb and will buy it anyways. Easy profit no risk.
Speaking of original. Mount & Blade to me is the most original RPG series to come out in the last decade. It probably has a larger modding community then the Elder Scrolls series, and the next Viking Xpac is actually being made by a very talented mod team.
Then we have Warhorse Studio. A Czech video game developer working on Kingdom Come Deliverance. An open world RPG that will go down as one of the greatest games ever made. Trust me on that.
But MMOs unlike single play RPGs require way more manpower and money to fully realize and that is the problem. Smaller indie companies have tried to make that next big Sandbox MMO but without the money to back a project of that scale , most of them end up in vaporware hell.
Honestly the only game I have any sort of hope in is Star Citizen. I hope it turns out well because I don't see anything else on the horizon.
For now i'll stick to my Mount and Blade and Skyrim.
No, you have got it wrong. To wit, a multiplayer sandbox, and moreover a massively multiplayer one, requires a totally different mindset, a different design; not more money and manpower, rather a different approach is called for.
In a single player game, the design only needs to accommodate the interaction between a player and the environment in a persistent manner. In a massively multiplayer game, the core interaction is between the players, interacting with each other. It's a totally different design problem.
And, PvP makes it worse, not better, as the damn griefers just run everyone else out of the game, a phenomenon already noted by Bartle.
These projects do not suffer so much from scale, as from a lack of understanding of the design problem. How do players interact with each other, out side of ganking? What makes this interaction fun for both players, rather than tedious or annoying? These questions are hard to answer, and are largely ignored by both AAA and indie efforts, and so we see the churn of new 'mmo' games coming out, and fading away.
Originally posted by iridescence Originally posted by Kaladin
Fair enough, so what do you suggest they try next.There are lots of things the could try. Just look at the recently crowdfunded games for a lot of innovative ideas. Problem is the people with the real money either don't want to take any risks or have some innovative systems but then ruin them with bad cash shop mechanics (looking at you ArcheAge). EQ Next *may* be different but we'll have to wait and see.
/rant on
Haven't ever made any official announcement or anything myself but as someone that wanted to make a different type of game I can tell you up front without a doubt that investors are really gun shy of putting up any large sum of money toward making a online game. They won't do it for well known developers and they won't do it for unknown wanta be developers because the failure to success is very low. high risk ideas need to be done by ones on investment. I will not under any circumstances go through KS so the idea died. The government may start regulation of these sites next year and that may be BAD. Really bad.
Another problem is that if one finds others willing to put into the project, 99% of them want a contract or they want more than what it is worth in revenues. Half of them won't even read the fucking manual.
Lastly it really does cost a ton of money up front if one expects to actually get anything in return. Not to make it more bleak here but most of these indie projects are like a space ship with a leaking fuel tank about to launch. Sure they will get off the pad but how far will they go before blowing up.
Generic engines and generic netcode that can be accessed by anyone can lead to disaster. Hell I can crash my HE server at will simply by executing a program form command console since I know the code and everyone else knows the code it can't be secured. Nothing compared to BWT engine though because I crash the server form Python console. can't afford to spend years in development of a project that may well die before it goes live.
Just to frustrating and aggravating to deal with anymore.
Innovation is a tricky thing, because its possible to "innovate," to the point of "alienate," and completely miss the mark. Development studios are, rightfully, taking it slow... as much as it sucks to stand by and watch. The decline of the giant MMO is really upon us and I think a lot of studios are reluctant to take a chance at this point (see: Blizzard canceling Titan). An MMO in the style of Destiny is more like what we will see going forward, I think. Less attachment, more drop in and have fun. Players who long for meaningful social interaction are getting left behind, but there isn't much we can do about it
I've really found I just need to look elsewhere to scratch that itch. DayZ does it perfectly, and I am still really hopeful for Repopulation (though reluctant to ever buy into an Alpha/Beta again, since DayZ is the only positive experience I have ever had with that).
Please visit my youtube channel for some H1Z1/DayZ casual roleplay videos!
If you want EQ1 you can join me in playing a VERY low budget game that is sort of like EQ1 in Project Gorgon.
The graphics are actually not bad,the lighting perhaps is a bit bad but not if you can play on highest settings it actually looks good.
Where the game is lacking is of course it is not finished nor even in Beta but it lacks in assets,this is a VERY small team with very little money.
What it offers is lots of skills to be learned,some unique ideas ZERO hand holding,sub class "meaning can play any two classes together as a combo,well almost any,some combo classes cannot be combined for various reasons.It is a non linear game,meaning you are free to go where ever you want,kill something do a quest whatever.The NPC's all thrive off of favor of which you must gain favor with them.
Totally free to play during this lengthened Alpha phase no strings attached at all,example no need for a Facebook account or any other lame stuff i see developers doing,just totally free to try out and offer feedback.The main dev actually wants feedback and ideas.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
The Decline of MMOs Prof. Richard A. Bartle University of Essex United Kingdom May 2013
Thanks for that, Scot. It was a very interesting read.
I agree with many of his points about problems, cause and fixes even though I don't have a particularly pessimistic view about the current MMO market nor its future.
One thing that he did not really address is a key part of player dissatisfaction: familiarity. It's not just that all MMOs are clones, it's that no matter what, they will be perceived as clones whenever they incorporate a component or module that we have already seen.
It was easy to say "Holy shit, this is really new and cool" when that thing had never been done before. That was the advantage of the early MMOs that can not be duplicated. Practically everything in them looked and felt fresh to us. And we formed attachments to them in large part for that reason.
Those games created the 3-D world MMORPG genre. Now we have a genre that has been around for 15+ years with an ever-changing smattering of new twists and things built on a base of what has become the core of the genre.
That's just the way things are when they are no longer brand new or world firsts.
Look at the automobile industry: we now have cars with collision avoidance that parallel park themselves... pretty clever incremental stuff. But they're still by and large 4-wheeled internal combustion engine driven just like the model T was. Are we supposed to get all moody and condemn the automobile industry for its lack of creativity because cars still don't fly themselves and they're still cloning Henry Ford's design?
"Social media gives legions of idiots the right to speak when they once only spoke at a bar after a glass of wine, without harming the community ... but now they have the same right to speak as a Nobel Prize winner. It's the invasion of the idiots”
― Umberto Eco
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?” ― CD PROJEKT RED
Ah yet another analogy posing as truth. The thing with cars is-- they have to follow the rules of physics. And after a certain amount of infrastructure has been in place, they really have to conform to that infrastructure.
An MMO video game is an imaginative place-- whatever a designer can imagine, he can make it happen. Games are not bound by physics! And they certainly are not bound by what came before. They can be anything-- they do not have to build on the Model T.
Look at the automobile industry: we now have cars with collision avoidance that parallel park themselves... pretty clever incremental stuff. But they're still by and large 4-wheeled internal combustion engine driven just like the model T was. Are we supposed to get all moody and condemn the automobile industry for its lack of creativity because cars still don't fly themselves and they're still cloning Henry Ford's design?
But there are practical reasons why cars are that way. It's not like there are tons of other designs that would work for a car that they just haven't really tried yet (maybe there are but I doubt it). It's more like music where modern pop music pretty much sounds very similar to each other because their market research has shown that's what sells best but at least there is different music available for those of us who don't like it to listen to. Core problem here is that an MMORPG just costs too damn much to make so only the most mainstream white bread designs tend to get approved.
Ah yet another analogy posing as truth. The thing with cars is-- they have to follow the rules of physics. And after a certain amount of infrastructure has been in place, they really have to conform to that infrastructure.
An MMO video game is an imaginative place-- whatever a designer can imagine, he can make it happen. Games are not bound by physics! And they certainly are not bound by what came before. They can be anything-- they do not have to build on the Model T.
MMOs are bound by technology so the analogy holds.
Originally posted by iridescence
Originally posted by Iselin
Look at the automobile industry: we now have cars with collision avoidance that parallel park themselves... pretty clever incremental stuff. But they're still by and large 4-wheeled internal combustion engine driven just like the model T was. Are we supposed to get all moody and condemn the automobile industry for its lack of creativity because cars still don't fly themselves and they're still cloning Henry Ford's design?
But there are practical reasons why cars are that way. It's not like there are tons of other designs that would work for a car that they just haven't really tried yet (maybe there are but I doubt it). It's more like music where modern pop music pretty much sounds very similar to each other because their market research has shown that's what sells best but at least there is different music available for those of us who don't like it to listen to. Core problem here is that an MMORPG just costs too damn much to make so only the most mainstream white bread designs tend to get approved.
Not every idea is worth trying (since people here rarely think things through) and you don't know whether some of those ideas have been tried but only cut at an early stage of development.
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been-Wayne Gretzky
Lobotomist's post put me on to this article which is well worth reading in full. I particularly liked butterflies as a term for player behaviour as opposed to locusts and the term non-MMO to describe what MMOs have become:
The Decline of MMOs Prof. Richard A. Bartle University of Essex United Kingdom May 2013
Abstract Ten years ago, massively-multiplayer online role-playing games (MMOs) had a bright and exciting future. Today, their prospects do not look so glorious. In an effort to attract ever-more players, their gameplay has gradually been diluted and their core audience has deserted them. Now that even their sources of new casual players are drying up, MMOs face a slow and steady decline. Their problems are easy to enumerate: they cost too much to make; too many of them play the exact same way; new revenue models put off key groups of players; they lack immersion; they lack wit and personality; players have been trained to want experiences that they don’t actually want; designers are forbidden from experimenting. The solutions to these problems are less easy to state.
-Snip-
Good read
It's still an opinion piece... they did similar such thesis on notable pop figures as Madonna. Fluff articles at best.
Anything is opinion, even science. It is his contribution to the founding of MUDs which counts, I will ask you the same question I did Quirhid, perhaps you can tell us your industry credentials?
One doesn't need industry credentials to call BS on it though. One only needs to look around.
We have more choices in MMOS than we ever had.
More Players play MMOS than they ever did.
More and more Indie and small companies are now making MMOS than they ever did.
MMOS are making more money than they ever dreamed of.
Crowd funding is all time high which means people are very much interested in MMOS.
To say MMO's are dying or have bleak future is just BS. Yes they didn't turn out exactly the way you want (sorry that is life) but that doesn't mean the world revolves around your opinion. (by you i mean people who love the doom and gloom).
Nor does one need to have an army to walk into Mordor, but it helps.
Ok so no industry credentials, neither have I. But I have been gaming for too long to remember and you strike me as someone who has only been doing it for a few years, but I may be wrong. That perspective means the reasons you gave for why the gaming industry is strong seem shallow to me:
We do not have more choices than we ever had, we have more MMO's, tons more. But they are nearly all built on one template, WoW's. The same game with a different skin on it. Most built on a small budget with a cash shop that demeans gaming ethos.
More 'players' do play MMO's than they ever did. But where do these players come from? They have been mined over the years from players who are more and more casual. In an effort to maximise the playerbase, people have been tempted to play MMOs who are not really MMO players. They are butterflies (players who flit into a MMO, do not settle done and are gone in a month) or locusts (who treat a MMO like a solo game that needs to be beaten then go). The industry is now mining mobile phone users, there are no more casual players out there, once they are fed up with what is on offer, MMO's are going to go over a cliff.
There are some interesting indie startups. There is some hope there. But the bar is very high in the graphical department, will these MMOs be able to compete, to put in the content updates a MMO needs to survive and do something different? So far not one has to my knowledge. Some like PoE have/had? a good cash shop. But offering something new to the genre with top rate graphics may be beyond indies. As you say many have come out, nothing ground breaking so far, that should tell you something.
Gaming is now the biggest entertainment in money terms in the world, so MMOs are now making more money. But as I have said, the casual playerbase can get no bigger, they will be left with those new to gaming, teenagers, in the long term. The playerbase will shrink and the money with it.
Crowd funding is mostly funded by players like me who yearn for something more than what we have now. So far their dreams have not been realised. So I don't hold out much hope here, in the long term players will realise they are not getting what they wanted.
I am not a lover of doom and gloom but I do see that good numbers do not mean the industry is doing fabulously. And if you look over these forums you will find many, often the majority of posts reflect that. You do realise that before every fall the numbers were good? There were great numbers just before the credit crunch for example.
The gaming industry is already based on a shopping mall model. Are players happy to call themselves shoppers? The industry is moving towards a casino model, maybe in the future there will be millions who are happy to call themselves gamblers instead of players. But I think they will wise up and call it a day. You will still have some form of gaming, I am just not sure even you would recognise it as such.
I just paid $15 and logged into WoW to revisit, give it a chance after the latest big patch and within the first minute I wanted to log back out.
Looks super outdated and in fact worse than it used to because they did something to the lighting and now everything has the same amount of light. Super bright and ugly, no darkness. The sky in Stormwind looks like Minecraft 1.0 and it's never night time. Everything looks the same, but somehow worse.
Super easy, everything dies almost instantly.
It looks like they spend $46 on this expansion and are hoping to rake in hundreds of millions from all of the suckers.
All of the games out now and even the ones coming are either lobby console casual crap or Asian anime throw-up.
I just want EQ1 with a brand new graphics engine and AAA production quality.
It seems like there is no more talent and passion anymore, just people who want to be trillionaires.
I think the problem might be on your end.
People see their beliefs reflected in the real world, so if you see nothing worthwhile in sight - that is all you.
The best is yet to come.
He's not alone. I feel the same way. I think it depends on when people started to get into MMORPGs. Those of us who were lucky enough to experience games like UO, Asherons Call and EQ1 in their prime have a completely different outlook on MMORPGs. Those of you who came into the genre with WoW, or later, do not know how good this genre can be because you missed out on the earlier stuff.
It's like driving a Ferarri, then they suddenly stopped making Ferarri's and started producing mini vans. A lot of people just don't know how fast they could be going
Well I came in during AC1 and played EQ1, DAOC, and FFXI. I had fun playing those games but they had their flaws just like todays games.
This was my MMORPG gen 1 "career"
UO ->EQ1->AC->AO->DAOC->SWG
I played them all - yes they were some of the best MMORPGs period.
But guess what - the new MMORPGs are awesome in their own ways.
I love the new - I enjoyed the old ones.
Evolve
Adapt
Enjoy
Have fun
Sure, I can enjoy the mmorpgs of today, but it always only lasts for couple of weeks or at most a month. Why? Because the games are swimming in potential, missed potential that was never claimed. The games are so extremely narrow and object driven, that they literally end the minute you realize, for example that the closely hand held narrow and linear end-game of any particular game is not for you.
I went to SWTOR to experience the class stories I missed, with the current x12 XP boost, and the simple housing/strongholds feature brings a ton of fun and optional "different" end-game for the title. But these features are very reluctantly put into mmorpgs these days, and they are a lot more simpler than they have to be, because raids and "meaningful content" and blah blah *Peter Griffin mega puke*
Look at the automobile industry: we now have cars with collision avoidance that parallel park themselves... pretty clever incremental stuff. But they're still by and large 4-wheeled internal combustion engine driven just like the model T was. Are we supposed to get all moody and condemn the automobile industry for its lack of creativity because cars still don't fly themselves and they're still cloning Henry Ford's design?
But there are practical reasons why cars are that way. It's not like there are tons of other designs that would work for a car that they just haven't really tried yet (maybe there are but I doubt it). It's more like music where modern pop music pretty much sounds very similar to each other because their market research has shown that's what sells best but at least there is different music available for those of us who don't like it to listen to. Core problem here is that an MMORPG just costs too damn much to make so only the most mainstream white bread designs tend to get approved.
"Social media gives legions of idiots the right to speak when they once only spoke at a bar after a glass of wine, without harming the community ... but now they have the same right to speak as a Nobel Prize winner. It's the invasion of the idiots”
― Umberto Eco
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?” ― CD PROJEKT RED
It seems like there is no more talent and passion anymore, just people who want to be trillionaires.
It is hardly that. They just don't want to be broke and unemployed.
Right on. In my opinion, the relatively small percentage of players that even want a 2014 reskinned EQ couldn't possibly generate enough revenue for a studio to support it. Smaller studios have tried to make old school MMO's, but the players usually revolt because they fail to understand how difficult it is for a small studio to produce AAA support, content, bug fixes, balancing and community communication. These smaller games usually suffer greatly from players that turn on the devs, dissuade others from playing and ultimately injecting so much toxicity into their communities that the game struggles to recover.
It seems like there is no more talent and passion anymore, just people who want to be trillionaires.
It is hardly that. They just don't want to be broke and unemployed.
Right on. In my opinion, the relatively small percentage of players that even want a 2014 reskinned EQ couldn't possibly generate enough revenue for a studio to support it. Smaller studios have tried to make old school MMO's, but the players usually revolt because they fail to understand how difficult it is for a small studio to produce AAA support, content, bug fixes, balancing and community communication. These smaller games usually suffer greatly from players that turn on the devs, dissuade others from playing and ultimately injecting so much toxicity into their communities that the game struggles to recover.
Exactly what I would expect when trying to cater to the habitual malcontent, self-declared critics with "good taste."
Just like anything else that costs money to make and people buy, the market has a tendency to produce what the majority want to play. It's a pretty organic evolution.
But there will always be people who consider themselves to be above the "unwashed masses who lack taste" that will criticize whatever is popular... it happened to Mozart too.
"Social media gives legions of idiots the right to speak when they once only spoke at a bar after a glass of wine, without harming the community ... but now they have the same right to speak as a Nobel Prize winner. It's the invasion of the idiots”
― Umberto Eco
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?” ― CD PROJEKT RED
The masses tend to get the generalised mass market products, it's the small products that drive evolution. It should be the same in MMO, aim for more niche markets - a MMO with no levelling and lots of raids,or the lore rich questing and rich virtual world with pve/pvp mix at end with no rush to get there, or maybe the open world pvp etcetc. The fail comes when a dev aims for x million subs and multiple mmorpg styles - you either fail to please anyone or you end up with a very expensive to dev bucket of features pretending to be 1 game.
rpg/mmorg history: Dun Darach>Bloodwych>Bards Tale 1-3>Eye of the beholder > Might and Magic 2,3,5 > FFVII> Baldur's Gate 1, 2 > Planescape Torment >Morrowind > WOW > oblivion > LOTR > Guild Wars (1900hrs elementalist) Vanguard. > GW2(1000 elementalist), Wildstar
MMOs have a very limited future. The younger generations of gamers who grow up with iPads and cellphones in thier hands from age 4 or 5 are not going to sit at a computer and play MMOs. The whole concept of slow steady progression and long term, in-depth gameplay over years is completely foreign to most younger players.
Even Blizzard sees the handwriting on the wall. They took their 'next-gen MMO', code-named Titan, stripped out the MMO elements and rebuilt it as a Team Fortress style shooter. They will milk WoW for the next decade or so but it's obvious that they have reduced the amount of focus they put on it. Instead they seem move excited about their upcoming MOBA and FPS products.
MMOs have a very limited future. The younger generations of gamers who grow up with iPads and cellphones in thier hands from age 4 or 5 are not going to sit at a computer and play MMOs. The whole concept of slow steady progression and long term, in-depth gameplay over years is completely foreign to most younger players.
Even Blizzard sees the handwriting on the wall. They took their 'next-gen MMO', code-named Titan, stripped out the MMO elements and rebuilt it as a Team Fortress style shooter. They will milk WoW for the next decade or so but it's obvious that they have reduced the amount of focus they put on it. Instead they seem move excited about their upcoming MOBA and FPS products.
Kind of a flawed logic there as the younger generations are the one's making games like Flappy and Candy Crush million dollar babies.
Even a simple game can get you to play it for hours... the problem here is, some games aren't giving you reason to WANT TO play them for hours. That is what changed.
Also, too many games leads to fickle players. If you know a new game is coming out every week, you're less likely to play the ones that are out for very long. Doesn't matter what genre you play, all of them are competing for your attention and they all generally get it.
Comments
...and that's a pretty pathetic list of innovation for 10 years. Think of how much tech in general has changed since 2004. Also take player housing off the list. Ultima Online had that long before WoW (perhaps guild housing as well I'm not sure) and DAOC was 2001 so you can take WvWvW and sieges off that list as well.
Fair enough, so what do you suggest they try next.
I can fly higher than an aeroplane.
And I have the voice of a thousand hurricanes.
Hurt - Wars
I am all for innovation as long as it isn't just for the sake of it. But when people like you say all innovations so far have been 'pathetic' it always makes me wonder 'that hey maybe these people have some amazing ideas'.
I would very much like to hear your ideas so that maybe devs can learn a thing or two here.
There are lots of things the could try. Just look at the recently crowdfunded games for a lot of innovative ideas. Problem is the people with the real money either don't want to take any risks or have some innovative systems but then ruin them with bad cash shop mechanics (looking at you ArcheAge). EQ Next *may* be different but we'll have to wait and see.
Agree with the OP. MMORPGs today
1. Have no challenge except for raids
2. Have no real socialization
3. Require too much interaction
Games require more coordination (clicking/mouse moving) but less cognitive ability/social skill.
Not interested.
Luckily, i don't need you to like me to enjoy video games. -nariusseldon.
In F2P I think it's more a case of the game's trying to play the player's. -laserit
Are you talking about the developers or the players?
Oh, I see, you *are* talking about the devs.
:P
Ahh, yes, I see a new day has dawned. So, time for another mmos are dead flame post.
No, you have got it wrong. To wit, a multiplayer sandbox, and moreover a massively multiplayer one, requires a totally different mindset, a different design; not more money and manpower, rather a different approach is called for.
In a single player game, the design only needs to accommodate the interaction between a player and the environment in a persistent manner. In a massively multiplayer game, the core interaction is between the players, interacting with each other. It's a totally different design problem.
And, PvP makes it worse, not better, as the damn griefers just run everyone else out of the game, a phenomenon already noted by Bartle.
These projects do not suffer so much from scale, as from a lack of understanding of the design problem. How do players interact with each other, out side of ganking? What makes this interaction fun for both players, rather than tedious or annoying? These questions are hard to answer, and are largely ignored by both AAA and indie efforts, and so we see the churn of new 'mmo' games coming out, and fading away.
There are lots of things the could try. Just look at the recently crowdfunded games for a lot of innovative ideas. Problem is the people with the real money either don't want to take any risks or have some innovative systems but then ruin them with bad cash shop mechanics (looking at you ArcheAge). EQ Next *may* be different but we'll have to wait and see.
/rant on
Haven't ever made any official announcement or anything myself but as someone that wanted to make a different type of game I can tell you up front without a doubt that investors are really gun shy of putting up any large sum of money toward making a online game. They won't do it for well known developers and they won't do it for unknown wanta be developers because the failure to success is very low. high risk ideas need to be done by ones on investment. I will not under any circumstances go through KS so the idea died. The government may start regulation of these sites next year and that may be BAD. Really bad.
Another problem is that if one finds others willing to put into the project, 99% of them want a contract or they want more than what it is worth in revenues. Half of them won't even read the fucking manual.
Lastly it really does cost a ton of money up front if one expects to actually get anything in return. Not to make it more bleak here but most of these indie projects are like a space ship with a leaking fuel tank about to launch. Sure they will get off the pad but how far will they go before blowing up.
Generic engines and generic netcode that can be accessed by anyone can lead to disaster. Hell I can crash my HE server at will simply by executing a program form command console since I know the code and everyone else knows the code it can't be secured. Nothing compared to BWT engine though because I crash the server form Python console. can't afford to spend years in development of a project that may well die before it goes live.
Just to frustrating and aggravating to deal with anymore.
/rant off
If you are interested in making a MMO maybe visit my page to get a free open source engine.
Innovation is a tricky thing, because its possible to "innovate," to the point of "alienate," and completely miss the mark. Development studios are, rightfully, taking it slow... as much as it sucks to stand by and watch. The decline of the giant MMO is really upon us and I think a lot of studios are reluctant to take a chance at this point (see: Blizzard canceling Titan). An MMO in the style of Destiny is more like what we will see going forward, I think. Less attachment, more drop in and have fun. Players who long for meaningful social interaction are getting left behind, but there isn't much we can do about it
I've really found I just need to look elsewhere to scratch that itch. DayZ does it perfectly, and I am still really hopeful for Repopulation (though reluctant to ever buy into an Alpha/Beta again, since DayZ is the only positive experience I have ever had with that).
Please visit my youtube channel for some H1Z1/DayZ casual roleplay videos!
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCrQoK5VZlwBBzpsksmXtjMQ
If you want EQ1 you can join me in playing a VERY low budget game that is sort of like EQ1 in Project Gorgon.
The graphics are actually not bad,the lighting perhaps is a bit bad but not if you can play on highest settings it actually looks good.
Where the game is lacking is of course it is not finished nor even in Beta but it lacks in assets,this is a VERY small team with very little money.
What it offers is lots of skills to be learned,some unique ideas ZERO hand holding,sub class "meaning can play any two classes together as a combo,well almost any,some combo classes cannot be combined for various reasons.It is a non linear game,meaning you are free to go where ever you want,kill something do a quest whatever.The NPC's all thrive off of favor of which you must gain favor with them.
Totally free to play during this lengthened Alpha phase no strings attached at all,example no need for a Facebook account or any other lame stuff i see developers doing,just totally free to try out and offer feedback.The main dev actually wants feedback and ideas.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
- Albert Einstein
Thanks for that, Scot. It was a very interesting read.
I agree with many of his points about problems, cause and fixes even though I don't have a particularly pessimistic view about the current MMO market nor its future.
One thing that he did not really address is a key part of player dissatisfaction: familiarity. It's not just that all MMOs are clones, it's that no matter what, they will be perceived as clones whenever they incorporate a component or module that we have already seen.
It was easy to say "Holy shit, this is really new and cool" when that thing had never been done before. That was the advantage of the early MMOs that can not be duplicated. Practically everything in them looked and felt fresh to us. And we formed attachments to them in large part for that reason.
Those games created the 3-D world MMORPG genre. Now we have a genre that has been around for 15+ years with an ever-changing smattering of new twists and things built on a base of what has become the core of the genre.
That's just the way things are when they are no longer brand new or world firsts.
Look at the automobile industry: we now have cars with collision avoidance that parallel park themselves... pretty clever incremental stuff. But they're still by and large 4-wheeled internal combustion engine driven just like the model T was. Are we supposed to get all moody and condemn the automobile industry for its lack of creativity because cars still don't fly themselves and they're still cloning Henry Ford's design?
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?”
― CD PROJEKT RED
Ah yet another analogy posing as truth. The thing with cars is-- they have to follow the rules of physics. And after a certain amount of infrastructure has been in place, they really have to conform to that infrastructure.
An MMO video game is an imaginative place-- whatever a designer can imagine, he can make it happen. Games are not bound by physics! And they certainly are not bound by what came before. They can be anything-- they do not have to build on the Model T.
But there are practical reasons why cars are that way. It's not like there are tons of other designs that would work for a car that they just haven't really tried yet (maybe there are but I doubt it). It's more like music where modern pop music pretty much sounds very similar to each other because their market research has shown that's what sells best but at least there is different music available for those of us who don't like it to listen to. Core problem here is that an MMORPG just costs too damn much to make so only the most mainstream white bread designs tend to get approved.
Not every idea is worth trying (since people here rarely think things through) and you don't know whether some of those ideas have been tried but only cut at an early stage of development.
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been -Wayne Gretzky
Nor does one need to have an army to walk into Mordor, but it helps.
Ok so no industry credentials, neither have I. But I have been gaming for too long to remember and you strike me as someone who has only been doing it for a few years, but I may be wrong. That perspective means the reasons you gave for why the gaming industry is strong seem shallow to me:
We do not have more choices than we ever had, we have more MMO's, tons more. But they are nearly all built on one template, WoW's. The same game with a different skin on it. Most built on a small budget with a cash shop that demeans gaming ethos.
More 'players' do play MMO's than they ever did. But where do these players come from? They have been mined over the years from players who are more and more casual. In an effort to maximise the playerbase, people have been tempted to play MMOs who are not really MMO players. They are butterflies (players who flit into a MMO, do not settle done and are gone in a month) or locusts (who treat a MMO like a solo game that needs to be beaten then go). The industry is now mining mobile phone users, there are no more casual players out there, once they are fed up with what is on offer, MMO's are going to go over a cliff.
There are some interesting indie startups. There is some hope there. But the bar is very high in the graphical department, will these MMOs be able to compete, to put in the content updates a MMO needs to survive and do something different? So far not one has to my knowledge. Some like PoE have/had? a good cash shop. But offering something new to the genre with top rate graphics may be beyond indies. As you say many have come out, nothing ground breaking so far, that should tell you something.
Gaming is now the biggest entertainment in money terms in the world, so MMOs are now making more money. But as I have said, the casual playerbase can get no bigger, they will be left with those new to gaming, teenagers, in the long term. The playerbase will shrink and the money with it.
Crowd funding is mostly funded by players like me who yearn for something more than what we have now. So far their dreams have not been realised. So I don't hold out much hope here, in the long term players will realise they are not getting what they wanted.
I am not a lover of doom and gloom but I do see that good numbers do not mean the industry is doing fabulously. And if you look over these forums you will find many, often the majority of posts reflect that. You do realise that before every fall the numbers were good? There were great numbers just before the credit crunch for example.
The gaming industry is already based on a shopping mall model. Are players happy to call themselves shoppers? The industry is moving towards a casino model, maybe in the future there will be millions who are happy to call themselves gamblers instead of players. But I think they will wise up and call it a day. You will still have some form of gaming, I am just not sure even you would recognise it as such.
Sure, I can enjoy the mmorpgs of today, but it always only lasts for couple of weeks or at most a month. Why? Because the games are swimming in potential, missed potential that was never claimed. The games are so extremely narrow and object driven, that they literally end the minute you realize, for example that the closely hand held narrow and linear end-game of any particular game is not for you.
I went to SWTOR to experience the class stories I missed, with the current x12 XP boost, and the simple housing/strongholds feature brings a ton of fun and optional "different" end-game for the title. But these features are very reluctantly put into mmorpgs these days, and they are a lot more simpler than they have to be, because raids and "meaningful content" and blah blah *Peter Griffin mega puke*
An indy car developer circa 1974
More examples here: http://www.autoblog.com/photos/what-were-they-thinking-class-at-the-2013-amelia-island-concours-delegance/#photo-156727
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?”
― CD PROJEKT RED
Right on. In my opinion, the relatively small percentage of players that even want a 2014 reskinned EQ couldn't possibly generate enough revenue for a studio to support it. Smaller studios have tried to make old school MMO's, but the players usually revolt because they fail to understand how difficult it is for a small studio to produce AAA support, content, bug fixes, balancing and community communication. These smaller games usually suffer greatly from players that turn on the devs, dissuade others from playing and ultimately injecting so much toxicity into their communities that the game struggles to recover.
Exactly what I would expect when trying to cater to the habitual malcontent, self-declared critics with "good taste."
Just like anything else that costs money to make and people buy, the market has a tendency to produce what the majority want to play. It's a pretty organic evolution.
But there will always be people who consider themselves to be above the "unwashed masses who lack taste" that will criticize whatever is popular... it happened to Mozart too.
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?”
― CD PROJEKT RED
rpg/mmorg history: Dun Darach>Bloodwych>Bards Tale 1-3>Eye of the beholder > Might and Magic 2,3,5 > FFVII> Baldur's Gate 1, 2 > Planescape Torment >Morrowind > WOW > oblivion > LOTR > Guild Wars (1900hrs elementalist) Vanguard. > GW2(1000 elementalist), Wildstar
Now playing GW2, AOW 3, ESO, LOTR, Elite D
MMOs have a very limited future. The younger generations of gamers who grow up with iPads and cellphones in thier hands from age 4 or 5 are not going to sit at a computer and play MMOs. The whole concept of slow steady progression and long term, in-depth gameplay over years is completely foreign to most younger players.
Even Blizzard sees the handwriting on the wall. They took their 'next-gen MMO', code-named Titan, stripped out the MMO elements and rebuilt it as a Team Fortress style shooter. They will milk WoW for the next decade or so but it's obvious that they have reduced the amount of focus they put on it. Instead they seem move excited about their upcoming MOBA and FPS products.
Kind of a flawed logic there as the younger generations are the one's making games like Flappy and Candy Crush million dollar babies.
Even a simple game can get you to play it for hours... the problem here is, some games aren't giving you reason to WANT TO play them for hours. That is what changed.
Also, too many games leads to fickle players. If you know a new game is coming out every week, you're less likely to play the ones that are out for very long. Doesn't matter what genre you play, all of them are competing for your attention and they all generally get it.