"Combat-oriented players" conveniently ignores the fact that we're RPG players. Videogame RPGs have been designed this way for like 35 years now, and have never been a replacement for the tabletop RPG experience. But they have been combat-oriented throughout those 35 years (from Ultima to Wizardry to Baldur's Gate to Skyrim.)
Normally I tell RPers to RP. If you want it, do it. Nothing stops you. Most often it's an RPer arguing in favor of oldschool MMORPGs (which were empty, glorified chatrooms) while I argue in favor of a fully-realized RPG filled with content.
Slow pace has been a deliberate feature of videogame RPGs for 35 years (from Ulltima to Wizardry to...) The core RPG genre has always appealed to a broader, casual audience by deliberately not being twitch-intensive. So don't paint combat as too slow-paced for "combat-centric players", since it's exactly the same pace we've enjoyed for a very long time.
Implementing RP elements like emotes costs significant dev-hours, and won't always provide enough benefit to be worth it. Attracting and keeping the RPG crowd represents a huge potential revenue source. Attracting and keeping the RP crowd represents a much smaller niche group. So they don't "break" the game, but they passively water down the quality of the game's other features (100 dev-hours working on emotes is 100 fewer dev-hours spent improving combat quality, for example.)
1. I have to disagree with you on that what we are seeing in MMOs is just a reiteration of video game RPG. MMORPGs are very divorced from the turn based, squad based RPGs I remember, games like Xenogears, Phantasy Star and Final Fantasy. Today's gameplay looks more like the gameplay from action titles (but not as good, since there is only so much you can do with storyboarding in an MMO) or FPS games (but not as good, since there are constraints on the action). In fact, I'd argue that action adventure (Grand Theft Auto) and FPS games (Destiny) do the things the combat-oriented MMORPG players like better than MMORPGs can, which might be why this genre isn't as popular as it was ten years ago.
2. The problem with "If you want it, do it" is why would a roleplayer want to roleplay in a game with no avatar functionality and no spatial chat? I tend to think that the 'old school MMORPGs' were neither empty, nor glorified, nor chatrooms like you describe. Well...perhaps they were 'glorified' by today's standards in the sense that they allowed you to do basic things like sit on chairs, lay down, walk, chat and have the words come out of the character's mouth via chat bubble. Add in a lack of customization and a lack of space, and you really have to wonder why somebody would even bother paying money to roleplay in today's games...especially since you get the same functionality for free via IRC.
3. Well, it seems that the publishers disagree with the 'slow paced combat' we've grown accustomed to then, as games are increasingly twitch-based. We had a thread not too long ago that didn't like the trend...it reminds me of when RPers like myself complained about the trend ten years ago to nerf avatar and chat functionality.
4. The thought that avatar functionality is a waste of resources needs to show that adding avatar functionality 'waters down' the combat quality, which I don't think it can. What waters down the combat quality are combat players who consume whatever combat content is created (at great expense) more quickly than it can be published. How many times has a new quest chain saved a game? That is the biggest waste in MMO development today...endgame raids that are so skewed towards the most committed players that perhaps comprise 1-5% on the total. Again, part of the problem here is that we equate things like emotes and chat bubbles as "RP niche wants," but that assumes that only the most extreme of the extreme roleplayers use such things. Common observation shows that this isn't true...all kinds of players use chat bubbles and emotes. They are a quality of life addition that helps a game weather the troughs, adding revenue and maintaining interest, while developers are busy churning out more combat content.
__________________________ "Its sad when people use religion to feel superior, its even worse to see people using a video game to do it." --Arcken
"...when it comes to pimping EVE I have little restraints." --Hellmar, CEO of CCP.
"It's like they took a gun, put it to their nugget sack and pulled the trigger over and over again, each time telling us how great it was that they were shooting themselves in the balls." --Exar_Kun on SWG's NGE
"Then why have forums and talk about game and the genre?"
Is the concept of discussing the good the bad and the ugly of a game you like and play really that foreign?
No and that is why I have a problem with his way of thinking. A lot of people seem to default to things like "You do not like it then don't play" as an way to ignore the bad and the ugly. If he does not like the game (or genre), he can still play it, he can still respond here. In fact, how would he know if you dislikes it without playing (the backward thinking part). Even if you dislike a game, you still have a opinion about it, why not discuss that opinion?
Once again.... no one wants to go back to the "old school" MMO's... they want the current MMO's to do it BETTER THAN THE OLD SCHOOL MMO'S. The problem is that the current MMO's do it worse than the old school MMO's in all ways except graphics.
Stop constantly accusing us of this please. [mod edit].
Subjective.
Combat, world exploration and questing are a lot better in new MMO's.
Once again.... no one wants to go back to the "old school" MMO's... they want the current MMO's to do it BETTER THAN THE OLD SCHOOL MMO'S. The problem is that the current MMO's do it worse than the old school MMO's in all ways except graphics.
Stop constantly accusing us of this please. [mod edit]
Subjective.
Combat, world exploration and questing are a lot better in new MMO's.
Subjective.
Combat that required a well coordinated team of tank, eps, heal and support was far more interesting than today's small group mechanics imo. World exploration as you follow the arrows and question marks can't be considered better,.
Quests have improved, but the cost was the decline of better socialization and turned MMORPGs into mostly solo affairs.
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
I am just going to post my thoughts versus responding previous posts since I appear late to the discussion. I do not know really how to sum up my view of the state of MMOs right now. What I see are games with interesting concepts and components to me, but the gameplay and the graphics are just complete sh*t. The graphics are sort of lame in many game...not horrible, just lame. Nothing takes enjoyment out of game more than to just run around performing endless, very short, and inconsequential quests. I mean I like questing, but instead of killing 5 things or collecting 5 things to get minimal xp or something I will never use...ugh. I'd rather have a quest where I take on more than 5-10 of anything and I am done. Even though Skyforge seems to be another one that is missing the mark, their instances are substantial. I give them that...but not much else.
Secondly, for RPers the customization of our toons is REALLY important. Either allow cosmetic customization of your toon or don't. Enough with the lame character creators that only let you tweak a face with an already generic face in a list or do not allow you to color or scale the dimensions of your character. ENOUGH WITH THE CLASS LOCK POWERS!!! That's just a*s-stupid!!!! Blade and Soul are guilty of that. They seem to be shifting things a tad, but still only certain classes can play certain sets. What if I hate everything about that class other than the powerset!?
Finally enough focus on PVP! PvP is fine for those who love it and almost every game has some form of it. Whether it is good or not, I can't say as I am not much of a PVPer. What happened to games where people are encouraged to team. As I mentioned all over this site, CoH was the champion of this as far as I am concerned. Powersets were design to work together...even the villian ones to a small degree. Also, they had the mentor system where a low level player can join up with a much higher level player if they wanted. Simply scale the xp (and CoH did I believe) so that that lower play doesn't suddenly powerlevel up to max in no time. Honestly, I took advantage of powerleveling, but I had already been playing the game for years. So, I already knew the high level content. I get the gripe about new players powerleveling and having no idea how to play their toons.
Point is there is zero investment for some players now. If I just wanted to hack and slash with no control over content and design then I'd just play my console and go back to games like GoW. Oh and there are actually players out there who don't get their jollies by shooting DAMN GUNS or hacking everything with a DAMN SWORD! Come on guys, there are toons that can use staffs, bangles, scepters, and super powers not requiring an actual weapon. USE YOUR IMAGINATION and quit spitting out 200 military shooters (whether it's space creatures or undeground creatures shooting a gun is shooting a gun SHEESH) and hundreds of variations on D&D. Wildstar tried, but still every character uses a knife or a gun minus the esper.
If even some of these are addressed I guarantee at least a modest hit. Also, I will subscribe to a game for good content...just hasn't been any in years. Sad really.
I think that the problem with the mmo's we have now is that they are just the combination of features we like being paired with too many things we simply don't care for that ruin it for us. Of course what fits in which category will differ player to player, but i really think that it's simply an issue of bad features cancelling out the good that lead to us being here complaining about what is available. Alot of us are playing games that we feel could be a lot better, but we settle for what is the compromise we can most live with, but aren't exactly thrilled by. I admit, i have personally been doing that alot lately.
It isn't that there aren't great features that we like being put into games. It's just that they aren't being put into games that also have these other features we love.
The first snowflake are the "old school" ones. These guys will never be happy and talk about how they played EQ for a billion hours and no game today comes close to their experience ten years ago. And of course their experience is the only one that matters and anyone who disagrees wasn't around to experience how great things were playing on dial up. My take on these guys Is sometimes people just outgrow a hobby. If it's been 5,6 10 years and all you can do is QQ how games aren't fun anymore well it's probably time to go outside. .
The second snowflake is the new generation of give it to me now without any work. These guys are a drain on society and a drain on the mmorpgs. It's clear that they outnumber the first flakes as more and more games are catering I their give it to me now mentality.
These two groups that think they are such special snowflakes are the biggest issue with mmorpgs today. They litter every games forums, general chats and other sites like this.
There was a time when folks like you were 'special snowflakes' too, you know.
What's funny about this post you made is it sounds exactly like the gripes of a lot of dedicated players (those 'first special snowflakes') right around the time of WoW when the powergaming clans started invading the MMO scene. The big complaint back then was how the game publishers started to get on the whole gamification trend, taking out the world elements like crafting, roleplay, economy and non-combat to focus excxlusively on combat, voice chat and überloots to satisfy the counterstrikers
Back then, when folks like me who liked the complexity were the establishment, we used to say things like "why don't these folks just push for better FPS and action titles, instead of screwing up what we like?" But to no avail; folks like the achievement crowd and the combat junkies were the industry's new darlings.
But the industry has a new crowd now: folks who don't want to be on TS/Vent, or in clans, or in impossible raids. The industry will give them what they want, too, despite the nostalgia about the way the games 'ought' to be. Trust me, I know. I've lived it before.
__________________________ "Its sad when people use religion to feel superior, its even worse to see people using a video game to do it." --Arcken
"...when it comes to pimping EVE I have little restraints." --Hellmar, CEO of CCP.
"It's like they took a gun, put it to their nugget sack and pulled the trigger over and over again, each time telling us how great it was that they were shooting themselves in the balls." --Exar_Kun on SWG's NGE
The biggest part of the problem is that MMOs have become games in which you grimly and silently go about your business questing and collecting shinies.
Solo.
And yet, on the other hand, there are lots of multiplayer games where people team up casually.
What's needed is the combination of:-
1) Virtual, persistent world
2) social gameplay
But if developers want to attract casual players, they can't use the "old skool" method of attaining 2) (i.e. making the gameplay so hard you need to team up). That certainly works, but it only works for a niche.
What's needed is ... somehow ... to steer completely clear of the equation that's dominated MMO design, the equation casual=solo. Get away from "story", away from making what are basically solo RPGs that just happen to have other people running around in them to give them a bit of background colour.
We need to get people playing together constantly, day in and day out, in the same way as they do in multiplayer co-op games, but in the context of virtual, persistent worlds, where the community builds up and becomes solid from making friends. Where the content is leavened and enriched by the social aspect, but avoiding the error of enforcing teaming through content difficulty (which only makes for niche games). We need people to want and enjoy playing together in a persistent virtual world again, but without requiring hardcore commitment (though that should always be possible, of course).
MMOs are a genre quite unlike the others. Take FPS or a driving game, you get the mechanics right with good graphics and people will rave about your "new" game.
You get you mechanics and graphics right in a MMO and people say its a clone.
It is much harder to make a great MMO than it is a great FPS. The gameplay balance, the levelling, the co-ordination or PvE and PvP. The fact that players expect very different things because what we once called MMOs no longer exist, so we want things from different periods in the genres lifetime. The pull between sandbox and themepark.
Its is seen as safe to make a clone, even when few really do amazingly well. When they do produce something special (you mentioned ESO) it should have our support unless we want every new MMO to be a dumbed down F2P tinyMMO.
Yep, that's one of the problems. People always say they want innovation, but their wallets mostly seem to disagree.
Also agree on the fragmented market. People constantly complain about games that don't target them in the first place, which is basically a completely pointless thing to do. If you are not in the target audience of a game, your opinion about it is irrelevant and says nothing about it's quality. It's simply not made for your taste, thus you won't like it even if it has the best game design ever put into a game. (would be a great thing for it's target audience though )
1. I have to disagree with you on that what we are seeing in MMOs is just a reiteration of video game RPG. MMORPGs are very divorced from the turn based, squad based RPGs I remember, games like Xenogears, Phantasy Star and Final Fantasy. Today's gameplay looks more like the gameplay from action titles (but not as good, since there is only so much you can do with storyboarding in an MMO) or FPS games (but not as good, since there are constraints on the action). In fact, I'd argue that action adventure (Grand Theft Auto) and FPS games (Destiny) do the things the combat-oriented MMORPG players like better than MMORPGs can, which might be why this genre isn't as popular as it was ten years ago.
2. The problem with "If you want it, do it" is why would a roleplayer want to roleplay in a game with no avatar functionality and no spatial chat? I tend to think that the 'old school MMORPGs' were neither empty, nor glorified, nor chatrooms like you describe. Well...perhaps they were 'glorified' by today's standards in the sense that they allowed you to do basic things like sit on chairs, lay down, walk, chat and have the words come out of the character's mouth via chat bubble. Add in a lack of customization and a lack of space, and you really have to wonder why somebody would even bother paying money to roleplay in today's games...especially since you get the same functionality for free via IRC.
3. Well, it seems that the publishers disagree with the 'slow paced combat' we've grown accustomed to then, as games are increasingly twitch-based. We had a thread not too long ago that didn't like the trend...it reminds me of when RPers like myself complained about the trend ten years ago to nerf avatar and chat functionality.
4. The thought that avatar functionality is a waste of resources needs to show that adding avatar functionality 'waters down' the combat quality, which I don't think it can. What waters down the combat quality are combat players who consume whatever combat content is created (at great expense) more quickly than it can be published. How many times has a new quest chain saved a game? That is the biggest waste in MMO development today...endgame raids that are so skewed towards the most committed players that perhaps comprise 1-5% on the total. Again, part of the problem here is that we equate things like emotes and chat bubbles as "RP niche wants," but that assumes that only the most extreme of the extreme roleplayers use such things. Common observation shows that this isn't true...all kinds of players use chat bubbles and emotes. They are a quality of life addition that helps a game weather the troughs, adding revenue and maintaining interest, while developers are busy churning out more combat content.
FF went real-time in 1991, Phantasy Star in 2000. Xenogears was always real-time. So these aren't turn-based games you're mentioning. They're real-time games with a focus on tactical decisions, strongly influenced by character stats, which is how MMORPGs work. MMORPG combat shares a lot more in common with Final Fantasy than GTA. GTA's combat is laughable compared with a good MMORPG's combat like WOW, so no I don't think combat-oriented players would prefer GTA. Lastly, this genre is objectively more popular than it was 10 years ago so maybe let's stick to discussing reality, and not making random statements which have no basis in truth.
Why would they want to role-play? Because they're role-players. We're discussing a group who by definition are interested in role-playing. For the fraction-of-a-fraction of players who are only in it for role-playing, yes MMORPGs aren't for them because the visual nature of MMORPGs only limits your ability to role-play. For the vast majority of role-players, they're interested in more than just RPing, and so nearly all major MMORPGs provide a great place to enjoy both a fun game and also role-play.
ESO, GW2, Wildstar, and Archeage all offer bubble text. So your concerns are objectively unfounded.
You don't seem to understand. Teams have a finite number of dev-hours with which to make a game. Spending them on feature A will mean that fewer dev-hours are available on other features. It objectively waters down the rest of the game. Surely you're aware that the interest in solo questing is dramatically higher than the interest in role-playing, so you must surely be able to make the simple logical step beyond that to realize that dev-hours spend on that gameplay are more efficiently spent than the ones spent on role-playing features.
Basically your post seems mostly based in this objectively false notion that bubble text is a dying feature, when it's in literally every major MMORPG, and that it's required for role-playing, when it isn't. You also have a very poor sense of efficiency, recommending that games cater to a very small niche interest (more than the baseline they're already consistently doing) at the expense of the common interest.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
Yep, that's one of the problems. People always say they want innovation, but their wallets mostly seem to disagree.
Also agree on the fragmented market. People constantly complain about games that don't target them in the first place, which is basically a completely pointless thing to do. If you are not in the target audience of a game, your opinion about it is irrelevant and says nothing about it's quality. It's simply not made for your taste, thus you won't like it even if it has the best game design ever put into a game. (would be a great thing for it's target audience though )
Peoples wallets mmostly say they don't want a buggy unfinnished mess like Vanguard was. Good innovative games tend to sell well, like Minecraft did. The somewhat polished and innovative MMOs that have been released have sold well, FF XIV, GW2 and ESO all are somewhat innovative and have done far betterthen the rest off the MMOs we seen the last few years, they are hardly as innovative as they should be though.
If a game is fun, innovative and well made it will sell plenty. Just innovative but boring or poorly made wont cut it.
The universal problem with MMOS and players is they aren't fucking universal. MMO fans are a large group of individual human beings with dissimilar tastes in what kind of game mechanics they enjoy. Just because one faction like certain features and another likes others doesn't make either camp wrong nor any less of an MMO fan.
This mistake of trying to lump MMO fans into one massive group is what has been the downfall of many an MMO company. My favorite lament from these clueless companies has got to be the old chestnut "MMO players don't have any idea what type of game they want." To which I always have to laugh and think "no you stupid bastards they do, you just don't have the sense to see them as anything but one giant conglomeration, so its no wonder they come off looking like Dr. Jeckyll and Mr Hyde." I could go on but I don't see the point. I'll just sum up by making this example. Get a handful of people in a room, get them to decide between them what restaurant they wish to get lunch from, they can all only agree to get lunch from one place. Keep upping the number of people and watch how quickly trying to make a decision or make compromises spirals out of control. This resulting clusterfuck riot is exactly what happens when an MMO maker attempts to make a game for the widest possible audience.
.....Or like this thread, one person tries to lump millions of individuals into some like minded hive mind.
The only "universal problem" about MMOs and MMO gamers is there isn't one. Nor is there a universal solution. The only real fix is for companies to add enough variety to the market where enough players can finally find the type of MMO they want to call home.
Been looking over this forum for months, this is first post in response to an excellent viewpoint. I typically feel that variety to the market, and customer relations/feedback are important to the market more than some "magical" reinvention of the genre.
The problem is very simple,we have a really FAKE market selling FAKE mmorpg's but they do well because the people buying them or supporting them are not really looking for a mmorpg.
What i see in forums are people looking for a fps instead of a rpg,they don't want anything remotely resembling a role play game,they just want to kill other players...aka fps.
Then i see people complaining about boring and grind,well is that an argument the game is bad or that rpg elements are not their thing?Often if not most cases the game does not even have role play elements,MOST of these games are linear questing games just to gain levels and then they end up a never ending loop of grinding loot dungeons.
There are two laughable ideas that really show most developers haven't a clue as to what they are designing.....1 WHY does end game have to be in instance dungeons?2 WHY are quests making your player more experienced as a Warrior or Paladin when the quests have nothing to do with those classes.Furthermore WHY are games making your Warrior more experienced as a Warrior just because you stepped onto a new pixel in some map?
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
The problem is very simple,we have a really FAKE market selling FAKE mmorpg's but they do well because the people buying them or supporting them are not really looking for a mmorpg.
What i see in forums are people looking for a fps instead of a rpg,they don't want anything remotely resembling a role play game,they just want to kill other players...aka fps.
Then i see people complaining about boring and grind,well is that an argument the game is bad or that rpg elements are not their thing?Often if not most cases the game does not even have role play elements,MOST of these games are linear questing games just to gain levels and then they end up a never ending loop of grinding loot dungeons.
There are two laughable ideas that really show most developers haven't a clue as to what they are designing.....1 WHY does end game have to be in instance dungeons?2 WHY are quests making your player more experienced as a Warrior or Paladin when the quests have nothing to do with those classes.Furthermore WHY are games making your Warrior more experienced as a Warrior just because you stepped onto a new pixel in some map?
Learn what RPG means mate. Learn what is pen and paper RPG. Learn about different genres of RPG. Diablo style game is as much RPG as Planescape Torment or pen n paper rpg session in wampire or LARP. YES. IT. IS. THE. SAME. Get your facts straight, and stop selling your opinions as facts.
The problem is very simple,we have a really FAKE market selling FAKE mmorpg's but they do well because the people buying them or supporting them are not really looking for a mmorpg.
What i see in forums are people looking for a fps instead of a rpg,they don't want anything remotely resembling a role play game,they just want to kill other players...aka fps.
Then i see people complaining about boring and grind,well is that an argument the game is bad or that rpg elements are not their thing?Often if not most cases the game does not even have role play elements,MOST of these games are linear questing games just to gain levels and then they end up a never ending loop of grinding loot dungeons.
There are two laughable ideas that really show most developers haven't a clue as to what they are designing.....1 WHY does end game have to be in instance dungeons?2 WHY are quests making your player more experienced as a Warrior or Paladin when the quests have nothing to do with those classes.Furthermore WHY are games making your Warrior more experienced as a Warrior just because you stepped onto a new pixel in some map?
Well, the explorotion thing basically comes from pen and paper games where many of your skills are none combat. Exploring the world are good for skills like survival, geography and a bunch of others. The problem with MMOs is that they really don't have much none combat skills.
The questing thing is also from pen and paper, basically the DM rewards you with XP there for furthering the story but MMOs have dumbed down the mechanics pretty badly, I think every single P&P character I ever had would either punch the farmer who wanted him to kill gophers in his field or walked away laughing.
Quests in pen and paper is usually pretty epic, in our changeling campaign we just stopped a weird sect from summoning some kind of supernatural being called "the autumn emperor" who wanted to rule great Brittain. Took us about 10 RP sessions with 8-10 hours each. In my own Pathfinder campign the story so far is an origin story about how some peasants becomes great heroes, mostly through puzzle dungeons filled with diabolical traps (but very few monsters), there is a long quest story there but some of my players frequent this forum so I wont go into specifics.
MMO questing is really dumbed down with us doing mostly menial tasks and the few good quests are usually split into a whole bunch of smaller quests which makes it feel far less epic than it should.
And yes, the current MMO endgame doesn't work anymore, with the current speed of leveling the games need far more endgame then just some raids and dungeons.
Questing gives out far too much XP for menial tasks, it is one thing to find and clear out a bandit camp but a rather different thing to walk 20 feets to deliver a message to some peasants brother. Those quests tend to give out a rather similar amount of XP which is insane.
The problem is very simple,we have a really FAKE market selling FAKE mmorpg's but they do well because the people buying them or supporting them are not really looking for a mmorpg.
The games produced are inarguably real MMORPGs. They offer the same core experience as the last 35 years of videogame RPG history, except as MMOs.
The market buying them is inarguably real. Those players are looking for a game similar to the 35 years of successful videogame RPGs, and that's what's being offered.
In what way do you believe MMORPGs are remotely similar to a FPS? They aren't similar; not by far.
Are you somehow equating PVPing with FPS gameplay (when in fact all sorts of non-FPS genres offer PVP)? PVP doesn't make something a FPS. Most genres offer PVP in some form.
Are you somehow mistaking a vocal minority's request for more PVP as common? It's not. The majority of MMORPGs are played predominantly PVE.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
What originally drew me to the genre was old school EQ.....We were dropped into a world and explored....No hand holding, no quest givers with exclamation points above their heads, no maps...Just us players and a new world to explore...To me that is what is missing.....Instead of giving us a world and letting us make our own stories, we are forced to do quests in a linear path with no exploration whatsoever...IMO WoW ruined the genre....It became wildly successful and from then on every game wanted a piece of the WoW pie....Before WoW, most games tried to be unique....Now its all about the money and all any of them seem to know is WoW makes money so let's make our game like theirs.
Once again.... no one wants to go back to the "old school" MMO's... they want the current MMO's to do it BETTER THAN THE OLD SCHOOL MMO'S. The problem is that the current MMO's do it worse than the old school MMO's in all ways except graphics.
Stop constantly accusing us of this please. It's getting quite aggravating and starting to appear as an attempt at trolling that is not needed.
Thank you for being more considerate from now on.
Subjective.
Combat, world exploration and questing are a lot better in new MMO's.
Just.... no. lol. You have never played the old MMO's have you? EQ has them all beat. There are likely a few others that other players can name on here as well.
It's too hard for mmorpg to keep players. The only people that play mmorpg for years and years are farmers. Which mmorpg company dont' need to spend that much effort on keeping them.
The people on the forums who complain all day are too hard to keep anyway. That's why game studio stop caring about them. If you look around there are mmorpg that people asked for, usually small indie company, but people's response is usually it is not good enough.
The problem with MMO's is every decision is made from a monetized standpoint instead of an MMO standpoint. Adjust X so Y amount of casuals will play. Almost every decision is based off that simple formula ever since WoW launch.
You must be new to this genre. Otherwise you would realize pre-2004 mmorpg games had it's customers playing it between 2-6 years easily.
For many players, because the accomplishments in games took months and you progressed off them, the game became an addiction and second life for many gamers. Getting end game or an end game item actually had bragging rights and was a huge thing. Your name, or your clans name was well known to the server because it was able to kill this end game 300man++ raid boss.
Players wanted to stay with a game for a while because they wanted something they could invest their time into and reap rewards from it. For example, after I decided to quit lineage 2 (a couple years before GOD was released and completely ruined the game), I sold my 3 accounts for a total of $10,000. I bought myself a car that got me through college. It was a worth while investment and while investing that much time I enjoyed every moment of it. My best memories are from that game.
2-6 years? No.
The reason early MMORPGs didn't surpass 450k players (EQ1) is because players definitely weren't retaining that long. Instead they were abandoning the game at faster rates than modern games.
We know this because in pre-Cata WOW only had 30% retention to level 10. We combine that knowledge with a player retention model a little like the Excel screenshot shown in this article.
In the industry we create models which predict player count based on two primary inputs: installs and retention.
Essentially it's a leaky bucket. Installs fill the bucket with water, and retention determines the rate the water leaks out. The leakier your bucket's retention, the higher the flow of new water (installs) you need to sustain a certain level of water.
If you're good at math, you can take that Excel screenshot from the second article and add in the relevant information. Basically you'd set it up so that installs and retention are tweakable inputs, with installs adding to the game's total player count each day, but retention reducing the remaining players in each daily install cohort. Once you have it set up, you can begin playing with retention and install numbers to see their effects on total player count over the long term.
The first thing you'll learn playing with these numbers is retention's importance to maintaining huge player counts like WOW did. The reverse is also true, and poor retention is likely the largest factor why early MMORPGs never surpassed 450k subscribers. Without good retention you require a tremendous amount of new installs to replace lost players each day.
We know WOW achieved crazy player counts, and it did that even on 30% level 10 retention (which would be somewhere between day-2 and day-7 retention, given how quickly you could reach level 10.) Having played directly with retentions' and installs' influence on total player count, you know it's quite likely WOW needed superior retention and installs to achieve its many millions of players compared with early games' 450k. As a result, it's a safe assumption that fewer than 30% of players lasted 7 days in early MMORPGs.
And that's why the assumption that early MMORPG players stuck around 2-6 years is clearly wrong. It's far more likely that most early MMORPG players stuck around fewer than 7 days.
All of that is just one factor.
The other factor is competition. If there aren't many options, then you're more likely to stick with a MMORPG than if many MMORPGs exist. So this actually increases player retention a little (but we're still faced with the reality that the math showed us earlier: it's unlikely retention was higher than WOW's unless these games were spending virtually nothing on advertising.)
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
There is no problem with mmos. The only problem is the self proclaimed "old school " clowns and the I want it now crowd. If we could just get rid of these two special snowflakes it would make gaming and forums so much better.
The universal problem with MMOS and players is they aren't fucking universal. MMO fans are a large group of individual human beings with dissimilar tastes in what kind of game mechanics they enjoy. Just because one faction like certain features and another likes others doesn't make either camp wrong nor any less of an MMO fan.
This mistake of trying to lump MMO fans into one massive group is what has been the downfall of many an MMO company. My favorite lament from these clueless companies has got to be the old chestnut "MMO players don't have any idea what type of game they want." To which I always have to laugh and think "no you stupid bastards they do, you just don't have the sense to see them as anything but one giant conglomeration, so its no wonder they come off looking like Dr. Jeckyll and Mr Hyde." I could go on but I don't see the point. I'll just sum up by making this example. Get a handful of people in a room, get them to decide between them what restaurant they wish to get lunch from, they can all only agree to get lunch from one place. Keep upping the number of people and watch how quickly trying to make a decision or make compromises spirals out of control. This resulting clusterfuck riot is exactly what happens when an MMO maker attempts to make a game for the widest possible audience.
.....Or like this thread, one person tries to lump millions of individuals into some like minded hive mind.
The only "universal problem" about MMOs and MMO gamers is there isn't one. Nor is there a universal solution. The only real fix is for companies to add enough variety to the market where enough players can finally find the type of MMO they want to call home.
Been looking over this forum for months, this is first post in response to an excellent viewpoint. I typically feel that variety to the market, and customer relations/feedback are important to the market more than some "magical" reinvention of the genre.
I agree, MisterZebub has hit the nail on the head and there is an answer to the problem he has identified, which tends to work in other formats of business/industry.
What companies should do is make a decision on what segment of their target audience they want to cater for, and build a game for that segment. The volume of those they go for will be more limited than the "all things to all people" approach, but that approach no longer works as there is a lot of variety out there now, not just a few MMOs.
If you take MMO gamers as a whole i.e. the 'universe of MMO players', within that universe will be a diverse range of tastes i.e. x will want this and y will want that - but there will be groups that like the same things. The software companies need to pick their group (bit of effort and research required) and go for the tastes of that group. If we imagine that there are 100 different groups (could be any number, less, probably more) with even more sub-groups. The more targeted the MMO the smaller the group but if a good job is done, you'd get a high % of a particular group as customers because you have catered specifically for them. EVE online is a good example. Not much else like it and it's done what it wants to do well - so you either like it or you don't. In industry, it's why Bentley, Ferrari etc sell their cars, in small numbers compared to the mass markets, but they are aiming for a particular segment of the market. I would imagine a high % of mega rich people will have a really high end car. It's the same with MMO - build an MMO to cater for a specific audience, target them, stick to them and with them.
The 64 million dollar question then, is are there enough people in your target market to justify the cost of building the game and running it? Some think Wildstar failed as a payment model because it was too niche with it's difficult raids etc, but it had too much of everything else in it too, so turned off both raiders and non raiders.
For me, and possibly for you - there is your perfect MMO design in our heads (requirements, likes, dislikes) and many will like and dislike what I would like and vice versa. Companies need to find out what we want, identify the numbers in such a group and chase that group by giving them what they want i.e. deliver as closely as pissible to the needs of their target audience in an unwaivering fashion - simply by being all things to all people, like every other company, means there's too much choice, too much noise and people just wandering from game to the next same game and not being satisfied that much.
You must be new to this genre. Otherwise you would realize pre-2004 mmorpg games had it's customers playing it between 2-6 years easily.
For many players, because the accomplishments in games took months and you progressed off them, the game became an addiction and second life for many gamers. Getting end game or an end game item actually had bragging rights and was a huge thing. Your name, or your clans name was well known to the server because it was able to kill this end game 300man++ raid boss.
Players wanted to stay with a game for a while because they wanted something they could invest their time into and reap rewards from it. For example, after I decided to quit lineage 2 (a couple years before GOD was released and completely ruined the game), I sold my 3 accounts for a total of $10,000. I bought myself a car that got me through college. It was a worth while investment and while investing that much time I enjoyed every moment of it. My best memories are from that game.
2-6 years? No.
The reason early MMORPGs didn't surpass 450k players (EQ1) is because players definitely weren't retaining that long. Instead they were abandoning the game at faster rates than modern games.
We know this because in pre-Cata WOW only had 30% retention to level 10. We combine that knowledge with a player retention model a little like the Excel screenshot shown in this article.
In the industry we create models which predict player count based on two primary inputs: installs and retention.
Essentially it's a leaky bucket. Installs fill the bucket with water, and retention determines the rate the water leaks out. The leakier your bucket's retention, the higher the flow of new water (installs) you need to sustain a certain level of water.
If you're good at math, you can take that Excel screenshot from the second article and add in the relevant information. Basically you'd set it up so that installs and retention are tweakable inputs, with installs adding to the game's total player count each day, but retention reducing the remaining players in each daily install cohort. Once you have it set up, you can begin playing with retention and install numbers to see their effects on total player count over the long term.
The first thing you'll learn playing with these numbers is retention's importance to maintaining huge player counts like WOW did. The reverse is also true, and poor retention is likely the largest factor why early MMORPGs never surpassed 450k subscribers. Without good retention you require a tremendous amount of new installs to replace lost players each day.
We know WOW achieved crazy player counts, and it did that even on 30% level 10 retention (which would be somewhere between day-2 and day-7 retention, given how quickly you could reach level 10.) Having played directly with retentions' and installs' influence on total player count, you know it's quite likely WOW needed superior retention and installs to achieve its many millions of players compared with early games' 450k. As a result, it's a safe assumption that fewer than 30% of players lasted 7 days in early MMORPGs.
And that's why the assumption that early MMORPG players stuck around 2-6 years is clearly wrong. It's far more likely that most early MMORPG players stuck around fewer than 7 days.
All of that is just one factor.
The other factor is competition. If there aren't many options, then you're more likely to stick with a MMORPG than if many MMORPGs exist. So this actually increases player retention a little (but we're still faced with the reality that the math showed us earlier: it's unlikely retention was higher than WOW's unless these games were spending virtually nothing on advertising.)
You're using WoW as an example when I said a pre-2004 game, not post-2004 game. WoW is clearly an example that killed long term players in MMORPG games with its casual play.
Anyone who played MMORPGs before WoW remembers the long term investments players had in the games, and they know you are just full of it. I think you are honestly just trying to defend the current status of the genre.
You are also forgetting the "lost players" come back to the game when they realize nothing better has been released. I've seen thousands of "returning to this game" posts for Lineage 2.
7 days of playtime before quitting is quite a ridiculous claim, and I don't even know why I'm responding to this at all. Maybe you only played 7 days before quitting because you couldn't stand having to invest time into a game to get something, but many many people did enjoy the time sink games, and stuck with them for years. Unless (by your claims) I was just talking to imaginary people via game chat, voip programs, and messenger services for many years.
And I guess you are claiming I also am talking to imaginary people that I have been playing with the same game since 2011 when it release. And prior to that we were all playing the same game for five years. But we all must be imaginary because we aren't old school snowflakes right?
Comments
2. The problem with "If you want it, do it" is why would a roleplayer want to roleplay in a game with no avatar functionality and no spatial chat? I tend to think that the 'old school MMORPGs' were neither empty, nor glorified, nor chatrooms like you describe. Well...perhaps they were 'glorified' by today's standards in the sense that they allowed you to do basic things like sit on chairs, lay down, walk, chat and have the words come out of the character's mouth via chat bubble. Add in a lack of customization and a lack of space, and you really have to wonder why somebody would even bother paying money to roleplay in today's games...especially since you get the same functionality for free via IRC.
3. Well, it seems that the publishers disagree with the 'slow paced combat' we've grown accustomed to then, as games are increasingly twitch-based. We had a thread not too long ago that didn't like the trend...it reminds me of when RPers like myself complained about the trend ten years ago to nerf avatar and chat functionality.
4. The thought that avatar functionality is a waste of resources needs to show that adding avatar functionality 'waters down' the combat quality, which I don't think it can. What waters down the combat quality are combat players who consume whatever combat content is created (at great expense) more quickly than it can be published. How many times has a new quest chain saved a game? That is the biggest waste in MMO development today...endgame raids that are so skewed towards the most committed players that perhaps comprise 1-5% on the total. Again, part of the problem here is that we equate things like emotes and chat bubbles as "RP niche wants," but that assumes that only the most extreme of the extreme roleplayers use such things. Common observation shows that this isn't true...all kinds of players use chat bubbles and emotes. They are a quality of life addition that helps a game weather the troughs, adding revenue and maintaining interest, while developers are busy churning out more combat content.
__________________________
"Its sad when people use religion to feel superior, its even worse to see people using a video game to do it."
--Arcken
"...when it comes to pimping EVE I have little restraints."
--Hellmar, CEO of CCP.
"It's like they took a gun, put it to their nugget sack and pulled the trigger over and over again, each time telling us how great it was that they were shooting themselves in the balls."
--Exar_Kun on SWG's NGE
Combat, world exploration and questing are a lot better in new MMO's.
Combat that required a well coordinated team of tank, eps, heal and support was far more interesting than today's small group mechanics imo. World exploration as you follow the arrows and question marks can't be considered better,.
Quests have improved, but the cost was the decline of better socialization and turned MMORPGs into mostly solo affairs.
Clearly not better in my eyes.
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
Secondly, for RPers the customization of our toons is REALLY important. Either allow cosmetic customization of your toon or don't. Enough with the lame character creators that only let you tweak a face with an already generic face in a list or do not allow you to color or scale the dimensions of your character. ENOUGH WITH THE CLASS LOCK POWERS!!! That's just a*s-stupid!!!! Blade and Soul are guilty of that. They seem to be shifting things a tad, but still only certain classes can play certain sets. What if I hate everything about that class other than the powerset!?
Finally enough focus on PVP! PvP is fine for those who love it and almost every game has some form of it. Whether it is good or not, I can't say as I am not much of a PVPer. What happened to games where people are encouraged to team. As I mentioned all over this site, CoH was the champion of this as far as I am concerned. Powersets were design to work together...even the villian ones to a small degree. Also, they had the mentor system where a low level player can join up with a much higher level player if they wanted. Simply scale the xp (and CoH did I believe) so that that lower play doesn't suddenly powerlevel up to max in no time. Honestly, I took advantage of powerleveling, but I had already been playing the game for years. So, I already knew the high level content. I get the gripe about new players powerleveling and having no idea how to play their toons.
Point is there is zero investment for some players now. If I just wanted to hack and slash with no control over content and design then I'd just play my console and go back to games like GoW. Oh and there are actually players out there who don't get their jollies by shooting DAMN GUNS or hacking everything with a DAMN SWORD! Come on guys, there are toons that can use staffs, bangles, scepters, and super powers not requiring an actual weapon. USE YOUR IMAGINATION and quit spitting out 200 military shooters (whether it's space creatures or undeground creatures shooting a gun is shooting a gun SHEESH) and hundreds of variations on D&D. Wildstar tried, but still every character uses a knife or a gun minus the esper.
If even some of these are addressed I guarantee at least a modest hit. Also, I will subscribe to a game for good content...just hasn't been any in years. Sad really.
It isn't that there aren't great features that we like being put into games. It's just that they aren't being put into games that also have these other features we love.
What's funny about this post you made is it sounds exactly like the gripes of a lot of dedicated players (those 'first special snowflakes') right around the time of WoW when the powergaming clans started invading the MMO scene. The big complaint back then was how the game publishers started to get on the whole gamification trend, taking out the world elements like crafting, roleplay, economy and non-combat to focus excxlusively on combat, voice chat and überloots to satisfy the counterstrikers
Back then, when folks like me who liked the complexity were the establishment, we used to say things like "why don't these folks just push for better FPS and action titles, instead of screwing up what we like?" But to no avail; folks like the achievement crowd and the combat junkies were the industry's new darlings.
But the industry has a new crowd now: folks who don't want to be on TS/Vent, or in clans, or in impossible raids. The industry will give them what they want, too, despite the nostalgia about the way the games 'ought' to be. Trust me, I know. I've lived it before.
__________________________
"Its sad when people use religion to feel superior, its even worse to see people using a video game to do it."
--Arcken
"...when it comes to pimping EVE I have little restraints."
--Hellmar, CEO of CCP.
"It's like they took a gun, put it to their nugget sack and pulled the trigger over and over again, each time telling us how great it was that they were shooting themselves in the balls."
--Exar_Kun on SWG's NGE
Solo.
And yet, on the other hand, there are lots of multiplayer games where people team up casually.
What's needed is the combination of:-
1) Virtual, persistent world
2) social gameplay
But if developers want to attract casual players, they can't use the "old skool" method of attaining 2) (i.e. making the gameplay so hard you need to team up). That certainly works, but it only works for a niche.
What's needed is ... somehow ... to steer completely clear of the equation that's dominated MMO design, the equation casual=solo. Get away from "story", away from making what are basically solo RPGs that just happen to have other people running around in them to give them a bit of background colour.
We need to get people playing together constantly, day in and day out, in the same way as they do in multiplayer co-op games, but in the context of virtual, persistent worlds, where the community builds up and becomes solid from making friends. Where the content is leavened and enriched by the social aspect, but avoiding the error of enforcing teaming through content difficulty (which only makes for niche games). We need people to want and enjoy playing together in a persistent virtual world again, but without requiring hardcore commitment (though that should always be possible, of course).
We need to get to casual=social.
MMOs are a genre quite unlike the others. Take FPS or a driving game, you get the mechanics right with good graphics and people will rave about your "new" game.
You get you mechanics and graphics right in a MMO and people say its a clone.
It is much harder to make a great MMO than it is a great FPS. The gameplay balance, the levelling, the co-ordination or PvE and PvP. The fact that players expect very different things because what we once called MMOs no longer exist, so we want things from different periods in the genres lifetime. The pull between sandbox and themepark.
Its is seen as safe to make a clone, even when few really do amazingly well. When they do produce something special (you mentioned ESO) it should have our support unless we want every new MMO to be a dumbed down F2P tinyMMO.
Also agree on the fragmented market.
People constantly complain about games that don't target them in the first place, which is basically a completely pointless thing to do.
If you are not in the target audience of a game, your opinion about it is irrelevant and says nothing about it's quality.
It's simply not made for your taste, thus you won't like it even if it has the best game design ever put into a game. (would be a great thing for it's target audience though
- FF went real-time in 1991, Phantasy Star in 2000. Xenogears was always real-time. So these aren't turn-based games you're mentioning. They're real-time games with a focus on tactical decisions, strongly influenced by character stats, which is how MMORPGs work. MMORPG combat shares a lot more in common with Final Fantasy than GTA. GTA's combat is laughable compared with a good MMORPG's combat like WOW, so no I don't think combat-oriented players would prefer GTA. Lastly, this genre is objectively more popular than it was 10 years ago so maybe let's stick to discussing reality, and not making random statements which have no basis in truth.
- Why would they want to role-play? Because they're role-players. We're discussing a group who by definition are interested in role-playing. For the fraction-of-a-fraction of players who are only in it for role-playing, yes MMORPGs aren't for them because the visual nature of MMORPGs only limits your ability to role-play. For the vast majority of role-players, they're interested in more than just RPing, and so nearly all major MMORPGs provide a great place to enjoy both a fun game and also role-play.
- ESO, GW2, Wildstar, and Archeage all offer bubble text. So your concerns are objectively unfounded.
- You don't seem to understand. Teams have a finite number of dev-hours with which to make a game. Spending them on feature A will mean that fewer dev-hours are available on other features. It objectively waters down the rest of the game. Surely you're aware that the interest in solo questing is dramatically higher than the interest in role-playing, so you must surely be able to make the simple logical step beyond that to realize that dev-hours spend on that gameplay are more efficiently spent than the ones spent on role-playing features.
Basically your post seems mostly based in this objectively false notion that bubble text is a dying feature, when it's in literally every major MMORPG, and that it's required for role-playing, when it isn't. You also have a very poor sense of efficiency, recommending that games cater to a very small niche interest (more than the baseline they're already consistently doing) at the expense of the common interest."What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
If a game is fun, innovative and well made it will sell plenty. Just innovative but boring or poorly made wont cut it.
What i see in forums are people looking for a fps instead of a rpg,they don't want anything remotely resembling a role play game,they just want to kill other players...aka fps.
Then i see people complaining about boring and grind,well is that an argument the game is bad or that rpg elements are not their thing?Often if not most cases the game does not even have role play elements,MOST of these games are linear questing games just to gain levels and then they end up a never ending loop of grinding loot dungeons.
There are two laughable ideas that really show most developers haven't a clue as to what they are designing.....1 WHY does end game have to be in instance dungeons?2 WHY are quests making your player more experienced as a Warrior or Paladin when the quests have nothing to do with those classes.Furthermore WHY are games making your Warrior more experienced as a Warrior just because you stepped onto a new pixel in some map?
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
The questing thing is also from pen and paper, basically the DM rewards you with XP there for furthering the story but MMOs have dumbed down the mechanics pretty badly, I think every single P&P character I ever had would either punch the farmer who wanted him to kill gophers in his field or walked away laughing.
Quests in pen and paper is usually pretty epic, in our changeling campaign we just stopped a weird sect from summoning some kind of supernatural being called "the autumn emperor" who wanted to rule great Brittain. Took us about 10 RP sessions with 8-10 hours each. In my own Pathfinder campign the story so far is an origin story about how some peasants becomes great heroes, mostly through puzzle dungeons filled with diabolical traps (but very few monsters), there is a long quest story there but some of my players frequent this forum so I wont go into specifics.
MMO questing is really dumbed down with us doing mostly menial tasks and the few good quests are usually split into a whole bunch of smaller quests which makes it feel far less epic than it should.
And yes, the current MMO endgame doesn't work anymore, with the current speed of leveling the games need far more endgame then just some raids and dungeons.
Questing gives out far too much XP for menial tasks, it is one thing to find and clear out a bandit camp but a rather different thing to walk 20 feets to deliver a message to some peasants brother. Those quests tend to give out a rather similar amount of XP which is insane.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
The people on the forums who complain all day are too hard to keep anyway. That's why game studio stop caring about them. If you look around there are mmorpg that people asked for, usually small indie company, but people's response is usually it is not good enough.
The reason early MMORPGs didn't surpass 450k players (EQ1) is because players definitely weren't retaining that long. Instead they were abandoning the game at faster rates than modern games.
We know this because in pre-Cata WOW only had 30% retention to level 10. We combine that knowledge with a player retention model a little like the Excel screenshot shown in this article.
In the industry we create models which predict player count based on two primary inputs: installs and retention.
Essentially it's a leaky bucket. Installs fill the bucket with water, and retention determines the rate the water leaks out. The leakier your bucket's retention, the higher the flow of new water (installs) you need to sustain a certain level of water.
If you're good at math, you can take that Excel screenshot from the second article and add in the relevant information. Basically you'd set it up so that installs and retention are tweakable inputs, with installs adding to the game's total player count each day, but retention reducing the remaining players in each daily install cohort. Once you have it set up, you can begin playing with retention and install numbers to see their effects on total player count over the long term.
The first thing you'll learn playing with these numbers is retention's importance to maintaining huge player counts like WOW did. The reverse is also true, and poor retention is likely the largest factor why early MMORPGs never surpassed 450k subscribers. Without good retention you require a tremendous amount of new installs to replace lost players each day.
We know WOW achieved crazy player counts, and it did that even on 30% level 10 retention (which would be somewhere between day-2 and day-7 retention, given how quickly you could reach level 10.) Having played directly with retentions' and installs' influence on total player count, you know it's quite likely WOW needed superior retention and installs to achieve its many millions of players compared with early games' 450k. As a result, it's a safe assumption that fewer than 30% of players lasted 7 days in early MMORPGs.
And that's why the assumption that early MMORPG players stuck around 2-6 years is clearly wrong. It's far more likely that most early MMORPG players stuck around fewer than 7 days.
All of that is just one factor.
The other factor is competition. If there aren't many options, then you're more likely to stick with a MMORPG than if many MMORPGs exist. So this actually increases player retention a little (but we're still faced with the reality that the math showed us earlier: it's unlikely retention was higher than WOW's unless these games were spending virtually nothing on advertising.)
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
What companies should do is make a decision on what segment of their target audience they want to cater for, and build a game for that segment. The volume of those they go for will be more limited than the "all things to all people" approach, but that approach no longer works as there is a lot of variety out there now, not just a few MMOs.
If you take MMO gamers as a whole i.e. the 'universe of MMO players', within that universe will be a diverse range of tastes i.e. x will want this and y will want that - but there will be groups that like the same things. The software companies need to pick their group (bit of effort and research required) and go for the tastes of that group. If we imagine that there are 100 different groups (could be any number, less, probably more) with even more sub-groups. The more targeted the MMO the smaller the group but if a good job is done, you'd get a high % of a particular group as customers because you have catered specifically for them. EVE online is a good example. Not much else like it and it's done what it wants to do well - so you either like it or you don't. In industry, it's why Bentley, Ferrari etc sell their cars, in small numbers compared to the mass markets, but they are aiming for a particular segment of the market. I would imagine a high % of mega rich people will have a really high end car. It's the same with MMO - build an MMO to cater for a specific audience, target them, stick to them and with them.
The 64 million dollar question then, is are there enough people in your target market to justify the cost of building the game and running it? Some think Wildstar failed as a payment model because it was too niche with it's difficult raids etc, but it had too much of everything else in it too, so turned off both raiders and non raiders.
For me, and possibly for you - there is your perfect MMO design in our heads (requirements, likes, dislikes) and many will like and dislike what I would like and vice versa. Companies need to find out what we want, identify the numbers in such a group and chase that group by giving them what they want i.e. deliver as closely as pissible to the needs of their target audience in an unwaivering fashion - simply by being all things to all people, like every other company, means there's too much choice, too much noise and people just wandering from game to the next same game and not being satisfied that much.