I'm honestly tired of the themepark generation of MMOs. WoW was good for a while, then there were a slew of copies. Then Rift came along, and then Guild Wars2. Ok, awesome...after that I just got bored of it. ESO came around and started doing things slightly differently...then Archeage despite their cash shop and land grab failings, the core of it was good. After taking a long break from MMOs (GW2 was the last one I played to any serious degree) I am knee-deep in Black Desert Online. Sandboxy like Archeage, combat like Tera, gorgeous world like Gw2. Its a fun game I don't even know I am playing an MMO sometimes. One night I didn't kill one mob, I was too busy setting up my workers and trade empire (at level 31).
So for me, yeah themeparks are dead. I need more than just level, dungeons, raids, pvp. BDO provides that for the time being.
It is more accurate to say the genre in dying in the west. Specifically, there is no more western AAA dev of mmorpgs. Isn't that a fact?
Koreans are also putting the breaks on MMORPG development - Bless is probably the last AAA MMORPG to be made in Korea. The most played games in Korea are MOBAs, RTS games and FPS games.
MMORPGs keep dropping down in popularity.
So it's not only west - online game studios are shifting focus to arena based games - like arena team shooters (Overwatch, Battleborn, Paragon, Paladins etc....), MOBAs, Vehicle arena games (World of Tanks, Armored Warfare, War Thunder, World of Warships etc...)
If you look at what all of those games have in common:
1. Short gameplay sessions 2. Team based gameplay 3. Arena based
Easy to jump in and out for a quick game - no need to spend 100s of hour grinding PvE to get to endgame - it's all about instant gameplay.
Why is this where game dev has shifted to? Easy - this is where 90% of the playerbase is today considering that LoL, Dota2, WoT have well over 100 million monthly players
Well, this is what MMORPGS need to do in order to evolve. Short session gameplay...I've been saying this for years. Only a small fraction of a playerbase play the game more than a few hours per day or more than a few hours per clip. Many of us play anywhere from 15-20 minutes to an hour. And a lot of people play solo. Solo short session gameplay. I know this isnt a vocal majority on forums, but the people that make up most of the playerbase do not visit the forums and are playing solo with limited time. Only one developer has grasped this concept publically: The guys @ Wildstar a few years back. However, they failed to capitalize. Just look at what games prosper and actually grow: D3(say what you want, it thrives on expansion sells not cash shop or subs), PoE, etc...what do they have in common besides not really being an MMO? Short session game play that can be done solo (greater rifts and mapping). POE only continues to grow. And D3 somehow survives without a sub and a cash shop. Tell me why if not because of a steady population that stems from correct development decisions?
I'm honestly tired of the themepark generation of MMOs. WoW was good for a while, then there were a slew of copies. Then Rift came along, and then Guild Wars2. Ok, awesome...after that I just got bored of it. ESO came around and started doing things slightly differently...then Archeage despite their cash shop and land grab failings, the core of it was good. After taking a long break from MMOs (GW2 was the last one I played to any serious degree) I am knee-deep in Black Desert Online. Sandboxy like Archeage, combat like Tera, gorgeous world like Gw2. Its a fun game I don't even know I am playing an MMO sometimes. One night I didn't kill one mob, I was too busy setting up my workers and trade empire (at level 31).
So for me, yeah themeparks are dead. I need more than just level, dungeons, raids, pvp. BDO provides that for the time being.
"
Sandboxy like Archeage, combat like Tera, gorgeous world like Gw2. " Black Desert is all that? For real? Becouse i've played Archeage alot and its housing,crafting and farming aspects are the best i have seen since i started playing games about 18 years ago.
Most i heard about Black Desert is that Character customisation, graphics and boobs great, and that the rest is all grind and shallow/generic.
City of Heroes WoW FFXI EQ2 Ryzom Guild Wars 2 was about to drop
These games were all out at the same time, and at the states they were at then they were all pretty good or decent, in fact I didn't have time to play all of them back then. Are they still out there now? Yes, many of them are either too old, changed too much, or in the case of CoH not out anymore. There was a time I could play two really good mmorpgs at once. That isn't the case anymore.
Even stuff that didn't make it was great. I enjoyed the hell out of Tabula Rasa
I don't like the genre now. Sure you have FFXIV out there and BDO isn't half bad, but I don't care for the current state. And no I don't like TESO, the game is shit and FFXIV while good is so damn straightforward with its lack of horizontal progression that its nothing but a one track gear grinder, which I absolutely despise. Explorers like myself are completely shut out.
My opinion of course.
Any mmo worth its salt should be like a good prostitute when it comes to its game world- One hell of a faker, and a damn good shaker!
As mentioned, for western Devs, yes you might as well say it's dead.
what? Isn't The Division was just released to great commercial success?
I think we differ on what an MMORPG is if you think the Division is classified as one. It's a good FPS, but that is as far as I take it. Even that game is having a hard time keeping players vested in it. Everyone I know that played it has quit for various reasons.
This topic is talking about MMO, not MMORPG (see the topic title). This site classified TD as a MMO. SO does its developer.
Whether people play for a long term is irrelevant. In fact, for most MMOs, 80% quit after 30 days.
MMO's are like food or beverage, they are MANY, some are recognised by quality and some simply by marketing. Some are almost the same but in different package.
People do weirdest of things, instead of making them more healthy, they make them near poisonous, but in shiny package, and when other people look at a package they believe and buy it.
Why u say?
Simple, poison comes cheap. Quality does not.
As long as you keep buying it, we will keep making it.
That said, i believe MMO Market will grow as long as internet and world population does
What some players might be pointing out is one branch of MMO, called MMORPG which is having some difficulties.
The now established F2P model is pushing P2P/B2P out of the way, microtransactions seem smaller investments than giving out 50$ outright on purchase, and publishers like that.
Why would Publishers like giving something free rather than getting those 50$ right away you say?
Microtransactions/Cash Shop, consider it like a bank loan, when you start playing, you notice you need this or that, which you really like, you might not have time on hand to farm it ingame, so you pay, and every other day you pay again,
before you know it you went over the 50$ mark but you are happy with your new costume ,armor, gun, sword, mount or whatever, and for Publisher it is important ,that you are happy
I've been through too many "X genre is dead" phases to buy that the MMO genre can't evolve.
It seems ridiculous now, but there was a significant period of time back in the mid-90s when RPG was considered a dead genre that no suits dared to touch with even a 100 dollar bill.
The MMO genre is going through some kind of phase right now, but I have no doubt it will make a serious comeback at some point down the line.
What's far from certain, though, is what form it will take.
"
Sandboxy like Archeage, combat like Tera, gorgeous world like Gw2. " Black Desert is all that? For real? Becouse i've played Archeage alot and its housing,
O.o crafting
and farming aspects are....
the best i have seen since i started playing games about 18 years ago.
The CRAFTING? In ArcheAge? The BEST?
no... just NO...
Best crafting I have seen in any MMORPG was in Vanguard: Saga of Heroes, hands down. I have heard of other titles that were nearly if not as good as well, although I have not seen those myself.
ArcheAge's crafting system is just BS randomized, no skill, P2W crap at it's "finest".
nariusseldon said: Whether people play for a long term is irrelevant. In fact, for most MMOs, 80% quit after 30 days.
I think that's relevant since the moving cloud of hungry locusts demands AAA development budgets.
Yet, clearly, it's a losing proposition to wager on holding their attention.
I'd switch the shop over to the playstyle-of-the-week newer and faster rollout titles, too. No brainer.
That is the point .. no dev is aiming to hold everyone's attention for a long time. They only need the whales. Or if they are selling boxes like The Division, they only need to make a game good enough to worth $60.
"
Sandboxy like Archeage, combat like Tera, gorgeous world like Gw2. " Black Desert is all that? For real? Becouse i've played Archeage alot and its housing,
O.o crafting
and farming aspects are....
the best i have seen since i started playing games about 18 years ago.
The CRAFTING? In ArcheAge? The BEST?
no... just NO...
Best crafting I have seen in any MMORPG was in Vanguard: Saga of Heroes, hands down. I have heard of other titles that were nearly if not as good as well, although I have not seen those myself.
ArcheAge's crafting system is just BS randomized, no skill, P2W crap at it's "finest".
Archeage is a game ,whose crafting mechanic makes you spend less labor per craft at higher levels, that forces you to make more items to be able to reach top tier crafts, its mathematics model is near perfect, and the sole variation in crafting, to be able to make
turn farming products to crafting ingredients
use ingredients from dungeons, world, farming etc to create things that simulate crafting in the real world:
Housing itself, vehicles, ships, gliders, armors, weapons ,jewelry, basically almost anything else you can think of that can exist in a game world.
Havent yet seen such extensive and well done system objectively.
What you dont like and you doesnt realise why ,is Trion component, which made labour that should had been available at normal rates, SEVERELY SCARCE, just for profit sake, and not only that, they also made some ingredients CASH SHOP ONLY, as well as try to limit and control most aspects of crafting by linking it to $ expenses and cooldowns. Now that is what most really think. And if we didnt have cursed Trion greed there, Archeage would had been a much different experience.
It is only through the slumps that the genre evolves. That last slump evolved the gene into a more arcade style with less depth and more twitchiness. I'm hoping this latest slump will force at least some segments of the industry to try something different, but still be detailed and designed for the long term and not the short.
MMOs are not dead but the playerbase is hardly growing either, just moving between games. No larger western MMOs are really in the development, just some crowdfunded and indie games.
So things are hardly as good as we wish they should be, but there is no disaster yet either. We do need a new western success MMO in the next few years or MMOs could actually start dying for real. Hopefully will one of the smaller western games do well.
It is only through the slumps that the genre evolves. That last slump evolved the gene into a more arcade style with less depth and more twitchiness. I'm hoping this latest slump will force at least some segments of the industry to try something different, but still be detailed and designed for the long term and not the short.
How much did Starcraft 2 evolve the genre? It was a great game and extremely well designed, but it didn't evolve things. It was one of the few major releases in a long drought of RTS titles.
How much did Smite evolve the genre? Quite a lot -- it was an entirely new perspective on MOBAs. It was one of a flood of MOBAs during perhaps their most successful period.
There isn't some hard rule of where more evolution happens, but certainly MOBAs spawned during the tail end of the RTS boom, and 1st/3rd person MOBAs spawned during the MOBA boom, and FPS/RTS hybrids spawned during the RTS boom. Most of the major sub-genre branches do seem to get created during the boom of a genre, not during the decline.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
Loke666 said:
So things are hardly as good as we wish they should be
...just a matter of unreasonable expectations.
Your very post is proof of that :-P
Unreasonable expectations? Where is the evolution of old mmorpgs like Asheron's Call, UO and EQ? Where are the devs that are out there saying "We want to be UO/Asheron's Call/Ryzom/SWG 2016 with all the bells and whistles that come with being made now. We don't want to rebuild the wheel, we want to turn the wheel into hover wheels. We want to turn the skateboard into hoverboards."
"We want to make something new, that has the great stuff of the old days, plus 10"
"Right now, we are trying to make the mmorpg version of 5th edition Dungeons and Dragons."
I call shenanigans. Unrealistic expecations my ass. More like lack of vision.
Any mmo worth its salt should be like a good prostitute when it comes to its game world- One hell of a faker, and a damn good shaker!
Quirhid said:
It was bound to happen. It is a really old game. You didn't expect it to run forever did you?
You'd think they'd be working on Eve 2.0; correcting mistakes, ditching all the arcaic mechanics and legacy bullshit, but alas no...
That is what they are doing with EVE for the past 5 years...just reworking the game, again and again.
Yes, nothing last forver but that is not the case that is happening with EVE. EVE isn't losing players because it is old, in fact it is probably the only game on the market that went under complete facelift.
With the recent upheavals from WWBee and the release of the new Citadel content the gaming population is on an uptick.
5 years from now will still be going strong, and you'll keep telling folks it's dying.
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
MMO's are like food or beverage, they are MANY, some are recognised by quality and some simply by marketing. Some are almost the same but in different package.
People do weirdest of things, instead of making them more healthy, they make them near poisonous, but in shiny package, and when other people look at a package they believe and buy it.
Why u say?
Simple, poison comes cheap. Quality does not.
As long as you keep buying it, we will keep making it.
Thats true but with gaming it more has to do with the fact that devs do not care about the game and only the money, you can always tell when a game is made from passion, take most of the batman games for example, or shadows of mordor they are good examples of the devs caring about the game. I think the same can be said about some of the older mmorpgs. Guild wars 2 also seems to have allot of passion put into it for what it is.
The MMORPG scene died for me when Lunia, WonderKing Online, City of Villians, and countless other games I settled into kept getting shut down. MMORPGs have become a relic, but MMOs are still very much a thing. If Trove ever gets shut down, we'll know that the MMO scene is in a bad place. That game has managed to pull in an extremely wide range of players both old and new to MMOs.
Loke666 said:
So things are hardly as good as we wish they should be
...just a matter of unreasonable expectations.
Your very post is proof of that :-P
Unreasonable expectations? Where is the evolution of old mmorpgs like Asheron's Call, UO and EQ? Where are the devs that are out there saying "We want to be UO/Asheron's Call/Ryzom/SWG 2016 with all the bells and whistles that come with being made now. We don't want to rebuild the wheel, we want to turn the wheel into hover wheels. We want to turn the skateboard into hoverboards."
"We want to make something new, that has the great stuff of the old days, plus 10"
"Right now, we are trying to make the mmorpg version of 5th edition Dungeons and Dragons."
I call shenanigans. Unrealistic expecations my ass. More like lack of vision.
Exactly this goes with my reply about games made with some form of passion.
MMO's are not dying but they are seeing a doctor on a regular basis. I think MMMO's have ObamaCare and with rising premium costs no wonder their unhappy.
Loke666 said:
So things are hardly as good as we wish they should be
...just a matter of unreasonable expectations.
Your very post is proof of that :-P
Unreasonable expectations? Where is the evolution of old mmorpgs like Asheron's Call, UO and EQ? Where are the devs that are out there saying "We want to be UO/Asheron's Call/Ryzom/SWG 2016 with all the bells and whistles that come with being made now. We don't want to rebuild the wheel, we want to turn the wheel into hover wheels. We want to turn the skateboard into hoverboards."
"We want to make something new, that has the great stuff of the old days, plus 10"
"Right now, we are trying to make the mmorpg version of 5th edition Dungeons and Dragons."
I call shenanigans. Unrealistic expecations my ass. More like lack of vision.
It takes real money to get that, so I don't think the problem is Devs. Publishers/investors just aren't buying into this sort of design or R&D in the west...So we're left with devs going to kickstarter, or trying other crowdfunded means to an end. SO whatever expectations one has is a moot point from the get go. IF the money isn't there, the game will not be either.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
As is with anything, once something gets saturated, you find other means. Publishers are smart to move onto other less saturated markets. MMORPGs aren't dead or is coming close to dying, it's just not worth the risk the huge investment it requires.
Comments
So for me, yeah themeparks are dead. I need more than just level, dungeons, raids, pvp. BDO provides that for the time being.
Well, this is what MMORPGS need to do in order to evolve. Short session gameplay...I've been saying this for years. Only a small fraction of a playerbase play the game more than a few hours per day or more than a few hours per clip. Many of us play anywhere from 15-20 minutes to an hour. And a lot of people play solo. Solo short session gameplay. I know this isnt a vocal majority on forums, but the people that make up most of the playerbase do not visit the forums and are playing solo with limited time. Only one developer has grasped this concept publically: The guys @ Wildstar a few years back. However, they failed to capitalize. Just look at what games prosper and actually grow: D3(say what you want, it thrives on expansion sells not cash shop or subs), PoE, etc...what do they have in common besides not really being an MMO? Short session game play that can be done solo (greater rifts and mapping). POE only continues to grow. And D3 somehow survives without a sub and a cash shop. Tell me why if not because of a steady population that stems from correct development decisions?
For real? Becouse i've played Archeage alot and its housing,crafting and farming aspects are the best i have seen since i started playing games about 18 years ago.
Most i heard about Black Desert is that Character customisation, graphics and boobs great, and that the rest is all grind and shallow/generic.
Maybe people are wrong, ill check it out again.
City of Heroes
WoW
FFXI
EQ2
Ryzom
Guild Wars 2 was about to drop
These games were all out at the same time, and at the states they were at then they were all pretty good or decent, in fact I didn't have time to play all of them back then. Are they still out there now? Yes, many of them are either too old, changed too much, or in the case of CoH not out anymore. There was a time I could play two really good mmorpgs at once. That isn't the case anymore.
Even stuff that didn't make it was great. I enjoyed the hell out of Tabula Rasa
I don't like the genre now. Sure you have FFXIV out there and BDO isn't half bad, but I don't care for the current state. And no I don't like TESO, the game is shit and FFXIV while good is so damn straightforward with its lack of horizontal progression that its nothing but a one track gear grinder, which I absolutely despise. Explorers like myself are completely shut out.
My opinion of course.
Any mmo worth its salt should be like a good prostitute when it comes to its game world- One hell of a faker, and a damn good shaker!
Whether people play for a long term is irrelevant. In fact, for most MMOs, 80% quit after 30 days.
People do weirdest of things, instead of making them more healthy, they make them near poisonous, but in shiny package, and when other people look at a package they believe and buy it.
Why u say?
Simple, poison comes cheap.
Quality does not.
As long as you keep buying it, we will keep making it.
Yet, clearly, it's a losing proposition to wager on holding their attention.
I'd switch the shop over to the playstyle-of-the-week newer and faster rollout titles, too. No brainer.
What some players might be pointing out is one branch of MMO, called MMORPG which is having some difficulties.
The now established F2P model is pushing P2P/B2P out of the way, microtransactions seem smaller investments than giving out 50$ outright on purchase, and publishers like that.
Why would Publishers like giving something free rather than getting those 50$ right away you say?
Microtransactions/Cash Shop, consider it like a bank loan, when you start playing, you notice you need this or that, which you really like, you might not have time on hand to farm it ingame, so you pay, and every other day you pay again,
before you know it you went over the 50$ mark but you are happy with your new costume ,armor, gun, sword, mount or whatever, and for Publisher it is important ,that you are happy
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y6Sxv-sUYtM
It seems ridiculous now, but there was a significant period of time back in the mid-90s when RPG was considered a dead genre that no suits dared to touch with even a 100 dollar bill.
The MMO genre is going through some kind of phase right now, but I have no doubt it will make a serious comeback at some point down the line.
What's far from certain, though, is what form it will take.
The CRAFTING? In ArcheAge? The BEST?
no... just NO...
Best crafting I have seen in any MMORPG was in Vanguard: Saga of Heroes, hands down. I have heard of other titles that were nearly if not as good as well, although I have not seen those myself.
ArcheAge's crafting system is just BS randomized, no skill, P2W crap at it's "finest".
turn farming products to crafting ingredients
use ingredients from dungeons, world, farming etc to create things that simulate crafting in the real world:
Housing itself, vehicles, ships, gliders, armors, weapons ,jewelry, basically almost anything else you can think of that can exist in a game world.
Havent yet seen such extensive and well done system objectively.
What you dont like and you doesnt realise why ,is Trion component, which made labour that should had been available at normal rates, SEVERELY SCARCE, just for profit sake, and not only that, they also made some ingredients CASH SHOP ONLY, as well as try to limit and control most aspects of crafting by linking it to $ expenses and cooldowns.
Now that is what most really think. And if we didnt have cursed Trion greed there, Archeage would had been a much different experience.
So things are hardly as good as we wish they should be, but there is no disaster yet either. We do need a new western success MMO in the next few years or MMOs could actually start dying for real. Hopefully will one of the smaller western games do well.
Your very post is proof of that :-P
How much did Smite evolve the genre? Quite a lot -- it was an entirely new perspective on MOBAs. It was one of a flood of MOBAs during perhaps their most successful period.
There isn't some hard rule of where more evolution happens, but certainly MOBAs spawned during the tail end of the RTS boom, and 1st/3rd person MOBAs spawned during the MOBA boom, and FPS/RTS hybrids spawned during the RTS boom. Most of the major sub-genre branches do seem to get created during the boom of a genre, not during the decline.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
"We want to make something new, that has the great stuff of the old days, plus 10"
"Right now, we are trying to make the mmorpg version of 5th edition Dungeons and Dragons."
I call shenanigans. Unrealistic expecations my ass. More like lack of vision.
Any mmo worth its salt should be like a good prostitute when it comes to its game world- One hell of a faker, and a damn good shaker!
5 years from now will still be going strong, and you'll keep telling folks it's dying.
The circle of life.
"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
Now, which one of you will adorn me today?
Just kidding...
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson