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What is the 'Magic' that Makes a Good Game?
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With Lineage (1) for me it was all "Wow, look at all the people I'm playing with! From all over the world! And this game's world is so big too!" - All pretty much things that wouldn't impress me anymore nowadays.
UO was amazing for the freedom it gave in character creation, and all the crafting skills. Not to mention the taming.
CoH's character customization, both visual and when it came to power sets (specs/abilities if you will) was awesome. Not to mention it was a superhero MMO. Flying. Running around with super speed. Teleporting. Phasing to become impervious to harm for a while. So much cool stuff.
SWTOR and TSW were both incredible experiences in story. I've also enjoyed the gameplay, and the customization to a lesser extent. SWTOR's Legacy system is also something I enjoy. It's nice to have some account wide progress. A shame it kinda got neglected after a while, and they started adding all that character specific crap as money sinks.
BDO's world and those drop dead gorgeous weather effects, along with the contribution and worker system that let me create a huge trade/crafting empire.
My SWTOR referral link for those wanting to give the game a try. (Newbies get a welcome package while returning players get a few account upgrades to help with their preferred status.)
https://www.ashesofcreation.com/ref/Callaron/
Providing enough of a spectrum of mechanics that plays well together is the ultimate goal, where even a game that's done "by the books" can fail to be interesting because the mechanics are not well integrated with each other, the plot is bland, the graphics aren't quite right, etc.
It's why a game you can classify as mechanically broken and severely flawed can still be interesting as well. Because while overall there might be many faults, you still have aspects of the game that are interesting enough to the players that they remain dedicated to the game. Be it the setting, the style of gameplay, the supporting tools, customization, or simply the novelty of the concept, there are a range of reasons people might find themselves enchanted by even a floundering niche title.
While I do enjoy good gameplay, I can't say many MMOs manage to deliver content in their combat-focused style that's actually all that deep or interesting to me. I tend to cope with the tab-target and stilted action more so than actually enjoy it, and instead the many ancillary elements are what I find value in. An engaging narrative provided through both the game's direct narrative, it's environments, and the people I interact with. On top of that is the collaborative element of it where I can enjoy building experiences on an interpersonal level.
For single player games it tends to require more on the end of personal control. Like for Fallout 4 between the mods and the built-in content for base building and tinkering, a bulk of my gameplay is spent not in combat or running missions, but rather playing around with building new places, revamping gear, and assembling little collections and displays.
The "magic", or entertainment value of a game for me is the result of a lot of generally equally weighted elements. A game can have as deep of a combat system or as action-packed moment to moment gameplay as it wants and it simply won't catch my interest if the theme, setting, narrative, and personal control over certain features (like character customization, gear, and crafting) doesn't exist on a comparably deep level.
"The knowledge of the theory of logic has no tendency whatever to make men good reasoners." - Thomas B. Macaulay
"The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge." - Daniel J. Boorstin
Coh lovedthe diversity powers the travel powers and the bases the players made it great. EQ lived the longevity and a fast guild. Horizons (back when it was called this) it wad the dragons and the guild. same guild as coh and eq2. In eq2 I was
never satisfied with my character. Same in wow.
So for me it's both. Something epic that sets it apart that i like abd then the players.
I don't believe I play games for a "magicial" experience. It isn't that simple. 100 players will have 100 different ways of being with a game. You can't boil it down to a just add X formula.
Epic Music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vAigCvelkhQ&list=PLo9FRw1AkDuQLEz7Gvvaz3ideB2NpFtT1
https://archive.org/details/softwarelibrary_msdos?&sort=-downloads&page=1
Kyleran: "Now there's the real trick, learning to accept and enjoy a game for what it offers rather than pass on what might be a great playing experience because it lacks a few features you prefer."
John Henry Newman: "A man would do nothing if he waited until he could do it so well that no one could find fault."
FreddyNoNose: "A good game needs no defense; a bad game has no defense." "Easily digested content is just as easily forgotten."
LacedOpium: "So the question that begs to be asked is, if you are not interested in the game mechanics that define the MMORPG genre, then why are you playing an MMORPG?"
For example, look at Crowfall - best I can tell, the game is essentially a combination of resource plundering, city-building, and waging campaigns as a guild... and aside from some tertiary PvP, that's really the heart-and-soul of the product. So the CF team seems to be very focused on putting together an MMO that lives or dies based upon a kind of never-ending (or, more accurately, repeatable, always-changing) war - casting off a lot of the needless shit like questing and arenas and such in the process.
The more I think about it, however, the more I believe that that's how companies are not only going to succeed in the future, but, in a way, how they succeeded in the past. As another example, let's recall Star Wars Galaxies. Now, at first glance, it was a sandbox MMORPG with loads to do. But when you peer at SWG's endgame - the truly memorable part of the whole experience - it really was resource collection, roving PvP, town-building, and base-protection... in many ways kind of a less visionary version of what Crowfall is trying to accomplish.
Even WoW - a very different type of MMO - was a much tighter and more narrative-driven experience in vanilla and BC, and it just seemed like the more "stuff" Blizzard piled on, the less cohesive and interesting the game became (and it certainly wasn't helped by the "epics for everyone" policy adopted from Cata-onwards).
I'm not convinced that you can put your finger on the pulse of an object as complex as an MMO and say "this, right here, is the thing that makes it all work." But when you look at how rapidly people grow bored of even promising new releases these days - most of which are still trying in some way to ape WoW's carnival-like atmosphere cluttered with booths and rides - I believe it is because they are seeking a product that commits to a narrow, very-fun vision, and doesn't go and poop in the pool once everyone is enjoying themselves with it.
*Edit*
I want to add one more thing that I overlooked initially, and that is community. These days, almost nobody in these games knows each other. You enter instances with random schlubs, you grind to the end, and you never see them again. MMOs used to be about community investment - a place where it was in your best interest as a player to help those around you excel.
But the pursuit of convenience has virtually obliterated that quintessential driver of the genre - we're so eager to hop into our next x-realms or battleground that we never stopped to wonder at the fact that we're mostly playing by ourselves, now.
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If you leave too many obvious contradictions or absurd assumptions hanging, i can't take the game seriously.
It becomes all about the mechanics themselves.
Answer: Hmmn very tough question. Probably Rappelz 1 through 4 epics. At 5 they screwed it up and it killed the game. It had awesome drops, taming, open world PvP that was active and brutal. The competition in those early years was fierce. Guilds were the best. I can't really explain it but you earned everything you got. It was the Dr. Pepper of mmorpgs back then.
What does a game have to have to create a magical experience for you?
Answer: For me it is a active open world PvP. No matter what you do you have to watch your ass. It also creates friendships and alliances. It usually turns into major drama. When you have major drama in the game it is magic.
What game(s) coming out do you think may, perhaps have that magic?
Answer: I think Camelot Unchained. Realm PvP looks awesome. No level progression. Its just realm vs realm. For me that's all I want just PvP all day .
But it's an illusion.
People respond to games as much with emotion as they do with reason. The "magic" in a game is the way that the game makes you FEEL. And that is a purely emotional response.
Listing technical reasons like features gives you a basis for comparison, but it certainly won't tell you if you'll "like" that game or if you'll find it "fun".
The whole is greater than the sum of its parts.
A game may have every single feature that you love, yet you may find it totally bland and boring because of the way those features are implemented.
With EQ, its been well documented in threads like these:
http://forums.mmorpg.com/discussion/427602/say-its-nostalgia-all-you-want/p1
With titles like World of Warcraft, it may have been how well it brought the features of other MMOs together in such a polished package. Despite the fact that it was more "gamey" than previous virtual worlds, it looked and played so slick, the UI so clean, and the movement and animations so tactile, people were gladly willing to forget about everything else.
Then there are games like minecraft where the block graphics and strange quirks don't matter because its gameplay has a unique charm.
There are countless oddball games on steam that seemingly lack all normal conventions - and yet they become wildly popular. Goes to show you that you can't always predict what people will find fun.
Yep, it's been done many times.
Value creativity and uniqueness over sequels, every damn time.
That can be accomplished in a lot of different ways. A few examples would be.
Shenmue- Way of the samurai - Omicron - Vampire the Masquerade:BL- GTA/Red Dead: These games offered a world full of experiences even if they weren't huge worlds, they were filled to the brim with activities that supported different ways to approach the character you were playing as.
Elder Scrolls - SWG - Divinity:OS - Fallout - Xseries etc.. While possessing the same qualities from the above games... Instead of having a predefined Protagonist role to approach from different angles (in some cases).. These games let you truly define your character and their motivations, while offering huge realistic worlds ripe for exploration and uncovering buried secrets.
KOTOR - BG POE NWN1+2) Jade empire as well as a number of Jrpgs. While most of these games may lack the worldly aspects of the above- They do a good job of mixing the predefined story path (that can branch in different directions) with an added bonus of deep character development and relations within the confines of the story/world (companions). Allowing you to align with factions that fit your chosen agenda, and doing a great job of making that decision in direction carry weight for you as well as your party.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
But the key is that they be interesting gameplay decisions. You can get sword A or B, but A is unambiguously better in every way, is not an interesting decision. You can use skill A or B, and there are trade-offs, but you'll make the same decision for the same reasons in every battle you every fight, may be one interesting decision, but it's not one per fight.
And then the key is the frequency of interesting gameplay decisions. One interesting decision per day is not enough. You want players to be faced with a constant stream of them. You don't have to include all possible types of interesting gameplay decisions. Good combat is a common source of them, but combat that basically plays itself is fine if you've got enough other interesting things loaded into your game.
So what makes gameplay decisions interesting? That's a matter of opinion, and is the primary underlying reason why different players prefer different games.
The best games for me have been the ones I couldn't stop thinking about, the ones I would read about, read other people's opinions and experiences about, and find surprises all the time.
Once you can just go online and find out the best build, the meta, or whatever it is, once the game is demystified, it loses its magic for me. So the simpler the game, the shorter- lived it is.
An MMO that did that for me was original Darkfall for a couple of years, because the world was so big and you could carve out your own niche even if you were solo or played with a few people you saw regularly.
A non-mmo would be Morrowind.
Why did World of Tanks explode onto the scene and pretty much dominate the early Free to Play market for a couple of years? It's a lobby based matchmaking game about World War II and Korean era tanks. Why was there such a large market for this? I thought my fascination with tanks was a fringe interest.
Other games flop badly and it doesn't make any sense. Wildstar, for instance, had exactly what a lot of people were begging for, which was a more difficult and challenging version of WoW. It had new races, new classes, an interesting combat system, a completely new world with it's own lore and yet it may end up closing down in the next 12-18 months.
What makes Witcher 3 so damn good, and worth so much more praise than the first two installments? Why did it take three games in the series before the world lifted their collective heads and said "Whoa, this is really good!" I mean, I feel the same way personally. In fact I didn't play the first two until after playing the third installment, but why?
I think that the magic that makes a great game is the most elusive factor in the industry. I think that timing is a huge factor, innovation and/or nostalgia is a high factor, aesthetics are a complimentary factor as is gameplay.
You can easily see the difference between games which were simply made for money, or games made to be fun (and make money, of course, but not only that).
Too many suits seem to view games as being quantifiable- i.e. if Hearthstone did this or that, and was successful, I can hire 10 guys and we can do the same thing. But that's not how games work, I don't think.
Sometimes it even seems to me like a game was pretty much a corporate affair, but you can tell one of the guys was really into it, or just especially talented, and one aspect of the game shines because of it.
***
Generally I think this "love" of the game manifests itself in attention to detail.
I know I talk about BDO a lot lately but bear with me-
One of the things that struck me about the game was I was fighting in an area with 2 groups of NPCs fighting. When the "bad guys" were cleared from the area, either by me or the "good" NPCs, the good npcs leaned on their swords, clearly exhausted.
That animation was totally unnecessary. In most games the good guy npcs would just stand there or in a best case scenario walk around randomly. But the fact that they added that animation for that condition added to the drama of the area.
BDO is full of details like that. It's clear to me that at least a few of the Devs really put their hearts and souls into the game.
In any case, these kind of details really bring the magic of the game to me.
2. A receptive audience.
Nowadays , if you as people to play the game for few weeks before they can start the end game and able to "play with other" then .... hahaha
BTW , good 'magic' for games ? not MMORPG ? seriously ?
Okay , good 'magic' that make a good games is the reward for winner and tears of the losers .
We human are cruel . We enter challenge for 'reward' , and the 'reward' taste better when there are win and lost .
Typically this is done best within the Sandbox genre in faster-paced games such as Minecraft and Halo Forge Mode, but Geocaching in recent time has shown us that Pokemon Go is capable of a similar endeavor, even if that tech is currently out of reach to indie devs as far as I know. I also experienced this while playing Project Gorgon, an Indie MMORPG, and I'm looking forward to Chronicles of Elyria to bring these features to the table.
Depending on how socially fulfilling your game is, the more likely it is you are to talk about it with your friends and attempt to lure them into that circle you are building. Popular MOBAs have also accomplished this, most notably League of Legends and Overwatch. I would never be interested in those games if my friends were not playing them and hadn't invited me, which brings me to my next point ...
Referral Rewards were a very powerful, driving force when released for League of Legends, at least initially. These programs definitely help to drive community, while the sale on Minecraft during the early development stages would make people tell their friends to 'get this game now' and thus have everyone purchase that game.
Another thing is that it's the Competitive Easter Eggs that make some of these games truly stand out for me. You might play the game a little differently than someone else, and be rewarded for such, as well as encounter players who do not know how to use that mechanic fully. This creates a sense of skill gap that keeps the game interesting socially, because you have the option of teaching others or holding it over their head. If there is a huge threat, players will typically bond together to deal with that threat, which I saw often in the earlier days of Aion Online PvP and Vanilla WoW when high-level players would gank low-level ones, and in Aion's case twinking could be used to defeat high-level players on occasion.
Along the same lines, being able to contribute to newer players is very important for a healthy community. It keeps you talking with new faces, it helps newer members interact, and it keeps them social. Barrens chat is legendary in World of Warcraft, but have you ever stopped to think of the many social bonds that were created between players through it? Even the simple act of begging for your first few gold to buy equipment would put newer players in the crosshairs of veterans, and some people actually get a kick out of helping others ... it truly made the games feel alive.
Single-player games such as Fallout and TES typically create a lot of online buzz with people talking about them, trying to reach out for that social connection where none is present - these games also establish a sense of false social connectivity, where the world is actually socially palatable.
Other examples include social interaction between game developers, community managers, and so on between the player base - typically promotions, news stories, keeping people informed, and so on while still having a personality to that news instead of making it bland and 'newsy'. Also, a healthy forum for the game allows others to share information and prosper, whereas one filled with trolling, hatred, or inactivity is likely to show that the game is faltering in some way.
Think about it, can you remember an MMO you adored where you didn't have a whole lot of friends? Would you be more likely to buy a game your friends were praising and talking about often?
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I think developers are often surprised at the results, both good and bad.
Really is more of an art than science.
"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
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The "magic" happens when the puzzle fits like it should, as the developers envisioned it.
VG
RISK ..
Risk=Excitement =Stronger sense of Victory or Defeat=more Challenging feel=more Satisfying rewards=stronger community experiences=equals better immersion = Better Overall Game Experience..
The games that have best represented this in my experience are UO,AC , EQ , Eve
These games all have a couple things in common .. Risk - wrapped around , strong class mechainics, diverse believable worlds ..
Since 2004 from Wow to the current shiny turd BDO , it seems to have eluded Devs and they have removed most of if not all Risk in MMOs ...
Not much excitemnet for me , if i can run into a wall of swords knowing if i die i will bounce back up and continue fighting with no meaningful loss , its like kicking kittens ...But some people like this ...
Now some games have great worlds with strong class mechaincs ( TOR,ESO ,FF14) for ex... and they tell great stories .. But are nearly as exciting as laying on the couch reading a good book at times , Thet are all missing Risk ......
So for me and IMO RISK =Magic