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5 Best MMO Improvements Of The Last Decade (And The 5 Worst) - MMORPG.com
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5 Best MMO Improvements Of The Last Decade (And The 5 Worst) - MMORPG.com
The last decade has added both some wonderful and terrible things to the MMO genre. Now that 2020 is upon us, it is time to take a look back at the last 10 years, and see where the industry went right, and where MMOs went horribly, horribly wrong.
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This one became the worst MMORPG in the decade (or more like ever) with their obsolete slow engine, outdated graphics - and even worse F2P transition where EA/BioWare used their own game as a ransomware by locking character's bank and equipment and demanding $15 to unlock it (after I've paid $60 for the game during release). In the end it saved me couple hundreds $$$ (and a lot of nerves!): I never buy BioWare/EA games without 50%-90% discounts since 2013, mitigated Mass Effect Andromeda, Anthem, Star Warss Battlefront 2 launch fiascos.
Happy new year, lovely people of MMORPG.com team and respectable commenters! May your articles and comments will be even more fun and useful in the next decade!
Thank you for your time!
LOL some would say its the worst because it led too
Worst – Pay to Win Cash Shops
It has also led to nickle and dime cash shops. Devs make more items for them cash shops than the actual content in the game.
FFXI a game i always mention was cross platform way back in 2003 with Ps2 and PC and added Xbox a few years later.So anything done now is likely only an equal or worse because in FFXi they also used a language translator meaning that even language was not a total barrier.
F2p is not a good thing because there is no such thing as F2p,just look at W101 a game where you can maybe play a few zones but 99% of the game iis untouchable in f2p mode.Of course other restrictions and cash shosp are added into the f2p model,so it becomes a real bad shit show.
Segregating players between money spent is NEVER a good thing.
Public questing is too VAGUE a statement.The content still must adhere to immersion otherwise you ruin the whole purpose of a rpg.Also a MMO is MEANT to be an interactive platform for all players,so there is nothing new here we always had the public questing since the beginning of mmorpg's.Questing is also a loose term,we can call it events,daily events or daily content.
The term Quest should revolving around seeking knowledge to solve a quest,this is most of the time NOT the case in how a public quest works because most games are all hand holding.Yet again FFXi NO hand holding,you have to actually talk to npc's and figure out the subtle hints for yourself,it is an actual quest that might lead you to gather knowledge from all corners of the game world.
"pop culture approved"
Umm online gaming only really became a thing because of DSL,so to assume it had ANY chance of being a thing before then is nonsense.What i am saying is that gaming was still a thing it just had to be shared talked about over top of peopel that did not care for gaming.Once we got online dsl it became second nature and then more people could interact with others of similar interests.It doesn't mean gaming was not accepted,it just didn't have a chance to be a household thing because besides not having any online ability,there were also NOT that many games.
Even as early as the Nintendo and Sega systems,they became a very common Christmas gift in ever household.Gaming became a VERY common hobby and that goes back long before THIS decade.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
Worst: P2W and casino gameplay.
Logic, my dear, merely enables one to be wrong with great authority.
Online gaming was available on dial-up, and was even prevalent for the dreamcast and gamecube lol. It became easier with cable and dsl, but those of us who grew up playing games in the 90s and 2000s know the stigma that came along with playing games, and online games specifically. Now I get to watch movies and shows created about games I've been playing for years. I think if you're dismissing that gaming is completely different now, you must be blind.
Where I would disagree is on F2P and story-focused progression.
On F2P, I dont need to go into too much, except to say that it has dramatically affected MMORPG game design for the worse. I would also say that F2P prevented game developers from learning from their mistakes. When games stopped earning enough to keep going and new launches flopped, the developer community should have taken a step back and gone "right, we didn't do as well as we wanted, what went wrong and how to we design a better game that players will actually play?". Instead, F2P allowed them to ignore their poor design decisions and instead makeup the lost revenue through predatory monetisation. This has contributed significantly to the stagnation of the genre.
On the story front, I strongly disagree. Story (as in developer-led story, rather than player stories) is not gameplay, so the more story you have, the less game you have. Additionally, story and gameplay usually clash: my actions almost always contradict what the story is telling me. In order to deliver a compelling story, you have to lock down the gameplay to remove these contradictions, thus resulting in a worse game. Further, story and multiplayer don't mix well. Not only do my actions contradict the story, but now so does everyone elses actions. Story also serves to segregate the community......something you really want to avoid in a multiplayer game.
F2P - Bad Mojo
Back in my day we called them "Game Demos."
There are only a handful of good games that do F2P 'right,' without running into P2W/MTX/Lootbox BS.
I don't have the time/money to play them all, but to me there are more bad than good from F2P that I've been able to experience.
Yeah, I said money for a F2P game, just to cover my bases.
I'll pbly never be fully sold on it, because nothing is really free, and if I'm paying with my time, then it's still pretty expensive and better be worth it to me.
Flame me with 'Ok Boomer' comments all you want (I'd be an 'Ok X'er,' which just sounds cooler anyway.)
Plus, with this game pass stuff coming back around I hope it kind of kicks F2P to the wayside, or pushes more shitty/predatory Dev's toward the 'F2P done right' column.
Mobilification of PC Games - Horrible Idea
Keep that shit on shovelware mobile games and don't make everything shallow/bite sized for the PC master race.
Are we becoming more ADHD in general or do Devs just think we can't concentrate for longer periods of time of 10+ min's?
Always Online - Shit Idea
Too many gamers are still on unreliable/slow internet, and we all can't afford unlimited data/fast plans.
Pirates be pirating.
Game Streaming - Shit Idea, for now
See Above, but could be cool if peeps didn't have to worry about above.
VR - Great idea, slow uptake
The VR gaming i've experienced has been pretty damned cool.
Still limited by comfort level and meaty games to get into.
Still not as widespread into other industries as I expected.
Still too far away from The OASIS for my liking.
eSports - Great forward movement
It's cool to see this have more traction now-a-days.
It's cool to see colleges get into the mix.
It's cool to hear that more peeps are considering this a legit career path.
Lack of MMORPG Success Stories - Sad
I wish I had more options for the things that I like, but it seems like I have to put up with too many cons to enjoy of few pros with our current games available.
Too many Gaming portals - Good and Bad
It's never been a better time to be a gamer overall, IMO, with all the options/availability to game.
Excited to see how GoG 2.0 can handle all of these portals and combine them into 1 space.
The more we have becomes a bigger pain in the ass to manage, but also creates better purchasing situations for us Customers.
Devs telling us what we want instead of listening to us - Bad, but getting better maybe?
MS really shit the bed at the beginning of XBOX One, but seem to be on the right track after listening to their players for the next console release.
Nintendo always shits the bed in some way, and the lack of storage on the first Gen Switch made more of an asspain for us players.
Sony is shitting the bed by being so hard up over cross-platform play, and using a flimsy excuse of protecting us. If we want to make bad choices, let us make bad choices. PC/Xbox/Switch are doing better with it, and making gaming easier for us, which is a plus.
I bored myself, so that's all for now.
Gut Out!
What, me worry?
Worst: Daily quests and login bonuses. I want to have off-days when I'm busy with other stuff.
I think F2P and Pop Culture Approval is in the Worse category. I'd throw streamers into the Worst category as well.
I can't help but laugh at this but at the same time I think you're right. I think Mobile "gaming" is a thing of the future. I personally cant stand it and think its dog shit but I cant deny the fact that it's the up an coming future. Though I feel its purely for one thing - money grabs. Passion, depth, quality I feel are things of the past where instant gratification is what's here to stay and in the upcoming future which sucks
(Cash shops in general are just bad, even the less aggressive ones, and you can't have f2p without them.)
Another WORST, one I don't see on the list, is the trend toward scripted boss fights as opposed to better AI. I don't mind if the occasional boss is a kind of puzzle to figure out, but when every boss follows a script that requires precise rote execution and rehearsed meta-knowledge of the script, I tune out immediately. That's not a role-playing game; it's glorified Simon Says.
The worst feature to ever make it into any type of game IMO.
define "devil" please
"Story-driven progression", does not rate a "Best" since dev-created stories are never as interesting to me as dynamic player-driven stories that are developed with friends and enemies on the fly. Dev-created stories are fine for quests and story arcs, but not when they attempt to define who are characters are or their place in the world. Let players decide that, thank you.
I think for a mmo 1 of the best attributes is any kind of casual community event.
I think the worst approach to mmos is the current unregulated gambling mechanics.
I do agree with most of the other items here. Especially the horror that is time gating. Free to play is not a best either. It's trivialized the importance of picking a game and sticking with it. The end result of that is a terrible lack of community in most MMOs, people just hop around to whichever gives them the greatest dopamine hit at the moment.
I similarly disagree that F2P was one of the best things, and would instead call it one of the worst things, for similar reasons, and others. It's of course pretty funny that they'd drop F2P in as one of the best, then try to put P2W as one of the worst, as if P2W was a thing back during the earlier days of the paid subscription model. I played online games back then, it wasn't, you paid your subscription, and that was it, no cash shop, or other stuff, at most there would be a vet store, where the longer you have been paying to play, the more points you would have to spend on stuff that would be mostly cosmetic.
I also find story focused progression to not be a good thing, but not for the same reasons. The thing is that story focused game play works just fine for your standard offline game, but with online games, especially for a MMO (not all online games are MMOs, but all MMOs are online games), it just doesn't work well. It just makes so little sense that you make a character, then follow a story that treats you as the online one able to save the world, when at the same time it tells you to do so with other players, all of which are also being told they are THE one.
If some at least stopped trying to do that tired old trope, it'd be better, but nope, you are THE one in pretty much every game. I find focusing on lore, rather than some big overarching story to work much better for online games, then they can have small stories/tasks here, and there to lead you through that exploration of the game lore.
The other big problem with story focused online games is if you want to tell a good story, it helps if it's all worked out at once, with the same people, or at least that they start with a defined path to follow, with a set end target. If an online game manages to last long enough, any original plans for the story would have been long since exhausted, they are never meant to reach an end state, people come in, and out, each making new stuff up that could conflict with prior content, as a result the story all just goes to crap, or they give up on it, and basically abandon the story.
Agreed entirely. Streaming is known to the state of California to cause cancer.
I can never understand what some people have against a a given class, or what not being a specific gender. Sometimes while people call them classes, a game really just has characters, as they will even be given names, with backstories, rather than a name for a class, and the lore behind that class. Then in other cases a class is designed in such a way that it just makes it being a given gender more sensible, or was just made to be part of the lore behind the class, like say a Valkyrie, they're always female, not male.
F2P was the toothpaste that could not be put back into the tube cause once someone gets something for free it's less likely people would be willing to pay for the same or similar product. IMO western PC games screwed themselves by going ftp for that short sighted greed which in the long run still proves to be a death sentence for many that adopt that model AND does not even prove to be nearly as profitable when compared to mobile. Just look at what happened to gazillion, SOE and Trion. All ftp, all were shut down or sold. PC games always had the solid reason/excuse that the games they developed cost more money to make than mobile but instead of getting on the ground level with players and try to win them over with actions they decided to and still to this day stay in their ivory towers thinking they are the kings when in reality they were dethroned long ago. Some younger PC devs who are new to the genre don't have that hubris and can possibly change that culture, hopefully, before PC games become obsolete.