Sadly I think New World has shown us that there won't be any more "Great" MMORPGs.
That said, what would I like to see if by some miracle one was made? A game built entirely around entertaining game mechanics and not just another pointless pachinko machine designed to nickle and dime its player base out of every last dollar possible. Even purely cosmetic item stores avoid adding playable content which takes away from the gaming experience. Such mechanics suborn fun and make the regular playing experience a drudge to be avoided by buying your way around them. And to those MMO designs I say Poo to you with knobs on.
Maybe in 20 years when VR is 1) affordable and 2) no longer fuckawful crap.
Oculus Rift is only $299, on Amazon.. a little less then what I paid for my last Graphic's card, to be able to play Crowfall.
Egotism is the anesthetic that dullens the pain of stupidity, this is why when I try to beat my head against the stupidity of other people, I only hurt myself.
1. Not one major storyline but three minimal. This isn't new obviously but the stories should be avoidable and play time in game should move stories forward and events change the users environment and npcs none the less as if others have taken a course of action in the stories. Make it possible to jump back in to a story at certain points.
2. The world should be open with no instanced dungeons but designed for manipulation of everything from environment to NPCs and even monsters. Eg. Not being able to fight higher level monsters could be resolved by running them in to their mortal enemies nearby and they fight.
Another option could be to cause maybe a road block of sorts in the right environment such as rockfall in a cave or another diversion.
- PVE focused, possibly no pvp with the reason of spending the resources on good pve... If pvp then it has to be indirect as part of npc faction conflicts and dynamic world (like EqNext).
- Open ended content, not story driven - Make worlds not stories. Role playing means I play a role I choose, not a role dictated by a story.
- Dynamic living breathing world (no voxels please, I don't want players to be able to permanently directly change/destroy the world bu I do want it to be dynamic (Think EqNext).
- Deep combat system with roles, and slow enough that it becomes tactical rather than twitch combat. Obviously roles mean co-op; zerg aka every player manage their own health etc is not roles. AND support for all kinds of playstyles, tactics and combination of roles, not just the very simple trinity setup known from WoW, but take a base in the much more advanced EQ1(Luclin+ era) and grow from there.
- Absolutely NO scaling of any kind.
- Everything your character will ever wear, own, etc shall be gained in the game by playing the game. Feeling of acomplishment and all the old school stuff. Obviously this also means no cash shop, alt coins, cosmetics .. The game will just need to make money using other tactics. Gated content, keys, questing to unlock content is very welcome .. again that thing about feeling of accomplishment.
- RNG based gear system, including rng in crafting (EQ2 is it was at launch before they ruined it). At any point should a player be able to hit a jackpot and get a valuable/rare item. Absolutely NO gear for points systems of any kind.
- NPC factions that players have to gain stading with in order to get benefits, trade, quests, or plain simple not be "kill on sight". Weave this into the dynamic world, where supporting factions on their world-missions will grant you benefits as they gain power.
and more.. well, if this wasn't enough to begin with.
Give me something out of the blue that is interesting, polished, and not overly similar to anything else that I've already played. A lot of players think they want a game that is very similar to their previous favorite, but with just a handful of things tweaked in ways that they'd prefer. The problem is that if you got such a game, you'd be 90% of the way to being sick of it the first time you logged in.
One of the reasons why I liked Uncharted Waters Online so much is that it was so different from anything else that I had ever played. The same is true of Kerbal Space Program. I'd surely have enjoyed them a lot less if I had previously played a bunch of other games that were very similar to them. But there weren't any other, similar games to have played. The next great MMO needs to do that, too.
Playing Book of Travels or even some survival games such as Exile, I realized that the first "M" in MMORPGs is not what I really need anymore or ever (BDO is a solo game, GW1 was a coop game with the best PvP ever). What attracted me there in the first place has always been in fact the last three letters of the acronym. I even think that this first "M" is the root of many problems, but this is beyond the scope of this post...
I am in favor of smaller server population where everybody has some kind of reputation according to their playstyle or their feats. I am in favor of a population big enough so you do not know everybody, but small enough so you know a significant proportion of the players. You know that some of them are funny, some of them you can trust, and some other could be dangerous...
I want cosmetic to be linked to achievements again instead of wallet.
I want horizontal progression, with meaningful ways to progress outside of combat.
I would not be against some gacha mechanics allowing players to hyper-over-specialize in a given skill, and there would be a lot of important ones. The idea here would be the uniqueness of each player.
Another way to achieve it, would be to create as many unique classes as server population or something similar (remember, I would like limited server population). In fact I prefer this idea over the previous one. If a server would be 100 conccurent players, then there would 100 classes, and there would be a limit to simultaneous duplicates. So maybe at any given time, there would be only 2 or 3 necrolich or 2 or 3 warsong drummers or whatever overspecialized class.
I would like meaningful combat: it would be dangerous and not trivial even for seasoned warriors. Killing a monster would be a significant accomplishment and not just like mowing the grass.
Everything from the players to the monsters could die definitively. For the players, progression would be kept through a family/dynasty system like in some rogue-like games. Corpse runs would be done by a new character, and if the corpse would be lost so would be its gear.
I would like the monsters to be named and dead forever when they pass away. If the warrior slays the Purple Troll, then it's definitively dead and does not respawn: the warrior could definitively brag about it, being the Purple Troll Slayer! The cave would be empty for a while, and maybe later another kind of creature would find this cave attractive.
I would like the monsters to be on a schedule (even an irregular one), so may be you could enter the Orange Troll's cave when it goes hunting/slaying and steal his stuff without a fight, hobbit style.
I would like also some near-undefeatable monsters that are really scary that most reasonable people would just run from and only suicidal-crazies-would-be-heroes would like to fight (most of them would actually die in the process). Managing to kill such a creature would lead to amazing rewards...
I want also a large part dedicated to exploration, with a world worth of it that has a static part (beginning areas) and a ever-changing procedural one for the advanced players.
I want a game where there is no "endgame". Or may be, if the players fail together to save the world, there could be a real end to the game!
I'm starting to think that maybe a MMORPG is not what I'm looking for. Maybe I'm looking for a great open world rpg that has out of this world AI and can be enjoyed with a half dozen or so of my friends.
I want to get lost in a fantasy world and people just kind of keep getting in the way
What I want from an MMORPG is what I can't have in a single-player RPG; the other players role in my experience.
I want meaningful relationships that would vary in nature, type, and dynamic. I want multiple means of interactions between the players and between the players and the world. I want the players' actions to affect the world. I want to see progress or decline based on players' decisions and action in grand, macro, and micro scales. I want to see communities forming up. I want to see them cooperate to achieve harder goals. I want them to build cities, elect mayors, unite with others and form up kingdoms. I want players to betray such governments, to coup, and to form hidden alliances. I want to be "good" be meaningful. I also want to be "bad" be meaningful too and not just being an asshole. I want the dark forces have their own agenda, their own progress, their own meaningful gameplay systems to follow. I want the world to provide only the beginning of the stories, and the rest should be told by the players. I want an economy. Each zone having their own products, natural resources, trade-laws. A whole complex gameplay system revolving around the economy. Produce. Sale. Transport. Protect. I want anti-immersion breaking rules, mechanisms, and systems.
Constantine, The Console Poster
"One of the most difficult tasks men can perform, however much others may despise it, is the invention of good games and it cannot be done by men out of touch with their instinctive selves." - Carl Jung
Ownership of my toon, so when I'm done playing, when the game has closed up shop, I'll still have what I put so much time into. Plus everything @Viper482 said.
SWG Class and Crafting/Resource system along with GW2 combat and open world event system. NO PVP. Buy to Play with cosmetic ONLY cash shop Player Homes and cities in the game world ala SWG NOT instanced which you can decroate with stuff you found and earned in the game. Good Story ala Lotro
Nailed it.
Allow faction PVP for players who choose to opt in (we called it declaring in SWG).
- An RPG.
- Not a five minute frills instant dopamine hit of flashy lights and overloaded UI.
- No people dressed up as penguins or polar bears or other sh*t like that.
- Rich dark fantasy where dragons and other powerful mythical monsters are actually bad ass.
- Weapons and armour that mean something, not switched out every 2 minutes.
Maybe in 20 years when VR is 1) affordable and 2) no longer fuckawful crap.
Oculus Rift is only $299, on Amazon.. a little less then what I paid for my last Graphic's card, to be able to play Crowfall.
300$ for a GPU? Bro, are you playing on an integrated intel GPU? Jokes aside, 300$ is a steep price. Would you rather get a new smartphone (useful) or a VR headset (glorified toy) If it is not around 100$ it's never going to fly.
What I want from an MMORPG is what I can't have in a single-player RPG; the other players role in my experience.
I want meaningful relationships that would vary in nature, type, and dynamic. I want multiple means of interactions between the players and between the players and the world. I want the players' actions to affect the world. I want to see progress or decline based on players' decisions and action in grand, macro, and micro scales. I want to see communities forming up. I want to see them cooperate to achieve harder goals. I want them to build cities, elect mayors, unite with others and form up kingdoms. I want players to betray such governments, to coup, and to form hidden alliances. I want to be "good" be meaningful. I also want to be "bad" be meaningful too and not just being an asshole. I want the dark forces have their own agenda, their own progress, their own meaningful gameplay systems to follow. I want the world to provide only the beginning of the stories, and the rest should be told by the players. I want an economy. Each zone having their own products, natural resources, trade-laws. A whole complex gameplay system revolving around the economy. Produce. Sale. Transport. Protect. I want anti-immersion breaking rules, mechanisms, and systems.
I love every letter leaving your fingers, but I’m wondering whether we’re being realistic in your words and my dreams
Alot of what was already said was and is amazing.... I would love to see something like most of you described in a more modern setting, or a combo of Modern/Future/Fantasy style.... realistic driving, true open world with destructible environment that does not repair itself... changes must matter so consequences matter to every choice. That way if player housing is a thing landscape choices are a thing to consider. Real environmental elements like rain, snow, wind and such that effect to over all world making travel slower, harder or easier depending. Catastrophic Weather issues that change a landscape.... I know alot of people would not like these ideas but I think they would be interesting for game play.
I could name off a bunch of awesome features like improved AI, open dynamic world, deep crafting and resource gathering, etc etc.
None of that matters because the assumption that there will be a Next Great MMORPG is only that. An assumption. The golden age has come and gone. Now all we have are horrible companies that just want to make money any way they can. Now we have cash shops, blockchain, crypto and it's all get rich quick play to earn where the game part of video games is an afterthought to the making money part. It's more gambling than gaming. It's past pay 2 win and now pay 2 everything. Even worse most of this crap wants money before there is even an actual game to play.
I have more hope that a team of modders will make Valhiem into a MMO than anything triple A ever releasing anything worth playing.
The major thing I want from the Next Great MMORPG is no cash shop, which is not going to happen, so personally I don't think there will be a Next Great MMORPG.
"You CAN'T buy ships for RL money." - MaxBacon
"classification of games into MMOs is not by rational reasoning" - nariusseldon
Comments
(My son speaking to his Japanese Grandmother) " Sorry Obaba, I don't speak Japanese, I only speak human."
2. The world should be open with no instanced dungeons but designed for manipulation of everything from environment to NPCs and even monsters. Eg. Not being able to fight higher level monsters could be resolved by running them in to their mortal enemies nearby and they fight.
Another option could be to cause maybe a road block of sorts in the right environment such as rockfall in a cave or another diversion.
Proud MMORPG.com member since March 2004! Make PvE GREAT Again!
- Open ended content, not story driven - Make worlds not stories. Role playing means I play a role I choose, not a role dictated by a story.
- Dynamic living breathing world (no voxels please, I don't want players to be able to permanently directly change/destroy the world bu I do want it to be dynamic (Think EqNext).
- Deep combat system with roles, and slow enough that it becomes tactical rather than twitch combat. Obviously roles mean co-op; zerg aka every player manage their own health etc is not roles. AND support for all kinds of playstyles, tactics and combination of roles, not just the very simple trinity setup known from WoW, but take a base in the much more advanced EQ1(Luclin+ era) and grow from there.
- Absolutely NO scaling of any kind.
- Everything your character will ever wear, own, etc shall be gained in the game by playing the game. Feeling of acomplishment and all the old school stuff. Obviously this also means no cash shop, alt coins, cosmetics .. The game will just need to make money using other tactics. Gated content, keys, questing to unlock content is very welcome .. again that thing about feeling of accomplishment.
- RNG based gear system, including rng in crafting (EQ2 is it was at launch before they ruined it). At any point should a player be able to hit a jackpot and get a valuable/rare item. Absolutely NO gear for points systems of any kind.
- NPC factions that players have to gain stading with in order to get benefits, trade, quests, or plain simple not be "kill on sight". Weave this into the dynamic world, where supporting factions on their world-missions will grant you benefits as they gain power.
and more.. well, if this wasn't enough to begin with.
"I am my connectome" https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=HA7GwKXfJB0
One of the reasons why I liked Uncharted Waters Online so much is that it was so different from anything else that I had ever played. The same is true of Kerbal Space Program. I'd surely have enjoyed them a lot less if I had previously played a bunch of other games that were very similar to them. But there weren't any other, similar games to have played. The next great MMO needs to do that, too.
— Shigeru Miyamoto
Playing Book of Travels or even some survival games such as Exile, I realized that the first "M" in MMORPGs is not what I really need anymore or ever (BDO is a solo game, GW1 was a coop game with the best PvP ever). What attracted me there in the first place has always been in fact the last three letters of the acronym. I even think that this first "M" is the root of many problems, but this is beyond the scope of this post...
I am in favor of smaller server population where everybody has some kind of reputation according to their playstyle or their feats. I am in favor of a population big enough so you do not know everybody, but small enough so you know a significant proportion of the players. You know that some of them are funny, some of them you can trust, and some other could be dangerous...
I want cosmetic to be linked to achievements again instead of wallet.
I want horizontal progression, with meaningful ways to progress outside of combat.
I would not be against some gacha mechanics allowing players to hyper-over-specialize in a given skill, and there would be a lot of important ones. The idea here would be the uniqueness of each player.
Another way to achieve it, would be to create as many unique classes as server population or something similar (remember, I would like limited server population). In fact I prefer this idea over the previous one. If a server would be 100 conccurent players, then there would 100 classes, and there would be a limit to simultaneous duplicates. So maybe at any given time, there would be only 2 or 3 necrolich or 2 or 3 warsong drummers or whatever overspecialized class.
I would like meaningful combat: it would be dangerous and not trivial even for seasoned warriors. Killing a monster would be a significant accomplishment and not just like mowing the grass.
Everything from the players to the monsters could die definitively. For the players, progression would be kept through a family/dynasty system like in some rogue-like games. Corpse runs would be done by a new character, and if the corpse would be lost so would be its gear.
I would like the monsters to be named and dead forever when they pass away. If the warrior slays the Purple Troll, then it's definitively dead and does not respawn: the warrior could definitively brag about it, being the Purple Troll Slayer! The cave would be empty for a while, and maybe later another kind of creature would find this cave attractive.
I would like the monsters to be on a schedule (even an irregular one), so may be you could enter the Orange Troll's cave when it goes hunting/slaying and steal his stuff without a fight, hobbit style.
I would like also some near-undefeatable monsters that are really scary that most reasonable people would just run from and only suicidal-crazies-would-be-heroes would like to fight (most of them would actually die in the process). Managing to kill such a creature would lead to amazing rewards...
I want also a large part dedicated to exploration, with a world worth of it that has a static part (beginning areas) and a ever-changing procedural one for the advanced players.
I want a game where there is no "endgame". Or may be, if the players fail together to save the world, there could be a real end to the game!
I want to get lost in a fantasy world and people just kind of keep getting in the way
"Be water my friend" - Bruce Lee
I want meaningful relationships that would vary in nature, type, and dynamic.
I want multiple means of interactions between the players and between the players and the world.
I want the players' actions to affect the world.
I want to see progress or decline based on players' decisions and action in grand, macro, and micro scales.
I want to see communities forming up. I want to see them cooperate to achieve harder goals. I want them to build cities, elect mayors, unite with others and form up kingdoms.
I want players to betray such governments, to coup, and to form hidden alliances.
I want to be "good" be meaningful. I also want to be "bad" be meaningful too and not just being an asshole.
I want the dark forces have their own agenda, their own progress, their own meaningful gameplay systems to follow.
I want the world to provide only the beginning of the stories, and the rest should be told by the players.
I want an economy. Each zone having their own products, natural resources, trade-laws. A whole complex gameplay system revolving around the economy. Produce. Sale. Transport. Protect.
I want anti-immersion breaking rules, mechanisms, and systems.
Nailed it.
Allow faction PVP for players who choose to opt in (we called it declaring in SWG).
- Not a five minute frills instant dopamine hit of flashy lights and overloaded UI.
- No people dressed up as penguins or polar bears or other sh*t like that.
- Rich dark fantasy where dragons and other powerful mythical monsters are actually bad ass.
- Weapons and armour that mean something, not switched out every 2 minutes.
Just for starts.
"Be water my friend" - Bruce Lee
Ea is like a poo fingered midas ~ShakyMo
None of that matters because the assumption that there will be a Next Great MMORPG is only that. An assumption. The golden age has come and gone. Now all we have are horrible companies that just want to make money any way they can. Now we have cash shops, blockchain, crypto and it's all get rich quick play to earn where the game part of video games is an afterthought to the making money part. It's more gambling than gaming. It's past pay 2 win and now pay 2 everything. Even worse most of this crap wants money before there is even an actual game to play.
I have more hope that a team of modders will make Valhiem into a MMO than anything triple A ever releasing anything worth playing.
The major thing I want from the Next Great MMORPG is no cash shop, which is not going to happen, so personally I don't think there will be a Next Great MMORPG.
"classification of games into MMOs is not by rational reasoning" - nariusseldon
Love Minecraft. And check out my Youtube channel OhCanadaGamer
Try a MUD today at http://www.mudconnect.com/