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MMORPG Saturation or Unmet Expectations: Which is the Reason for the Quick Decline in New Game Popul
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MMORPG Saturation or Unmet Expectations: Which is the Reason for the Quick Decline in New Game Population? | MMORPG.com
Why do new games drop in population so quickly after launch? Is it that the games themselves just don't meet expectations, or are there just too many MMORPGs to play these days? Steven provides his thoughts on the subject.
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then you will loose 90% of your Playerbase realy fast.
거북이는 목을 내밀 때 안 움직입니다
Games where I try it for a month and walk away throw up some progression wall in front of me that says "hard core players only beyond this point". I'm talking about way before even getting into raiding. An example would be ESO's PvE end game. Even just regular dungeons will often throttle you like a pitbull with a chew toy. You go look up the dungeon rewards and they arent even as good as the stuff you bought off the guild auctions. It's confusing and I just don't even know where to start or why. I just think "well I guess that's the end of the line for me", log out, uninstall and move on.
I ran into the same thing with New World. I was max level and starting to get my end game gear and they released the patch which upped the difficulty on all end game content. What used to be obtained solo or in small groups now required raids. They moved the goalposts on me, so I moved on. I understand that's changed, so I might go back with the next content patch.
Anyway, to be clear this isn't limited to MMOs. You find the same pacing error made in ARPGs and mmo-lite game like Destiny 2 and The Division.
If you want slightly more detailed reason - a lot of developers (regardless of how much $$$ they have) are too lazy and too short-sighted and keep churning out games with same exact gameplay many people have already experienced before, without offering enough gameplay variety and tools for creation of self-sustained, player-driven content, which naturally makes people lose interest in playing the game faster.
* Gaslighting
* Expectations/hype
* Gameplay
I've been around for a while in the mmorpg circles, I've played just about everything. And while I have only one reference for this, I know it has happened more than just once. I was around for the original beta for Star Trek Online. The promised us actual pve content for the Klingon faction, but then when it didn't materialize after launch like they promised. They tried to gaslight us into believing they never said any such thing. And they might have gotten away with it if gamers hadn't slapped them upside the head with screenshots of their promises.
Expectations/Hype can ruin a game faster than lying to paying customers (and yes, gamers are paying customers even in f2p games). I remember Mythic hiring some fantastic hyper-master for Warhammer Online, he basically promised the moon, and what we got was a reflection in dirty water. You'll have rich content and a lot of pve and not just pvp in all the factions! It'll be awesome! Granted the pvp was the most fun I ever had in WHO.
Gameplay can also tank a game pretty fast. Promising fun pvp/pve and then giving us meh on one or both will make the game fail. Making combat as stale as month-old toast will add to that.
For f2p games there's also monetization and time games that will ruin a game.
Welcome to the forum!
Are young players going to be willing to do a long haul in any game, still be there one, two, even five years later? MMOs are greatest in offering a mix of play in a multiplayer environment making a game stronger than the component parts and building a better community than any other genre. But todays players seem to want a quick fix, quick bit of BR, quick bit of Driving, quick FPS session. All of that and maybe more in one evening, that playstyle leads you to pick the best titles for each gameplay type. Not picking a game with second best everything, as for the community players expect to find that in social media now, not in game.
That's a huge hurdle to get over, hopefully there is a MMO horse out there that can do it!
Doesn't help that MMOs are frequently designed to be paired down or more clunky versions of single player or lobby titles.
Saturation is part of the problem, but in a big part because most of them are clones, and those that aren't still tend to lean on some rather common tropes.
And the lean into more aggressive and exploitative monetization over time, the entire genre leans perpetually more towards serving a smaller subset of consumers.
2) Yes same ol'sh1t is same ol'sh1t. Yes. I cannot play WoW clones anymore or barely.
I went back to BDO, for its relaxing grind, but 30 min a day is enough for me. I am not dedicated to it. I just appreciate the flashy and flowing combat the same way I would mindlessly stare at a fire in a hearth.
I am currently trying NW for its faction PvP. But I am kinda disappointed by the combat clunkiness. I am not sure if I will stick to it. There is not much innovation here for a so called "NEW" world. I mean this is far from the first game that does faction PvP, but well, the world is pretty, the game is young, and possibly promising to some extent.
Tower of Fantasy. A Genshin carbon copy. Tried it for few hours. Got bored.
------
Like I mentioned in another thread, the brain is like a stomach. It feeds on experiences. When you are bored, it means you got everything from a given experience and need something new.
This is exactly how I feel with MMORPGs nowadays.
There are too many things to play with more new ones every day.
Back in the days when most of us stuck around MMOs longer, there was only a fraction of new game releases per year compared to today.
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?”
― CD PROJEKT RED
거북이는 목을 내밀 때 안 움직입니다
But still, some of those worlds…. There is magic in there, somewhere.
/Cheers,
Lahnmir
Kyleran on yours sincerely
'But there are many. You can play them entirely solo, and even offline. Also, you are wrong by default.'
Ikcin in response to yours sincerely debating whether or not single-player offline MMOs exist...
'This does not apply just to ED but SC or any other game. What they will get is Rebirth/X4, likely prettier but equally underwhelming and pointless.
It is incredibly difficult to design some meaningfull leg content that would fit a space ship game - simply because it is not a leg game.
It is just huge resource waste....'
Gdemami absolutely not being an armchair developer
I like the part of your comment about the unexploited potential of the massive amount of players but in PvP. To be fair, there is also the crafting/economic game that take advantage of the first "M" of MMOs. But it is true that we stopped there. There is nothing beyond.
For the last part of your comment, I am not sure...
The big monetization change is the F2P transition. And it opened the doors to way more players (and bots). Abusive monetization technics do not repel players. Diablo Immortal is the proof of it.
However, a lot of players are not stupid. They play for free. Hit the paywall, then move on.
A game is just a game after all.
Part of it's something you said. "When a game costs nothing to try, you try everything , but don't stick to everything."
Part of it is also as you said that they butt up against the pay wall and just don't convert to paying customers. They may try to crawl along with F2P for a while, but they still leave after it's clear their progression will always lag behind on a personal level.
Both of those feeds the churn rate of F2P titles, the ratio at which a game earns new players versus loses old players.
Games like Diablo Immortal rely on the whales to be dumping absurd amounts of money, like multiple top PvP guilds having paid in ~1m each. Their success isn't based on F2P players staying around, only that at any given moment there's enough of them present to support the whales.
거북이는 목을 내밀 때 안 움직입니다
/Cheers,
Lahnmir
Kyleran on yours sincerely
'But there are many. You can play them entirely solo, and even offline. Also, you are wrong by default.'
Ikcin in response to yours sincerely debating whether or not single-player offline MMOs exist...
'This does not apply just to ED but SC or any other game. What they will get is Rebirth/X4, likely prettier but equally underwhelming and pointless.
It is incredibly difficult to design some meaningfull leg content that would fit a space ship game - simply because it is not a leg game.
It is just huge resource waste....'
Gdemami absolutely not being an armchair developer
WoW was pretty much the last original MMO we had...After that everyone was trying to copy it....Also there was a shift when WoW came on the scene: MMOs went from exploration, open world type games to questfest, on rails story driven games.....They just were not as much fun....Also they took away alot fo the community by making everything solo friendly....What made EQ, AO, and many of the old school games fun wasn't necessarily the game, but it was the people that made it fun.
1. Fickle gamers: most gamers are younger with busier lives, so while they're quick to jump on the newest thing, they're quick to leave when the NEWER thing comes along.
2. Overhyping by media and streamers: YouTube and Twitch creators play, so their viewers quickly jump on board. As they move on, so do many of their viewers.
3. Jaded players: This happens all across entertainment as the "everything sucks" mentality takes hold and most things fail to meet the ever-expanding and often unreasonable expectations.
I think many companies just want to be the next "WoW", but that phenomenon isn't likely to repeat itself. In the same way we see massive-budget movies flopping in the box office, the problem is trying to get EVERYONE on board. Frankly, it's good we're seeing more indie games (including MMOs) being made. While some people may think a game is unsuccessful because it doesn't have a million players, that isn't exactly true.
then they're gunna be out of business soon.
― Terry Pratchett,
No fate but what we make, so make me a ham sandwich please.
Most forms of mainstream entertainment releases will see big numbers at launch followed generally by a decline. Whether it is an album, a movie, book or video game release. The question is how much of a decline is healthy and how slow does it have to be to end up still being called a success. For example, a quite normal drop in release box office numbers to the second weekend is around 40%. Mainstream AAA MMOs are not too different from tentpole pictures so why is the media expecting them all to either grow or at least stay the same in playerbase after release? Let alone years on end?Why are MMOs subjected to such unrealistic expectations?
If the media is to be believed only a handful of MMOs have ever been truly successful and most are a disappointment. Why mention LoTRO or Star Wars? The former has been around over 15 years and the latter over 10. A decade old MMO will surely have had the right to loose players. LoTRO has never had the initial numbers either to compete with the big boys so quite opposite to what the article suggests, it did and still does manage to keep people interested and more MMOs should look to what it did right. Star Wars launched to insane numbers and while it probably lost more players after release as was expected, EA would have pulled the plug long ago would it not still turn a profit.
Far more interesting in my opinion is it explore why there is so much negativity surrounding this genre and why do the media and/or players end up calling pretty much any MMO a failure. How many big MMOs have actually failed, ie not recouped their production cost and turned a profit?
It seems to me the market is still very much alive even though most articles have been doom and gloom every since none of the big releases managed to be the “WOW killer”.
Does the problem lie with the proposition of MMOs themselves as they are generally meant to be “played forever”? Is it because WOW ingrained such unrealistic expectations that still plague this genre?
Generally speaking, comparing 10 year or older games to new releases is unhelpful. It is like comparing viewership numbers of network TV series from today with a decade ago. Times have changed, the market has changed, consumer behaviour has changed.
It's actually not "hard to put a finger on exactly why games drop in players so quickly". It is only hard if you expect one answer to fit all games, whether they are new releases or decade old MMOs.