What a new MMORPG needs to seceed and why current MMO's fail.

[Kevin the Inkling]

Before you read note this is mostly an opinion and theory. It is not promoting any MMORPG in particular nor is it condoning any MMO in particular.

This is just a serious of observations of why the Genre is in such a sorry state.

There are two abrivations you'll learn. MMORPG and MMO. The two terms are used in conjuction in a rather vague manner though they are not the same thing.

MMORPG stands for "Massively Multipler Online Role Play Game" MMO which sounds like it's just the prior term shortened does mean. "Massively Multiplier Online." RP is the term that needs to me remembered was cut out of MMORPG. Role play games are simply any video game where the empthis is as much on the story and the perspective of your character and your character's world as it is the gameplay.

Alien Isolation is an Survival Horror game in the first perspective. Though it's not the first game people would think of when thinking of an RPG it does count, one the game never breaks the 4th wall, the story is well woven into the game enviroment, your character has emotion in relation to what happens and what is said.

All of Duty or Halo Multipler game modes are far from an Story driven experience. Fourth wall is often broken, there is no story other then kill the other players. No context or reason behind objectives other then. "To win the game."

Both games funtion similarly, both are done in the first person perspective, both you use guns, grenades and if choosen stealth to win.

So to put it another way an MMORPG tends to create an viritual world with an economy story and unquie feel. Everquest was the first true MMORPG. Though the time sinks in that game contributed to the sterotype of "No life."

An lobby game however with zero story, zero world to explore and zero economy like Combat Arms however would fall under the "MMO" Catagory. Why? Well Combat Arms is Massively Multiplier and online."

But the thing most games with the "MMO" Tag fail to realize is that the first M stands for "Massively". You can see battles of 40 or more players in Everquest. And by technicality the only actual First Person Shooter to really qualify as an MMO would be Planetside 2 as there are battles of hundreds of players clashing all at once. A Lobby of two teams of like 6 or 10 each hardly counts as "Massively" Multiplayer.




Now that some understanding to the terms is down let's get to the main focus. The Largest and most seccessful MMORPG World of Warcraft though seccessful has done the most Harm for the Genre as a whole. Before Wow Everquest was the MMORPG. Infact Wow is essentially a dumbed down version of Everquest.

Before Wow the term "End Game" In reffering to an MMORPG did not even exist. Sure there was always a max level. But part of Everquest's charm was that there wasn't just one thing to do but several. Including Role playing with other players.

Wow's creators did infact play Everquest and they raided in Everquest. That was all they did in Everquest. Everquest had raids but they were not instanced as the "Everquest Raids" Were intended to be battles requiring an litteral army of players. And remember because Everquest was inteded to be a viritual world there was no concern of how many raids could be performed in a day. In theory if a raid occured against a particular dragon in Everquest at 10am and killed the dragon a different group of players with the same goal in mind arriving at noon would realize they can't raid that dragon.

Wow's focus has and always will be Raiding and PVP. However their tend in devolpment has been the oversimplification of the game at the expense of the classes and the existing content.

http://www.mmo-champion.com/content/5063-WoW-Down-to-5-6-Million-Subscribers

Looking at the subcriber graph in the link above you notice right away Wow was just constantly and steadily growing from launch, through BC and right up until the End of Wraith. Then it started a downward trend where it gets lower and lower before a slight rebound at the new expansion launch before getting lower and lower, excellerating the decent with each expansion.

Why is that? Let's see. Wraith was a very story driven expansion with alot to do, alot to explore, you had the addition of a new class, It was versitile, you had new content for questing, dungens, raids, etc. At the very end of Wraith there was the tell tale signs of the gradual shift which seems to have killed Wow. And caused the infection to spread across the Genre as well. Wow gained a feature called "Dungen Finder" Which just allows you to queue to be assembled into a group with a bunch of random players.

Before dungen finder to do a dungen you had to find four other players who wanted to do it and could cover the roles nessicary. You had to communicate before hand and talk. You often friend listed good players you done a run with. And the mean or rude ones you added to ignore.

In short you established a reputation. Good reputation meant other players trusted you to help them. It also meant you got offers to help in content such as raids.

A Bad rep worked against those who were a pox on the other player's experience from being rude etc. Entire guilds were black listed. And some guilds had such postive reputations their name was considered a sort of lucky charm when raiding.

The Talent tree as revamped. Then you had the removal of ammo from the Hunter class which took away the only method Engineers had to make money with that crafting profession.

The game grew to be an extremely anti social one. As it stands now in wow guilds wouldn't even exist if the "Guild Perks" didn't exist. The social aspects of the game are gone, the team work gone, less and less to do outside of raiding and PVP. With the addition of Raid finder wow transformed from an MMORPG to an MMO and now it is the single most expensive single player game out there.

Wow as it currently stands is like buying a copy of Final Fantasy 10. But you have to pay 15 bucks a month to play it.

Another thing wow did very wrong which left an entire section of the game content without value. The deliberate gimping of crafting. In wow the best possible gear is obtained from raiding. That's true even of player vs player gear.

Crafted gear is weaker then what can be obtained from dungens.

Too many MMO's copy the traits of the descent era of Wow that the Genre is itself in a death spiral. People don't hate the Genre because it's a "Time Sink" All video games are time sinks.

People don't like MMO's because they suck now.




So that's how and why current MMORPG's failed. What would a new MMORPG need to be seccessful?

A New MMORPG needs to be a world first! That means with story, Economy, social interaction a nescesitity.

That means open world with no invisible walls. The Barriers to keep the players from venturing out of the game area need to be illussions that the world is much bigger not flat out invisible walls, be creative mabe a river of Lava there? An eternal Blizzard there? Or a lethal high radiation area there lined with signs that have skulls on them? Final Fantasy 14 well a good game fails this trait miserbly. I never seen a more linar invisible wall boxed game in my life.

Crafting should Matter! There should be multiple paths to power and ability not one. Every item, every piece of equipment should be craftable. You should not be forced to do one particular activity to obtain it. If your good at making money in the game you can buy that weapon, or if you raid you find it among the loot, or if your a weapon crafter you can make one yourself.

Like wow several MMO's see this need to make crafted equiment inferrior those who know this avoid crafting entirely since it's seen as an effort in futtility.

Fallen Earth an post acolypitic game however every item can be crafted with various different resource types and research to learn how to make more advanced things too mastered the concept of MMORPG crafting dead on.

Drop Faction obession. Alot of MMO's try to copy the Alliance Horde concept in their MMO's failing to see this creates bitteriness in the game community and adds nothing to the game of value. Some MMO's try to add even more factions failing to see how it adds unessicary complexity. Instead of NPC or story Factions which are automatic enemies how about player created Factions of make player guilds function more like Factions. It'd add more value to the guild concept.

The worst offender of the faction nonsense would be Fallen Earth. That game has 12 Factions. You heard that right. Twelve. Imagine if Wow was like that there'd be Alliance, Horde and 10 other Factions..

Their idea was your Faction would be allied to two other Factions and enemies of the others. But if you look at the Faction interaction graph linked here.
http://fallenearth.wikia.com/wiki/Factions?file=Factions.png

Which I reffer to as the ring of hatred. The Green Lines represent friendly status, the Orange lines represent openly hostile, and the Red lines represent Primary enemy.

If you look at this graph you realize that regardless which faction you pick your two "Alies" are hostile to each other. Which means if you call for help from your allies your "Reinforcements are likely to get into a battle with each other.

Too many MMO's use Faction to determine side or team in PVP. But maybe player created Factions are the way. I'd obliterate griefing in PVP for one. It'd be impossible to bot.

There needs to be things to do other then simply raiding or PVP. Instead of focusing on "That" Or the End game. Make playing the game vauled at all levels.

One thing that would also make an new MMORPG great. Scaling enemies and quests. Where your restricted not by level but by your own sense of adventure.

No Dungen finder raid finder nonse either. It turned wow into an Single player game. Do not copy those mistakes.

Graphics are important but so is style and gameplay. Be original be different.

[Yamcha]

Its much easier then your analysis. The market is saturated since WoW. Blizzard noticed that and scraped Titan or whatever it was called in the last stage.

Those changes you criticise were important and keep even know millions of people playing WoW ( not me, the game always bored me at max. level)
Put down the nostalgia glasses and try to objectively review classic WoW vs. WoW 10 yrs later.

[Tux]

specifically why do we think Modern MMOs fail?
what is the measurement for that?

[zert]

Stopped reading when you used "then" instead of "than"

[Kevin the Inkling]

Mr.Moe eredeti hozzászólása:

Its much easier then your analysis. The market is saturated since WoW. Blizzard noticed that and scraped Titan or whatever it was called in the last stage.

Those changes you criticise were important and keep even know millions of people playing WoW ( not me, the game always bored me at max. level)
Put down the nostalgia glasses and try to objectively review classic WoW vs. WoW 10 yrs later.

That's kinda the point. Max level is the main focus of all MMORPG's. Until you reach that point you barely any activities of note. Notice how there's no mid level or early level raids in any MMORPG?

The reason Blizzard scrapped Titan is because they have wow. It'd been competing with itself.

The Market is indeed Saturated but saturated with wow clones that flat out copy the changes that caused the wow's decline.

You also fail to realize that alot of these MMORPG's instead of being social viritual worlds with adventure and activies abundant they're just single player games now that cost alot of money.

As for how Modern MMO's fail. That's subjective.

But when you consider an Genre that was supposed to be centered around social interaction team work and such have become so anti social then yes they are failures in that sense.

Tell me. If Call of Duty Multipler costed you 15 bucks a month every month regardless if you play or not. Would you play COD?

The Newer MMORGP's are essentially doing that copying wow, making overpriced Single player games with poorly designed combat or lack luster activites period and expecting to have 12 Million subscribers.

An MMORGP doesn't need to be Millions strong to be seccessful. Eve Online went the Effiecent route. Only one server. I don't even think Eve Online has a Million players. But they're doing well with their game. And I'll say this there is far more social interaction in Eve then Wow.

[♠ZerØ♠]

iddqd eredeti hozzászólása:

Stopped reading when you used "then" instead of "than"

When I glanced at the title, I thought is was going to be about how it would be possible for an MMO like WoW to secede from it's partent company, then I reread the title after clicking, and was disappointed.

I was heavily discouraged buy a massive wall of text I did read it, and while a good point or two was to be had, I didn't make a list of note with which to form a rebuttle.

The only issues myself and a lot of older WoW players have with the game is simply the dumbing down of the systems. The massive sweeping changes that made character and equipment builds pointless. It's rough specing an Arcane mage, hunting down rare arcane specific gear, maxing damage, grabing proc damage gear to boost your offence through the roof because you hit faster than other mages, only to have all mage gear become generic Power loot, and now I have to rack up arcane combo charges to even be able to use my primary offensive ability to any effect. To be a mage, I now have to think like a rogue, and now I have no reason to not just spam fire since it is the only thing that really matters...

As for Fallen Earth, to hell with that game. Nifty in concept, run by asshats.

[Val]

MMORPGS that aren't at all similar to WoW game mechanics wise and endgame content wise

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aLssa4xBZqg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DGsyckPIYFs
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WWYn2E9KHT8

[Kevin the Inkling]

Valzeras eredeti hozzászólása:

MMORPGS that aren't at all similar to WoW game mechanics wise and endgame content wise

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aLssa4xBZqg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DGsyckPIYFs
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WWYn2E9KHT8

Sure different mechanics and such. But here is a question. Not counting Eve Online do you know of any Science fiction MMORPG that doesn't copy Wow?

That's actually part of the problem too. Too many games focus on being the same excact Genre of MMORPG. You wanna roll a Paladin a Million different MMO's where you can be a Knight.

Wanna be a Smuggler? Or gunslinger? Not that many options.

darkangel98s eredeti hozzászólása:

The only issues myself and a lot of older WoW players have with the game is simply the dumbing down of the systems. The massive sweeping changes that made character and equipment builds pointless. It's rough specing an Arcane mage, hunting down rare arcane specific gear, maxing damage, grabing proc damage gear to boost your offence through the roof because you hit faster than other mages, only to have all mage gear become generic Power loot, and now I have to rack up arcane combo charges to even be able to use my primary offensive ability to any effect. To be a mage, I now have to think like a rogue, and now I have no reason to not just spam fire since it is the only thing that really matters...

As for Fallen Earth, to hell with that game. Nifty in concept, run by asshats.

Fallen Earth was praised on crafting only. As I said the Factions well sounding cool in concept were a poor design in practicality. Note if you play Fallen Earth 90% of the players all roll Chota. Help from an Ally Faction is worthless as if both Allies respond you merely created another battle not gain any support. And to be honest that really sucks since alot of the Factions were cool. I think people mostly roll Chota because with 90% of the player base being Chota it's easy mode.


The dumbing down as you put it was a big part. But it took away Immersion too. It wasn't so much they were trying to catar to the Candy Crush generation of gamer but alot of the simplification came at the cost of features and Immersion.

A Hunter had to bring Arrows if they used a bow, or Bullets if they used a gun to the battle. Engineers could make higher quality bullets and arrows then what could be bought from an NPC vendor.

In vanilla wow some of the best possible equipment in a few scanarios was crafted then began the trend of Crafting professions not being able to craft on par to what dropped in raids or dungens.

My points are not so much as "Have to be excactly this way." More a Philophy of how an MMORPG should be designed.

I think my points could apply to an Third Person shooter MMORPG. Which I don't see why those don't exist yet. Terra was a step in that direction but made alot of the classic mistakes.


As it currently stands the norms for MMORPG's. The "Evil or Bad guy Faction will always have an overwelmingly higher win ratio in PVP then the good guy Faction due either to deliberate design or just trend.

Professions are always a waste of time, those materials are better used to be sold to the players dumb enough to pick up a profession.

Social interaction, Role play, or any activity other than raiding, PVP and combat will either be an afterthought or non existant.

[Markus Kruber]

I give up on 99.9% of all mmo's and now just wait for Black Desert and if that one sucks than I will leave mmo's for good.

And I'm playing mmo(rpg)'s since Dark Age of Camelot and Saga of Ryzom, bought and played almost all the mmo's that came out till Elder scrolls online, which was the last one.

Black Desert better delivers, it's my only hope!

[Kevin the Inkling]

Trollface.jpg eredeti hozzászólása:

I give up on 99.9% of all mmo's and now just wait for Black Desert and if that one sucks than I will leave mmo's for good.

And I'm playing mmo(rpg)'s since Dark Age of Camelot and Saga of Ryzom, bought and played almost all the mmo's that came out till Elder scrolls online, which was the last one.

Black Desert better delivers, it's my only hope!

Okay Mr Trollface. What did you enjoy about MMO's that got you interested. And what are MMO's doing wrong?

This is an opinion and philophy driven discussion I wanna hear other opinions on why they were great once and what they're doing wrong or failing to do well to cause this?

An well designed MMORPG should be a well crafted world.

As I said before I'd love to see an MMORPG use a scaling system so your not just constantly moving to the new area based on level but out of prefrence.

All MMO's essentially work that way Zone 1 is level 1 through 10ish zone 2 intended for levels 10 through 15, and so on. I'd like to see one where you can be or play anywhere and the content scales with your character's level and ability.

[Markus Kruber]

Yarri eredeti hozzászólása:

Trollface.jpg eredeti hozzászólása:

I give up on 99.9% of all mmo's and now just wait for Black Desert and if that one sucks than I will leave mmo's for good.

And I'm playing mmo(rpg)'s since Dark Age of Camelot and Saga of Ryzom, bought and played almost all the mmo's that came out till Elder scrolls online, which was the last one.

Black Desert better delivers, it's my only hope!

Okay Mr Trollface. What did you enjoy about MMO's that got you interested. And what are MMO's doing wrong?

This is an opinion and philophy driven discussion I wanna hear other opinions on why they were great once and what they're doing wrong or failing to do well to cause this?

An well designed MMORPG should be a well crafted world.

As I said before I'd love to see an MMORPG use a scaling system so your not just constantly moving to the new area based on level but out of prefrence.

All MMO's essentially work that way Zone 1 is level 1 through 10ish zone 2 intended for levels 10 through 15, and so on. I'd like to see one where you can be or play anywhere and the content scales with your character's level and ability.

Most important for me, is a mmo(rpg) that is hard (Black Desert already seem to fail on that point) and give you the feeling you have a very tough journey ahead of you, but a journey worth taking because of the beautiful world, all the secrets it has and the awesome, but deadly creatures that lurk on every corner, something you don't expect.

Problem with todays mmo(rpg)'s is they feel so small (because of all the instant teleporation (why did they add that?)). They are so easy, and because of that, that epic journey you hope to get feels like a grind because it's so easy you don't have to pay attention, just click the same 3-4-5 (depends on lvl) keys in the same exact rotation and stuff dies infront of you. You can even play todays mmo(rpg)'s by being completely drunk and it's still hard to fail while leveling.

Why do I talk about leveling so much? because that's the only thing I enjoy in a mmo(rpg) and for me it can't take long enough, as long as the world is big enough and challenging! I want to feel like I'm on a real epic journey where I have to fight for my own existence. I don't really care if I'm also helping other or be a bad guy and steal and kill stuff but as long as it's PvE (nowdays, because I'm getting older and my pvp skills begin to lack).

So a lot and strong PvE is a must. But I don't care about all these big group raids/dungeons, 5-10 min is more than enough (for me). And I to do stuff in the open world much more than a dungeon that is on a rail, go from pack to pack, boss to boss > end boss (yay).

So in short, I want a PvE rich mmo(rpg) full with secrets (hidden stuff, puzzles) and challenging combat, in a very beautiful, huge world!

PS, grinding isn't bad, as long as you don't fall asleep doing it =)

[Kevin the Inkling]

Trollface.jpg eredeti hozzászólása:

Most important for me, is a mmo(rpg) that is hard (Black Desert already seem to fail on that point) and give you the feeling you have a very tough journey ahead of you, but a journey worth taking because of the beautiful world, all the secrets it has and the awesome, but deadly creatures that lurk on every corner, something you don't expect.

Problem with todays mmo(rpg)'s is they feel so small (because of all the instant teleporation (why did they add that?)). They are so easy, and because of that, that epic journey you hope to get feels like a grind because it's so easy you don't have to pay attention, just click the same 3-4-5 (depends on lvl) keys in the same exact rotation and stuff dies infront of you. You can even play todays mmo(rpg)'s by being completely drunk and it's still hard to fail while leveling.

Why do I talk about leveling so much? because that's the only thing I enjoy in a mmo(rpg) and for me it can't take long enough, as long as the world is big enough and challenging! I want to feel like I'm on a real epic journey where I have to fight for my own existence. I don't really care if I'm also helping other or be a bad guy and steal and kill stuff but as long as it's PvE (nowdays, because I'm getting older and my pvp skills begin to lack).

So a lot and strong PvE is a must. But I don't care about all these big group raids/dungeons, 5-10 min is more than enough (for me). And I to do stuff in the open world much more than a dungeon that is on a rail, go from pack to pack, boss to boss > end boss (yay).

So in short, I want a PvE rich mmo(rpg) full with secrets (hidden stuff, puzzles) and challenging combat, in a very beautiful, huge world!

PS, grinding isn't bad, as long as you don't fall asleep doing it =)

That is a good point. Not alot of MMORPG's do open world raids anymore or Raid bosses. Now it's all instanced, queues, quick travel. Remember how Wow has the Zeplins and Ships. How they travel a distance then they teleport after a little bit?

I'd love to see the quickest long distance travel work something like that but minus the teleport.

Sometimes the over abundence of convience kills the fun. It's like an impossible to lose game. Easy enemies, limitless lifes. I don't think MMO's need to be brutually hard but they certainly shouldn't be as easy as they currently are.

However the older MMORPG's compared to the current ones is similar to the comparison of the classic Resident Evil games to the current ones.

https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/81/04/44/810444276b52643d278ad7728be25bde.jpg

Don't get me wrong easy games can be fun. But there is a point when you have to realize wait that's too much hand holding.

There needs to be some challenge and for MMORPG's plenty of challenges that require you to group up. Soloing an MMORPG should not be easy.

[Val]

Yarri eredeti hozzászólása:

That's actually part of the problem too. Too many games focus on being the same excact Genre of MMORPG. You wanna roll a Paladin a Million different MMO's where you can be a Knight.

Wanna be a Smuggler? Or gunslinger? Not that many options.

Tree of savior has 80 classes which includes a class that dual wields guns.