2 years later... the almost sad state of MMOs in the new era

yerm

yerm

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Neranja said:
Funny that you mention that, because that is exactly one of the pain points of old era MMORPGs like EverQuest: you can't solo (except for a few classes) and have to look for a group when you login. If you only have an hour it could very well be that you didn't find a group for the evening and accomplished nothing.

WoW was heralded as the "casual MMO" at launch because a) it was possible to progress your character on your own, and b) use the Hearthstone to instantly go back if you needed to log out suddenly. The only things locked behind group/raid content was acquisition of medium to high end gear.
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A successful future MMO absolutely does not have to copy WoW, but it needs to still address the same issues that it did in some way even if differently. Being able to log in and be productive with under an hour window to play needs an answer, even if you don't take WoW's casual approach of easy solos and autoformer puggable content.

Likewise for mudflation, wow took the prior gear obsolete route, eq reinvigorated its husk of a game with progression servers, other games try to encourage backfarming while some (often browsers) do full resets. You aren't limited to one right answer but you have to deal with this issue somehow.
 
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mkopec

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I still think to reinvigorate the genre, they need to look back at games like EQ and UO, rather than WoW. Do an 180 and make shit hard rather than easy with quest hub bullshit and 30 min stretches like most of you are advocating for. If you cant sit down and play a game for 2+ hours, maybe MMORPG are not for you?

But thats just my take. Making MMORPGs into a lobby type 30min thing is not my idea of advancing this genre. This should be a persistent living breathing world that you take part in, not some lobby type shit that you just warp into some instance and shit.

But I know, this is not for everybody, and I get that. I just think making more wow type clones that make 80-90% of the game easy mode instanced bullshit except the high end raids is not it, imo. also the whole thing abotu raiiiid, raiiid raiiid, bullshit. How bout getting down to just the journey and a single group based game, make that shit difficult and scale, instead of everyone rushing through 90% of the game so they can raiiiid. I mean at that point, why not just make a character and fucking instanced raiiiiid all day long then, cut the bullshit out that no one wants to do anyway (level, world, etc...).
 
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yerm

yerm

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You don't need to cater to 30 minute play nor do you need to make it easy.

Just have SOMETHING to do in that time.
 
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mkopec

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Im not saying make solo not a thing. Solo always has to be in the game in some way. But grouping and interdependence has to be incentivized heavily.
 
Kaines

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mkopec said:
If you cant sit down and play a game for 2+ hours, maybe MMORPG are not for you?

But thats just my take. Making MMORPGs into a lobby type 30min thing is not my idea of advancing this genre. This should be a persistent living breathing world that you take part in, not some lobby type shit that you just warp into some instance and shit.
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And this view will never get you the funding you need to actually the make type of game you are advocating for. You'll never have a large enough player base to justify the capital outlay required to make a top-end MMORPG by requiring 2+hour game sessions. You just won't. So you can "advance the genre" all you want with your theorycrafting, but that is where it will stay if you insist on this level of poopsockdom.
 
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Sithro

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I honestly think that a new MMO should look more at Dark Souls/Demon Souls than WoW or whatever. To me those games ooze whatever EverQuest had. An MMO that tells the players, "Hey, this world is hard as fuck, come at me bro." would set in people's mind that it's supposed to be difficult. Basically, it's you and other players vs the world itself.
 
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Chris

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Noodleface said:
Farming Maraudon, a level 48 dungeon, for poison resist gear for AQ, a tier 2.5 raid, was AIDs man.

When a new raid comes out I want to focus on just that raid, not some gear check to enter it.
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Yeah that was terrible design. The WoW systems designers have never really known what they were doing and being conservative with loot was their only saviour, not surprising it's gone to shit now loot is handed out for doing next to nothing.

Now what if you got the nature resist gear from AQ, especially AQ20? The more time you spend in AQ the easier it gets but you don't need to trivialize BWL loot.

Then reward players for getting the stuff. Maybe that troll settlement in Eastern Plaguelands has a crypt that's a really good farm spot but you can't enter it without the resist gear? How about an alternate route into Zangarmarsh full of poison spores that you are now immune to?

Obviously along with this you have inventory and storage improvements to support it. Again it may sound like shit but my point is that you can try and be imaginative and get players earning more gear without abandoning old dungeons.
 
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Lambourne

Lambourne

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One thing I've often thought about is how WoW drastically upped the number of clicks/keypresses required to play your character, and also added reactive abilities where the player has to respond to a cue by pressing a certain ability. The criticism here is that you're basically playing the interface rather than looking at and responding to the game world. Original EQ didn't have an aggro meter or warnings when a mob added, you had to look at the game world and respond to it. You didn't stare at hotbars looking at which blinking key to press next.

I think this immersion in the game world can be a great way to draw the player in. This requires a minimalist interface that just gives the player the needed information to interact with the game world and nothing more. Minecraft nailed this aspect too.
 
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Noodleface

Noodleface

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The real cues are voice overs and environmental effects. The stuff you're talking about is achieved by addons like dbm. It also raised the ceiling on skill required for bosses which is why I find most EQ players struggle to raid in wow at a competitive level.
 
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Cybsled

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Ya, the difficulty in EQ1 was usually how many bodies you could throw at a boss and if you had enough tanks/healers to deal with the deathtouch bullshit the SOE devs used as a crutch.
 
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Illuziun

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mainstream big budget MMORPG's are dead, they will never be revived if you just chase the WoW formula. Need to start from scratch, come up with some more innovative concepts and start building off of a niche crowd. Sadly games are so expensive to make these days, it just isn't that easy any more.
 
Ukerric

Ukerric

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mkopec said:
Making MMORPGs into a lobby type 30min thing is not my idea of advancing this genre.
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No one's advocating this.

But if your game can only be played hardcore, then it will only have a hardcore population, and that means a crash and burn type game. 250000 subscribers on the first month, 10000 the next. You do need something that you feel is worthwhile to play if you cannot commit to searching a group for the "main content" of your game.

A good example is the XP/gear separation. Solo, you can earn XP. Grouped, you can earn gear. Make the power/XP curve flatter, and there's only as much you can get in terms of XP to overcome the lack of gear. So, the casual guy ends up doing some XP during the week, and delve into dungeon groups in the weekend.

Very basically, have EQ, except you can solo greens and blues outside of dungeons. You can farm treants in S Karana if you want to, but someone of your level who does dungeons has better than tattered leather and cloth caps and blows thru your treants in 2/3rd of the time because he's got twice your stats and skill points.
 
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Kriptini

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We need to take the "massive" out of MMORPG. We need to build games and worlds to a more modest scale. Instead of trying to catch everybody and their sister with catch-all gameplay elements, focus on elements that will appeal to the niche of gamers that like to play one game for long periods of time while developing personal advancement and social reputation. ArcheAge took a lot of steps in the right direction for this, though ultimately it failed because they increased overhead to try to appeal to a wider audience and were crushed by it.

No more Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games. I would like to see some Modest Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games.
 
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iannis

iannis

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Yeah, the truth is that out of the thousands of people on your server you probably interacted with a few hundred of them. There were whole guilds on mine where I knew one of the guys and interfaced with the entire guild through him.

DAOC felt a lot more homey. Server caps were also a lot lower, and you had co-op gameplay with realm defense.

My only point is that you don't have to have 5,000 people on the server for it to be a vibrant massive community. You can get the same thing with 500 people if the game encourages it.
 
gshurik

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I never played EQ, but I was hardcore into FFXI.

Whilst I'd never go back, certain aspects of Final Fantasy XI still make me extremely nostalgic and sad that they never came back. There was something magical about having to actually catch an airship, ride it and then walk a while to where you needed to be. It made the world feel huge which was really cool. Catching the ferry from Selbina to Mhaura, with the amazing music that accompanied it. Actually having to time yourself before shops closed at certain times.

The world just felt alive in XI, and you felt like you were a part of it rather than being the center of it. Obviously I don't have time for this shit now-a-days so I'm glad XIV is the way that it is, but there's a part of me that will always miss it.

I love FFXI, I have a ton of nostalgia for it, but the UI, battle and content design was pretty bad, and is atrocious for modern palates.
Having to use Windower in order to ALT+TAB and enhance macros in order to actually be competitive. Having to use spellcast to be higher tier competitive in end game content, just shows how limited the game was, especially seeing as it seemed designed for that.
I have also maintained relationships and friendships from XI, which is pretty amazing because it's a common story that people have from playing XI. There was something about coming together in adversity in XI that truly made it possible to form special bonds with people.

It's the little moments in XI that stood out. Sure we had grand battles against Promathia and Odin, but what stands out to me is browsing the Rolanberry-mart or casual fishing on the docks of San D'oria.


It's the small things that are forgone in newer MMOs.
 
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Cybsled

Cybsled

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Kriptini said:
We need to take the "massive" out of MMORPG. We need to build games and worlds to a more modest scale. Instead of trying to catch everybody and their sister with catch-all gameplay elements, focus on elements that will appeal to the niche of gamers that like to play one game for long periods of time while developing personal advancement and social reputation. ArcheAge took a lot of steps in the right direction for this, though ultimately it failed because they increased overhead to try to appeal to a wider audience and were crushed by it.

No more Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games. I would like to see some Modest Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games.
Click to expand...

Archeage didn't fail because they tried to cater to a wider audience, they failed because of lack of meaningful content, stupid nerfs (hur hur, let's equalized vehicle speeds so we can sell faster vehicles later, then nerf them after people buy those! ), and blatant pay2win gameplay mechanics mixed with typical Korean MMO RNG bullshit. It was fun for a while, but the only niche the Korean devs and Trion were aiming for were fucking whales.

The other thing to realize is while you can make a modest multiplayer online role playing game, don't expect anything more than a modest budget and modest returns. There are probably tons of games like that out there on Steam. I've played on DayZ Epoch servers or Project Zomboid servers that felt like mini-MMOs.
 
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Muligan

Muligan

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Yeah... MMO's are over. The evolution of MMO's, fueled by money and the audience, has taken it beyond a time where both the creators and players were the D&D, RPG, etc. breed. It's spoiled until time can go full circle again. It's unfortunate that people will not experience gaming as many of us did. We'll probably have to experience a few different era's before MMO's are a thing again if ever.
 
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Quineloe

Quineloe

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Neranja said:
But that is the basic premise of Diku MUDs, and Brad just took that design and made it 3D for the Wolfenstein/Doom generation.

Sidegrade content like crafting has its own problems:
  • if it adds in any way to player power it will become mandatory at high end (remember when in TBC leatherworking was the shit because of the drums?)
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I don't but didn't most of the issues from mandatory highend tradeskills come from the fact that there is a lot of "only the crafter may use this" through NO DROP or other effects items?

Assuming you could forge a top 1% weapon with a special ore that only comes from the hardest zone, if neither the weapon nor the ore was restricted in trade, there'd be no need to actually be the smith. You could have wanking at 450/450 and be fine.
 
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