Originally posted by GreenChaos

There are plenty of companies taking risks.  But the gamers (you) are blind to them most of the time.

PotBS is a great multilayer ship based business simulator.  - that was a risk.  For those of you that say it was crap, compared to a single player equivalent, like Anno 1701/ 1701 AD (a highly respected game in the genre) PotBS was actually much better (imho).

The follow new games are trying something new:

Lego universe -
Build anything you want, by yourself or with other people. Explore what other people make, make your objects destructible if you wish. Purchase the legos for what you made in game, to make it in real life. One of the most innovative MMOs ever and how many of you people are going to check it out? Or are you just going to ignore it and continue to complain that nothing new is coming out?

The old republic – heavy emphasis on story with voice acted dialog, quests that give you choices.

CitiesXL – City building MMO.

The Agency – Real aiming, gear based classes.

And I'm sure there are others, I don't research every new game coming out.

Thanks alot for the hint with lego universe i will definitly have a look at it.

I have been looking for a more sandbox like game where the environment interacts with player behaviour. I think the big derail that has happened in the genre is that the new games are more linear theme parks  than open worlds. With the certain attractions feeling very static and repetitive being boring very fast.

MMO's are about the communities (at least for me)

Some risks developers should think about that come to my mind are:

• reward for interacting with others. Similar to "facebook" where more contacts feel rewarding to some. Why not count people that put you on their friendslist? (people from other guilds count more) - in New Worlds Online you gain experience when you introduce yourself to another player. I would like a game where not a title and a name hover above peoples heads but question marks and only once this player has introduced to you - you see their name. Before that its more like: "A dwarf tells you "text"" or "A gnome greets you".
• bring back teamplay to MMO's we have enough solo grinders now. Look how Ryzom allows harvesting in a team. The idea is not that new - would love to see similar for crafting. Let a guild craft their own ships and siege weapons.
• work with the /played time a certain account has - use that number for both, penalties and rewards. Casual gamers and hardcore gamers do not connect well in the same environment but have to play on same servers. So use that number to balance things. (especially in PvP but also some in PvE)
• encourage roleplaying - look the nice music system of LOTRO, why is it not used for quests? Play the correct melody practised with an NPC (random keystrokes) during a battle or event to progress. Anyone remember the EQ raid where you had to finish song lines in the middle of a fight to calm down skelleton adds?
• give players a chance to create their own content within the game. (Eve and Ryzom - well done!)
• stop to make everything automated and macroable - crafting can be done like in EQ2 and must not be watching a progression bar finishing 20 of the same recipe. (LOTRO)
• let things decay and let players decide what pieces of their equipment are epic and to be blessed UNDESTROYABLE.
• Stop linearity and herding. Remember how EQ used to have Freeport, Qeynos, Kelethin, Felwith, Akanon, Neriak as starting cities for the first 6 months it was almost like several different games. A gnome would know where the bank is in Akanon but an elf got completely lost down there. The plane of Knowledge came years after release but in new games everything is centralised really quick, making the different carreers pretty identical. WoW does that well too if i recall correct.
• stop exagerating the number of servers at launch, rather you have not enough servers than empty ones. In my opinion WAR had too many servers at launch. Those that i tried where pretty empty, hardly found anyone for the public quests.

When MMOs cost 30 million+ to produce, taking a risk isnt exactly what shareholders want to hear. It's a business first.

Originally posted by protoroc

When MMOs cost 30 million+ to produce, taking a risk isnt exactly what shareholders want to hear. It's a business first.

If you're going to pump 30 million+ into an MMO, and come up with another version WoW, why bother?

Chances are your game won't be as polished as WoW, have a built in audience like WoW, and why would anyone who plays WoW leave? I don't play WoW, but I play a pretty similiar clone of it, even if the devs don't want to admit it..

Do I want to go play Aion? Why would I?  From what I am gathering, its essentially another clone..

Seems to me that making another vanilla boring game just like all the others with maby one different feature is a risk all in itself. At least if you make something out of a radical idea, people will go to that because there is nothing like it.

Originally posted by Marcus-

Originally posted by protoroc

When MMOs cost 30 million+ to produce, taking a risk isnt exactly what shareholders want to hear. It's a business first.

 

If you're going to pump 30 million+ into an MMO, and come up with another version WoW, why bother?

 

Chances are your game won't be as polished as WoW, have a built in audience like WoW, and why would anyone who plays WoW leave? I don't play WoW, but I play a pretty similiar clone of it, even if the devs don't want to admit it..

 

Do I want to go play Aion? Why would I?  From what I am gathering, its essentially another clone..

 

And apparently it is very successful in Asia. I think it is a myth that people don't want clones. How many versions of Madden Football are out there now?

Incremental improvement on gameplay + new setting + new graphics = win in market place. Halo3, Gear of War 2, Half Life2 .. these are all good games.

LOTR did that with flying colors. It is no wow and it makes money. Lineage II I think is also doing well and  it is a sequal.

Originally posted by nariusseldon

Originally posted by Marcus-

Originally posted by protoroc

When MMOs cost 30 million+ to produce, taking a risk isnt exactly what shareholders want to hear. It's a business first.

 

If you're going to pump 30 million+ into an MMO, and come up with another version WoW, why bother?

 

Chances are your game won't be as polished as WoW, have a built in audience like WoW, and why would anyone who plays WoW leave? I don't play WoW, but I play a pretty similiar clone of it, even if the devs don't want to admit it..

 

Do I want to go play Aion? Why would I?  From what I am gathering, its essentially another clone..

 

 

And apparently it is very successful in Asia. I think it is a myth that people don't want clones. How many versions of Madden Football are out there now?

Incremental improvement on gameplay + new setting + new graphics = win in market place. Halo3, Gear of War 2, Half Life2 .. these are all good games.

LOTR did that with flying colors. It is no wow and it makes money. Lineage II I think is also doing well and  it is a sequal.

 

Most of the games you mentioned don't require a $15 monthly fee...

Also, I'm not talking sequels, I'm talking about MMOs that when i pull them out of the box, play like World of Warcraft, with new skins, and perhaps some slightly different content.

As far as Aion in Asia, yes, I hear its doing well, do you happen to know how many subs it has? I honestly don't know.. As compared to Warcraft as well?

Though i believe Warcraft has a lil mess in Asia right now, or did, not sure how that panned out,  or if it did already...

Originally posted by Snorf  Commentary by Terrant
 

 

Some risks developers should think about that come to my mind are: Some nice ideas here, but most of them won't fly, or will end up being a failure even if released. and here's why:

• reward for interacting with others. Similar to "facebook" where more contacts feel rewarding to some. Why not count people that put you on their friendslist? (people from other guilds count more) - in New Worlds Online you gain experience when you introduce yourself to another player. I would like a game where not a title and a name hover above peoples heads but question marks and only once this player has introduced to you - you see their name. Before that its more like: "A dwarf tells you "text"" or "A gnome greets you". 
  
  I have a theory about this. It's called the Ankh-Morpork Fire Brigade theory. It goes: "reward someone a few times for doing something, he'll just find whatever sneaky underhanded way he can to do it more often and thus, earn a bigger profit" See, if I were an enterprising player, I'd have me and a friend keep making throwaway alts, using the /introduce to get the bonuses, delete them, or start over. Some even sneakier (and richer) people might dual box a couple accounts, botted, to do just this, and farm xp 24/7 jsut through introductions.
  
• bring back teamplay to MMO's we have enough solo grinders now. Look how Ryzom allows harvesting in a team. The idea is not that new - would love to see similar for crafting. Let a guild craft their own ships and siege weapons.
  
  This exists in some games now, sorta. The problem with making it a team effort though, is that it's a team effort. God help your fleet if non of the sailmakers are on, or your dockmaster gets mad and deletes his character. Depending on others tends to cause a lot of risk. Look at some of the corporate sabotage in EVE now.
  
• work with the /played time a certain account has - use that number for both, penalties and rewards. Casual gamers and hardcore gamers do not connect well in the same environment but have to play on same servers. So use that number to balance things. (especially in PvP but also some in PvE)
  
  See the fire brigade theory above. Rewarding players for a certain amount of /played=botting. Penalizing players for it and they'll figure an optimal way to log out for a few minutes every so often to dodge the penalty.
  
• encourage roleplaying - look the nice music system of LOTRO, why is it not used for quests? Play the correct melody practised with an NPC (random keystrokes) during a battle or event to progress. Anyone remember the EQ raid where you had to finish song lines in the middle of a fight to calm down skelleton adds?
  
  Now, personally I love this idea. Problem is, 99% of the MMO community probably are opposed to roleplay, or at least ambivalent. Forcing people into anything like this usually goes poorly.
   
• give players a chance to create their own content within the game. (Eve and Ryzom - well done!)
  
  Requires server space. And someone to watch the content to make sure nothing inappropriate gets through. Not saying it's not doable...but gives most devs the willies.
   
• stop to make everything automated and macroable - crafting can be done like in EQ2 and must not be watching a progression bar finishing 20 of the same recipe. (LOTRO)
  
  /Agree
   
• let things decay and let players decide what pieces of their equipment are epic and to be blessed UNDESTROYABLE.
  
  Item decay exists in most mainstream MMOs. And the "indestructible" tag (you played MUDS didn't you?) will never happen in most of those cases. item decay=moneysink.
  
• Stop linearity and herding. Remember how EQ used to have Freeport, Qeynos, Kelethin, Felwith, Akanon, Neriak as starting cities for the first 6 months it was almost like several different games. A gnome would know where the bank is in Akanon but an elf got completely lost down there. The plane of Knowledge came years after release but in new games everything is centralised really quick, making the different carreers pretty identical. WoW does that well too if i recall correct.
  
  I both agree and disagree. The reason this has been done in most games is because in, say, EQ, you ended up with a game that sometimes felt empty, because no one was around. Forcing people into 1-2 central hubs gives you a feeling of more life. At the same time, it DOES feel like herding, so i understand how you feel.

• stop exagerating the number of servers at launch, rather you have not enough servers than empty ones. In my opinion WAR had too many servers at launch. Those that i tried where pretty empty, hardly found anyone for the public quests.
  
  You ever win on this one. Not enough servers and you get a laggy, crashy opening. Too many, you have ghsottowns. It's hard for devs to accurately forecast their server needs at opening in time to get the servers up and running FOR said opening. So this one is, sadly, often unavoidable.

 

 Keep in mind guys, nothing is a sure bet.. Every game, every opportunity has risk. World of Warcraft was not a sure thing when it came out. It did however have a good chance because of the following of already warcraft crazy gamerz. 

Now that the WoW, quest style, game has been beaten to death, it will still exist, there will still be that type of MMORPG out there. However I think what alot of us are trying to say, is that there are other games which are coming out which will open up what has traditionally been done.

I mean really look at what they are doing with MAG. This is not a MMO, it is in a sense as 256 people FPS online battle it is, but to have engineered the technology to sustain a FPS with 256 active people, while not having lag or degredation of play, is no easy task. The engines which these games are built upon will eventually become easier as more advances in existing technologies, let alone the new technologies coming that were shown just at E3.  Should I mention an MMORPG in a fantasy setting using Natal from the Microsoft guys?  Or maybe a Swordplay MMO using the PS3's new motion controller.  

I really think eventually we'll see that doing an MMO isn't going to be such a huge investment. Look at what Star Trek Online is doing with their Gensis engine. Imagine a 3rd or 4th version of that to create new worlds, what would have taken hundred of thousands of dollars to have a person generate, is now done automatically and with as much artistry as possible (by a computer) in a fraction of the time.

I think we'll are just on the doorsteps on what gaming will be, online, and with FiOS coming to more and more homes, just imagine not even having to have the content static, the server just dishes out new content, and it changes. Hell even depending on the weather where you live, your "home town" in the game could have the same weather... I think we'll see more and more, real live immersion with games too..  it's good marketing and a great way to keep you in the game.   iPhone application that let's you check on things in the game, while not "in" the game..  

I think we'll see better and better games coming, and  more and more companies will find ways to make these more massive games, easier to develope.. Allowing them to take the focus of having to create so much content, and allow the focus of the gameplay to take forefront, and the story..  
 

There will be alot of MMOs getting released within the next year, that will cover all of what you are suggesting there...

FPS MMOs: APB, Global Agenda, Huxley, The Agency
These are pretty much straight forward FPS-games with character-development and stuff like items and quests added to the mix.

FPS/RPG: Fallen Earth and Earthrise
These will have a mix of FPS/3rd person action combined with the usual RPG-elements in the combat-department, while featuring a open world sandbox, factional warfare, territorial warfare, deep crafting systems and skill-based character-progression, without the usual level-grind.

Space-Action: Jumpgate Evolution and Black Prophecy
Twitch based space-sims, with the usual RPG-elements (missions, exploration, character-progression, items, ect.)

Story-driven MMOs: SWTOR and STO
These will rely heavily on story-telling in the allready known universe of Star Wars and Star Trek, featuring the usual RPG-elements.

It took the developers 5 or more years to develop them so far, as developing something new, isn't easily done, like creating yet another EQ-clone (WoW is basically itself an EQ-clone). They needed their time and why nothing new came out during the last 5 years.

And even before there were MMOs in all the flavours you described there. SWG, Planetside, EvE Online for example. And then there was titles even before WoW got released, that were totally different. Like AO or Neocron.

I'm looking very happy into the shorter future, as there'll be a whole lot of fresh MMOs to try out, that aren't yet another grinding-contest.

Originally posted by jrs77

I'm looking very happy into the shorter future, as there'll be a whole lot of fresh MMOs to try out, that aren't yet another grinding-contest.

/Agree

I don't think the OP and a lot of posters here realize a very very critical point. MMOs are failing not because the developer are not taking risks. As a matter of fact, they did and still do. It's not about them not being innovated. You can innovated all you want, come up with the strangest idea in the world, make it unique unlike anything anyone have ever seen, yet you can still fail. The OP wrote a whole thesis there but still fail to realize a key point to any game success.

WHY?

Because you did not look at the root of what gaming is all about. Why are we playing games?

Because we enjoy them, we are having fun playing them. Right?

So, the key point to a game success is not taking risks, it's providing the "FUN" value to a broad audience. Now, FUN is a subjective thing, one thing could be fun to one person but not fun to the others. BUT, it is possible to provide a high fun value to a large amount of players. World of Warcraft proved this.Did it really propose anything new for the genre when it came out? Not really. Does it taking a huge risk, going to a direction nobody gone before? Not really. It's a combination of what were there in the market at that point. You can clearly see the inspiration from multiple games before it. They just took the ideas, combine them, polished them and more importanly make them FUN to play for many people.

You can say all you want about WoW but the fact still stand. World of Warcraft provides the FUN, the entertainment value for many people for a long time.

SO, you are looking at it wrong. Trying to make the game FUN for your target demographic sometimes involves taking risks. But it's not taking risks will make your game FUN and success. At the end of the day, Why MMOs are failing is not because developers are not taking risks. It's because their games are not FUN for many people or cannot keep being FUN for long. Some games are very FUN to play at first but quickly lost their magic.
 

THE OLD REPUBLIC = FAIL, sorry Starwars fans but I just cant see this going anywhere, All this talk about story, and setting it in the time that they have NO I dont feel it. [...] Maybe Bioware can save it but, the hole we have come up with the Third wheel " that is Story"  got me spooked that they are way way off base of what the MMO public wants or needs.

All in all I see myself playing EVE for the next 5 years untill the industry finaly catches on and start to understand what the PUBLIC realy wants. 

well... what is it that "the MMO public" wants?
why does EVE provide it and SWTOR not?

because i'm looking forward to SWTOR, while i never even bothered with EVE...

Originally posted by jrs77

There will be alot of MMOs getting released within the next year, that will cover all of what you are suggesting there...

FPS MMOs: APB, Global Agenda, Huxley, The Agency
These are pretty much straight forward FPS-games with character-development and stuff like items and quests added to the mix.

FPS/RPG: Fallen Earth and Earthrise
These will have a mix of FPS/3rd person action combined with the usual RPG-elements in the combat-department, while featuring a open world sandbox, factional warfare, territorial warfare, deep crafting systems and skill-based character-progression, without the usual level-grind.

Space-Action: Jumpgate Evolution and Black Prophecy
Twitch based space-sims, with the usual RPG-elements (missions, exploration, character-progression, items, ect.)

Story-driven MMOs: SWTOR and STO
These will rely heavily on story-telling in the allready known universe of Star Wars and Star Trek, featuring the usual RPG-elements.

It took the developers 5 or more years to develop them so far, as developing something new, isn't easily done, like creating yet another EQ-clone (WoW is basically itself an EQ-clone). They needed their time and why nothing new came out during the last 5 years.

And even before there were MMOs in all the flavours you described there. SWG, Planetside, EvE Online for example. And then there was titles even before WoW got released, that were totally different. Like AO or Neocron.

I'm looking very happy into the shorter future, as there'll be a whole lot of fresh MMOs to try out, that aren't yet another grinding-contest.

Wish i had said this, much more complete than my post, but making the same point. And I am very happily awaiting the release of these titles in the next year or two.

Originally posted by VowOfSilence

THE OLD REPUBLIC = FAIL, sorry Starwars fans but I just cant see this going anywhere, All this talk about story, and setting it in the time that they have NO I dont feel it. [...] Maybe Bioware can save it but, the hole we have come up with the Third wheel " that is Story"  got me spooked that they are way way off base of what the MMO public wants or needs.

All in all I see myself playing EVE for the next 5 years untill the industry finaly catches on and start to understand what the PUBLIC realy wants. 

 

well... what is it that "the MMO public" wants?
why does EVE provide it and SWTOR not?

because i'm looking forward to SWTOR, while i never even bothered with EVE...

My guess is he...oops, I mean the MMO public....wants a skill-based, non-levelling, non-class MMO. Boiled down further...a lot of people griping about TOR want SWG2, with a bit of EVE tossed in

Get. Over. It.

TOR isn't going to be like SWG. It's not going to be made for SWG players. It's not a sequel to SWG. It's not taking anything from EVE. I think so much of the anger over TOR is so many SWG fans were hoping it would be everything they loved pre NGE with so much more added, and have now found out that it is (god help me for saying this) a quest based, class-based, level based MMO with set factions. In other words, similar to some other games out right now. I won't say what ones. You can guess.

Honestly TOR isn't those games either, but it is closer to them than to SWG. Hence the anger.

Originally posted by Czzarre

As with most big businesses, the giants of the industry play it safe and mimic another comanies success rather that risk huge financial losses and push the envelope. However the MMO industry is not devoid of risk takers...you will find them in smaller independent games

/thread

also, If they gave you what you wanted you would stop playing.

Originally posted by terrant

Originally posted by Snorf  Commentary by Terrant
 

 

Some risks developers should think about that come to my mind are: Some nice ideas here, but most of them won't fly, or will end up being a failure even if released. and here's why:

Thanks, and thanks for your time to share your thoughts on them :)

• reward for interacting with others. Similar to "facebook" where more contacts feel rewarding to some. Why not count people that put you on their friendslist? (people from other guilds count more) - in New Worlds Online you gain experience when you introduce yourself to another player. I would like a game where not a title and a name hover above peoples heads but question marks and only once this player has introduced to you - you see their name. Before that its more like: "A dwarf tells you "text"" or "A gnome greets you". 
  
  I have a theory about this. It's called the Ankh-Morpork Fire Brigade theory. It goes: "reward someone a few times for doing something, he'll just find whatever sneaky underhanded way he can to do it more often and thus, earn a bigger profit" See, if I were an enterprising player, I'd have me and a friend keep making throwaway alts, using the /introduce to get the bonuses, delete them, or start over. Some even sneakier (and richer) people might dual box a couple accounts, botted, to do just this, and farm xp 24/7 jsut through introductions.

This you could say about normal experience and every other reward in games too. The trick is to cap the right things and take deleted / inactive accounts out of the formula. There are online ladder games 1v1 where you can not gain points anymore if you play vs the same person again and again.

• bring back teamplay to MMO's we have enough solo grinders now. Look how Ryzom allows harvesting in a team. The idea is not that new - would love to see similar for crafting. Let a guild craft their own ships and siege weapons.
  
  This exists in some games now, sorta. The problem with making it a team effort though, is that it's a team effort. God help your fleet if non of the sailmakers are on, or your dockmaster gets mad and deletes his character. Depending on others tends to cause a lot of risk. Look at some of the corporate sabotage in EVE now.
  

To be honest i dont see the problem you describe. Take EQ for example, there where raids people said you need 6 clerics minimum to have a chance. So some nights we sat there with 40 people but only 4 clerics on. So what we did was?? go and cry? No, we formed an alliance with another guild and we learned to change our strategy so that 4 clerics + 4 druids could do the raid too. We as a team solved the problem - the wooting was loud when we did it with 3 clerics.

 

• work with the /played time a certain account has - use that number for both, penalties and rewards. Casual gamers and hardcore gamers do not connect well in the same environment but have to play on same servers. So use that number to balance things. (especially in PvP but also some in PvE)
  
  See the fire brigade theory above. Rewarding players for a certain amount of /played=botting. Penalizing players for it and they'll figure an optimal way to log out for a few minutes every so often to dodge the penalty.
  

As i said - you could use your own theory for every reward in an MMO. Giving experience for killing a wolf? Someone might write a makro. But experience for wolfs i common and using the /played data in a smart way could help to ballance out 24/7 vs casual.

• encourage roleplaying - look the nice music system of LOTRO, why is it not used for quests? Play the correct melody practised with an NPC (random keystrokes) during a battle or event to progress. Anyone remember the EQ raid where you had to finish song lines in the middle of a fight to calm down skelleton adds?
  
  Now, personally I love this idea. Problem is, 99% of the MMO community probably are opposed to roleplay, or at least ambivalent. Forcing people into anything like this usually goes poorly.
   

Well everytime i saw things like this in games i and my guild had a blast. I think what you describe is the saying that people dont eat what they dont know.

• give players a chance to create their own content within the game. (Eve and Ryzom - well done!)
  
  Requires server space. And someone to watch the content to make sure nothing inappropriate gets through. Not saying it's not doable...but gives most devs the willies.
   

Well Ryzom manages it very well and if most games have one thing too much then its server space.

• stop to make everything automated and macroable - crafting can be done like in EQ2 and must not be watching a progression bar finishing 20 of the same recipe. (LOTRO)
  
  /Agree
   
• let things decay and let players decide what pieces of their equipment are epic and to be blessed UNDESTROYABLE.
  
  Item decay exists in most mainstream MMOs. And the "indestructible" tag (you played MUDS didn't you?) will never happen in most of those cases. item decay=moneysink.
  

I think you misunderstood, i was not talking about items that can be repaired. I was talking about items that are destroyed / unusable once they where used too much. The only game that i know doing this is Ryzom and its fun. It is a dev taboo to take something away from a player - breaking taboos is taking risks.

• Stop linearity and herding. Remember how EQ used to have Freeport, Qeynos, Kelethin, Felwith, Akanon, Neriak as starting cities for the first 6 months it was almost like several different games. A gnome would know where the bank is in Akanon but an elf got completely lost down there. The plane of Knowledge came years after release but in new games everything is centralised really quick, making the different carreers pretty identical. WoW does that well too if i recall correct.
  
  I both agree and disagree. The reason this has been done in most games is because in, say, EQ, you ended up with a game that sometimes felt empty, because no one was around. Forcing people into 1-2 central hubs gives you a feeling of more life. At the same time, it DOES feel like herding, so i understand how you feel.

No when EQ came out all capitals where rather crowded because there was enough content around them to bind people 2-3 weeks nearby. In modern games you are put on the mainstream rail really quick following the identical quests and carreers. Of course it is done like this, because it is much easier to balance and much cheaper to develope. But it is less fun and does not feel like a world.

• stop exagerating the number of servers at launch, rather you have not enough servers than empty ones. In my opinion WAR had too many servers at launch. Those that i tried where pretty empty, hardly found anyone for the public quests.
  
  You ever win on this one. Not enough servers and you get a laggy, crashy opening. Too many, you have ghsottowns. It's hard for devs to accurately forecast their server needs at opening in time to get the servers up and running FOR said opening. So this one is, sadly, often unavoidable.

 

You will only get the crashy and laggy opening if you allow too many players on the same server at the same time. To be honest i would rather have had some crashes in WAR than finding myself being the only one with 3 others doing a public quest in a 4 weeks old game.

 

 

Originally posted by Snorf

Originally posted by terrant

Originally posted by Snorf  Commentary by Terrant
 

 

Some risks developers should think about that come to my mind are: Some nice ideas here, but most of them won't fly, or will end up being a failure even if released. and here's why:

Thanks, and thanks for your time to share your thoughts on them :)

• reward for interacting with others. Similar to "facebook" where more contacts feel rewarding to some. Why not count people that put you on their friendslist? (people from other guilds count more) - in New Worlds Online you gain experience when you introduce yourself to another player. I would like a game where not a title and a name hover above peoples heads but question marks and only once this player has introduced to you - you see their name. Before that its more like: "A dwarf tells you "text"" or "A gnome greets you". 
  
  I have a theory about this. It's called the Ankh-Morpork Fire Brigade theory. It goes: "reward someone a few times for doing something, he'll just find whatever sneaky underhanded way he can to do it more often and thus, earn a bigger profit" See, if I were an enterprising player, I'd have me and a friend keep making throwaway alts, using the /introduce to get the bonuses, delete them, or start over. Some even sneakier (and richer) people might dual box a couple accounts, botted, to do just this, and farm xp 24/7 jsut through introductions.

This you could say about normal experience and every other reward in games too. The trick is to cap the right things and take deleted / inactive accounts out of the formula. There are online ladder games 1v1 where you can not gain points anymore if you play vs the same person again and again.

Still players will find ways to take advantage of game mechanics and devs will try to pach the problem. it is always a constant war between exploiting game mechanics and patching.

• bring back teamplay to MMO's we have enough solo grinders now. Look how Ryzom allows harvesting in a team. The idea is not that new - would love to see similar for crafting. Let a guild craft their own ships and siege weapons.
  
  This exists in some games now, sorta. The problem with making it a team effort though, is that it's a team effort. God help your fleet if non of the sailmakers are on, or your dockmaster gets mad and deletes his character. Depending on others tends to cause a lot of risk. Look at some of the corporate sabotage in EVE now.
  

To be honest i dont see the problem you describe. Take EQ for example, there where raids people said you need 6 clerics minimum to have a chance. So some nights we sat there with 40 people but only 4 clerics on. So what we did was?? go and cry? No, we formed an alliance with another guild and we learned to change our strategy so that 4 clerics + 4 druids could do the raid too. We as a team solved the problem - the wooting was loud when we did it with 3 clerics.

The EVE corporate sabotage is part of the game, you have to know who to trust and who to give permissions too, simply because you need others to be able to craft bigger stuff, or achieve harder objctives. so with that problem we add an extra layer to the game, while recruiting to the corp one often needs to do a background check. i for one am for limiting the solo play. MMOs should be a community activity, and dont give me the excuse that you may not have time to commit to a group for 30-60 minutes or more, in that case go play a SP game and come back to the MMO when you have time to play with others.

 

• work with the /played time a certain account has - use that number for both, penalties and rewards. Casual gamers and hardcore gamers do not connect well in the same environment but have to play on same servers. So use that number to balance things. (especially in PvP but also some in PvE)
  
  See the fire brigade theory above. Rewarding players for a certain amount of /played=botting. Penalizing players for it and they'll figure an optimal way to log out for a few minutes every so often to dodge the penalty.
  

As i said - you could use your own theory for every reward in an MMO. Giving experience for killing a wolf? Someone might write a makro. But experience for wolfs i common and using the /played data in a smart way could help to ballance out 24/7 vs casual.

see first red reply

• encourage roleplaying - look the nice music system of LOTRO, why is it not used for quests? Play the correct melody practised with an NPC (random keystrokes) during a battle or event to progress. Anyone remember the EQ raid where you had to finish song lines in the middle of a fight to calm down skelleton adds?
  
  Now, personally I love this idea. Problem is, 99% of the MMO community probably are opposed to roleplay, or at least ambivalent. Forcing people into anything like this usually goes poorly.
   

Well everytime i saw things like this in games i and my guild had a blast. I think what you describe is the saying that people dont eat what they dont know.

then you could probably make them RP whithout them knowing it, the best example ive seen with this is SWG (pre-cu) where battlefatigue required you to go to a cantina and listen/watch player dancers and musicians. perfect place to have a chat with guild mates or the dancers or a perfect stranger that happens to be hunting the great krayt dragon and needs an extra gun. you where RPing without knowing it.

• give players a chance to create their own content within the game. (Eve and Ryzom - well done!)
  
  Requires server space. And someone to watch the content to make sure nothing inappropriate gets through. Not saying it's not doable...but gives most devs the willies.
   

Well Ryzom manages it very well and if most games have one thing too much then its server space.

gives devs the willies, but isnt this topic about taking risks? Eve does it pretty well with the aliance wars that go on every day, and aliance systems owned and fought for on daily bases, where both and sometimes more)  sides have to watch out for spies, infiltrators, massive war operations, or a surgical critical strike. If it is implanted as a normal game mechanic then it is something to be used for. in one of the latest eve blogs they have a new type of ships made for the "media" where they have all the abilities to be in the middle of the battlefield and survive but not invulnerable and their only purpose is to simply record and document.

• stop to make everything automated and macroable - crafting can be done like in EQ2 and must not be watching a progression bar finishing 20 of the same recipe. (LOTRO)
  
  /Agree
   
• let things decay and let players decide what pieces of their equipment are epic and to be blessed UNDESTROYABLE.
  
  Item decay exists in most mainstream MMOs. And the "indestructible" tag (you played MUDS didn't you?) will never happen in most of those cases. item decay=moneysink.
  

I think you misunderstood, i was not talking about items that can be repaired. I was talking about items that are destroyed / unusable once they where used too much. The only game that i know doing this is Ryzom and its fun. It is a dev taboo to take something away from a player - breaking taboos is taking risks.

well if its about taking items away, you simply have to make them replaceable. it will drive the economy. if it takes a 100000 man raid 100000 times with a 0.01% drop rate, of course these items cant be destroyable. but say a loss of something one can buy with a little gold/isk/credits then its not a big deal. In eve if i loose a caracal, pfft not a problem i can buy 10 more if i loose a battlecruiser i can buy 2 more ect... of course there are the exepctions of super expensive ships, but hey, if you are not willing to risk it then dont fly it. same thing can be applied to any game, as long as what is destroyable is relatively easy to replace then why not

• Stop linearity and herding. Remember how EQ used to have Freeport, Qeynos, Kelethin, Felwith, Akanon, Neriak as starting cities for the first 6 months it was almost like several different games. A gnome would know where the bank is in Akanon but an elf got completely lost down there. The plane of Knowledge came years after release but in new games everything is centralised really quick, making the different carreers pretty identical. WoW does that well too if i recall correct.
  
  I both agree and disagree. The reason this has been done in most games is because in, say, EQ, you ended up with a game that sometimes felt empty, because no one was around. Forcing people into 1-2 central hubs gives you a feeling of more life. At the same time, it DOES feel like herding, so i understand how you feel.

No when EQ came out all capitals where rather crowded because there was enough content around them to bind people 2-3 weeks nearby. In modern games you are put on the mainstream rail really quick following the identical quests and carreers. Of course it is done like this, because it is much easier to balance and much cheaper to develope. But it is less fun and does not feel like a world.

i will have to agree with this, there should not be a central hub for everything, things should be separated into specialities all over the game world, say the best place for mining suplies and metalurgy related activities would be deep in the mountains of the dwarves. and magical tailoring in the elven cities the gambling and trading in the human capital and so on....

• stop exagerating the number of servers at launch, rather you have not enough servers than empty ones. In my opinion WAR had too many servers at launch. Those that i tried where pretty empty, hardly found anyone for the public quests.
  
  You ever win on this one. Not enough servers and you get a laggy, crashy opening. Too many, you have ghsottowns. It's hard for devs to accurately forecast their server needs at opening in time to get the servers up and running FOR said opening. So this one is, sadly, often unavoidable.

 

You will only get the crashy and laggy opening if you allow too many players on the same server at the same time. To be honest i would rather have had some crashes in WAR than finding myself being the only one with 3 others doing a public quest in a 4 weeks old game.

i am not a game designer, but (speaking off the top of my head) could one not have 20-30 servers on standby, and open 3 of them, as soon as say 2 of them reach 70-75% capacity then a 4rth open, when 3 of them reach 70-75% then a 5ft and so on...until it stabilizes in which case the excess servers can be shutdown and keep 1 or 2 on standby and open them up upon need.

 

 

 

If people werent such frakking pussies and QQ everytime they didnt get their instant gratification, and cried about something that was too HARRRRD!!! or too boring and an inconvience for them, maybe todays MMOs would be more diverse than just ripping off and trying to clone the success of World Of Nubcraft maybe less MMOs would quit failing, start making more games cater to everyones style of play not people that play 1 hr a day and then quit 3-4 months later, the same people that defend these casual friendly games are the same ones that leave MMOs first are at the beginning the most vocal about their fanboism defend their (insert vanilla MMO of the month : Aion , SWTOR etc, etc) then when the chips are down they QQ on the forums how this and that should be removed or nerfed Wah Wah!! Flash foward 2 weeks later.... a post on the said MMOs website in a general forums titled : Why I Am Leaving (Insert Game) and they go on this whole diatribe about how they didnt like x game mechanic or that, too time consuming , too much grind (most MMOs today dont even have a grind anymore to get to max level..) QQ about this and that until the rest of the community tells them dont let the door hit you in the ass cause we wont miss ya, back to WOW you go vile wench!!!

In the end its accounts, marketing , and the suits that tell the devs how to make the game and the target demographic to go for so far its not working out so well,  and so just cause the mass majority is casual doesnt make for a good MMO if you plan for long term players, if everything can be completed with months time whats the use of playing MMOs anymore if people want to rush to the end?

how is that even close to a risk? it was very plainly shooting themselves in the head. it couldnt have been a more straightforward shot than if it was done with a gun. they went from original and fun with pre-cu to generic with the NGE. besides, they took the 'risk' after the game was made and when they were getting very good business with their actually original and good gameplay.  If people are going to take a risk with a game, then they shouldnt make it a new game after they made it.

Originally posted by firefly2003

If people werent such frakking pussies and QQ everytime they didnt get their instant gratification, and cried about something that was too HARRRRD!!! or too boring and an inconvience for them, maybe todays MMOs would be more diverse than just ripping off and trying to clone the success of World Of Nubcraft maybe less MMOs would quit failing, start making more games cater to everyones style of play not people that play 1 hr a day and then quit 3-4 months later, the same people that defend these casual friendly games are the same ones that leave MMOs first are at the beginning the most vocal about their fanboism defend their (insert vanilla MMO of the month : Aion , SWTOR etc, etc) then when the chips are down they QQ on the forums how this and that should be removed or nerfed Wah Wah!! Flash foward 2 weeks later.... a post on the said MMOs website in a general forums titled : Why I Am Leaving (Insert Game) and they go on this whole diatribe about how they didnt like x game mechanic or that, too time consuming , too much grind (most MMOs today dont even have a grind anymore to get to max level..) QQ about this and that until the rest of the community tells them dont let the door hit you in the ass cause we wont miss ya, back to WOW you go vile wench!!!

In the end its accounts, marketing , and the suits that tell the devs how to make the game and the target demographic to go for so far its not working out so well,  and so just cause the mass majority is casual doesnt make for a good MMO if you plan for long term players, if everything can be completed with months time whats the use of playing MMOs anymore if people want to rush to the end?

That, my boy, is a whole lot of "QQ"ing, lol

Z