A bit self critique, or a question, as you wish.

You see, when DCU was developed, at a time still in beta one of the developers said, he expects the average gamer of DCU to play 2-3 hours a day. I know laughed out loud back then, and reality was proving me true. That player hardly seems to exist. Or maybe he DOES exist, but I guess he plays either WOW or some of the many F2P titles.

Now if we look at SWTOR, it is just another example how people BURN through content. One of the Bioware devs admitted that players currently play a lot, long times. That is what companies never really grasp. You see, I make any bet a considerably large amout of MMORPG gamers is made up of unemployed, students, addicted gamers and housewives. People who have little money and much time, for what other hobby kills to much time with so relatively little money. Outside of TV of course, but thats an entirely passive medium, and thus not for everyone. I don't mean to bash anyone with that, it is just an observation, an impression.

Now the past Triple AAA MMOs have all been more or less themeparks. And the point is, a themepark content is always much quicker to play through and see it all, and with each passing year MMOs got more themeparkish and had less and less sandbox elements. So while for example in SWTOR a person with a 40 hour job and family has an average of 2 hours per day AT BEST to play a MMO, and would probably take half a year or more to max level, we the locust gamers can make two or three max level chars in 6-8 weeks. And NO company can EVER make so much content so fast to satisfy us with themepark elements EVER.

Alas the bad thing is, developers don't ralize that. They still program for those 40 hours employed family guys, which just go to casual games, f2p games with no obligations or just stick with single player games, thinking that MMOs are just for people with much time. That's the great mistake in thinking from dev side. Now the only way to keep us locust gamers in a game longer would be many sandbox elements, stuff to keep ourselves busy while waiting for the real next content. LOTRO had just few sandbox elements, but enough that when Mines of Moria came out I was again hooked for half a year. I did crafting, I used to spent tons of money (and grind money) for several different dyed sets, I spent 2 weeks alone figuring the music system, I spent untold weeks with seeding crops, watching it grow, watching people on neighbouring fields work, in fishing contents, in  holiday events... whatever! I did a 1000 things NOT HEROIC STORY QUESTING. Sandboxish things mostly. And only they can keep us playing, to make breaks.

But here in SWTOR now as in other MMOs like AoC, WAR asf, there is only quests, combat and thats it. And that is where we sort of gamers burn through, burp and then we are done. Which is what will happen to SWTOR in 2-3 months when people like me will have 2-3 level 50 chars, have seen enough story and it's game over.

But am I to blame that I have so much time? Or aren't game developers to blame for assuming another target audience which just doesn't keep a MMO alive?

So many questions.

The problem with SW:TOR isn't just that the devs didn't make enough content for MMORPGers.  Like you said there are people that literally will play an MMO for 72 hours straight, there's no way a theme park MMO can support players like that through PvE content alone.  The problem in SW:TOR is this

-Subscription model:  If a developer is asking you to pay money up front with box prices and a monthly fee, they are going to be judged against other P2P games.  They don't care if the game is new, if they don't have enough content or inovation, then these people will not continue to play past the first month.

-Lack of PvP: PvP is an important aspect of MMOs simply because of those people that play 72hrs a week.  There's not going to be enough PvE content ever, so PvP is a valuable supplement to keep players interested.  SW:TOR (and pretty much most other new MMOs) made the mistake of  having poor PvE at launch.

-Too expensive to be profitable: This goes back to the subscription model part, but EA's design philosophy was all wrong.  They wanted to make a WoW clone to compete with WoW, so they tossed a lot of money at it, and hoped the Star Wars IP would sell the game.  The problem with this is that with so much investment, it made the game inflexible, and even then most players would agree that whatever content was there it didn't seem like it was $300 million worth.  They probably would have done better if they focused on innovating one aspect of MMOs (EvE-Sandbox, Minecraft-Teraforming, GW-PvP) and then built it up from there.

While I generally agree with what you wrote, one thing:  playing 2 h / day you definately will hit max level much much sooner than in 6 months in Swtor and most of current themeparks.

Especially that much of playerbase have played some mmo before, be it WoW or something else and they already know schematics and how to be effective in questing in themepark and I am NOT saying about guys that skip dialogues and / or don't read quests.   Another thing is that mmorpg's got very streamlined so player don't even have opportunity to just wander around as landscape is very tunneled and almost all freespeaces is filled with mobs every 2 meters ,so that actually disencourage anything but doing quests.  Just design.

Mmorpg's were always games that many players played for long time, well every game has many players like that, be it MOBA games, FPS games, strategy games, etc

Since mmorpg's got focused on end-game , players want fast streamlined simple way to max level, devs provided that but this backfired.

Remember WoW Vanilla in 2004 also had hordes of players spending like 6 h + per day and still it took LONG time to hit max level.

Themeparks have this fatal flaw in design. If you want players to take time and group up before max level, then "levelling" have to be long, problem is sooner or later most players will be at max level and new players / characters will feel "lonely" , grouping up to do some content will be hard and in effect they will see levelling as a chore.  So solution: speed up levelling and soloify content. 

Sure but that will put even more strain and focus on end-game content and it will result in current sitiation.

Level based, streamlined, directed , tunneled themeparks have HUGE advantages especially in accesibility and are easy-to-design for developers.

BUT

They also create HUGE problems themselves. Problems that would not exist at all without levels and more sandboxy gameplay. (ofc this kind of game would have their own share of problems as well).

Thing is : current themepark model is eating it's own tail + gamers know this model + huge competition + this model has unsolvable problems. 

Devs will have to do something , this "something" will result in losing part of potential playerbase and I think investors & devs have to realize that. 

F.e. GW2 is in it's core e-sporty kind of mmorpg and there is portion of playerbase that will not like it

ArcheAge is huge world, big on crafing & some sandboxy elements and pvp kind of game  + will propably require more 'patience' than usual themepark so that will scare away portion of playerbase as well

WoW like model IS and WILL BE still attractive to certain segment of mmropg playerbase but it will still suffer from some of unsolvable problems and it won't be able to HOLD as big playerbase as it had in past.

I have seen studies that say the average MMO player plays 30+ hours a week.  During release I would expect the average player plays 50-80 hours a week.  I know lots of players that play 40+ hours a week and work full time jobs.   In game like Tor where a knowledgeable player can reach max level in 30 hours or even 60 hours if they are slow that means they better have endgame content ready.  The problem here is ToR did not test thier endgame content and it came out severely bugged and lacking. 

For many years MMO devopers  had to decide between going "big" with a broad amount of content like Vanguard but very poorly done content or going "small" with a very narrow amount of content like Rift.  The advantage to going small is the content can be of much higehr quality and can actually be thoroughly tested prior to release.  Most games have gone the Vanguard route and came out half baked.  With a budget 3 times bigger than any MMO ever released Tor had the opportunity to do the unthinkable and go "big" but with quality.  They wasted that oppurtunity on voiceovers.  The Voiceovers were nice and probably helped sell a lot of pre-sale boxes but it took a lot of development time from the rest of the game.  I have to think Tor is a wasted oppurtunity.  I am sure it will still do well because its Star Wars name but its certainly a missed oppurtunity.  With that budget they really should have made something much much better.

In regards to burning through content I think you exaggerate.  if a company goes "small" like Rift there is always content fpr players who play 12 hours a day.  In Rift there is always something to do.  There was mroe than enough to do at release and the endgame content was well done.  Since release there are always small goals and objectives one can do each day no mater how much they play.  Its not the players fault here it is poor planning and poor development on the part of Bioware. This game should not have been released for another 6 months until the endgame was properly tested and the they had time to add basic functions and features to the game.

I dont think so, i think Devs are trying to please too many people at the same time. They should start with keeping one target audience, either PVP, PVE, RvR etc. When i think of how MMO devs plan MMO these days, what comes to mind is the episodes from the Simpsons were Homer design a car.

it can do everything but it looks like shit and is shit.

I agree with most of your assessment, Elikal.

Ironic thing is that the very nature of premade themepark content urges people to burn through it. Apart from the "no lifers" like you describe, it's also normal gamers. That's because of themepark content being ready made, guided and giving you carrots around every single corner. It's a well known mechanic employed by gamemakers. In the case of SWTOR: Normal leveling, every single quest, social leveling, valor ranks, planetary commendations, pvp commendations, daily commendations, space-on-rails ranks, alignment levels, etc. Even exploring content.

Everything offers tangible progress and rewards to look forward to. For gamers its like putting a hungry kid from a very poor background in a candy shop and telling him he can eat all he want in 10 minutes. He'll leave the store much quicker and sicker compared to the same kid being told to design his own cookies, bake them and share them with his family. Which would be the sandbox equivalent.

When you play an mmo, what are you doing? Well the first thing is to make an avatar, ok. You want the avatar to represent your inner persona, or some facet of it, whatever you call it. Think about it, that explain the behavior you are talking about. Its not bad or good, its what those games are about. You want those avatars to represent you well.

No, we aren't the locusts.

We are the pigs in the pen.

When the farmer keeps feeding us our own shit to eat in  the slop bucket eventually the farmer gets eaten.

Most MMO developers are too obssessed with making the players play the game along a very tightly controlled, predetrmined set of paths. Play it their way, or take a hike. The problem is that all this carefully mapped, linear content is a lot easier to blow through than content of a more dynamic nature. There are hard limits on the amount of linear progression serving content a game develper can develop. Whether it's 80 hours or twice that, it's very finite when you consider how many MMO players play over 20 hours a week. If the game doesn't offer an immersive world with plenty to do beyond the predefined quest progression, there are going to be some serious issues.

Replayability is also key for MMOs. That's why redundant game zones for each level range and multiple starting areas that give each race their own progression through at least the first third of your leveling time are so important. It's one thing WoW got right, but many WoW clones have failed to match, much to their detriment.

WoW also showed how Battleground PVP could provide a great return of play time versus development time and resources for a good portion of the player base. Many titles have tacked a similar mode onto their games, but most fail to provide enough variety, proper level tiers and sufficient quality to leverage the potential of this kind of content.

Most people blow through a solo RPG in a month, two tops and never play the game again. Even if an MMO offers three times the amount of content, it obviously needs other elements to keep people paying a subscription fee for continued play.

MMO design has become stagnant. WoW's success made it very tempting for others to try to copy what WoW did, rather than looking for better ways to provide players what they want, need and expect from an MMO. The fact that most have failed to even come close to matching vanilla WoW just proved that if you can't produce a derivative product at least as good as the industry leader, you aren't going to accomplish much beyond wasting a lot of development money and man hours.

If we are like Locusts, at least we are a predictable swarm of locusts with predictable appetites. That so many developers continue to fail at even understanding what the player base hungers for clearly points to the fact that bad developers and short sighted publishers destroy MMOs, not the players.

I think that traditional MMO design is a stagnant fail and the subscription model probably kills a lot of titles that may have survived and thrived with out the pressure to justify $15/month to continue playing a game you already have paid for. I think it's time for MMO developers/investors/publishers to re-examine status quo MMO design principles and the $15/month Pay to Play pricing model.

No! bad game design destroyes mmo's and mmorpg changing from worlds to games is whats killing the genre.

Rift's launch was actually very similiar to SW:TOR.

The reason why Rift didn't suffer the huge backslash was simply because they came out with new content extremely fast, and there was really nothing else to play at the time.

when you look at mmo's closely they are not great when viewed as a game, but they are great when viewed as a  virtual world. None of these games would be good if they were single player games, the only thing that makes them interesting is that you can play online with thousands of other players..so stop designing mmo's like a single player game and bring back the virtual world and the social aspect that made these games interesting in the first place.

No, bad design.

I get the content eaters, but when the content is flawed, it doesn't matter.  SWTOR is flawed imo, the single player story/mmo mix doesn't work the way they tried to do it...  Maybe someone will get it right, but I think its a flawed concept atm.

As for it taking someone half a year, nah...I only play my main when my wife can play, and we work different shifts and often do not play on many days and we are both less than 5% away from 50...So it took a month of casual play.  I didn't see the big rush in SWTOR either, their isn't much that I feel I need to be 50 to do...

I have been bashing it some lately, but I still got my money out of it, and I will give it a while longer, but as I said, I think it is a flawed concept and I don't see how they salvage it for many mmo players, that will not be blinded by the 'its star wars'.

Originally posted by nerovipus32

when you look at mmo's closely they are not great when viewed as a game, but they are great when viewed as a  virtual world. None of these games would be good if they were single player games, the only thing that makes them interesting is that you can play online with thousands of other players..so stop designing mmo's like a single player game and bring back the virtual world and the social aspect that made these games interesting in the first place.

Yes, this guy is a genius.

Originally posted by nerovipus32

No! bad game design destroyes mmo's and mmorpg changing from worlds to games is whats killing the genre.

Sub-genres exists in other forms of entertainment as well. Some like the daughter and some prefer the mother. It is about tastes. In the entertainment business, best movies do not  make the most money or have the most viewers. In fact, blockbusters seldom even win at Oscars.

I would not say that themeparks have a bad game design, it is just a sub-genre;  a formulaic sub-genre that is changing very little over time. Just like Hollywood blockbusters - copy-paste plots, pool of  few select actors and directors directors, and insane amount spend on advertising.

Why are they so successful?

Originally posted by thexrated

Originally posted by nerovipus32

No! bad game design destroyes mmo's and mmorpg changing from worlds to games is whats killing the genre.

Sub-genres exists in other forms of entertainment as well. Some like the daughter and some prefer the mother. It is about tastes. In the entertainment business, best movies do not  make the most money or have the most viewers. In fact, blockbusters seldom even win at Oscars.

I would not say that themeparks have a bad game design, it is just a sub-genre;  a formulaic sub-genre that is changing very little over time. Just like Hollywood blockbusters - copy-paste plots, pool of  few select actors and directors directors, and insane amount spend on advertising.

Why are they so successful?

 

themeparks cannot sustain themselves because its impossible to keep putting content out fast enough..its a failed formula. players eat up the content and then have nothing to do and unsubscribe..its not a good design philosophy to retain players.

Originally posted by nerovipus32

when you look at mmo's closely they are not great when viewed as a game, but they are great when viewed as a  virtual world. None of these games would be good if they were single player games, the only thing that makes them interesting is that you can play online with thousands of other players..so stop designing mmo's like a single player game and bring back the virtual world and the social aspect that made these games interesting in the first place.

+1

I didn't read word one off your post.  I looked at the title and say absolutely  'YES.'  Whatever thoough you put into your case is probably well made and I would probably agree with most of it.  Sadly, I am not going to, because the answer to the title of the thread is 'YES'

Originally posted by nerovipus32

Originally posted by thexrated

Originally posted by nerovipus32

No! bad game design destroyes mmo's and mmorpg changing from worlds to games is whats killing the genre.

Sub-genres exists in other forms of entertainment as well. Some like the daughter and some prefer the mother. It is about tastes. In the entertainment business, best movies do not  make the most money or have the most viewers. In fact, blockbusters seldom even win at Oscars.

I would not say that themeparks have a bad game design, it is just a sub-genre;  a formulaic sub-genre that is changing very little over time. Just like Hollywood blockbusters - copy-paste plots, pool of  few select actors and directors directors, and insane amount spend on advertising.

Why are they so successful?

 

themeparks cannot sustain themselves because its impossible to keep putting content out fast enough..its a failed formula. players eat up the content and then have nothing to do and unsubscribe..its not a good design philosophy to retain players.

I agree, perhaps they are not ment for hardcore people to begin with, if they were, it would be a lost battle. However, I do not think they are a failed formula. A well done themepark can be quite profitable over the life-cycle. You have to understand that popularity is not really the measure companies have for success.

I would say that it is players who will have to adjust their expectations. I do not see this sub-genre changing a lot or dissapearing, they are the most profitable in MMO space.

Blame the game developers.

Or yourself to spend time in silly forums/video games :P