Originally posted by Loktofeit

I'm also looking forward to the newer indie projects. I just want one... ONE... to take the bold approach of under-promise and over-deliver. I think the overpromising and failure to deliver contributes as much to their demise as the lack of polish and bugs.

Overdelivering is probably difficult.  Hold a system in reserve out of sight of the beta players?

Not in this day and age.

I do like the car analogy.  I certainly fall into the "enthusiast" category.  It's one of the reasons I like the RPG genre, they lend themselves well to analysis.

Unfortunately, I know my views of a "fun" game are in the ultra minority.  Discussing mmorpg's has become more fun than actually playing them.

My outlet has become writing my own single player RPG.

Originally posted by AlBQuirky

 

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Originally posted by Amaranthar
Has any game since WoW released and not lost large percentages after the first month?

 

Acting like it's just a few "whiners" that visit a single message board is nothing more than whitewashing a very obvious problem with the industry.

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One needs to ask why these players are leaving so soon after release. Is it because the game sucks? Could be. Is it because a new game just released? Maybe. Is it because something happened in their real life and they are unable to play? Hopefully not, but a possibility. Is it because they played through the whole game already? This is the one I usually look at closest.

 

Most of the games released now take very little time and effort getting to max level. Even casual players are accomplishing this in a matter of weeks. From what I've read on this site, many games lack an in-depth "end game" of any sort.

I think (my opinion) that players leave after a couple of months because they "beat the game" and there is not much left for them to do. I could very well be wrong, but that's my take on it :)

Or played through enough of it and start getting that "I've done this before" feeling.

My 40 man raiding days are over.  It was fun while it lasted but I'm not doing it anymore.  Combine that with the fact that I detest arenas and battlegrounds, once I hit max level I'm left with nothing to do on that character.  So it's either re-roll or move on.  I usually choose the latter.

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Originally posted by dave6660
Or played through enough of it and start getting that "I've done this before" feeling.

My 40 man raiding days are over.  It was fun while it lasted but I'm not doing it anymore.  Combine that with the fact that I detest arenas and battlegrounds, once I hit max level I'm left with nothing to do on that character.  So it's either re-roll or move on.  I usually choose the latter.

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The "I've done this before" feeling does seem to hit with more and more frequency in games, I must admit.

By default, I assume I'm a lone eccentric in whatever room I find myself in :)

That said, just because we think about these subjects to the extent that we feel confident arguing the finer details of design does not automatically mean that our tastes are different from more detached gamers - we're just more consciously aware of what makes us like or dislike a feature or style, can more quickly see why certain design choices were made.

On the other hand, I know I can go read the beta forums for a specific game and be blown away by the debates over the 1 or 2% bonuses to one ability or another where people have such a deep understanding of the theorycraft of a particular system that they can simulate out the whole metagame in their heads with confidence.

Originally posted by maplestone

By default, I assume I'm a lone eccentric in whatever room I find myself in :)

That said, just because we think about these subjects to the extent that we feel confident arguing the finer details of design does not automatically mean that our tastes are different from more detached gamers - we're just more consciously aware of what makes us like or dislike a feature or style, can more quickly see why certain design choices were made.

On the other hand, I know I can go read the beta forums for a specific game and be blown away by the debates over the 1 or 2% bonuses to one ability or another where people have such a deep understanding of the theorycraft of a particular system that they can simulate out the whole metagame in their heads with confidence.

Several years ago, at PAX West, I atended an NC Soft party.

I ended up speaking with two Guild Wars players (apparently there were only a few Lineage 2 players and I just never found them).

One of them knew so much about guild wars, every stat, every mob placement, which bosses had which abilities, essentially every single detail about everything that I had to think the guy was one of their developers. Which he wasn't.

There are some people out there who are crazy scary abotu the details.

Originally posted by dave6660

My 40 man raiding days are over.  It was fun while it lasted but I'm not doing it anymore.  Combine that with the fact that I detest arenas and battlegrounds, once I hit max level I'm left with nothing to do on that character.  So it's either re-roll or move on.  I usually choose the latter.

I vote for "move on". There are so many games out there that there is simply no reason to stick to one.

I think OP has a point with the car analogy.  However, I still feel that a good game that is appreciated by the enthusiast, more often than not will still be greatly appreciated by the average gamer.

Originally posted by Quirhid

Originally posted by fenistil

Originally posted by Quirhid

For example, the lack of an auction house creates depth to trading. I understand it completely, but like you said, I don't care about it. If the game is about slaying monsters its that it has to focus on. Everything else is more or less an inconvenience.

True.  There is one thing though.

Mmorpg developers often feed community with posts, blogs, and various information about crafting and economy and even sometimes advertise it. 

Then they provide this feature as some totally primitve, meaningless thing.

That's why some part of playerbase have every right to be angry.

 

If game is 'about slaying monsters' then it should be communicated honestly with "our mmorg is mainly about combat and fun, we focus on it and other things are just for little distraction and not important or rich features".

 

Most companies don't do that and then part of playerbase have every right to bash non-combat things.

Because which mmorpg honestly said that game is about slaying monsters almost exclusively?

Without that you cannot say 'if game is about slaying monsters' because WHO would decide that?

Me? You?  Jon from Alaska? Mark from Czech Republic?

 

Mmorpg developers try to please too wide playerbase and because mmorpg crowd is not fresh but seasoned as majority already played some mmorpg in past, be it WoW or be it UO or be it some asian f2p game.

Yet they still try to create game by going same design like mmorpg's would be still this 'new fresh exciting thing' that could group wide variety of diffrent players for long-peroid of time becasue they would be willing to go on compromises cause this mmorpg would be so new, exciting and diffrent experience.

Well mmorpg's are not new, exceptional experience anymore that's why most of 'wide-net' mmorpg's fail to keep their playerbase playing for long time peroids.

You let your bias show in the red there. Combat features are just as rich as non-combat features.

But anyway. Its not common to see companies doing that. Only thing that comes to my mind was when, at one point, Arenanet stated their crafting would be "robust" strongly hinting it wouldn't be the main focus. Who would want to deter potential customers when, lets face it, many just look at the feature list and not much else.

To me, a feature list alone is not enough to describe a game, not by a long shot, because to be on the list doesn't yet tell me anything about how said feature is implemented. Many wishlists and suggestions on this forum list things like crafting, exploration etc. but they don't go into detail how they should be made and how the listed features interact and complement each other. Those lists come with a huge amount of implicit expectations that likely are different from player to player too.

Then there are those, who only rate the game by the length of the list -> longer is better.

You mistunderstood me.

I never said that combat cannot be rich feature nor I graded them by more rich or less rich.

I was writing that crafting and non-combat as made as not rich features, like side-development.

I was just adressing that having non-combat features weak or not existant is ok IF game devs and marketting clearly states that and not try to 'blink an eye' to crafters, explorers and other players who don't put combat first to lure them as well.

Problem is that mmorpg nowadays promise too much and fail to deliver. 

I mean nobody expect crafting and many non-combat thing from Call of Duty right? 

Thing is Call of Duty is not promising anything in that regard. 

Make mmorpg that focus on combat, make no promises in other deparmants and then it is very much ok if it does not provide that features or provide lack-luster version of them.

Make promises about world, immersive feature wide experience, say that this will be experience for all sort of players, etc and then provide game that all meaningful things revolve around combat = face well deserved shitstorm.

If you don't like incovneniances because for you mmorpg is all about combat - by all means you should have mmorpg's like that for you. You should have plenty of them.  Propably  most of mmorpg's  or  mmo's should be like that.

IF they are solely about slaying monsters. Not all mmorpg's should be ONLY about slaying monsters. And even if they are it should be clearly 'said'.  Nowadays many mmorpg's are promsing something else.

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For 'wish-lists' there were many topics and posts with how should be implemented as well.  I remember even one or two my own posts with propositions HOW said features should look like.

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This is main problem for mmorpg's nowadays.  There are many types of mmorpg players nowadays. Many of them know what they want or at least think they know.

You want to play a game about slaying monsters and everything else in incovenience more or less for you.

I want to play game that is build to mimick some fictional world in a simplified gamey sense, that will have strong combat and strong non-combat elements.

Making a game that will be satisfying for both of us is propably close to zero.  Many of your inconveniences is my game.

Many of your conveniance is trivalization and boredom for me.

My wanted features are inconvenience and boredom for you.

And so on so on.

Still game companies try over and over again to make a game that will be at least INITIALLY attractive for both of us.

Kinda what stoppoed me from playing mmorpg's, among few other things.

Originally posted by lizardbones

Holy cr@p. You made an accurate analogy. On the internet. On the MMORPG forums. I feel like I've just seen Bigfoot.

ROTFLOL!!!!!  Classic :D

Why do I care if something is important to the 'average gamer'?

Comparing MMORPGs to cars is just wrong. Video games are an experience that a few to use actually to depart life. For some of us, actual life is just a joke, something that thousands of years of men have undergone, toiling or doing nothing, but still with no real way to convincingly escape reality. Now video games have offered this for only a quarter of a century and yet there is no comparison; it completely puts down the old ways of mysticism and fantasy novels. Most will never grasp this, just as most are not philosophers or mystics. Again why should I care about the 'average gamer' when I am up here sailing on the clouds? No mystic has ever cared about the common man except to treat him kindly and be of little use to him so that he can go back to doing what he was doing. Thankfully I am not the 'MMORPG audience', as MMMORPGs today are complete shit. But since gaming evolution ended on a non sequitour wit hMMORPGs I do often revisit the genre.

Your analogy isn't quite right because the car person is showing they may have actual knowledge of how the systems in the car work and how to get the most out of them. Where as most people on these boards are utterly clueless to the real systems inside a game, how they work, how to get the most out of them, and how "simple" it is to "just add this one thing" to a game.

A better analogy would be comparing these forums users to those who hang around on movie sites commenting on the movies they like and don't like. There you will also see a lack of knowledge and many quotes about how the soon to be released movie will be the best ever followed shortly after release by the same person claiming they ruined the whole movie and that they suck.

This is a site of people who are big fans of the MMO genre, not necessarily people who have a deep understanding and knowledge of MMO. Hell you'll see people comment on how a game did something none had ever done before and some MMO 10 years ago did the same thing.