Originally posted by DonY81
Is it me or are MMOs of late including future ones getting less and less classes. 4 seems to be the magic number these days. It majorly turns me off to be honest. I like options, more depth. It feels MMOs are just getting less and less depth about them. Am i the only 1 whose seeing this. Maybe im getting too picky....is it me?

No, it's not just you.  I see that as a design decision to reduce production costs, make class balance easier, reduce development team size and reduce production time to get the product out the door faster so the suits can earn as much profit as possible before moving on to the next cash grab.

Originally posted by Latronus

Originally posted by DonY81
Is it me or are MMOs of late including future ones getting less and less classes. 4 seems to be the magic number these days. It majorly turns me off to be honest. I like options, more depth. It feels MMOs are just getting less and less depth about them. Am i the only 1 whose seeing this. Maybe im getting too picky....is it me?

No, it's not just you.  I see that as a design decision to reduce production costs, make class balance easier, reduce development team size and reduce production time to get the product out the door faster so the suits can earn as much profit as possible before moving on to the next cash grab.

Its really sad. This is a perfect time for a developer to put in a shift and get creative because at the moment its just damn right dull. Im playing GW2 at the moment. Its ok but for thats all it is, is ok. It will get me by until something better comes along. Also i just do not have anything on my radar that could grab my attention.

Ahh, damn this is turing into a rant but you get my drift.

They know they can get away with it.

Recipe for success.

Develop less,

develop faster,

(Low cost),

Hype product,

(High box sales)

Community complains,

Company makes promises,

Game loses subs,

Game goes F2P,

Game gains players, and increase revenue.

Cut down the crew.

Start new project

Repeat.

Originally posted by DonY81

Originally posted by Latronus

Originally posted by DonY81
Is it me or are MMOs of late including future ones getting less and less classes. 4 seems to be the magic number these days. It majorly turns me off to be honest. I like options, more depth. It feels MMOs are just getting less and less depth about them. Am i the only 1 whose seeing this. Maybe im getting too picky....is it me?

No, it's not just you.  I see that as a design decision to reduce production costs, make class balance easier, reduce development team size and reduce production time to get the product out the door faster so the suits can earn as much profit as possible before moving on to the next cash grab.

Its really sad. This is a perfect time for a developer to put in a shift and get creative because at the moment its just damn right dull. Im playing GW2 at the moment. Its ok but for thats all it is, is ok. It will get me by until something better comes along. Also i just do not have anything on my radar that could grab my attention.

 

Ahh, damn this is turing into a rant but you get my drift.

I hear ya and agree...

Originally posted by DonY81
Is it me or are MMOs of late including future ones getting less and less classes. 4 seems to be the magic number these days. It majorly turns me off to be honest. I like options, more depth. It feels MMOs are just getting less and less depth about them. Am i the only 1 whose seeing this. Maybe im getting too picky....is it me?

nope, your not the only one. AoW pulled me out of the battlegrounds, dungeons, crafting, daily pit of disspare when there was no hope insight.

Originally posted by bcbully

Originally posted by DonY81
Is it me or are MMOs of late including future ones getting less and less classes. 4 seems to be the magic number these days. It majorly turns me off to be honest. I like options, more depth. It feels MMOs are just getting less and less depth about them. Am i the only 1 whose seeing this. Maybe im getting too picky....is it me?

nope, your not the only one. AoW pulled me out of the battle grounds, dungeons, crafting, daily pit of disspare.

See, i want to play that but AOW is only really available for the US atm. Im from the Uk and wulin....well ...is it going to happen?

If only that was the only thing that was being dumb down... But the reality is that the whole genre is being nerfed into oblivion.

Where are the deep, complex and long lasting world MMO?!  Yep, nowhere... for now and even for the not so near future.

/sigh

Have a look over the features available in FFXIV when ARR (re)launches this summer. They're aiming for a very feature rich launch with a great variety of gameplay systems to add depth to the game. IMO it's looking like the most feature-rich launch of a major MMO in over a decade.

It's very much the exception though as you're right OP, MMOs in general are getting shallower and shallower as the investors behind them are just trying to milk them for as much short-term profit as possible. They don't care about long-term profit from subscriptions because copying WoW doesn't work and they won't allow devs to try anything else.

Originally posted by bcbully

Originally posted by DonY81
Is it me or are MMOs of late including future ones getting less and less classes. 4 seems to be the magic number these days. It majorly turns me off to be honest. I like options, more depth. It feels MMOs are just getting less and less depth about them. Am i the only 1 whose seeing this. Maybe im getting too picky....is it me?

nope, your not the only one. AoW pulled me out of the battlegrounds, dungeons, crafting, daily pit of disspare when there was no hope insight.

Yeah I'll definitely be trying AoW.  I'm trying to hold to my principle of not playing a mmorpg until a few months after release.  I want the bugs and translation problems to get worked out.

Archeage is also on the horizon which is a must try.

Originally posted by Alberel

Have a look over the features available in FFXIV when ARR (re)launches this summer. They're aiming for a very feature rich launch with a great variety of gameplay systems to add depth to the game. IMO it's looking like the most feature-rich launch of a major MMO in over a decade.

It's very much the exception though as you're right OP, MMOs in general are getting shallower and shallower as the investors behind them are just trying to milk them for as much short-term profit as possible. They don't care about long-term profit from subscriptions because copying WoW doesn't work and they won't allow devs to try anything else.

The FFXIV ARR Alpha I played was as generic as it gets.

Originally posted by Magiknight
Even those games that offer more options dont actually offer any options. All of the classes are becoming homogenized. So although you can pick multiple classes they are all very identical. If you have real choices you would have strong differences between the classes. You don't see these differeces anymore. The gaming community has made it taboo for their to be weakness in any class.

exactly. one size fits all mentality. heaven forbid a class have a weakness. waah why cant my warrior heal itself, waah why cant my healer also do some damage, waah why cant my glass cannon wear heavy plate!! no choice anymore as far as classes. you might get some choice in how you spec such as a few more points of damage or a few more on defense but thats it. easy and lazy but hey if you can make millions doing the least amount of work, why wouldnt you?

Originally posted by DonY81

Originally posted by bcbully

Originally posted by DonY81
Is it me or are MMOs of late including future ones getting less and less classes. 4 seems to be the magic number these days. It majorly turns me off to be honest. I like options, more depth. It feels MMOs are just getting less and less depth about them. Am i the only 1 whose seeing this. Maybe im getting too picky....is it me?

nope, your not the only one. AoW pulled me out of the battle grounds, dungeons, crafting, daily pit of disspare.

See, i want to play that but AOW is only really available for the US atm. Im from the Uk and wulin....well ...is it going to happen?

There was a new post from gpotato today on their site. Basically they said: Translations are done. Team is working on a final beta client. Beta will open in february sometime. Launch will be "Early 2013".

This game has gender locked schools though, but you can allways steal skills in script raids from the other schools. THere are also rare skills that will drop in events that only a few players will get. They have high costs to cast and learn but you will play carefully around these. You can even see your character look change as you progress in the skills :)

Playing from Norway, the russian server with engrish translations is currently best as long as you have english friends. Look in the thread "Toally free Wushu" for how to get on the russian server and find the english guild.

I'd like to promote TSW a bit here too (which I also play). There are no classes and you make your own as you go from a large pool of skills. Almost like Magic the Gathering or GW1. Also you can switch builds at any time out of combat to adapt to the world.

EVE (again which I play) is the same way, but getting all skills here is impossible as they add skills faster than you could learn. There are no builds though, your build is your ship.

There are a lot of lazy developers which make cookie-cutter classes. Some even discard roles and make all their "classes" almost equal in their role. Just don't give the developers of shallow games money :)

Originally posted by Mardukk
You are correct op. They are reducing distinctive classes likely due to the fact that they refuse to separste pvp and pve ability mechanics. When they don't separate the ability effects they force themselves to make classes very similar and cc effects very boring and weak. This is one of my biggest issues with later mmos.

I think the biggest issue here is the crybabies in the forums screaming for balance 1v1. In a multiplayer role playing game I think you should expect to have to bring a composite team to the fight and not cry beacause your ranged glass cannon was caught and killed by a melee dps.

If you get killed, get some friends and find a tactic to win.. :)

---

Originally posted by PieRad
They know they can get away with it.

 

Recipe for success.

 

Develop less,

develop faster,

(Low cost),

Hype product,

(High box sales)

Community complains,

Company makes promises,

Game loses subs,

Game goes F2P,

Game gains players, and increase revenue.

Cut down the crew.

 

Start new project

Repeat.

---

LOL very true + make tons of fashions available at Item Shop and even game marriages, sell might for high price and generate great revenue.