Content locust are somewhat of a problem, however on the other hand game companies who spen 200 million and 5 years in development that deliver 2 months worth of content is a problem.  Most compaines now days are falling into this. Long development cycles with not much content. Folks goble it up and go ok whats next.  

Suposedly swtor was to have 10 years of content, that has yet to show up. Despite the fact we were told they had banked content in the wings waiting. 

Originally posted by Burntvet

And yet, none of the things mentioned in the article will stop MMORPG.com from having dozens of features/articles/columns/previews/anything else hype and praise the next "themepark of the week" to the skies.

We have seen it over and over again.

How can the "themepark of the week" MMOs continue to garner such heavy coverage and positives reviews, at this site and others, and then crash 2-3 months after launch?

 

Just because sandboxes promote longevity in a game, doesnt mean that themeparks are bad games.  MMORPG.com reports on all upcoming games, it is hardly their fault that there are more themeparks than sandboxes. Sandboxes are hard to make, and often financially unviable.

Sandbox fans need to stop being such negative Nancy's and start accepting the diversity of interests in the genre. Follow games you like, ignore ones you don't. The industry doesn't revolve around you.

The fundamental error I see in this analysis is that your "content locusts" don't generally value content.


They get into a game pre-launch if they can, race to level cap without reading a scrap of quest content if they can skip it for efficiency, and then gain style points minimizing the endgame/PvP and bitching about the failings of the balance and mechanics on every game forum on the web.

Since they often come with well organized multi-game (short attention span) guilds, the guild leaders are invited to puffed up summits to "fix" the game in beta and earl y launch, but they move on anyway.

Loud and outspoken, they dominate forums and influence the press because that's their metagame. And in toto, crafters, explorers, socializers, any other play style is left as a silent plurality, unserved.

It's killing the industry that a fashion has emerged that it is more cool to rush to level cap in AAAs and then trash them publicly in social media and move on.

It means that the strategy of  over-hyping the box, getting a few heavy months of subs, then going f2p is actually the only reasonable minimaxed strategy to pay for a AAA production.


Because hell, no one is going to settle for lame graphics or incremental development (minecraft aside). The MMO piranha want something near-excellent to diss.

No, not content locust.  MMO piranha.  Leaving bloody scraps in their wake, including a mangled playerbase that likes the game that's shutting down, or laying off devs who then can't produce new content or maintain what they've made.

 Sorry , but I need to disagree on "Content locusts not being a bad thing". It is a bad thing , I mean c'mon now , if you're planning on playing a game just to rush through content and getting the hell out then please stick to solo console games.  Besides EVE-Online that delivers a non level cap system and great economy , I see no other MMO trying to do what CCP did what EVE-Online. 

  And what "next hotness" are we talking about? How many times do I need to say this? Take all releases within the past 5 years and there is no difference between all of them , except for the login screen and color of the sky. That's about it.  If Guild Wars 2 was called for example Cup Wars 2 , the game would of had negative 5$ sale on release day. The real problem is people finding "awesomness" in a game that isn't that awesome in the first place , and the "hype" meter on this site shows how right I am.      My kind of MMO that I'm looking forward at trying is End Of Nations , why? Because it's not like every other release!  It's something different!  And more Devs need to try something different.   I'm pretty sure that FF14 will still end up being a failure after all the "over hauls" , yet people are expecting it to be the next big thing the world have never seen before.  Please spare me God...!!!!

Originally posted by evilastro

Originally posted by Burntvet

And yet, none of the things mentioned in the article will stop MMORPG.com from having dozens of features/articles/columns/previews/anything else hype and praise the next "themepark of the week" to the skies.

We have seen it over and over again.

How can the "themepark of the week" MMOs continue to garner such heavy coverage and positives reviews, at this site and others, and then crash 2-3 months after launch?

 

Just because sandboxes promote longevity in a game, doesnt mean that themeparks are bad games.  MMORPG.com reports on all upcoming games, it is hardly their fault that there are more themeparks than sandboxes. Sandboxes are hard to make, and often financially unviable.

Sandbox fans need to stop being such negative Nancy's and start accepting the diversity of interests in the genre. Follow games you like, ignore ones you don't. The industry doesn't revolve around you.

Nice in theory, but the gaming press, including MMORPG.com hypes up these mediocre games EVERY TIME.

Not occasionally, not once or twice, but all the time.

And not with 3 or 4 articles, but 20? 30? More than 100 in TOR's case, for example.

And then the games tank a couple months in, after glowing reviews, that seem to miss all the reasons these games crash, while over emphasizing whatever positive aspects there are.

The reviewers can't see the shortcomings? The shallow play? The same game mechanics for the Nth time? The same quests and the same classes? Have these people never played an MMO before? (If so, what are they doing reviewing them in the first place).

And yet, the big scores keep rolling in.

And whether or not I am a sandbox fan, has nothing to do with any of that.

This article takes issue with the shortcomings of recent MMOs.

I take issue with the gaming press not mentioning or noticing these shortcomings when they overrate and hype the mediocre games we have been seeing.

Quite well written, but not exactly spot on. Content locusts are a problem in the sense that they give the standard for minimum play time the game offers. What happens to perspective subscribers when they see articles and forum posts like 2 days to reach level cap ? This is very destructive for any MMO.

Now I am not a veteran MMO player (only played a few and realy stayed only with EVE), but I am not the typical casual player either. I like to explore the game without it bugging me about anything (I hate the way RIFT anounces events f.e.). Also I like to study a game system (I contracted this disease in EVE). What I'ce seen lately is that you are not allowed to see much into the future of your character. The skill descriptions are unclear, there's almost no help on the stat systems etc. So I realy can't do much more than to follow the quest path created by the devs.

We are forced to turn into content locusts. And it seems many people are slowly getting stomach aches :-)

I do not agree with the Foundry system being any kind of a solution. There are very few good designers but many loud and bad critics :-)

I thnk people don't realize the sheer amount of people that stick with games sometimes..  It's considered a failure here if a game holds 200k people as active players. 

Thas is two hundred thousand men, women and boys...and some little girls.  Some games have more, some have less but if you have somewhere in that vicinity of people that is a shitload of people.

There is more than one reason we need developers to make games. It's all well and good to support the notion of enabling players to create their own game content by means of editors and Cryptic like foundry tools to make missions. However, you will end up with the same issues that have reared their ugly head with every game that has tried it. You will have a very few gems amidst a ton of utter CRAP and a slew of exploitive missions to loot or level you up by means of skipping any actual content. It becomes self defeating because the quiet line of MMO gaming is that if a mechanic or system can be exploited or cheated then it will be.

The only thing that keeps MMORPGs going is a variety of options to keep you entertained in one package. That's partly why they warrant a subscription. Once you start specializing then the game becomes something else. You might as well create a MOBA.

I am not afraid of content devouring players and simply see it as a by product of modern theme park game design. Everything is on rails and some people can speed along them better than others. To me, it's just another sign that people may well be too good at and too worn out by the same play model we keep seeing over and over. Regretfully if I honestly knew how to buck the trend I’d go cash in rather than write about it here. :)

I have to agree, but I think part of the problem is also that you can play one MMO a long time with rather repetetive content, it is after that you get tired and dont feel to do it again. That is how Wow pulled it off, the large percentage of its players were new to the genre.

And adding player created content is indeed the easiest way to solve longviety. Another is more competetive PvP but that becomes better as well if you mix it with player created content.

I believe that the next generation of MMOs will have at least partly player created content one way or another. The real problem is to make this attractive to both soloplayers and guildplayers.

I dont think NWNs idea of player created dungeons is the best way, I rather have guild owned dungeons were other guilds try to solve the dungeons, in a PvE server would those dungeons be populated by hired in or collected monsters while on PvE servers players would populate them instead. Make it so that the guilds earn money based on how far they get into others dungeons and their own dungeon would generate some cash depending how well it stop others to solve it.

The secret to a game's longevity seems to crystallize as "player-made content". How neo-classic.

Originally posted by Burntvet

And yet, none of the things mentioned in the article will stop MMORPG.com from having dozens of features/articles/columns/previews/anything else hype and praise the next "themepark of the week" to the skies.

We have seen it over and over again.

How can the "themepark of the week" MMOs continue to garner such heavy coverage and positives reviews, at this site and others, and then crash 2-3 months after launch?

This strikes at the heart of the mmorpg genre for me^. It does not even have to be a crash if a transient userbase (ie high value to immigration/ emmigration turn-over even if it's positive and not negative!).

An idealistic opinion of mmorpgs: Each one caters to a specific community of players. But - when massively = transient crowd where ironically everyone else is also transient (locusts is neat analogy: there for the crops before the next field): The quality of the game is never going to be that exceptional for what it potentially could be imo.

Instead of locusts we need ants!

Originally posted by MumboJumbo

Originally posted by Burntvet

And yet, none of the things mentioned in the article will stop MMORPG.com from having dozens of features/articles/columns/previews/anything else hype and praise the next "themepark of the week" to the skies.

We have seen it over and over again.

How can the "themepark of the week" MMOs continue to garner such heavy coverage and positives reviews, at this site and others, and then crash 2-3 months after launch?

This strikes at the heart of the mmorpg genre for me^. It does not even have to be a crash if a transient userbase (ie high value to immigration/ emmigration turn-over even if it's positive and not negative!).

An idealistic opinion of mmorpgs: Each one caters to a specific community of players. But - when massively = transient crowd where ironically everyone else is also transient (locusts is neat analogy: there for the crops before the next field): The quality of the game is never going to be that exceptional for what it potentially could be imo.

Instead of locusts we need ants!

I've always wondered if it is because the reviews are written at the height of the 'newness' factor of an mmo. The review is released before the reviewer starts seeing the real cracks in the armor, before the emotional connection to the game wears off. Y'know, that feeling most of us have for the first month or two of playing a game - then the review comes out, and its glowing. Then the players and the reviewers start realizing the game is NOT all that great around the same time......tooo late, the review is out. Why didn't the reviewer realize this? Same reason the players don't for several weeks into game play.

Just a theory.

Maybe one of the reviewers here could comment. Have any of you ever regretted your review after a few more weeks of gameplay?

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Originally posted by MumboJumbo

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Originally posted by Burntvet And yet, none of the things mentioned in the article will stop MMORPG.com from having dozens of features/articles/columns/previews/anything else hype and praise the next "themepark of the week" to the skies. We have seen it over and over again. How can the "themepark of the week" MMOs continue to garner such heavy coverage and positives reviews, at this site and others, and then crash 2-3 months after launch?

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This strikes at the heart of the mmorpg genre for me^. It does not even have to be a crash if a transient userbase (ie high value to immigration/ emmigration turn-over even if it's positive and not negative!).

An idealistic opinion of mmorpgs: Each one caters to a specific community of players. But - when massively = transient crowd where ironically everyone else is also transient (locusts is neat analogy: there for the crops before the next field): The quality of the game is never going to be that exceptional for what it potentially could be imo.

Instead of locusts we need ants!

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