You could say that game play and "scope" have suffered as graphics have sky rocketed.  The only exception I can think of here is FPS.  Every other genre seems to sacrifice to stay in the graphical arms race.

Because it's fun to talk shit about MMORPGs?  Actually, I should just remove the question mark, thats a statement.  It is fun to talk shit about MMORPGs.  

To be a little a little less cynical, the genre has potential, it just isn't there yet.  The last few years of failed WoW clones might be enough to steer the genre in another direction.  You think Blizzard is dumb enough to try to clone WoW with their next release?  I highly doubt it.  

Originally posted by Drachasor

Originally posted by Tatum

Originally posted by Drachasor

Originally posted by Tatum

People were complaining about $15 subs even before the economy was terrible.  Fact is, most of us have a skewed perspective when it comes to spending.  Example:

People complain that $15 per month is too much for gaming yet,

They'll spend $20 at the movies watching a crappy summer flick, munching on popcorn and chugging coke (two hours of entertainment, at most)

They'll spend $7 per meal for crappy fast food...and do this at least a few times per week

$15 per month is VERY cheap for a hobby.  Mostly, it's just an issue of the games not really being worthy of charging a monthly fee, regardless of price.  If you spend a good amount of time playing a specific MMO, $15 is a steal.  Far far cheaper than the console gamer who buys a new, $60, beatable-in-one-weekend, console game every other week.

Comparing completely different industries isn't a very valid way to look at it.

Money is money, regardless of which non-essential thing you're spending it on.

If you want to make the claim that these games have no basis for charging monthly subs, then go for it.  That's a valid arguement.  However, there is no way you can prove that $15 per month, for a hobby, is expensive.  It's not.  

Well then, go spend time with loved ones.  It's free.  All that other stupid stuff like eating, games, and movies is a waste of money.  Jump in puddles.  Go for a walk.  Use your imagination.  Talk to people.  Clearly with all the entertainment options that are free, it means everything else is overpriced.

Frankly, the most ridiculous argument you can have for something being priced reasonably is that "X, which is completely different, costs more."  If the above things that are free suddenly started costing money, it would be quite fair to say that's insane even if other forms of entertainment were more expensive.

I have plenty of other hobbies and none of them are 100% free.  That's reality.

Like I said, if you want to say that these games should NOT have a sub fee, then fair enough.  It looks like the market is moving away from that anyway.  Make no mistake though, you're going to pay one way or the other, whether it's monthly subs, or constant expansions, or microtransactions...

MMORPGs have been the cheapest form of gaming out there.  The problem isn't the price of the sub fee, it's the suckiness of the games that makes us question why we're paying a sub fee in the first place.  

If people can't dig up $15 for some thing that they spend 80 hours (maybe) per month doing, then they have no clue how to manage their money.

Anyone in the beta?  I looked into this game a while back and it seemed promising as in indie, sandboxy, skill based game.

Originally posted by Drachasor

Originally posted by Tatum

People were complaining about $15 subs even before the economy was terrible.  Fact is, most of us have a skewed perspective when it comes to spending.  Example:

People complain that $15 per month is too much for gaming yet,

They'll spend $20 at the movies watching a crappy summer flick, munching on popcorn and chugging coke (two hours of entertainment, at most)

They'll spend $7 per meal for crappy fast food...and do this at least a few times per week

$15 per month is VERY cheap for a hobby.  Mostly, it's just an issue of the games not really being worthy of charging a monthly fee, regardless of price.  If you spend a good amount of time playing a specific MMO, $15 is a steal.  Far far cheaper than the console gamer who buys a new, $60, beatable-in-one-weekend, console game every other week.

Comparing completely different industries isn't a very valid way to look at it.

Money is money, regardless of which non-essential thing you're spending it on.

If you want to make the claim that these games have no basis for charging monthly subs, then go for it.  That's a valid arguement.  However, there is no way you can prove that $15 per month, for a hobby, is expensive.  It's not.  

People were complaining about $15 subs even before the economy was terrible.  Fact is, most of us have a skewed perspective when it comes to spending.  Example:

People complain that $15 per month is too much for gaming yet,

They'll spend $20 at the movies watching a crappy summer flick, munching on popcorn and chugging coke (two hours of entertainment, at most)

They'll spend $7 per meal for crappy fast food...and do this at least a few times per week

$15 per month is VERY cheap for a hobby.  Mostly, it's just an issue of the games not really being worthy of charging a monthly fee, regardless of price.  If you spend a good amount of time playing a specific MMO, $15 is a steal.  Far far cheaper than the console gamer who buys a new, $60, beatable-in-one-weekend, console game every other week.

Originally posted by arieste

I have changed.  I'm better at playing MMORPGs.  I'm more experienced.  I can play damn near any MMO out there without a manual and quickly get good at it.  Killing a wolf and finding a sword no longer has any novelty for me.  Not because it's not cool, but because i've killed hunreds of different wolves and have found thousands of different swords.  It's not the wolf's fault or the sword's fault.  It could very well be the best realized wolf in history, and the coolest sword in history, but it simply takes more than a wolf and a sword to entertain me now.

 There is the issue that today's game continue to be built as though we've never played one.  The problem isn't that before it took 10 minutes to find a cool place, but now it takes 5.  The problem is that finding a cool place isn't that cool anymore.  The experiences the games offer are the same experiences we've had countless times.  In order to create that sense of newness and wonder, they have to offer new experiences.   If some game out there had a "seed" feature that allowed a player to plant a seed anywhere in the world and that seed would grow over a month and eventually become a tree, this would create the experience of newness and wonder for the player - because a player hasn't done anything like that before.  Now, planting trees is not a particularly exciting thing to do and you can't really base a game around it, but the point i'm trying to make is that to get people to feel like they're discovering something new, you have to create new mechanics and ways to interact with the game.  Building a harder boss or having 20km zones instead of 5km zones changes very little. 

That's pretty much the issue.

Personally, I'm not optimistic.  Why would developers work on some thing "new" when they can just roll out the same old template and gaurantee some sort of return for their investors?

 Are developers finally realizing the attraction of a "sandbox" world?

No.

As far as single/muti-player games go, yea I think they are.  Just look at how many of those games have some sort of open-world element to them.  They're still not all that open ended or 'sandboxy", but they've moved further away from the linear route.

MMORPS, on the other hand, have moved more towards directed game play.  Go here, do this quest, go there, do that quest, level, repeat.

Until one of the big developers really hits it with a more open-ended MMORPG, I don't see how you'll see much of a shift.

Interesting question.  I think theres a couple things you have to realize:

1) In the old days, MMORPGs were completely new to us.  Every thing was mysterious and exciting.

2) Newer MMOs have tilted more towards "content" and being user friendly.

Most of it comes down to predictability.  These games have become more and more predictable, partly because we've seen it all before and partly because players complain when they're challenged or surprised in an MMO.  You're not going to find much mystery with instanced questing and static mob spawns unless you're completely new to the genre.

Could some one make an MMO that feels "new" and "mysterious"?  Definately.  Will it happen?  Who knows.  One thing is for sure, it would have to be an MMO that breaks the old 1-2-3 button mashing, mob killing, quest training, level grinder mold.  

Originally posted by gestalt11

 They are both bad.  That is why its best to have some sort of counter and tradeoff system.  Timers are brainless and limiting.  CC with no counter has well known problems.  You cannot allow CC to go unchecked or it makes gameplay crap for many people.  But you also need to make countering CC for the defender both a mindful process and something that has a tradeoff in the tacitcal situation.

Counters sound great, but how exactly do you do that in a balanced, skilled way?  Giving every class a counter would make CC a waste of time.  Giving one class a counter would put way too much importance on that one class.  Not sayiing it can't be done, just that I don't think any one has nailed it yet.  Most often, CC is either way too powerful, or really crappy.  

Of course, this isn't really an issue with PvE, only PvP.  And, if we're being honest here, PvP "balance" generally means that combat is reduced to it's most basic form of who can spam DPS the fastest...

Originally posted by Axehilt

Originally posted by Tatum

Simple solution.

Single target.  Short duration.  No cool down, but some form of immunity timer.  This would require a really active play style where you're constantly casting and recasting your CC.  No long duration, AE CC like the old days.  No long cool down timer crap like you see now.

 

Immunity timers which aren't player-instigated are a terrible mechanic.  A game's combat quality is strongly based on the relationship between action and result.

WAR's immunity timers ruined its combat.  They gave characters excessive CC (and AOE CC) and then tried to balance that with immunity timers.  The result is that your amazing CC capabilities aren't really that amazing because half the time they don't do anything at all.

Combat is simply better when abilities consistently do what they say. 

Except that, with NO immunity timer, you have the potential for "mez lock" or "stun lock" or what ever you want to call it.  At the least, you need an immunity timer that gives diminishing returns on effects when a target is hit over and over with the exact same spell.

I'd MUCH rather deal with an immunity than a cool down.  Placing cool downs on your CC skills really sucks the skill out of a system.  Sure, the skills are effective when they're up, but mostly you're just staring at a tiimer.

There's still some hope with features like public quests and dynamic PvE ( or what ever Guild Wars 2 is attempting).  All it takes is one successful MMO to prove that it can work.

Simple solution.

Single target.  Short duration.  No cool down, but some form of immunity timer.  This would require a really active play style where you're constantly casting and recasting your CC.  No long duration, AE CC like the old days.  No long cool down timer crap like you see now.

Good article and good responses.

We could hammer this out over about a hundred pages, but I think there are a few major points here.

Combat - It's bad.  But, that hasn't really changed.  In some ways it has improved a little.  Your character has more to do now and is more diverse...which also makes combat feel clunky (trying to juggle 40 quick bars full of skills).  Not to mention, with so many skills on cool down you spend most of your time watching the UI and running through the same patterns, rather than reacting to the action.

Risk - A little bit of risk can go a long way towards making things exciting.  You don't need horribly punishing death penalties that take away a weeks worth of grinding, just some thing (any thing) to actually make you fear death.

Mystery - Really, this ties in with every thing else and is maybe the biggest change from early MMOs.  It's far too easy to know and predict every single element of these games.  Static worlds, scripted, instanced encounters, predictable AI...

Originally posted by Harabeck

Originally posted by Tatum

Originally posted by Harabeck

 

Have you read about the combat? Sound incredibly dull. Hardlock and a big focus on auto-attacks with some kind of weird stance switching system.

Welcome to the mmorpg genre.  Dull combat is sort of the standard...despite the fact that most of these games choose to focus on combat...

Take a better look around. We've got some great alternatives out now and coming soon.

Like what?  I know of "better" versions of the typical shit (guildwars) and a few odd ones (planetside, DDO), but I've yet to see any thing great.  I certainly haven't heard of any thing new that would break the trend.

 They'll continue to reward based on time.  The amount of "non-gamers" in this genre is, and has always been, massive.  If they suddenly started mixing skill and risk into the equation the bitching would be of epic proportions.  For the same reason, even as technology improves, we'll still see mostly auto-target, button mashing combat systems.  

Originally posted by Harabeck

 

Have you read about the combat? Sound incredibly dull. Hardlock and a big focus on auto-attacks with some kind of weird stance switching system.

Welcome to the mmorpg genre.  Dull combat is sort of the standard...despite the fact that most of these games choose to focus on combat...

Lobotomist, not sure why this game isn't on the list, I've wondered that myself.  Some of us ARE interested in the game, but personally, I've learned my lesson about closely following games that are early in development.  I like their ideas though, a very sanboxy MMO that doesn't focus on a FFA PvP gankfest.

Originally posted by steuss

Alts are a broken answer to broken systems. When you create a system that limits the player people get bored and create alts to do something new.

 

When games reflect more real-time interactions people will no longer be pigeonholed by their online avatar's characters, but by their own knowledge and skill.

 

 

Pretty much.

Your game play options are usually limited to:

1) grind levels

2) grind end game

If you don't like grinding end game, you're only other option is to roll alts.  Personally, I'd prefer a single character server, but the game needs to be designed around that idea.

This is like poking a bear with a stick, then acting surprised when the bear wakes up and rips your scalp off...

If the game allows ganking, you better believe there will be some amount of ganking.  The idea of a gank-free, FFA PvP game is ridiculous.  There will allows be a population of random PK players out there and that population will always be bigger than what developers (apparently) expect. 

The reason people gank is irrelevant.  If you don't want ganking, make the game faction vs faction or realm vs realm.

I've always like utility classes more than any thing else.  They're much more about awareness and reaction, rather than dps or healing.

Light spec Eldrich from DAOC is still my favorite.  That was a really versitile CC/utility class.  It's too bad, you don't see CC or utility classes like that any more. Now it's more about limited CC and boring, ambiguous debuffs.