Player Perspectives (Archived): You've Lost that Lovin' Feeling
After playing the single-player RPG Zelda: Twilight Princess, Player Perspectives columnist Jaime Skelton wrote this article on the magic of video games and what MMOs can do to re-capture it.
Column By Jaime Skelton on March 05, 2010
This past week, I've been playing The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess. Now I'll warn you now, this is my first Zelda game and this is also my first play-through (and I'm playing blind - i.e. no walk-throughs or outside help). I lived a very console-deprived youth. I had an original NES and a Sega Genesis, after which consoles were deemed too expensive in my household; my gaming was redirected back to PCs. Until a few years ago, I actually thought the little guy in green was Zelda. Although I am in a console-loving home now, I have a lot of gaming to catch up on, but, as you all know, MMOs can suck a lot of that time away.
I ended up playing Twilight Princess on a whim; my husband has been pushing for me to play Zelda, any Zelda, for a while now. After watching a friend play through some of Ocarina of Time, I finally acted on my husband's advice, chose Twilight Princess, and began playing. Although I often only pick up RPGs for a few hours before quitting, I've been consistent in playing a few hours almost every night. A few nights ago, I went through an interesting boss sequence, one which involved mounted combat, good timing, and foresight. It lasted several minutes, and when it was over, I leaned back in my chair with a huge grin. My arms ached, but it was fun, and the excitement of that entire boss fight lasted for a long while afterward.
It then made me realize something: I have rarely felt so enthused while playing an MMO; at least, not while playing PvE. PvPing has a natural way of giving you that mystical "thrill" video games are supposed to offer; that's simply due to the adrenaline from real time combat between two players. Let's set that aside for a moment, however, and look at the PvE a game offers - its quests, its environment, its dungeons and boss encounters. Where is the same excitement that a single player RPG can offer? Why are MMOs so dull?
Many have come to blame the boredom of MMOs on what's called the "theme park," a quest-driven landscape in which players always have some predetermined goal to achieve. It's fair to argue that this questing has become simply a different flavor of grinding. The problem isn't the questing grind itself, however. Quests are what drive the story of an RPG, even more open ended games like Oblivion or Fable. The problem goes even beyond the quest design to the game design itself. Quests and battles have become short, predictable, repeatable. The steps to the dance may be different, but whether you're fighting Heigan, Sartharion, or Sindragosa, the abilities you use, and the "rules of the game," are always the same patterned responses. And, worse than that, you'll be back next week to repeat the same pattern in hopes of the elusive golden trinket of awesomeness.
Part of the problem lies in an MMO game system's predictability. When I head into a new area in an MMO, I generally know a few things about my enemies. I know the aggro radius. I can see whether the creature is aggressive or not. I can even tell how its level and difficulty compare to my character. I know a general series of abilities that my character can use to defeat any creature, and I know the rest of my abilities should it offer certain responses (for example, a root for a creature that runs away, or a silence to interrupt a caster). I know how reliable the environment is (few environments offer surprises like traps or falling debris). I know that if a quest in the area wants me to collect 10 shiny baubles, it will tell me where to find them, and I know they will either appear on the corpses of the enemies I am told to kill as a portion of loot, or as an interactive object in the local environment. Get ye quest, kill, loot, return. Rinse, repeat.
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If predictability is part of the problem, the other part is repetition. Single player RPGs offer a semi-linear pathway; there is a beginning and, after meeting certain conditions, there is an ending. MMOs, however, have to offer a persistent world; they can't afford to have an ending. Worse than that, however, is the fact that MMOs seem to be incapable of offering a "one-time" experience for a character. The death of a villain in an MMO is not final; it's merely a temporary death designated to help a character complete an objective. There is no sense of permanence; I can return to defeat the dragon as many times as I want, and it's the same story, the same fight, the same pattern every time. As the sense of permanence deteriorates, so does the sense of achievement; as repetition sets in, the fun fades. Voila: a recipe for MMO burnout.
Single-player gamers generally find fault with MMOs because they find them dull and lifeless. Perhaps they're right on that account. The MMO gaming experience has devolved into a game of numbers, far more so than any other genre. While every game possesses its own methods of min-maxing and power gaming, the MMO has made number-crunching "the way." If you don't adhere closely to recommended specs, talents, rotations, or reach certain measurable performance standards, you are the outcast: the noob who needs to L2P, the player who "sucks," the underachiever, even if your methods procure a fun way to play.
What MMOs need is genuine innovation: not just a new way to kill ten rats, but a complete rethinking of character development and environment interaction. MMO developers need to reach into the great big bag of tricks the rest of the video game industry uses, at the least; more ideally, they should be inventive, creative, break away from the mold that we can carry with us from MMO to MMO. The problem with the industry needing innovation is that while the players can chant that mantra until they're hoarse, the responsibility lies in the developers' hands to provide it. Until they take that responsibility seriously, players are left waiting either empty-handed or entertaining themselves with the same-old.
Every time I find myself getting wrapped up in a single-player game, I feel that tiredness of the genre creeping in again. I wonder if MMOs will ever be fun again. Heck, sometimes I wonder if they were ever fun in the first place. I wonder if the industry is killing itself, and whether they'll ever care enough to make a change. Like most of you, I come back because MMOs have a unique pull on my gaming habits, a draw that makes them the "game of choice." There's no denying, however, that the genre needs a serious kick start, an injection of fun that's been lost in translation for a long time. Whoever brings it first will be well remembered in our history.
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Holy crap, This is like the first time i've read something on this site from a blogger and can totally relate.
The way this person feels after playing Zelda is exactly how I felt after completing Mass Effect.
Your spot on, the mmo genre never was fun when it came to pve and the high quality single player games are pulling so far away i find myself sticking to games with pvp for my only enjoyment.
What a great article.
The problem with MMO's is that they have taken all the challenge out of the games to appease the masses of the "I want it now" generation. Heaven forbid they have to work for anything. All the baubles are in predetermined locations so you don't have to search for them. Quests have no mystery to them, they lead you by the hand to finish them. Death has very little meaning in these games.
The class level system has not helped either. Putting your character into a straight jacket with little freedom to evolve your character as you see fit.
Funny, UO initially was not like that. Neither was AC1. EQ started this although it was far more challenging than what we have today. EQ did introduce the horrid raid scenarios though,
Sad to say, I see nothing coming down the pike to change this whatsoever.
The way I see it this is a case of vastly greater AI and script than most MMO even bother putting on their most prized raid bosses.
Also you can make a single player game dynamic, fast acting and responsive because you do not need to take into consideration the network architecture required to efficiently transmit player actions to the other players.
I agree with just about everything you have said in this article. I would love to see the MMO developers reach into that "bag of tricks" and bring some of that unpredictability to a game. Thing is, though, I don't think we'll remember the first developer to do it as much as we'll remember the first time the players actually accept it.
You say
"The problem with the industry needing innovation is that while the players can chant that mantra until they're hoarse, the responsibility lies in the developers' hands to provide it. Until they take that responsibility seriously, players are left waiting either empty-handed or entertaining themselves with the same-old."
but I think part of the responsibility also lies with the community of players. My line would have been something like, 'players can chant that mantra until they're hoarse, but when a developer does try something new it is often met with instant cries of "Fail!" '.
I'm not saying the big innovation is out there already, just that we have not been giving developers much of an incentive to look for it yet. If and when it does arrive we'll probably be able to look back through gaming history to see its origins in other systems that were either too unpolished, or were unfortunate enough to arrive before critical mass had been reached and players were more willing to give "new" a fighting chance.
I do hope to see that day soon, but I fear we are not able to embrace "new" in a way that speaks to the financial needs of development and production of an MMO right now.
So.. yea...
Figured out ten years ago that MMOs have issues and you've just caught up. Well I hope that the rest of the industry catches up soon too.
RPGs are very concentrated experiences. 12 hours and it's done. The game designers put everything you need into it-characters,story,progression.
With MMOs I think it's largely what you put into it. You design a character,you pick your quest chain. Killing 10 rats is interesting if you make it an interesting adventure. It only becomes boring when you apply an RPG 'leveling-up-to-endgame' mentality to it. Hell, I've spent 12 hours fishing in an MMO. It became a contest because I made it one. I don't want some RPG game designer telling me what to do next and what fun is.
i don't think that the two need to be seperate.
Play LoTRO, many of the man quests use instancing cleverly. For example humans watch their city burn for the tutorial, once out of the tutorial our taking quests in the now destroyed city trying to rebuild. In the "epic book" one is a dungon quest and only if you have that part of the quest active does a cutscene end a fight with one of the bosses.
sure you'll segregate the players who "have gone through hell" from those who havent but it adds to imersion.
Let's hope the new Bioware MMO will bring something new to the genre. I've given up on MMOs for now, and I am only playing League of Legends when I feel the PvP cravings. At least there I can skip straight to the action.
Todays mmo devs did this to themselves. In choosing to make mmos solo centric they pulled the wool from the eyes of the mmo gamer.
At the start of the mmo genre our games were nothing but big worlds filled with mobs of varying difficulty.
It was pretty simple yet through social interactions the terrible content was masked.
Now that every game let you solo easily we now notice the horrid fetch quests, the grinds, the lack of a good story.
Now we put these games up against single player adventures.
Oh well, These devs deserve the criticism.
Quests were meaningful in the old EQ. If i did one, it was long and very involved.
I have thought for a while now that if games were to make several story lines that span different level ranges, players will not get bored with muyltiple run throughs becuase they are in the same place with a different branch of the story.
Its a simple idea that could really be worked on so that we have minimal amounts of "Teh orks around hear ar many, kill 10 plz"
I agree with most of the article but the "one time experience" I'm not going along with. I never cared a lot if xyz was popping up somewhere again. I cared how much fun or effort it was to kill him or it. Thus MY experience when it HAPPENED was important - but not the one others would have or if I could (different from must) experience it again. People wouldn't reply games voluntarily AND have fun if the knowledge that even the boss abc is there again would be a problem.
The problem I see in MMO quest design today is they are for convinience, casual playstyle and plain lack of money and good quest designers chopped down in single tiny pieces. Efforts of thinking by the player is not part of the calculation. And no, imprecise or aweful location descriptions equals not "I ask the player to think". ;) I for example remember a very funny quest in Vanguard where I had to do some jump'n'run like stuff to find someone hidden on a roof. I knew that guy was there. I had to figure out how to get there. Took me some time until I managed. But alone the fact that THIS simple experience stands out as positive ... tells us about the sorry state of game ... err quests I think.
The lack of surprise (traps, fainting and waking up somewhere unknown?), unexpected turns in story, fights that are not defined by "n" (the number of mobs you need to kill or loot pieces you need to obtain) but if you figure out something tricky, have good timing, react to a challenging mob ... that is missing in MMOs usually and can be found way more often in single player RPGs.
I have a few of those things in the last EQ2 event quests I'm fond of. I can't put in words how I enjoy the story lines of those recent quests! The halloween thingie with one turning into a werewolf and growing stronger, the maze was fun and the first time I voluntarily repeated a zone, several times even. The cinematic parts. Nice. The quest where I was attacked in the vampire village and screen turned black and I woke suddenly up somewhere else and npc's greeting me when stepping outside "Oh you have woken?" ... atmosphere. The last valentines day quest with the traps in roofs and floors - nice. The will-of-a-tyrann quests both in Queynos and Freeport - great. I didn't expect the Freeport ending. And it took me some time before I started thinking that there must be a trick for the Queynos version and not just plain bad game design. Those are the things that make quests fun. The remainder and main chunk of quests in MMOs unfortunatelly is just that ... the biggest chunk but the remainder,
You forget the major hurdle MMOs have to face, many types of people play and have many levels of skill. If you make quests exciting/challenging to the skilled players, the less skilled players can't come close to beating it and get frustrated to no end. Create quests that are doable by the less skilled players and the skilled players are now bored and simple breeze through the content.
Last month Asheron's Call introduced a new quest for an augment (augments are permanent additions to your character for different skills/stats etc.). Asheron's Call, for those who don't know, is a skill tree/classles game. This means people can set their characters up in many different ways.
Well this quest that was introduced was a challenge, even many skilled players died the first time they entered the dungeon. So there were 3 different threads that went on for pages and pages where the less skilled players (or those who set up their characters in a very weak way) were complaining to no end that the quest wasn't fair. Naturally those who completed the quest said it was fair and very doable and offered strategy tips. It didn't matter though because those who couldn't beat the quest took it PERSONAL, they were angry that the game was beating them and that clearly something was wrong and needed to be changed.
So when a Turbine dev explained the quest and why it was the way it was (basically saying it wouldn't be changed) those people felt even more insulted because they couldn't accept that they weren't skilled enough to complete the quest (this quest was a solo only so each person had to do it completly by themselves, no one else could even enter the dungeon with you). Some people said the opposite and were thrilled that any actually challenging and thus exciting quest had been added and asked for more.
I think the real issue comes down to that, most MMOs set themselves at a level where everyone can complete it. If players reach a point and think "Well I could never do that" then they might quit because they feel defeated. This results in true gamers breezing through every MMO released without any challenge at all.
You are 100% right, I am gad I am not the only one that sees this into todays games, Gone are the days of engaging play, I kinda blame wow for coming along and dumbing down the mmo world, I have named those I want it now folks to the "Instant Gratification Generation" they have pretty much ruined the mmo world, its a shame that even pve games are so care bear these days..
Posted by Snarlingwolf above
Well this quest that was introduced was a challenge, even many skilled players died the first time they entered the dungeon. So there were 3 different threads that went on for pages and pages where the less skilled players (or those who set up their characters in a very weak way) were complaining to no end that the quest wasn't fair. Naturally those who completed the quest said it was fair and very doable and offered strategy tips. It didn't matter though because those who couldn't beat the quest took it PERSONAL, they were angry that the game was beating them and that clearly something was wrong and needed to be changed.
My Thoughts nothing against poster.. :)
I would not expect to waltz into a new encounter and defeat it the first time, if so then really whats the point of the encounter, there should be a learning curve some trial an error, this really shows exactly my point about the state of mmo's today, I know AC has been around along time and turbine can make some great quests, I know this from lotro. dieing on the fisrt attempt then complaining in the forums translates to me just give me the prize :(, I am glad to see turbine dev's sticking to thier guns on this one.
It is and will always be a marketing decision. Take all the challenge out of a game so that every person, no matter how unfamiliar it is with MMOs, can beat the game in a minimum of time.
Greater achievements then shift over to the time invested being the deciding factor. They become dull and repetetive.
I personally cant think of a way that brings the majority of players back to the point where they get encouraged by challenging encounters instead of complaining on the forums.
Good read,
One of the problems i see is that most MMO's are built around a business strategy first and not around the fun first.
And you can see it, cash shop and subscriptions are not fluid in any manner, it's pure cutthroat.
When they start building MMO's for the sake of fun, then they'll make progress.
There's 3 games I'm hoping will deliver
- The Elderscrolls online... or is it Oblivion i dunno...Whatever it'll be called - www.tentonhammer.com/node/61590
- Miner Wars - www.minerwars.com/?aid=14
- DawnTide- www.dawntide.net/
I agree with SnarlingWolf's comment, and go one step further in saying that MMORPGs should have a high challenge rating, regardless of player skill.
Let me give some background that led to my feelings on the topic. A short time ago, I picked up Demon's Souls for the PS3. I had unsubbed from WoW just before that and was looking for a fun console game. Sitting down, I made a character and jumped into the game. An hour later, I was frustrated. The game was hard... unforgivingly hard. Each level had its own tricks and traps, enemies were relentless (even if the AI was weird at times) and charging into a fight meant almost certain death. After another hour of playing and experiencing (what I then thought to be) the incredibly harsh death penalty several times over, I put the controller down and said, "Enough."
A week later, and after giving myself time to cool off, I found myself thinking of the game. It had wiped the floor with me and I thought to myself, "Why?" Why couldn't I beat it? I consider myself a capable gamer, but I looked at the games I had been playing and realized I had been gaming in Easy World. WoW had softened me, and now I was playing a game with more versatile features. Realizing this, I sat down again and started playing the game, but this time I took my time and thought about my actions.
Where once I got slaughtered by a blue-eyed demon knight on the first level, I spent a few minutes learned his tactics, dodging his blows, and landing hits when and where I could. After letting him heal himself by mistake, I finally downed him and felt something I hadn't in a long while. Accomplishment. I had taken out a minor minion of the level and I felt great.
I never felt this while playing WoW or other games like AoC. I was challenged now and a part of my brain switched on that made me adapt to the game, not the other way around. Personally, I would love an MMO to adapt greater AI and have an experience more like Demon's Souls (adapted for MMO landscapes, of course). I love the game through and through now because I understand it, took the time to learn and mold myself to what was required, all while shaping a character.
MMORPGs, regardless of what types of people play them, need to have a strong challenging world where not everyone can achieve the 'pinnacle' of success. It'd be there, and always would be, but I don't want to be one of the hundreds of thousands who have achieved the same thing. If 'casual' gamers can't do everything, so be it; that's the fate of a 'casual' gamer. You can still accomplish significant things, but not everything. If you want to pursue challenges, take the time to learn and adapt to the game.
Tl;dr version: Demon's Souls gave me a wake-up call and a new perspective when looking at MMORPGs. I know there are other inspiring games out there, but this one showed me I need to be challenged and even killed a few times so I can remember the world is in control, not me. It shouldn't matter what your playstyle is; an MMO world should challenge you to learn its secrets and strategies in order to succeed.
Well since I want a challenge quest I take no offense to you thinking the same thing ;-)
However there are a lot of people who do not, they don't like things being challenging or the chance that they may fail, my point being that because there are so many people like that the MMO companies make their quests/content too easy.
Now granted AC is one of those nice games where you drop items on death and get vitae when you die (5% reduction in skills, die again before clearing it then it becomes 10% etc etc). So death has a bit more meaning, but it is clear that people don't want a challenge by the certain people that typed up a storm over having a challenging quest they died in. Three threads at the same time that stayed on top of the boards for weeks, it was ridiculous to read.
Part of the problem is the old "end-game" discussion. MMOs are not supposed to end, so you stay and pay the sub. Business model. *shrugs*
Other than that, yes, heroic, I only felt in single player MMOs, but even there you need to level at times with side-quests or grinds to get to where you have to go. Dragon Age Origin, all is well, but at times, when fighting through dungeons I just thought "sigh, another fight, the same as the last 10". But the *EPIC* final battles and movie scenes made it well worth it.
Will I play DA again? Not so sure, since I am not an achievement hogg. Sure, different side-stories due to the different backgrounds, even if you play evil vs good makes a difference, but the overall outcome is basically the same. Mass Effect 1 is the only thing I see a difference, depending on your playstyle, *if* you imported the savegame into ME2.
Anyway, that aside,
All this leads to what I call MMO tourism. Get tired of one, you test the next. Wait for yet another new title to appear, realize it basically is the same, return to your old or continue searching for a new one....
I agree with this article. Especially the part where it is pointed to that it is up to the developers to bring about some changes. Anyone who says that it is up to the gamers to "vote with their wallets" just doesn't "get" this hobby/addiction. MMO gamers are going to play...something...whatever it is...even if they don't 100% like the game. This is what's supporting this industry. What is expected in return is that the developers listen to their consumer base and offer up more variety of types and approaches to making MMOs. Not a reliance on a particular pattern/method of making them. The gamers mentioned keep supporting the industry in hopes that some day they will see the MMO made that contains what they want.
Now, whether it is naive of them to hold onto such wishes is another story. I personally do think we are at a key point where a significant amount of players may exit the genre due to a stagnation in approach to MMO design.
Are people forgetting there are plenty of games that give you a since of achievement like Mass effect or Zelda.
Eve Online
No set character skill system ( Be what you want to be!)
Living history (99.9% of what happens in Eve is player driven and player history/)
Examples
Great BOB and Goon Wars
- these two factions have been fighting it out for 2 - 4years
- Systems 100s of systems have been fought over and lost and gained.
Everything you do in Eve is a one time thing...
We raid some else space and take it from them i can not wait a week and redo the fight. it becomes the history of eve.
Now there is a game that i have been beta testing that is pushing MMOs to be non rinse and repeat.
Mortal online
the problem being is that as a community. these games are Niche market games very small player base needing to be leveraged over years of development to gain a strong player base.
I know that you guys are talking about pve content but that fact is that the only way to make a MMO that has a truly persistent world is to make it player driven world.
"Give the players a sandbox and let them build the world they want!" - Nox404
Long Live the Sandbox!
EDIT: Will go back and fix grammar and spelling mistakes when i get home from work, Sorry.
Alot of players are tired of the genre - like the Op. And there are alot of ppl that are still hoping that the genre will be able to move forward and add more creativity and options for MMO gamers. Thats why alot of us come back. But I have stoped hoping now. Until I see a game that really focuses on strong AI and more randomised content rather than predefined combat - or a gankfest like most of the PVP in these games are.
I have to agree with the main point of the OP. To me that is one of the biggest problems with MMOs these days.
They fall into one of two categories:
Either like say Champions Online they are "fun" but completely lack all challenge or depth of content
or
They have totally lost sight of making the game-play itself fun
Play FFxi and learn about good PvE, dur
its all the spoonfed playerbases faults anyways. If everyone wants to be able to solo all the time then don't expect good meaningful pve. If everyone wants to be able to get all the gear super easy and fast, then don't expect good PvE. Oh and PvP? You can't have PvP and good PvE its been proven time and time again. Balancing for PvP makes PvE lame cause everyone has to be everything so that PvP is balanced. PvE suffers from this greatly.
Again look at FFxi, no PvP and Forced grouping = good PvE
I agree.
The problem is we have like five sandbox games to choose from and hundreds of linear mmos.
Not one of those sandbox games are made by a big time developer (CCP is now but not at first).
So most people don't notice them (besides Eve).
Players are partly to blame here, the main reason in MMO's that combat, and AI has not evolved is because players require the predictability.
To the point where AI is intentionally weakened down in most MMO titles.
On a side note, this is why i highly enjoy Global agendas PvE, the AI is wonderful and the combat can approach that of PvP in a good number of cases. However many get caught up on the nature of "The boss battle" GA employs at the end, forgetting that the AI they encountered before getting there gave them a good challenge.
We need more quality mmos and less quantity. You take a long look at the game list on this site and if you can pick out 10 quality mmos then you get a gold medal. The mmo genre has become more of a money making philosophy than making a great game philosophy. There is only a small handful of devlopers that make me confifdent in buying their games each year.
This is a forum perception only. Please reference my sig.
This. FFXI has much slower combat than most 'popular' MMOs yet it arguably has the most in-depth and 'fun' system out there.
I'll also point out that the Korean developers are making huge strides with the genre atm. They're distinctly turning more towards action/platform games, dropping targetting altogether and making combat a much more active affair, very similarly to Zelda in many respects. Western players probably still won't like these games because they'll likely still cling to the fundamentals of Korean MMOs - grind grind grind. But I'm hoping devs over here try to incorporate the new combat mechanics the Koreans are trying.
All I can say is after 10 years, I am playin Civ4 and CivRev. Hope springs eternal, but I need to have some fun in between.
All I can speak for is myself and my tastes. What is missing is challenge and community. Everquest did a lot of things right and of course quite a few things wrong.
One of the things I would like to see from Everquest in today's MMO is the danger factor brought back to the game. This can be in many forms like death penalty, outdoor environment, etc.
The next thing I would like to see is more public dungeons. This is one of the many ways to create community. I met so many new people in dungeons who later became friends.
I feel the game should have a crafted economy with decay. The gear should not be the main focus of the game. A crafted economy creates community if you get rid of the EVIL Auction House.
What we need is player cities with personal business vendors to sell our wares. This again creates community.
Death penalty. Today's death penalty is a joke and needs to be reworked. This ties in to the danger factory that is missing in today's MMO.
We need a more open world not a funnel from point A to Z.
Another game that we should copy some things from is Star Wars Galaxies. IMHO this was the number one game that created community that I ever played. A lot of the discussion from above is some game play from Star Wars Galaxies.
A few things that come to mind is player camps in the wilds, taverns with player characters that entertain and give many types of buffs, crafting shops to sell wares. mini games like multi player poker, black jack, etc.
With that said I feel were starting to see a turn of events lately. All the new gamers that were brought in by wow that had the fast food mentality are now getting tired of McDonalds and catching up to us that had out grown it a long time ago.
I've banged on about this before but I'll try and be concise this time. There are two things which would make a massive difference if factored into the design of an mmo:
1) When considering the game world, factor in more elements than players and monsters. Even terrain is barely a factor in the mechanics of most game-worlds. Make other hazards, moving landscapes, player-created items etc a major part of the game design, so that each part revolves around the others, and you might finally have something other than: Player-kills monster-gets treasure.
Consider the rogue in WoW: It was created to fulfill all the interesting necessities of an rpg world, such as detecting and removing traps, picking locks and scouting ahead. I watched as all these interesting elements were eroded away until you had at last a dps class almost indistinguishable from the others. Why did it happen? No attention was given to anything other than the class' combat abilities, which meant that the other world features withered and fell off, a little like the extinction of species reducing biodiversity. The players and designers are both at fault for letting it come to that.
2) Randomize: I'm talking about randomizing more than just combat dice rolls and loot drops. With rare exceptions, why is this as far as designers go? Is it will, or ego, or is it just too hard for them? Randomizing of major game features is the only way to guarantee a non-repetitive experience. It has to be done well; A combination of hand-designed, and randomized components, and randomized-components-within-components will make all the difference. Been to this dungeon before? Players will still have to be careful because the trap will not be in the same place it was last time. And its a different type of trap. And its in the middle of a group of monsters this time. Etc...
Good article, MMOs are not only easy today, they lack innovation and never forces the players to think.
Arenanets dynamic world and Biowares focus on story might help the genre but we need a combat system that is more flexible.
Bosses with random abilities and stats is another possibility to force the players to think that would also add something to the game, it might sometimes make the fights harder but it is easy to make and with many options it would be harder to just check out how you kill the boss on wiki.
MMOs could learn a lot of things from pen and paper RPGs, both about combat and about character development.
I may just never understand. Why even play the game if you know exactly what mobs gonna be where what quest your gonna do what loot your gonna get and who your gonna do it with? Not to mention the implied fact that you will win. It is, as we call in mathematics, a solved problem. The fun is in UNcertainty.
Maybe peoples lives are already so uncertain they just want something they can depend on?
My take.
MMORPG's are no longer about MMO nor RPG, but about single player experiences wrapped up in a multipler existance. Gone are the games like Asheron's Call, EverQuest and Dark Age of Camelot that actually pulled people together in a unique way that made a player yearn for more of the same. World of Warcraft is actually trying to remedy that with the dungeon finder system, but this is not enough.
We need renovation of the game mechanics as a whole and not just part of it. We need developers to look beyond what was done and make it better and better. We need deeper quest. We need whole, seamless worlds to explore. We need them to pay attention to the small details of a game and not just the big things. We need new game mechanics that break the current class and level system that has pretty much stagnated this genre since day one.
Some day someone will create a perisitent online world that uses new game mechanics, new combat system, allows a player to really get into their character like never before. I just hope it comes out long before I care any more.
I think the games are way too easy, but i blame that on the players, it's practically what they've asked for. Players just want to get to endgame as fast as they possibly can. There is no rp in an mmorpg. Hardly anybody ever reads a quest, they just scroll to the bottom to see just how many rats they got kill and take off.
All most people care about is the pvp. And thats fine but why do game dev's waste their time making big games. They should just have one area and let everybody start at lvl 50 or whatever and let them go at it.
The funniest thing is when a new mmorpg comes out, 3 weeks later someone has already reached endgame and is complaining about lack of endgame content. They dont play the games to enjoy it, they just treat it like a competition to reach endgame first.
I don't think randomisation as in make it random, more random, and most random is the way to go, as a mean to spice up the environment it is a viable tool however as means to an end it might as well be a dead end. What mmos need is dynamics, mechanics that allow to create avalanches yet also tools to controll and guide those avalanches.
That is one thing that makes sandbox games interesting, the potential each player has to start an avalanche as well as the potential each player has to stop an avalanche.
To me it seems the more players are boasting on what needs to be in the "next greatest MMORPG" the more they just perpetuate the mediocre cycle of gameplay. Lest we not forget, Zelda was created by a developer too. The Elder Scrolls, the Halo series, Ratchet and Clank, Mario Kart; All these games were created and based upon a few very simple principles that created an abstract challenging and exciting gameplay choice for players regardless of playstyle.
The "catch all" phenomenon that MMO developers employ when creating games is still new in terms of its genre-life-span, but it seems to be progressing at a much slower rate.
To categorize the problems with MMOs in general, you have to take into account more than just a stale genre. The players are stale. The platform is abnormally diverse. They aren't programming for a single system, they are programming for variations of many different systems. They are dealing with a volatile social network of entitled enthusiasts each trying to shape the game into their own. They have to constantly fight for market share in the shadow of other games promising a revenue that will never be guaranteed.
Either way you look at it, the MMO genre right now is a gamble. Noone can guarantee what will be popular next, and no developer wants to risk the chance of waning subscriptions or popularity, so they make the mistake of listening to forum proponents and keyboard-knuckle scrapers, thinking that employing their ideas along with time tested gameplay mechanics will yield the most effective results. Gone are the days an MMO developer can utilize their own creative genius to create something worth playing. Instead we get left with underfunded pipe dreams, and rushed *proposed* high revenue generators, in hopes that one of them might do something right for once. The genre is becoming sickening.
This article touches on the basic reasons why MMORPGs were a niche market for so long while other video game genres sold millions.
'Pulling out from the bag of tricks' of other video game genres is the same as simply making MMORPGs more fun. And by fun, that means the mainstream gamer definition of fun. The kind of fun you get playing God of War or Baldur's Gate or Resident Evil or any such successful games. Not the hardcore, old-school MMORPG player definition of 'fun' which is outlined in all the flaws listed the article.
Old-school players endured all those flaws in previous MMORPGs. Old-school players PAID for games full of those flaws and that convinced developers that they could make a profit with those flaws rather than *fixing* them. So those flaws became tradition in MMORPGs that last to this day.
And becasue of that any modern MMORPG that actually tries to use that bag of tricks from other video games will be derided by those same old school MMORPG players as not being a true MMORPG and ruining the genre.
Frankly, the genre needs to do exactly what this article proposes and look toward other genres to see how to evolve and actually become as much fun and appealing as those games are to mainstream gamers. Maybe if old school MMORPGs like Ultima Online and Everquest had tried to do that earlier, there never would have been the need for this kind of article in the first place.
I got the same feeling as in the article while playing Ys VII The Oath in Felghana (with an english patch because it's a japanese game)
And although bosses are terribly hard even on normal and can make you angry with their patterns and make you die and retry the fights several times after you beat it you want another awesome fight :P
I had a similar experience recently when I borrowed a copy of Collossus from a friend. It was the first single player I had played in almost 5 years besides Guitar Hero and I can't say that I have had more fun with any other game in the last decade. It surprised me that a dated game on a dated system made my weekend. At first I thought an MMO would instantly go gold if it could capture even a fraction of the fun I had playing that game but realized we may never see such a game because people want to feel like a winner without having done much to deserve it.
People have been tricked into believing that you don't actually have to win anything to feel like a winner. Playing WOW reminded me of playing one of two slot machines. The first one is called 'dungeon with a GS less than you have'. This is the one most people play. You put in your time/money, pull the lever and watch the flashing lights. You've paid the price, put in the effort but the house usually wins and you get nothing. The other machine is called 'dungeon with a higher GS than you have'. This one is EXACTLY like the other one but now you get the awesome, gut wrenching tension of hoping some jackass doesn't trip over the cord mid pull and reward you with the pleasure of trying again. Either you play the no effort machine with little risks, little effort and very little chance at reward or you play the machine with slightly more risks, slightly more effort and very little chance at reward. The rewards you do finally get will never equal the time you had to put into getting them and when you've finally got every prize that machine has to offer? You get to move over to the next set of machines that look only slightly different but have the exact same mechanics, the same risks, the same effort and the still super awesome chance to win nothing at all.
I understand why you get nothing 99% of the time, its because you don't have to put any effort into it so you don't deserve anything in return. To me, saying 'I WIN!' when you get a dead boss with no effort and nothing in return is the same thing as saying 'I WIN NOTHING'. People don't games like video poker to win, they play for the prospect of the chance at maybe winning. Why do you think there are more people playing Farmville than there are Twitter accounts? Because people would rather put in almost no effort for the eventuality of maybe getting something in return.
Something like that.
I'll say that there once was a time when I thought I could never go back to single player games. After playing mmorpg's the single player games felt so empty and lifeless.
But now mmo's are so solo centric and lacking in any kind of player interactions that they feel dead too. So it's a choice between a lifeless game with a crappy single player experience (mmo) or a lifeless game with a better single player experience (the true single player game). Hmm, which will I choose?
Good column!
The reason MMORPGs aren't fun is because they're designed for mass amounts of players once they reach the end level.
It has to seriously be looked at and redesigned because of the reasons given in this article AND because end game raiding is only based on a stratified method of choosing players (guilds). If developers would use a random and/or systematic approach to picking players for end game raiding, it would then become a truly massively multiplayer experience.
World of Warcraft has a new systematic approach to joining 5 man content called the Dungeon Finder. It worked wonders for the 5 man content. The Blizzard developers then chose to leave the Dungeon Finder out of raid content. I believe this happened because of the huge misconception that is hurting the MMORPG community:
The MMORPG community think people who don't know each other can't coordinate in games. That it has to be a guild or voice chat coordinated effort. This is 100% wrong.
As for the leveling experience, that's another story. As another user pointed out, it's very solo centric. I remember Dark Age of Camelot in the first year after its launch was very group centric in order to survive and level up. It made the game incredibly hard and challenging; but players still attempted to solo for the thrill, so there's a balance between solo and group gameplay in MMORPGs.
Dark Age of Camelot was also criticised in its early days for having insane down times in which you had to wait 5-10 minutes for a player's health to regenerate without the use of a healer. Mana too. Thus, we have World of Warcraft which introduced 30 second 100% health food and potions.
MMORPGs are still quite new. It takes a long time to make just one. They're huge. I imagine in 10-20 years we'll have these problems figured out.
I think a large issue here is the word "skill" and the difficulty involved in defining it. For non-MMO titles and particularly non-RPG titles, it's not as hard because most of those games involve a significant amount of twitch. No matter what kind of game you're playing, you have to take stock of the situation, decide on a course of action, and then successfully execute that action. If you can do these three things quickly and consistently with a high degree of success, you are considered to have skill. If you happen to be playing a real-time strategy game, you may engage in these observations and actions over the course of several minutes. In a first-person shooter, it's probably more like a few seconds, and in a fighting game every single instant requires your attention and reflexive response.
But in the genre that MMOs are based off of (console RPGs or pencil-n-paper RPGs, take your pick), there's no twitch involved at all. You've got all day to make observations and decide on a course of action if you need it. Likewise, no hand-eye coordination is required, so the execution part of the skill trio is not present. All you do is observe what is going on, and decide what to do next. "Skill" comes purely from being a good decision maker. Understanding all of your options, understanding your situation, and predicting which action will have the best effect is all that matters.
MMOs are a step removed from that — the combat is real-time so you do not have the luxury of thinking for minutes about what to do. But they're not twitch games either. When it comes to MMOs, where does the skill lie? What makes an MMO encounter "hard"? Unfortunately, most of it comes down to preparation. It's unacceptable for an MMO combat to come down to twitch skills, and it sucks to have it come down to luck (you lose if the enemy uses this skill twice in a row, you win if it doesn't), so ultimately the game MUST allow you to win if you know what to do and are prepared to do it. Be this level. Invite these classes. Bring these pots and scrolls. Hotkey this ability. When this happens, do this. When that happens, do that. Victory. If you lose, it must be because you weren't prepared and didn't know what to do and when. If you lost because your reflexes weren't good enough, most would consider that a failure on the developers' part for requiring twitch skills. If you lost because you were unlucky, again, developers' fault and sucky game.
And what makes this all a crapshoot is that you are 100% expected to be prepared for whatever you're about to get yourself into. The makers of Zelda assume that you're going into each dungeon and each fight completely blind, and they so they require no advance preparation... only good observation, decisions, and reflexes. (If you're prepared because you're reading a guide as you play, that's not their concern; you're just ruining your own experience.) The makers of MMOs must assume the exact opposite: that you are going into each dungeon and each fight fully prepared with the knowledge and resources required to beat it. Your party members demand no less of you either. This is why it's so difficult to meaningfully put "hard" (and therefore genuinely rewarding) PvE encounters into MMOs; the only measure of skill is whether you have had someone explain how to beat it, and the developers must fully expect that you have already done that.
Even though I don't know enough UnrealScript do actually make anything close to a game yet and my knowledge of UE3 is still very limited, I still have a general knowledge of how I'd pull the following off due to working in other languages... even if they were basic.
Even though the fact it's payware hasn't gotten me to try it, Spellborn made something very interesting possible from what I heard. When merging MMO and FPS and including real time combat while not creating an innovative way to pull it off, you're likely to have a dead game on your hands due to lag. There's ways around this... like using peer to peer connections-- something fairly easy to do in an instanced area. In a big, open world however, it can turn into a nightmare real fast unless you can open and close connections without the burp that in instanced games, is known as entry lag. The alternative is to just have everything go through the server first-- it also stops hackers more effectively, but also is more than capable of doubling your ping. In a fun, hack and slash game where you do more than cast lock-on fireballs at people, this can lead to alot of angry players. Currently, I'm contemplating a solution for the entry lag issue with peer to peer connections without compromising a connection to the server as well to monitor actions. The hacking issue would also need some overthinking done to it...
As for the interface itself... I don't know what in it hasn't been done before. You point and click from a first or third person prospective with fancy crosshairs telling you where your bullet, arrow, or ball of flaming gas will go. Stats apply accordingly... except now, it's a moving bullet that follows a pattern-- not an amination that's strictly for effect. Also the hit rating stat and crit stats would need to be taken out... maybe... or replaced with a devistating-effect option since criticals in general in action games are just headshots.
As for the monster issue, where bosses respawn... there really isn't a plausible workaround for it outside of instancing. WoW did it seamlessly in WoTLK, but it was still instancing. My take would be to use instancing... scarcely and only when absolutely needed. Like... if you're facing a boss that's at the end of a 10 quest chain or a zone boss or something bigger than the terrorizing imp that stole Johnny's wallet. Likewise, group quests should be entirely optional-- about half of the story bosses should be soloable. As for quests themselves, making them all commit to a large story without tightly constraining the playerbase to a linear story without spending way too much time on a quest system seems impossible too.
As someone who firmly believes a good pistoleer can take down a rocketeer twice his level if he really is good enough... stats, though should stay, would need to be done in such that they don't overcome gameplay. Getting to that point, however... I'm afraid the easiest way to do so would be with constant testing and tweaking. From my experience... with the unreal engine, that isn't as easy as it seems. Hopefully UE4 is different when it comes out.
Best explained. I started MMOing before they were big, Fighter Ace and alot of large scale WW2 sims, a game 10-six came about which was an around the clock game. You had to protect what was yours 24/7 one way or another.
Then came DAOC my first fantasy based MMO. I found it cool to gain power with every level be it combat styles or spells. My goal was to catch those whose level made them unbeatable by me in a PVP scenario. My goal was not to necessarily be better but to be on even ground. After many , many hours of mindless grinding i achieved max level, Epic armor which was as good as you could get and into the fight i went.
I met 100s of friends in the grind game. Most times unintentional. We all just needed help from one another. It was the way of things. Helping each other be it strangers or not. The alure of the game was leveling, becoming just a little more powerful then a friend or foe . At max level we could just PVP. What a blast that was. What made it even better was the social element behind it all. The comraderie of it all. The competitive element.
Eventually the social element post WOW fell out. It still isn't there anymore so we kill bears, we quest endlessly for gear , rinse and repeat only this time there is no social environment. The social environment is what keeps people playing with the game interest is completely extinct. You can log into any modern day game and not a soul will speak to you just because they need you to help them advance because they don't need anybody.
So I'm gameless, I have no interest or intention of EVER playing another kill and quest MMO. I want to log in , go PVP on an even playing field and just have fun. Nothing more, nothing less. I'm past earning my place. I'm looking for an actual intellectual gaming experience. I'm looking for a game that puts community first above all even the game. I'm beyond burn out of the typical MMO as we know it. I'm officially retired until a title is released that can offer me the experience PVP wise right out of the box that i so desire.
Something like that.
I'll say that there once was a time when I thought I could never go back to single player games. After playing mmorpg's the single player games felt so empty and lifeless.
But now mmo's are so solo centric and lacking in any kind of player interactions that they feel dead too. So it's a choice between a lifeless game with a crappy single player experience (mmo) or a lifeless game with a better single player experience (the true single player game). Hmm, which will I choose?
I just don't understand it.
For me the two features mmos had that kept me playing instead of single player games were Social interaction and Character advancement. Single player games could not touch these aspects.
So I don't get why today's mmos would forgo the majority of social interaction and make a mmo solo centric. Playing with hundreds of other people is a mmos thing. Yet now these games are feeling like watered down single player rpgs.
Before anyone tells me its because people have lives. the older mmos let us solo also. They did a great job of making a game accessible for the solo minded player yet making it attractive to play with other people. It was balanced.
As an example Saga of Ryzom does this. I can solo the entire time but if i teamed up i would have a much easier time through less downtime, more Xp per hour and the actual conversation moving things along.
That's how mmos should be, I don't think the devs get it.
Final Fantasy XIV.
Break the mold.
Extremely well thought out article! You echoed my sediments spot on. While MMOs are my game of choice, I get the same deja vu every time I play another new one.
I'm hoping SW:TOR changes that, but who knows if it will....
Thank you for sharing ! :)
I also found this a great article. I myself have been playing MMOs since the start of EQ. They certainly have lost something. I played Mass Effect and Mass Effect 2 recently because a friend told me to.. Best choice ive made in a long time. GREAT games. Awesome story in both. ME was epic.
I think back to EQ1. I still think a new version of that style of game WOULD be popular. It was the only MMO that i can remember feeling i accomplished something. Camping a mob for 8 hours waiting for it to spawn may not be the most fun, but I do remember when he did spawn, and i killed him how happy i was.
I agree there is no sense of danger in games anymore either. You dont see level 40 sand giants walking around in an area made for the 10-20 range. Or how about camping the Animals in Runes of Kunark with people constanly keeping an eye on the Dragoons that could come kill you at anytime. I know my heart was pumping many times running my butt to the zone line.
I dont know what MMOs can do really. Im pretty burnt out on them all myself. Im sticking with my solo player games till i hear something promising. Dragon Age is next on my list. Im hoping the story is as good and Biowares Mass Effect games
Right on - I all the games I've played are great but I simply get bored within a couple of weeks......... Now I'm looking for Zelda
you kind of forgetting the fun of mmorpg also lays in interacting with fellow players and the guild as a community where people become friends and talk to one another and play together to have fun.u can never find that in a console game and enjoy it for more then a few days of playing at most.
after i play mmorpg i seldom play console games.once u are used to the level of interaction inside a mmo a console does not appeal as much anymore.
its more of finding the right mmo now.and i have high hopes for FFXIV to deliver that.
and Blade & Soul later on ^^
Yeah, I have hopes that CCP's WoDOL and Bioware's TOR fix this much needed issue in MMO's.
well the things that are keping MMOs from advancing further are two things:
A) Investors-> they only know what sells, so that what they tell the game companies to make. They will pull funding away if they find an element that might "get sales down" or "discourage buyers" and they only know very little about games or MMOs.
They pressure companies to add stupid things like central auction houses, microtransactions, and character transfers just becuase they might get them more money per month, but those drastically degrade the experience.
If a new edgy company comes along seeking investors that wants to make a breakthrough game, guess what? they cannnot get a decent investor to come along and fund them and NOT tell them to change things. They have to bascially bow down to them to keep the funds coming in. They make the changes to thier games to keep the funding, and when it is released it's only a shadow of what It once was, becuase the investors did not think it would have sold in the orginial state.
B) network infrstructure->The ISPs are to blame, they never upgrade their networks, specailly in the US, it's pretty sad when someone in estonia or albania or ukraine tells me they have a 40MB connection for 10 dollars a month, when I pay 50 for my 6 MB connection.
I had to beg an plead to get 6 meg connection here.
The aussies can feel me on this one. they have to fight for a 2MB connection down under most of the time. That's pathetic in this day-and-age.
if the damned ISPs would upgrade their networks to the speds we deserve, then MMOs can get better.
most MMO producers/devs have to tone down the actions sent to and from the server to optmise for the crappy connections most have. i would love to have something like Oblivion as an MMO, but guess what? the ISPs are not gonna let us.
This infuriates me and this is a reason I stick to single player games and LAN games. becuase once you play one or two MMOs you've basically played them all.
If I play MMOs for a long time I tend to forget how good single player games can be. Last month I bought both StarTrek Online and Mass Effect 2. I "finished" STO (RA5)" and think that it is not a very good game. But my opinion about STO for sure would not be as bad if I had not played Mass Effect 2 at the same time. They are both similar in some things (you gather your crew etc.). But in the things which are similar I would say STO lacks behind 10-15 years of game development.
I am especialy disappointed with STO because all the things they told about "Episodic content" and how we should feel like we play an episode of star trek. When I play Mass effect 2 I feel 10x more like in an star trek episode then with the "episodic content", it is just another name for "quest" and its like the standard boring mmo quests "textbox -> kill something -> textbox". I told my girlfriend that I could buy "ship models" in game and place it in my quarters and she said "ah like captain picard" because she thought I talk about STO but I talked about mass effect. This is only a little thing, but you play MMOs much longer and if you play them for 1 year (which is not too long) you pay 4x as much as you pay for a singleplayer game. I don't understand why they often do not deliver more then a single player game.
What I miss the most about a a lot of older RPGs was the puzzles that involved a little thinking to solve. One game in particular for its way it did puzzles was the Tomb Raider series, which I loved a lot as a kid. I could see this type of gameplay in a MMO, grant that once someone goes through it there will be a spoiler on how to tackle it, but it would give anyone a chance to try their own hand at it or look over a guide for it. Then again for some puzzles it could be set up in a way that the dungeon is randomly generated and the puzzle twisted in a sense to keep form having a spoiler guide for it.
Aside from that, There needs to be a lot of interactiveness with environments itself. Theres a new game I think in Korea called ArchMage? that uses destructible environments. Not sure to what extent they use them, but I could see destructible environments used in a number of ways in a MMO where puzzles are concerned. Destructible or even constructable environments would greatly help MMOs today from the boredem they face now.
Ok so puzzles and destruct/construct environments, what else could there be? What about more mini style games? Just like the old RPGs where doing smaller games to complete a task would be great to see in more MMOs today. Anything from trying to ski down a mountain with a huge snowball following you or jumping on the back of a mob and riding him through a section of forest with the baddies on your tail, figuring out a encrypted puzzle with a timer ticking down to doomsday if you dont get it solved in time, to just about anything your imagination can construct. Hell even opening Casino style games within a MMO would give players something to do when the questing grind is too much, or when your waiting on friends for a raid. These casino style games could offer up many rewards for the risk you take with in game gold at a chance to win a assortment of prizes.
This are just a few things i can think of atm, but MMOs as a whole these days just simply suck, suck, suck, suck. I have yet to see any real good triple A titles that offer anything different that the last one did. I think Scott hit the nail on the head about his article where art is sacrificed for profits and huge publishers are mainly to blame. To be honest, if there isnt a surge soon of more MMOs that uses the ideas I had given for example, I think Im done with MMOs till someone does decide to step up and start revolutionizing the industry again. Im hoping more Indy developers step up and be able to fill those gaps. If so, ill support them knowing that keeping a huge publisher out of the picture may start the process of true artistry again in the industry!
MMOs are only fun if you make them fun. The people you know are very important to your enjoyment, and the way you interact with the game makes it fun. No developer can do with a MMO what can be done in a single player RPG. It cannot be done. This is why it is always better to create a world and give players tools to create "content" for themselves. Good pvp does this well, good lore and incentive to role play does also. You cannot make MMO combat or storytelling as consistently engaging and interactive as a single player game, so you have to make the world itself feel vibrant and real to make it feel right for players.
MMO’s are now made for solo players, but how can they possibly compete with an actual solo game? They are trying to be all things to all men and end up looking half baked. They are cast from the WoW template and so are good in terms of the way that template is good, but because of that there is no innovation.
Sense of community is what has been lost. We went from living together in a virtual world to playing single player games where occasionally other players are present. You could be a hero or a villian, a warrior or a tradesman, a statesman or a vagabond. Now you are just anonymous.
Zelda is not a RPG and it's not an Action/RPG either.
Final Fantasy is a RPG and Diablo is an Action/RPG. Zelda is a medieval Action/Adventure game at most, but it's a great game nevertheless. I don't get why fans think it's so important for it to be acknowledged as a RPG.
Few MMO's ever gave me the feeling of achievement after completing a quest or defeating a boss. I'd say my first playthrough on Guild Wars was like that, having your character in the cutscenes and stuff.
Ahh, Zelda. Now that brings back some memories. Long hours, sore thumbs, lost sleep and broken controllers, lol. Now this is a little off topic, but I had to let all of you Zelda fans know about this show if you don't know about it yet. It's called Legend of Neil and I find it rather funny. Note; due to some adult themes, this show maybe unsuitable for younger viewers, no nudity or anything, but not office viewing material.
www.effinfunny.com/legend-of-neil/seasons
Single player games have their place, but, their not very sociable, and, imo, are too limited even in their enjoyment, because you can't share any of these achievements with anyone, your not part of anything, and when the game has finished, its all over, very few games, single player games that is, have replay-ability, once its done with, its just another game gathering dust on the shelf. MMO's on the other hand, the better ones at least, are the ones that keep you coming back again, and again, and again, i know there are a good few haters out there, but that is something that Blizzard have managed to capture, to a degree, in WoW, though personally i would say Eve has more of it, but Eve is a space based game that unfortunately, doesnt capture peoples imagination as well as the more fantasy based games do, which is a shame, When players are given the tools to create, they can sometimes achieve incredible things, Eve isnt the only game to have managed this though, SWG before the fall, had one of the most incredible communities i have ever encountered online, and thats the one thing thats missing from single player games, there is no community, and its the one thing that can raise a game from being, just a game, to being .. awesome..
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...
I liked what you had to say, except for one thing: the "ending" issue. You imply that a game is a single playthru and that's it. Sorry to tell you, but I can't describe how many times I save the Princess in World 8, shot down the invaders from space, and ran the same maze looking for pellets and power up jawbreakers. Over and over. Replayability is a hallmark of the single-player experience, and MMOs only took that to the logical extreme, allowing players to continually experience it in the same session.
What MMOs fail at is too closely mimicing the experience of a DnD style game, with levels, challenge ratings and experience. To take the boring out of the repetition of an event, the event doesn't have to be unique, it has to be continually challenging. Scalability of a locale would fix that. You go in, and everything scales to your 'level', be it character level, adventuring level, skill level, whatever. That way, you have the same challenge whether you're a lowbie, a newb, a pro, or a leet. It's always going to be as challenging as it is supposed to be.
This also eliminates the overgeared, raider-leet end-gamers ability to just go thru and raep content meant for lower level players and inflate the economy unnaturally because the loot drops scale, too, and what drops for them won't be farmable, nor will it be useful to players under the leet's level.
And as a side benefit, there's no more asking what level a certain instance/dungeon is because they scale. It's always the level it needs to be to present a challenge to a player of you level/skill.
Sure there are problems with this system, too, and probably more than a few exploits that would need to be worked out, but as far as addressing the challenge issue, yes, this system works.
Wow, well said about current and past mmo's. They are indeed very lacking and all fall under the same standards too often. The devs really need to come up with new ideas for mmo's, especially environment interaction. Can you imagine the different possiblities and fun a mmo can have if they did that? Instead of you and your party running up to the boss and hitting it or casting magic on it. You can use objects on the field/room to kill or weaken it.
Example: Throwing a spear into the bosses weak point, make a boulder come crashing down on it, or making it fall down a pit temporarily to open a window of opportunity to attack and even kill it.
And this doesn't even have to be just for bosses, other enemies can suffer the same fate. They can even make it into a team play action. Not like you can push a boulder by yourself or distract the boss long enough to throw that spear.
I have that exact same feeling after playing games like Mass Effect, Fable 2; even older games like Oblivion & Morrowind. My next game to get is FFXIII :D
I do hope that future MMORPGs will learn from the mistakes of the current generation of failures and provide more than just a number-crunching grindfest that lacks any kind of immersion or roleplay.
100% agree to the OP. This:
"Every time I find myself getting wrapped up in a single-player game, I feel that tiredness of the genre creeping in again. I wonder if MMOs will ever be fun again. Heck, sometimes I wonder if they were ever fun in the first place. I wonder if the industry is killing itself, and whether they'll ever care enough to make a change. Like most of you, I come back because MMOs have a unique pull on my gaming habits, a draw that makes them the "game of choice." There's no denying, however, that the genre needs a serious kick start, an injection of fun that's been lost in translation for a long time. Whoever brings it first will be well remembered in our history."
This is exactly how I feel these days, esp the last few months playing single player games more and since the new stuff like CO and STO was especially underwhelming. Not when Dragon Age, ME2, Drakensang II, Venetica and whatever I played was SOOO much more fun.
I think creatively MMOs are indeed dying. Tho not by numbers, they become a fast food sort of mindless mass entertainment and boring for anyone who demands more than a computer version of a sitcom.
I agree with this as well, With auction houses, instant teleporting to zones, and the need to interact with one another less also is a huge factor. I hate to bring up EQ again, but there were no AHs and you had to rely on a druid or wizard to bring you places, or take the long way there. Little things like that added a lot to the game.
Why can't we do Zelda-esque combat, bosses, dungeons etc. in a MMO?
Just too CPU/Network/Vid/AI intensive for massively multiplayer?
I mean, 3rd person action combat games like Zelda/God of War (to some extent Mass Effect) are ridiculously popular....
WOW, great read Jaimie!! One of the things you mentioned that can never be captured in the typical MMO with a persistant world is the time to bask in the glory of what you have just accomplished. The only way to approach this in an MMO is through instancing which is still used to a lessor degree. Not the same but close.
Your statement: The death of a villain in an MMO is not final; it's merely a temporary death designated to help a character complete an objective. There is no sense of permanence; I can return to defeat the dragon as many times as I want, and it's the same story, the same fight, the same pattern every time. As the sense of permanence deteriorates, so does the sense of achievement; as repetition sets in, the fun fades. Voila: a recipe for MMO burnout.
In an instanced world (ducks to avoid barbs from the Intanced=cheap crowd) the mobs aren't all repopping constantly. While it can be repeated, you still have the wonderous feeling after a series of battles to complete a mission/quest or vanquishing an area of accomplished something. Just sit for a bit, its ok, you own this place! Not the same as Zelda but close.
Hmm..where DID I put Zelda............
Though it is up to the devs to come out with the content, it's up to the consumers to stop buying crappy products and giving them a reason to make more versions of the same old. So long as we keep buying it, they will keep making it.
Old Republic promises to give that linear feel...I'll wait to pass judgment on that one.
It would not be difficult to design a game around the premise of 'once you do it, it is done'. You would only need to incorporate a system for players to interact with others that are at the same position in the story. There's nothing saying that a persistent world cannot look different for every player. It's simply a matter of rethinking design from the ground up. Games originally only looked identical to each person for easier and more efficient processing and bandwidth usage. In today's technological era, they need to scrap these old notions and move on.
It reminds me of the shift from Tileset based games to Bumpmapped games to full-on 3d interactive games. It took years for game devs to realize that they no longer needed to use the old tired method of tileset usage because computers could handle processing and data storage much easier. It took them even longer to realize that they could add interactive and destructible objects on top of bumpmapped terrain.
I wonder how long it will take them to realize the same for game mechanics and story...
On a side note, I've been saying the same things as the OP since WoW first came out. But, people are so blinded by their addiction that they will defend it viciously. Mention that WoW isn't 'the best game ever' to any hardcore player and they will not only disagree, they will attack you violently and personally. This is a sign of addiction, not of admiration.
It's sad really; when you see all these blinded people fumbling mindlessly at something. It's almost as bad as legal addictive drugs: Alcohol, tobacco, etc. These aren't only chemical addictions, they are personality addictions. I challenge every WoW player to step back and think about what they're doing in the game. Think about your accomplishments from the perspective of a story. What have you done that you have not done before? When was the last time you felt a feeling of real accomplishment that wasn't fueled by the need for 'phat lewtz'?
Overall I agree but what I found funny was the first line implies that video games in general have lost there magic but I think the only place that stands true is mmo's, weve reached a stage in video game production where mmo's simply can't afford to keep taking the liberties they do if they in tend to keep growing the genre.
I'll use my choice of mmo's right now as an example,STO the lack of production standard is the most glaring error there and something every game on the market is guilty of, no single mmo I know of has even one single "feature" something that pops out and makes you feel like you are really "into" the game. Mmo's seem to be comprised of some two or three "systems" and there is never any true variation on these systems they just roll out the same stuff over and over again. Most mmo's follow a pattern that after a month of playing you learn and unfortunately mmo's rarely switch it up after that which I think really accounts for why so many games really have such a hard time keeping people after the first month, you really at that point have "experienced" most of what the game has to offer the only question is was it fun enough to keep doing over and over and over again. If mmo producers would throw a swerve in here or there I really think they can help there retention of players.
I want an mmo made with the production standards of say a Grand Theft Auto or a MGS Sons of the Patriots, and to this point no mmo has come close to offering that kind of experience, the most intense feeling I ever got from an mmo was in SWG not so irronically during pvp and it is a feeling I get often from many offline and console games.
Nice article Jamie. And welcome to the ever growing horde of jaded mmo gamers. We have been saying this crap since wow's first exp pack lol.
Your right, the industry really does need a kick, but its going to need the devs to wake up.
I agree in the sense that I've stopped spending money on MMOs. I've tried quite a few P2P and none of them seem to fit, even when I think they are very good games (like EVE and Fallen Earth).
MMO gamers have gained a reputation as the kind of fools that are easy to separate from their money. Hence, we have recent game launches such as Allods Online and STO. These two respectively represent the ugly side of the F2P model and P2P model, but both models have an ugly side and this is growing.
So, the first thing that has to happen is MMO gamers have to stop throwing their cash at anything new on the horizon. This includes SWTOR, which I will say despite knowing (a) this will likely fall on deaf ears, and (b) that I need to hear this as much as anyone. I'm really hoping this will be a game that I will buy and enjoy BUT I will force myself to wait for launch and player feedback before buying.
In the meantime I'm quite enjoying a couple of F2P games. MMOs can still be excellent fun by the way. And you can still meet people and build a community. I may try single player games again at some point, but the world of MMOs still seems infinitely more fun to me because of the social aspects. Even when I am soloing I am playing with other people in a sense. I really enjoy grinding by myself but also chatting on guild chat after a tough day.
Nice article. I totally agree with the lack of permanence in MMOs. It's a real immersion breaking and makes the games feel more arcade-like and less immersive.
One thing though; In the description on the front page it says, "Jaime Skelton wrote this article on the magic of video games and what MMOs can do to re-capture it."
At the end all you said is that MMOs need to be more innovative but that goes without saying. You didn't really mention even one specific thing that could be improved. And I think that's the problem with the MMO genre generally. We all look at single player games and all these cool things they can do... but they're all reliant on having just one player in that world. In an MMO they have to make it enjoyable for thousands of people all on one server. And that's the problem right there.
The magical all-consuming MMO will never exist due to the limitations of being in a multiplayer world. The only way to improve immersion is to go the way of World of Warcraft and other games and start using more phasing and instances. However, that separates the community and the world so I think we'll never have both MMO AND full immersion.
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.
There is a major difference between what an mmorpg does and what a single player RPG does.
MMORPG games are easy as hell, but they make their grind take so long in some cases months and years to reach level caps, and at that point your ether sick of the game or deprived of any real challenge. End game in mmorpg games usually involves high # of players working together to do something which other than getting everyone on the same page, and eventually getting everyone well geared enough is usually not a challenge just more time consuming.
RPG games are a challenge, they have puzzles, they have bosses that can actually kill you, confusing rooms, and many other things that add to the challenge.
Only really 2 mmos / online games that I know of that actually provide this kind of adventure feel and challenge without so much of the grind.
Monster hunter
and D&D online.
after i played zelda phantom hour glass and megaman battle network, i find mmo's kinda the same- all u do is grind. quests r grind. all u do is pointless clicking - ur character and mobs taking turns to hit each other.. BORING
now dont hate on me, i dont mean all mmo's, i kinda like the mmo runescape and dungeon and dragon cuz the quests are require more thinking.
I am glad that this was posted on an MMO-dedicated site. I am feeling the same way: MMO Burnout. I've done a lot of solitary RPGs to recapture that immersion that I first had with MMOs. In fact, I went to MMOs for a time because the solitary games were starting to get stagnant to me. One thing that I've really enjoyed is how Mass Effect 2 took a lot of your decisions from Mass Effect 1 to effect the game. Not many games do that and I applaud it as it gives the game a real sense of continuity.
I believe that there is hope as most of the MMOs in production that I've been following seem to want to move towards more innovation instead of trying to stick with the normal formula. I just hope that something interesting sees the light of day to bring me back into the genre.
I just picked up this game as well; Soul Lv.40 atm. Felt the same way killing the first blue eyed demon XD.... just wait until you get invaded by another player!
Was just saying to a friend earlier that I hope games like Demon's Souls and Monster Hunter overtake the MMO in the online Arena....another console generation and I think we will have it. Ive had more fun playing Demon's Souls Multiplayer than I have in any MMO for the past 4 years.
I've got to agree here. I have felt this way for several years now. At first I thought it was my having kids or getting old, or whatever. But then I came to the same conclusion as you, mmo's just don't make the pve aspect any fun.
I agree that something needs to change but like others in this thread have already pointed out. Most of today's MMO players aren't going to accept the change. At least not right away. Most of the suggestions mentioned in this thread to make things better would cause major uproar and controversy.
Haha, exactly what I was going to say, except for the At least there I can skip straight to the action. part!
This is, by far, the best thread, column that I ever read in this site... Congratulations to the writer..
I have lost ´that love feeling´ also and I was striving to know why... I am playing Dragon Age: Origins right now and trying, with a lot of pain, to play Sar Trek Online (I am a trekkie willing to enjoy the game, and I just gave up and canceled my subs). DA:O is givig to me all the thrill that MMOs dont give me anymore... And the reasons are all in this writing... I particularly enjoyed this part:
"The MMO gaming experience has devolved into a game of numbers, far more so than any other genre. While every game possesses its own methods of min-maxing and power gaming, the MMO has made number-crunching "the way." If you don't adhere closely to recommended specs, talents, rotations, or reach certain measurable performance standards, you are the outcast: the noob who needs to L2P, the player who "sucks," the underachiever, even if your methods procure a fun way to play."
Thats right!!! The only difference between one MMO and other is the ´tactic´ on numbers!!! There is no fantasy anymore, there is no innocence anymore, the ´newbie factor´ disappear fastly because the ´gang´ is more worried to know the stats and how to use it to kill the enemy than to discover the world (because, as the writer put it, we all know the drill, to gather 10 frog legs, or to escort this, or that, or to kill this or that, and even PvP games are all the same, a combat between specs and skills like lolcoptering).
I am frankly tired of MMOs, and I can see the genre dying fastly (my girlfriend do prefer to play American McGee Alice than LOTRO that she loved so much, but now it lost the spark, after a few years doing the same thing over and over...).
The only thing briefly amusing on a MMO to me today is the starting, where I can fool myself, specially on char creation, that I am playing a new game... That doesnt last 30 mins...cAnd the fantasy soon dies on numbers of stats and players using the best equip to do the very same thing that they do on ALL MMOS around...
I dont think the problem is in the ´level´ of challenge, not to me at least... If that was the problem , PvP with player skill only would solve it... The problem is that we are really tired of the same things all over and over again... Try to kill this blue demon again, again, again and again (over 3-4 years, almost every day) and you will see what I am talking about... All the MMOS are the same, be it easy or difficult, once you get the hang of it, you just know what will happen next... And because this, mostly gamers try the ´math´ side of the MMO to improve their experience of gaming (its natural, they all know what happens next, maybe there is more difference in the numbers). Then you have an army of specialist on equips, tactics of PvP / PvE, all forgetting the game itself and concentrating on numbers, dull tactics..
What you 2 felt killing this demon is not the accomplishment that came from the difficult of the game itself, but the accomplishment that came from you being forced to do YOUR thing, alone by the frist time, to kill it.. You discovered by yourself, and killed it... IT was like YOU killed it by the first time, and doing anything by the first time is difficult.. Get a total newbie to play a MMO and he will be THRILLED with the difficulty (Oh boy, you have to cast this ´root´ thing to stop him, and then getting far from it and then ask my pet to aggro it, and I have to control my threat level, so he doesnt come to met?!?! AMAZING!!!! To kill blue demons I just need to dodge and shoot...).
Love this article and all the input I see from the community here. I figured i should toss my two cents in for your generally mauling.
The problem with these games is not the Developers OR the Community. It is Both. I currently play WoW but I started out playing UO. I was on an RP shard and having a blast until I wanted to get into some of the more group based content. This was when I found that most people who played on this RP server did not want to RP. A fun backstory and a flawed character design make for an interesting play. As a classing Pen and Paper gamer I know that it is what you Cannot do that makes your character fun, not what you can. When I tried to get involved with other players in larger organizations i was told I "was playing the game wrong and could not join them" because I did not Min/Max my character. This was disheartening but was the core of the problem. Now fast forward to now where I play WoW. I still have people telling me "You are playing the game wrong" because my Warlock is not munchkin'd out to DPS 6k. (For those that do not know that is 6 thousand damage a second).
Who is ruining my fun? The developers who created the content that requires me to need other players who want me to fit their mold?
If you have played some of the Raids you know that they can be very hard and require an exacting strategy that can easily be influenced by one player simply standing in the wrong place. If you have ever been in a 25 man raid and wiped on the last boss because you screwed up it is Not pretty. The content is their for the more difficult and more skilled players but really it is only there at the End Game.
Once again whose fault is it that my fun is ruined? The players who have a narrow view of the role I should fulfill or the Developers who created the world that defined the role as it is needed?
Good point, good question...
I think the community is just addicted to this genre of gaming... Its like a bad mexican soap opera... Everyone knows how it ends, but we are all addicted to it, because for some reason, we do expect it to change, praying that it doesnt... We feel safe, we know the drill, we had fun with it in the past... I remember my first days on Darkfall, it was my hope of good gaming... I got myself with 2 other friends, old MMOers (very old, from SWG Pre-CU)... I decided to explore the world, they joined in my blissfull ignorance... Every cave we saw was a surprise!!! Every mob was a doubt (can we kill it, how we kill it? Is it worth the try? Are we being watched by PKs?)... Then a friend who is more addicted than us, saw us playing and said ´You dont need to do it, you will get only crap loot and its too dangerous, come with me, I do knowa place to camp a NPC who drop a good amount of loot and its safe)... Soon our group was disbanded and there I was doing our drill, exactly like every MMO out there, camping a NPC, looting, using the same tactics to get it, over and over again... My friends were happy, I know that they saw our expedition as naive and ´newbie´, and forgot the feeling of being in something new...
Therefore, I do agree with you, its the community fault as it is the devs fault, since they use the same mold, with slight differences, to every MMO... And we, teh community, always pick the easier way, the gray path, the safe one... And we watch the soap opera, knowing that the good guy will marry the poor girld, and the rich villain will suffer a hideous end... And we will cheer with it...
It was the same for me with playing STO and Mass Effect 2 at the same time.
Great article, it really addresses why I struggle to play most MMOs with any degree of success.
There are two games I play that allow for the feeling of permanence most MMOs are missing.
1. EVE Online - Massive alliance battle over territory in the nullsec (0.0) areas of space. What are they fighting over? Territory. Territory owned allows you access to more money and resources, should you be able to exploit them of course. The idea is that your actions actually have consequences. When you build a ship, someone buys it, they get it blown up... they need a new ship. And there you are to build them another one. Everything is player driven, everything is meaningful. I like that about EVE.
2. Wurm Online - Now here is a dream game.... imagine a first person, skill based game, where you can terraform the land with almost no limits, actually cut down or plant trees, build buildings in the size and shape you want, build walls, build ships, mine tunnels into mountains, breed animals (for war or food or work)... that is Wurm Online. If you can get past the sometimes awkward interface and grasp the way the item quality system works (items have a quality level that can be repaired, items take damage by being used, items also decay slowly over time, etc) you will find a game that is actually remarkably good.
I urge anyone looking for a good sandbox game to play this game. A word of warning though: this game is not finished, by any means. It still lacks a lot of animations, the graphics are still being worked on, and the game has its bugs, but trust me, this game is too unique to pass up.
I would have listed Planetside as a third option but... well, techincally, it wasn't permanent, but your actions nonetheless had tangible effects on the game world. Still, the game is no longer what it once was. So here's to Planetside, one of the best games I ever played.
One game to rule them all: DFO
I think MMOs are closer related to "games" like Farmville than to the grand The Legend of Zelda. I also believe we could learn from politics: if things seem to go wrong all the time, don't assume someone makes mistaks. Assume it's the way it's meant to be. Why? MMOs are played for very long periods of time, not just a few dozen hours. The thing that makes you play are your friends and social networks, not really the game. The game must be interesting enough to log in for the first time and it must be good enough to keep you hooked long enough until (mild) addiction kicks in: your social obligations, people to chat and some repetitive tasks to keep you busy. The milestones, levels and things you get, your first mount, the flaming uberpants are designed as the carrot on the stick to push you forward and help you through boring moments. By the time the trinkets have generated enough endogenous value so that the virtual goods are actually somehow important, like the correct brand of sneaker shoes you certainly have. There is data indicating that players master levels faster when their next level up is an important milestone (new ability etc). Level ranges where nothing really special happens are leveled slower, not because people suddenly enjoy the game more. There is just lesser "force" to move them forward, that's when the social stuff is important.
It cannot be too exciting, because you would'nt have time to socialize and you would not do the same repetitive things over and over for a couple of months. Average joe stays with one game for several months. The MMO is made so that you can watch TV or do something else. Metagame counts as well. The MMO just needs to enhance the situation, more like a radio while you drive. Maybe all the things you do are boring if done separately, but they become acceptable and fun once you do the things at the same time. If you play a subscription game, companies don't need (or even want) you to play, they just need to convice you that loggin in while doing something else is worth the money. Actually, they just need enough concurrent players so their systems, most important social aspects, work.
Now, maybe that's not you. You post on a core gamer MMO portal anyway. You actually play the games, because they are somehow fun to you. I am quite certain it's different for the other people out there. Grown up with a brain flooded with information, nano-second video cuts of flashy MTV clips and a short attention span, MMOs are made for them. They aren't meant to be immersive and fun. Why don't we play MMOs from the couch? I guess that's because you need to quickly tab to the internet and you need the extra screen to run your favorite TV show. You can't play from the couch, because that would make MMOs look boring. Your semi comfortable desk chair is perfect to put you into a procrastination mood, where you would LIKE to achieve something but you don't most of the time--designed to make your brain idle. In asia, especially korea, it even becomes one-handed gaming, because people smoke with the other (that's the not so inaccurate prejudice) and they NEED to. You can't make the game challenging and immersive in the larger part of the game. You can have spikes, just enough to serve as a carrot stick. I wonder why MMOs are not more like Farmville, not less. I guess the next Blizzard MMO will be.
Exaggeration for the sake of illustration. I guess developers as idealistic as you exist as well, otherwise we wouldn't have the discussion. ;)
Now this post is straight after my own heart!
I also love the Zelda series, but I've never heard of an RPG fan who didn't know that Zelda was the name of the Princess . . . and you call yourself one of us, for shame. LOL!
You're right though, today's games have me crying for a game like Asheron's Call or Everquest with the same old grind and better graphics. What happened to MMO's? I can't seem to figure out what it is that all these newer games are missing . . . seems more to me like it's a form of magic to get an MMO right, but more or less I think it's been over-capitalized.
I also believe there are so many factors missing from today's MMO's that the task of working on a new MMO is daunting to the Nth degree. Originality, difficulty, deep story lines, mysterious "undocumented" quests, open exploration and mind-numbing character calculations are among the greatest in my mind. If it sounds too hard to develop and even HARDER to play . . . I want in.
Does anyone recall their first MMO experience? Asheron's Call was my first experience, not but a month or two after it's original launch. Then again, when I was a n00b to the MMO world I didn't read up on ever facet of the game either, I just explored and hoped for the best. So, on the part of individual play-styles, I'd say online collaboration to divulge every facet of every game from the moment of it's conception "spoils" most MMO's before they get a chance to surprise us from the ground up. So, some of the blame we have to put on our very own selves sometimes.
There are also the games that never received the proper polish before launch and continued to have trouble after launch (Asheron's Call 2 and Vanguard come to mind), but had the real potential to draw on their predecessors and usher in a whole new slew of MMO veterans and n00bs alike. With all of the WoW and FFXI/Anime knock-offs out there, it went from picking one of two possibilities (AC or EQ) to "What do I do with myself now?"
I've found myself enjoying The Chronicles of Spellborn, Runes of Magic and Dungeons and Dragons online. Why? They are free and I can't think of not one better P2P game out there that has drawn me in enough to make paying for them worthwhile.
With that said, there is hope! Diablo 3 will be coming out soon, Hero's Journey is still in development, Heroes of Telara is also in development and FFXIV shouldn't keep use waiting for too much longer, right?
Great article all-around. Good luck hunting (for a game, not in one, lol)!
I so agree! MMOs just tend to be point and click for the most part. I mean, yeah, they throw in a few skills, some potions, but it's just SO grind heavy. They really need innovation!
UO, WoW, and EQ2 all have such mechanics.
For me, MMOs have lost their sparkle because of the lack of challenge, because of the lack of imagination in gameplay, and the lack of "reward" for accomplishing something.
Lack of challenge. I really hope the trend of making everything continually easier doesn't continue. But then again a 50 million dollar budget Farmville/MafiaWars would probably rake in the cash.
Imagination. Rigid gameplay standards are the norm now-a-days it seems. You WILL hit buttons x, y, and z in the same order now and forever. I'm a Jason type player. I want a wide array of things that I can do at any time that do a wide variety of things that are all reasonably equal choices to accomplish my goal. Do I feel like my double-barrel shot gun or my chainsaw at this moment? Maybe I want to smash it to bits with an iron. Maybe I'll use my hook shot at this moment and slash it to bits with my chain saw. The clothy should be capable of tanking. The plate guy should be perfectly viable ranged dps.
Reward. Loot doesn't matter anymore. It'll be replaced in a month or less. Save the princess, cure a plague, kill the ultimate bad guy of evil, Save the world from being made mini by gnomes? Dime a dozen within a single MMO. Many MMOs seem to suffer from power-up manga syndrome. The story telling is quite mundane.
Power-Up Manga Syndrome, LMBO! I hope you don't mind if I use that line someday.
I read a few of your posts Midmagic and for the most part, I agree. Some games DO have interactive environments, but I think the previous poster was talking about the level of interaction that not only goes up to the Legend of Zelda series but does so just as often, just as integrated into every step and (as it appeared to read to me) well beyond.
I still argue that making an MMO out of a game exactly like Oblivion would put smiles on a LOT of faces, but I'd take Zelda as well (which makes me wonder why someone hasn't turned Zelda or another big, original NES title into an MMO). Right about now I'd take a Mario Bros. MMORPG if the devs just kept it "close". Anyways, I keep going back to Oblivion over and over again, and I could practically recite all of the dialog. My point being, look at all of the games that people love . . . they were pretty darn hard and we loved it (that's what she said).
Make it retarded-hard (no offense), put content in it that one one is going to get to until at least a year after the game's released, make it complex to understand, hide quests all over the place (some that may never even be discovered) and make sure you cut anything "cartoony" out of it. Watch me sit at my computer for the next 6 years happily playing until the graphics become completely intolerable and likely well beyond!
::: coughs Asheron's Call :::
Anyways, great posts. It's good to see so many people commenting on the topic and having fun getting it all out there. I know I feel better.