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Persistent world is not required for fun
nariusseldon
Member EpicPosts: 27,775
well, i am opening this thread so people can discuss gameplay with respect to virtual world (or the lack of), and not definition (which personally i don't care).
Let me state a few obvious underlying facts first.
- people have different preferences. You can state yours but i don't think it is valid say everyone would prefer sandbox to themepark .. and hence sandbox is not "better" than themepark.
- The topic "world is not required for fun" is pretty much obviously true for many players. Many highly rated online multiplayer game has no persistent world (examples, LOL, D3, WOT, Borderlands ....) but will match multiplayers from a "massive" population and even allows people to trade with a massive population (D3).
- While world persistencies are not in many of these games, there are usually some other form of persistency .. most populat is toon/character persistencies. D3 has it. LOL has a form of it (you reset your hero per game, but you bring abilities tied to the player). WOT has it .. even many online FPS has it.
Now my thesis (so this is opinion, not facts) is this:
Virtual persistent world is expensive to make. In the beginning, it brings persistency of characters and social communications but the devs (and players) do not realize that some of these benefits can be captured WITHOUT the world.
Today, you can form cross server groups (much more flexible than only groups within your own server). You can have friend list and chat channels. You have LFD/LFR. You don't need the persistent world to form groups to play with others.
Today, you can have persistency of characters and progression (which seems to be quite important to players) without a persistent world. You can bring these characters from game to game, and if they make a new instance, you can bring the character there.
At the same time, it get rid of much of the in-assessible elements of a persistent world (interfering with others' dungeon adventure, long travel ...).
Now obviously these advances are only catered to some (and i would argue a lot) but not all players. But like all markets, the online gaming market adapts to its customers.
The question, of course, is what other gaming innovation can be done to make onlineg gaming better. Personally i think it is in diversification, and focus. For example, PS2 looks like a good game (and we can debate about taht) and while it retains teh world, it streamline interactions, and focus on pvp with some capture mechanics (no more than some SP games). And the selling point is huge battles.
Another online game i am watching is Marvel Heroes, which is like Diablo with some persistent areas (hence a MMO instead of online action RPG). But this one is very lite on the MMO aspect.
Mechwarrior online is another potentially good game, but it is strictly 8 vs 8. Now there may be some persistent aspect (your mech, your character, and even control of sectors) ... a combo of instanced battle and control over a map (without a 3D world) may be another direction.
I believe there can be other types of truly out-of-the-box development, and not going back to old idea of an one persistent all inclusive world. May be another idea for those who want to explore, is a SKYRIM type world but you seamless switch from instances from instances depending on what is "appropriate" for the player. For example, if you are going into a dungeon, it needs to be only for a small group so you feel isolated, then the game will automatically put you in an instanced. If you go into a town, the game will automatically put you with a lot of players (persistant area). if you are on the country side exploring, then the game will randomly put few other explorers into one instance .. so you will feel that the world is not totally empty, but it is large and only few will meet (to prevent crowding when you are exploring say a mountain).
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The point is to discuss the role of persistent world, and why many popular online games (and you can look at the xifre top games .. a convenient place to compare) do not need a persistent world while have persistent characters, and trading.
I am trying to distill the desirable elements of the old persistent world idea, and see how it is evolving in the market. The scope is online games, with some persistency.
Obviously. But i also speak for data .. for example xfire shows that most of the top 10 online games have no persistent world.
I enjoy many online games, with persistencies in characters, and may be trading, but without a persistent world.
I suspect more people will care to admit they enjoy games like Borderlands over many MMOs here.
well when talking xfire...it is not a new thing that most players doesnt want to play a "real MMO" at all, for most due to time required to play and be of importance as a single person.
so ofc most players doesnt want to play a MMO at all, as the very nature is very inconvenient, games with instance grinding really only ruin their own budget, by making a whole persistent online world, as it is used for such a short time each customer....for customers who would rather have more focus on the "epic fights" anyway, rather than open world fights where someone else may "steal" your kill, while ofc those that steal it in that situation all of a sudden love that scenario....but then that is usually 1% happy customers and 99% unhappy - pure bad buisness.
either way...MMOs will never be mainstream, that is all I wanted to say ; )
No persistent world = not a proper mmo.
Unfortunately this is the way "mmos" are heading though. All your wow clone style games are like this anyway once you level, just queueing in cities to go instanced dungeons or shite instanced pvp.
Someone's bound to crack on to the money making wheeze of just have the city and the instances, have a development budget of a cooprpg but sell it as a mmo and rake in some sub cash for 6 months before converting to "free" 2 play and making more cash.
Once upon a time themeparks weren't a bunch of instanced to hell and back trash.
E.g. daoc, EQ.
There's the odd modern exception too like gw2 and planetside 2.
So...?
The OP is not saying that persistent world is not required for a mmo, he is saying ONLY that persistent world is not required for fun. How can anyone disagree with that big insight?!
I will agree with that in theory, if we change proper to normal or traditional anyway.
But thats basically what a huge portion of CoH was. A bunch of city zones and massive instancing. While closed now it lasted what 8 years? and spawned 2 major expansion and tons of smaller ones.
I find the Minecraft model insteresing: on-demand generation of random persistant landmasses that can be shared or kept private. I liked the Eve model of a huge sprawling collection of interconnected systems in which players mostly play within one small corner. I'm curious what would happen if the two ideas met half-way: players could generate islands, then choose to keep them private or connect them into a web of other islands through which players and resources could move from island to island.
The database, server load and QA overhead might prove too large to make the idea viable, but on the other hand, if I understand Second Life (which I haven't actually played), it has already tackled many of these same issues.
Exactly. I doubt anyone would disagree with that statement.
The threads are getting a little repetitive around here. This could have easily been in covered in one of the several other active threads dealing with ``worlds``.
"Mr. Rothstein, your people never will understand... the way it works out here. You're all just our guests. But you act like you're at home. Let me tell you something, partner. You ain't home. But that's where we're gonna send you if it harelips the governor." - Pat Webb
If you hadn't noticed, there aren't many games with persistent worlds that have released in the last 8 years.
What's more, if you wanna go by what's the most popular, you don't even really need a game to be "fun" apparently. Look at all the iOS games.
You speak as if the idea of a persistent world is "old" and is no longer relevant to have fun.
I have yet to see a persistent world done correctly so this whole "New School Vs. Old School" thread is flawed
What online MMO (or even MMO like) game released in the last 8 years doesn't have a persistant world?
TSW, GW2, swtor, cov, war, wow, vg, aion, aoc, ddo, ac2, eq2... and dozens of others.
All have persistant worlds. Actually in discussing the games on this site, by far the majority have persistant worlds vs iffy ones like d3.
edit - ios games are not games?
Once leveled tsw, swtor, wow and Aoc might as well be cooprpgs as everyone is sat in cities queueing to go instances
Vg, aion, war and gw2 have reasons to step outside though.
Wouldn't know with eq2 and ac2
Almost every single one of those games you listed is primarily instanced/lobby based. Vanguard being the obvious exception.
If you hadn't noticed, there aren't many games with persistent worlds that have released in the last 8 years. What's more, if you wanna go by what's the most popular, you don't even really need a game to be "fun" apparently. Look at all the iOS games.
What online MMO (or even MMO like) game released in the last 8 years doesn't have a persistant world? TSW, GW2, swtor, cov, war, wow, vg, aion, aoc, ddo, ac2, eq2... and dozens of others.
Almost every single one of those games you listed is primarily instanced/lobby based. Vanguard being the obvious exception.
Those games have persistent, shared worlds. Well, I'm not sure about CoV and DDO to be honest, but the rest of them have virtual worlds that are persistent and shared.
Those games could be set in a white, featureless cube that is 10 yards on a side, and it would still be a virtual world. A 10 yards per side cube would be a bad virtual world, but a virtual world it would be.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
None of them are instanced lobby. You can treat them that way if you wish but all them have have a world you can go out and meet hundreds/thousands of players and intereact with them in.
I am not interested in definitions. I did not say this is about MMOs. I said this is about online MP games. And non-MMO online games can be fun, can they?
I don't think discussing if there *is* a persistent world is very helpful. The focus should be if the persistent world is contributing to the fun.
Take WOW as an example. Yes, there is a virtual world. But a lot of players ignore it and spend 90% of their time in LFD/LFR instances, and pvp arenas. If so, the world contributes very little to the fun, and it may as well not be there.
I am not interested in definitions of MMOs .. but what is contributing to the fun. I see that the reason why the gameplay is moving AWAY from playing the world .. is because those lobby based co-op dungeons, and arenas are capturing fun factors that is not in the world.
So the question is whether the world is obsolete, whether it is their or not ...
or is there other types of changes (like phasing, or limited interaction like PS2) that make the world a better feature for "fun".
Sure. All games, or any form of entertainment for that matter, can be fun. That goes without saying. Am I missing something here?
"Mr. Rothstein, your people never will understand... the way it works out here. You're all just our guests. But you act like you're at home. Let me tell you something, partner. You ain't home. But that's where we're gonna send you if it harelips the governor." - Pat Webb
Yes. If you look at xfire data, or what MOGs (multiplayer online games) are popular recently, those with virtual worlds are not on it.
And if you look at MMO trends, it is moving away from virtual world gameplay to lobby type gameplay.
So the question is what characteristics of virtual world gameplay turned players off, and are there any fix? One thing i can think of .. is focus .. like PS2 .. limited focused pvp interaction.
Or are more and more MMOs going to turn away from the virtual world idea? Are more online games being made either non-MMO (like MWO, or WOT) or have very little vritual world component (like Marvel Heroes)?
The reason your xfire data is false is because MMO's where never mainstream and should never have become mainstream, WoW is what made MMO's mainstream and because of their methods the MMO world has changed significantly.
People don't seem to understand that we people who love MMORPG's dont want any of this shit. we want our persistant world to escape from reality and meet new people, hang out with them do things with them without being guided by anyone.