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An Mmorpg for everyone's taste
tazarconan
Member Posts: 1,013
There are elements in various mmo's we ve seen that were adding points to game's values in one way or another. Well structured open world pvp,well organized and build up pve, challenging gameplay,there themepark elements,sandbox elements,three faction pvp, rich diplomatic agenda,deep crafting systems for many and varying proffesions,build your own house,build guild's fortresss and build various buildings in it to enstrength its defence,wallls towers buy npc guards for it, deep roleplaying world ,with players actions affecting the world around it,etc etc etc
What im curious about is how come we havent seen one mmorpg so far that has everything in it. I mean lets think about it. if i was a developer i would like the game i make to be intresting,addictivewith good gameplay in it and have everything i could put in to make sure it gives the feel its real..something like a medieval fantasy simulator world/realm.I could try to make something that it has the magic in it. And ofc for financial reasons as a dev id like to get as many sales/subs from it so i can have max profit.
How i do that? i put every element that all types of players like.
Things that Themepark fans love areas that they can pve without afraid of getting ganged,arenas for fair pvp aka wow and tournaments aka m&b warband where players can visit on specific day and time om cities to declare participations for fame and fortune and/or to win titles,raid prggresion pve daily dungeons and quests etc etc
Things that hardcore players would like. Specific dungeons harder than others with better drops but with chance of permadeath (only in these specific dungeons) for the addrenaline bursters,specific areas where killling ganging corpse looting items is possible for the ones that willlingly want to visit and match their balls, and every thing we may saw so far from games in this catagory.
Things that sandboxers love.Free world to explore,occupy,build houses and clan keeps, rich mining,foreaging,harvesting ,crafting, a really huge world to explorew with rewarding adventuring,find hdeen ancient ruins keeps that only afew players will ever find (hard to spot due entrances to observation/tracking succesfull or not hidden dice-roll desided) etc etc etc
Really deep character build up with skills abilities feats and many talent trees all along to be earned and progress with the ability to choose class ,multiclass like in ddo or rift,or start without class if the player wants by chossing the things he like custom like like it happens in oblivion/morrowind) all these options given to the player when he starts a new toon.
I understand that some mmos are starting to go to this direction (archeage) and some othersbut even those have only a few of the elemnts i mentioned above.Not all . Why? Is there a reason? And why those games didnt appear in the past also? Dont devs want to create and deliver a complete product? Just thoughts....
Comments
Things player a likes player b doesnt
devs like to make easy money... so they just make wow clones and people seem to eat them up..
When people stop buying wow clones the devs will have to re-think.. but until that happens im pretty sure nearly all AAA MMORPGs will be WoW clones..
Ah i really hate the world WOW clones as WOW just copied other games but you get my point..
but even after that you wont be able to please everyone..
I wonder if its technically not possible to include all this content on a grand scale in one game. Add to that the server load for players online and participating in these varied activities. I have no idea but im wondering if it would bring the game to a grinding halt...
It seems likely that developers continue on with the same themes in content because its easier, cheaper (SWTOR aside), can appeal to a broader range of players AND can garner the most bucks because of its broad appeal. When you add a ton of varied content this could require a higher range of player pc to handle the load. Just a thought.
No such thing like an mmorpg for everyone's taste.
Mainstream mmorpg devs tried to make mmorpg like that for past 7 years, after WoW's success. (which won't happen again).
It just does not work.
Especially now after mmorpg market has matured a bit and most potential consumers already played at least 1 mmorpg.
Those people already have at least minimal preferences, so there are things that they liek and that they don't.
Imo way to go is to create mmorpg that cater to 2-3 niches at same time, instead of doing an mmorpg that will try to be "for everyone" and universally acclaimed <-- it usually result in mmorpg that is very solo + instance running based.
Market is oversaturated with that kind of gameplay so players looking for that kind of gameplay either play WoW or hop between dozens of similar games.
If devs want to have loyal, long-term playerbase then they need to do more differentiated mmorpg's that for sure won't be liked by parts of potential playerbase.
It is either "attractive to very wide playerbase but lose huge % of it fast" or "attractive to smaller playerbase but won't lose so much players and have them 'hooked' for longer".
Well that or just develop / gamble on making mmofps, mmorts or some mmo but no mmorpg and try to tap into 'fresh market' and playerbase that can still play a game going on big compromises.
Many of devs will do that and good. Actually less mmorpg titles, but more thought out and innovative would be better for genre.
Its expensive.
Each feature that you mention costs money, often a lot of money, to develop. The more features, the more expensive. Imagine adding the cost of developing several MMOs together to find the final cost of your, "please everyone," MMO. So, maybe somewhere in the two to four times as much to develop, without any assurance that it would produce revenue at the same increased rate.
Selling an investor on, "we are going to spend two or three times as much money as anyone else does developing an MMO," is likely to be very difficult.
When all has been said and done, more will have been said than done.
They did appear in the early years, they were called Star Wars: Galaxies and Eve Online.
The problem with these games is that they were inherently profitable in the long run.
Long run games are literally built so that the players can do whatever the hell they wished, they were not obligated to a track of missions that pertained to their level nor were they tide to a single role via class system.
They were not built for instant money bang, well, Galaxies kind of was but not really since MMO concepts were in their youth in the early years.
Most companies want the instant money, which is why you see an endless string of MMORPG's with the same f'ing class systems over and over again. But it only worked for one IP which was World of Warcraft.
WoW is a phenomenon, it was never intended to be the long run game we see it as today. It's completely opposite of what a sandbox is suppose to be, and still lacks quite a few features one would expect from such a monster. They still have not made any housing developments for this game after so many years.
Any long run game that attempts the WoW formula will fall flat, Star Wars Galaxies is a testiment to that. This is why you see so many MMORPG's and WoW-esque clones in the years following WoW's launch, all of which lack many of the features one would see in a game like Eve or SWG.
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But then you have a case like Eve Online where the company intentionally plays the long ball and doesn't try to grab a quick buck. I don't think there is any other company apart from maybe NCSoft trying to play the long ball at the moment.
And here's just one example why it cannot work: as long as you have raid dungeons, BoE and BoP gear and purple drops you cannot have a player-driven economy, as long as you have a player-driven economy you cannot have a loot-driven raid progression.
I maintain this List of Sandbox MMORPGs. Please post or send PM for corrections and suggestions.
It'd love to understand where that confusion between "sandbox" and "FFA PvP" comes from...
Respect, walk
Are you talkin' to me? Are you talkin' to me?
- PANTERA at HELLFEST 2023
To expand on that, different players want the best gear to come from different activities. You can't please them all at once in the same game.
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I'll give some other examples of why the original poster's proposal can't work. Some players want a huge amount of progression, so that they get a lot stronger as they go. Others want to be able to just play the game without having to worry about leveling up. How do you satisfy both at once?
Some players want to be able to kill any players they come across and steal their gear. Others want to be safe from non-consensual PVP and be able to do whatever they want without having to fear being ganked. How do you please both at once?
True that.
How I hate fact that I missed SWG
Loved UO though.
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At long-ball = possibly XL Games with ArcheAge.
Kinda heavy on themepark element, but still feel like game intended from ground up to be 'long-ball' project.
Yep. It's getting so I need to Cntrl+V "Define sandbox please"
Exactly....If it has no PVP, then player B will hate it...If its FFA PVP player A will hate it.....If its solo based player B will hate it, if its forced grouping player A will hate it....etc etc etc
I don't see any reason why a game should aspire to appeal to everybody. The market is sufficient enough to develop content that appeals to different players' tastes. People who like what TOR has to offer are playing TOR. People who like TSW's setting will play TSW. And so on. Certainly developers are not doing as good a job at capturing segments of the market as they should (people who categorize themselves as hardcore sandbox and/or pvp players for example), but that's neither here nor there when it comes to making a "universally appealing" game.
And really, I think the different strokes for different folks approach to market diversity is okay. The idea that a game has to have everybody playing it to be successful has arguably held the industry back long enough. From a gamer's standpoint, success or failure should be judged on whether a game sufficiently appeals to the audience it was trying to capture, not on whether it can sell X number of boxes and generate Y number of subs. more than some arbitrary standard.
That said, it would be interesting to see a game that tried to offer genuinely diverse gameplay and how that could be made to work....
Just brainstorming here:
Something for everybody probably requires "realms" with vastly different sets of rules and objectives and progress that is specific to a given type of gameplay.
What I'm imagining is a huge social lobby from where players can go off to different worlds and do their thing. Gear would be tied to the individual worlds, so earning gear in "quest & raid world" will not allow you to step into "24/7 open battleground world" with your raid gear and pwn peeps (though a pvp version of quest & raid world would allow players to pvp in their pve-acquired gear). When you die in "24/7 open battelground world" perhaps you die and lose your pvp rank and gear and have to start over from rank 1 (effectively permadeath...in that world).
You could even justify this lorewise by using an "Avatar" approach (the movie, not the cartoon), where the player character takes over the body of an inhabitant of the world he's traveling to. On some worlds the god of resurrection or advanced medical technology or whatever can resurrect your avatar...on other worlds you're SOL.
DIfferent dimensions/futures of the same world would seem to be the most feasible since the same resources could basically be reused. The premise would be that different outcomes from some key period in the world's history have created these different futures. Your character is part of the "police force" tasked with setting things in these other dimensions to right.
IMO that approach is probably the least controversial in the sense that people who only want to play one style of play won't feel obligated to explore different worlds to explore the "rest of the game" since most of the terrain and NPCs would be the same ... it would only be the way they were utilized that was different. On the other hand, different worlds or times would encourage players to explore parts of the game they wouldn't normally play, enabling them to get more out of the game. There is always a tradeoff.
The metagame would be driven by improving your titles, housing, and vanity item quantity/quality in the lobby space as you obtain lobby-space rewards for your accomplishments in the various gameplay worlds.
Apart from valid points people have made so far, Kitchen Sink Game Design is Bad Game Design.
If you try to do everything, you'll do everything badly.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
Thats exactly what im talking about. If player A likes pve only he can do that without wories of getting ganged.If player b is a sandbox lover he can find those elements and if he likes to pvp with corspelooting he can visit certain areas that support that.
Thats not true.Depends on how u do it.
The solution is simple. If everyhting is included om an mmo every player can do what he likes. Nothing will force me to do something i dont like right. The idea is about a game that has everything a player could ask.
The key to such a game everyplayer upon login is to have a wide list of possible activities. Dont do same things every day etc
Cmon, that is a load of Bullshit.
SWG and EVE do NOT give meaningful PVE content on par with a themepark. Running the same mission over n over isnt the same as visiting a plethora of areas with a different feel to each.
Uncle Owen types want to control the loot distribution
PVE folks want to adventure for their loot, and not be forced to rebuy the same things from Owen
PVP want to hunt the prior 2 mentioned groups.
There is no way to make a game to appeal to all IMO.
Asking Devs to make AAA sandbox titles is like trying to get fine dining on a McDonalds dollar menu budget.
The problem is that player B wants to kill player A, while player A wants not to be killed by player B. The free for all PVP types often don't only want to be able to kill max level players with good gear; often they want to be able to kill low levels who can't fight back. Your proposal won't let them, so they won't like it.
Haha ofc. This kind of behavior though is kinda retarded. Whats the point in killing lowbies? They cant defend themselfs its pointless.This more like harrasment. Im sure i wouldnt want those kind of players in a game i play. Even for that kind of players though there could be some zones that anyone wants to get ganged or loose equipment he can enter these zones to meet those good fellas heh.
No. He's pretty much right. There is no such thing as unlimited budget. You have to concentrate on something.
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been -Wayne Gretzky
I feel that the ultimate problem in creating a game for everyone's tastes is conflict resolution. When two players in a shared world have a disagreement with each other, how does that disagreement ultimately get resolved in-game?
In a PvP game, when players reach a certain level of antagonism, they can resolve their difference through conflict until one of them drives out the other or they come to a mutual respect through the conflict. The problem is that PvP aptitude is not equally distributed and if you are not a fan of PvP play, you start to feel like a peasant, a sub-class of player who lives by the leave of the PvPers.
In a themepark PvE game, when players dislike each other, they are expected to simply go their seperate ways and stop interacting if they can't resolve things. The problem is that being allowed to evade conflict resolution makes the community feel like it is forever flying apart.
On a RP server, there is a sort of court-like social structure - conflict resolution is handled through living breathing players who have the moral or game-mechanic authority to listen to arguements and pass out judgements. The problem is your game is at the mercy of this social structure that might collapse from its own internal drama.
In a non-PvP sandbox, you have to figure out how to keep people having a temper tantrum from kicking sand in faces (using the wide array of verbs to grief each other in some way or another). This ends up requiring a high level of GM policing.
If you have a world composed of different lands with different rules, it comes down to a question of how a resolution is resolved between players in different lands. This will result in either the subcultures either growing apart from each other or one tromping around the others' land without any respect for the local rules and spoiling that game.
Imagine a writer talk with you are 3 friends and ask "what stuff you like in books, tell me and I will write"
Then he writes the book and send to you and your friends.
Now imagine this situation
Writer talks to you, your 3 friends and 40000 guys asking what they like in a book, that then he will write it.
What book you think you will like more? The first or the second one?
By trying to fit everyone you will have to make parts worse to make others people like it. A simple example is permadeath, a guy that fucking love to see permadeath in mmorpg would not see it because of the many others that would hate it, the same with open pvp and other stuff.
While what u say makes sense try read the whole main thread