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What is the one major feature MMO's lack today as well do without?
Talrune
Member Posts: 339
As the title states what is the one feature we would love to see or keep in mmos as well as one we could do without?
Me personally I would love to KEEP the story as I feel that gives depth and immersion to the game.....and one i could do with out is to over simplify the game, too many mmos do that today and I think that is a reflection on the generation coming up.
When I was a teen I wanted a challenge and I did not want anyone to tell me how to solve it unless I had tried all avenues....now it seems its all gimme gimme without any work to get the reward. I admit im 40 and have been playing mmos about 17+ years now but I still feel there is hope and that they need to be challenging without the instant gratiifaction all the time.
So how do you all feel? anyone??
Comments
i kinda made this post in a dead thread. so sorry for hijacking abit but it is the same subject.
Here is what i think: (this was a reply to someone ignore the upper part)
MMO's today are not TOO good., why are alot of them hanging by a thread reverting to free to play if they are too good?
No our standards havnt really changed. but developers look at wow and think that bringing in a gazileon features = happy gamer.
This is not the case tho, the reason we are bored is that all those features are really shallow and dont really bring any fun too the game.
Now here is what should happen: Leveling exp needs to be 10folded at least. make it a chalange to level up because leveling up = adventuring, specially if you create a dangorous world to do it in where the slightest misspull can wipe your party (yes on random mobs)
Also make a need for grouping make thing unsoloable. Doing that will bring the community back into games because you have to group in order to lvl up, you can be succesfull 2manning but 4manning will be alot faster.
Bring back a death penalty, Dying should be a sin in an mmo. When you die penalty would be 50% of your next gained exp goes into your penalty for 10% of your lvl. If you have that people will watchout for eachother. you would like help if your in a predicament yourself so this creates a stronger community.
Also removes dungeons while your at it. make it all open world so you would have to find out for yourslf when a boss would be up or not.
these are simple little things wich todays mmo's are missing
the word MMO (Massivly Multiplayer Online) stands for adventuring together with people. not doing evrything by yourself and ocasionally group for a dungeon..
edit: These are things from past mmo's, things wich todays mmo's are missing. if you find Instant gaming fun the mmo market was never your place to have come searching. leveling up in a party was a whole lot of fun back in tha day.
Well i am 26, but i have been gaming Alot since when i was young. (yes i still got plenty of outside time) basicly any mmo before wow was set up this way. market got flooded by people without a clue and almost 10 years later we have our result.
Mess with the best, Die like the rest
Could do without:
The shift away from "Virtual World" to "eSport" - I hate it.
Lack Today:
Outstanding community tools (guild management, guild alliances, housing/communities, etc). There are a few that have had solid bits and pieces, but I can't think of any that tie it all together really well.
i like you
Keep: WASD Controls -
Imo, games that try to stray to far from a control system that every one is so familiar with (semi-WASD to no WASD controls) end up doing some weird things that sound nice in theory (so called truly dynamic combat, auto switching of weapons etc.). But, make gameplay terrible in practice. The standard movement, jumping being useless, and way of targetting and attacking may be generic, but it's stable, it works, it's fairly kind to developing a sort of hand memory.
Some games have gone ages without anything close to WASD controls, then try to integrate it only partially. Others try to start off with their own take on WASd, how it works in their game. Doing either of these is pretty fail because the fact that most MMO's are re-hashes means the creators are not smart or creative enough to handle messing with such a long term standard. A few games have done well for years without WASD, but these, imo are few and far between.
...In short, use WASD or Don't but stop trying to re-invent the wheel.
Loose: Kill & Collect Questing -
This is when I quit most MMO's if they don't wow me graphically or with interesting storyline. If the best thing they can come up with out the gate is I am a new recruit who has to work my way up through a strand of repetative NPC's to fetch them nedless junk from pretty much the same monsters in different skins...I decline to play. This gets even worse when a game lets you auto-nav-run to the sites of your goals.
They might as well throw up a sign that says begin botting here. In questing I want to encounter riddles, and puzzzles, have to craft special items and move through obstacle courses, maybe have a time limit to do things within and have to figure out how to seemingly unrelated items work together...not mindlessly murder endless spawns until I level.
Basically, The linear grind is idiotic and that is the major earmark of it. Give me something more interesting to do.
The thing i beleive are lacking in MMO's today
1- Death penalty, It help create immersion in the world, it makes your fear some area's it made the world exciting atleast to me i find myself playing game that have a death penalty much more than games such as Rift, WoW.
2- Depth of the game - There was much more depth to games preWoW for example with EQ you could kill any NPC in the game, if you were a human you could kill human guards, however by doing so you would loose reputation and gain it else where. For example killing a human guard in qeynos you woulkd loose rep with qeynos guard, sureefield glade but you would gain it with corrupted guards of qeynos. Kill tomany wolfs in Qeynos hill are the ranger of surefield didnt like you as much. Different NPC were different faction based for example there was faction for every class in a city and were different in all the other cities.
3- Social aspect of the games are long gone atm it a single player game till max lvl then 5 man dunguen crawl after that (where you dont even talk cause u wanna get through it asap).
4- No quest hubs, hate these much rather the older way where ytou discovber them urselfs. and they were acualy quests not kill 5 of these and talk to me.
Unfortuently nowadays people dont know about how important these thing are in MMORPG anymore cause they never played the older games due to starting with WoW
MMO's lack recognition amongst PC developers.
Why if I want to play a game I have to spend hundreds on my PC to upgrade graphic card, etc, when I already spent hundreds for the PC itself? A PC that will work, what, 10 years tops and I have to go and buy another one. I hate game stations. I hate sitting on a couch instead of at a desk. I hate their limited in game movement. I hate the feel of controllers in my hands. I want to play on a PC with a keypad and mouse. MMO's can't advance until Wal-mart is selling supercomputers instead of crap for less than $200, BEFORE THE ECONOMY CRASHES. The only thing advancing now are DS's; tiny hand held games for little bitty children.
Why am I still driving a vehicle propelled by gasoline? I've seen plenty inventors come up with alternatives. Why doesn't anything in society advance anymore??? Everyone screams, "give us a better mmo!" Crap, give us better anything. Stop wasting idiot time trying to build a ladder to the moon, dissecting unborn children's brains, and making the *&%# telephone have more buttons!!!
Why?
Why?
Why?
Why are we not advancing anymore???
Again you choose to play these new MMOs when there is an MMO that has everything you are asking for. Seems to me that you really don't want what you are asking for.
Now if you really want so top notch sandbox action then i suggest you watch this video and head on over to the forums and grab yourself a beta key,beta starts today.
This game has a cash shop but it's all vanity items like a sword that some idiot bought but all it did was look good and glow.
Watch this VId in HD all the way through. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FJP3PgzodFU
Here is another related set I can think of for keep and lose in MMO's (I am starting to like this thread more and more).
[Note: Keep btw is synonymous in my repies here with what they are lacking fully or to some degree, as is Lose for what they can do without... I find this format easier to work with in replying I hope others do as well.]
Keep: High degrees of player moderation. -
When players can flag rule breakers, punish people who abuse pvp to make low levels lives hell, fame and defame each other within a rating system, Handle ticket issues, And in some instances even temp-ban or temp-mute poor additions to their community pending further review...it's all the better, Imo. There are a good number of MMO developers out there that seem almost terrified of giving over any kind of authority to their player base. But, I have never seen a good example of this having been done, and not going even better then could have been hoped for.
Lose: Apparent Developer Apathy -
Developers of games often seem distant, Disconnected with the player base, and otherwise disconcerned with anything but the bottom line.... They often seem that way. This is not usually the case, and the fact is they are usually busy. But, what they are busy with is normally not very transparent.
I think players need to be able to glimpse a lot more of the process. And, feel a lot more connected and that they are cared for. There is not much else that is more discouraging then getting an auto-response to a ticket that doesn't help and sometimes doesn't even address an issue a player is having. Or bringing up a real issue within a game about some sort of glitch or buggyness and seing it go ages without even being responded to.
First, sorry for the double post but I saw this after I posted another thought I had on this subject.
I think that is on MMO developers more then the PC industry for a few reasons. For the computer inustry, there is no one panel of people who sit back and decide how good computers will be and what they will be able to handle, and above all what they will cost for the next year. It's not the london fix.
You have people who make chipsets like intel, people who make hardrives like sea gate, software and back-enders like cisco systems. They each do their best to put out the best stuff for the best prices. companies like HP or acer take parts from them and build machines that are sold to companies who slap their logo on them and send them to a store to be sold to the end customer...
That is only a very basic (also somewhat flawed and omitting look at how that works) look at how the industry works. it's so in depth, and involved, with so many people who will never be on the exact same page that it is impossible to wave your fist at the machine in fury and expect results.
On the computer industry end of things the truth is consumers determine the price and what is available by their trends of consumption. MMO's could advance a lot if we all had a laptop size super computer we picked up for 50 bucks. That won't happen any time soon though because gaming is not the main drive of the industry.
Now, look at MMO developers. They have only a single point to come from on it. They have tons of model formats, engine types, hosting ability and what not to choose from. And if they pick a winning formula more people can play more often.
For instance with Runescape I can still play it on a dinosaur pc with windows 98' special edition, as easily as I can play it on my Thermaltake running windows 7. Because it's developers picked java to run it on and build it in, something every machine has across the planet. Not only this but they inovated in ways never thought imaginable before on java. pushing the language used as a game engine to it's limits and mastering it's application.
And, in the comming year they will make a bigger leap then it was from the classic 2d version to the 3d it is today by switching over to html5....
Then look at up-commings like ArchAge that will basically take all the best features of MMO's that currently exist, enhance them and seemlessly blend them into a single game, while at the same time ditching all the stuff people tend to hate feature wise in an MMO.
My point is that MMO's only truly advance when their developers decide to push the limits of what they can currently offer, and make true inovations, as apposed to cranking out the next big throw together title that will make them a lot of money.
I could do without mentoring, power leveling and Rested/Bonus Exp, Raids and Voice chat
I would like to see the return to slower leveling
Watch your thoughts; they become words.
Watch your words; they become actions.
Watch your actions; they become habits.
Watch your habits; they become character.
Watch your character; it becomes your destiny.
Lao-Tze
Ah vanguard.
Yes the thing with vanguard is. When it was in beta or just went live, i have played it i played it a day and i did not do anything for me. not combat not enviroment. i was quickly done with it.
Now if you really want so top notch sandbox action then i suggest you watch this video and head on over to the forums and grab yourself a beta key,beta starts today.
This game has a cash shop but it's all vanity items like a sword that some idiot bought but all it did was look good and glow.
Watch this VId in HD all the way through. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FJP3PgzodFU
if they completely redid the engine and made performance not suck then yeah Vanguard would be great.
and no the performance issues are not fixed and yes the game is still buggy as heck.
Watch your thoughts; they become words.
Watch your words; they become actions.
Watch your actions; they become habits.
Watch your habits; they become character.
Watch your character; it becomes your destiny.
Lao-Tze
Bad things we dont need:
Fast leveling or leveling at all - I really dislike the fact that all games at the moment is like, go out kill 1 mob, turn in q, DING level 2... oh wow, i dinged level 2? Seriously, that just makes no sense at all, i remember in DAoC, dinging level 10 was awesome nice, it was also, decent fast, but it was not too fast.
The reason games are like that nowadays is to hide the fact it has nada content. Zones are rushed through so easy. Levels should take long, and it should not be obtainable by questing, it should force you out in the wilderness, to explore, and whack stuff... either solo or in a group. Voila, mmorpgs got the mmo back in them, that was easy.
Heck why even have leveling... Ultima Online did it perfectly, you gain skill... based on the skill you use. Voila, easy, endgame created just by that. You maxed Sword? But want Mace instead? -sword+Mace, get whacking! But i understand if everyone does not like that system, im fine with keeping levels, just make it take forever to hit max level, WHILE you have some awesome fun content. Simply being able to group up, and whack VERY hard hitting crabs in DAoC, in the early levels, was fun!
Fast traveling - Honestly, being able to go from a-z in a milisec, makes the world seem small and useless. Make all areas and zones have something fun and valuable in them, make some zones hard to get to, voila... gameworld allready feels more like a world. Horses in DAoC was a good "fast travel" system... it still took you some time to get there, but you could atleast go make coffee, or talk with people (shock), in the meantime. Ultima Online had the recall system.. worked also, but not sure that would work today. Make capitols or similar big cities "teleportable"... but to get out to the good hunting areas? TRAVEL! Also, remove mounts, or make them decorative stuff only. It wont happen i know, people like their flying crap.
Good things we need:
Zones being ... varied.
Im tired of seeing zones 1-15, 15-25, 25-35 etc. Seriously... Every friggin zone should have some varity in them... even the highest friggin zones should have some cap level monsters people are able to solo, able to group and able to raid. Lots of them. And every friggin low level zone should NOT just have 1-15 mobs... there should be monsters allowing you, as a lowbie, to level up, BUT there should also be monsters allowing even higher level characters to come to that zone, and level up. That could be an "Orc camp, who set up a camp close to newbie city HullaNewbie", where if you were a level 1-15 you would get royally owned, and fear that place... but then you would see a level 35 come by, whack the place, and think "OMG I WANNA BE AS STRONG AS HIM WHEN I GROW UP.... BACK TO LEVELING!!!"....
Dungeons being.... NOT INSTANCED!
Seriously... im so tired of it. Dungeons should be open for all. Again, in all dungeons (which should be huge!), there should be monsters people can solo, people can duo, people can group against, and monsters which people would need nothing short of a raid to defeat.... Ofcourse the raiding part only makes sense later in the game. But nevertheless, there should be "dungeon bosses", which would be almost suicide to take on solo/duo, to promote group play.
Loot being... varied and good everywhere...
Weird topic, i know. Anyways, good loot should NOT be dropping from dungeons... it should be dropping EQUALLY all over the world, except those special bosses in HIGH end dungeons. In a level 15 dungeon, you should be able to get good loot, no doubt, and some special loot, BUT... there should still be outdoor areas, and alot of them, that gives the exact same shot at good loot, heck, there should be bosses out there also, which gives that special loot. Normal, soloable/duoable/groupable monsters, should overall, no matter where, drop the same amount of loot-quality. Dungeons however, should have their "special items", maybe with graphic differences... people love that nowadays, and a faster respawn time, and a % chance to drop. Whereas outdoor special bosses, would drop 100%, but spawn slower.
I got so much more to write, but... im old, and no one agrees. I wish someday, a mmorpg will be released, which i will enjoy again...
I am not going to mention something old I want brought back. I am going to ask for something we will be asking to be brought back in 5 to 10 years time. MMOs are devolving and I don't think we will have all these features in five to ten years time:
Raids
Grouping
Factions
Crafting
In five to ten years time some or all of the above will have been removed from MMO’s. Some are already rare like factions, but they are increasingly given little time in the new easyMMO’s.
Staff interaction with the public.
Of course, given how much of the public is armed and hostile as hell, that may be a disguised blessing.
Self-pity imprisons us in the walls of our own self-absorption. The whole world shrinks down to the size of our problem, and the more we dwell on it, the smaller we are and the larger the problem seems to grow.
I don't think you should ever be able to max out a toon.
EvE Online I think does the length/breadth of progression correctly, I just hate how you can't gain anything (skill wise) from playing - just waiting.
One thing that needs to go is the tie between no-choice PvP and Sandbox games.
May suck for you but many people don't really have a problem, i run two clients two boxing of the one PC. Yes it's got a few bugs that are not game breaking but nothing like nearly six years ago.
Telon is booing and plenty of players playing.
This is this week and where is all the lag and buggy as hell you are talking about lol.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cLo3HjcUOSE&feature=relmfu
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=te_OI1rYdBk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AkLB0nWoJQE
Vanguard unplayable with bugs..okay lol.
Anyway i'm just off to do some sandbox gaming in AOW.
Wow - those GFX were appalling and with all the characters jumping/sliding all over the screen - I can see where the hate on polish comes from.
Reminds me of SWG - after 5-7 years they still had rubber banding players/NPCs/mobs and other such engine glitches.
Lol, we are not talking GW2 graphics, vanguard is nearly 6 years old, we are talking about features in an MMO.
For nearly six years old the game does not look bad at all.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GE3MZf6q7Bk
Anyway, ill leave you to it i'm off to play Age Of Wushu US beta that starts today.
An mmorpg with horizontal progression that takes either many years to max out or just makes it impossible is something I've been waiting for a long long time. I don't think it would be popular though. The race to max level and "end game" has become a very big part of the genre.
There are certain queer times and occasions in this strange mixed affair we call life when a man takes this whole universe for a vast practical joke, though the wit thereof he but dimly discerns, and more than suspects that the joke is at nobody's expense but his own.
-- Herman Melville
The one major feature missing from MMOs is truly dynamic worlds. NPCs that go to sleep at night, animals that migrate, bosses controlled by DMs that dont just follow a script, cities and land that change over time
We could lose: experience progression. make games fun to actually do minute to minute, not just to increment some counter