Is it me or are MMOs of late including future ones getting less and less classes. 4 seems to be the magic number these days. It majorly turns me off to be honest. I like options, more depth. It feels MMOs are just getting less and less depth about them. Am i the only 1 whose seeing this. Maybe im getting too picky....is it me?
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I play MMOs for the Forum PVP
No, it's not just you. I see that as a design decision to reduce production costs, make class balance easier, reduce development team size and reduce production time to get the product out the door faster so the suits can earn as much profit as possible before moving on to the next cash grab.
Its really sad. This is a perfect time for a developer to put in a shift and get creative because at the moment its just damn right dull. Im playing GW2 at the moment. Its ok but for thats all it is, is ok. It will get me by until something better comes along. Also i just do not have anything on my radar that could grab my attention.
Ahh, damn this is turing into a rant but you get my drift.
They know they can get away with it.
Recipe for success.
Develop less,
develop faster,
(Low cost),
Hype product,
(High box sales)
Community complains,
Company makes promises,
Game loses subs,
Game goes F2P,
Game gains players, and increase revenue.
Cut down the crew.
Start new project
Repeat.
I hear ya and agree...
nope, your not the only one. AoW pulled me out of the battlegrounds, dungeons, crafting, daily pit of disspare when there was no hope insight.
See, i want to play that but AOW is only really available for the US atm. Im from the Uk and wulin....well ...is it going to happen?
Have a look over the features available in FFXIV when ARR (re)launches this summer. They're aiming for a very feature rich launch with a great variety of gameplay systems to add depth to the game. IMO it's looking like the most feature-rich launch of a major MMO in over a decade.
It's very much the exception though as you're right OP, MMOs in general are getting shallower and shallower as the investors behind them are just trying to milk them for as much short-term profit as possible. They don't care about long-term profit from subscriptions because copying WoW doesn't work and they won't allow devs to try anything else.
Yeah I'll definitely be trying AoW. I'm trying to hold to my principle of not playing a mmorpg until a few months after release. I want the bugs and translation problems to get worked out.
Archeage is also on the horizon which is a must try.
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 FFXIV ARR Alpha I played was as generic as it gets.
exactly. one size fits all mentality. heaven forbid a class have a weakness. waah why cant my warrior heal itself, waah why cant my healer also do some damage, waah why cant my glass cannon wear heavy plate!! no choice anymore as far as classes. you might get some choice in how you spec such as a few more points of damage or a few more on defense but thats it. easy and lazy but hey if you can make millions doing the least amount of work, why wouldnt you?
There was a new post from gpotato today on their site. Basically they said: Translations are done. Team is working on a final beta client. Beta will open in february sometime. Launch will be "Early 2013".
This game has gender locked schools though, but you can allways steal skills in script raids from the other schools. THere are also rare skills that will drop in events that only a few players will get. They have high costs to cast and learn but you will play carefully around these. You can even see your character look change as you progress in the skills
Playing from Norway, the russian server with engrish translations is currently best as long as you have english friends. Look in the thread "Toally free Wushu" for how to get on the russian server and find the english guild.
I'd like to promote TSW a bit here too (which I also play). There are no classes and you make your own as you go from a large pool of skills. Almost like Magic the Gathering or GW1. Also you can switch builds at any time out of combat to adapt to the world.
EVE (again which I play) is the same way, but getting all skills here is impossible as they add skills faster than you could learn. There are no builds though, your build is your ship.
There are a lot of lazy developers which make cookie-cutter classes. Some even discard roles and make all their "classes" almost equal in their role. Just don't give the developers of shallow games money
Because i can.
I'm Hopeful For Every Game, Until the Fan Boys Attack My Games. Then the Knives Come Out.
Logic every gamers worst enemy.
I think the biggest issue here is the crybabies in the forums screaming for balance 1v1. In a multiplayer role playing game I think you should expect to have to bring a composite team to the fight and not cry beacause your ranged glass cannon was caught and killed by a melee dps.
If you get killed, get some friends and find a tactic to win..
LOL very true + make tons of fashions available at Item Shop and even game marriages, sell might for high price and generate great revenue.
try before buy, even if it's a game to avoid bad surprises.
Worst surprises for me: Aion, GW2
Err hello just check my sig game,oh yeah let me think Origins Of Malu,Embers of Ceurus,Archeage,Black Desert oh and yes Wushu is damn complex and way deep hopefully one of these will float your boat and Pathfinder might be funded yet as well not bad for a genre nerfed into Oblivion is it ?
This man is a genius ^
You make the mistake thinking "many options automatically means more depth" when it doesn't. Depth is the amount of viable options. You can have game with16 classes where only 4 are viable and a game with only 6 well balanced classes will have more depth. Many old games from text-based dungeon crawlers to MMORPGs have many options but usually only a handful were useful. Newer games may have less options, but much larger percentage of them are "good choices" meaning they contribute to depth.
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been -Wayne Gretzky
I'll be in there with you on all of those.
This is the "industry's" recipe. This is what they did to hip-hop in the late 90's. It went for each sentence being a complete thought with several meanings to "let's party in the club."
Water it down, then stretch it out.
Depth is not about number of classes. It is about number of interesting choices.
Every rants on D3 because there is no stat allocation. I found it has MORE combat depth than any MMO i have played because there are so many variations of skill combination that is viable with reasonable trade-off.
Just today, i am discussing (on other forums), about this hybrid archon build of D3 wiz, and in the thread, there are at least 3 or 4 different build variations with pros and cons. I came home and tried one out. How often do i do that when i play WOW or other MMOs at the end game .. not very often. How often do i do that in D3 ... almost every few weeks since the game was released.
And the point? This game has ONLY 5 classes. So depth is not about the number of classes. At least to me.