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How can a new themepark mmo avoid the themepark trap?
maccarthur2004
Member UncommonPosts: 511
How can a new themepark mmo avoid the players rushing through your developer's provided AI content in a very little time and, when reaching the "endgame" and there is nothing else to do, they going back to WoW?
One alternative that i tought would be make the ultimate goals (itens, gear, etc) be artificialy very hard and toilsome to get, but i think that wouldn't work since the players still have WoW as a better alternative and are used to easy earnings.
Comments
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been -Wayne Gretzky
http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/thread/373227/page/1
If a game is fun then it'll have players - whether it's an FPS, RTS, TBS, or MMO.
Personally I'm more for sandboxes than themeparks, but the bulk of the post-WOW themeparks can't even hold themepark players.
There's no real "themepark trap", but rather the game studios are putting out sub-par games. Themepark players finish the content of the poorly-made sub-par clone game, then hop back to a game that's more fun for them.
Why avoid it? Just play your business around the fact that players are going to rush through content. Hooked them on lower intensity progression till the next expansion.
Easier said than done. Most themepark MMOs seem to have a retention problem.
Eliminate level progression entirely.
Instant level-cap characters directly into endgame with gear progression via PVE and PVP.
The only way to avoid a game becoming top-heavy is to design the game to be top-heavy from the start.
Every game have a retention problem. You act like all those sandbox games dont' have retention problem.
I think you just need to make a better game than the rest of your competitor. Which is easier said than done.
That is the point. Don't see it as a problem. Just accept a short duration of play from players, and plan accordingly.
Agreed. Even as I typed my reply I thought the same thing.
But I do think sandboxes have more potential to encourage loyalty to the game. I think players become more attached to their characters in sandboxes and as a result have a harder time moving on.
Thats easy. You implement systems that give players side content to get lost in. Look at Skyrim. It has a quest line (very short) and the rest of the game is fleshed out in (really good) side quests.
Understanding thats a console mechanic, for an MMO allow players to have housing. To me this plants the user in the virtual world. Its persistent. Next allow them to hunt, fish, craft, build - like flying machines and boats.
Next you dont add (linear) quests but what I would consider 'adventure' quests. Have me go out in the world and locate/hunt something for an achievement/reward/loot/etc. They can small mundane things or all the way up to raid-level like encounters. The key is the player determines when and how they run it.
Who says you cant explore a cave and find a raid monster in there? Yeah, so what you get killed. But now you have discovered something new to conquer and must convince others to go with you to take him down. I'm just talking thoughts right now but you get the idea.
the solution is probably to mix a sandbox and a theampark game. Give players a theampark to play but have sandbox activities at all levels for them to get side tracked in.
No dev will ever be able to keep up with players ability to consume content but most theampark players don't want a sandbox only game ( and vice versa ) A mix of both that you could do both in would seem to give the best of both worlds.
The problem of course would be doing it right. If the theampark is just tacked on or the sandbox is just wow style crafting ( I.E usless ) then they just have another halfassed game.
-_- That whole thing was a joke. Take the only, the only succesful surviving sandbox MMO and establish a trend from that? Really?
I mean, If I pick Darkfall, Xsyon, Mortal Online, Fallen Earth and a few others to just establish a trend there along the lines of "sandboxes jsut don't work" and then show the "ideal themepark", say WoW as contrast, would you be happy with that? Would it make you think "gee, sandboxes sure suck" unless you were already leaning towards that direction?
A joke. You can't be serious.
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been -Wayne Gretzky
Do themepark mmos need retention?If they can generate profits over a limited shelf life and then roll out the next product, then surely that is what they should do.
Personally I see themeparks becoming more like the single player games in terms of equity generation, short life span with sequels and add on packs.
Instant action, quality, polish and churn. Retention is the remit of a "world/sandbox" game, why should themepark games worry about it?
"Come and have a look at what you could have won."
I have nothing against themepark games, it's their world design that sucks because it is linear.
If you mixed the content up throughout the world instead of having a linear path through it then they would be fine. Sadly right now they're all so top heavy and the world is dead...
Interesting suggestion. Do you see this infringing on console games?
btw, I left consoles to play MMOs because I got bored... and agree with your point that MMOs are becoming like single player games.
"Infringing"? There is no "copyright" here.
And not just conosle games. iOS games. PC single player games .. all have little retention issues. And why do you think MMOs are better than console games?
It is just a matter of taste. There are plenty of good console games like Dishonor that probably are more fun (at least to me) than most MMOs.
The answer is to not create games using a skinner-box model.
The sad truth, is that most gamers are so used to skinner-box models, that they refuse to accept anything else as fun anymore. Any game with clear, progression-based content, is going to get devoured at increasingly efficient rates. Furthermore, thanks to the internet, the number of people who can go through content at these lightning fast speeds goes up with each game.
Why is it "sad" if that is what is fun to them? We are talking about entertainment here. So the whole industry is showing that a skinner box is fun ... great ... it is what works.
And why look at devouring content as a problem? Someone is enjoying your content, and you are making money from it .... a win-win.
More and more I'm starting to agree with this thought, MMORPG's are following more of the model of the single player title, including their revenue generation model. It seems that they can make money even without a large, long term sub base, so sub retention really isn't an expectation by the Devs anymore.
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
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"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
Very possible but companies need to be wary that if they continue to produce MMOs as one shots, they will lose player loyalty and their next game may not be as appealing. Look at how far Bioware has dropped. And lots of folks are wary of Cryptic.
Right now players still consider MMOs to be long lasting games that evolve and grow so I still think devs need to develop games that is designed to retain players, otherwise their next game will pose more challenges to be successful.
People want to feel as if they are progressing so all you're really doing is advocating hiding the overt progression number of, say, player level in trade for progressing in other ways.
Hey aesperus, what makes your fun better than someone elses, hmm? Maybe you should apply that entry-level psychology on yourself too. Skinner box is maybe the crudest way to describe motivation in a game. Or anything really.
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been -Wayne Gretzky
Realistically the only way to do it is to either:
1) Make it a world, rather than gear treadmill, so that the gear treadmill is just one part of the world. Crafting, housing etc to do while waiting for new content.
2) Do what SoE do with EQ2 and make broken content in the raid / zone progression so that people have to wait until its fixed (strangely whenever new content is nearly ready to be released) to continue with progression.
which one, except TOR ?
played some non linear theme parks too
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