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Should developers stop making MMOs for everyone
DocBrody
Member UncommonPosts: 1,926
"Accessible"
"Beginner Friendly"
"Consensual"
"Broad audience"
"PvE or PvP"
"Optional"
"Play the way you want"
HOW MUCH LONGER? Why does almost every developer shove these shallow-taste "Mutually agreed" game concepts down our throats?
Why do initially good games get invaded and destroyed by complaining carebears or other minorities and developers even listen?
Why does every game come out as a mix of little secluded "playstyles" to please everybody?
Why can´t we have more niche titles which don´t need 1 000 000 players to be profitable?
Comments
There's plenty of titles for niche audiences, like Darkfall and Salem. However, those niche audiences seem to want AAA budgets despite being niche, which is why they don't get what they want.
Do you want a Darkfall or Salem with the budget and polish of WoW/GW2/ArcheAge? Not going to happen.
Indie developers already try doing this not that it always helps if a huge horde of zealot casual themparks destroy it in matter of weeks demand this carebear that.
Im for indie where gamers comes first and money second or third.
guys, I guess any specific MMO would be / was total fail, as MMO = massive and not small audience based game.
only IMO
try before buy, even if it's a game to avoid bad surprises.
Worst surprises for me: Aion, GW2
I would like to have
1) one pure PvE MMO to play, which never has to worry about PvP balancing or PvP gear, and can solely focus on delivering great PvE.
(Banning everyone who whines about missing PvP. "Don´t like the game, go play something else" dev attitude)
2) one pure PvAll MMO with non consensual PvP, territory control, heavy social interaction, virtual world persistant sandbox treating NPC and player equally and keeping laws and repercussions ingame, governed only by NPC and players.
(Immeditaly banning everyone who whines about griefing or ganking. "Don´t like the game, go play something else" dev attitude)
Exactly. Niche concepts -> crap budget, sadly
Then they go point at those small buggy indie titles and say: Look, it´s not working! Come back to play our cool big budget mainstream titles.
How about niche concept -> reasonable budget -> profit ? (e.g. EvE)
We need an MMO like vanilla EQ again. for the peaple who dont like change, i know thers others out there like that besides just me, right?
We certainlty be a niche, but would be nice if dev's cared about us to.
OP just described an almost ideal mmorpg.
"Accessible" - what's wrong that players can access mmorpg? It's an online game after all...
"Beginner Friendly" - yes, you want your players (that will bring you their cash) to start and not to abandon 5 minutes later.
"Broad audience" - wrong conception. Give me specific audience
"PvE or PvP" - wrong conception. I'd prefer either PvE or PvP, no "dual model".
"Optional" - good conception. You may do quest or you may not do it. You may buy vanity item in cash shop (if there is any) or may not - it does not affect anything
"Play the way you want" - it's just ideal mmorpg. You have a quest "Oh thee braveth hero, plz bring me The Head of Titan Duck"....and the player can hunt down Titan Duck, steal that head from other player, buy that head...Anything wrong with this conception? It's what I personally want, a very wide scale of choices, not linear one.
I see no evil in most thing OP describes. On the contrary - I suppose they may indicate a good game. Other question are rhetoric ("Why can´t we have more niche titles which don´t need 1 000 000 players to be profitable?"). Just because you will have to gain a very loyal almost 100% paying player base that would regularly visit your cash shop (and cash shop would not be P2W). Or "Why do initially good games get invaded and destroyed by complaining carebears or other minorities and developers even listen?" - it's called democracy, you know. People have a right to say what they want to, it's their right. If I think Lotro should have Teddy Bears, I do have a right to post on their forums. If I think SWTOR should became pr0n game, I have a right to tell this idea.
OP, just please calm down. Situation is not that grim, we have some interesting kickstarters and community that will support them.
http://www.mmoblogg.wordpress.com
MMOs are made to appeal to everyman for maximum profit. MMO stands for Massive Multiplayer Online, yet all we get are versions of WOW.
The infinite variation of gameplay allowed by online gaming reduced to us playing different takes on one game. Now you get your other online games of course, but in "MMO's" which where the online form of the RPG we are getting one playstyle. This would be like EA only releasing B3 style shooters from now on. Solo gamers would not put up with it, but MMO gamers do.
The move to F2P has been part of that, if you can play it for free, what does it matter if it is a sub standard rip off? But we had already moved to the WoW template long before F2P took of, the explosion of F2P just cemented the WoW clone as the only game in town.
Unless your running a non profit organisation ,the purpose of a successful business is to maximise profits. If you're talking about producing a game with similar costs in developing to a AAA game your going to struggle to see anyone take that kind of risk on a niche market
I'm with you in that I want to see a game developed for the player that wan't to be challenged because I personally think it will attract a more mature audience, however I couldn't answer your poll because your yes/no answers are asking for ALL developers to be one way or the other.
If your question was "Should a developer stop making MMOs for everyone", I would vote yes because I would love to see someone take that chance to hopefully create something special.
Darkfall 1 was great game and rather nice looking world. It failed on zerg and all race clans,cheating and splitting up community to early in two servers and to long grind.
If all believe you can't survive alone or saying that you been constantly ganked then people starting to believe this and leave.
Game community of Darkfall have for most part ruined there own game.
Even if devs dont deliver all or slow with updates solving bugs and communicate very bad you as player still dont need to cheat but 90% of darkfall community still cheated 24/7.
Darkfall was nich and great game, but it would have survived if the above points i mentions did not happen.
There is 100% market for niche indie games.
But gamers themself destroy them.
Darkfall:cheating zerging and US players demanded there own server which was way to early splitting up community.
DayZ hackers hackers hackers and the gamers who saying DayZ is way to hardcore and wanne dumbdown versions it will fail eventually or CoD kids who think its about fragging and dont understand the whole concept of what DayZ is all about .
Gamers themselfs are many times the ones who make it imposible for indie developers to continuing.
Also when you start a game and search the net for every bit of info you get like wiki's, walkthroughs, databases or builds then obvious you be bored to death in few weeks or months no challenge at all.
Ithink the gamers need to re-evalutate how they think and play these games today and start over as it was 15years ago. orther wise i dont see any good future for any game at all it will all be super dumbdown versions and lifespan of weeks maybe even less.
EVE isn't what you're asking for. It offers a broad spectrum of activities, including PvE, crafting, exploration, trading and PvP. High sec is quite newbie friendly and the tutorial teaches you the basics well enough. PvP is consensual and optional more often than not in that you're essentially giving your consent by leaving high sec.
EVE can be pretty hardcore and niche, but many players don't play it as such.
I don't know , we would have to ask the developers of Wild Star for those answers .
I still think its possible to sattisfy everyone in one game...
combine a social game like 2nd live with a true RPG and a sandbox MMO, allow people under certain circumstances to controll NPC armees like in a RTS game. And then allow 3rd party companies or individualls to develop more content for the game, while the orriginal developers just concentrate on the core engines of the game and the skills and abbities.
But to fix this you need tomwork in layers and not in a pot trying to mix everything up. Because thats where we currently go wrong, we add all those things to the core of the game and that does not work.
Best MMO experiences : EQ(PvE), DAoC(PvP), WoW(total package) LOTRO (worldfeel) GW2 (Artstyle and animations and worlddesign) SWTOR (Story immersion) TSW (story) ESO (character advancement)
Yeah, because people asking for niche games that don't hold your hand with MONTHLY SUB FEES don't have money nor a life. /eyeroll
Developers should have a vision and stick to it. There is no specific design or mechanic that makes a game for a mass audience or a tiny one. The people that say such things are wrong. History proves it over and over.
If anything developers should stop using ROI and statistics in the design phase. We might actually get a "game" then.
"If the Damned gave you a roadmap, then you'd know just where to go"
Darkfall - I played the first year or so. I found a better community there than any other game I found until I got into WvW in GW2. I think a niche game or even a game with a few issues makes a tighter community.
Massively - The mmorpg's I play aren't massively populated anymore. I remember in the early days of WoW (and maybe still today) when the game was super-crowded. It was almost annoying. But it gave a false sense of community -- still warmed my little toon's heart.
Economy - I agree the economy will dictate change for the better. There will be a bubble bursting or a crash *crosses fingers*.
And here's some food for thought: A lot of us are old farts, or older farts in our careers and would pay/sub for that niche game, once we find it. We are looking by god! Will the market diverge into mmorpg's for older players who are 25 or 30+ and mmorpg's for younger players teen to 25 or so. I see this occurring already.
Gaming since 1985; Online gaming since 1995; No End in Sight! My YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC8POVoJ8fdOseuJ4U1ZX-oA
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been -Wayne Gretzky
Yep.
Fact.
Should developers stop making MMOs for everyone
Of course not, they actually should START building MMORPG for everyone again.
It use to have so many different playstyles put into on game, now all we have is these combat oriented online game which to me seem that developers only make MMO's for a certain audience and definitly not for everyone.