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The Faith Is Gone
seacow1g
Member UncommonPosts: 266
So I just want to talk about about my relationship with MMORPGs; I used to love them, I used to think that this genre could achieve things that no other genre can, but after nearly a decade of disappointment now my belief in them is gone. I've come to understand that MMORPG's are simply too big, too ambitious, and too riddled with design challenges to be done "correctly". In order to make them both fun and profitable, many people need to play, but needed many people to play them renders and developer from being able to produce a good one. I could get in depth into what I mean about this but it boils down to one simple fact: MMORPG's CANNOT be the genre I hoped they'd be. It's not economically feasible, it's not even feasible design wise. I used to be excited about the possibility of being able to play the same game with the same character, making a community of friends to play the game with for years. I used to have that in the early 2000's, but that time is gone. The dream is gone now. Get angry at me if you want, but I just felt like mourning the death of my dream. At least indie games and MOBAs are pretty awesome atm.
Sincerely,
An old MMORPG fan
Sincerely,
An old MMORPG fan
Comments
That's the rub. Bitches want the cool indie stuff but balk at anything that isn't top notch. Doubly true for graphics.
Epic Music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vAigCvelkhQ&list=PLo9FRw1AkDuQLEz7Gvvaz3ideB2NpFtT1
https://archive.org/details/softwarelibrary_msdos?&sort=-downloads&page=1
Kyleran: "Now there's the real trick, learning to accept and enjoy a game for what it offers rather than pass on what might be a great playing experience because it lacks a few features you prefer."
John Henry Newman: "A man would do nothing if he waited until he could do it so well that no one could find fault."
FreddyNoNose: "A good game needs no defense; a bad game has no defense." "Easily digested content is just as easily forgotten."
LacedOpium: "So the question that begs to be asked is, if you are not interested in the game mechanics that define the MMORPG genre, then why are you playing an MMORPG?"
One problem may also be though that there are many more artists out there than true game designers. Original game design is hard to come by. But certainly a lot of talent is going to waste on big budget garbage.
About half a decade ago when I had already seen quite a few MMO's fail impress I had formed the opinion that new games best chance at success would be to focus the budget on gameplay design and systems and keep the world small and then to expand it after release. Many commenters here thought that was a terrible idea and said they'd never play such a game, but after seeing so many games start so big, I believe this may be the way to go more than ever.
I just stumbled upon the OP and I share many feelings exposed in his argument, and this led me to sign up and reply
To present myself a little bit, I've played MMOs since SWG was released, so it's been quite a while. Off the top of my mind I can recall playing Anarchy Online, SWG, WoW for a bit, Tera, SWTOR, Fallen Earth, EvE Online, ESO, D&D Online and probably many I've forgotten about...
One of the biggest problems that turned me away from MMOs is that devs seemed to focus more on features rather than experience. This was most felt in SWTOR to me.
What I mean by that is that most of them use "tried and 'true' " MMO systems without thinking of what experience they are offering to their players. Namely, the class and quest system. This is a great system on its own, but I feel it appeals only to a single type of class fantasy : the Knight/Paladin/Jedi/Warrior fantasy. Questing is very much a knightly activity, where you fight in the name of values or to defend the cause of people who can't fight themselves.
For the love of RPGs, I can't fathom why a Rogue, a Priest or a Druid's primary activity in an MMO would be slaughtering untold amounts of wildlife/humans because some random guy in village asked him for. To me it doesn't make any sense why a sneaky assassin would take part in a 40 men battle to fight against a being that threaten an entire world.
Questing and Raiding are good systems in themselves, but they only appeal to hero or knights in shining armor fantasies and most MMOs don't have any other system but the questing and dungeon system to support other types of class fantasies. In all these games, every player regardless of his class is in essence a Paladin because of what he does with a different skill set.
In SWTOR, the personal story would further a personal class fantasy and that was probably the most welcome feature of the game. But everything else you did in the world was Paladin/Knight class fantasy because questing in itself is. It doesn't matter who you are questing for, as long as your are questing with the current system you are helping someone further their cause and defend their ideals through combat, which is the job of a Knight or a Paladin.
On top of that, like the OP said it's a design challenge and I think the MMO architecture (having several thousands of players per server) is also poorly utilized. What purpose does having 20k players on the same server serve in current MMOs ? Even in vanilla WoW, we could argue that we needed only 80 players per server (40 per faction) to fully enjoy all the content that the game had to offer. More players than that was not needed and the more players there were didn't synergize with the game systems as a whole.
The only time where you need more player within a game is where players make the content for other players. It's especially true in PvP games such as Planetside 2 or EvE Online : in the first example, you need other players to have something to shoot at (which is the premise of the game) and in the second example, you need players to craft the items you need to progress.
I'm not trying to spark a sandbox vs themepark debate here, but you go to Disneyland to enjoy the rides either alone or with a group of friends you can relate to. For your own experience, it doesn't matter how many people the park can hold at any one instant.
But to propermy take advantage of large numbers of players, the devs must accept to release the burden of content making to the players and giving them proper tools to make that content. That is hard to do in IP-based MMOs in order to prevent immersion breaking (in which case the themepark model is more appropriate, but once again, why the need for the MMO structure and servers ?), and it would require a brand new IP. I'm also not sure many devs are willing to let their players take over much like CCP did.
I'm not saying that EvE is the example MMOs should follow. It has its flaws, sure. But it allows many different "class fantasies" due to its open nature and it also makes sure that you have tools as a player/corporation to do that. It's definitely not balanced or interesting to new players due to how much the corporations have stacked over the years, but the system in itself is worth looking at.
___
TL;DR My delusion with current MMOs is that in my mind, they don't fulfill class fantasies other than the Paladin/Knight because quest systems make you in effect act as one (fight the opposition to the quest giver's goals) regardless of your class. Game mechanics don't support any other playstyle because of how combat centric they are. If you're a powerful demonist trying to enslave a powerful demon, in the end what happens is you fighting some NPCs, then fighting the boss and a prompted text/cutscene telling you you've succeeded.
Anyone else feeling that too ?
Kind of like Stardew Valley.
It's weird to think 1 person worked 4 years and made that game. And yet there it is. A clone of games already in existence but on a device where that style of games was totally absent.
Could you imagine a MMO on a 3ds or a Vita? Nintendo's new phone?
I don't care for the iOS MMO's.. but they too have good possibility. I think the way I play has changed as I aged as well. I don't have time to put into games like WoW or EQ. Those, in all reality, sucked up such a mass proportion of my time... ain't nobody got time for that.
I'd be furious if we went back to say EQ where you had to camp spawns.. it'd spawn and some arsehat didn't wait in line killed it, took the gear and made you go back to waiting 4 hrs...
Developers cannot afford to make a great game and instead take money that could go into development but spend it on advertising in hopes to convince people to buy their second rate game.
Everywhere in the world economy is moving fast,technology is moving fast,however in the mmorpg genre it is actually moving backwards.
We made EXCUSES for a long time and many were just excuses but now we have had physics and shaders and lighting and hi res textures for a long long time.We know housing is doable,we know physics is doable,we know just about every thought we can put into a game is doable,yet developers are not doing it and most cannot afford to do it.
What bothers me is i still see EXCUSES and people twisting around facts just because they happen to like the game or are a fanbois.Nobody is saying you can't like a game but when you are dissecting a game and rating it based on development,that is NOT about YOUR likes or dislikes,it is about development,could the developer have done better and how much better.Is the game leaving out too much etc etc.
As long as fanbois continue to over rate games based on them liking it,we will never see the genre improve,we will continue to see half ass efforts and tons more upstart devs making even more second rate games.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
"This may hurt a little, but it's something you'll get used to. Relax....."
High quality artwork doesn't come cheap.
"Be water my friend" - Bruce Lee
Here I am, a Jedi Consular. My way of life is peace, my job in the Jedi order is to be a diplomat and or force master. However, when I land on coruscant and walk into the Justicar zone, I am immediately given an Area Quest to slaughter 40 Justicars. No reason, no justification, no other options to attempt to reason with their leaders. Nope, just slaughter them for leveling points.
On another occasion I was playing a Jedi Knight on Balmorra I think. So Balmorra is packed from one end to the other with imperials that are just standing around earning their imperial paychecks by being stationary punching bags. I probably killed, no shit, 500-900 imps during my story quest which was to find and kill a Sith lord that was enslaving and murdering thousands of innocent people.
So after chainsaw lightsabering my way through about a thousand imps I finally have the Sith Lord subdued and if I hit him one more time then he dies... oh wait, he turns green and there's a chat option. Lets seee here, so my options are to spare his life for light side points or kill him for dark side points... hrmmm that's an interesting opt... wait? *screeeching brake noise* what the fuck? Seriously? If killing one evil Sith lord is worth DS points, then I should be glowing red at this point for the amount of people I killed just on the casual trip to his lair.
Yep, this is a good summary of the TOR experience as well. As a Sith Warrior, it would make sense that I go out and slice stuff up, but then I would come into side quests where they'd ask me to free operatives. Err, don't you guys have operatives for that or you're just lacking manpower ?
It comes down to outdated systems that have become such an integral part of the DNA of the genre that developpers put them in or publishers force devs to put them in just because. Like you said, game systems are not supporting the "class fantasy" you were expecting from a Jedi Consular or Knight and that is why it felt so disconnected like you mentionned.
If we take the Ranger class fantasy as an example, regardless of whether they fight with a bow or a sword, these are guys that live to explore the wilderness and scout threats, sometimes fighting skirmish battles. In most MMOs today, Ranger-like classes are designed around ranged damage dealing. Purely for their combat capabilities than what it means to be a Ranger and explore the world and get rewarded for that.
It's a trick designing awesome systems rewarding non combat centric (but still adventure oriented) class fantasies, and it hasn't been done well yet in traditionnal MMO settings I find (or I haven't heard of these games yet), but I'm pretty sure the first dev team who does will be remembered as sparking a new breath of life in the genre.
So why are his comments clueless? Because making great games is how you make money.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
Many things have killed the OP's dream from putting graphics before gameplay to seemingly assume that nearly anything people like in solo games must be better than what is happening in a MMO and shoe horning it into the design.
Starving artists? Not sure it was like that, but we may be talking about the same thing. We had an early age of gaming entrepreneurs who gambled on big success in a new genre. You might say there were some starving studios if leaning to the poetic.
So it was not about making enough money to survive, it was about making a killing with a great game. But as the years past accountants and other suits became the dominant force in those gaming companies which survived. The attitude changed from making a great game and expecting money to follow, to design by numbers and expecting the money to follow. Franchises are the epitome of this.
Now you may say, well if some companies did not survive then that shows what happens if you don't get the suits in. To an extent that's true, but it passed a line where creativity became a secondary factor in gaming. Numbers came first. EA's old CEO crowing about how his designers now budget everything as they work shows that mentality.
Also I think you will remember a lot of the old companies being bought out by bigger ones, solely done for business reasons not creative ones.
That does not mean no great games are now being made, but without indie variety would be non-existent. When it comes to small companies, you can make a killing if you come up with something new like CD Project. But once you have that success, do something else at your risk, a risk most will not take, quite wisely.
They did amazing market research. They poached players, even entire guilds off of EQ for their Alpha/Beta to test and get tons of input. They knew exactly what the problems were with the current market leaders, and reacted brilliantly to it.
Everyone complains because of things like "Quest to Level," but the reason why this worked for WoW is because that's what the market wanted. Otherwise, Blizzard would have developed another Grinder like EQ.
On top of that, their software is high quality. Their graphics engine scales very well from mid-range to high end hardware. They keep it updated with the times (adopting new APIs, improving performance, going to Multi-Core and 64-Bit, etc.). Blizzard does a lot of the behind the scenes, under the covers, but necessary maintenance work that other MMORPG developers simply refuse to do.
They went above and beyond in making sure what they were developing, was actually viable. A lot of developers these days do not fully vet their strategies.
The new trend of "kickstarter" games is going to break a lot of "hearts," I suspect.
One of the things, I believe, that is causing such a large drop in the MMO population, and games like WildStar to practically close up shop a couple years after release, is that these "easy path" games are hollow victories. People are now demanding games that are more like EQ because they were more difficult and more difficult means more rewarding to accomplish.
Just as an example, the mass exodus from MMO's is quite clearly going, for the most part, into the MOBA scene. MOBA's are fantastically difficult to be any good at playing. Far more difficult than, for instance, the easy, workless, hand holding experience of SWTOR.
Godfred's Tomb Trailer: https://youtu.be/-nsXGddj_4w
Original Skyrim: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/109547
Serph toze kindly has started a walk-through. https://youtu.be/UIelCK-lldo
We just have too many games trying to dethrone WoW, by beating WoW at its own game. Not going to happen. Those who like WoW are playing it. The rest of us are lost in limbo waiting for MMOs to actually be a living, breathing world.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
EQ had no marketing, and had 500,000 subs when no one knew what a MMO was.
The problem is the games suck complete buttocks. Not a lack of marketing.
There will always be division between players and developers cannot cater to all types of MMORPG gamers.