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The Most Important Aspect in an MMO and Why Recent Games Have "Failed"
coventryhagdog
Member Posts: 85
It's not story.
It's not soloablity.
It's the social aspect and how the game can trick you into interacting with others.
Regardless of how beautifully your world is crafted, it can only be visited once. People play online, because they want to interact with others. The small minority of solo players who leave the game once they have siphoned the content have also been the small minority.
The entire mentality of "THE GAME STARTS AT END GAME" was always due to the fact that the experience became mostly social at end game through forced reliance on other players, i.e. GUARANTEED, SOCIAL INTERACTION.
People will point their fingers at WoW with: "BUT LOOK AT HOW THAT GAME FARED AND IT WAS A SOLO GAME!..."
Was it now? Soloing was trivial. It was purposely trivialized so that people could hit end-game more quickly and finally be forced to find others to complete content with.
WoW changed the scene, because WoW recognized that indeed it wasn't the story/graphics/quests that were driving continued subs in the long term, but guild interactions. The most powerful innovations WoW contributed to the genre were all of the tools it made to facilitate interaction, e.g. Group Finder, Guild Finder, etc.
By virtue of its inductive hold and accessibility it has managed by the power of social drive to maintain its ridiculous playerbase over more than a decade, where other games have gone to F2P after a couple years or less.
If you want an example of a shell of a game that was held afloat by how it brought people together, by forced grouping for any kind of progression no less, take a look at FFXI, a game that preceded WoW, yet, with its inferior combat, etc. has persisted to this very day.
These recent games have completely deprecated that aspect: phasing, individual story quests, etc. have taken millions of hard currency to develop the least important aspect of an MMO.
Since this is some sort of discussion forum, I am obliged to ask what you think and how I could possibly be wrong, although that is quite ridiculous and I will laugh at your feeble arguments.
Comments
If you want to socialize, go to a bar.
Combat is the most important feature in a game figuring as its the one feature you're doing over the half time.
If you forced your friends to hang out with you and socialize would they be your friends.....would they even like you ? Or would they resent the fact that they had to do this just to get what they really want.
Why do you think forcing people to do it in a game would turn out better ?
He didn't say friends. Trading doesn't need to be with friends and could even be with enemies. PVP definitely doesn't need to be with friends. Forming alliances and truces in PVP doesn't need to be with friends. Even grouping to do dungeon runs doesn't require having a barbeque afterwards.
Problem is market, nowadays game companies are aiming the player base that just want the "game" part rather than the "virtual world" part.
Back when I was playing Lineage 2 in its early days, a clan/guild was both a political and economical actor in the server.
Now in all recent MMOs I played, a guild is just a 2nd *friend*list + random chat.
The only game I recently played that still had socializing is Second Life.
Too all the people who vote "Combat", why note play LoL or some online FPS then ?
Because, as OP said, the main difference between an MMORPG and other kind of PvP game is the socialisation.
I think a good example is probably Eve Online, the social aspect of the game is integral to the games design, everything is based around the Player Alliances and Corporations that make up those alliances, and the tools that support it are often complex, because Corporations etc, often have very different focuses, people often think that the primary focus of Eve online, is the PvP, it really isn't its just one of the several aspects of the game, it also has a fairly hefty PvE side to it, most of the players do after all, reside in high sec, some never venture outside of high sec in the years that they have been playing, but they are also part of the corporate structures that exist within the game, Eve is a social MMO at heart and i think that is one of the reasons, why despite it being a game with 'space ships' its continued to thrive, it will never have WoW numbers, its not that kind of game, and any game that seems to chase after those 'figures' always seems to derail and end up in some kind of train wreck scenario.
But the more games that support the single player experience instead of being a bit more 'inclusive' will inevitably have issues, the various 'billy no mates' of this world, need to be able to break out of their shells and socialise, how many players wing their way through a game, breezing through levels to max level and then declare they have 'won the game' its an empty win though, because in reality they lost, not only did they probably not enjoy the experience that much, but they had an empty win because its entirely probable that nobody else even noticed they were there.
Didn't see it as an option, but I think one of the most important aspects to a MMO is an abstract we refer to as immersion. It's one of those feelings you get while playing a game, where you are just another person within a big virtual world. It's not exactly something that can be summed up with a simple list either. Two games I think pulled this off pretty well were EQ1 up to a certain point in its lifespan, and Vanguard if you were lucky and didn't crash all the time. I missed out on older games which I heard good things about such as UO and DAOC, so not sure if they pulled it off.
As one of the other posters wrote, community is a big thing as well. This also plays into the immersion factor a bit. As convenient as it is, I feel that the group finder has a negative impact towards a server/playerbase community. There is already the lack of accountability for a person's actions due to being hidden behind a computer screen, but now you're grouping with people you will most likely never see again. For most of us, being decent human beings, this doesn't affect our behavior much, but there is a growing percentage of people who seize upon this anonymity to act like idiots. If this person was on your server, then you can blacklist the person so you and your guild will never group with them again. Server reputation used to be something. Unfortunately, I'm not sure we can do without the group finder nowadays. It's something we've gotten used to having in this day of age. And I guess the group finder itself isn't the actual issue, but how the playerbase has chosen to use it.
Immersion is pretty much a social aspect of the game, one of the reasons why so many games fail to 'immerse' the player into the game is because they are largely a solo affair, and you don't get immersion from NPC's, the group finder comes in for a lot of criticism, but in reality, it needs to be there, because the first thing you need to do is make it easier for players to get together to do things, and the more they do, and the more they have fun, the more likely they are to do it again, but first they need to meet people and make friends, the group finder can help them do that, as a social tool its one of several 'first steps', its no good having people doing the same things in the same area if they are not actually working together but just 'alone in the crowd' and its only when players do start socialising more, that the game does manage to immerse the players in that world. But your right in that if players only rely on the group finder, and don't make at least some effort to socialise, then the opportunity is lost, some players just don't want to socialise, or are so socially awkward that they are unable to, and much as we might wish it otherwise, an MMO cannot replace counseling.
So many and wild assumptions...
You proposed 2 games as examples of your assumptions - WoW and FFXI.
1) With WoW, you would have very difficult time to prove anything as it is a phenomenon, an anomaly in the industry and just the sheer amount of years WoW has under the belt sets it very far forward from any competition.
Isn't it the amount of content and already established user base rather than anything else?
How is WoW end-game/leveling so much actually different from other MMOs?
2) FFXI, while lasting very long, it wasn't ever that overly successful, considering multiplatform release. What was the subs peak? 500k? Once you cut out all other platforms and regions so you can compare the game to other western titles, you do not get that pretty picture.
At the end, your "case study" is WoW where you were not really able to narrow down anything and FFXI which does not stand for very successful comparable title.
Just another thread "games should be like xya because that is how I like them"...or am I wrong?
Was going to say almost exact same thing.
[mod edit] Simulation aspects and socializing are embedded into the very nature of RPG.
It must be that a lot of fellas here started in the genre from post dumbed-down WoW because they tend to confound hack'n'slash (AKA Action oriented RPG) with proper RPG. Not surprise, considering many people consider Diablo 3 and MOBAS as MMORPGs. It's quite eloquent of the poor state of the genre: Extreme casualization, extreme leading towards the arcade, mechanics to isolate the players from the rest, exclusive focus on combat, poor features and funcitonality, etc.
One question: Why don't you play console games, solo games or action games and leave this genre in peace?
Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.
You got it in reverse.
It is the MMO devs who want to tap into a large audience and cater to combat-centric, solo-centric gamers.
You don't think people actually care about a game type and want to change it, right?
Because he belongs to majority that can make development of such MMOs effort and money worthy.
There is nothing "wrong with the genre", you are just a minority that does not cope well with changing market.
I disagree with the OP entirely. Most MMO players nowadays are asocial or they play with very tight circle with friends and they don't give a bat's eye about their surroundings. I'm one of those people. I play with my girlfriend and 1-2 friends I made along the way and I resent games that force group content on me and above all I resent games that force me to build a group of 3+ (5 is acceptable) players. I do not like strangers. Especially strangers that can screw up the whatever run I'm doing. Guild Wars 2 has it best, I'm not forced to group with anyone, yet neither I or other players are being punished if I "kill steal" a mob, infact they might even thank me. And this my friend is why I play Gw2 after almost 2 years. I'm not looking for a second life, I'm looking for fun, and I find fun with close group of friends, beating challenges.
P.S: Yes I always join RP guilds, since the community there puts the FUN before the competition. Naturally as a skilled player I have a WvW-only guild but I'm mainly representing the RP one.
"People play online because they want to interact with others", huh? Not any more, not in my case.
The OP has made the usual simplistic mistake of thinking that people who solo in games are antisocial, which is laughable. I solo all the time, but via my voip software I am chatting, as I play, with real-life friends and family almost all the time. I prefer to interact with people I know in real life and who I can actually meet up with and have a beer, instead of responding to random people typing a few syllables at a time in a chat box. Sorry, but the average level of chat you see in mmorpgs does not tempt me into interacting with anyone bar answering or asking the odd question.
There's a vocal (and bloody irritating) minority of mmorpg players who persist in thinking people should play "their way". They've fallen for the flawed, inane social concepts of Facebook and Twitter, whereby how "social" you are - and thus how much of a "true mmorpg'er" you are - is measured by how many virtual "friends" you have in the game. It's quite pitiable.
Sandbox means open world, non-linear gaming PERIOD!
Subscription Gaming, especially MMO gaming is a Cash grab bigger then the most P2W cash shop!
Bring Back Exploration and lengthy progression times. RPG's have always been about the Journey not the destination!!!
a mature setting and community, becouse we are all kinda old nowdays arnt we?
anyways: combat as mentioned before thats what you do 90% of the time
and immersion and living world.
Its not combat or social interaction. Its not even story or graphics.
Its all of the above.
If an MMO focuses too much on 1 or 2 aspects to the detriment of the others then it will fail.
AoC and Tera focused on combat and graphics.
SWTOR focused on story.
This guy gets it.
While many of you lament the present, supposedly anti-social state of MMORPGs, you fail to realize that you are, in fact, a minority. Most people playing MMOs today approach them no differently than single-player games (with multiplayer options), which themselves are increasingly skewing towards being more MMO-like. Developers are simply answering the call from their customer base by making MMORPGs increasingly solo-centric. These types of players are not, by definition, anti-social. As someone else mentioned, they simply prefer to be more selective about who they play with.
Now, I won't deny the importance of the social variable to an MMO's success, and I'll be the first to admit that I've played games long after I've grown bored with them simply because I loved the people I played with. I'll also admit that I personally believe most MMORPG soloers abandon games much sooner than those who do not identify as such. But the social aspect is not why people play MMOs. There's this other wonderful thing that makes your typical MMO different from a lobby-based shooter or League of Legends, and it's called persistence.
In all honesty, I think the most important aspect in any MMO is different for different people. But I would say combat. Since most of my time in an MMO is generally spent fighting something, be it a mob or another player, I want fun combat. It doesn't matter if I play the game for 3 hours or 3 years.
I'm not denying the importance of the social aspect of the game. Heck if it weren't for the friends I made in WoW I most likely wouldn't have played it as long as I have. I'm just saying that for me, fun combat is important.
I voted Turnips, for personal reasons that I'm not going to get into here.
Anyway, there is no "most important" aspect of MMORPGs. Where features lie on the scale of importance is different for different players. For some players grouping is very important. For other players, not so much. For some players group content means "social", for other players, not so much. I think of many other things when I think "social". Just talking to people, buying things from people either from the person directly, from their shop or in an auctionhouse, interacting with people out in the world by just being around them, fighting with or against them or seeing them do stuff, and yes, group content too. I can't think of an MMORPG that doesn't provide some or all of these things.
At the same time, those social interactions are pointless without a story or game play that engages me with or without other people around. So even if the social aspects are the most important, they can't exist without all the other aspects of the game being of sufficient quality to keep me interested in the game.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
Totally agree. It's why I just quit ESO and have returned to a dated ancient old free shard that has a particular three realm build with a lot of unique classes and races and...socialization.