The Biggest Problem With MMOs Summed up In 4 Minutes

Eldurian

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V82OwyF_vBg

I think this is the message AAA game designers really need to here. Especially the "Safe is risky" part.

Every time someone comes to me excited about a new MMO the first thing I ask them is "How is it different from (closest sounding MMO I've played)?" And if the meaningful difference described in their answer sounds less like a whole new game and more like an expansion for another game, I generally won't even try it.

AAA MMO designers need to stop squabbling over the target market that wants WoW or something close to it, and determine what the largest target market unsatisfied by current MMOs is. And if they market is satisfied they need to find the next market.

"Niche MMO" shouldn't be a dirty word. There is practically unlimited design space to be explored by the MMO industry. AAA companies need to stop "playing it safe" and then wonder why their game goes F2P a few months after release every time. A well done "Niche MMO" with a sizeable niche is going to attract more customers and far more DEVOTED customers, than a rehashing of the same design space that's been explored over and over and over.

Eldurian

What you are stating is your opinion, one that a lot of people who put a lot of money into MMOs happen to vehemently disagree with.

The actual problem is you can't exercise consumer sovereignty by voting with your dollar to tell MMOs what you want, because there aren't any games out there that are the magical grindfest of your dreams.

(Other than Wurm Online but I feel like that isn't your cup of tea for other reasons)

ApexTKM

Yea the problem is they are trying to compete in blizzards market instead of trying to compete in their own market if you know what I mean. They need to attract their own core of players instead of trying to steal some WoW players. Releasing something innovative can have a better chance at retaining a core group of players than getting a hype train and attracting WoW players cause most of the WoW players will go back to WoW anyway. Relying on WoW players to stick around on some new mmo is a no-no IMO.

Your better off relying on the audience you are trying to attract to stick around as long as you stay away from Blizzard's market.

TLDR; Stay away from blizzard and do your own thing but I wouldnt mind them taking 1 or 2 concepts from blizzard for once.

Shaigh

Problem is the hypocrisy. People talk about how mmorpg should stop compete for blizzards market but the moment a game releases we expect the game to have big sales and longterm retention, if it doesn't its immediately deemed a failure and the game is dying.

We ignore if the game was a good investment, we ignore that lots of people still play the game, all we care about is that its another game that doesn't have 1M subscribers after six months and nowhere close to competing with World of Warcraft.

ApexTKM

Shaigh said:

Problem is the hypocrisy. People talk about how mmorpg should stop compete for blizzards market but the moment a game releases we expect the game to have big sales and longterm retention, if it doesn't its immediately deemed a failure and the game is dying.

We ignore if the game was a good investment, we ignore that lots of people still play the game, all we care about is that its another game that doesn't have 1M subscribers after six months and nowhere close to competing with World of Warcraft.

Your generalizing. People's expectations are weird. A game releases so it must have a million subs and sell millions of copies? Its true about the long-term retention though, thats something I expect when a game releases, I expect the people who make the game have a audience that'll stick around for the long run.

People expect it to be as close to as a WoW killer as possible otherwise its a failure, awful mindset imo. Depending on how you define competing........swtor is competing with WoW right now just because it doesn't have the sub numbers like WoW doesn't mean its not competing and yes I'm ignoring swtor's cash shop.

Like I mentioned in another thread, people really need to stop thinking "WoW Killer" and look at it as a competition in the MMO genre. That way you don't get disappointed at the fact that WoW is still standing.

Wizardry

Well developers do actually look for a target market.
However that is not nearly enough,you still have to make a solid in depth game and not just some generated world with a bunch of yellow markers to hold your hand.

The effort i have seen in mmorpg's has been horrible but when i look at everything else,i guess it is not all that bad since i see a ton of crap like moba's that take the effort of a few amateurs with spare time on the weekends.

Quality is NOT selling games,not even close there are many other factors.Esport and money are the main driving factors.Why would devs spend more than they have to,if millions support moba's,why take risk spending on larger bigger game development studios.

Eldurian

I there are two major factors to consider in MMO success. In order of importance:

1. Can you keep your staff paid? Can you maintain your servers and any other ongoing costs? Basically are you making money faster than you are losing it?

2. Is your staff large / skilled enough to keep up with the MMO market? Are you able to keep your users supplied with new content and features, able to get bugs fixed, and hopefully do some graphics updates every few years?

Any MMO that can't answer yes to both of these questions is an MMO in decline. Any MMO that can answer yes to both of those questions should have a lot of life left in it and the ability to slow or reverse any declines they may eventually face.

Questions of how many subscribers it has or how it stacks up against other major MMOs are really irrelevant as long as the answer to those two questions is yes.

Eldurian

Wizardry said:

Esport and money are the main driving factors.Why would devs spend more than they have to,if millions support moba's,why take risk spending on larger bigger game development studios.

Because the MOBA market is already oversaturated.  LoL has a commanding share and for those who want something different there is SMITE, Paragon, Heros of the Storm, Overwatch etc. etc. etc.

Safe is risky. Playing it "safe" means going head to head with the titans of the MOBA industry.

Creating a niche MMO on the other hand could guarantee you the loyalty of a certain segment of the market if you make a game that is actually good. I think at this point there are more MMO players that are upset with what the industry offer than those actually content with their current MMO (If they are even currently playing one.)

nerovergil

i like that bald guy

CrazKanuk

Eldurian said:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V82OwyF_vBg

I think this is the message AAA game designers really need to here. Especially the "Safe is risky" part.

Every time someone comes to me excited about a new MMO the first thing I ask them is "How is it different from (closest sounding MMO I've played)?" And if the meaningful difference described in their answer sounds less like a whole new game and more like an expansion for another game, I generally won't even try it.

AAA MMO designers need to stop squabbling over the target market that wants WoW or something close to it, and determine what the largest target market unsatisfied by current MMOs is. And if they market is satisfied they need to find the next market.

"Niche MMO" shouldn't be a dirty word. There is practically unlimited design space to be explored by the MMO industry. AAA companies need to stop "playing it safe" and then wonder why their game goes F2P a few months after release every time. A well done "Niche MMO" with a sizeable niche is going to attract more customers and far more DEVOTED customers, than a rehashing of the same design space that's been explored over and over and over.

I think that you're missing a major premise. Yes, he does say that it might not appeal to everyone and that appealing to a smaller market who will be fanatical could be a good thing, the problem is that there is no evidence of any such sub-market in MMOs.

You can't just make something because it's different and hope that it catches on. The problem with MMOs is that there is NOT a niche market big enough to justify creating something "remarkable". The problem is that deviation is cost-prohibitive, and the majority of MMO gamers will NOT accept something which sacrifices some frills (ie graphics) for innovation. By definition it's a catch-22. Without massive investment, there will be no innovation and without innovation the market will, ultimately, die.

That said, we always seem to have the "Last Bastion of Hope" on the horizon (ie CU, Pantheon) to keep hope alive. Ultimately, though, I think it's more likely that we'll see mainstream games adopt more MMO features over time and the term MMO will be diluted to the point where MMO is meaningless. All games will be MMOs. 

Hariken

Shaigh said:

Problem is the hypocrisy. People talk about how mmorpg should stop compete for blizzards market but the moment a game releases we expect the game to have big sales and longterm retention, if it doesn't its immediately deemed a failure and the game is dying.

We ignore if the game was a good investment, we ignore that lots of people still play the game, all we care about is that its another game that doesn't have 1M subscribers after six months and nowhere close to competing with World of Warcraft.

And throw in that the internet has made everyone a critic. People start bad mouthing a game while its still in the Alpha stage. So most games that are good have a fail on them before they are even released. 

Mikeha

I wonder how many of these we will get today. 

Loke666

Shaigh said:

Problem is the hypocrisy. People talk about how mmorpg should stop compete for blizzards market but the moment a game releases we expect the game to have big sales and longterm retention, if it doesn't its immediately deemed a failure and the game is dying.

We ignore if the game was a good investment, we ignore that lots of people still play the game, all we care about is that its another game that doesn't have 1M subscribers after six months and nowhere close to competing with World of Warcraft.

I don't think most of us do...  Yeah, there are always a few trolls calling anything a failure but they have said the same thing about any Wow expansion beside the first as well. No game is dying because of that, the problem is that if you want to beat Wow at it's own game you can't make something as good but with modern graphics, you also need it to be better then wow.

And few copies are better then the original which mean that doing something different actually have better chance to stand out then a clone.

Sabas

I think the current answer to MMO's is tech based.

With current tech it is impossible to create sustainable PvE content. You cant create meaningful PvE content with the current set up. Players will consume it much faster then you can create it. A possible solution is investing in new tech where you create a PvE eco system. Anything that goes beyond running 1 of quests and endless raids. A good example is what Ryzom tried to do.

That is one of the reasons you see many developers going back to a sandbox design. But again most are stuck tech wise. It always comes down to tools and systems that allow for new things to happen.

In my honest opinion the innovation will happen when someone comes up with a smarter way of creating content and worlds. That in turn will lead to a game that feels fresh and new once again. I am a MMO player but I stopped playing seriously years ago because we have been playing the same game for years. 

Thats why I am exited for Dual Universe. It is solving real tech problems that prevent the genre from evolving.

Konfess

"determine what the largest target market unsatisfied by current MMOs is."   They have, the estimate is less than 300 players.  But surely there are more players in the market for new MMOs than 267?  Yes there are.  But when you group them as a target audience, they fragment into several much smaller niche groups all of small sizes.

Another reason the number is so low, that is the estimated number willing and able to spend money.  Why bother counting those players who refuse or are unable to spend money on a game.  The are voting with their wallets, but they are saying nothing.

Why target Blizzards audience?  Because it's the only one speaking with its wallets.  There has been a list of innovation  SWG:CU/NGE, TSW, SW:TOR, TERA, RIFT, even APB.  That isn't even a complete list.  What has the industry learned?  Innovation is a waste of time and money, that the market doesn't really want.

No game can have a million subs, because there is never more than 300 players that actually want the feature set, mechanics, or will spend money on it.

"better then wow."  That is the million dollar question, what exactly must be done to be better than WoW?  I used to say that WoW was like scatting on perfect ice.  From movement to avatar synchronization with the game world, were flawless or at least felt that way.  Art, story, and quest can't be copied or improved upon because it's unknown what was done right in the first place.

Sabas

Konfess said:

"determine what the largest target market unsatisfied by current MMOs is."   They have, the estimate is less than 300 players.  But surely there are more players in the market for new MMOs than 267?  Yes there are.  But when you group them as a target audience, they fragment into several much smaller niche groups all of small sizes. 

Poppycock, the succes of several kickstarters show that there is a huge market for new products that try to do new things.

How succesful these games will be nobody knows. But it clearly shows that there are plenty of people who are willing to support and pay for their "niche". And I'm not sure if a potential player base between 10 or 20 000 is niche. Compared to WoW it certainly is but what happened with WoW was a social phenomenon. Plenty of WoW players are not MMO players.

Then look at a game like Star Citizen, once again it shows there is a clear market with money to spend.

Claiming that there has been innovation just isnt true. Adding voice or changing the theme is not changing how the game is being played. It takes more then changing the back drop to create a new and meaningful experience.

danwest58

Yea MMOS should be a Niche market from other video games in general.  However you cannot be so niche that you cannot support your game on a subscription.  The reason I say that is these cash shops come into a game, 9 times of out 10 it ruins the game and people leave.  They come back spend a little money for 2 or 3 months and leave again.  That is not a loyal audience.  

A loyal audience is what I use to be when I played UO, or SWG or WOW Pre-WOTLK a person that is subs and playing a lot of hours for years not 2 or 3 months then moves to the next shinny thing.

When I talk about too Niche.  Today the large percentage of MMO Players will not play Permadeath, or FFA PVP with FFA Looting.  It just will not happen, yet kickstarters keep coming out with these ideas and learn that well there is no money there.  The same can be said about these Group all the time for everything PVE MMOs.  And no you cannot ignore that people do not have time and say if you dont have time then you shouldnt be playing MMOs.  The problem is you are PARTLY right and you are PARTLY wrong.  For example, I played FFXI and 95% of the time I could find a group (this is FFXI Pre WOW) There was another 5% of the time I couldnt find a group or it would take 2 to 3 hours.  I hate to say this but TODAY the vast majority of MMO players are single player players.  Its the true as much as I HATE it.  So if they have to group all the time you will have a very low population and next to no groups, new person comes in wants to play and you find no groups what so ever for hour after hour and they quit.   Sorry but you need new players coming in and cannot have them sitting on their hands because your game is too restrictive.

This is why WOW worked so well.  You had a lot of group content, a lot of it plus people found it fun and engaging and wanted to do it.  The Group content also was not 15 minute rush rush rush content, where you would queue up for the next group content.  This is where MMOS died and YES this is the part were you can say, IF YOU DONT HAVE TIME TO PLAY AND FIND A GROUP FOR MMOS THEN DONT PLAY.  Why?  Because If you got home late one night (11pm) and your friends all have gone off to bed, but you wanted to get in 30 to 45 minutes of game time to relax from the day, there should be SOLO CONTENT.   Quest, Storyline stuff like SWTOR story instanced quest, world events that people are running around doing like FFXIV Fates, and so on.  But your DUNGEONS should not be Queue up wait 5 minutes, button mash content for 15 minutes start the cycle over again.  Again this is where MMOS dyed They made a Mutliplayer game a single player game to make people who truly have no time for MMOs the 15 a minute week warrior and made them feel like they were someone.

The TRUE Niche in MMOs is that player that wants to play with other people but dont want to be tied to grouping 100% of the time.  Games that push grouping by making grouping natural and not cram it down your throat.  For Example levels come faster or Skilling up comes faster when you are with at group of people taking one harder content that requires teamwork, coordination AND 90 or so minutes of your time.  This is the true NICHE where players will be tied to their social relationships in a game and will have loyalty to them and by default the game.  There is no loyalty not because there is no social relationships anymore, just click a button wait for the Queue to pop for the next piece of group content.  I am sorry to all you solo fans out there but the fact is players stuck around to play with friends in the past, today players dont stick around for nothing because they do not need the social bonds to be successful.  

danwest58

Sabas said:

Konfess said:

"determine what the largest target market unsatisfied by current MMOs is."   They have, the estimate is less than 300 players.  But surely there are more players in the market for new MMOs than 267?  Yes there are.  But when you group them as a target audience, they fragment into several much smaller niche groups all of small sizes. 

Poppycock, the succes of several kickstarters show that there is a huge market for new products that try to do new things.

How succesful these games will be nobody knows. But it clearly shows that there are plenty of people who are willing to support and pay for their "niche". And I'm not sure if a potential player base between 10 or 20 000 is niche. Compared to WoW it certainly is but what happened with WoW was a social phenomenon. Plenty of WoW players are not MMO players.

Then look at a game like Star Citizen, once again it shows there is a clear market with money to spend.

Claiming that there has been innovation just isnt true. Adding voice or changing the theme is not changing how the game is being played. It takes more then changing the back drop to create a new and meaningful experience.

I hate to tell you this but them Kickstarts will show nothing.  the Indy developers are not capable of producting a quality game period.  They can produce a game but it will have so much copied material with so many bugs it will not be funny.  Just look at one of the recent single player games that the Indy developers created which is sword coast legends, the game had Great ideas and a well thought out plan.  What happened?  It failed because the amount of bugs, the shotty game play and the quality of the game.  This is because the only dam thing they are good at is writing lines of code.  They cannot troubleshoot their own code, they cannot seem to QA it at all, and the code itself is buggy.  And when you do find 1 good one in a thousand they get snatched up fast.  

Well how do I know this.  I worked with countless developers from India.  One application we do speech recognition with for 2 years our Indy team could not figure out how to use Java garbage collection so the app always had memory leaks and crashed.  We put a single US Developer with 5 years experience in front of the app.   In 2 week the app was fixed no java memory leak.  This is not some outlier.  This is what happens ALL the time.

The Indy developers CANNOT produce quality MMOs.  The most you will get is a handful of crappy MMOs that a handful of players will play for a little while until the company runs out of money because they cannot sustain any reasonable revenue due to the low quality game.  

Sabas

Thats not the point.

The point is that the succes of their Kickstarters shows that there is an untapped market.

Eldurian

So allow me to summarize the topic thus far:

Original Post- There is a serious market need for variety among AAA MMO's that will appeal to people other than WoW's target audience.

Opposition- There is zero evidence of that! There would only be like 300 people interested! Nobody would spend any money on it!

Support- Kickstarters bring in millions of dollars by promising innovative ideas. Clearly there is a market for MMO's other than WoW clones.

Opposition-  That's not evidence! Indie MMO's are notoriously low quality!

*DING* *DING* *DING* *DING* *DING* *DING* *DING*

Congrats! You've made my point!

Indie MMOs are bringing in millions of dollars on products that they expect you to fund and then take years to build after they have your money. They are making you pay for beta's and calling it early access. They are generally filled with bugs, have poor graphics, and are slow to update and release new features.

Yet there are thousands of people playing indie MMOs and throwing millions upon millions of dollars at the release of new indie MMOs.

Imagine for a moment that a AAA game was released promising new and innovative features like most indie MMOs. However, they were not asking for your money years in advance and had a free beta. And even at the low end of AAA MMOs they would have more money than Star Citizen.

You don't think a game like that could do better than yet another rehash of the WoW model? Because I would say there is zero evidence that slight variations on World of Warcraft is a good model for any MMO being made... since World of Warcraft.

Octagon7711

It's so many variables in making a great game that a few good qualities won't guarantee success.  Hundreds of things have to come together in just the right way to make a great game, and if it is a great game people will play it like there's no tomorrow.  It won't really matter if it's a kickstarter, or an indie, if it's other qualities overwhelm the player in a good way, the game will be a success.  But again,  just naming one or two qualities of a game won't guarantee success.

CrazKanuk

Eldurian said:

......

Indie MMOs are bringing in millions of dollars on products that they expect you to fund and then take years to build after they have your money. They are making you pay for beta's and calling it early access. They are generally filled with bugs, have poor graphics, and are slow to update and release new features.

Yet there are thousands of people playing indie MMOs and throwing millions upon millions of dollars at the release of new indie MMOs.

Imagine for a moment that a AAA game was released promising new and innovative features like most indie MMOs. However, they were not asking for your money years in advance and had a free beta. And even at the low end of AAA MMOs they would have more money than Star Citizen.

You don't think a game like that could do better than yet another rehash of the WoW model? Because I would say there is zero evidence that slight variations on World of Warcraft is a good model for any MMO being made... since World of Warcraft.

WHOA!!!! Let's slow the horses on that one. You're right about thousands of people, but millions upon millions of dollars is debatable. PFO died on the vine, SotA was released with such fanfare that nobody actually realized it released. It's now enjoying a whopping 30k owners on steam. Shit, Daybreak even told swgemu that they could, basically, legally, use the IP. Why? Precisely zero fucks to give. If that was of any value, they could replicate it themselves with an updated graphics engine and, apparently, make a killing. However, they peak at a few thousand players. 

Secondly, any marketer, or scientist, would throw out Star Citizen as a data sample. You can't say, "Based on my sample size of 1 game, AAA games could make over $100 million in crowdfunding." It's the same way you can't talk about stealing market share from WoW. It's not realistic. There has never been a game to record that much money through crowdfunding and there may never be another, so why would you even use that? It's anomalous data. Realistically, crowdfunded games might see a million or couple million. If they see over 2 million they should consider themselves to be in the top 1% of crowdfunded games. 

Third, Star Citizen only shows that people aren't willing to wait. For as much fanfare as they have received, their popularity will be the death of them. With each dollar, there are greater expectations and greater pressure to release something. So how can you be innovative in that environment? So, please guide me to an investor who would give $150 million to make Star Citizen. Find me 1 that would even hear your pitch for a $150 million game and I would be surprised. 

The easy answer to your final question is, no, I don't think that there is evidence that an innovative game would be better than a WoW rehash. In fact, I'd go as far as to say that the WoW rehashes are doing quite well. Take a look through MMOs on Steamspy. TERA has 4 million owners, Neverwinter has 4.5 million, Rift has like 3 million. SotA? 30k. If you've got better evidence, please do feel free to lay it out there. 

Eldurian

PFO died on the vine because it was a terrible game in every aspect aside from what was promised. Yet it still managed to raise a couple million dollars.

The argument I'm making has nothing to do with if another game can raise 100 million dollars through Crowdfunding like Star Citizen.

The argument I'm making is that you have games like SWTOR that spent 200 million+ dollars on development without raising a single dime through crowdfunding only to make WoW with voice acting and Star Wars IP, and still be completely overshadowed by WoW.

That's many times the money you would need to create a good sandbox MMO that has taken the time to learn from the mistake of other failed sandboxes and perfect the recipe. And then you don't rely on Crowdforging to make your money. You rely on the fact that you're the first decent sandbox to hit the market since EVE, and go about making money the way any other AAA game would. Subscription/premium fees with a cash shop on the side.

If you can make 100 million on the promise of a good sandbox... maybe... in a few years. Imagine what you could make on a fully finished / quality product.

Passionate users don't have to the power to do something like that. A first rate game development company does.

MadFrenchie

CrazKanuk said:

Eldurian said:

......

Indie MMOs are bringing in millions of dollars on products that they expect you to fund and then take years to build after they have your money. They are making you pay for beta's and calling it early access. They are generally filled with bugs, have poor graphics, and are slow to update and release new features.

Yet there are thousands of people playing indie MMOs and throwing millions upon millions of dollars at the release of new indie MMOs.

Imagine for a moment that a AAA game was released promising new and innovative features like most indie MMOs. However, they were not asking for your money years in advance and had a free beta. And even at the low end of AAA MMOs they would have more money than Star Citizen.

You don't think a game like that could do better than yet another rehash of the WoW model? Because I would say there is zero evidence that slight variations on World of Warcraft is a good model for any MMO being made... since World of Warcraft.

With each dollar, there are greater expecta tions and greater pressure to release something. So how can you be innovative in that environment?

This is the only part of your post I disagree with Craz.  Necessity usually breeds innovation.  External pressures are the totality of what makes natural selection work within the confines of evolution.

Eldurian

Well that, and his entire post was based on the assumption that I was saying AAA MMO's should use Crowdfunding. Which isn't what I was saying at all.

Sabas

Eldurian said:

Well that, and his entire post was based on the assumption that I was saying AAA MMO's should use Crowdfunding. Which isn't what I was saying at all.

I think it just fits some people's agenda to downplay the clear need in the market.

Wich is silly concidering how much money people are willing to spend on Kickstarters. A promise of a product that does something different that they like. Not even being sure that the product gets released or will be fun in any way.

As always the solution will come from doing things smarter. Currently the big money doesnt want to invest in new solutions. And no, "social tools" or "twitch integration" is not being smarter.
Just think back to how cutting edge MMO's were when they first entered the scene.

Better art works for single players.
MMO's must evolve on interaction with the world.

Luckily that doesnt have to cost 200 million.