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The problem with MMORPGs
NotNiceDino
Member Posts: 320
I believe that there are a total of three problems with MMORPGs.
The first problem is budget, not everyone can afford to make an MMORPG, it costs money. This does not stop people from making so called MMORPGs in their Moms' basements, and when the result are typically laughable at best, the issue is self explanatory, it's not going away, noone has to play bad games. The solution is simple: Do your homework before you spend money.
The second problem is one most people have complained about to some degree: the Balance/Cookie Cutter issue. What I believe, and what I don't think most people who complain fail to realize is that this problem is the inherant result of thousands of people playing the same game.
Let me explain: computers do one thing, crunch numbers. We all know this. RPGs where at their core nothing but a numbers game long before they where set to electronics. D&D is at it's core nothing but rolling a dice to generate a number to plug into a variable of an equation which generates a result. Numbers. Again, we all know this. Here's what I'm getting at: anything you want to accomplish in an RPG, be it craft something for profit, kill a PvE boss, level up, grind faction, PvP, etc. is nothing but a math problem. Of course through a combonation of the game creators' artistry and our own imaginations, we're able to separate ourselves from this, but the fact remains.
Now, here's why this is an inherant problem in an MMORPG: In any game, on any server, what you have is thousands of people trying to solve the exact same (if you think about it, very few) math problems. Is this situation, someone is always eventually going to come up with the best solution, and there always will be a single "best" solution. Once this happens, everyone who can will mimic the solution and cry "Cookie Cutter", and everyone who can't will cry "Balance."
Second problem, I call this the Uncle Own issue, and people may not be as concienciously aware of this one. When SOE implemented NGE and put the nail in SWG's coffin one of the things they said they where trying to fix was that character where, "Uncle Own not Luke Skywalker." That sounds nice, because everyone wants to be Luke Skywalker, the problem is that in the Star Wars universe there are billions of Uncle Owens and one Luke Skywalker... that's what makes him Luke Skywalker. It's like in The Incredibles when Jason Lee is all like, "When everyone's special, noone is" or some such thing. "Too many chiefs, not enough indians" is another common phrase. But obviously noone wants to pay $15 month to be Uncle Owen so someone else can pay the same amount to be Luke Skywalker. It's the same as when you where 5 and playing Star Wars, GI Joe, He-Man, Super-Friends etc and got in fist fights over who got to be, only now it costs money.
Incidentally, for those of you who like to bitch incesantly about instancing: This is why you have instancing. It's to simulate an individual and/or small group expirience within an MMORPG, because noone ever wrote a fantasy novel about 5000 people sitting around waiting to kill the same dragon over and over, because that doesn't make any sence, and isn't very exciting. Basically the idea of instancing is that it simulates that everyone else is farting around the public areas, while your off saving the world (I.E. your Luke Skywalker, everyone else is Uncle Owen (or Biggs Darklighter at best). Does it work? Is it good/bad? I'm not saying, I'm just saying that's why it's done.
So those are my thoughts. I don't know what the solution is.
Active: WoW
Semi-retired: STO
Fully retired: UO, EQ, AC, SWG, FFXI, DDO:EU, PoTBS, AoC, EvE
Tried: EQ2, Tabula Rasa, Auto-Assault, Isteria, LotRO, Wizard 101
Looking forward to: Star Citizen
Comments
you're complaining about indy games, that right there is full of WTF. Sorry you're not allowed to play the violin anymore Johny, You'll never compare to that guy over there that has been playing since he was 3, compared to him your results are laughable at best. Now despite being a hobby indy games serve a very important part of the game industry as they are the only spot where we'll ever see real inovation(in MMO's atleast), therefore acting as a kind of a theormeter that devs you consider real can copy when they see sucess(after all they can can do their specility a rehash that's worth a lot of money). I'm not really that worried about you claiming games being made in their mothers basement as you could mean it as a figure of speech, just so you know these people are normally very sucessful. after all they're handling an extremely large project with just a handful of people, imagine what they have to do at their work on a 40+ hour a week instead of a handful of hours.
along the lines of indivualality this actually does happen a lot in some games, you just seem to be playing the wrong ones. For instance in chornicles of spell born(not out yet) when you level you get to determine how your character stats grow, when you fight very few people will fight like you(their spinning wheel, combo system, and the balances that go with it insures it), for gear the stats aren't tied to the aesthetics, and even the individual skills won't play the same because they have plug ins for each one(increase missile speed a bit, increase the damage, increase the speed that the wheel turns).
as for instancing it deserves to be bitched about, you can't meet random people and the random events that people cause. Without the instance where you make your group first you can play the game how you want, killing stuff a higher level, going slowly, taking the scenic route. in a well designed open world dungeon you have choke points where the difficulty increases where people end up waiting a bit to heal and where others do the same forming your 'grouping point'. Instances are really just the unfourtant effect of there needs to be a boss type lazy design, when in reality you just need a few large dungeons where the difficulty slowly increases and where people eventually meet at choke points(this is how uninstanced dungeons can work).
I find it amazing that by 2020 first world countries will be competing to get immigrants.
Actually, I was pointing out that I wasn't talking about Indy Games. I deliberately grouped out games with budget issues for a reason... so in your own words WTF?
Sorry, but I stopped reading there, because you where obviously missing my point right off the bat.
Active: WoW
Semi-retired: STO
Fully retired: UO, EQ, AC, SWG, FFXI, DDO:EU, PoTBS, AoC, EvE
Tried: EQ2, Tabula Rasa, Auto-Assault, Isteria, LotRO, Wizard 101
Looking forward to: Star Citizen
I find it amazing that by 2020 first world countries will be competing to get immigrants.
As for budget issues; I think with WoW's continued success, there might be a slowdown of developers simply throwing money at MMOs. Vanguard branded itself as "second most expensive MMO ever", and whether true or not it was a fantastic failure.
Besides excessive spending for essentially no benefit, there's still a high level of necessary spending for achieving "polish"; one of the things credited most for WoW's success, which up until then was commonly saved as a post-launch procedure.
But you know, I hope as with every other genre of gaming, when an increased amount of money invested directly correlates with a lowered amount of risk the developers are willing to take, the opposite begins to happen in the indie arena.
By that I mean, standard procedure with the big companies are lotsa evolution and little revolution. Revolutionary changes will come from garage studios, where it doesn't make sense to try to evolve a mainstream innovation without mainstream kind of money.
Indie innovations in the MMO genre don't much exist right now though. There's no encouragement from the top. There's no mediums present akin to XBLA and PSN where small studio projects share the limelight with bigger titles. There isn't a company like id or Valve responsible for things like Counter-Strike, Team Fortress and most recently Portal.
I guess because even big developers right now haven't figured out how to create a profitable title.
Having an indie scene though always helps to spur innovation and create a middleground between evolution and revolution.
So the solution to the first issue you mentioned I think would be the industry becoming content with just a few hundred thousand subscribers for new MMOs again, and write World of Warcraft off as a one time phenomenon. Whether this'll happen or not will come in one of two ways I believe; either WAR and AoC fail to break a million subscribers or Blizzard's next MMO years from now fails to catch World of Warcraft.
Either way, once everyone is content again with six digit subscribers instead of seven, more risks will be taken and the genre can mature with quicker releases, better technology and accessible middleware for smaller development teams.
As for balance issues: You're pretty much right. Jack Emmert was the designer I believed closest to finding a solution to this. With City of Heroes/Villains all of the "numbers" were hidden outside of percentage figures. This has changed since NCSoft took over but, for the years CoX was under Cryptic Studios control; you had players trying all sorts of powerset combinations and specs with little regard to the numbers game.
There still were balance issues and cries of things like Energy Melee being overpowered; but the absence of numbers goes along with the idea of separating the players from the math being a big part of game design.
That said, there'll never be a balanced MMO. Pen and paper games decades old will never be balanced. The solution to this is probably to just become content with shifting "FoTM" classes and specs; but only after building a game where the math isn't so easily accessible to players.
As for instancing: I beieve its something players will have to get used to if they haven't already. I do think the use of instancing could be slimmed down to what's absolutely necessary in delivering a rewarding experience. Like, not all dungeons warrant being entirely instanced, when the content is average and only the boss matters much.
WAR and AoC are trying new things. AoC is singleplayer up until a point. WAR will instance off only bosses in a lot of dungeons, and some dungeon entrances will only appear at random.
We'll see how "instancing" or otherwise tailoring content to a small number of people changes in the future. It is the future though, so however many shapes and sizes it comes in, players should get used to.
I don't believe there's a solution to instancing since I don't really think its a problem. As with everything though, it can be improved upon.
What I deem worth instancing would be when you literally burning bridges or things along that line. Sometimes boss battles, but as far as I'm concerned those are an over used cliche.
Instancing is over used and under utilized.
I find it amazing that by 2020 first world countries will be competing to get immigrants.
I will throw in my two cents. I agree with the OP and he makes some good points.
Consumers are used to a high degree of polish in games like Halo & COD. Those games are costing like $15M to make and a MMO has many many times the content because you certainly need a much bigger world, more items and more mobs than a game like Halo. So it is not hard to imagine you need $50-60M to make a MMO if you want to keep the same level of polish.
Anything that costs so much money would inevitably demand a level of fiscal responsibility. No one, even the people crying for innovation on this forum, would risks their life's savings and careers without some notion of the return. And while this encourages more evolution than revolution, it is NOT necessarily a bad thing. Look how far FPS has come by evolution.
I have hit on the "math-problem" aspect of MMORPG for a long time now. People like to optimize. It is in human nature and there is no way you can get away from it. And even hiding information won't work because people can always run repetition, gather data and run statistical analysis. There are plenty of people actually doing that on WOW forums.
Instancing, as said before, is not a real problem. It is a GOD SENT after the horrible camp-fest I have experienced on EQ.
To me, the biggest problem with developers is that they simply don't know how to run a business. I know this may sound odd, considering current game developers create massive world systems and crazy networks to allow gameplay from all over the world. But when I see games that come out with visions of competing with other game, and then fail to deliver on half of the features promised on release, or the game is released in essentially a beta state; the stench of bad management superseads any good features the game may have had.
Here's a few of the most common pitfalls I see in game development:
1) Developers living in their own little fantasy world: Developers often claim to create a AAA MMO yet fail to include features that are common in other games, or deliver design philosophies long ago trumped by alternative designs. If developers wish to compete, they should compare their game to other offerings on the market. A game just like wow, but with a quarter of wow's content on release is destined for failure. Alternatively, a game just like wow but with a clumsy interface is also destined for failure. The point here is that so often new games come out with features that have been vastly improved in games already on the market. A bit of market research would help developers to notice and resolve these flaws.
2) Investors unwilling to follow through on a project: When I hear about a developer releasing a game in essentially a beta state, I blame no other aspect then bad management. It is the responsibility of the CEO to make sure that investors know what they are getting into when they invest, and that releasing a game before it is done will often cost far more customers through bad word of mouth then simply waiting until the game is ready to release. This is a common mistake, and has essentially been the downfall of the past few games I've tried. Naturally, there will come a point where further investment in a badly managed game is pointless, and at that point a fire sale will take place. However, again bad management has caused the downfall of an investment, as the board of directors should have taken steps to resolve the bad management issue before the game reaches such a sad state. No matter which way you look at it, a game released in a poor state is the direct result of bad overall project management.
3) Developers refusing to listen to the playerbase and other potential customers: Now, we all know about the idiots who make bad game design suggestions. I'm sure I may have made a few suggestions in my time that may seem ridiculous to other gamers. However, there are often many gems of insight available from gamers, and far too often that advice is ignored. Most of the great products on the market are in essence envisioned by customers and communicated to the manufacturer through market research studies and consumer information research. It is primarily through the customer research and satisfaction that better products are made. The sooner developers start listening to and trying out some of the out of the box ideas presented by many enlightened gamers, the sooner we will start to see some truly compelling game design philosophies.
4) Games released in an unpolished/buggy state: I don't know when it became commonplace to release buggy and unpolished software, but I do know that it's a big turnoff to customers, and the game will lose many customers even if the core game is spectacular. Recent examples: Vanguard and Hellgate London. Recent success: WOW. There is simply no question that releasing a game in a buggy and unpolished state badly hurts cutomer acquisition and retention. Simple methods exist to exercise quality control, yet developers rarely use these controls, or use them ineffectively. Again, it comes down to bad management.
Naturally, there's more points of failure, most of which have been discussed ad naseum on these and other forums. But I guess it doesn't hurt to mention a few of the top issues again, in hopes that the next Indy developer may actually take head and hire true management talent.
The problem with MMORPGs, at least for veterans, is that we are tired of the same old formula. The only way to overcome burnout and the feelings of "been there, done that" is to have new playstyles, interesting and different content, and polish. These things cost millions of dollars and require extremely talented people.
It's only a matter of time until the majority of MMORPG players become veterans and refuse to do the same things they have already been doing. Future MMORPGs in my opinion will be mostly complete failures and companies will not continue to dump millions on them as a result. While this is good news for the existing, high subscriber games because the future holds few competitors, it's bad news for the genre.
MMORPGs are virtual skinner boxes.
http://www.nickyee.com/eqt/skinner.html
There's really not a "problem with MMORPGs" when it comes to the usual veteran argument.
How is a "veteran" defined? Maybe a person with anywhere from 50-200+ days /played worth of MMO experience? I believe some accountability is expected on our part when it comes to being irrevocably bored with the genre.
It takes a strong cognitive shift to put aside all of our gripes with the genre in order to like MMOs the way we used to.
I'm personally incapable of it, as I tried to like LOTRO with the aforementioned rationale but didn't manage to. At the same time I did manage to put aside how unbearably outdated DAoC appeared to me just a month ago and found a new love for it.
That said, I can't help but notice new players loving new games I can't seem to, so for that I don't blame the developers themselves, just myself for burning out.
I think it's ok to hope for new stuff that stimulates our desire to play games in the genre, but at the same time we have to realize we're expulsion of the MMO churn when we become dissatisfied. Single-digit percentiles that didn't fall into a lot of retention rates.
So in short, compromising on our part is much easier than waiting for or expecting million dollar decisions tailored to veterans who feel they've been there and done that.
I'd like to pipe in on the budget issue. It's not true that small budgets create poor quality games. I've been part of teams with big budgets behind them that just didn't have the visual direction or art staff. Sometimes it's staffing, sometimes it's flaws in leadership. A small team with strong art and strong code and strong design and leadership can do more on a smaller budget then a big company with money to burn. So it's not the money but the staff. My 2 cents from my experience working in the industry.
Arioc Murkwood
Environment Artist
Sad but true.
You can take blizz for example. They always put out fantastic games. They go out of their way to put little things there for humor.
Most players don't even know the can repeatedly click on NPCs and annoy them in most of Blizz games.
The fact Blizz incorperates their past sucesses into their MMO is awesome as well. Zergling pets, Mini Diablo, Weapons named after legendary items from Diablo 1 and 2.
It is the little things. The story can't have major disconnects. I don't like the elven quests but I like their lore.
Most MMO's have major disconnects in their story or horrible glitch issues as previously stated that they never fix. EQ still has horrible pet pathing issues. Your pet will run the oposite way and vanish... but you can't get another one cause you already have one. Though you can give it orders and it will say it is carrying out orders... you never see them again.
A lot of WoW players never played a Blizz game before WoW. Also it is hard to go back to an MMO that is not done as well as one that you have previously played because you can see how much better it could be.
Which Final Fantasy Character Are You?
I feel the biggest problem facing the future of mmos is money in a different way. WoW has set a precidence for money making. The carrot on a stick, repetitive grind method of holding memberships and making money. No matter a companies budget from this point on game developers will be looking at this model as a success and continue to create games along these lines because after all, these companies want to make money.
We can all hope that some day a developer will create a wonderful new expierence with all the right combinations of freedom pvp etc. But Im afraid we are stuck with executives asking "will it make us wow money?"