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How to reverse the decline of MMOs
booskA
Member UncommonPosts: 79
There is one easy fix. Developers need to adhere to the quote "Protect Me From What I Want". I originally encountered this quote in a piece of Jenny Holzer art, circa 1999, but I do not know its origin. If developers just apply this to players, all the ills of MMOs would be fixed. Once a player gets everything they desire in an MMO, there is no reason to play. Every MMO I know of today besides mindless grinders and EVE ignores this truism. And they loser subscribers like water in a sieve after a fairly short period. Always leave the player with not just one, but many goals. Have several ultimate goals that are mutually exclusive and proactically impossible to achieve. Once a dev has the guts to this, there will finally be a chance for WoW killers to be born.
Comments
What decline? The market is growing. F2P is growing.
I agree
but whatever elements of fun need to be retained too -- especially when you reach level cap
most new mmos face the issue of not enough content at end game (because the game is too new compared to existing games)
I dont think mmos are in decline
new mmos challenge is striking a good balance between using what already works and risking some innovation
EQ2 fan sites
The devs don't know anything...yet.
It's like the big Call of Duty complaint: Releasing the same game over and over (Modern Warfare, World at War, Modern Warfar 2, Black Ops, Modern Warfare 3).
People will complain and complain about it with good reason. But until people stop buying the damn thing, we will continue to run on the same treadmill.
Honestly, I think it's the opposite problem. While games like RIFT did allow players to race through and consume all the content, that's because there wasn't any real content. If players had gotten what they wanted, they would have been playing actual content to slow them down instead of playing the same battle a hundred times over. While protecting you from the little content there is can extend gametime (filler, like in WoW, or any number of games outside the genre) it doesn't make it a good game.
It seems that MMO devs are holding true to your quote, except it's only a small portion of what you want.
Devs don't care. if they cared you'd see it.
The real problem is that most devs are too caught up in hold-over concepts from previous genres, such as leveling, experience, and predefined factions. These were useful game mechanics for their time, but they've long since past their expiry date, and created artificial limitations within the MMO genre. The innovation in MMOs has only extended to exploiting the individual for a quick buck, and exporting those skinner box mechanics to other genres that were far better off without them.
The whole leveling system needs to go; as soon as you get rid of it, you also get rid of concepts such as 'end game' and quantitative (numbers based) progression. Once you do that, you have a singular game, and a singular audience, rather than two separate games for two separate audiences (levelers, and those who've hit level cap). Make it big and open and give people lots of choices regarding gameplay. Let them form different types of player organisations, and allow them to be part of multiple groups rather than just the one guild. Have dragons that they can kill; maybe they can steal an egg and raise their own guild dragon to protect their town hall/city, that other groups can attack to get raid loot, etc?
Allow players to set up taverns with mini games such as poker or racing, or even roulette. Maybe you could create a system for virtual beer brewing or cooking to have players trying out different ingredients for different effects and bonuses. Create a cartography system so players can map and hide goods like buried treasure, have a contracts system, allow for in-game documents to be created and traded for the poets among us. And of course, have interesting, dynamic combat abilities without going overboard and making it all about the fighting. Oh, and avoid the same fucking predetermined faction crap that you see in every MMO nowadays. Players don't need developers to tell us how to organise ourselves; we're more than capable of doing it ourselves, and we prefer it that way.
There's so much that could be done, and the real problem is that games are no longer being made by gamers, for gamers. They're being made by market analysts, business graduates with no foundation in classical thought, and machine men with machine hearts. It takes a soul to create art -- to create something that other people can connect with -- which is why the next big MMO will probably come from an indie company, or a small-time developer, rather than a AAA studio. Blizzard has sold their soul, I think the changes to WoW and the implementation of Diablo III prove that. Titan will probaby be a resounding success, but it won't be the MMO that escapists are looking for. It'll be Facebook with online transactions, and raids with your mates. I'd sooner take a smack to the balls than walk down that path.