As long as new teens keep coming on board the gaming companies can avoid ever really taking notice though.
Those "teens" are all, minimum, in their mid-20s by now. Yes, that's how long this tired old topic has been repeating.
Self-pity imprisons us in the walls of our own self-absorption. The whole world shrinks down to the size of our problem, and the more we dwell on it, the smaller we are and the larger the problem seems to grow.
Thus we are to blame, for p(l)aying their product : )
I haven't been posting although I have been a member for many years.
That's because no matter what happens with a game, it's only a game, i don't feel like it MUST become better and satisfy my every need, become the best and only one true game i should play.
If there are no mmos for us to play, let's do something else. Thus we would be voting with our wallet and maybe the "villainous" developers would create something for the audience that left....
Or maybe they will say "screw them" and make tablet and mobile phone games. Either way, we can't loose imo.
Very true, I keep buying theme park after theme park knowing full well they will only provide short term entertainment, so I am in fact part of the problem.
But no more. I drew the line in front of GW2 and don't plan on playing any more theme parks in the future (well, except perhaps maybe TESO due to its alledged 3 faction pvp model).
I'll support titles more in keeping with my preferences such as DF:UW, The Repopulation, COS and ArcheAge and will stick with EVE while I wait.
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
Its been said. The quality keeps going down because we pay for it. Gone are the days of the basement dwelling nerd playing for hours to level, here to stay are now now now generation that dont feel like video games should be challenging. Give me my epic loot when i log in! Before, developers used to design content, now they spend more time designing features.
The standard MMO template, such as it is, can't help but encourage solo play. Players are divided into 50-100 tiers (from rat-whomper to godslayer) and the world is just as divided into zones with content targeted at only a subset of those levels. Then add sequential, gated questlines to the mix to further segregate folks and top it off with having to fight with your teammates over any good gear that drops. Only the most social of butterflies would even bother with grouping when soloing is far more convenient and personally beneficial.
I'm genuinely surprised that CoH/CoX was only mentioned in passing throughout this thread because that game was one that set the forced grouping/solo paradigm on its head. Being able to scale your level up or down at any time to run practically any content is a revelation that I believe all themepark games should follow. Though they had archetypes to help people fill certain roles in groups, you could bowl through most content with a mix of just about anything. The rewards for grouping (besides the fun of playing with other people) were tangible as you could see your XP bar shooting up far more quickly than when playing alone.
And most of the grouping that occurred wasn't forced-- the game was simply designed to make grouping as easy as soloing and offered substantive rewards for doing so. If a new game went that direction, I think we'd see a lot more socialization.
Originally posted by Banaghran Originally posted by lizardbonesOriginally posted by SiveriaPretty much have gone the way of the dinosaur since world of warcraft brought mmorpg's to the casual smacktards. The olkd style of mmo's like FFXI pre-abbysea, and the old mmo's casuals cant get into since everything takes time and isin't handed to them, Devolopers see this and relize there is more profit just making a biliant wow-clone/wannabe that is solo centric till endgame. Its compounted by the fact that grouping in most of these newer mmo's have really bad exp splits as well, so much that it'd be 2-3x faster just to solo. In FFXI I don't like how in Abbysea you can go from 30 to 99 in a day, some people can take a new job and get it from 1 to 99 in a day or so, Which ruins how the game was more about the journey. There also si the fact that wow has caused the average MMO gamer to just wanna rush till level cap for so called endgame. Sorry but I don't call pve raiding with 0 purpose endgame, I prefer pvp endgame with pve raiding for gear like daoc was before you could craft your own magical items.Overall WoW has killed the mmorpg market considerably, nothing comes out anymore that doesn't just feel like its trying to clone wow. Personally? I wish someone would bomb all the wow server's and shut the game down. Preferably late at night so as to prevent casualties. Not going to happen, but the mmorpg genre needs WoW to die in order for it to start to recover itself.
This post illustrates part of the reason that solo content is so successful. Starting way back in the day, when content required groups, you had people who divided players into "The Elite" (themselves) and "The Rabble" (everyone else). When content requires groups, but most of your players are "The Rabble", they quit playing. When the content allows everyone to play, not the "The Elites", the games make more money.Good in theory bad in practice, because due to cutting corners and laziness we arrived at the state that instead of having 500 hours (random number) of solo content and 500 hours of group content now soloable, we have just 500 hours of some kind of content that is too simple or pointless for both groups.
So in reality the players still quit playing, arguably in larger numbers, but nowadays not because they simply cannot do something, but because there is nothing left to do instead of the things they are either unable or unwilling to do.
Flame on!
You're comparing games that peaked at 300,000 players to games that are peaking at a million or more players. Of course they've quit in larger numbers. There are just more people playing.
Group content is a long term mechanic. For games where players are sticking around, it's for the group content. This includes dungeons, raids and PvP. The initial purchases come from the solo content though. Being the hero makes people want to play a game. Developers can choose to go with group content from the get go, and get fewer sales or they can go with solo content to sell the game, switching over to group content for the long term. In either case, they'll end up with the same number of permanent players. Which of these choices does it make sense to choose?
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
You're comparing games that peaked at 300,000 players to games that are peaking at a million or more players. Of course they've quit in larger numbers. There are just more people playing.
He meant percentage of playerbase not simple amount.
I hear your sentiments Op but I would like to point out the following.
Just a couple reasons, but not all encompassing.
We live in an MMO industry ripe with players suffering from Attention deficiet gaming disorder where-in they are in a game and leave it after the 1st month or two. We live in an MMO industry oversaturated with games. We live in an MMO industry that wants to get as many people playing as possible aka casuals thats dont have tons of time to play. We have a mixed bag of people with varying tastes, likes, dislikes, and intresting player personalities.. In this type of existance the mmo's you suggest will rarely exist, unless there is a player base that is going to stay for long periods of time and devote themselves to the game.
Player bases also need to check certain behaviors before loggin into MMO's also. People dont like to play with racisits, alchoholics, drug users, anti religious bigots, and high school teen drama-queens, just to name a few.
All my opinions are just that..opinions. If you like my opinions..coolness.If you dont like my opinion....I really dont care. Playing: ESO, WOT, Smite, and Marvel Heroes
Originally posted by Random_mage Its been said. The quality keeps going down because we pay for it. Gone are the days of the basement dwelling nerd playing for hours to level, here to stay are now now now generation that dont feel like video games should be challenging. Give me my epic loot when i log in! Before, developers used to design content, now they spend more time designing features.
What do you mean "we pay for it"?
The trend is F2P .. and lots of people are not paying a dime.
The standard MMO template, such as it is, can't help but encourage solo play. Players are divided into 50-100 tiers (from rat-whomper to godslayer) and the world is just as divided into zones with content targeted at only a subset of those levels. Then add sequential, gated questlines to the mix to further segregate folks and top it off with having to fight with your teammates over any good gear that drops. Only the most social of butterflies would even bother with grouping when soloing is far more convenient and personally beneficial.
I'm genuinely surprised that CoH/CoX was only mentioned in passing throughout this thread because that game was one that set the forced grouping/solo paradigm on its head. Being able to scale your level up or down at any time to run practically any content is a revelation that I believe all themepark games should follow. Though they had archetypes to help people fill certain roles in groups, you could bowl through most content with a mix of just about anything. The rewards for grouping (besides the fun of playing with other people) were tangible as you could see your XP bar shooting up far more quickly than when playing alone.
And most of the grouping that occurred wasn't forced-- the game was simply designed to make grouping as easy as soloing and offered substantive rewards for doing so. If a new game went that direction, I think we'd see a lot more socialization.
EQ had 'forced' grouping and its still working just fine. So its not the content that 'makes' you solo. Its a choice. I agree with the other gentlemen who said something along the lines that grouping today is NOT like grouping in the past. In the past when we grouped we didnt mind the grind because you were chatting about different things, getting to know each other, etc. Today even in a group these gamers tend to not want to talk at all. They want to play with you only so they can tackle the content. And once done they vanish completely anonymous. Just seems like that is acceptable today which says more about gamers playing mentality than it does about the grouping mechanic.
Dont know which came first, but EQ2 you could lower your level as well. Mentoring I think it was called.
It brings up an interesting side note. My son had a playdate yesterday and I watched them play games. It was funny to notice how they didnt care about the content (where they were) as much as they wanted to get through it (what they were doing). Granted it was a KINECT game (and my son is 6), it drew an erie parallel to today's MMO gamers. They really DONT CARE about a persistent world. Guessing their age they have never seen/experienced one so they aren't missing anything. If I was a marketer, I would define the gaming audience as people who want to be god like and blow threw as much diverse, aesthetically pleasing content as fast as they can. Make the content too challenging (where they cannot continue that flow of constant progression) and their ghosts! gone. Off to the next game, vehemently complaining of the epic fail across social media on their way out.
Thats a scary proposition for a developer. Here you are given a lump sum of money to develop something (hopefully something you are interested in). Yet, you really cant. Because in order to pay that money back you need to create something that people will play NOW. Cant really worry about next year though it would be great to. In essence Im scared to be unique and try something different because everyone else is screaming at you to give you the same.
Same thing happened to the music industry. Now everything all electronic in some form or another. Creativity has been buried.
Agree - just the way things are, but we can never rule out hope for that one developer to try to do something different. Its what keeps me playing all these years...
Im sorry you didnt understand what I was saying. Simply put, we spend money on crap, so developers have no real incentive to create a game that players have to work. The f2p point may be valid, however, remember game companies need to make money.
Originally posted by Random_mage Im sorry you didnt understand what I was saying. Simply put, we spend money on crap, so developers have no real incentive to create a game that players have to work. The f2p point may be valid, however, remember game companies need to make money.
In the context of this thread, solo centric content does not make games cr@p. It makes them solo centric. It would seem to me that it's as simple as the fact that games with forced grouping cannot compete with games where the content focuses on solo game play...which makes the forced group games inferior. For the most part, they don't even make it past the first step, which is 'get sold'.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
This. You should post it in every thread about f2p, or sandbox, or solofication
Let's face it, we (people on gaming forums) are only the tip of the iceberg, there are a sh*tload of gamers who never looks into a forum or community page, only plays. A lot of them also like their games easy, solo-oriented, carebear-ed, and (horribile dictu) f2p. Since the game development turned into an industry, it's a pretty easy choice to them, which playergroup should they target.... They can make a lot more money with less effort from the "rabble" (if we stick to your terms, although I never considered myself among those stuck-up elites )
That's the thing though, game development has *ALWAYS* been an industry! It has always existed to make money. The makers of Meridian 59 didn't just put a game out there and not care if they made a profit, they were catering to the perceived market of the time. Same with UO. Same with EQ. Every game took a look at the existing market and decided what would make them the most money. The marketplace changes over time, by the time WoW came along, they recognized that there was a massive unserved marketplace that was not currently playing any MMOs so they tailored their game to them.
The fact remains, there are many, many, many, many more "rabble" than there will ever be "elite". They have all the money and thus, all the power.
I hear your sentiments Op but I would like to point out the following.
Just a couple reasons, but not all encompassing.
We live in an MMO industry ripe with players suffering from Attention deficiet gaming disorder where-in they are in a game and leave it after the 1st month or two. We live in an MMO industry oversaturated with games. We live in an MMO industry that wants to get as many people playing as possible aka casuals thats dont have tons of time to play. We have a mixed bag of people with varying tastes, likes, dislikes, and intresting player personalities.. In this type of existance the mmo's you suggest will rarely exist, unless there is a player base that is going to stay for long periods of time and devote themselves to the game.
Player bases also need to check certain behaviors before loggin into MMO's also. People dont like to play with racisits, alchoholics, drug users, anti religious bigots, and high school teen drama-queens, just to name a few.
Excellent point, one I've made many times myself. The reason for short-stays in games today is because there are a ridiculous number of games in the marketplace. Don't like one? Play another! Back in the days of UO and EQ, there wasn't that option. There were a handful of games and people stuck with one, or jumped between a very few, because they had no choice. They couldn't just rage-quit and go somewhere else, there weren't that many places to go so they tended to stick around a game a lot longer out of necessity, not out of desire.
Add to that the fact that the MMO marketplace is positively huge today, it's not the little insular community that we had back in the UO days where most gamers had the same general interests, now there are thousands of communities that play these games and finding someone who thinks just like you is much more difficult. That's life. Welcome to reality.
You're comparing games that peaked at 300,000 players to games that are peaking at a million or more players. Of course they've quit in larger numbers. There are just more people playing.
Group content is a long term mechanic. For games where players are sticking around, it's for the group content. This includes dungeons, raids and PvP. The initial purchases come from the solo content though. Being the hero makes people want to play a game. Developers can choose to go with group content from the get go, and get fewer sales or they can go with solo content to sell the game, switching over to group content for the long term. In either case, they'll end up with the same number of permanent players. Which of these choices does it make sense to choose?
Technically, i was comparing tbc to wotlk+, but whatever
As for sticking around for group content, this is one of those fallacies, because you say "group content", but what we actually get are fixed group dungeons, raids and pvp, which is nowadays essentially soloing with a twist for all but the 10% top hardcore players, and before that, roughly 70-80% of players participated in those only very rarely.
We have to re-expand the definition of "group content" in mmos.
Its one of those things, "i raided in eq2, thus i am happy that now everyone can raid", completely forgetting that new players will never get the same epic feeling...
Bit puzzled by Yamota’s reply as he seems to be doing a counter argument that agrees with me? What you put in your post was what I believe, so crossed wires there.
New teens join us every year Icewhite, they don’t come in decade job lots and then we get another batch when the last lot are in their mid 20’s. So it is a continual process, which gaming houses rely on to support tired format titles.
I am not suggesting we don’t pay for games. I am suggesting we do not pre-order, that was how it used to be and they developed and distributed games before the internet Darkhalf357x. You do know that online shopping came after gaming started right?
“Simply put, we spend money on crap, so developers have no real incentive to create a game that players have to work.” – So true.
Basically those kind of MMOs ended in 2004 after the release of the game that shall not be mentioned......SInce then it is all about the individual player and instant gratification and it probably wont change until that monster is slain.
Originally posted by Theocritus Basically those kind of MMOs ended in 2004 after the release of the game that shall not be mentioned......SInce then it is all about the individual player and instant gratification and it probably wont change until that monster is slain.
Well, wow's sub is now stable at 10M with quarterly financial results. It will still be the biggest MMO for a while.
And who can fault them? Whatever they do .. works. They make better games than most other companies.
Originally posted by Theocritus Basically those kind of MMOs ended in 2004 after the release of the game that shall not be mentioned......SInce then it is all about the individual player and instant gratification and it probably wont change until that monster is slain.
It won't change even then. For all it's faults, one thing WoW proved is that the MMO market that existed before WoW came on the scene was just a minuscule piss in a bucket. Whereas there might have been half-a-million MMO players in the world before WoW came along, Blizzard proved that there were, in fact, 12-13 million people interested in playing MMOs, just not the games that existed before.
There's no chance in hell that any AAA MMO company is ever going back to the way things were before WoW. Time to stop living in the past and join the reality of today.
We do have to realise that things have moved on. Can old values be brought back? Possibly but remember that what has happened so far is that a few phrases like faction warfare and sandbox are just being used as hype. They don't really deliver when it comes down to it.
I see no reason to think that the instant gratification trend will cease, I do see the games changing even more and those who think they are alright now may put their hands up in horror in a few years time.
The really big problem is the migrating player bases. With no stability in player base, little long term can be achieved in a MMO. That is the same for a MMO that tries to bring back old values or a new easyMMO that just tries to tread water and make a profit in the current market.
Originally posted by Theocritus Basically those kind of MMOs ended in 2004 after the release of the game that shall not be mentioned......SInce then it is all about the individual player and instant gratification and it probably wont change until that monster is slain.
It won't change even then. For all it's faults, one thing WoW proved is that the MMO market that existed before WoW came on the scene was just a minuscule piss in a bucket. Whereas there might have been half-a-million MMO players in the world before WoW came along, Blizzard proved that there were, in fact, 12-13 million people interested in playing MMOs, just not the games that existed before.
There's no chance in hell that any AAA MMO company is ever going back to the way things were before WoW. Time to stop living in the past and join the reality of today.
i think wow really proved that if you have a half decent game and a metric shit ton of advertizing you can get alot of customers. It was no different than D3, and while it sold 10m copies i wouldnt call it spectacular by any means.
however not including China, wow only has about 4 million customers NA/EU so mmo companies should be using the 4m and not 10m to appeal to their playerbase. I would be going for a 2 million playerbase. That is achievable with a decent mmo.
one thing to take into consideration is that many players have now played wow for many years and have become bored with that basic gameplay. This is why a game like Guild Wars 2 was successful and why there is now room for more indepth and unique games. You cant eat candy forever. Sooner or later youll want something with substance.
They went out of business when WoW came out, not because it was a killer game but because they did nothing more than create cash cow companies, it's no longer about the adventure but about the Venture, the amount of money they can make from shit.
i think wow really proved that if you have a half decent game and a metric shit ton of advertizing you can get alot of customers. It was no different than D3, and while it sold 10m copies i wouldnt call it spectacular by any means.
however not including China, wow only has about 4 million customers NA/EU so mmo companies should be using the 4m and not 10m to appeal to their playerbase. I would be going for a 2 million playerbase. That is achievable with a decent mmo.
one thing to take into consideration is that many players have now played wow for many years and have become bored with that basic gameplay. This is why a game like Guild Wars 2 was successful and why there is now room for more indepth and unique games. You cant eat candy forever. Sooner or later youll want something with substance.
Like what? Mud cakes?
One thing is for sure, you'll get nowhere by acting "you know better" because at the end of the day, you don't know any better. You and me and every D3 and WoW player are the same with equally valid preferences. Like opinions, everyone has an a**hole: You're not interested in mine, I'm not interested in yours. I doubt it smells like roses.
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been-Wayne Gretzky
Originally posted by charlizd They went out of business when WoW came out, not because it was a killer game but because they did nothing more than create cash cow companies, it's no longer about the adventure but about the Venture, the amount of money they can make from shit.
Not true, i play Vanguard.
If people choose easy games like WOW, GW2, RIFT then it's their own fault.
one thing to take into consideration is that many players have now played wow for many years and have become bored with that basic gameplay. This is why a game like Guild Wars 2 was successful and why there is now room for more indepth and unique games. You cant eat candy forever. Sooner or later youll want something with substance.
Yet there are lots of people who have been playing WoW since it launched and have no interest in playing anything else. I have friends who have paid their monthly fee since the day the game came out and are still going strong. Apparently, you can eat candy forever if all you want to eat is candy.
WoW's success came from making a game that almost anyone's computer could run without having to upgrade and understanding that there were tons of players outside of the traditional MMO marketplace. That's where they put their advertising dollar and it paid off big time. Other games like Wizard 101 and Maple Story did the same thing and they got massive numbers of players. They did something that nobody else had thought of and they get criticized for it.
Comments
Those "teens" are all, minimum, in their mid-20s by now. Yes, that's how long this tired old topic has been repeating.
Self-pity imprisons us in the walls of our own self-absorption. The whole world shrinks down to the size of our problem, and the more we dwell on it, the smaller we are and the larger the problem seems to grow.
Very true, I keep buying theme park after theme park knowing full well they will only provide short term entertainment, so I am in fact part of the problem.
But no more. I drew the line in front of GW2 and don't plan on playing any more theme parks in the future (well, except perhaps maybe TESO due to its alledged 3 faction pvp model).
I'll support titles more in keeping with my preferences such as DF:UW, The Repopulation, COS and ArcheAge and will stick with EVE while I wait.
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
Before, developers used to design content, now they spend more time designing features.
Currently playing Real Life..
http://i36.tinypic.com/2uyod3k.gif
For all your stalking needs..
http://www.plurk.com/Random_
The standard MMO template, such as it is, can't help but encourage solo play. Players are divided into 50-100 tiers (from rat-whomper to godslayer) and the world is just as divided into zones with content targeted at only a subset of those levels. Then add sequential, gated questlines to the mix to further segregate folks and top it off with having to fight with your teammates over any good gear that drops. Only the most social of butterflies would even bother with grouping when soloing is far more convenient and personally beneficial.
I'm genuinely surprised that CoH/CoX was only mentioned in passing throughout this thread because that game was one that set the forced grouping/solo paradigm on its head. Being able to scale your level up or down at any time to run practically any content is a revelation that I believe all themepark games should follow. Though they had archetypes to help people fill certain roles in groups, you could bowl through most content with a mix of just about anything. The rewards for grouping (besides the fun of playing with other people) were tangible as you could see your XP bar shooting up far more quickly than when playing alone.
And most of the grouping that occurred wasn't forced-- the game was simply designed to make grouping as easy as soloing and offered substantive rewards for doing so. If a new game went that direction, I think we'd see a lot more socialization.
Good in theory bad in practice, because due to cutting corners and laziness we arrived at the state that instead of having 500 hours (random number) of solo content and 500 hours of group content now soloable, we have just 500 hours of some kind of content that is too simple or pointless for both groups.
So in reality the players still quit playing, arguably in larger numbers, but nowadays not because they simply cannot do something, but because there is nothing left to do instead of the things they are either unable or unwilling to do.
Flame on!
You're comparing games that peaked at 300,000 players to games that are peaking at a million or more players. Of course they've quit in larger numbers. There are just more people playing.
Group content is a long term mechanic. For games where players are sticking around, it's for the group content. This includes dungeons, raids and PvP. The initial purchases come from the solo content though. Being the hero makes people want to play a game. Developers can choose to go with group content from the get go, and get fewer sales or they can go with solo content to sell the game, switching over to group content for the long term. In either case, they'll end up with the same number of permanent players. Which of these choices does it make sense to choose?
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
He meant percentage of playerbase not simple amount.
I hear your sentiments Op but I would like to point out the following.
Just a couple reasons, but not all encompassing.
We live in an MMO industry ripe with players suffering from Attention deficiet gaming disorder where-in they are in a game and leave it after the 1st month or two. We live in an MMO industry oversaturated with games. We live in an MMO industry that wants to get as many people playing as possible aka casuals thats dont have tons of time to play. We have a mixed bag of people with varying tastes, likes, dislikes, and intresting player personalities.. In this type of existance the mmo's you suggest will rarely exist, unless there is a player base that is going to stay for long periods of time and devote themselves to the game.
Player bases also need to check certain behaviors before loggin into MMO's also. People dont like to play with racisits, alchoholics, drug users, anti religious bigots, and high school teen drama-queens, just to name a few.
All my opinions are just that..opinions. If you like my opinions..coolness.If you dont like my opinion....I really dont care.
Playing: ESO, WOT, Smite, and Marvel Heroes
What do you mean "we pay for it"?
The trend is F2P .. and lots of people are not paying a dime.
EQ had 'forced' grouping and its still working just fine. So its not the content that 'makes' you solo. Its a choice. I agree with the other gentlemen who said something along the lines that grouping today is NOT like grouping in the past. In the past when we grouped we didnt mind the grind because you were chatting about different things, getting to know each other, etc. Today even in a group these gamers tend to not want to talk at all. They want to play with you only so they can tackle the content. And once done they vanish completely anonymous. Just seems like that is acceptable today which says more about gamers playing mentality than it does about the grouping mechanic.
Dont know which came first, but EQ2 you could lower your level as well. Mentoring I think it was called.
It brings up an interesting side note. My son had a playdate yesterday and I watched them play games. It was funny to notice how they didnt care about the content (where they were) as much as they wanted to get through it (what they were doing). Granted it was a KINECT game (and my son is 6), it drew an erie parallel to today's MMO gamers. They really DONT CARE about a persistent world. Guessing their age they have never seen/experienced one so they aren't missing anything. If I was a marketer, I would define the gaming audience as people who want to be god like and blow threw as much diverse, aesthetically pleasing content as fast as they can. Make the content too challenging (where they cannot continue that flow of constant progression) and their ghosts! gone. Off to the next game, vehemently complaining of the epic fail across social media on their way out.
Thats a scary proposition for a developer. Here you are given a lump sum of money to develop something (hopefully something you are interested in). Yet, you really cant. Because in order to pay that money back you need to create something that people will play NOW. Cant really worry about next year though it would be great to. In essence Im scared to be unique and try something different because everyone else is screaming at you to give you the same.
Same thing happened to the music industry. Now everything all electronic in some form or another. Creativity has been buried.
Agree - just the way things are, but we can never rule out hope for that one developer to try to do something different. Its what keeps me playing all these years...
Currently playing Real Life..
http://i36.tinypic.com/2uyod3k.gif
For all your stalking needs..
http://www.plurk.com/Random_
In the context of this thread, solo centric content does not make games cr@p. It makes them solo centric. It would seem to me that it's as simple as the fact that games with forced grouping cannot compete with games where the content focuses on solo game play...which makes the forced group games inferior. For the most part, they don't even make it past the first step, which is 'get sold'.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
That's the thing though, game development has *ALWAYS* been an industry! It has always existed to make money. The makers of Meridian 59 didn't just put a game out there and not care if they made a profit, they were catering to the perceived market of the time. Same with UO. Same with EQ. Every game took a look at the existing market and decided what would make them the most money. The marketplace changes over time, by the time WoW came along, they recognized that there was a massive unserved marketplace that was not currently playing any MMOs so they tailored their game to them.
The fact remains, there are many, many, many, many more "rabble" than there will ever be "elite". They have all the money and thus, all the power.
Played: UO, EQ, WoW, DDO, SWG, AO, CoH, EvE, TR, AoC, GW, GA, Aion, Allods, lots more
Relatively Recently (Re)Played: HL2 (all), Halo (PC, all), Batman:AA; AC, ME, BS, DA, FO3, DS, Doom (all), LFD1&2, KOTOR, Portal 1&2, Blink, Elder Scrolls (all), lots more
Now Playing: None
Hope: None
Excellent point, one I've made many times myself. The reason for short-stays in games today is because there are a ridiculous number of games in the marketplace. Don't like one? Play another! Back in the days of UO and EQ, there wasn't that option. There were a handful of games and people stuck with one, or jumped between a very few, because they had no choice. They couldn't just rage-quit and go somewhere else, there weren't that many places to go so they tended to stick around a game a lot longer out of necessity, not out of desire.
Add to that the fact that the MMO marketplace is positively huge today, it's not the little insular community that we had back in the UO days where most gamers had the same general interests, now there are thousands of communities that play these games and finding someone who thinks just like you is much more difficult. That's life. Welcome to reality.
Played: UO, EQ, WoW, DDO, SWG, AO, CoH, EvE, TR, AoC, GW, GA, Aion, Allods, lots more
Relatively Recently (Re)Played: HL2 (all), Halo (PC, all), Batman:AA; AC, ME, BS, DA, FO3, DS, Doom (all), LFD1&2, KOTOR, Portal 1&2, Blink, Elder Scrolls (all), lots more
Now Playing: None
Hope: None
Technically, i was comparing tbc to wotlk+, but whatever
As for sticking around for group content, this is one of those fallacies, because you say "group content", but what we actually get are fixed group dungeons, raids and pvp, which is nowadays essentially soloing with a twist for all but the 10% top hardcore players, and before that, roughly 70-80% of players participated in those only very rarely.
We have to re-expand the definition of "group content" in mmos.
Its one of those things, "i raided in eq2, thus i am happy that now everyone can raid", completely forgetting that new players will never get the same epic feeling...
Flame on!
Bit puzzled by Yamota’s reply as he seems to be doing a counter argument that agrees with me? What you put in your post was what I believe, so crossed wires there.
New teens join us every year Icewhite, they don’t come in decade job lots and then we get another batch when the last lot are in their mid 20’s.
So it is a continual process, which gaming houses rely on to support tired format titles.
I am not suggesting we don’t pay for games. I am suggesting we do not pre-order, that was how it used to be and they developed and distributed games before the internet Darkhalf357x. You do know that online shopping came after gaming started right?
“Simply put, we spend money on crap, so developers have no real incentive to create a game that players have to work.” – So true.
Well, wow's sub is now stable at 10M with quarterly financial results. It will still be the biggest MMO for a while.
And who can fault them? Whatever they do .. works. They make better games than most other companies.
It won't change even then. For all it's faults, one thing WoW proved is that the MMO market that existed before WoW came on the scene was just a minuscule piss in a bucket. Whereas there might have been half-a-million MMO players in the world before WoW came along, Blizzard proved that there were, in fact, 12-13 million people interested in playing MMOs, just not the games that existed before.
There's no chance in hell that any AAA MMO company is ever going back to the way things were before WoW. Time to stop living in the past and join the reality of today.
Played: UO, EQ, WoW, DDO, SWG, AO, CoH, EvE, TR, AoC, GW, GA, Aion, Allods, lots more
Relatively Recently (Re)Played: HL2 (all), Halo (PC, all), Batman:AA; AC, ME, BS, DA, FO3, DS, Doom (all), LFD1&2, KOTOR, Portal 1&2, Blink, Elder Scrolls (all), lots more
Now Playing: None
Hope: None
We do have to realise that things have moved on. Can old values be brought back? Possibly but remember that what has happened so far is that a few phrases like faction warfare and sandbox are just being used as hype. They don't really deliver when it comes down to it.
I see no reason to think that the instant gratification trend will cease, I do see the games changing even more and those who think they are alright now may put their hands up in horror in a few years time.
The really big problem is the migrating player bases. With no stability in player base, little long term can be achieved in a MMO. That is the same for a MMO that tries to bring back old values or a new easyMMO that just tries to tread water and make a profit in the current market.
i think wow really proved that if you have a half decent game and a metric shit ton of advertizing you can get alot of customers. It was no different than D3, and while it sold 10m copies i wouldnt call it spectacular by any means.
however not including China, wow only has about 4 million customers NA/EU so mmo companies should be using the 4m and not 10m to appeal to their playerbase. I would be going for a 2 million playerbase. That is achievable with a decent mmo.
one thing to take into consideration is that many players have now played wow for many years and have become bored with that basic gameplay. This is why a game like Guild Wars 2 was successful and why there is now room for more indepth and unique games. You cant eat candy forever. Sooner or later youll want something with substance.
Like what? Mud cakes?
One thing is for sure, you'll get nowhere by acting "you know better" because at the end of the day, you don't know any better. You and me and every D3 and WoW player are the same with equally valid preferences. Like opinions, everyone has an a**hole: You're not interested in mine, I'm not interested in yours. I doubt it smells like roses.
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been -Wayne Gretzky
Not true, i play Vanguard.
If people choose easy games like WOW, GW2, RIFT then it's their own fault.
Yet there are lots of people who have been playing WoW since it launched and have no interest in playing anything else. I have friends who have paid their monthly fee since the day the game came out and are still going strong. Apparently, you can eat candy forever if all you want to eat is candy.
WoW's success came from making a game that almost anyone's computer could run without having to upgrade and understanding that there were tons of players outside of the traditional MMO marketplace. That's where they put their advertising dollar and it paid off big time. Other games like Wizard 101 and Maple Story did the same thing and they got massive numbers of players. They did something that nobody else had thought of and they get criticized for it.
Played: UO, EQ, WoW, DDO, SWG, AO, CoH, EvE, TR, AoC, GW, GA, Aion, Allods, lots more
Relatively Recently (Re)Played: HL2 (all), Halo (PC, all), Batman:AA; AC, ME, BS, DA, FO3, DS, Doom (all), LFD1&2, KOTOR, Portal 1&2, Blink, Elder Scrolls (all), lots more
Now Playing: None
Hope: None