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Niche Market Gaming - Is this what you want instead of the current mmorpg titles today? (poll)
Eronakis
Member UncommonPosts: 2,248
I am rather curious of how this will turn out.
This thread is solely about niche market gaming. What I mean is that mmorpgs pre-wow were made for niche market gamers. The MMO's didn't cater to everyone but a niche market of gamers who enjoyed a particular style of gameplay.
I am specifically looking to get a sample from the mmorpg.com forum community to see if this style of a particular type of gameplay is what people are still wanting to have?
So this is your chance to vote and let your voice be heard. Do you want this type of game?
I tried to generalize as much as I can for this niche market of gamers.
Features & Game Design Elements - If the majority of these interest you in a game still vote yes. If not then vote no.
- Community driven game: Group content is king. Solo play is available but let's give a 70% group content to 30% solo content ratio. This also means server reputation for your character as well. Are you considered a good player? Do you ninja loot? What type of player do you project your self to the community?
- Challenge Content (Risk vs Reward): The more challenging the content you face the more reward you'll get from it. This means no hand holding. Prove your worth as a player within a group.
- Top Heavy PVE: With the primary focus on PVE content which would compliment a community driven game. (The community of which old EQ use to have).
- Adaptable In-depth Combat Mechanics (complete gear dependency omitted): Use combat mechanics were you can adapt to an intelligent AI in the middle of a fight to change your strategy. There are multiple ways to win a fight based on how you or the AI adapts to strategy.
- Open Immersive World: Little to no instances as possible. You log into a living breathing game world where your character is apart of it. Your character is not the sole hero but apart of a large community where a player could earn to be a hero.
- Explore in a Dangerous World: This ties into the above with the Open Immersive World. A world in which you can explore and find hidden items, quests, locations and landmarks. Each area is different with it's own set of challenges. The world is dangerous.
- Adventure: Instead of the monotonous tasks we have in most mmos, go on an actual adventure with a group. This could mean epic travel. This could mean the adventure/quest could take several gaming sessions to finish. Sometimes it could take a few hours. Triggered events could happen at different key points in your adventure to lead you astray from the path you've taken with your group.
- Player influence: This means players get to decide what to burn into the history of the game. Essentially create future lore of the game based on the communities influence on what they do or don't do in the game world.
- In-depth Crafting System & Item Design: Have a player driven economy within means. Allow players to have a robust crafting system (similar to vanguard or SWG). Allow players to choose from different templates to design their own gear as well as to decide what and how many stats you can have in each item piece.
- End Game Content (balanced with lower levels): Strategic challenge end game content which could include raiding. However, what you can experience with end game content you can also experience while leveling up as well.
- Minimize Instant Gratification: You earn what you get. This is not tee ball where everyone gets a trophy. Sometimes it may take time to earn something you want as a player or a group based off how challenge it may be. Time sinks could play a factor but not necessarily the reason for challenge.
- Death Penalty: A medium to harsh death penalty that encourages players that wiping is not a good thing. There are actually consequences when you wipe a group.
Please vote and comment. I found it rather interesting that the "All I want is EQ with improved graphics" thread got great feedback and seemed like a lot of people want that style of game back in the mmorpg market. So now I am making a poll to see if that's true just based of these forums alone. I am pretty sure I am missing some key features, if so list your key features that you'd like to see in a niche market gaming that is complimentary to the above list.
Comments
Currently Playing: ESO and FFXIV
Have played: You name it
If you mention rose tinted glasses, you better be referring to Mitch Hedberg.
The genre is saturated with the WoW model and the instant gratification. Those features I listed is what I want to come back. Those where essential to old school mmo's. Right now I am not interested or excited for any mmo. It's rather sad
Agreed.
+1.
I agree. This is what the mmo genre was pre-wow. Granted pre-wow we had lack of technology and robust programing languages and engines to build games such as these. I do really believe a game of those features I listed could maintain a good 100k community or so. I think a 100k worth of dedicated players to this niche would make a great gaming experience.
Niche market gaming was big time pre-wow until Blizzard monopolized the genre. Money talks. Can't discredit that. I believe with a hell of a demo and a pitch investors or even a good kickstarter campaign could work. I have ideas that would cater to a community as this, just don't have programers yet nor a demo.
I like to add horizon design instead of railed base on level.
I mean i want to wear any gears i able to find and learn any spells that i manage to unlock.
Contents like quests not gated by level.
I want to see level as one way to raise character stats and make it stronger, but not key unlock major contents,
That's most thing i want to see in multiplayers game , since it make people easier to join the game with other without too much difference because of play time .
There are many games out there that achieve various parts of your 'check boxes' the fact that you are waiting for this mythical perfect 'check box' game to come along is the problem. The industry doesn't care about people like you - they want to appeal to people who actually buy and spend money on MMOs..not try endlessly to recreate EQ.
EQ was okay in the virtual world department but pretty awful in the 'game' department and hence got crushed by a superior game maker in Blizzard - and that trend shows no signs of ending. MMOs are becoming good games and mediocre virtual worlds.
Do you have the skill to do any programming yourself?
Do you have any 3D art skills, such as modeling or animation?
Do you have millionaire friends with cash to blow?
Gotta have at least one of those three.
Hate to say it, but if not, then you really have your work cut out for you.
Disclaimer: I am working on my own game, have some decent coding skills, am a UE4 subscriber, and I need to get back to working on learning how to do 3D art and animation. I know a few people in the video / PnP gaming industry, but I am not interested in doing business with them at the moment.
World of Warcraft killed the genre. League of Legends is spoiling the younger crowd where everything else feels too hard.
I've played World of Warcraft, Tera, Rift. They all get boring after a couple weeks and I seem to always find myself back playing another game that is exactly what you call it. Its a niche market game.
I recently picked it up again. One thing to note is that it has gotten easier since the last time i played it, theres nothing else quite like it. I will say this, it is very time consuming but rewarding when you kill a boss. It takes thinking, you control a team of 9 mercenaries. Yeah 9! You lose gold and exp when you die. Player Driven Economy. The item mall is one of the most hated because random boxes for mounts and wings, but you don't need any of it to progress. It should not be the reason not to play this game if you can just ignore it!
Also, it is most likely a game no one has ever heard of...even though its still going strong after 5 years. SHOCKING!
Niche market gaming was "AAA", but it's not WoW's fault that it takes six times as much manpower to write a game using a current generation engine versus a previous generation engine. There have been many generations of game engines since 1994.
You Have an Idea For A Game - Here's Why Nobody Cares
Why Your Game Idea Sucks
It takes so much more to make a game than an idea and some money that even trying to explain it is ridiculous. There are people on these forums who are actually in the industry, and they could probably explain it, but it would just be a giant wall of text with good grammar that most people wouldn't bother to read and wouldn't believe anyway. Getting games that we call "crap" out the door and functional requires the kind of sacrifice that most people can't even conceptualize, much less actually survive. It doesn't make the games any less "crap", but the effort put into them is almost inconceivable. I think if people really knew what it took, they would stop saying things like, "I have an idea for an MMORPG that could really work!" It's not the idea, it's the people making the game that makes it work.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
There is no perfect game. Every game designer knows this. It will always be on a never ending cycle of improvement. I wasn't trying to recreate EQ. I was taking game design elements that made EQ create and want to see those in a new cohesive mmo with some innovated mechanics.
Actually, Brad McQuaid is making Pantheon which is for this niche market gaming. He's essentially recreating a newer version of EQ but into a new game. He's started a kickstarter campaign. The idea was to have a virtual RPG world. Then blizzard decided to make everything super easy. MMO's started out to be a niche market. Then Blizzard used their marketing and massive amounts of capitol to draw in non mmo gamers. And thus those non mmo gamers feel like they understand the genre from it's roots and they have no idea what their talking about because they never played those mmo's pre wow.
What people say and what people want are two different things.
And stop demonizing Blizzard and WoW. You sound silly.
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been -Wayne Gretzky
What do you want?
I dislike that Blizzard decided to take away the soul of what mmo's had before it's release. I can't argue on the revenue of what they have accumulated by monopolizing on the genre. This thread is not about blizzard and WoW, so putting the thread back on it's rails from it's current derailment.
I'm going to go out on a limb and say that most of those features aren't really that niche and, furthermore, mainstream MMOers would probably be glad to have more of that in their games. The problem is that either niche developers or niche fans tend towards the extreme in how they want things implemented.
It's not enough for all endgame content to be group-based, now any new player who wants to get anything meaningful done during a play session has to group up or gtfo. A meaningful death penalty with XP debt for example, like City of Heroes had at the onset, either gets trivialized entirely or people clamor for corpse runs, item breakage, and stark restrictions on rezzing. Boring quests are a bother so let's ditch them entirely. An open world is awesome so no instancing. We want to create a virtual world but instead of endowing it with any of the trappings of civil society, we'll recreate the wild west or Sudan and marvel as our playerbase shrinks to virtually nothing.
The problem is that a lot of the changes made to the genre are clear improvements over what existed at its nascence. If one were to objectively look at the big games released in the last couple years, he'd see that developers have tried to turn back the page in many ways, to revitalize some of the core elements without throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
No .. that is not what i want.
I want convenient games with minimal socialization, and challenging combat. D3 is a good example. I don't mind a virtual world, but don't make me walk around for ages, or have to talk for 15 min before getting into a group. Convenient features like fast travel, instances, LFDs are a must.
In fact, think of a lobby instanced game .. the closes to that, the better I like it.
We know, we know, we know, we know. lol. seriously we know. I knew what you'd say before you posted it.
You are definitely fixated with WoW. If this thread is not about Blizzard or WoW then how come you bring it up in more than half of your posts?
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been -Wayne Gretzky
so? You don't think i should express myself (or vote in the poll) just because you know?
Lots of people are consistent here. I already know who is going to ask for a virtual world, PD, sandbox .....
You don't see me ranting about people repeating themselves.
I think that what you're talking about is kinda like dating a stripper. It sounds so awesome!!! In reality, though, it's not really what you're looking for.
Sorry, I think it's been proven more than it's been disproven that the "old school" formula doesn't work anymore.
Crazkanuk
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Azarelos - 90 Hunter - Emerald
Durnzig - 90 Paladin - Emerald
Demonicron - 90 Death Knight - Emerald Dream - US
Tankinpain - 90 Monk - Azjol-Nerub - US
Brindell - 90 Warrior - Emerald Dream - US
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Let's see, WoW was never mentioned in the OP. I use WoW as an example because everyone is familiar with WoW. Blizzard is the one who used WoW to change the genre around. So why not use that as an example to convey what I am talking about? Should I use Rift or Tera? Or any other mmo title? Why should I? When everyone knows what WoW is or at least played the game. It would be nice if you could use your time and energy to post constructively instead of derailing the thread again.
You have yet to answer my question. What do you want? Are these features what you'd like in an mmo? Yes, No? Let's talk about the content of the thread instead of the personal attacks yes? Thanks.
No mention of meaningful open PvP over a large area of the game-world... not interested. Also, didn't see any mention of player built cities/territory control that would be a requirement for me to support a niche game.
Sorry in advanced if they were mentioned and I just missed it.
A man is his own easiest dupe, for what he wishes to be true he generally believes to be true...
It does work. There is a market for it for sure. How big? Yet to be determined. What I have described is the soul of the old school mmoprg era. The difference is the things we want to have in an mmo we can finally program. EQN is leading us into a mix of new and old school mmo model. So yes, it will work if it's a quality game.
I don't have to ask you to give me an example. Vanguard was based off a the old school formula persay but with some innovated gameplay and features. Vanguard failed because they released an unfinished game. It was buggy, laggy and took a lot of resources to run the game. So saying the "old school formula" doesn't work anymore is a blind statement. We don't get that "old school formula" anymore because developers are not doing it. They want to cater their mmo to the masses, not a nice market. Which is the whole point of the thread...
Even with the small sample of votes on this poll it seems like the majority would like to see the "old school formula" back but designed a bit differently. It's completely fine if you don't want the "old school formula". This game style is not for you.
It does not work for me. And this site is not exactly representative of the MMO market.
And in fact, even you use the word "niche" in the title .. which implies it does not work for most players. Now whether there is a big enough niche to support any game remains to be seen.