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Which elements should a good MMORPG have?

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  • SEANMCADSEANMCAD Member EpicPosts: 16,775
    too much question but a successful AAA mmorpg always has medieval setting
    actually its basically 'a successful AAA mmorpg as a F ton of marketing'

    besides...are we talking here about what we consider best or more popular? are we able to evaluate for ourselves what is good without a market place indicator telling us that McDonalds burgers are the best because they sell the most?...hmmm?

    Please do not respond to me, even if I ask you a question, its rhetorical.

    Please do not respond to me

  • ZEXTEGZEXTEG Member CommonPosts: 4
    I do agree with nerovergil about the medieval setting, not because its in alot of AAA mmorpgs. People have always liked medieval weaponry and such in mmorpgs since they bring more interesting combat to games. Its also easier to create a medieval setting because technology wasn't so advanced back then. In mmorpgs where technology has already advanced you will have to start to think how the technology works and start to work with physics and chemistry way more than in a medieval setting mmorpg.

    Also when talking about good elements in mmorpgs, the best element in a mmorpg in my opinion is good tutorials. Theres nothing i hate more in games than not undestanding the mechanics of the game proberly. I always like when a game has alot and good mechanics but unless they are proberly introduced, the lack of understanding will ruin the gaming experience. 
  • Hansen88aaHansen88aa Member UncommonPosts: 7
    The sad thing is that MMORPGs are so expensive and difficult to make that companies can't take the risks of innovating. If they take a risk and try something new that hasn't been done in the genre and it fails, all the invested money is gone. My point is that MMORPGs can be done in so many different ways than what we're seeing today, but most of it haven't been explored yet because of the high costs and difficulty to create truly AAA MMORPGs. 
  • AxehiltAxehilt Member RarePosts: 10,504
    Deivos said:
    Actually if you look at the bulk of failed games, that's the exact formula they were following.
    Wrong.

    As one example Warhammer Online copied skin-deep features of WOW without understanding that the focus on interesting gameplay (one of the internal organs) is what actually made things work.  (Rotations were shallow, CC was excessive, and PVE mobs had almost no abilities so they all played identically.)

    So while players are easily faked-out by cardboard cutouts (the skin) that vaguely look like another game, the reality is these games aren't actually cloning what made WOW the success it was.

    A frequent example posted is WOW's demonology rotation, as an example of the depth of its combat.  I post WOW's combat depth, and challenge others to prove other MMORPGs had similar depth, and the result is virtually always the same: they don't have WOW's combat depth.  The lone exception has been FFXIV's Lancer class.  In all the "clones" only one class of one game actually manage to clone the underlying reason (the internal organs) WOW's combat was fun.

    Now because the activity(ies) you spend 80% of your time doing in a game is the game, and because (as a result) combat is the game in most MMORPG, this is a critically important thing to get right.

    But of course all these "clone"-spouting players don't see that.  All they see is the cardboard cutout.  And that's all it takes to trick them.

    "What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver

  • DeivosDeivos Member EpicPosts: 3,692
    edited May 2016
    Axehilt said:
    Deivos said:
    Actually if you look at the bulk of failed games, that's the exact formula they were following.
    Wrong.

    As one example Warhammer Online copied skin-deep features of WOW without understanding that the focus on interesting gameplay (one of the internal organs) is what actually made things work.  (Rotations were shallow, CC was excessive, and PVE mobs had almost no abilities so they all played identically.)

    So while players are easily faked-out by cardboard cutouts (the skin) that vaguely look like another game, the reality is these games aren't actually cloning what made WOW the success it was.

    A frequent example posted is WOW's demonology rotation, as an example of the depth of its combat.  I post WOW's combat depth, and challenge others to prove other MMORPGs had similar depth, and the result is virtually always the same: they don't have WOW's combat depth.  The lone exception has been FFXIV's Lancer class.  In all the "clones" only one class of one game actually manage to clone the underlying reason (the internal organs) WOW's combat was fun.

    Now because the activity(ies) you spend 80% of your time doing in a game is the game, and because (as a result) combat is the game in most MMORPG, this is a critically important thing to get right.

    But of course all these "clone"-spouting players don't see that.  All they see is the cardboard cutout.  And that's all it takes to trick them.
    My turn to say wrong now.

    Your assumption that War did not focus on "deep gameplay" is already proven false by simply pausing to look at the scope of the game and features that they had been working on. The combat as compared to WoW of the time wasn't particularly different, and beyond that the classes had more distinctive play and vistual qualities to them. The game world got more focus as they were trying to implement some slightly evolved features.

    What was the actual problem? Well, the bugs for one were numerous. Maintenance was a drag in that game. The visuals prior to launch got a shotgun to the knee with the apparent texture drop from what they had in the beta. Then there was the issue that the world was dominated by long quest grind that felt dominantly like you were going through the motions with intermittent breaks to grind the event locations.

    The other counterpoint on your example is that it was still close to WoW and Blizzard had timed a major expansion to hit close to launch of War. People that might have migrated to that game suddenly had less incentive to because the title they were already playing in the same vein suddenly had more content to play.

    WoW's combat depth is not itself deep. All you are talking about it optimal attack queues. It is still fundamentally a simple mechanic and still something that in most cases isn't even consequential to think about. Most mobs in WoW don't have the capacity to "interrupt" any combat rotations, so ultimately the only challenge offered there are elite and boss monsters who are generally about much more distinctive gimmicks than an interrupt. In reality you have effectively over-fluffed the value of a single mechanic and made up claims about it's "depth."

    To which that claim has in fact been proven wrong with reference to all sorts of games and the ways in which they make their combat deeper through quite a variety of mechanics that WoW lacks. Song twisting was one example given previously and BDO for example utilizes a combo system to allow players quite the free form approach to chaining skills.

    So lets not make up bullshit. Especially when everyone can smell it from a mile away.

    Your suggestion fails because your idea is to offer people what they already have. If you can't understand how that is an inane concept then I can't help you.

    So to repeat what you so blatantly failed to understand;

    "Cookie-cutter game design is not good game design. It floods the market with many titles that inevitably under-perform and rapidly lose player retention because of the samey nature of the experience. Some manage to hit it off with just solid user experience or good narrative, but the bulk of titles that go through the motion of ripping off the same gameplay as every other success inevitably fail because if you want a game like that really good one, you're going to play the really good one. Not the Nth knockoff that's come in it's wake.

    The right thing to look for on a good game design in general and not just an MMO would be to consider a key concept your game will operate around and build the user experience to focus on that. Splaying your concept out too broadly, encompassing too many feature sets, or changing directions on major game components are all very common mistakes in the industry that cause many developers to go under before they even have a complete/viable product.

    So pick what the core theme and mechanics are of the game, and consider what features can help flesh out those pieces into a complete user experience. Taking a page from existing games is good as a reference on implementation of certain mechanics and how to do or not do them, but don't copy something and expect success."

    "The knowledge of the theory of logic has no tendency whatever to make men good reasoners." - Thomas B. Macaulay

    "The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge." - Daniel J. Boorstin

  • AxehiltAxehilt Member RarePosts: 10,504
    Deivos said:
    My turn to say wrong now.

    Your assumption that War did not focus on "deep gameplay" is already proven false by simply pausing to look at the scope of the game and features that they had been working on.
    Nobody plays a game saying, "I know it sucks, but I play it because you could tell they tried."
    • The focus of a dev team is utterly irrelevant.
    • The result is what matters.
    • Warhammer's result was shallow moment-to-moment gameplay.
    • Acting as though all the fluff nonsense (the 20%) matters more than a game's core systems (the 80%) is just ignorant.  The narrow set of things you spend most of the time doing in a game (the 80%) is the game.  If those things suck, the game sucks.  You could have the most amazing fluff (20%) ever made, but it will never make a difference if the majority of the game sucks.

    "What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver

  • AAAMEOWAAAMEOW Member RarePosts: 1,600
    I don't think warhammer online have that much to do with wow.  It's more of a RvR game gone wrong when it only have 2 sides.  With unbalanced population.
  • DeivosDeivos Member EpicPosts: 3,692
    edited May 2016
    Axehilt said:
    Deivos said:
    My turn to say wrong now.

    Your assumption that War did not focus on "deep gameplay" is already proven false by simply pausing to look at the scope of the game and features that they had been working on.
    Nobody plays a game saying, "I know it sucks, but I play it because you could tell they tried."
    • The focus of a dev team is utterly irrelevant.
    • The result is what matters.
    • Warhammer's result was shallow moment-to-moment gameplay.
    • Acting as though all the fluff nonsense (the 20%) matters more than a game's core systems (the 80%) is just ignorant.  The narrow set of things you spend most of the time doing in a game (the 80%) is the game.  If those things suck, the game sucks.  You could have the most amazing fluff (20%) ever made, but it will never make a difference if the majority of the game sucks.
    Plenty of people play games that they knowingly see as having fault or "sucking".

    The focus of a dev team is entirely relevant because it dictates what they are delivering. What they pay attention to, what the scope of their project is, what they decide are features to focus on, revise, remove, etc. Their design focus and the content they choose to execute on is exactly what makes their product.

    Which is the results.

    Warhammer's results were a lot of broken code and cut corners in pushing content that the devs did not have a handle on. The idea that the moment to moment gameplay was shallow is entirely personal conjecture on your part.

    And your last argument doesn't even make sense given my dialogue was about key concepts and building gameplay around that. The core systems were the only thing I gave any commentary on. I never mentioned any sort of fluff so you are presently engaging in making up yet another completely bullshit argument that no one but yourself is participant in.

    If you'd like to step back into reality, then I will be happy to repeat the point that designing games that are derivative of other games which have already captured the intended market share is suicide. Learn from past products, even take a page from their book. But thinking you can make a successful title with painting by numbers is naivety to the utmost.

    You're free to do that yourself, but don't sell bad business to other people.

    "The knowledge of the theory of logic has no tendency whatever to make men good reasoners." - Thomas B. Macaulay

    "The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge." - Daniel J. Boorstin

  • nariusseldonnariusseldon Member EpicPosts: 27,775
    The sad thing is that MMORPGs are so expensive and difficult to make that companies can't take the risks of innovating. 
    They (western devs) are not even making new AAA mmorpgs. Innovation is besides the point. 
  • Gamer54321Gamer54321 Member UncommonPosts: 452
    edited May 2016
    Goodwill towards player base during design (not being populistic drivel, more like being an artistic endeavor)

    Artistic merit (no gimmicks, nor half assed ideas)

    Technical competence (provide good, robust and secure game mechanics, before and after game release)

    Good communications skills (Devs should communicate their ideas clearly, both internally  to co-workers, and externally to players)
  • Gamer54321Gamer54321 Member UncommonPosts: 452
    Meaningful and deeply interesting player vs player interaction

    Sa-Matra Wasteland (Arma 3, multiplayer) have this very nice setup for having the players mingle and fight each other by simply spawning (dynamically/periodically) ojectives on the map, that makes players get interested in moving around on a huge map, and to plan their gameplay around. Camping a main road that leads towards an objective that just spawned is one of many things a player will find meaningful.

    In the large scope of things, this way with the spawning objectives, combat is just one aspect of the gameplay, making gameplay very interesting I would say, with terrain, personal items, vehicles and situational awareness all building up this very exciting gameplay.
  • Sid_ViciousSid_Vicious Member RarePosts: 2,177
    edited May 2016
    words.. WHAT IS BEST MMORPG??
    well..

    I like crafting that is a game within a game within a game but its useless unless the item made can be used to PVP or is actually better than PVE dropped gear. Sometimes I enjoy crafting while listening to music.. but not with games that you just stack ingredients and hit 'craft' or whatever. I want crafting to be a game much like vanguard... EQ2 did it just a little bit...

    Storyline.. I think that when playing MMORPGs it should be focused on PVP storyline more than PVE. Forced PVP is required for storyline that truly matters and effects other people so that you can truly feel legendary.

    PVE... group oriented.... this is what makes an MMORPG, especially if you feel the need to grind.. you play with other people! That means they use vent/teamspeak and nobody is having to wait for a teammate going through some storyline... FUCK SOLO PLAY.. this means that grinding mobs is funner than interacting with NPCs when it comes down to it. People should be able to play with each other and interact no matter their level. There should always be reasons to group with lower level players.

    PVP.. every game should make as many things PVP as possible... this is where the most remembered interaction comes from. If it were up to me, than every type of PVP would be possible. Hardcore FFA PVP with full-loot is the best that I have experienced so far.

    Arena.. every game should have a quick fix for people without patience...

    Grind.... there should always be some dangling carrot to work toward.

    Mob bosses that are legendary.. should be limited time to kill... like a GM event... unique to the story line then ended so that nobody else ever gets the same.

    Rewards... duh .... . . .   . make me fight for something

    NEWS FLASH! "A bank was robbed the other day and a man opened fire on the customers being held hostage. One customer zig-zag sprinted until he found cover. When questioned later he explained that he was a hardcore gamer and knew just what to do!" Download my music for free! I release several albums per month as part of project "Thee Untitled" . .. some video game music remixes and cover songs done with instruments in there as well! http://theeuntitled.bandcamp.com/ Check out my roleplaying blog, collection of fictional short stories, and fantasy series... updated on a blog for now until I am finished! https://childrenfromtheheavensbelow.blogspot.com/ Watch me game on occasion or make music... https://www.twitch.tv/spoontheeuntitled and subscribe! https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCUvqULn678VrF3OasgnbsyA

  • Loke666Loke666 Member EpicPosts: 21,441
    too much question but a successful AAA mmorpg always has medieval setting
    No, a high fantasy setting, sometimes with a little clockwork punk is the standard MMO setting. But there are exceptions, Eve have done fine and SWG initially had some success as well. And TOR is one of the top 5 western MMOs.

    AoC is low fantasy (or supposed to be at least) even though it could been more successful. The setting was never the problem really there, the game was just too buggy when it launched at least 6 months too early. 

    City of Heroes did acceptable as well with superhero setting.

    But since over 90% of all MMOs is high fantasy you can't really make any more of it then that the companies prefer to make high fantasy. The reason for that might be that they think that is what the players want but it might also be that they are easier to make and that they can use tried mechanics for it.

    Making high fantasy games might not be so smart as you think, since almost all MMOs have that setting you easily get lost among 100 other similar games while a James Bond, Shadowrun or 3 musketeer MMO would get a lot of publicity just because the setting is so different.

    A successful MMO need to stand out from all other games some way or the other, the setting is one way of doing that. Assuming that all successful MMOs must be very similar to eachothers is a huge misstake.
  • AxehiltAxehilt Member RarePosts: 10,504
    Deivos said:
    Plenty of people play games that they knowingly see as having fault or "sucking".

    The focus of a dev team is entirely relevant because it dictates what they are delivering.
    We're not talking about a game "having a fault".  We're talking about the core experience (the 80%) of the game.  We're talking about 80% of the game sucking.  Nobody plays games that feel that way.

    The focus is irrelevant because it doesn't dictate what they're delivering.  It dictates what they're trying to deliver.  Nobody plays a game saying "this game sucks, but I play it because you can tell the dev team tried."  Intent doesn't matter, only results matter.

    "What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver

  • DeivosDeivos Member EpicPosts: 3,692
    edited May 2016
    If that were true there'd be fewer games in existence. APB Reloaded for example wouldn't still be around. If you wanna hold this delusional straw man argument with yourself about percentages and that what the developers work on has nothing to do with the results, fine. I'm not going to accept misinformation being shared to the world under the illusion of knowledge as you are trying to do though.

    I'm honestly surprised Loke was confused enough to upvote your nonsense.

    What you're saying first of all is an entirely tangential argument that has nothing to do with anything that was said before any ways. As said in my post where you were clever enough to not quote because it would dismantle the lie you were trying to make;

    "The focus of a dev team is entirely relevant because it dictates what they are delivering. What they pay attention to, what the scope of their project is, what they decide are features to focus on, revise, remove, etc. Their design focus and the content they choose to execute on is exactly what makes their product.

    Which is the results."

    The fact that your ongoing argument is predicated on lying out your nose as much as possible in an effort to look smart is rather depressing.

    The focus of a dev team is relevant because it does dictate what they are delivering. Why would you think otherwise? Their focus is quite literally the content on which they are intent on creating and delivering to the public. You admitted as much. How they perform in that endeavor can vary, but it does ultimately define the type of experience to come from the title before it's even finished.

    The quality of the game suffering is a direct consequence of the focus overreaching the developer's skill set or delivering on a user experience that is simply not fun.

    Even an idiot should be able to understand that. The focus of the game's design dictates how it takes form in a very direct way. The consequences of a constantly changing focus on a game's design, too broad a scope of a design, too new of concepts to really offer refined user experience, etc are all consequences of the focus of the game not aligning with the developers ability to execute on that intent.

    That is exactly how we reach the point where someone can judge whether or not a game sucks. Games don't exist in a nebulous state until they hit the market and suddenly Schrodinger into a good or bad game, there is a process of development that takes place which makes it good or bad.

    As I stated in my first post (because you apparently failed to understand it that last couple times);

    "Cookie-cutter game design is not good game design. It floods the market with many titles that inevitably under-perform and rapidly lose player retention because of the samey nature of the experience. Some manage to hit it off with just solid user experience or good narrative, but the bulk of titles that go through the motion of ripping off the same gameplay as every other success inevitably fail because if you want a game like that really good one, you're going to play the really good one. Not the Nth knockoff that's come in it's wake.

    The right thing to look for on a good game design in general and not just an MMO would be to consider a key concept your game will operate around and build the user experience to focus on that. Splaying your concept out too broadly, encompassing too many feature sets, or changing directions on major game components are all very common mistakes in the industry that cause many developers to go under before they even have a complete/viable product.

    So pick what the core theme and mechanics are of the game, and consider what features can help flesh out those pieces into a complete user experience. Taking a page from existing games is good as a reference on implementation of certain mechanics and how to do or not do them, but don't copy something and expect success."

    Additionally there was this to say on the matter;

    "
    Your assumption that War did not focus on "deep gameplay" is already proven false by simply pausing to look at the scope of the game and features that they had been working on. The combat as compared to WoW of the time wasn't particularly different, and beyond that the classes had more distinctive play and vistual qualities to them. The game world got more focus as they were trying to implement some slightly evolved features.

    What was the actual problem? Well, the bugs for one were numerous. Maintenance was a drag in that game. The visuals prior to launch got a shotgun to the knee with the apparent texture drop from what they had in the beta. Then there was the issue that the world was dominated by long quest grind that felt dominantly like you were going through the motions with intermittent breaks to grind the event locations.

    The other counterpoint on your example is that it was still close to WoW and Blizzard had timed a major expansion to hit close to launch of War. People that might have migrated to that game suddenly had less incentive to because the title they were already playing in the same vein suddenly had more content to play."

    In this dialogue we can clearly see that what was being talked about was the core features of the game (combat and supporting mechanics in the game world). You choosing to espouse nonsense about fluff and and sucking things does nothing to further any argument or points that were offered within the realm of reality.

    So then what's the reality of the argument? Well lets pick apart this 80% of the game thing you keep talking about.

    We can break this massive delusion of yours right now by clearly noting the combat in a game does not exist in a vacuum. In order for that content to be interesting it needs many other factors to drive players into following that content. You can have a game as simple as walking around a map pressing the left mouse button be fun so long as the supporting features builds that simple combat into an entertaining experience.

    Where you draw the line on core content and fluff seems to be pretty damn fuzzy if you're claiming that the questing mechanics of the game world in MMMOs is fluff. It may not be directly tied to combat, but quests are a primary director of the user experience in themepark MMO titles. Likewise while people are apt to say visuals don't matter, you are in fact staring at the screen when you play games and whether or not the game looks good does weigh on how enjoyable the user can and generally will be (especially if they know that the game looked better at one point).

    And then there's that little truth you probably made up all this straw man fluff to avoid. 805 of the issue being that War was an MMO that came out into a market already dominated by a game like it that was much bigger and had more time to be refined. On top of that, the well timed expansions hitting against other MMO releases guaranteed that players who are interested in an MMO like WoW would be more apt to play, well WoW because it's the big fish that just got more content. Not a fledgling title breaking into a market that has to try and steal market share from other longstanding titles.

    So to repeat this point again;

    "If you'd like to step back into reality, then I will be happy to repeat the point that designing games that are derivative of other games which have already captured the intended market share is suicide. Learn from past products, even take a page from their book. But thinking you can make a successful title with painting by numbers is naivety to the utmost.

    You're free to do that yourself, but don't sell bad business to other people."

    "The knowledge of the theory of logic has no tendency whatever to make men good reasoners." - Thomas B. Macaulay

    "The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge." - Daniel J. Boorstin

  • nerovergilnerovergil Member UncommonPosts: 680
    edited May 2016
    Loke666 said:
    too much question but a successful AAA mmorpg always has medieval setting
    No, a high fantasy setting, sometimes with a little clockwork punk is the standard MMO setting. But there are exceptions, Eve have done fine and SWG initially had some success as well. And TOR is one of the top 5 western MMOs.

    AoC is low fantasy (or supposed to be at least) even though it could been more successful. The setting was never the problem really there, the game was just too buggy when it launched at least 6 months too early. 

    City of Heroes did acceptable as well with superhero setting.

    But since over 90% of all MMOs is high fantasy you can't really make any more of it then that the companies prefer to make high fantasy. The reason for that might be that they think that is what the players want but it might also be that they are easier to make and that they can use tried mechanics for it.

    Making high fantasy games might not be so smart as you think, since almost all MMOs have that setting you easily get lost among 100 other similar games while a James Bond, Shadowrun or 3 musketeer MMO would get a lot of publicity just because the setting is so different.

    A successful MMO need to stand out from all other games some way or the other, the setting is one way of doing that. Assuming that all successful MMOs must be very similar to eachothers is a huge misstake.
    i never heard almost all of mmo u mentioned. EVE kinda popular but i never play it. SWG? who play that craps nowadays.....
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