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What's left?
DarkHigh
Member UncommonPosts: 157
With the pay to win, politics, cash grabs, etc. What is left for MMO gamers? Specifically those who like PvP content. I'm one who thoroughly enjoyed PvP in Lineage 2, Aion (pre-p2w cash shop), Archeage (alpha), and even BDO although I spent my fair share of cash trying to stay competitive.
So what's left? Is the genre finally at the point it's time to walk away? From what I see there doesn't seem to be anything coming out that isn't a cash grab or vaporware kickstarter mmo.
So what's left? Is the genre finally at the point it's time to walk away? From what I see there doesn't seem to be anything coming out that isn't a cash grab or vaporware kickstarter mmo.
Comments
As I said many times before. Its dead. We went from a genre that held most potential to a dead genre in span of years.
And the reason: megalomania
Developers started thinking MMO sucessis measured in millions of concurrent users. And anything less is a failure.
We had mmos with 600 thousand users, being called failures and cancelled.
Today we know that such numbers are unrealistic.
To reach even close to such numbers your game must be accomodating to most casual playstyle and probably also be free and for children ( and also have children kill each other, and insult each other ) like Fortnite or LoL
The MMOs are - we know now - Niche thing.
This is why unrealistic expectations - set by WoW and EQ - destroyed the genre.
Today if anyone is making new MMO they should count with 1000 concurrent users at maximum.
And if that is enough to keep their buisness afloat - You will have a winning MMO
Both of those are simply unrealistic.
Last MMO that had some semblance of hope for MMO world was EQ3. Sony was actual company with funds that employed actual people. But when Sony was suddenly sold to Russian mafia.
Smedly left and kickstarted a very curious MMO "Hero Song".
This MMO is I believe a blueprint of what MMO should be to actually succed:
It had dynamic world, dynamic quests, changing world - in short everything EQ3 was suppose to have. But all done in easy to make 2d world and 2d graphic. The quest and content was created procedurally.
They could have easily made this, and surely it would not have 100 000 players. But we allready established that this is expectation thats killing MMOs.
A small, niche project, that is sustainable. That is what we need.
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Hero Song ended because Smed was offered job at Amazon studios ( i think ) , so yea ... another one down the drain.
Still. This kind of sustainable - realistic project, is what we need.
It is a gross misconception (and another pitfall of the themepark design philosophy) that an MMO must have hours upon hours of scripted, quest driven gameplay and progression. The sad reality is that players often blow through this content far more quickly than was intended and designed for. Even if more content was planned for, it would require a legion of developers to create it in a timely manner. In reality, players chew through the content that is available, become bored waiting for the next update, and then go elsewhere like swarms of locusts seeking their next meal. Additionally, having such a large staff would spell bankruptcy. Case in point, development costs are already astronomical, which is why large publishers need such a large audience for a game to remain solvent and profitable. Furthermore, requiring that an MMO be "all thing" to "all people", or "make everyone happy" is just setting yourself up for failure, and this is why these hoped for multi-million subscriber MMOs always fail. As a result, they fall to microtransactions, cash shops, and dreaded loot boxes, thus preying on their customers to make up the difference.
It's time for MMOs to abandon the questing progression model; it simply isn't chronologically or financially feasible. Leave quests to single-player games where they are best served and truly belong, and let players within MMOs create their own stories as it should be.
There are tons of games designed specifically to pvp,like Unreal Tournament "highest skill needed",Overwatch ,TCG's,Hero games etc etc.
What is left is only HOPE but right now EVERYTHING in gaming is about maximizing profits in an absolutely flooded market.Remember when Wow made it rich then all those crappy copy cat games came out,well Hearthstone did very well for about 2-3 years now we see a ton new tcg's ,likely at least 20 or more.
Just like real life that has run out of ways to cut corners,gaming is in the same boat.We already dropped to the gutter with claims of FREE to play making millions of dollars and hand holding/markers in games is like they are made for 7 year olds.
Just hope and pray there is an upcoming Producer...team that has the ability to give us a AAA game with more substance than loot drops.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
The OP mentioned PvP; shooters have changed mostly for the worse, either becoming easy mode, cartoon caricatures, or using a simplistic setup that inhibits the use of strategy (like BR) and I am not even going into the game as a service aspect here.
Looking at other genres, arcade platform has is possibly had the most obvious journey into ever easier play in gaming. Gaming has changed so much that terms used in the nineties don't even have the same meaning now, not just MMORPG, the same can be said for "adventure games". They used to be an RPG with lots of interactivity and puzzle solving. Now it is used for anything Conan Exiles, Destiny 2, Postal 4.
When games started to make more money than films globally a few years ago you knew the writing was on the wall. Gaming has become the leading entertainment mass media with all the issues that go with that. Glossy, shallow and the product of a conveyor belt of high volume output for the masses.
Because those people make up the majority, studios are giving into demands from people whom don't even like MMORPGs, thus making MMORPGs into "something else".
What studios still haven't realize is that those entitled people have the attention span of a knat. They are not loyal to any game. Like locust, the move on. Leaving studios and the real fans of MMORPGs holding the bag.
I bet you most studios would kill to have 300K dedicated, long-term players. Instead, they aim for millions of entitled locust and the game ends up with a few thousand in the end.
No fate but what we make, so make me a ham sandwich please.
There are certain queer times and occasions in this strange mixed affair we call life when a man takes this whole universe for a vast practical joke, though the wit thereof he but dimly discerns, and more than suspects that the joke is at nobody's expense but his own.
-- Herman Melville
it's entierly pvp, but on prime times there's so many enemies and allies it almost feel like really hard co-op pve.
it's true open-world, true f2p, true action combat, no daily grinds, what more can you ask.
the only downsides are relatively high hardware demand and steep learning curve.
Sad reality to say the least.