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Why MMORPGs suck.
Jimmy_Scythe
Member CommonPosts: 3,586
Sometimes, answers are so obvious and so common to you that you don't notice unless you're really looking hard. The kind of hard where you have to dump most of the cultural baggage that you've acquired in life and look at things with clear and unbiased mind. I recently had an epiphany about quality and quantity and I think it strikes directly at the core of why most of you are unsatisfied with the current MMORPG market. It also explains certain trends that are comming up in future MMORPGs.
How many of you played NWN? Did you ever notice that you had more fun on the persistant servers, that could only host about 90 players at a time, than you currently do in WoW or EQ2? Ever wonder why?
Some of us started on MUDs in the early to mid 90's that could only host about 150 to 200 people at one time. All the veteran Mudders will tell you that modern MMORPGs don't measure up, but they can't seem to explain why. quick hint: it's not becuase text offers you more freedom (it does, but that not why they were more fun) or because the devs were focused entirely on gameplay.
The reason MUDs and NWN were more fun than WoW, EQ2, Lineage 2, DAoC, AO, etc. is because of the first "M" principle. The first "M" stands for massive, and mass is the focus from developement to consumer. These games are mass produced and then mass consumed.
Think of it like this: You go to McDonalds and order a value meal. It's cheap, it's quick, it fills the need. The down side is that it's low quality food with low quality service that leaves you hungry about an hour later. Everything about a fast food restaurant is designed to get food to the customer and herd them out the door within 20 minutes. In short, it's about mass.
Now if you go to a local "Mom 'N Pop" diner, you sit down, the atmosphere is nice, there are waiters, the food is good, and you don't feel hungry untill time for the next meal. The difference? The diner focuses on providing a high quality service to a small number or patrons, while the fast food place is interested in turn a profit by selling mass quantities to as many people as possible. It's obvious which side is more profitable. It's also obvious which side provides the greatest quality.
This is the situation with MMORPGs. They are meant to net subscribers in mass. Rather than make a focused, high quality experience, these games are made to provide several low quality experiences in order to minimize developement time and still net a large number of people with varying interests. A lot of this has to do with bandwidth usage.
If I'm only gonna host 64 people, I can provide a much greater level of interaction than I could if I was hosting 3000+. Regardless of parallel server structure and advanced message processing, The more load you place on the server and the bandwidth, the slower and simpler the game is gonna have to be. Of course, we ARE making advancements in what the server can actually do with the bandwidth it uses. But with the conventions of MMORPGs set, there is the temptation to simply leave things as they are in order to accomodate more players per sever. As if adding more players to a crappy game is going to magically make it better.
Players are demanding quite a bit more though and devs realize that they can only do so much with the technology they have. This is the reason you're seeing more instancing in these games since you can broaden the depth of gameplay by limiting the server load. That's a double edged sword though, since most "hardcore" players claim that they want a persistant world with zero instancing.
So basically, you're left with a trade off. Better game play, or more massive servers. I personally want a good game. Fuck the number of concurrent players on the server. I don't usually play with all 3000 people on a server anyway 
Comments
I would read your post but I don't like reading.
I agree.
for me i dont like the grouping gimic we are starting to see in games. I dont play MMO's because i want to be in a big guild, have a few hundred people on a friends list or go out in ~6 person parties when ever i play. i play MMO's because humans are unprictable, the person who runs up to you might be just passing through, looking to trade items, or slice your head off. i like the randomness of people my favorite games are those that give you absoultly no warning of the other player's intentions. This is why i don't like instancing it locks out the uninvited making theif classes compleatly useless when it comes to PVP(in a loot stealing sense)
also to expand on what the OP was saying, it seems devlopers are trying to impliment systems just for the sake of saying they have that system in their game. maple story for example "has" a crafting system. little do most non-players know the crafting system is nothing more then trading a lot of items to an NPC, along with a "service charge" for them to give you a better item.
blah
I did read your post, and agree with every word.
The only problem is that the two are often times linked when you get into graphics, animation, sound, and operating systems like Windows.
Creating a MUD just has to support text, in a scripting language that is so easy a child could do it. Bandwith isn't an issue. Development can be done in your free time.
A modern MMORPG though? Now we are talking languages like Python, using rendering programs like 3D StudioMax. These utilities aren't cheap, and there are compatability issues between operating systems, and the hardware that the clients will have. Plus, you have to look at parsing down your packets in a manageable form, with a mind to latency, and security against hacks and 'sploits. Where at one time you needed only a bit of space on some server for your MUD, the MMORPG oftentimes needs a ton of hot running, advanced servers running in a cluster. If only one of them encounters a fatal exception, your whole service can be screwed.
So in today's MMORPGs, you often need a full time staff to develop and code the game, using industrial grade hardware and software tools that are expensive, before even a single player signs up.
I hear what you are saying, and I believe every word. The problem is, you need massive investment, massive servers, and massive time in development, for just one player, let alone one hundred thousand. The community in Seed was the best I've ever seen in an MMO. The roleplay was deep. The devs cared.
But the financial considerations and the logistics of a modern, graphic MMO were too great for a small outfit like Runestone, and the game folds tomorrow. I have no doubt that the game would have survived if it wasn't pushed out early. Then again, how long can we expect the angels and backers to keep paying for development, before they demand to see the game?
Maybe things will be better in ten years...I don't know.
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"Its sad when people use religion to feel superior, its even worse to see people using a video game to do it."
--Arcken
"...when it comes to pimping EVE I have little restraints."
--Hellmar, CEO of CCP.
"It's like they took a gun, put it to their nugget sack and pulled the trigger over and over again, each time telling us how great it was that they were shooting themselves in the balls."
--Exar_Kun on SWG's NGE
Actually i prefer,haveing more people in the world,
i would like lets say 1000+ more in a highly rendered map, BIG Map, of WW2 Style Games,
as real as the game engine allows,like make a base in the trees, and since there will be so many players, it would be a great suprise.
i would not mind playing in a game with 500-1000 people in one game , driveing tanks , and air craft, and whatever, that what would make the game more interesting,then 64 players,although 64 is quite alot.
like,
jeeps, if its damaged, you could repair the engine, with basic mechanic skills but the engine would basicly die out over time,due to being damaged,because of needed replacement parts,
use that development time on physics and what you could do in the game then dust in the nutshell eye candy, like climb up a tree, in the game , but that would require different..controlls, then mouse and keyboard, more like analog controls ,or have controllers as gloves,and control that way,
but the problem is the damned internet,it needs a net latency at least 60 net frames or more.
If anyone Hates mmorpg just go play counter strike source or battlefield
or hl2
Which FF Character Are You?
~Currently Playing L2~
~6x OL~
Your right about that, nc soft seems like they like to do there own thing instead of listening to the cry babys about nerfing this and nerfing that all the time, sure there not always perfect but a hek of alot better then any other companys ive experienced.
When I want quick action I still perfer a good FPS. Nothing like popping into some random server, doing some slaughtering and then pop right out when you are done. Wham-Bam-Thank You Mam kinda of stuff.
The problem with most MMOs is that the focus is so much on uber gear, or leveling. To most people the story and environment is always a back seat. Everyone rushes to get to the magical end-game which is looked at as the beginning of the game not the end (still haven't figured out why they call it end-game then).
I think the issue is not how many people are playing. I believe you could have equally great games be it 10 people or 10,000 people. Even in games like WoW on popular servers rarely will you ever see a fraction of the total people that are playing at any given time. I can understand what the OP is getting at though, the more people that you have playing a particular game, the more people will bitch and moan and cause the game devs to change the game (usually in a bad way at least to a potion of the gaming community).
What needs to happen is dump the who concept of levels. Each week or even day change elements of the world around a litlte (there was another thread the other night about this idea). And for goodness sakes don't have NPCs standing in the exact same spot 24x7 from opening day onward. I get so tired of seeing epic NPCs just standing there never moving. Hell how did they ever get so epic if all they do is stand there like Buckingham Palace guards?
Don't make content where you HAVE TO group. Instead make it where you want to group. I hate being forced to group, but love to run into random people want group just for the fun of meeting them. Don't make huge time sinks just to keep people playing all the time. Time sinks are to me just billboard signs reflecting developers being lazy on putting out fresh and new content.
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Currently Playing: Guild Wars 2 and Path of Exile
Quit: Eden Eternal, Wakfu, DDO, STO, DCUO, Sword 2, Atlantica Online, LOTRO, SWTOR, RIFT, Earthrise, FFXIV, RoM, Allods Online, GA,WAR,CO,V:SoH,POTBS,TR,COH/COV, WOW, DDO,AL, EQ, Eve, L2, AA, Mx0, SWG, SoR, AO, RFO, DAoC, and others.
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The cost of a true masterpiece AAA MMOG should, in reality, be somewhere in the neighborhood of $150 - $250 million, minimum. Hollywood doesn't seem to mind shelling out hundreds of millions to make a 2 hour movie ($350 million for that "masterpiece" Waterworld!)...Why should investing $250 million in a "living, breathing" synthetic world where millions of people spend 3 - 4 hours, or more, each and every day, be such a big deal?
A AAA MMOG development team should be anywhere from 200 to 400 people...mostly artists and designers. Too many rogrammers on a team can severely cripple a project...Third-party software should rule; it's already polished and it's almost always much better than anything that can be produced by dev team X! The biggest benefit being vastly reduced development calendars.
Time to market should be whatever it needs to be in order to produce a high quality entertainment service.
I've talked about these issues 'til I'm blue in the face...
The two groups that are most responsible for the junk-shit MMOGs that we currently suffer are: a) The prfoundly greedy venture capitalists...the money-men and b) The legions of mindless gamers who robotically hand over their lunch money every month in order to "play" the latest massively hyped game! The developers are actually ancillary in the MMOG making process.
The targets of our collective wrath, such as it is, should be the VCs and robot gamers...not the developers.
poopypants wrote:
MMOGs projects should be massive projects...far beyond what we now see.
The question that I originally posted was whether or not bigger is always better. I'm going to have to disagree and say that it isn't the size of the project, it's how you use it.
The cost of a true masterpiece AAA MMOG should, in reality, be somewhere in the neighborhood of $150 - $250 million, minimum. Hollywood doesn't seem to mind shelling out hundreds of millions to make a 2 hour movie ($350 million for that "masterpiece" Waterworld!)...Why should investing $250 million in a "living, breathing" synthetic world where millions of people spend 3 - 4 hours, or more, each and every day, be such a big deal?
So your solution is to just throw money at the problem? MMORPGs already cost more than games have ever cost in the past and they blow. I remember when America's Army first came out and hearing team leaders bitch about how they couldn't compete with that kind of budget. FYI, America's Army cost $2 million initially.
Time to market should be whatever it needs to be in order to produce a high quality entertainment service.
The catch 22 of that statement is that the "invisible hand" works both ways. You maximize profit by cutting corners as much as possible. The history of the corporation demonstrates that business leaders will cut the "bone and sinew" of their organization just to pinch a few pennies. This is exactly why games get pushed out the door before they are finished.
The two groups that are most responsible for the junk-shit MMOGs that we currently suffer are: a) The prfoundly greedy venture capitalists...the money-men and b) The legions of mindless gamers who robotically hand over their lunch money every month in order to "play" the latest massively hyped game! The developers are actually ancillary in the MMOG making process.
I could almost agree with that if it wasn't for one thing, those same money men and gamers have produced and consumed some of the greatest multiplayer games of all time. Starcraft, Unreal Tournament, Street Fighter, all of those IPs were green lighted by someone with a lot of cash. All of those games were consumed by "hardcore" gamers. The system can produce downright legendary result in small scale, multiplayer games, but can't seem to make an MMORPG that really lives up to the same calibur of their less massive counterparts.
The targets of our collective wrath, such as it is, should be the VCs and robot gamers...not the developers.
Actually, I think it's time we ditched the "wrath" altogether and began asking ourselves what it is we really want. MMORPGs will always be around so long as developers and publishers can maintain the "churn" for stretches of five to ten years. BTW, "churn" referrs to the ratio between players leaving a game, and players joining a game. So long as the two balance out over a five to ten year period, quality isn't really an issue. This is yet another reason why the problem is actually the twofold threat of mass and money. Throwing more money at the problem is VERY unlikely to do anything but provide us with more of the same.
While some have tried new different the ones that tried boomed ( d & d online) we really do not want new and different. Just look at any beta board why can not it be like game a b or c why does it have to be like wow the new beta boards crys.
I truely think it may be another 5 - 8 years before we see some real inovations come that make investing in a mmorpg worth while again. In the mean time send in the clones is upon us with the new and up comings.
While there is something to be said with always albe to find a group in the big game and always people around the behavior in such communites make it seem not worth the effort as well, and lack of motivation if in end game you do not feel like raiding only.
I think the other thing that has change is the wind in our sails. Ie swg changing game in mid stream . It leaves open the possiblity if there is something we really like in a b c mmoprg on a next patch it could be taken away nerfed changed or completely made non existant. Or make the grinding 6 months more just for the developers to time/monsy sink subscriber base. ( recent changes in wow)
While we know that happens it just gets old. So that is why i said we are the ones that have changed. It may be a long while before most of us stay with another game 2 + years again. In the mean time we play the boards the fourms and look at singal player games for gaming needs.
The down side of that is , migrating to possiblity of consoles or singal player games making more folks not even bother trying mmorpgs again knowing in a years time the inital investment of 50 turns into 50 for inital game 15 a month for 12 months $ 180 + 50 for a game turns into 230 and that is another reason why some folks at this point won't bother with mmorpgs at the present time unless a free trial comes along.....
I wouldn't be "throwing money" at anything...Rather, I would hire the best development team on earth and throw them at the problem! That's just good business sense. Already we're beginning to see a significant move away from the hopelessly broken status quo. The market is now beginning to differentiate into high, medium, and low quality offerings...just like nearly every other consumer market on earth.
The big MMOG developer/publishers here in the west are beginning to feel the heat from the "free2play" games that are now pouring out of Asia. Their only defence will be to offer much higher quality products and services. On the other hand, if the Chinese or Korean governments decide to dominate the MMOG industry, through their proxies, they could do so quite easily by following the Walmart example...i.e. make a few AAA MMOGs and put them on the market completely free of charge; then, after the competition in the west has collapsed and gone bankrupt, simply start charging for the box and monthly subs as normal. Yeah, they'll lose billions in the process...but it's not really a loss, it'd actually be the best possible investment since they would own the entire market as a result!
Ok where are these magical MOM&pop diners, stores, businesses that people keep going on about?
I`ve eaten at dozens of different Mom&pop diners guess what the food was terrible and the waiters where to busy sitting at a both chatting to one another.
Hell when I was young I used to work for a MOM&POP hardware store, this was before walmarts, k-marts, zellers, ect.. They were abusive, guilted you into working unpaid overtime by feeding you the line that their just a small business trying to survive.
Give me Mcdonalds and walmarts of MMORG WOW, instead of some POS "MOM&POP" setup, dark and light.
poopypants wrote:
Lol, how in the world do you think innovation is gonna come...magic?! Research and development costs are huge...
You seem to be missing the point. This is not a call for innovation. This is a question of large "mud ball" games that do a little bit of everything poorly, vs. small games that focus on one or two things very well. The more people you try to appeal to, the more watered down the entire experience becomes. The more people you place on a server, the less real-time interaction is possible. And of course, the more people you place on a server, the more impersonal and immature the community is.
I get razzed a lot, on this board, for advocating private servers. However, I've found that the communities in private servers are superior to those of the official servers. Likewise with NWN servers and MUD servers. The main reason for this is because the admin is much more involved with the community. They can react to problems within the community quite a lot faster than their commercial counterparts. The can also freely ban players for just being assholes, since they are run off of the donations of the community and have to look after the community's best interest.
You log onto a commercial game, and you're just another number. Six million served since last year, have a nice day.
why we'll never see any worthwhile innovations coming from the indie sector - they ain't got what it takes to get the job done. And let me be perfectly honest...I would love to see every independent MMOG "developer" crushed out of existence! They do little more than gobble up valuable resources - money and man-power - and give nothing of much value in return.
The ONLY innovation that I've seen lately comes out of the indie sector. Why? Because they have to limit the focus of their games to one or two elements and make them work. It's kinda strange, but by limiting your options you can actually make a much more fun game than many of the bloated, over ambitious products that clog the shelves at Best Buy and Wal-Mart. I dare you to play, Gish, Ocular Ink, or N and then tell me that there's no inovation in the Indie sector.
You also act as though the indie scene is stealing something from someone. Most indie projects are made by two to five people in a basement with funds out of pocket. Star Chamber was put together in two years, by five people with a budget of $10,000. They made all of that money off of another game that they sold by direct download off of their site. Yeah, they use (very little) manpower and money, but IT'S THEIR MANPOWER AND MONEY TO DO WITH AS THEY WANT. Unlike AAA titles, you don't see a dime unless your product is already finished. You can't even find a publisher unless you've sold close to 1,000 units.
Personally though, I don't think that indies should be making MMORPGs. I mean, we have a few good RPG developers in the indie scene. Spiderweb Software, Caravel Games and the like. But I think that we'd be ahead to just produce MORPGs instead. If we can make MORPGs that can host around 200 to 500 people at a time, like Minions of Mith, it would not only fit our "MO", but also provide that particular something that is missing from MMORPGs. Even better if we could make these games easily modifiable. Quake, Half-Life, Unreal Tournament, Total Annihilation, all of those game benifitted from a strong mod community. The FPS and RTS genres became stronger based on the innovations of those mods. Maybe there's more innovation in the garage than in the R&D lab....
That's why I'm really looking forward to Phantasy Star Universe.
The only place where you interact with lots of people is in the lobbies. In the actual game, you're with a maximum of 6 people at a time.
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"We'll be saying a big hello to all intelligent lifeforms everywhere... and to everyone else out there, the secret is to bang the rocks together, guys!"
I've redirected my efforts towards making better MMOGs...way better! The AAA MMOGs that we see today are way far behind the curve. In fact, they're now about 10 years behind their AAA SP cousins! The reason for this? Because publishers (the money men) want to scrape up every penny of profit...so to that end, they cater to the lowest common denominator - the people who can't afford to buy a decent computer or get broadband IS - forcing the rest of us to go along. Fuckin' assholes!
We're making headway now...some developers are beginning to shake free from the old paradigm and are now embracing the new one...i.e. high, medium, and low quality MMOGs.