Splinter Topic: What can "Make MMOS Great ... Again"?

pgt1027 wrote: »

Strevi wrote: »

Given that FFXIV is on 1st position right now
https://mmo-population.com/activity
I hope AoC will stay on 40 to avoid attracting voices who want fast travel and all no risk activities.

That website says WoW is at the top. It also includes non-MMOs.

Though, those population numbers are all pathetic, especially compared to WoW's 12 million peak. If anything, I think that proves that MMORPGs are a dying genre. This is one of the reasons *not* to follow modern MMO trends. You could argue that "the current MMO market wants and expects X, Y and Z," but that's ignoring the fact that this market is heavily on the decline and approaching death.

If you want your new MMO to be a big success, it should strive to be more than just "another one."

The last statements is directed more to Steven.
I searched a bit and from wiki
https://ashesofcreation.wiki/index.php?title=Ashes_of_Creation_PAX_Panel_Making_MMOS_Great_Again
I was directed to this video
Ashes of Creation PAX Panel - 17:32
where they say that they want to capture the nostalgia of old mmos but also be innovative
url="

https://youtu.be/rcOdyuV0tX8

I think over the years, MMOs learned what players really want.
Ashes of Creation should not try to be a game for old people.

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NishUK

MMO's have learned what people want? I don't know what you mean by that.

MMORPG's need to focus on the replay factor, currently FF14 and WoW are hard proving that many casuals are willing to play the story/quest content game but once it's complete that's it, they're not interested in dungeons, especially ones with strict mechanic difficulties as the only end game.

They need to reduce the gap between sweat lords and casual players with enjoyable replay factors and get players properly soaked into the economy and prosper game with other players without it being over baring and a chore.
It needs to allow for more natural player interactions using the world and NOT instancing, maintaining player excitement as well as NOT making pve AND PVP gameplay boring and easily concluded by gear and stats!

Strevi

It can happen that once players go through the AoC story, the servers meant for 10 000 players will remain with only 1000.
If the economy, pvp and node wars are the ones which are supposed to retain players, then I think they could have released the game already, maybe with a smaller map.

Gui10

to answer the OP question.. a booming economy that gives people free time lol and not needing 4 jobs just to survive lol. peace and love. And great gameplay of course. And a great community!

Solvryn

When they're made for the long term for everyone involved, they'll be good again.

Noaani

In terms of specifics, making MMO's great again means removing things like LFG systems.

MMO's aren't supposed to play like lobby games, and developers trying to make it so they do is one of the major reasons MMO's are not as great as they used to be.

The thing with this is that it includes PvP. The ability to join a queue for PvP is as much a detraction from what an MMO should be as the ability to join a PvE queue.

This is not the only thing that has caused MMO's to be less than what they should be, but it absolutely is a major detraction.

pgt1027

Strevi wrote: »

The last statements is directed more to Steven.
I searched a bit and from wiki
https://ashesofcreation.wiki/index.php?title=Ashes_of_Creation_PAX_Panel_Making_MMOS_Great_Again
I was directed to this video
Ashes of Creation PAX Panel - 17:32
where they say that they want to capture the nostalgia of old mmos but also be innovative
url="https://youtu.be/rcOdyuV0tX8

I think over the years, MMOs learned what players really want.
Ashes of Creation should not try to be a game for old people.

I think that question is fairly easy, and I think it comes down to two things.

First, as a thought experiment, imagine a first person shooter comes out that's so wildly popular, it attracts a large periphery demographic who don't normally like or play FPS. Whatever attracted this demographic, it wasn't the FPS mechanics and many of them start doing things like installing aimbots. Instead of banning the aimbot and the players that used it, the developer starts catering to them and adds its own official aimbot into the game. Over time, the developer caters more and more to this periphery demographic and even tries to pull in many more periphery demographics. Since the game is so popular, the rule of corporate "follow the leader" nonsense kicks in and basically all modern FPS games follow this model. It comes to a point that the idea that you should have to manually aim your gun in an FPS is treated with scorn as some kind of ancient boomer opinion. The FPS genre begins to die.

The question is: is the problem here that first person shooters were just a craze and always doomed for the grave? Should they have just implemented an even more innovative aimbot that allowed players to annihilate the entire map with a single click of a button? It should be obvious in this instance that the problem is that they have veered away from what makes an FPS an FPS. FPS is always going to be a potentially popular genre, but not as the strange abominations they've become in this scenario.

That's what happened to MMORPGs.The whole draw of the MMORPG is having an RPG where you play as a relatively normal dude inside of a big fantasy world, but this fantasy world is a big, persistent online server and its populated by other players. That's really the core idea behind any MMO, not just MMORPGs. You have a big game world hosted on a server that a large number of players call all connect into in order to interact with that world and other players. How many MMOs have stayed true to that core philosophy?

Why have MMORPGs taken this turn? It's partially catering to a periphery demographic who want to play a singleplayer game (and not an RPG at that), and it's partially just the typical corporate trend of wanting to put everything into a sterile, reliable package while nickel and diming the customer for all that they're worth. And consequently, you have a situation where modern WoW is less an MMO and more a psychological manipulation casino designed to do little more than keep players coming back and funnel them into the cash shop.

I think MMORPGs have the capacity to be a massive genre, but not in the current forms and not in the direction they've been going. What you need is an MMORPG that tries to be its best self instead of being built around hunting whales, and that's not going to be found in any of the modern trends.

The second thing is a little more basic. Casual friendliness.

Now, I know, that's what everyone talks about and that's supposedly what all the modern MMOs are going for. However, what they mean by "casual friendly" is, essentially, "Can a player with a low time commitment make the numbers go up?" What they should be asking is, "Can a player with a low time commitment have fun?" Now, admittedly, progression is a part of that equation. It can be frustrating if it feels like the only way to progress is to dedicate more time to the game than you want to or actually have time for. The more important question, though, is able to pick up your game and have fun within 30 minutes to an hour of playing it.

In terms of being able to make the numbers go up, modern MMOs are more "casual friendly" than they've ever been, but in terms of actually being able to have fun, modern MMOs have never been more hostile towards casuals. It's now a common adage that most MMOs don't start getting good until 100 hours in. That's disastrous for trying to attract new and casual players.

And very often these new MMOs fail the "I Win Button" principle. Imagine a game where there's a single button. You press the button, and it says "You win!" Now, that's a very easy game and a very accessible game, but was it a fun game? I don't think many would think so. Yet, that's how many modern MMOs approach making content "casual friendly," by making it full baby-mode easy. Casual players aren't idiots and terrible at the game. They're just people who have a low time commitment to the game. WoW's original map was plenty challenging for the casual player. When they "updated" the old world map with a new map based on their new corporate philosophies in the Cataclysm expansion, that constituted the first major drop subscriptions in WoW's history and Cataclysm is still seen as WoW's first major failure, even by the company itself apparently. Not that they learned any kind of lesson from it.

Focus less on making sure the casuals can all get to max level and have full BiS epic gear and more on making sure the casuals have a fun game to play.

MybroViajero

I think over the years, MMOs learned what players really want.
Ashes of Creation should not try to be a game for old people.

It is not the fact that AoC or any other MMORPG should focus on the old or modern audience, but to improve and make that MMORPG a better MMORPG and not the typical fast food MMORPG or WOW copycat attempts of the last decade.

Innovation is for the common good, not just for a group of people.

RazThemun

The reason so many go bland so fast is because instant access to information now. How does this work? Open YouTube, go watch your favorite streamer, etc. Because of this instant access to information.... people burn through content so much faster.... or they see it is way more difficult than they want to deal with and just give up. This is no longer 2004 where there were less options or websites to obtain information. Developers need to test their game, work out the kinks, give updates, and make it affordable for people to play. Most other things is upon the player base to solve. It takes years to develop content but players can quickly eat it all up in months and then complain about boredom... The community would fare much better if they just figure things out as they go and not worry as much about the meta builds, quickest way to down content, etc. otherwise it will be the same story a year after launch as every other mmorpg. Well I'm bored and rushed through the content I wanted to do... or I have to wait for a node to level which may be weeks so I will just play another game.

Wandering Mist

This is my own personal opinion, but to me "making mmorpgs great" means remembering why mmorpgs are unique and special amongst game genres. To me, what makes mmorpgs so special is the community and social aspects. To be able to walk into a town and see all these other players there, doing their thing, interating with you and the world. It's about walking through a forest, coming across a band of fellow adventurers who are struggling to take down a huge monster, and jumping in to help them. These kinds of spontaneous actions with other players are what make mmorpgs great.

Let's face it, an mmorpg won't be able to do story-telling as well as a single player RPG, or combat as exciting and fluid as a single player action game. Yes, some mmorpgs come close, but they will never match the other genres in those aspects.

And they don't need to! The reason why I follow Ashes of Creation is because Steven and Intrepid understand that what makes an mmorpg is the players.

pgt1027

Wandering Mist wrote: »

This is my own personal opinion, but to me "making mmorpgs great" means remembering why mmorpgs are unique and special amongst game genres. To me, what makes mmorpgs so special is the community and social aspects. To be able to walk into a town and see all these other players there, doing their thing, interating with you and the world. It's about walking through a forest, coming across a band of fellow adventurers who are struggling to take down a huge monster, and jumping in to help them. These kinds of spontaneous actions with other players are what make mmorpgs great.

Let's face it, an mmorpg won't be able to do story-telling as well as a single player RPG, or combat as exciting and fluid as a single player action game. Yes, some mmorpgs come close, but they will never match the other genres in those aspects.

And they don't need to! The reason why I follow Ashes of Creation is because Steven and Intrepid understand that what makes an mmorpg is the players.

This is what I'm saying. Where modern MMORPGs have faltered is in trying to be more like other games. MMORPGs should simply strive to be the best versions of themselves and play to their own unique strengths.

Strevi

Wandering Mist wrote: »

This is my own personal opinion, but to me "making mmorpgs great" means remembering why mmorpgs are unique and special amongst game genres. To me, what makes mmorpgs so special is the community and social aspects. To be able to walk into a town and see all these other players there, doing their thing, interating with you and the world. It's about walking through a forest, coming across a band of fellow adventurers who are struggling to take down a huge monster, and jumping in to help them. These kinds of spontaneous actions with other players are what make mmorpgs great.

That is crafting and PvE.
Don't all MMOs have this?

Strevi

pgt1027 wrote: »

Strevi wrote: »

The last statements is directed more to Steven.
I searched a bit and from wiki
https://ashesofcreation.wiki/index.php?title=Ashes_of_Creation_PAX_Panel_Making_MMOS_Great_Again
I was directed to this video
Ashes of Creation PAX Panel - 17:32
where they say that they want to capture the nostalgia of old mmos but also be innovative
url="https://youtu.be/rcOdyuV0tX8

I think over the years, MMOs learned what players really want.
Ashes of Creation should not try to be a game for old people.

I think that question is fairly easy, and I think it comes down to two things.

First, as a thought experiment, imagine a first person shooter comes out that's so wildly popular, it attracts a large periphery demographic who don't normally like or play FPS. Whatever attracted this demographic, it wasn't the FPS mechanics and many of them start doing things like installing aimbots. Instead of banning the aimbot and the players that used it, the developer starts catering to them and adds its own official aimbot into the game. Over time, the developer caters more and more to this periphery demographic and even tries to pull in many more periphery demographics. Since the game is so popular, the rule of corporate "follow the leader" nonsense kicks in and basically all modern FPS games follow this model. It comes to a point that the idea that you should have to manually aim your gun in an FPS is treated with scorn as some kind of ancient boomer opinion. The FPS genre begins to die.

The question is: is the problem here that first person shooters were just a craze and always doomed for the grave? Should they have just implemented an even more innovative aimbot that allowed players to annihilate the entire map with a single click of a button? It should be obvious in this instance that the problem is that they have veered away from what makes an FPS an FPS. FPS is always going to be a potentially popular genre, but not as the strange abominations they've become in this scenario.

That's what happened to MMORPGs.The whole draw of the MMORPG is having an RPG where you play as a relatively normal dude inside of a big fantasy world, but this fantasy world is a big, persistent online server and its populated by other players. That's really the core idea behind any MMO, not just MMORPGs. You have a big game world hosted on a server that a large number of players call all connect into in order to interact with that world and other players. How many MMOs have stayed true to that core philosophy?

Why have MMORPGs taken this turn? It's partially catering to a periphery demographic who want to play a singleplayer game (and not an RPG at that), and it's partially just the typical corporate trend of wanting to put everything into a sterile, reliable package while nickel and diming the customer for all that they're worth. And consequently, you have a situation where modern WoW is less an MMO and more a psychological manipulation casino designed to do little more than keep players coming back and funnel them into the cash shop.

I think MMORPGs have the capacity to be a massive genre, but not in the current forms and not in the direction they've been going. What you need is an MMORPG that tries to be its best self instead of being built around hunting whales, and that's not going to be found in any of the modern trends.

The second thing is a little more basic. Casual friendliness.

Now, I know, that's what everyone talks about and that's supposedly what all the modern MMOs are going for. However, what they mean by "casual friendly" is, essentially, "Can a player with a low time commitment make the numbers go up?" What they should be asking is, "Can a player with a low time commitment have fun?" Now, admittedly, progression is a part of that equation. It can be frustrating if it feels like the only way to progress is to dedicate more time to the game than you want to or actually have time for. The more important question, though, is able to pick up your game and have fun within 30 minutes to an hour of playing it.

In terms of being able to make the numbers go up, modern MMOs are more "casual friendly" than they've ever been, but in terms of actually being able to have fun, modern MMOs have never been more hostile towards casuals. It's now a common adage that most MMOs don't start getting good until 100 hours in. That's disastrous for trying to attract new and casual players.

And very often these new MMOs fail the "I Win Button" principle. Imagine a game where there's a single button. You press the button, and it says "You win!" Now, that's a very easy game and a very accessible game, but was it a fun game? I don't think many would think so. Yet, that's how many modern MMOs approach making content "casual friendly," by making it full baby-mode easy. Casual players aren't idiots and terrible at the game. They're just people who have a low time commitment to the game. WoW's original map was plenty challenging for the casual player. When they "updated" the old world map with a new map based on their new corporate philosophies in the Cataclysm expansion, that constituted the first major drop subscriptions in WoW's history and Cataclysm is still seen as WoW's first major failure, even by the company itself apparently. Not that they learned any kind of lesson from it.

Focus less on making sure the casuals can all get to max level and have full BiS epic gear and more on making sure the casuals have a fun game to play.

For me is not important the game to have a few million players. To be for casuals... I don't know.
For me progression is important. That is leveling and getting gear or making money to buy that gear. Once I have this, I roll new alts.
AoC brings the node leveling. I am not sure how that will feel. Especially after a siege when the node will fall because the casuals had no time to help building up the defense.

Strevi

Noaani wrote: »

In terms of specifics, making MMO's great again means removing things like LFG systems.

MMO's aren't supposed to play like lobby games, and developers trying to make it so they do is one of the major reasons MMO's are not as great as they used to be.

The thing with this is that it includes PvP. The ability to join a queue for PvP is as much a detraction from what an MMO should be as the ability to join a PvE queue.

This is not the only thing that has caused MMO's to be less than what they should be, but it absolutely is a major detraction.

There will be queues to login into the server if the game is popular, at least at release, until players finish the story or give up paying the subscription.

In game I liked the chat LF messages.
Some people hate them and prefer the dedicated lfg game interface.
I used to sell items too which I advertised in chat. Global auction houses made such things useless.
For lfg, right to loot in raids, trading... players make their own 3rd party solutions if the game does not provide it, or if is not good enough.

Noaani

Strevi wrote: »

Noaani wrote: »

In terms of specifics, making MMO's great again means removing things like LFG systems.

MMO's aren't supposed to play like lobby games, and developers trying to make it so they do is one of the major reasons MMO's are not as great as they used to be.

The thing with this is that it includes PvP. The ability to join a queue for PvP is as much a detraction from what an MMO should be as the ability to join a PvE queue.

This is not the only thing that has caused MMO's to be less than what they should be, but it absolutely is a major detraction.

There will be queues to login into the server if the game is popular, at least at release, until players finish the story or give up paying the subscription.

In game I liked the chat LF messages.
Some people hate them and prefer the dedicated lfg game interface.
I used to sell items too which I advertised in chat. Global auction houses made such things useless.
For lfg, right to loot in raids, trading... players make their own 3rd party solutions if the game does not provide it, or if is not good enough.

None of this has anything to do with what I said.

I'm assuming you quoted the wrong post.

Strevi

Noaani wrote: »

Strevi wrote: »

Noaani wrote: »

In terms of specifics, making MMO's great again means removing things like LFG systems.

MMO's aren't supposed to play like lobby games, and developers trying to make it so they do is one of the major reasons MMO's are not as great as they used to be.

The thing with this is that it includes PvP. The ability to join a queue for PvP is as much a detraction from what an MMO should be as the ability to join a PvE queue.

This is not the only thing that has caused MMO's to be less than what they should be, but it absolutely is a major detraction.

There will be queues to login into the server if the game is popular, at least at release, until players finish the story or give up paying the subscription.

In game I liked the chat LF messages.
Some people hate them and prefer the dedicated lfg game interface.
I used to sell items too which I advertised in chat. Global auction houses made such things useless.
For lfg, right to loot in raids, trading... players make their own 3rd party solutions if the game does not provide it, or if is not good enough.

None of this has anything to do with what I said.

I'm assuming you quoted the wrong post.

No, my answer was not clear and not exactly to the point you highlighted.
Sorry about that.

Queues have a performance reason too. And developers can chose to move them from within the game to the server login stage, and hoping that in game, players will not all of them move to the same place at the same time.

Noaani

Strevi wrote: »

Queues have a performance reason too. And developers can chose to move them from within the game to the server login stage, and hoping that in game, players will not all of them move to the same place at the same time.

This is untrue.

Queues to get in to the game and queues for participating in content serve different purposes. I wasn't talking about queues to get in to the game.

Wandering Mist

Strevi wrote: »

.

Wandering Mist wrote: »

This is my own personal opinion, but to me "making mmorpgs great" means remembering why mmorpgs are unique and special amongst game genres. To me, what makes mmorpgs so special is the community and social aspects. To be able to walk into a town and see all these other players there, doing their thing, interating with you and the world. It's about walking through a forest, coming across a band of fellow adventurers who are struggling to take down a huge monster, and jumping in to help them. These kinds of spontaneous actions with other players are what make mmorpgs great.

That is crafting and PvE.
Don't all MMOs have this?

Crafting and PvE are ways to increase player interaction, but only if the systems are designed around player interaction.

WoW has both crafting sure, but most of the crafting can be done solo with no interaction at all. If on the rare occasion you do need items from other players, you can just visit the auction house and buy the stuff without ever speaking to the players selling the items at all.

As for PvE, the dungeon system is specifically designed so that you don't need to interact with other players. Just press a button to enter the queue and the game does the rest for you. Then when you get into the dungeons, if you're lucky you'll get a "hi" at the beginning and a "thanks for the run" at the end, but that will be it. After all, why bother forming close connections with other players when most of the time those other players will be from different servers, meaning as soon as you finish the dungeon, they will disappear and you'll likely never see them again.

Open world PvE? Unless you are fighting mobs 5-10 levels above you, you can solo practically everything. Again, the game is designed around solo gameplay these days. You CAN interact with other players but the game doesn't incentivise you to do it, so most players don't.

Kilion

It seems like a bit too broad of an approach to think that there would be only one kind of MMORPG player type.

At the risk of sounding like Narc, I think this whole genre did best when the focus was primarily on the social experience embedded in an engaging gameplay system. With that being said, social games heavily depend on their players actually wanting to be social and it would start a whole other chicken-egg debate about whether players became less social or the game design became more casual-solo ("antisocial") first. But the fact remains that both seem to be the case compared to the past. Asmongold once said something alone the line of "almost every time you give players agency over other players gaming experience it will become a shitty gaming experience" and that basically seems to me like the best sum up of the casual solo care bear expectation for MMOs where engagement between players stays shallow in fear of people ruining the game for each other. (I not firing shots or blaming the dude, I don't know whether he elaborated on that statement or anything, it was simply a good example for what one kind of MMO players thinks, independent of whether Asmongold can be counted into that group or not)

Bringing back the more social engagement and trying to design a "high stake" game is not something everyone will enjoy, of that I am absolutely sure. Not only will it not be for everyone, I think Ashes will not be for a lot of people who still think this will be a game for them. People who want to grief / cause havoc like you can in Rust will in all likelihood find this game to slow and protective of people who don't want to engage in much PvP, while a lot of solo grind and casual gaming folks will find it frustrating that they cannot push their character progression to the point where they would hoped to reach.

To conclude this: To me it looks like Ashes wants to be more of a niche game, not boasting with numbers to kick WoW off the top of some list by any means possible, but it wants to offer a game with compelling story and gameplay to those who are still interested in that, with higher stakes than in a PvE game but not the shallow progression of some full PvP titles. And making some simple calculations it seems like Ashes can achieve that goal and be profitable without ever reaching the player numbers of WoW.

For a lot of people it's "Make MMOs social again"

Strevi

Noaani wrote: »

Strevi wrote: »

Queues have a performance reason too. And developers can chose to move them from within the game to the server login stage, and hoping that in game, players will not all of them move to the same place at the same time.

This is untrue.

Queues to get in to the game and queues for participating in content serve different purposes. I wasn't talking about queues to get in to the game.

What purpose do in game queues serve?

Strevi

Kilion wrote: »

...
With that being said, social games heavily depend on their players actually wanting to be social and it would start a whole other chicken-egg debate about whether players became less social or the game design became more casual-solo ("antisocial") first.

This is one aspect I mean when I say that developers learned what players want.
Statistically I think more prefer no / or weak interaction.

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