What are game play elements that keep players invested in the game?

As the title says, what are elements that make a game keep players invested / staying in a game for the long term?

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For me it's PvP with meaningful objectives - for example zones/fortresses to conquer and protect in well-coordinated guilds/warzone groups. That only works as an objective if you can spend more than 50% of your time in the game on that, though.

Which is why I'd really love to see RvR-type warzone hotspots that you can capture within half an hour, affecting the influence of your guild/node on other nodes, but without immediately threatening the ownership of an area. It would allow for constant meaningful PvP/RvR combat for those who seek it, but large-scale battles would still be scheduled and less frequent.

I'm sure for the average Ashes player the motivation will mostly be perfecting their skill rotations for PvE and 1v1-PvP, and clearing PvE challenges to collect crafting ingredients, improve their gear to the highest possible tiers, and trade.
It's how the communities end up in most games.
It'll be a bit more interesting in Ashes though, because PvE will impact politics and node growth as well.

Songcaller

Challenge. If I don't get challenge from pve, I will seek challenge from pvp and vice versa. I love growing my toons and making gold. I love the ability to make routines and to expand my skills. I'm not adverse to challenging classes to play but I'd rather have a good character to play.

JamesSunderland

I would say the main elements are most likely:

Sense of community[inside the gameplay aspects(generalized)],

Engaging/enjoyable content
[and how long it continues to be engaging/enjoyable + the frequency of content released(individualized)]

and the last one would probably be its gameplay Uniqueness in relation to its contemporary games, but that's abstract and debatable.

Korela

At the moment - the siege of castles, forts, nodes. But I hope there will be more thoughtful content for the const groups that have reached the cap. For example, special arenas with the restoration of resources between party duels (8x8). Or even weekly tournaments for groups. Ah, dreams

Ludullu

For me it's world exploration and neverending grind of my character's strength growth. Pvp, pve, quests, etc - that's all good, but that's just plain gameplay. I've got a ton of that in any other game. But if the world is interesting to explore and I can grind the game for hours to get a +0.1% power for my char - now that's what would hold me in the game.

tautau

Nodes
Guilds
Crafting
Exploring
Social Organizations
Freeholds
Taming and Breeding

Solvryn

Combat, great combat leads to meaningful PvP. I don’t need a reason or objective to fight, I clicked login for a fight.

Community forged in conflict, I am not interested in holding hands with most of the player base to kill a dragon. Want it for me and my group. I’m here for the fight.

That’s it really, everything else is secondary.

Azherae

Immersion and 'short-term nostalgia'.

When you say 'keep players invested' I assume you're not talking about the player type that logs in every day for a social reason, especially not in this era of Discord where they could log into their Guild's chat without ever logging into the game.

And probably can't be talking about the feelings that most combat parts of games bring, since those games are a mental 'slot' that is normally replaceable by some other game, which means it must offer unique combat or opponents, which is currently unlikely.

So immersion, because it 'creates a space within the mind that has its own structure' and 'nostalgia', which is somewhat related. Once that 'space' has been created, one gets the urge to return to it. If the game is consistent, then the logical player can think through whether or not logging into the game will return them to that space or not ('dead' games, for example, have usually lost this over a long time - often through changes meant to make things 'easier', but shallow games tend to 'run out of it' quite early).

I recognize that these aren't 'game play elements' but that's because it really could be anything as long as it fulfills these conditions, and MMOs are among the least limited. All the Developer has to do is make sure that whatever a player is experiencing for the first few hundred hours doesn't 'fizzle out' too much beyond that, and that the worldbuild/play loop manages to hold a 'special place in the player's heart' or similar, so that they occasionally yearn for it.

"Yearning to return" + "nothing quite like it" + "ability to reason that the game is still equal to the experience you wish to return to" = "Retention"

MMOs have the problem of needing to have all that stuff for a larger critical number of people than most other games, but every game has their specific challenges in this equation.

Galaturc

Azherae wrote: »

Immersion and 'short-term nostalgia'.

....

Spot on... Immersion and unique game elements that you yearn to return. A few examples from UO;

That sense of anxious feeling that I may be jumped at any moment by some PKs while farming in a distant dungeon, giving you chills and letting your hands go cold...
Owning a unique piece of land and building on it as I desire on the actual map where others can visit...
Putting up an NPC vendor to sell my loot and crafted items, and spending hours visiting other player vendors to find that silver vanquishing katana for the right price...
The leveling mechanics that keeps me excited as I progress, those 0.1 skill point dings when you're at 95 and the count-down to 100 begins...

A few examples from WoW;

Progression at the PvP events, that feeling when you kill 40 alliance players and not die once with your hunter...
Farming, buying, and selling rares or resources at the auction house, especially when the new DLC rush begins...
A sense of camaraderie when raiding with 39 other guildies...

George_Black

Owpvp, guild gameplay, no p2w.

Percimes

Things to discover or to figure out. Places. Stories. Mechanics. In a word: exploration.

I love to experience how different classes are played. How to navigate the game world and find the hidden paths and strange locations. I don't know how often I got distracted by a cave entrance is Skyrim while travelling for a quest. I can't explain the urge to go... everywhere, in Dying Light.

I love piecing the world history through the quests and other clues left here and there.

But I'm not a completionist. Once I've got enough to understand how things fit together there is a diminishing return to look for more pieces. More hassle than fun. So no need to play every classes to max level to get how they're played. Not need to repeat the same dungeon over and over again.

That's also, in part at least, why I'm not interested in raiding, too much repetition. Gear is only power/numbers, I prefer knowledge (experienced). In Diablo, I loved to clear a floor, remove the fog of war, I never even considered doing boss run. Once I've done a dungeon 2-3 time I ready to move on.

But there is such a thing as too much new mechanics. I got fed up quite soon of Red Dead Redemption because almost all new mission/activities felt like a tutorial. New things good, no need for mastery bad.

PvP, because it can be different each time, takes a way longer time to feel repetitive to me.

Spif

Character building
Build/spec experimentation
I do enjoy exploring, but this has been mostly killed by streamers and cheat sites
Raid mechanics are fun. But IMO 24/40 man raids are not, because of the politics. I'd be happy with 2-party raids for AoC. I'd also be happy with 8-man "hard-mode" dungeons that have drops of quality similar to raids, even if you have to run the dungeon several times to get a comparable number of drops.

But mostly, I like PvP. Not ganking-PvP. But roaming group v group PvP or objective based group PvP. Node attack and Castle PvP are great too, but those are looking like they'll be once-every-few-days events. And that's just not enough. Caravans? We'll see

Noaani

To me, it is raid content that keeps me in most games - all but one of the five games I've played the longest.

I can understand how some people dont like large raids due to the drama, but if you are in a guild where drama just isnt a thing, there is no better experience in gaming, imo.

I've personally yet to find any PvP content that keeps me interested in a game. To me, if you have castles as an example, you siege, win and then just defend every cycle. Constantly just defending a castle isnt actually dun or compelling gameplay. It is incredibly repetirive.

Same with arenas and such, before long you get to know everyone in your bracket, and fights just get stale.

At least with PvP, every new encounter added to the game is literally something completely new. While an individual encounter may get stale and repetitive, the ability to just as a new encounter means the content as a whole never does.

That ability to add a new encounter every month is not something I've seen an equivalent of in PvP.

WHIT3ROS3

I really like chipping away at short, medium and long-term objectives. Collecting, meaningful gathering and immersive environments (Player housing/building, inventory management) Fun and dynamic open-world content.

I think UI can play a really important part and making systems fun to navigate whilst trying to avoid just endless menu spam and achievement notifications blinking and buzzing like some kind of slot machine.
Well-crafted skill trees and achievement menus that allow you to clearly see character progression.

Mounts.

Solvryn

Spif wrote: »

Character building

Build/spec experimentation

I do enjoy exploring, but this has been mostly killed by streamers and cheat sites

Raid mechanics are fun. But IMO 24/40 man raids are not, because of the politics. I'd be happy with 2-party raids for AoC. I'd also be happy with 8-man "hard-mode" dungeons that have drops of quality similar to raids, even if you have to run the dungeon several times to get a comparable number of drops.

But mostly, I like PvP. Not ganking-PvP. But roaming group v group PvP or objective based group PvP. Node attack and Castle PvP are great too, but those are looking like they'll be once-every-few-days events. And that's just not enough. Caravans? We'll see

Combat and PvP are like two diamonds on a ring man, they lead to communities, conflict, strife, struggle, amusing guild drama.

It just tickles me, schadenfreude.

Ace1234

Fun and competitive pvp for me, mainly combat, but really any compelling pvp systems are generally enjoyable for me

ReallyUnskilled

cosmetics

hleV

Competitive PvP, preferably with lots of drama.

BaSkA_9x2

akabear wrote: »

What are the elements that make a game keep players invested / staying in a game for the long term?

It's a hard question, each individual has their own personal preferences. The MMORPGs I played for the longest time had a few things in common though: fun all around, exciting PvP & PvE content and I played with real life friends.

Out of these three, two are subjective and one won't ever happen again :'(

The following are also subjective, but I personally "just" want Ashes to:

not feel like a job;
allow for smaller groups not to be irrelevant in face of zergs;
make PKing great again - I think I've only played one game where PKing was done right (for me);
make Caravans great again - I played Silkroad very early on when trading worked, but that only lasted for a few months;
combat be the right balance of complex and fun;
bring back, just a little bit, the world before meta-gaming;
efficiently perma ban cheaters - not only accounts, but people;
never mix with real life politics;
be well managed and not fall into many traps that will soon appear;
have innovative PvE - basically copy ideas from RPG books, fantasy books, Isekai novels, etc;
allow for completionist gameplay, but without time-locked/fomo achievements - basically copy OSRS's Collection Log.

Diamaht

A sence of permanence. Housing goes a long way towards this. But I need to feel like there is something I am building on that I can continue to use as time goes on. Usually something external to the character is best.

Examples would be housing that my account characters use and add to like SWG, permanent skin unlocks like in GW2, the Legacy system in SWTOR etc. Something that shows the work I've put in on the game across all my characters.

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