Tenets of MMO's, ie, why most of them today aren't very good in the long term.

[melodramocracy]

Semi-random, long winded thoughts. I was going to post this the Warcraft forum, but figured players of other games might chime in if it were here.

There are things that MMO's naturally excel at, and other things that they're not so good at by design.

1. Players themselves are the content

You read that correctly. Your ability to interact with other people is the strongest asset this genre can possibly offer, and is exactly why many titles that are multiplayer have shelf lives that extend far past that of what a single player game offers. Those players are around long after bad guy #46 is dead, long after any small story arc is finished in the game. Creating scenarios where those players can interact with, or against each other, and ultimately make their own reasons for logging on is what good mmo's are made of.

Insulating players behavior, limiting how players can interact with each other, and creating an environment where the game can be largely consumed in solo fashion is a losing effort. It puts developers in a scenario where they have to create content that has a generally low skill cap, as you will have a wide range of players participating. It also creates problems in trying to judge overall difficulty in a given area. 15 enemies in a small space of land might be cakewalk for 15 players, but a few months later, that solo player walking through that same area might get overrun. While some games try to partially address this with mob scaling, in my experience it doesn't work out all that well.

2. Your avatar is your representative

There's a value to persona in these games, one that is weakened when players can rename themselves, move from one server to the next, faction change, etc, or even have a multitude of alts. You're no longer 'you', you're simply that one elf over there. You can't play the hero and have much in the way of recognition for it. You don't get to play the role of an antagonist and gain a level of notoriety for it. You can't act even worse, and then appeal for redemption from your peers, or vice versa. It weakens your position in the world you're playing in as an individual player, and again to point 1, lessens the strength of other players as a primary content factor.

3. You are not a hero

You being *the hero* is a doomed initiative in an MMO... because everyone else playing is being fed that same exact line. And unlike a pure single player environment, you're seeing the results of that on your screen, which sort of invalidates everything. Lets see.. I'm level 4 with a leather belt and rusty axe, and this NPC just called me his champion. I wonder what he calls that level 40 that just rode past with the full armor set?

4. Leveling as a means of access rather than power

This is a big one. Leveling is a staple of the genre, both for MMO as well as single player RPG's. The problem is that leveling by its nature effectively shrinks the world that is going to provide you with entertaining gameplay as you go. I'd like to see a game where leveling was almost solely a means of access to areas rather than one of access + an often significant jump in player power. It keeps your effective game world far larger, arguably making the game bigger as you go. Typical leveling also wreaks absolute havoc with PvP.

5. Large amounts of freedom trivializes overall gameplay

I've talked about this a lot, so don't want to repeat much here, but even the smallest of limitations in a game force a player to make a decision about how to handle it. Removing those small decisions increases a players sense of freedom, but also reduces the sense of involvement with the character. Limiting or eliminating risk has the same effect. Neither is good for this sort of game.

There's more to life than combat.

I'm not sure I've seen any MMO create a role where a player isn't a fighter first and foremost. Generally such things are left to player interpretation, which is fine, but there's room for that sort of thing to be part of intended gameplay itself. An example might be dowsing, where you've trained to find water, but aren't adept at combat... so other players need to protect you while you find the water (which in turn benefits everyone else in your group, etc).


Flame away, add your own, etc.

[Kanadei]

I mean I think it's just the industry progressing.

More games come out, people play games faster, people want more games, games have a smaller lifespan.

Me and my brother played Halo 1 for weeks. We played each level hundreds of times, spent hours on offline multiplayer, played it day in and day out with everyone who came over to our house.

I don't expect to do that with every shooter I buy though.

[lawow74]

All very fine and good, but what you consider as the way an MMO should be, these days is considered a poor business model by all the big studios. The problem being MMOs tend to represent a significant startup investment in assets, and like any business, the companies behind them expect a return of investment for them. While a given MMO might get away with breaking the mold on one of two of those tenets(number 4 is a fairly safe one to break as it's actually more inclusive by design), I don't see any studio with the assets to make a AAA game taking the risk on making an MMO in this style point by point.

Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe someone can do it. But the fact it hasn't been done yet isn't boding well for your suppositions, IMO.

[Zeta333]

The biggest problem i see i to many compies trying to be like WoW then failing.

Also to many compies are trying to cater to the casuals and ignoring the dedicated players that play for the endgame.

[lawow74]

And yet I've not seen any serious attempt to follow those tenets in a Kickstarter or Early Access that got anywhere. So where are all these people who want these supposed tenets of an MMO brought together to bring it to life? I'm reminded of all the fish-eye/pet peeve arguments about why WoW no longer has 11M subs over the years, cos this feature or lack of it killed the game.

I don't think enough people still want this type of game that it's ever going to get anywhere. But I'll leave that up to the games industry and the avenues of taking it to the people we have already to decide that. Good luck, you'll need it, just like you'd need it to get some wonky tax initiative to fund video games passed.

[CobraCommander]

Good read man.

5. Large amounts of freedom trivializes overall gameplay

I've talked about this a lot, so don't want to repeat much here, but even the smallest of limitations in a game force a player to make a decision about how to handle it. Removing those small decisions increases a players sense of freedom, but also reduces the sense of involvement with the character. Limiting or eliminating risk has the same effect. Neither is good for this sort of game.

I felt that way with GW2's dungeons and world bosses. No trinity turned non PvP group content into circle strafing and looking for the red flash of doom. I think we need at least some direction in our character's job and progression.

[Tradewind]

Also to many compies are trying to cater to the casuals and ignoring the dedicated players that play for the endgame.

Because like it or not, the "casuals" make up a vast majority of their communities. Those "dedicated players" are a tiny fraction by comparison.

[kail]

I can dig the OP. Valid points in genral, though some of them would simply direct an MMO game to become sandbox style. I would like to see some more though than simply EVE. Love that game, grow bored of the mechanics.

[Zeta333]

Because like it or not, the "casuals" make up a vast majority of their communities. Those "dedicated players" are a tiny fraction by comparison.

Yet WoW and all the others seem to be declining, the only one that seems to be steady at its population count is eve online, while not a huge one it does not cater to the casuals.

[Faroth]

I agree with a lot of what you've said. In fact, a lot of your points are why I still name Vanguard: Saga of Heroes the best conceived MMO in the past decade. Execution, on the other hand, well, they overreached for all the concepts at once.

Honestly, the best bet for these things to come back and an MMORPG to be created that focuses more on "living in a fantasy world" concept like Vanguard wanted and EverQuest probably best exemplifies is to see how VR Gaming develops. When a VRMMORPG comes along that really can recreate a fantasy life of adventure in another world, you might see more "another life in another world" and less "just playing a game" elements come back.

[Azrile]

Semi-random, long winded thoughts. I was going to post this the Warcraft forum, but figured players of other games might chime in if it were here.

There are things that MMO's naturally excel at, and other things that they're not so good at by design.

1. Players themselves are the content
2. Your avatar is your representative
3. You are not a hero
4. Leveling as a means of access rather than power
5. Large amounts of freedom trivializes overall gameplay
6.There's more to life than combat.
Flame away, add your own, etc.

A lot of these things seem to deal with theme park MMORPGs vs Sandbox MMORPGs and I completely agree with you. Ultima Online during it´s peak was far more fun than WOW is, especially now. WOW from 1-60 during vanilla was amazing, but it has been less fun ever since (for me).

1 and 6 together. My favorite thing to do in UO was craft and run my vendors. It was a very popular shop and hundreds of players had runes to it. I would just craft stuff to put on the vendors and chat with people when they showed up. The little town we had ( 4 players with houses) ended up being a newbie guild that at it´s peak had about 200 members.. again.. the new players would constantly be running around town and just outside it killing the easy creatures while they learned the game.

2. Changing realms was needed in many games just because of populations and really was many games trying to combat #1 issues. Nothing sucks worse than playing on a dead server. Race, class and easy server swapping... you are correct, they devalue ´you´..

3. Again, in sandbox games without quests, you are not the hero, you are just someone trying to survive. I hate themeparks... hey.. you just killed Garrosh.. now it is a new expansion and I want you to kill 10 boars... who are stronger than Garrosh was. That guy who is keeping an entire zone hostage right next to your capital city could not kill a single mob in Sithilis.

4-5 Yep, another fun thing about Sandbox games.. generally stuff was harder the further you got from civilization or the deeper you went into dungeons.. but nothing prevented players from going anywhere. One of our guilds best activities would be to just take an army of newbs to some really dangerous place and let them have at it while the more experienced players tried to keep everyone alive. It would be like bringing along 50 lvl 5 characters while you and 4 friends to a heroic dungeon.

[Fencers]

All majorly funded MMOs are viable play outlets for consumers. What qualifies as "good" is so subjective as to be worthless as a point of discussion.

The premise here is faulty and poorly argued.

[unfilteredJW]

Uncle Bens. Uncle Bens everywhere.