The Stagnation of MMO industry/genre and why

[Xcitement]

I've been following this thread on the official forums and because I am waiting for exams to finish before renewing my subscription I can't contribute there. I wanted to bring it here for you guys to add your 2credits.

http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=497759

The Stagnation of MMO industry/genre and why

The MMO industry has been stagnant for many years ever since World of Warcraft became the breakout poster game for the genre. After that, year after year, new MMO games released are either clones of it or have many elements that copied it. No doubt there are games that tried to be different. However, either they do not have the backings of a popular IP or fat financial support (or both), or they chose to be a niche market, they could not flourish in a world where the masses demand the lowest common denominator and make an impact.

It is no wonder then that none achieved the financial success the level of WoW and not even a close second (even if one considers WoW a "freak" phenomenon). Think about it. If the MMO industry is flourishing, there should be a new game coming out periodically (around the frequency of once every 2 or 3 years) that is a "hit". What is a hit? It should be first, the numbers of subscribers (or profitability of the game) will be more than the previous hit. Second, the subscribers or profitability of the game should be increasing or at least maintain at a stable rate.

The reasons the industry has been stagnant can more or less be attributed to the following factors and all of them are related to the fundamental design particular to MMO games. I will use SWTOR as an example but you could also see these in other games, especially up and coming new ones, inclusive of expansions of WoW, having the same fundamental problems (with some exceptions).

1. Sharding.
The concept of sharding goes all the way back to the grand-daddy of MMOG, Ultima Online. And that is where the name origin comes from. Sharding is basically the duplicating of the game worlds into different "shards", or servers (in reality, clusters of servers). Essentially, each shard is a complete world by itself

This design has one fundamental flaw that is plaguing most MMOGs, especially "hot" ones like SWTOR, WAR, AoC etc... First, an initial wave of gamers swarmed in, necessitating the setup of many shards (or servers) to cater to the new swarm. Since the initial swarm can be up to a million or even more players, many shards has to be setup to allow players to play without the inconvenience of queuing. Unfortunately, reality is that after the one month inclusive subscription, a significant percentage of these gamers quit.

Thus reducing the population of each shard to less than optimum. At the end, many shards or servers became ghost shards.

The nature of MMOG is that a player's experience is proportional to the number of players concurrently online. Things like PvP, dungeons, group quests are not doable without a ready pool of active players also wanting to do the same. And when you divide that by factions, levels, type-of-gameplays (i.e. PvP vs dungeons) the pool of players are even further fragmented. Now you further divide them by the various shards, you can see why players could not find (easily) other players to play with or against.Even the most anti-social solo player needs a thriving economy so that the auction house or whatever is that game's equivalent is fully stocked with player goods and also as a ready market to sell his haul.

Without a critical mass of population, a MMOG is nothing but a glorified single player game with an online connection and persistency.

If a shard becomes a ghost shard. Then what is the point of playing MMOG? Why not just play a single player game instead with no subscription and no need to connect to the internet?

The concept of sharding has to go. Either a game has to be better designed or,if this is a technological limitation, a technological breakthrough has to be achieved to put the MASSIVELY back to the massively multiplayer game label. New games should boast higher and higher simultaneous active players. The lack of this phenomenon is a sure sign that the MMO genre is stagnant.

Note : So far, only one known game has a single-shard design and it is called EVE online, which has a healthy subscription going. The only thing going against EVE is its niche factor (space-based, sandbox, PvP) and high learning curve. In any case, the technology is there already.

2. Trinity
Trinity refers to the "holy-trinity" of the tank, healer and damage dealer roles. The tank gets the attention of the boss and other mobs, the healer heals the tank and others and the damage dealers fires away at the boss and mobs.

The concept of trinity was grounded in the traditions of fantasy genre. You have the hero and the representatives of every race and class to fight the big bad in a dungeon. With the trinity design, you justify the need for different classes mixed into a gaming group. This was made popular by games like Everquest and solidified in diamond casing by WoW. Thereafter, every other games followed this design and

this has been infecting single player and even pen and paper games which DO NOT need such a design in the first place.

The problem with the trinity design is very simple. Tanking and healing is work. Damage dealing is fun. Hence you have a disproportionate number of players who chose to do damage and only a very small percentage of players who choose to tank or heal. Yes, there are masochists who find such activities fun for them (I myself likes to tank and I have a friend who swears by healing). However, in a dungeon group, you HAVE to have at least one tank and at least one healer. In a raid group, that number increases proportionately. So the requirement and the actual situation is vastly different.

Not only that, the tank and healer need to be properly geared, need to know their skill sets, need to do this and do that. You can have a relatively clueless damage dealer player in a group and you can generally breeze through a dungeon but if you have a clueless tank or healer, there is no way you can successfully clear the dungeon or you can do it painfully.

So why is there a need for trinity design? Actually, there isn't. A group of pure damage dealers should theoretically be able to kill the boss and mobs IF THE DESIGNER DESIGN IT THIS WAY. The way a MMOG designer design that dungeon, will affect the roles a class can play and how that dungeon play out.The industry needs to abandon the trinity design and come up with new sets of roles that are FUN instead of chores. By all means, keep the tanking and healing roles, but they should not be NEEDED in order to run a dungeon or raid. If they are unable to do so, at the very least make everyone a damage dealer so everyone can have fun.

Think about it, a dungeon or raid is essentially one big puzzle or a series of puzzles. Boss fights are also puzzle fights. That is why they are interesting and people wants to do them. If every fight is all about how a tank or healer do their job, then it becomes stale and uninteresting and worse, chores for a significant portion of a required group when there are significantly fewer percentage of players willing to do that.

Let's use the quintessential fantasy as an example : The Chamber of Marzarbul fight in Lord of the Rings movie. When the orcs came in, do you see Boromir yelling at them so that the orcs only fight him and no one else? Do you see Gandalf or Frodo standing one side and "healing" the others? No. Everyone chips in and fights. They help one another. Even when the mini-boss the cave troll came in, they took turns to deal damage to it until it dies. Yes, Aragorn tried to be a tank but he got beaten. Then frodo became unintended tank and then got beaten as well. The rest enraged and dps the troll to death. No tank, no

healer, equally if not more fun.Then along the staircase, the orcs shot arrows. What happen next? Legolas and, to a certain extend, Aragorn became the "tanks" and damage dealers to tackle the archer orcs while the rest move on. And finally, you have the Balrog. This is a special case. Only Gandalf is high level enough to take on the Balrog. So the rest has to flee. Essentially, Gandalf "tanks" the Balrog although he was sort of defeated (at that point of view from the fellowship).

So from this example, you can see, even if you need a tank, it does not have to be a single specific player with a specific class and a specific build. Anyone should be able to "tank" as long as he has to hit points. As for healer, well, just have potions do what healing spells can do and everyone is a healer. So anyone can chip in to heal if necessary. Or better still. Don't have healer. What you have in terms of total hit points is all you have in that battle. This makes the battle more exciting as the danger is higher. Players may attempt to run away because they know they will be defeated if they don't OR this forces other players to "taunt" the boss or mobs off their allies if they want their allies to live. Or even better still, mix it up. Have a variety of encounters. Some encounters need all to be dps. Some encounters need rotation of "tanks" and so forther.

One last thing for people who still want to cling on to the idea of trinity is that they may ask : "If there are no roles, then why bother to have so many classes?" Well, having different classes means your PLAYSTYLE is different and you have CHOICES. Sure, we are all damage dealers but he did it by swinging that big axe while I did it by lobbing a fireball. The type and number of classes do not have to be related to the roles a class may take.

Think out of the box. Be creative.

3. Factionalisation
WoW has horde and alliance. WAR has Order and Chaos. SWTOR has Empire and Republic. See the pattern?

In a world that is divided by shards or servers, tanks and healers, players are further divided by factions. Some are even divided into 3 or 4 factions! If you are a game like EVE with hundreds of thousands players, maybe you are justified. But if you are a server or shard of only 1000 players, you just divided your pool of players by half! Why would you want to do that?

The original design decision was PvP. Back in the granddaddy of MMOG, Ultima Online (UO), anyone can kill anyone else. So it created a hostile gaming environment of bullying, intimidation and anti-social behaviours (much like high school). So factions were created and now, you have a ready pool of allies and enemies. In theory, it sounds good. But in practice, you can only play and trade with allies. But if you want to fight your enemies, you either have to travel to a mutually agreed location to fight them (world PvP) or you queue up for some 15 minutes soccer-match-like instanced PvP (called battlegrounds or warzones or skirmishes or some such...)

And because one faction is traditionally the "good" faction and one faction is the "evil" faction (or pretty vs ugly), naturally players gravitated towards one faction, further making the population imbalanced. Hence, world PvP became meaningless because it became a number game and not tactics or strategy. Instanced PvP became instant gratification but the side with more people has to wait longer because the other side is simply too ugly or too evil.

So a mechanism created to facilitate PvP, ended up affecting PvE (grouping) and the economy and does not really help PvP much either.

Here, I would like to say SWTOR did some good work. Most recently in the 1.3 patch, SWTOR has unified the economy by making the GTN tradable by both factions. And instanced PvP now allows players belonging to same faction to fight one another. However, flashpoints and group quests are still affected, ironically.

Faction division should be organic. Players should at first belong to one single faction, friendly to one another. To facilitate world PvP or instanced PvP, they can choose to join a particular faction or many factions. This choice can be automated. Joining of factions can be semi-permanent with choices to switch or temporary. After all, players are either heroes or mercenaries. So there is no reason why they cannot switch factions.

This way, in PvE and economy, you have one unified player base and in PvP, you can have a 50/50 split. You can even have multiple factions (think guilds, sects, orders, armies etc...) fighting one another if so desired. The closest idea to this concept is Arena where anyone can fight anyone else and anyone can ally with anyone else. Now broaden this concept to battles and you have PvP essentially. To justify this in game, remember, players are free agents who can choose to ally with any faction he desire or he is simply a mercenary for hire.

So an Orc Warrior could join the alliance because the alliance pays him to do so. A bounty hunter can fight for the Republic because the republic has deep budget.

4. Grinding and leveling
Leveling comes from Pen and Paper RPG and carried to single player RPG. Leveling makes sense in a single player game with a definite start and end. Once you become high level, you fight high level monsters and get high level loot. And then you retire and live happily ever after. Makes sense.

Now transpose this to MMOG and this design is broken. Why? MMOG by its nature is persistent and also long lasting. (At least long lasting than a typical single player RPG game)

In a SRPG, you pay an upfront cost and the developers do not care a hoot if you took 1 week to finish it, took 1 year or never even finish it. In a MMOG, the developer wants you to keep playing as long as it is needed, for years if possible. The problem is, once you reached the "MAX" level, you feel you are "done" and no longer need to continue. So now the designers added another concept of "end game content" which is also another form of grinding. After all, a player with tier 5 gear should be able to beat the tier 5 dungeon and able to beat a tier 1 geared player right?

So what's the problem? The problem again is that it divided the pool of players. A level 10 can't run a dungeon with a level 50. A tier 1 50 cannot run a raid with a tier 5 50. So while there are many dungeons, each dungeon has a limited pool of players (and when you divide that by shards and roles and factions, you make that pool very small or non-existent, see the pattern?). Some games like SWTOR make some of the dungeon "heroic" so that players can run the same dungeons again but that is only solving the problem at a certain level bracket. Those dungeons at lower levels have no players to run and those raids at higher levels also have no players to run. Think of the bell curve. In the end, designers spent significant efforts to make dungeons but only a small percentage is fully experienced by players.

Why not do away with levels and tiers?

People will ask : then what is the motivation of playing dungeons or even the game?

Well, how about...wait for this....ummm, fun? Don't level a character because you want to get to "end game" so that you can get tier 1 gear, so that you can tier 2 gear, so that..what? What's the purpose again? Play through the game because it is fun to do so. I guess it is more challenging for the designers to come up with fun quests or dungeons as compared to kill 10 rats or spank the boss.

Same for PvP. Why do people play PvP? Well, why do people play sports? Sports is a form of PvP right? Make PvP depends on PLAYER SKILLS, TACTICS and STRATEGY. In this case, SWTOR's Huttball somewhat got it right.

It's just that we need a whole lot of more huttballs. Again, think out of the box for PvP (world or instance) and dungeons such that players want to play BECAUSE of the journey. And when that journey is FUN, no one cares what is the destination.

If you really must have rewards, then give rewards that does not imbalance the gameplay but are nice to have : faster or better looking mounts, trophies, furniture for homes or starships, titles, statues (in capital cities) and bragging rights. Even epic LOOKING armor and gear will still be more desirable than starter gear even if their stats difference are very small. Honestly, if I enjoyed a game of soccer, I don't really care if I win the world cup. But if I really want to win the world cup, I should then play a lot of soccer matches and practice my tactics and hone my skills, instead of getting a sets of shoulder pads or some epic shoes so that I can "pwn" other soccer players.

Another reason to play without levels or gears is story.

SWTOR nearly got it right with the story element as the main pillar of design. However, their execution is FLAWED. Instead of one epic story, they broke it up to many small insignificant stories. If you think of MMOG like a TV series, you will then understand how an MMOG can survive 8 or 9 years like a TV series. Think Babylon 5 (5 years arc), LOST, Friends, Battlestar Galactica (re-imagined) and so on. Even the clone war cartoon series has a sort of main story going along. This is starwars after all.

This also means your year 1 should not be the same as year 2. Imagine SWTOR's main storyline. Year 1 is the cold war. Year 2 is the cold war almost turning into a hot war. Year 3 is the hot war phase 1 year 4 is the hot war phase 2, year 5 is the finale of the hot war (theoretically a hot war can last many years). Year 6 is the winding down of the hot war. Year 7 is the peace building. Year 8 is the mini-relapse. Year 9 is the final peace (And if SWTOR can survive 9 years, by itself is already an achievement!)

Unfortunately, SWTOR took a good design and screwed up the execution. The stories are again all factionalised. So that every players have their own experience and writers are forced to write 8 or more different threads of stories, some good, some not so good.

Getting rid of leveling and grinding means that now EVERY MAP and EVERY QUEST and EVERY DUNGEONS/RAID can be participated by potentially, ANYONE in the game. You don't have to wait for that person to level or get the correct gear. It's like a giant theme park where you can ride anything you want, visit anything you want, without having the need to be of certain height or age or gender. And use story, vanity rewards and the fun experience as main motivation for players to keep playing.

Do all of the above and maybe, maybe, we will see the MMO industry flourish again. And not see clones after clones after clones being churned out and failed to advance the industry/genre as a whole.

TLDR version

1. Get rid of sharding, have one single world
2. Get rid of trinity, everyone is DPS OR invent new fun roles
3. Get rid of static factionalism. Everyone is same faction with the ability to form their own rival groups or have dynamic factions.
4. Get rid of levels and grinds. Introduce fun in the journey and forget about the destination. Introduce vanity, quality-of-life and title rewards for the achievement oriented players.
5. Do all the above and the MMOG industry becomes less stagnant, more vibrant
6. Profit. [<--- investors, please see this, if you see nothing else]

---------- Post added 2012-07-05 at 09:34 AM ----------

Now I understand the point of view of the original poster and to some extent I agree but there are some serious flaws in his theory. There are limitations that go beyond technical. There are biological and psychological limitations also.

Point 1. Get rid of sharding, have one single world.
This point was heavily discussed on the official forum and the OP was stating the reason why it is not technically possible is because people are not pushing the need for it. However there is an aspect the OP isn't seeing. The Biological limitation. I know you're wondering what the? What does that have to do with this? Let's for discussion purpose assume the technology is there so the servers and the home computers can handle the load we still have another problem. Well the human brain can only process so much visual information at a time. Imagine if you will you have 10,000 players on fleet in
this massive server. 200 players all happen to want to type something in general chat at that very moment. Did you catch any of that? How much information was lost? Who was replying to what you said, who was asking a different question, who was just making a silly comment or telling the fleet about something happening elsewhere? It's like being able to hear every single person in your city at the same time no matter where they are. When you start talking about the numbers we wish to have in these games you have to look at these things.

Point 2. Get rid of trinity, everyone is DPS OR invent new fun roles.
Now I wished that TOR did not go with the traditional trinity roles but let's face it it always comes down to trinity. Taking damage, dealing damage and mitigating/recovering damage. However I do agree there can be fun and inventive ways to design encounters that wouldn't require the traditional trinity. It can still be in the game but it wouldn't be needed.

Point 3. Get rid of static factionalism. Everyone is same faction with the ability to form their own rival groups or have dynamic factions.
There are issues with that. The lore may not facilitate that like in SW:TOR. You gotta have factions and allowing players to "jump ship" opens another can of worms. Anyone who thinks players would be able to regulate the faction balance is kidding themselves. You'll end up with situations where players will leave the less played faction and switch sides to the more popular one causing more of an imbalance.

Point 4. Get rid of levels and grinds. Introduce fun in the journey and forget about the destination. Introduce vanity, quality-of-life and title rewards for the achievement oriented players.
Anyone remember the first couple of months in the game? Remember the posts and complaints that it was "too easy" and "I got all the gear there's no point in me doing PvP or PvE." Removing levels and some form of grind as annoying as some people think they are would cause players to feel there is no point in doing anything. This is where the Psychological aspect comes in. They want to be rewarded for their effort. The interesting thing is BioWare did focus on the journey. People have been complaining about the destination. (Level 50) Remove the leveling seems counter to what he wants. How many of us loved looking forward to what new abilities you get when you level? Once you have stuff like acquiring new abilities it's all a form of leveling.


It is my OPINION that the apparent stagnation is because of the players. They truly don't know what they want. They say they want innovation yet flock to the games that give more of the same and shun the games that try to do things differently. Granted not everything different is good but by bailing on a good concept that hasn't been fleshed out with the player's input investors will be less inclined to invest in these "risky" endeavors. Players are way too hostile on the forums in the way they "voice" their opinion. As people the developers wouldn't feel motivated to make a bunch of <insert your favorite negative adjective> players.
Games that appeal to the masses will NEVER have the stuff the more "hardcore" player will desire at the level they want it to be.

[moff]

I dont understand why everyone wants to lose the trinity feature suddenly.
I love it, its the reason I like to play MMOs, its the reason I dont play diablo 3 anymore, it offers so much more tactical and strategical encounters.
I sure would be open to an alternative to trinity, but back to hack'n'slay diablo everyone can do everything? no sir, not interested. I'll have a look how GW2 handles this, but I sure am not convinced yet. and I dont agree that damage dealing is less work than tanking or healing, I played a damage dealer on a very high level for a few years in WoW, my main in SWTOR is a DD, but I have much more fun with my healer and my tank right now.

as for the shards, well, I just dont see that happen. 1 million people standing in front of the auction house? chatting in capital cities? no. people want to be in the center of things, there is a need to separate them. lose the hubs and the make the zones enormous, that might work for EVE, but not for every MMO.

I also understand all his points cocerning the factions and they are all true. but in the end I just like it, I really like to play against the other faction, much much more than against my own. its just like the football world cup, its much more fun when different nations fight each other. its more engaging, there more at stake, winning feels great.

[Arlee]

I understand that this is pulled from the swtor official forums, but this topic is probably better served being in the Video Games forum and not the swtor subforums because it is a pretty broad topic that discussion of a lot of games could be involved in

[lizon]

TSW does some of this all ready.

All players play on the same server but are in different "Dimensions" thus to prevent overcrowding. If you want to group with someone outside of your dimension you just group up and port to them.

While the game can work using a Trinity you can also play the game without one. Using half dps half healing builds or half tanking half dps builds.

Ever MMO needs some way to "level up". What is "fun" is seeing your player progress and get stronger over time. Levels accomplish this. In TSW this is muted in that there is no number next to your name saying how powerful you are and instead your "level" is determined by how many skills you have unlocked.

[WarpedAcorn]

With MMO's, I always default back to my Pen & Paper days. In those games, you didn't need to have a tank or a healer. You could get by with any party composition if you were clever enough. Enemies were dangerous because they had similar skills that the players had, not just 1 Billion HP. But also, enemy attacks were much more dangerous. That is something I miss in MMO's...actually seeing difficult enemies/encounters that aren't based on an enemy with one ridiculously damaging ability that is easily avoided, and artificially made more difficult by having an increased health pool.

That is one reason I prefer PvP combat, as that environment is populated with characters with similar abilities that behave in organic ways and provide a variety of encounters despite occuring in similar settings.

[Pugbot]

If you get rid of Trinity roles I think you are killing the casual player. The 32 year old mother of one who only does dungeons when their child is asleep and doesn't play well because of little practice. If you add in mechanics to get rid of standard Trinity roles then you are probably going to add in mechanics to put responsibility on everyone for a fight, and in WoW if you put responsibility on everybody in your group then you are not going to make it. WoW has such a large subscriber base because you don't have to be a good gamer to play it.

A lot of what that article refers to I think can be seen in Ultima Online. UO had no trinity roles, but at some points in the game one character could also manage to solo anything. UO also had a lot more "special tactics" to be used I think, like those that you refer to in the lord of the rings fight scene. But the game was also hard, and later in life its learning curve could be considered extremely high (so much so that I don't think I could play it now, having played it for 5 years over 5 years ago). But no mmog yet has compared to the feeling of adventure you would get each and every time you stepped foot outside of guardzone in UO in my opinion.


Also getting rid of the grind I think is a dangerous view point. You HAVE to work to achieve. Not every aspect of a game can be seen as purely fun, there has to be work. You are comparing games to sports and movies so I will do the same.....
Is professional football always fun? Hell no. You spend hours on the practice field, hours studying film, hours recovering from workouts, working on your contract, working on the community, etc. All of that to enjoy the final few snaps of a close game where the outcome is decided, where your training, or lack of shows itself. Professional sports ARE A GRIND.

---------- Post added 2012-07-05 at 09:33 AM ----------

I love these in-depths analysis on forums, but it begs the question: Who is this guy. I mean...what reputation does he have that we should consider his opinion? On what data does he base his research. Is there even a stagnation and decline?

Well said. At first reading his article I found it very interesting, as i progressed in i noticed he got more and more opinionated without facts. And it seems to all point to in the end "take away the grind" which I think is ridiculous.

And I think there is stagnation, it can be seen in most recently SW:TOR which is exactly like WoW was 3-5 years ago. Nobody wants to restart the same game, and that is all I have been seeing.

WE NEED LORD BRITISH TO REVOLUTIONIZE THE MMOG SCENE AGAIN.

[Mif]

It's funny that both OP's and the SWToR forum thread seem to have very carefully avoided Guild Wars 2.

GW2 has:

-A centralised server database = allows your character to visit other servers, thus combining the advantages of sharded and unified worlds.
-No trinity = No tanks, everyone heals themselves, and while you deal damage you're not a mindless "DPS"
-No factions = Everyone is on the same team. The community pulls in the same direction, instead of tearing itself apart.
-No grinding = No repeating quests, no rep farming, no gear treadmill.
-Levels aren't that important = In development the game didn't have levels, but they felt players needed a feeling of progress. They settled on a system where if you go to PVP you are instantly leveled to 80, and if you go into lower level zones you are de-leveled so content is still challenging.


I encourage people to read the info sticky in the GW2 subforum.

[Xcitement]

I love these in-depths analysis on forums, but it begs the question: Who is this guy. I mean...what reputation does he have that we should consider his opinion? On what data does he base his research. Is there even a stagnation and decline?

I don't know who he is or what type of data he has. I view it as a well thought out opinion. I may disagree but I respect how he voiced his opinion and can now have a meaningful discussion.

With regards of Trinity I think there are ways to move away from it but the Trinity will always be in play in some shape and form also why get rid of the traditional roles? Why not have them there also? I understand that may make some encounters easier but it can also make others harder.

I did not talk about GW2 because I don't know enough about it to have a valid opinion. I was just discussing what the Original poster from the official forums posted.


PS: I got no problem with the post moving if this is the better place for it to be so mote it be.

[Whitepepper]

I love these in-depths analysis on forums, but it begs the question: Who is this guy. I mean...what reputation does he have that we should consider his opinion? On what data does he base his research. Is there even a stagnation and decline?

I disagree that there is a stagnation. Compare Tera, GW2, Eve, and Rift to vanilla WoW. Looks to me like there's been alot of changes to the genre over the years. Just to name a few: dynamic events, instant adventures, group finder, raid finder, more interactive combat, increasingly complicated encounter mechanics.

SWTOR is the most like WoW of the MMOs that have come out recently but even if you compare those two games you can see evolution.

I further disagree that there is a decline. We have more new and upcoming MMOs than ever before which to me suggests the rise of MMO gaming.

Also the TLDR version looks like a list of GW2 features barring the one world and even that is relatively close with the being able to visit other servers. When I read the OP it looked someone who was disappointed in SWTOR and decided that the MMO genre sucks. You know, rather than trying one of the other options out there.

[Mif]

With regards of Trinity I think there are ways to move away from it but the Trinity will always be in play in some shape and form also why get rid of the traditional roles? Why not have them there also? I understand that may make some encounters easier but it can also make others harder.

The problem with the trinity isn't so much mechanics, it's:

[Trade][6:20pm]LF tank for some dungeon then good to go!
[Trade][10:49pm]Still LF tank for some dungeon then good to go!

or alternatively

"We're short 2 healers, no raid tonight"

[Restos3]

As Mif said, I love what they are doing with GW2. If only my computer was better.. But I digress.
GW2 can prove to be a successful game w/o copying everything off WoW, and is attracting more and more people.

MMO market is like that. Everything is a copy of a copy of a copy. We need originality, nothing else.

[Cyclone Jack]

1. Get rid of sharding, have one single world
While you still need a multi-server infrastructure, I think that more games need a way to play with everyone. GW2 and TSW have stepped in this direction and I think it is for the betterment of the genre. TSW has a single 'server' split up via 'dimensions'. Basically, its a number of servers and everyone jumps to the server that the group leader is on. GW2 allows players to jump to any server they please to play with people there.

2. Get rid of trinity, everyone is DPS OR invent new fun roles
Now, I'm not against tanking or healing or DPSing, but I think games are better when everyone is more hybrid. There is no tank or healer in the Diablo games, and they are removed from GW2. Heck, even TSW can get by, at least thus far, by having a team of hybrids. With more hybrids, roles can be shared and it makes for a better experience, at least for me. It also opens up much more tactical combat, and requires a bit more attention and coordination. I know that some people prefer the trinity setup, which is why we need to see both of these in games (just not in the same game). I like that we are seeing more games go the less trinity route, while we still have more traditional games. It opens the genre up and allows for players to play the games they enjoy.

3. Get rid of static factionalism. Everyone is same faction with the ability to form their own rival groups or have dynamic factions.
I could go either way here, but it really depends on how the game is structured. I enjoy the sided rivalry, but you need a minimum of three sides for this. The two-faction stuff just isn't working and, IMO, never really worked well to begin with.

4. Get rid of levels and grinds. Introduce fun in the journey and forget about the destination. Introduce vanity, quality-of-life and title rewards for the achievement oriented players. I agree here. This doesn't mean I want to remove progression, but that you can make a game just as good w/o levels. Again, TSW and GW2 are moving in the right direction, though I do with GW2 removed levels altogether.


5. Do all the above and the MMOG industry becomes less stagnant, more vibrant.
I would say that we need BOTH the traditional MMO, as well as the 'new' MMO. If everything goes to the no-faction, no-level, no-trinity game, then we're just changing one color for another. Like any genre, there needs to be a variety.

[Vexies]

@cyclone jack

I was going to post a point by point rebuttal.. but in the end all these points lead me to say.. so you dont want to play a MMO then? Basically the game you describe is one where you just log onto a max lvl character and run around killing shit while trolling the general channel..

yeah no thanks.

While I can respect GW2 and the direction they are going I would hardly want all games to be like that. I like diversity but i also like just about everything that you have listed as supposedly stagnant. It would be like saying yeah we need to shake up the FPS genre.. its so stale.. Oh I know lets get rid of the shooting!!

Lvls, classes, tanks, healers its part of the RPG genre and It would be a very stale genre indeed to not have them at all.

[Nadev]

This reads an awful lot like a plug for GW2... bleck.

[Profyrion]

It is my OPINION that the apparent stagnation is because of the players. They truly don't know what they want. They say they want innovation yet flock to the games that give more of the same and shun the games that try to do things differently. Granted not everything different is good but by bailing on a good concept that hasn't been fleshed out with the player's input investors will be less inclined to invest in these "risky" endeavors. Players are way too hostile on the forums in the way they "voice" their opinion. As people the developers wouldn't feel motivated to make a bunch of <insert your favorite negative adjective> players.
Games that appeal to the masses will NEVER have the stuff the more "hardcore" player will desire at the level they want it to be.

Consumers rarely know/understand what they want. This guy explained how and why that's true:



Ignore the bad afro, it's a good video. Worth the 18 minutes.

[Deleted]

It's funny that both OP's and the SWToR forum thread seem to have very carefully avoided Guild Wars 2.

GW2 has:

-A centralised server database = allows your character to visit other servers, thus combining the advantages of sharded and unified worlds.
-No trinity = No tanks, everyone heals themselves, and while you deal damage you're not a mindless "DPS"
-No factions = Everyone is on the same team. The community pulls in the same direction, instead of tearing itself apart.
-No grinding = No repeating quests, no rep farming, no gear treadmill.
-Levels aren't that important = In development the game didn't have levels, but they felt players needed a feeling of progress. They settled on a system where if you go to PVP you are instantly leveled to 80, and if you go into lower level zones you are de-leveled so content is still challenging.


I encourage people to read the info sticky in the GW2 subforum.

The same things that could make it good can also make it bad. You can't remove grinding from an MMO...a MMO IS grinding. Weither you like it or not GW2 still requires grinding...maybe a different kind, but grinding none the less.

[Mif]

You can't remove grinding from an MMO...a MMO IS grinding.

That's a pessimistic way to look at the genre.
It's like saying "life is suffering and no one can ever be happy".

[SamR]

The problem with the trinity isn't so much mechanics, it's:

[Trade][6:20pm]LF tank for some dungeon then good to go!
[Trade][10:49pm]Still LF tank for some dungeon then good to go!

or alternatively

"We're short 2 healers, no raid tonight"

That's no different than your side getting rolled in TF2 because you had no healers. And yet many many people prefer TF2 over a pure deathmatch FPS because it has roles. Because when you have a good group with everyone working together and performing their role correctly, it feels very rewarding.

Even in games where you don't have distinct classes, in many objective-based gametypes, you still have roles. You need some people to play defense and some to play offense. Playing defense might be boring, but if everyone plays offense, you're likely to get creamed by the other team.

There are a lot of people who like role-based combat, be it a trinty MMO or just a CTF-style map in a FPS.

Anyone can do anything is like pure deathmatch. It appeals to some, but not to others.

[Restos3]

That's no different than your side getting rolled in TF2 because you had no healers. And yet many many people prefer TF2 over a pure deathmatch FPS because it has roles. Because when you have a good group with everyone working together and performing their role correctly, it feels very rewarding.

Even in games where you don't have distinct classes, in many objective-based gametypes, you still have roles. You need some people to play defense and some to play offense. Playing defense might be boring, but if everyone plays offense, you're likely to get creamed by the other team.

There are a lot of people who like role-based combat, be it a trinty MMO or just a CTF-style map in a FPS.

Anyone can do anything is like pure deathmatch. It appeals to some, but not to others.

I personally hated TF2 and loved Quake Live (which, like you say, many, many people play it).

[Endus]

My 2 copper;

1. Sharding.
There's three ways to handle this.

• Separate servers keeping populations distinct (what the post complained about)
• A combined world so huge and communications so limited that the sheer size of the world acts to segregate people (the system EvE uses). This means no General or Trade chats that aren't restricted to the area you're in currently, no fast-travel systems, and no central cities at all other than the "noob zone" which is useless to anyone of a reasonable level. Which has its own issues, since "cities" with the requisite player character services need to be either plentiful but indistinct (or there will be favorites, leading to server issues), or player-built and run (again, what EvE does).
• Instancing. Everyone's on the same servers, but specific instances of central cities exist, limiting populations within them artificially to keep the spam down.

If you don't have something like the above, chat spam becomes untenable to handle, let alone graphical issues with hundreds of thousands of player characters on screen and acting separately. I'm not convinced shards or server realms are inherently the "wrong" way to handle this, though I do think they should be a bit more fluid than WoW's incarnation.


2. Trinity

The Trinity works because it's easy. The only way to get rid of it is to develop a completely different system for managing huge bosses that can swat players with ease. This isn't impossible, but we're just basically getting there now, tech-wise. For instance, if you remove the trinity, every character needs damage avoidance/mitigation, and regeneration. Not enough for them to stand and take shots from bosses, though, nor enough to heal other people through damage, otherwise you're back to tanks and healers. You then need another system in place to allow players to otherwise avoid damage. The most likely candidate is a cover system, combined with a much more complex and uncontrollable boss AI. The cover system allows players to grab attention from the boss, and dive for cover to not die, while their buddies dump ammo/strikes into the exposed vulnerable spots. The AI needs to be uncontrollable; if you can hold aggro, you've got tanks again. If you can do anything more than a "taunt" that lasts a few seconds with a longish CD, you've got tanks. It needs to be randomized somewhat so that the boss is constantly changing targets, keeping every player on their toes and avoiding damage. Bosses could have multiple targets, AoE effects, all that good stuff still, but the main focus would be ducking behind cover when targeted to LoS damage and block AoE, and healing yourself to recover from the bits of splash that are survivable.

This is much more complex to design than a trinity-based system, which is why developers keep going to the trinity.


3. Factionalisation

Factionalisation hard-codes conflict, and helps to channel it in a way that promotes balance. Guild- or corporation-based "factionalistion" usually results in a few uberpowerful player-run organizations, which brings you back to standard factions essentially again, but without the in-game story design. Dual faction systems are a bit simplistic, but three factions allow for unbalanced three-way fights, where if one faction gains the advantage, both the others will work against them together, preventing one faction from becoming supreme very easily. Games without factions lack this guidance, and PvP lacks purpose as a result; WoW PvP is about Alliance vs Horde conflict, GW2 PvP is about a bunch of people fighting duels. It's not on the same scale, story-wise.

Factions don't even have to be permanent or unchangeable, but the framework they provide to PvP conflict is beneficial.

4. Grinding and leveling

MMOs want you to keep playing. Whatever gameplay you provide will get boring to most customers over time, regardless of how good it may be, solely because they want to try new things. There will be a hardcore few who stick with it always, but they won't be enough to sustain the game, typically. Grinding and leveling helps to create two games; the leveling-up game, and the endgame. This provides more content and gameplay, and also delays the endgame to keep people playing longer. They also provide a measure for character investment and development. They don't need to require effort; EvE's system is based on training in realtime hours, even while offline, but the effect is still to "gate" player performance and to delay character development to encourage more game time invested.

In short, MMOs are Skinner boxes. Things like levels and rewards for grinding are what keep you punching buttons, since no matter how fun those buttons might be to punch, they'll eventually get stale unless there's something you're striving for.


I'm not entirely sold on the current MMO model, and I think there's ways to improve on it, but there's really solid reasons for all of these things from game design perspectives.