Will There Ever Be a MMORPG Without a Combat Focus?

[AcidicSyn]

Ultima Online, both retail and player shards, still going strong*.


* - the word strong is subjective, hush.

[procne]

I think Town of Salem, a crafting MMO, is still around.

Town of Salem is a different game, you meant http://www.salemthegame.com/
And yes, it's still running, but it hasn't seen any development for like 2-3 years now.

http://www.havenandhearth.com/ is from the same developers and is being actively developed

[AcidicSyn]

Play ultima online. Full crafter character. You make stuff people who combat or furniture for houses etc. So many possibilities.
There is still one big community, free server.

Except the vast majority of the time anyone you pay to guard you (or gate you) somewhere is going to gate you into shame where their buddies are waiting to rob you, murder you, then 2x click dagger on your corpse for some decorations.

10/10 would play UO again I loved that game so much.

P.S. OOOOooOOOooooOO?

[Lazerbrain]

As been said UO or SWGEMU are both mmo's without focus on combat.

[Selastan]

It was also a different time. But I still ask, what's the goal for someone "with billions of gold", even if they can buy the best gear? What's the gear for, if not for slaying bigger dragons? Same problem that even some combat based MMOs have, like Black Desert, where there is no real group focused content. Like, yeah, you can farm for softcap max level and highest level gear, but what's it for? There is nothing waiting at the end except more of the same with no alterations.

You might want it just for the sake of adding it to your collection, for one. It also makes trips to gather your materials easier. Yeah, you can kill the mobs you need with a rune scimitar, sure. But if you had a Godsword your trip would be quicker.

[Deferionus]

It was also a different time. But I still ask, what's the goal for someone "with billions of gold", even if they can buy the best gear? What's the gear for, if not for slaying bigger dragons? Same problem that even some combat based MMOs have, like Black Desert, where there is no real group focused content. Like, yeah, you can farm for softcap max level and highest level gear, but what's it for? There is nothing waiting at the end except more of the same with no alterations.

In RuneScape you had a high scores system that tracked experience in stats and you also had limited quantity items (party hats) to buy that were similar to collecting real would precious resources with limited supply. I know many people who were "skillers" and focused solely on non combat stats trying to be on top of their friends on the high scores. Others played for the economic collection aspect. Some bought extremely rare and valuable armor to wear as transmog.

I haven't played that game seriously in years, but it was the only MMO I've played where combat was not heavily focused.

[AcidicSyn]

this is funny to me because theres a whole video on how players destroyed one of the game's features by being too murderous

A great watch

Oh we murdered him too, not just the animals lol. It's legendary, Richard G was logged in as Lord British and forgot to make himself immortal for some event. Sooooooooo....we murdered him inside his own castle.

They made it canon.

- - - Updated - - -

It was also a different time. But I still ask, what's the goal for someone "with billions of gold", even if they can buy the best gear? What's the gear for, if not for slaying bigger dragons? Same problem that even some combat based MMOs have, like Black Desert, where there is no real group focused content. Like, yeah, you can farm for softcap max level and highest level gear, but what's it for? There is nothing waiting at the end except more of the same with no alterations.

In Ultima Online I was a crafter. I owned a keep which was filled with vendors, I was in a pretty decent/central location and lots of players had runes marked to where I lived. The bottom floor of the keep I left open to the public and I even let other people place vendors in there as well (we called these vendor malls).

My "end game" was being the proprietor of that vendor mall. Players of all factions and orders (there were 4 factions, 2 other factions, as well as guild warring in the game) could come and make purchases from my mall. It was very well traveled as there were all kinds of vendors there selling just about whatever someone needed.

The icing on the cake; anything I made myself had my name on it. IE, you'd click a sword and it would say something like "Sword, crafted by playername". So that let crafters sort of get their mark out there. The most wildly used gear in the game was made by players, lending more into this. Magic items existed, but when you died they would remain on your body so players were more careful with their magic gear and most used GM crafted gear.

It was a grand old time.

[Fencers]

There are such MMOs. It's just the OP wants to have it both ways; social MMOs like Second Life are not "real" games, but combat focused MMOs are too gamey.

[Selastan]

There are such MMOs. It's just the OP wants to have it both ways; social MMOs like Second Life are not "real" games, but combat focused MMOs are too gamey.

Is it so wrong to want a game where a combat focused class is only one of many options?

[Edge-]

Is it so wrong to want a game where a combat focused class is only one of many options?

Probably, yeah. Because combat is either the focus, or non-combat is the focus. Sandbox games are closer to what you're thinking of, the last game I think that could reasonably cover what you want is SWG. I don't think we've had as diverse a sandbox MMO with combat and non-combat options since that.

[Fencers]

Is it so wrong to want a game where a combat focused class is only one of many options?

Those games exist already. However, it seems like you want to play a World of Warcraft or Everquest style MMORPG without the combat; and that is wrong. Fundamentally those games are designed with combat as the primary interface with the game. Combat is the goal of those types of games.

That one could ride a scooter or bake a cake in Everquest or whatever, is often tied to combat as an eventuality or are a distraction from combat. So it is as misguided a desire as saying, "Is it wrong to want a First Person Shooter without shooting?"

Supposedly, that is why you showed up.

[Tumile]

there is a lot of issues related to the suggestion that you're coming up with OP, Personally I never played Runescape back in the day, I was dragged into it by friends way later after EOC, and then quit, only to try out OSRS, and suddenly I understood why they liked this game so much.

The fact that "Skills" - which for those who arent farmiliar with Runescape, refers to something akin to Profession, Fishing, Woodcutting, Herblore etc. are relevant in the world is such an enjoyable feature. but the way they make them relevant is by adding inconveniences deliberately for the players. it's an artifical blockade or inconvenience that makes them relevant every single time, Similar to how they made the Poké flute relevant in Pokemon by placing a sleeping snorelax on the road, blocking you from progressing.

You are simply unable to do this quest, or acess these grinding spots if you dont have X woodcutting levels, etc.

Restocking while grinding this spot will require 98 tiles to the nearest bank, but if you had level 72 agility you can cut it down to 44 tiles.

Make certain skilling capes insanely valuable like the crafting cape because its a Teleport that is 2 tiles away from a bank. this wouldn't have any value if they hadnt made an inconvenience in the form of the 28 slot limited inventory, and barely any items stack, as well as the inconvenience of running energy and that entire system.

and sadly adding these inconveniences would mean death for most games, it is simply not very popular on the market, and quite honestly OSRS gets carried quite a lot by the "Nostalgia" effect, not that people like the game because of Nostalgia, but most players are only giving the game a shot and continuing to the point where they can overcome these inconveniences because of the initial nostalgia. this obviously isnt the case with me, but if my friends didnt play this game when they were kids, I wouldn't be playing it today.

now with all the updates skilling is basically useless outside of the content that is locked behind it, having 99 smithing doesnt exactly allow you to craft the god slaying sword, its actually pretty worthless, when you're looking at any gathering skill they are pretty useless because of the added raids and bosses that drop large quanitties of these materials, which is sad, and definitely an aspect of OSRS' development that I personally dislike (even though im as close to a bossing/slayer pure as they come tbh)

When i played ironman mode for the first time was the moment I started appreciating how the game worked back in the day. You went out and levelled you minning and smithing to craft ur own god damn bronze scimmi. it wasnt just going to the GE and buying the "next level" of equipment every 20 combat levels, I also had to do skilling in order to equip myself (obviously as a noob at the time, i did this in a very inefficient manner, but I had fun doing it, including levelling my defence to match my att and str)

I wanted food, time to level fishing and cooking.

I needed ranged weapons to deal with certain slayer tasks, guess we'll level smithing a bit and throw some knives at critters to level up my ranged, then later we're on to levelling fletching to craft bows and arrows, but wait I need certain Logs to craft these bows so gotta level my woodcutting.

there was a nice flow between combat and skilling, and one wasnt more important than the other, untill I hit late game ofc where bossing had taken over completely in every aspect.

So whats my point of this rant? I like this type of gameplay, but i also think its unrealistic, Runescape has so many advantages that allow this, such as the shitty graphics allowing them to create a huge amount of content, insanely quickly, its very rare for any game to be able to get away with graphics like this.

If you want to add many of these systems, and make a similar flow between skills, and combat in an MMORPG, it would require a huge amount of content. just imagine how much work would have to go into making Smithing an actual proper part of the game in lets say, Wow for example. not only would balancing be an incredibly difficult problem, but to add proper workshops and smithing systems would require extreme amounts of development time, which costs a lot of money.

You want to add proper merchant systems to the game? fair, but once again, how do you make this enticing to the point where its a well integrated part of the game, but also make it big enough to be a relevant part of the game? it will require too many resources compared to how much revenue it will generate.

And most likely if you add one, you would want to add multiple, only having smithing would be a bit weird, but maybe I'm wrong.

none indie developers do not make games for the love of games, they are huge corporations where close to all forms of passion is gone, everyone is assigned to one single role, they dont even get to see the completed product till they are finished, its not an artist sitting there designing Dog Texture #7 knowing theres this and that quest interaction so therefore I will make it eminate these emotions. its artist #12 being told we need more creature models, and all of them will be neutral, since they need to be used in 500 different places. at best they get told the Biome they reside in, but for the most part the enviromental designers havent finished those biomes yet.

And MMORPG's are still very expensive and require a huge amount of resources for the most part, which makes it a difficult market for Indie devs, who are probably the only ones around who still game makes out of passion, although most of them don't.

TL;DR: Too many issues and resources required, compared to possible gain in revenue to make it worth making.

[vitor210]

So...I love the idea of the MMORPG. A fantasy world where you can leave your old life behind and live in a new, more fantastic reality. Trouble is, every single one wants to be an action RPG first. They might not start off that way, but the longer the games go on, the more they gravitate to skill-based action RPGs with a focus on endgame-instanced content.

It happened with WoW, of course. Torghast was an eye-opener for me. I expected a mode like Hades, where I could make endless progress and eventually power my way through. But Blizzard decided to make every run start with a blank slate, and nerfed any power that seemed too good. Like everything else, it became a test of skill in combat.

Now, I'm not too upset about WoW. War is in the title, of course it's going to focus on that. What I AM upset about...is Old School Runescape. My old go-to for my escapism. While there was very little to do that didn't result in a fight, fighting was always...easy. You right clicked on the thing, and as long as you were leveled and equipped right it died. Sometimes you ate if things got dicey. That's all it took for players who loved crafting to do what they did. They didn't need to master tick manipulation, flinching, or prayer flicking. But as the game went on and more players voted in new content, there was always a trend. New Dungeons, new bosses, new master level quests, all get voted in. But new skills? Not once.

It gets even worse with newer MMORPGs, like Black Desert, Final Fantasy XIV, and ESO. These games are almost entirely combat focused, they feature real-time dodging and character positioning. I'm not saying I'm bad at these things, and these games need to be dumbed down. I love Dark Souls, and have done complete playthroughs of Dark Souls III and its DLC more than 20 times by now. I just go to MMOs for different reasons. If it's a real RPG with a living online world, why is the only role one can play 3 different flavors of world-saving hero? What about those who want to be blacksmiths, or innkeepers, or horse breeders, or merchants, or potion brewers? Will these ever be treated as more than a side-job? Can we not have an RPG made for someone other than the hyper ADHD crowd who quit if they haven't slain a world-eating demon lord every five seconds?

yes there was, it was called Second Life. No memes, I feel like what 90% of the playerbase wants was a game like Second Life. No combat focus, just a literal virtual world to explore and be part of

[Kithelle]

SWG used to be good for this....tis a shame the devs ruined it to make it a WoW clone.

[PACOX]

Crowfall has classes entirely devoted to supplying their faction of the MMO war effort with better and better crafted gear, fortifications, siege weapons, etc. The game definitely is combat oriented as it's large scale faction vs faction, but there are purely support roles you can play (they can fight if need be, but their progression is about crafting).

Hmm, that kind of sounds like someone in GW2 who only focues on running logistical duties in WvW (RealmvsRealmvsRealm), they just lock a player into doing.

[Polyxo]

How about Animal Crossing?

[AcidicSyn]

Is it so wrong to want a game where a combat focused class is only one of many options?

Nope, not even a little bit. Those telling you otherwise typically tend to be the sort who believe games must be primarily about combat. It's also the result of conditioning. Players think combat has to be the focus just because that's what they're used to. It is a shame but, as you saw in runescape, folks haven't changed. Those of us who enjoy combat not being the focus of the game (and thus being far closer to a proper "living world") are the minority.

It's a single player game, but you mentioned stardew valley a few times and specifically that you'd like that just with less farming (I think it was you anyway). Try My Time at Portia, great game, similar concept as stardew (days, social with the towns people, etc) and just like stardew, combat is simple and straight forward.

[angrys13]

Play ultima online. Full crafter character. You make stuff people who combat or furniture for houses etc. So many possibilities.
There is still one big community, free server.

This is honestly the first thing I thought of. I played UO in its origination and loved the game in its core/essence, sad it's not really popular anymore.

[AcidicSyn]

This is honestly the first thing I thought of. I played UO in its origination and loved the game in its core/essence, sad it's not really popular anymore.

It's still around on some very well populated UO Gamer shards (At least I think its still UO gamers). The best of them has been down for a few years though, IPY, pre UO:R shard, loved it there.

Most of the shards I've heard of now are T2A or just before that, though some still have Trammel. A select few have Ilsh too but I haven't plauyed on any of those.

[Queen of Hamsters]

I loooooved Archeage's system of farming where you could load your goods onto a donkey and ride to a market. All I wanted to do was to manage my plot of land and sell things.

But then the forced PVP set in. They have "grace periods" in zones where pvp is prohibited, but I ain't limiting my experience around that. Was gonna check out Archeage Unchained but the PVP just ruins it. That's before mentioning the same-faction crap through Piracy.

I believe that if there ever was an MMORPG focused on RP with combat being entirely optional, it'd have to prohibit PVP completely.