Will There Ever Be a MMORPG Without a Combat Focus?

[procne]

Oh, I remembered one game - Rail Nation. It's a browser game, so I don't think you will treat seriously, but it's more of an example of a concept.
Players are grouped into cities and over several weeks (6 or 8 I think) they compete between cities to deliver enough goods with their trains and grow the cities. Mostly cooperative game.

Then there were also several of those country-society simulation games like e-republic where players would create fictional countries, form their governments, set laws, produce resources and goods and so on.

[Scathan]

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?

Odd, because in ffxiv is one of the most crafter friendly games available. There is a whole endgame for crafters. See Ishgardian restoration. On top of crafted gear being relevant in the gearing process.


There are disciples of the land/hand in addition to magic/war. There are entire questlines devoted to crafters, as well as their only daily quest with rewards suited for crafting. There are even relic tools for crafting, which would be ffxivs equivalent of artifact weapons, which combat classes have as well.

[FlawlessSoul]

eta You might want to look into the Star Wars Galaxies emulators out there, you could play that MMO without ever engaging in combat as well. I fondly remember my time as a doctor in the Anchorhead cantina.

SWG had fantastic non-combat depth - pre-NGE, you had a lot of customisation with character skills too. You could be pure combat-oriented with impressive damage output but reliant on other players to a greater degree, or a pure support class - even a "stay at home" crafter, buffer, healer, etc. - and anything in-between (I personally loved Creature Handler/Rifleman).

There are a few different emulators with different game versions - if you want the most customisation, go with a pre-NGE emu.

[Rhaide]

The inherent problem with your desire is that you are asking for two things:

1: A game with a focus on a large variety of non-combat options (not that combat can't exist in some form) which is something that a fair amount of players would like, but doesn't have a mass appeal.
2: A game with that is as large, lively, and well-realized. This type of MMO doesn't exist without a massive playerbase to support it.

These things are at odds with each other.

Unfortunately if you want to play something that is somewhat niche, you'll generally have to settle for something smaller and less expansive. No company wants to spend a ludicrous amount of time and money to realize something that only a marginal number of players will play (even if they LOVE it).

EDIT: Please don't take this as an insult to your desire in the least. It's just my honest view of what is going on.

[Clone]

There is a Jane Austen MMO that's about to die.

[Very Tired]

You could always play Runescape as a skiller, some people do that. Combat is always completely optional, with all activities in the game just being a means to earn gold or exp.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

IIRC there was an old life sim MMO called "A Tale in the Desert", in which you roleplayed as Egyptian citizens and farmers.

There is also "Ever, Jane", where you RP as people in Edwardian era (or Victorian era?) Britain. However, I can't remember if it was an MMO with a world, or server/lobby based.



Anyway, to answer the OP's question: MMOs are incredibly expensive to develop, run, and market, to the point that a MMO can only really be funded a rich corporation, and corporations like to play things safe. So they stick to the tried and true video game formula of "be a hero and kill countless mobs".

1. Development wise, a huge amount of work has to be placed into character customization. If you have like 5 different playable races, and 2 genders for each, that's 10 different character models that have to be rigged. If you want to create a "open mailbox" animation, you have to do it 10 times, one for each race/gender combo. And there are hundreds of player animations in a MMO. So right there you have a tremendous animation cost in terms of the number of animators who need to be hired, and the length of time it takes for them to complete all those animations while you are paying them. And if you have clothing, again that is a ridiculous amount of time you need to have 3D character artists trying to create different versions of the armor to fit everyone. And so on.

2. A LOT of money has to be invested into servers. And then there is the power cost of using those servers, and then the maintenance costs. And property to keep the servers in. And then you also have to pay for a lot of bandwidth. Huge expense right there.

3. Perhaps the most expensive aspect of an MMO isn't the development of the actual game or the running of the servers, but the marketing costs. In order to recoup the investment in 1 and 2, you're going to need A LOT of players, which means trying to reach as many people as possible. For MMOs and AAA games, marketing often accounts for more money in the budget than actual game development. The launch is crucial, because if the game doesn't get enough players and it doesn't look like that the playerbase will grow to a large enough size soon enough to offset costs, the publisher will pull the plug.

So what you end up with is that these games are very time consuming and resource heavy to build, and thus incredibly expensive, which means a LOT of players need to be brought onboard, so the execs will mandate that these games they are staking their studio on to fit established norms in the video game industry. Ie, "be a hero and kill mobs". A non-combat MMO would be seen as too risky.