Modern MMO - how it should be

[Bester]

I'm so fed up with everyone's pathetic attempts at copying world of warcraft. They make a wow-clone, it doesn't become THE NEW WOW and then it dies. Can't they get a clue? Are they so ball-less as to try something new at all? I'm so fed up with CEOs and marketing department running things. Alright, idiots, here's how a new MMO should be and I promise you it will bring you money if that's all you care about. Let me spell it out for you.

 

 

1) Sandbox. Nobody knows what that means, so let me tell you. It's when you've created so many game mechanics, that people can just spontaneously create adventures on their own. So forget about manufacturing wow-style quests wholesale. Here's what you do.

 

 

2) Hard and Unbalanced. Whoever gave you the idea that everyone should win? It's a game, not a politically correct speech. A mage can have the flying spell and others can just suck on it. Rogues can steal things from you and you can just suck on it.

As a side not, right now rogues are different from other classes only cause they have poison and stealth. Ridiculous. Rogues must steal stuff from your pockets and get away with it, at least sometimes. They must be able to steal valuables from mobs. Like mage scrolls. Which reminds me...

Mages learn spells from mage school? Since when is magic so casual and uncool? What is it - Harry Potter? Mages should learn spells from scrolls. Scrolls should be super hard to come by and some spells should be known by a mere 10-15 mages in the whole world. That's cool. Having a spell that pinpoints the location of any item in the world, even if it's in somebody's pockets? Having a flying spell? That is what being mage is about, not spamming icebolt like everyone else.

 

 

3) That brings me to the next point which is NO SOULDBOUND ITEMS. Soulbound is the teddy bear of mmos. World pvp is meaningless without loot drop. I'm not saying all items should drop - maybe let just ONE thing drop when you're killed. And then give rangers or rogues or druids the ability to track people. You call your friend ranger from your guild, then get some buddies who were otherwise occupied and together your follow your killer in his footsteps, maybe it's gonna be a trap or maybe you're going to find him crawled up in some sewer and punish him hard. In any case, it's going to be an adventure.

 

 

4) If loot can be dropped, then everyone is going to kill everyone, yeah? WRONG if you make death meaningful too. Death means loss of experience. Not just a little, but a real fkn loss. What, you think experience loss will discourage people and they won't play your game? WRONG again. Millions play DotA and LoL, and they experience so much butthurt as I've never experienced in my life. And yet they continue playing. Your marketing department is lying to you, so make death painful and meaningful.

 

5) Remember those ASCII rogue-like games where your enemy was represented by a sign, like $. You couldn't see what he's wearing, if he's dangerous or not. Well guess what, we're back to THAT. Right now, everyone is a shiny Christmas tree with lamps. They had this thing where you could see how the person was dressed in vanilla wow, but that's knowledge long lost, apparently.

 

 

6) No instanced dungeons. It creates competition. Here's an example on a smaller scale. We have 5 locations and 5 guilds. Guild#1 farms locations #1, #2, #3 and #4. Guild#2 farms location #5. Guilds #3, #4 and #5 DON'T FARM ANYTHING. And all those guilds want to change the situation, to shift it in their favor. Alliances will be created, treasons, infiltrations, promises and broken promises, huge battles, real friendships, real socializing.

 

 

7) Meaningful craft. Right now you implement crafting just to be able to say that the game has crafting. Make it important. For example, one class is pure crafter, others can craft too, but not as good. The crafter class will build barricades, place traps, craft such armor that you wouldn't be able to find anywhere else, something legendary. It'd be extremely rare. Only 10 people in the world would be able to be such crafters, but that's ok.

Make crafting cool again. If you're a leatherworker and you know how to make boots, why are you only allowed to make them from a restricted pre-generated list?! As you travel, you come across a rare animal. You fight it, manage to kill it, skin it and make boots from its hide. Only when you make them, do you discover their potential. That's called interesting.

 

8 ) Not everyone wins. People don't need to WIN in order to want to play, they need to have a theoretical possibility to win and then they'll play and imagine that some day they'll be as awesome as gods in this game. Most of them won't, but it doesn't matter, because they'll all try.

 

9) Anything with realism in it. Since when is unrealistic mechanics considered cool? If **** bounce in real life, they should also bounce in the game, right? Well then why are you constantly making unrealistic mechanics, unrealistic craft, unrealistic class difficulty, unrealistic death, unrealistic instances of dungeons, unrealistic loot drop? Enough. Believe me, if you made one realistic mechanic that isn't in any other wow-clones, like territories (such as orgrimmar) that could be controlled by players who would get a percentage from all the trade going on in that town, just THAT option would get you so much attention you'd be swimming in money. 

 

Alright. Now GO AND MAKE IT FOR GOD'S SAKE.

Edited December 18, 2013 by Bester

[Hurlshort]

Eh, it sounds like a lot of work.

 

It actually kind of sounds like Vanguard.

[Humanoid]

So, Ultima Online?

[LadyCrimson]

I won't play MMO's that have griefing/PvP capability as a default that one can't get away from, unless such has a very meaningful gameplay reason for existing. Even then I probably wouldn't play such a game. I'd respect it, wouldn't play it.

 

People like to feel they "all" have a similar chance and time-line for advancing characters in MMO's, if one puts in the same amount of work. People also like to feel the game isn't only catered to hard-core, 4-hour a day every day types of players in terms of having a chance at gear/anything "fun" or being able to run dungeons. Not that there can't be super hardcore MMO's, but I bet they generally won't be the mega-million player base types, so whether they could be a long-term success or not depends on their cost vs. how much/how long people will pay and all that jazz.

 

So basically ... sounds like you want a non-casual MMO. Could happen. Probably not often tho.

[Agiel]

That WoW still has a huge audience probably speaks to how Blizzard did something right with the MMO formula. I think the big reason that every "WoW killer" has failed so far is because it has lasted so long and it has been so instituionalised that to ask its players to commit to another MMO means to give up up to nearly 10 years of work and potentially even friends and acquaintances they've made in that time. Not only that, I'd bet you anything that no matter how much EA and Bioware spent making TOR, it was nowhere close to how much Blizzard and Activision spent on making and (more significantly) updating WoW; there is absolutely no game that at launch that could offer enough content to sate most players coming off of WoW.

 

It's a real shame. As probably the biggest MMO-head here, virtually every supposed "WoW killer" I've played had a lot of things that gave them he up on WoW (Warhammer Online, Aion, Rift, Guild Wars 2, Tera) and had most players kept at it I think they could have grown into things that were very special and we wouldn't have a genre totally dominated by just one game.

Edited December 22, 2013 by Agiel

[Bester]

That WoW still has a huge audience probably speaks to how Blizzard did something right with the MMO formula. I think the big reason that every "WoW killer" has failed so far is because it has lasted so long and it has been so instituionalised that to ask its players to commit to another MMO means to give up up to nearly 10 years of work and potentially even friends and acquaintances they've made in that time. Not only that, I'd bet you anything that no matter how much EA and Bioware spent making TOR, it was nowhere close to how much Blizzard and Activision spent on making and (more significantly) updating WoW; there is absolutely no game that at launch that could offer enough content to sate most players coming off of WoW.

 

It's a real shame. As probably the biggest MMO-head here, virtually every supposed "WoW killer" I've played had a lot of things that gave them he up on WoW (Warhammer Online, Aion, Rift, Guild Wars 2, Tera) and had most players kept at it I think they could have grown into things that were very special and we wouldn't have a genre totally dominated by just one game.

 

Nobody tried other formulas, so it's illogical to say that Blizz found "some good formula". If only ONE formula has been tried, then you can't base your argument on experience with formulas. Understand?

 

For all I know, it's the worst formula possible. And you can't prove me wrong, because the only game that uses another formula is Eve. And while Blizz loses players all the time, Eve keeps getting more and more players. See the tendency?

 

Obviously, Eve can't have that many players due to being unorthodox in the sense that you play a ship, so it can't be a WoW Killer, but the tendencies are clear.

 

When World of Darkness comes out and shows you (yes, you, people with no imagination) how an AAA sandbox mmo where you play a character looks, your world views will be shattered to pieces. Or maybe you won't even understand what happened due to lack of analytical mind.

 

 

 

Not only that, I'd bet you anything that no matter how much EA and Bioware spent making TOR, it was nowhere close to how much Blizzard and Activision spent on making and (more significantly) updating WoW; there is absolutely no game that at launch that could offer enough content to sate most players coming off of WoW.

 

You're clueless, aren't you? The progress is moving forward at the speed of light. Two months ago, there was no way to make an MMO on unity, but NOW there are two "engines" out there for just a hunder bucks. For another hundred, you buy a pack with tons of models. Then you concentrate on skills, content and game mechanics. It'd be an indie game for sure, but you can basically make an MMO with a small team of 5 people in under 2 years. It'd have everything WoW has and much more.

 

Now, not only that, but remember how AoC said they spent a year creating their character creation thing with faces and all that? Now you just buy that mechanism for 50 bucks for Unity.

 

When people start making really good indie MMOs in 5-6 years, big companies will have to notice them and hire them to make AAA analogues or steal ideas from them and make sandbox mmos like I described.

Edited December 22, 2013 by Bester

[AGX-17]

Making a game hard by making it unbalanced is just bad game design. I stopped reading there because it's clear your ideas are bad if you think that's how to make a game challenging. If you're mad about MMOs, don't play them. Games are meant to be winnable, there's no point to a game nobody can win in, except to make some kind of indie artsy nihilistic allegory about the meaninglessness of life.

Edited December 22, 2013 by AGX-17

[Hurlshort]

I just figured out that Bester is Harlequin.  

 

 

There really are a lot of MMO's that use different formulas, it's just not that easy to pull it off.  The Secret World is another example of a game that departs from the formula.

[Bester]

Making a game hard by making it unbalanced is just bad game design. I stopped reading there because 

I stopped reading after that too. Happy to have had this convo.

 

 

 

I just figured out that Bester is Harlequin.  

I don't know who that is, but it sounds like he's a man of class then. I'll go look for his posts now, maybe I'll learn some new smart and important stuff.

Edited December 23, 2013 by Bester

[Katzengott]

I like the idea(s), but obviously making this FTP / PTW as all new MMOs seem to be would ruin the whole idea because somebody could buy any item the hard working craftsman char could craft and any spell the lucky highlvl mage could acquire. And they would do because they'd own even more in a game where it's hard to be successful at. 

 

And if devs would not make it FTP / PTW who would play it? 

 

MMO is not about experiencing awesome adventures with 5 buddies you just met online like old DAoC anymore, y'know exploring, founding a guild eventually, joining epic PvP where everyone has to put off the guild cloaks because of massive lag :3 

 

It's more like, you start, you get ignored because it's everyones "farm char", if you happen to join a party they all know where to go and how to go there fast, mainchat is always spammed with market offers you don't understand, if you wanna msg somebody you accidentally get routed to the ZEN shop... everything looks flashy, tho.  

 

 

To create that game you'd like we'd need another Neverwinter Nights, including a toolset being able to backup Persistant Worlds for 300 players, more possibilities of scripting and designing. Less focus on awesome graphics. Community would do the rest. 

[Bester]

I don't know a single FTP online game where you can buy anything other than decorative things for real money.

[Katzengott]

really? In Neverwinter online e.g. you can buy faster mounts, potions which are noticeably improving your skills for PvP, henchmen which are much more stronger than normal ones.... of course, if you play long enough you may be able to get those with ingame currency...

 

BUT, if you'd make some things even MORE difficult to accomplish it would be even MORE pay to win which would suck. So you'd have to have a monthly fee for playing without ZEN market or whatnot.  

[Bester]

Neverwinter Online is like a browser game. It just doesn't count.

[LadyCrimson]

Neverwinter Online is like a browser game. It just doesn't count.

 

There's some truth to that. Plenty of folk who do almost nothing but play the Gateway after max level. The rest is a sensation of a series of short solo or co-op combat area missions without a real sense of "world". At least to me. I could gripe about WoW for many things, but for me at least, it did the "I'm in a world" feeling pretty well.

[Calax]

It depends on how you want to go about the world.

 

City of heroes had a significantly different formula from WoW and only failed because the publisher just decided to kill it. Star Trek Online has a different side to it, as does Champions, and both of those are going along quite well.

The Problem with MMO's is that they're trying to be to much like wow, and not embracing their differences. If you look at it Rift is really just WoW 2.0 with the old talent system. It's got all the new tech and systems that have been pioneered by other games (public quests, multiple specs, changing roles, even housing) and put them to use. But like was said earlier, the reason that WoW refuses to die is that the player base doesn't want to lose the time they've sunk into their characters to start fresh on another game where they might not have the money they did, or the abilities that they did.

 

And to create an open world pvp environment built around imbalanced play is just asking for population issues and whining from your players. Or for your game to be niche like EvE and Age of Wushu.

[SadExchange]

Eh, it sounds like a lot of work.

 

It actually kind of sounds like Vanguard.

This is exactly what I thought when I first read the post. Man, if there was enough time to release a product close to what was promised for Vanguard, you might be playing that right now instead of making this post. Too bad it pretty much crashed and burned due to the huge amount of bugs. I think about this type of game from time to time. How it would be mostly geared more towards hardcore players, however those of us with less time on our hands, like myself, could still get something out of it just by being in the world and actually role playing your character instead of "playing the class."

[Lexx]

I don't know a single FTP online game where you can buy anything other than decorative things for real money.

Fallen Earth is selling booster packs, which give you a realy high advantage over non-paying dudes. For example, you can cut down a 10 hours crafting timer to 2 or less hours, if I remember correctly. In late game this is a huge deal, because all good items need a truckton of time to craft.

 

Bleh this game is really unfun in late-game, just because of some really stupid design decisions.

Edited December 31, 2013 by Lexx

[Hurlshort]

I think you can still play Vanguard, actually.  

 

Also I'd call City of Heroes a success, it ran with a good sub base for a number of years.  

[Luridis]

Mr. Bester, I thought Mr. Garibaldi caught up with you some time ago...

 

Re: Prologue - World of Warcaft cannot be copied because it was a situational success. The games industry is finally figuring out that MMOs have more in common with TV shows than video games. In 2004 there were a ton of people looking for a fantasy game in the wake of the Lord of the Rings films and WoW's initial success is tied to those films. Then, just as a show gains more viewers as fans start to talk about it, so too did WoW. People started WoW because that's what everyone else was talking about. They stayed because that's where everyone was at, they understood it, and were vested in the knowledge of both mechanics and lore. It is far easier to start a new WoW character than it is to venture into a whole new MMO; one where you're guaranteed to be the "epic failsauce nubule" that all the bittervets love to hate-on. World of Warcraft continues to be successful because it's the popular culture of multiplayer gaming.

 

Re: 1 - This works in Eve because the game is focused on large social groups and economics. Those are more difficult to replicate in a fantasy environment... i.e. You can't make spells cost ISK to cast, but you can put a price on ammunition in a space game.

 

Re: 2 - Unbalanced? Then everyone plays the i-win class. Additionally, if Rogues could steal other people's hard earned gear then soon everyone would be playing Rogues because, who wants to put all that work if there's half a dozen rogues waiting out side the raid zone to loot everyone when they come out?

 

Re: 3 - Soulbound items create the economic effect that destructible ships produce in Eve. If items were not soulbound then they'd need to wear out, and in a relatively short time span. If something didn't consume equipment then the economy would quickly saturate with an item, regardless of origin (hand-me-down on drop only), and its value would deflate to vendor trash.

 

Re: 4 - While there are a small number of hard-core players of many games whom like this sort of thing, even in single player games via dead-is-dead; most people don't want to lose character progress/power. A ranking system is different thing all together. Imagine trying to hold a regular raiding schedule when 50% of your guild has a 3 day grind after every wipe... that's going to be almost universally hated.

 

Re: 5 - Personally, I agree with you. I like, and even perform better, at PvP when strategy must be devised and changed on the fly. When my decisions are based on the opponents actions, rather than playing rock/paper/scissors game created by cookie-cutter builds with absolute best offensive and defensive strategies for any specific pairing. However, I suspect most people prefer the predictable nature of offensive and defensive playbooks.

 

Re: 6 - No... Personally, I think instancing has far less to do with making sure everyone gets their own personal loot than it does preventing the kind of in-game lag that makes you want to pull your hair out. Ask anyone who's experienced 100% TiDi in Eve or anyone who played during the opening of The Gates of Ahn Qiraj on the first few servers in WoW. It's a horrible, horrible experience... period. A postal chess game is more exciting, really.

 

I'm tried... will have to reply to the rest later, if I remember.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Bester]

>World of Warcaft cannot be copied because it was a situational success. The games industry is finally figuring out that MMOs have more in common with TV shows than video games. In 2004 there were a ton of people looking for a fantasy game in the wake of the Lord of the Rings films and WoW's initial success is tied to those films.

 

Cool story.

 

>You can't make spells cost ISK to cast

 

Another cool story.

 

>Re: 2 - Unbalanced? Then everyone plays the i-win class.

 

Everyone played DK when BC came out? Nope. And I wasn't even talking about that kind of unbalance.

 

>Additionally, if Rogues could steal other people's hard earned gear then soon everyone would be playing Rogues because,

 

Because you're not thinking ahead. Any hostile action would get you a PVP flag, which would allow the victim of that action and his teammates to attack you freely. A rogue can try to steal things, but if he fails, he dies, loses hard earned XP, loses his hard earned gear, everything.

 

>If items were not soulbound then they'd need to wear out

 

Yes. Wear out. And make the amount of blue quality items and higher - limited.

 

>most people don't want to lose character progress/power.

 

Most people who play poker don't want to lose money.

[Luridis]

I've got another cool story for you...

 

Want this MMO you're talking about in one hand, and crap in the other. Now see which hand fills up first.

[teknoman2]

thing is, that most mmos do have a sense of complete stagnation

the point is not balance, it is to differentiate classes in more aspects than just their combat skills.

let me put it this way. i play GW2, i have 4 characters, each has 2 of the 8 crafting skills and i get their levels up 5 for each at a time. that allows me to farm the materials and have self made gear for all every 5 levels (crafted gear is in 5lv increments for those who dont know about the game). i do not need the rest of the players of the game, unless i plan to participate in group exclusive events like dungeons.

now if certain non combat related stuff were class based the thing would change. if only warriors could craft melee weapons, only guardians could craft heavy armor, only rangers could craft bows and so on, including that no class could gather materials that were not relevant to it's crafting skill, no player could become self suficient about his gear. it could also be used in dungeons: the engineer could operate a machine that cleared a path that avoided enemies. a thief could disarm an alarm so that no new enemies will spawn and so on

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

I just figured out that Bester is Harlequin.

So Bester is a Jester?

[Calax]

thing is, that most mmos do have a sense of complete stagnation

the point is not balance, it is to differentiate classes in more aspects than just their combat skills.

let me put it this way. i play GW2, i have 4 characters, each has 2 of the 8 crafting skills and i get their levels up 5 for each at a time. that allows me to farm the materials and have self made gear for all every 5 levels (crafted gear is in 5lv increments for those who dont know about the game). i do not need the rest of the players of the game, unless i plan to participate in group exclusive events like dungeons.

now if certain non combat related stuff were class based the thing would change. if only warriors could craft melee weapons, only guardians could craft heavy armor, only rangers could craft bows and so on, including that no class could gather materials that were not relevant to it's crafting skill, no player could become self suficient about his gear. it could also be used in dungeons: the engineer could operate a machine that cleared a path that avoided enemies. a thief could disarm an alarm so that no new enemies will spawn and so on

Except that, to a degree, in an MMO you have to afford the ability to solo because there will not always be somebody to play with you at all times. Multiplayer content can be the focus of your game, but you have to design a majority of your content (mostly of the leveling persuasion) around only one player being around at any time.

 

This is why most MMO's are endgame focused... because endgame is the only time you can guarantee there will be a large segment of your population twittling their thumbs. Although City of Heroes added layer after layer of things to the midgame and was built around alts.

[Bester]

 

 

in an MMO you have to afford the ability to solo because there will not always be somebody to play with you at all times

 

Oh, so at times it's not gonna be press X to win? Boo hoo.