MMOs

The problem with MMOs is that they keep trying to become the "WoW killer" instead of being their own thing.
A foolish endeavor, since the real Wow killer already exists (pic related)

Star Wars Galaxies

works for EVE

Stop making them week long themepark rides until max level so you can play the game's actually entertaining content that's over in 2 hours.

Yeah, that's about how I remember it. Nothing against roleplaying, but what it came to was that servers started introducing autism such as OOC (out of character) chat while by default you were supposed to stick to your "role". Upon my return to the game, I encountered people that warned me that I should type /o at the beginning of the chat because should the moderators see me, they could ban us. That was commonplace through the servers.

My explanation for this is simple however. The servers basically require the serverscript which requires some levels of tech literacy. After the original creators dispersed, the community was left with semi-literate server owners that wanted to expand the content. They did not however wish to code their own shit, so what they were left with was roleplay enforcement (it's easier to put few moderators to ban the criminals than to script the police faction).

I think that's the fault of all the mod-based RPG multiplayer games. AAA MMO developers are not bold enough to go in this direction sadly, and do the job properly which is why all of them fail within months, ironically.

Remove leveling in MMO's. Quite simply that, all leveling does is serve as a gate to stop you from enjoying content. Focus more on actual content and make choosing gear and learning skills more important. Builds are based around what you've learned and what equipment you bring.

t. lolberg

Casualization. World of Warcraft as the breakthrough success started a trend to make the games easier and easier, which in turn attracted hordes of casuals and made the shareholders happy.

This explosive short-term growth, however, inevitably comes with a long-term loss, the reason being that making the game easier also means that players get through content, which means that hardcore guilds will burn through it at alarming rates; faster than the developers can provide it. Needless to say, the hardcore players will get bored quickly, and many will leave for greener pasture. Without the hardcore players in turn, the only feedback you get for endgame content unsurprisingly comes from casuals, who want their content even easier.

A second feature that dealt a mortal blow to the MMO genre was the automated groupfinders. MMOs, by definition, are meant to be a social experience; games where you have to rely on other players to get through dungeons. This necessity of group-based play required you to socialize with other players, which in turn produced many great friendships, occasional feuds, and a living community in general. Take this away by an automated system, however, and the entire social aspect vanishes into thin air, as the players don't care for one another, and you might as well send them into the dungeon with NPCs. The death of the social community likewise causes many players to leave - ironically enough, casual players in particular who may originally have demanded the Group Finder feature, but now realize they are all alone.

As the player population dwindles, the shareholders get increasingly nervous, and demand that the company continues its growth. This can be done either by taking further steps to draw in as many casual players as possible (resulting in F2P games), or by having each existing player spend more money (Item shop and P2W elements). Both are highly toxic to the MMO, and once again demonstrate the shortsightedness of developers, publishers, and shareholders.

Finally, the MMO market is badly inflated. When WOW reached its zenith, it may not have been the only MMORPG on the market, but the number of active MMOs was fairly small. Unsurprisingly, WoW's breakthrough success motivated hordes of other development studios to make their own MMOs, causing the total MMO playerbase to split up, so that traditional P2P or B2P models no longer were sufficient to keep the game alive. Cue the introduction of F2P as a life-support system and even worse item shop bullshit.

TL/DR: The death of the MMO is chiefly to blame on overly greedy shareholders and publishers, as well as of the legions of casuals they see as their primary consumer base

MMO players have higher standards than FPS players so they realize playing the same game for 10 years gets stale.
The MMO genre has to actually make changes, but they keep insisting they don't, because other genres survive shoveling out the same shit over and over again.

Nothing.

It lives and thrives. For each closed game several new and better ones open up.

Apart from Warframe I don't know a single modern MMO where you can directly buy equipment with real money.

There are currently what? Two big B2P games? FF14 and BDO. BDO indeed has p2w cash shop with items boosting your gameplay performance, but I don't think FF14 has anything truly p2w.

Oh right, FF14 is p2p, not b2p is it? It's been a while.

TL;DR OP is a faggot and there is still nothing wrong with majority of modern MMOs

The only relevant mmos out right now are XIV and WoW (obvious). Where are these great ones I and OP are not seeing?

Pretty much every MMO is made to be purely addictive.
Every mechanic is designed around taking just enough time that you can't rush through easily, but also so you keep being interested.
Which means that the developers wish to be in constant control of everything you do. Little option for overpowered builds, little option for doing anything off the beaten path (sure, do it, but it won't really reward you or anything). If what you are doing is not what they intended at the speed they intended, they will try to make sure you avoid it.

The best MMOs are almost purely PVP, the sandbox MMOs where other people are the content. Which is content the developers don't fully control so there is some possibility of different gameplay each day.
Another option are older MMOs, from before they kept stats on everything and simply made mechanics because they assumed they would be fun.

Examples can be found everywhere.
Look at PVP in WoW, while in the furthest back past, PVP was something which just happened in the game when enemy players met. Patch after patch, they made it so PVP is pushed into a path they control more and more. Nowadays most PVP content is vastly different and has no effect on the overal world outside of battlegrounds and arenas.

Now let's address some bullshit you faggots spouted ITT, because I have free time.

Because ping doesn't decrease with higher bandwith. There are still no technology to make electricity travel faster than it does today.
So either you settle for

You have plenty of options to set up all sorts of communication with other players. Or what, you want game to do everything for you?

Nobody will play that except of a bunch of tryhard autists who will soon lose interest too, because there will be nobody left in such game.
Also applies to >>11375490>>11375425>>11376089

Eve is unique and unconventional, and is carried along by all other aspects. Still player base dwindled over the years so they implement f2p system now.

There are plenty of smaller budged games that deviate from WoW formula, you only have to look for them.

Human brain needs progression, in one way or the other. If there will be no measurement tool, people will quickly lose interest and move onto something that will have more obvious progression.
There are still games with unconventional power growth out there, biggest one being Skyforge.

Big and high budged games are aimed at casuals by default. Instead of complaining about WOW actually trying to satisfy its target audience, which isn't you, try finding game that actually made for autistic yet socially-active player such as yourself.

I can name a bunch, but you don't need to be Wanga to predict that my post will be shat on.
Still I don't give a fuck about anonymous opininons so there goes.

High budget WoW clone with anime skin, with casual TA. I dunno if it has any hard-core end-game content that is aimed for tryhard crowds.

High budget instanced dungeon crawler with cuhrayzee combat. Aimed at casuals but has some hardcore optional content, that will give DMC and NG veterans run for their money.

Space ninja simulator with through the roof production values and extreme p2w shop, somewhat balanced by the unlimited trading. There are people earning more plat through grinding and trading than average whale ever buys. Has good combat and movement system, but short on content.

Attempt at making action combat with open world. Not very good one, but offers super hero gameplay and customization. Rather than p2w it's pay to acces 70% of the fucking game.

Do I even need to explain what Tera is?

PvP focused game in chink fantasy. Western version got slaughtered by SJW localizers, so it's recommended to play on chink/jap/russian server with english patch. Can't say how hard it's p2w.

Everyone's favourite disappointment of the decade. Actually a successful attempt of merging seamless open world and real time action combat. Huge p2w shop despite being b2p.

Supposedly autists' and tryhards' heaven. Very low budget, but promises muh freedoms everybody wants.

Mature game for mature gamers. Supposedly has uncensored dicks and unlimited open world PvP.

How do I even describe it? Super old school MMO with animoo art style and unique rocl-paper-scissors combat that is neither wow clone, nor mash attack and hope for the best. Has some pretty autistc depths.

Grimdark proto-PSO2, has less elaborate combat and is run by nexon. Still has some nice models and armor destruction system.

Surprisingly is still alive and cicking. A golden age WoW clone with PvP and guild wars focus, huge skill bars and long-ass rotations.

JUST OFF THE TOP OF MY HEAD.
I played a whole bunch of another smaller games, but can't just remember them, since they most likely outclassed by the ones I mentioned.

This is quite literally the dumbest, shittiest fucking idea I have ever read.
Stay the fuck away from game development, forever.

Make it Runescape but good again.

Oh right fucking Skyforge.
A game that mixes open world and instanced dungeon portions and has unconventional leveling and class system.
Combat is sorta similar to Tera.
Has ass physics.

Those games are pretty shit nowadays, honestly.

Ya'll niggas just wait for Chronicles of Elyria.

What I think that that user described and I personaly would like too too is an integrated voice chat system that is affected by stuff in the game. Such as distance between characters, reverb in caverns, echoes, muffled sounds behind walls, stuff like that. This also means that you can instantly voice chat with a stranger you just met in game if he has it enabled.

Also remembered - Wakfu and Dofus, another extemely played-driven MMOs, as the result almost dead ones too.
Games like RaiderZ, TESO, D&DO and NVNO also exists, and is more or less dead with small autistic groups playing them, all offering different aspects in combat, world, monetary models and player interaction.
Then there is Tree of Saviour, which is anything but actual Ragnarok online successor it seems.

Great in-depth analysis my anonymous friend. I'm lost for words. Why not call EVERYTHING shit? I know that's what you want to do.

Those are some great ideas.
The only issue is that devs would actually have to do work.

Instances and ques ruined MMOs, I speak mostly for WoW, but anything that decreases your involvement in the community on an MMO kinda creates a void and just makes it a really bad RPG.

I'm looking forward to Camelot Unchained but don't have my hopes too high. The best way they can fix an MMO is eliminating levels, and making it entirely based off skill and loot then create an actual economy and having a pillaging pvp systems in place to regulate if someone becomes too powerful

skyforge is P2W.

I'm not calling everything shit because I haven't played every game there. However, I have played those four and the problems they've accumulated since they've come out (without resorting to basic greentext) would be one giant wall of text that I'm not feeling up to.

That's unrealistic. On day1 game will be infested with micspamming kids, and on day2 everyone will play with this function off. Congratulations oh TECHNOLOGY and big chunk of development resources wasted.

Seriously, people want some mulineux-tier freedom in online games, forgetting who is gonna play said games.
Fucking PSO2 - it has unrivaled character creator. What kind of players you'll be meeting most of the time? Generic anime girls/boys and unholy abominations made specifically to be ugly.

Everything can be assessed as p2w. Even skins, since they potentially can make you less visible in PvP. Or more visible in PvE thus easing combat in intense situations.

Usually problems arise from retarded community and devs' attempts to deal with said retardation, while normal players getting into crossfire. MMOs are games where humans play with humans, they are impossible to be perfect simply because of that.

there was only ever room in the world for 2, maybe 3 MMOs tops. A fantasy one, a sci-fi one, and a free to play one for the plebs. Back in the good ol' days that was WoW, SW Galaxies, and Runescape. WoW got too popular and server tech trying to handle the load (instancing and queues) ruined the comfy feeling of community. SW Galaxies was ruined by its devs/publisher. As other games popped up trying to kill the main ones, player bases fractured into unsustainably small numbers. There was too much choice and NOBODY got the amount of players they needed. The whole point of an MMO is a lot of actual players inhabiting the same space and simulating another world full of life. If you walk through town and you only see two real people and a handful of NPCs, you might as well be playing an offline RPG. So naturally, people in the games with small playerbases lost interest and stopped playing and the games just keep failing over and over and over.

Death of the genre is how MMOs can be great again. There needs to be a definitive answer when people ask "what MMO should I play?" They shouldn't be given a list of 10 different games because then the potential players are split 10 ways and none of them will be fun. The problem is that either none of the games are high quality enough to stand out, or people are too fucking stupid to collectively decide on one and stay there. If choice is removed and there is only one MMO worth playing, it will become great because of the larger number of people in it.

Go away armstrong.

Off topic, but that is like the most perfect loop ever

make an actual game instead of another hotbar skill grinding simulator. quit pumping out so many mmo's because that spreads out the player base too far and you end up having most die off not because they terrible but it suffered from the social media conundrum where people only use it because their friends do so if there's already one that's established then your shit out of luck

Of course people are going to micspam it, but also, it should be easy to mute/report this kind of people, not to mention, they'd have to be close to you for you to listen to them. Games Like DayZ use this kind of system and it looks like it works. The only problem I can think of is crowded areas being too fucking noisy, but then again, that what happens in real life, you just need a key to muffle semi distant sounds and then it's easier to hear your buddy right next to you.

And the freedom in PSO2's character createor isn't a bad thing in any way. You don't need to use it, some people will use it poorly and it's their fucking problem they're free to do what they want with their characters, but it gives players who want to mold their perfect character the ability to do so whitout taking anything away from anyone else.

WORLD OF TANKS
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though since like one year ago they introduced pay2win tanks, but still. nothing really surprising.

Make a massive game that looks nice, has lots of variety, is non-linear for maximum exploration, make it subscription-based so there's no reasonable excuse to put in cash shop shit, and have a separate server for PVP since not everyone wants that shit muddling up their gaming experience.

Dragons Dogma + Guild Wars

MMOs were always shit

You start by no longer trying to emulate other game's outcomes and systems at a surface level and instead understanding the design choices and philosophies that made those games and systems fun, engaging, and/or successful. WoW isn't the template of the genre, despite what investors think. If you want your game to be something less than a cancerous vehicle for your cash shop, then there's two decades of great MMOs and squandered potential for you to soak in and learn from; rather than trying to sit in the shade of the giant in the playground with everyone else.

More importantly, however, you have to make use of MMOs as actual massively multiplayer games; no more of this 'playing alone together' shit that games like Black Desert Online have been pushing, players and their choices need to be meaningful. The first goal of an MMO should be creating a sandbox for players to inhabit and establishing the rules and tools that they will have inside it; the interaction of players with eachother AND these tools should be the defining feature of an MMO, not poorly scaled UIs recursively copying one another and PvP-flagless tab-targetting combat.

Everyone also needs to stop fighting like ants on a molehill to be one of the 'big' MMOs; it never works unless you're FF and by pandering to lower and lower denominators of consumer you do nothing but degrade your game's playerbase. It's okay to be a niche title, and for your game to focus around on a few hundred thousands souls rather than bragging in blocked web ads about how you have over thirteen million 'players' while brazillians and bots flood your player centers. The scale and foundation of MMOs is that they are inherently social games, so stop eroding the only thing the genre has going for it both mechanically and subjectively and embrace it.

I'm sick and tired of seeing impatient autists and children form a loud majority and be constantly capitulated to with things like ____finders and auction houses rather than having to interact with people to overcome challenges and make character progress. There's so much potential in MMOs as a genre, you just have to stop trying to sit on WoW's throne and start trying to actually make the next great MMO. I could go on about MMOs for hours and hours, but this isn't my blog.

You don't need leveling to have progression

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Its not dumb as long as a some structure is built around that. Face of Mankind was a good example where it worked perfectly well for the gameplay. Just because you can attack everybody does not mean its a good idea all of the time. The game can have ways to discourage such behavior without it having to be a mechanical punishment. In FoM for example there was a player run police force, which would discourage random ganking on at least some colonies while if random ganking took place it would still provide content for both the ganker as well as a variety of other people.

Don't be too short sighted. Being able to attack everybody at any point in time (except maybe a useless spawn point) is a very important for many mechanics in a sandbox game to work well.

The same things that afflicted gaming in general afflicted MMOs in the same timeframe, but a more fragile and generally poor understanding of MMORPG design as outlined by made them much less resistant to the effects of explosive industry growth. Basically, gaming caught the attention of the jews and the psuedojews.

In any case, it's fucked, totally, irreversibly fucked. It is literally easier at this point for big studios and developers to SUBVERT MINDS AND CALIBRATE THE STANDARDS OF MILLIONS OF PLAYERS, SO THAT THEY ARE SATISFIED BY COMPLETE SHIT, than it is for them to simply prove their worth with good and high-quality games, like what used to happen fifteen years ago.

Ok, let's sum it up. What you guys want are
Sounds like a goddamn minecraft to me. I'm pretty sure with a bit of modding you can make it exactly that.
Why aren't you playing MMO of your dreams right now Holla Forums? It exists!

It also exists. Pic related.

The ONLY way I would even bother installing Dragons Dogma MMO would be if you could die when you were a high enough level and then come back as a Dragon to be a boss like one of the dragons you found postgame.
And then if you were good enough you could come back AGAIN as one of the beholders before re-spawning as a loser player character

Every time.

Learn to understand and read into cues, you fucking autist.

What went wrong is Planetstrike2 tried to appeal to Cowadooty faggots

I have another suggestion. Take Minecraft and the dark doors. And have them able to Stargate their way to other Minecrafter world's

You can never know with this board. You got me, I give you that.

Can you imagine the slaughter had Titans still had splash damage at the time.?

technology simply isn't advanced enough to facilitate the MMO experience people really desire, along with how fast information travels any adventure elements of MMOs die immediately after the entire games get mapped out in a matter of days or hours and players search for meta instead of simulating an adventure

its an inherently flawed genre

Also how do you protect players that don't want to participate in constant rapes by tryhard autists but still want to play game say for the world design or combat? BDO decided just to remove such systems, which was supported by majority of its playerbase.

i don't have any solutions off the top of my head, if you protect players too much, you lose a whole chunk of players who want to go ganking, and as much as it sucks to get ganked, having a form of player-made danger present makes things exciting when adventuring (see souls games). if you restrict all PVP to some kind of arena that just becomes a big macro-fight

i still fall back on saying MMOs are still a pipe dream for the time being

Well you see carbears and whale is prime income in MMOs. If you design game appealing for tryhard autists, they will just grind their shit and pvp 24/7 without paying you a cent.
Game like this won't run for long. Should I remind you that EVE along with open PvP also has plenty of PvE content, and they still had to go f2p model, because of dying player base?

The depth of EVE is enticing, but most of it seems incredibly mundane, I've already lost enough of my life to less immersive MMOs than it, if I get hooked on one like it I might as well just stock up on poosocks and pissbottles and cement my door shut.

I want a newer mmo to really sink my teeth in I enjoy Ffxiv on and off and now with HW finishing up in about 3-5 months its basically prep for next expac.
Crowfall and Albion online seem nice sandbox style games albion online seems to be finishing up and aiming for early 2017 release while crowfall is long time off.
wish black desert didn't fuck its shit up with the p2w crap least i was able to get a refund thanks to paypal
also have a teso account cause i got it for dirt fucking cheap on some sale last year but don't have anyone to play with so don't really care for it

ping for servers outside of us would just murder my experience with any of these type of games worst because i live in alaska

plenty of F2p games haven't really bother to give them much of a thought many of them don't retain much players after their launch.

REEEEEEEEEEEEEE

You're the casuals that ruin games for everyone

I hope you get lynched

Stay triggered, reddit.

My 2 shekels is MMOs need an expiration date. Everyone looks for the wow killer because it needs to fucking die. It was great exploring the warcraft world from the rts games and shoulda been put to bed after wotlk. You can't make a game for profit foremost and have it be good. Thats backwards.

Map size has literally nothing to do with ping or bandwidth. Content/NPCs/playercount does. I propose totally getting rid of complex NPCs.*

What part of "with strangers" you don't understand? Getting someone to install 3rd party software of your choice and setting up servers isn't exactly what I proposed, is it now?

That sounds like every MMO today, not like what I proposed.

Yeah, better stick to the same old same old, surely they'll just randomly do it right this time :^)

On a serious note, give me GTAV or IV source code and 10 people familiar with it. Within 3 months I'll give you an MMO killer and a mountain of shekels.

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Well I would reply to any of this but this whole article represents my views on faction PvP anyways
archive.fo/aWKDQ

Even then all the stuff you can buy directly can be made relatively easily.
All the good shit is level locked to boot so it isn't like a new player can take advantage of it.