Decline Why do MMOs suck so much?

[MadMaxHellfire]

eve online encourages you to know each and every player on the server. and to distrust them all.

 

[ADL]

Elder scrolls online allows you to join up to 5 guilds simultaneously

I love this system, means I can have one for trading, veteran dungeon runs, trials, Cyrodiil PvP and another one just for fun. Guild Wars 2 does this too, which is very similar to TESO in most ways.

 

[Norfleet]

Elder scrolls online allows you to join up to 5 guilds simultaneously

Ah, nice, wouldn't be an Elder Scrolls game if you couldn't be the leader of all of them.

 

[Nathaniel3W]

Ah, nice, wouldn't be an Elder Scrolls game if you couldn't be the leader of all of them.

They handled that well in... Oblivion, was it? I don't think it was Skyrim. Anyway, if you're already head of the Mages Guild, then when the Thieves Guild gives you the mission to steal the staff from the head of the Mages Guild, your journal says something about "I need to steal my own staff to prove my skills I guess." Fun times.

Also, regarding the MMOs not encouraging social connections: Funny; I never gave that much thought, probably because I never played MMOs for that. I played them as much as possible like a single-player game. And that's a big part of what turned me off to WoW. I would finish the quest, but the world didn't change. Nothing I did had any effect on the world like it would in a single-player game. Since I didn't much care about social connections, and the solo experience was disappointing, I couldn't really find any reason to continue playing.

 

[Norfleet]

Also, regarding the MMOs not encouraging social connections: Funny; I never gave that much thought, probably because I never played MMOs for that. I played them as much as possible like a single-player game. And that's a big part of what turned me off to WoW. I would finish the quest, but the world didn't change. Nothing I did had any effect on the world like it would in a single-player game. Since I didn't much care about social connections, and the solo experience was disappointing, I couldn't really find any reason to continue playing.

Exactly! You weren't encouraged to care, and without any of these factors, you lacked the glue to hold you there. An MMO is about the social connections first and foremost. Whether that connection is your friends that play (whether you met them in the game, or dragged them in with you), your guild-equivalent, a hated enemy whose existence you live to make miserable, or the people in whose face you wish to wave your e-Peen, it's all about that social connection. Without it, you may as well be packaging a single-player game and cutting the cost and development overhead of having to make and run servers.

Sure, that may not be the reason why someone initially plays, but it sure as hell will be the reason they keep playing, and your case perfectly illustrates this: It wasn't what you were looking for, and you didn't find it, so you didn't keep playing.

 

[Ravielsk]

An MMO is about the social connections first and foremost.

Not necessarily. MMOs should be about the world, the social connections are then a direct consequence of a well designed world. Focusing mainly or exclusively on the social aspect can create a game that is effectively a second job. If you went back to 2004 WoW was not successful because of some "social aspect" of the game, in fact as far as social bonds go WoW was the game that was the least concerned with them. The game was a success because it was, for lack of a better word, organic. Most of the over-world content was doable solo but doing it in a party was far more expedient and practical. So what would happen is that you would do 9 quests in a chain alone at your own pace and then finished the final quests with a random group that was also on it or just felt like helping. The group would then dissolve and in most cases never reformed but that was not a problem because this dynamic could and would repeat multiple times per zone with different people. You were not strictly forced into creating firm social bonds to progress that only came up when you wanted to tackle the most high level content. The socialization was not the explicit goal, it was a natural consequence of the world occasionally being tougher than the player.

Modern MMOs struggle with this concept because they are not designed to be "worlds" but "treadmills". So instead of something natural like those 9 quests in a chain that can be done sole and then the final one being meant for a group they create two entirely separate gameplay modes. One where you are steamrolling everything in the open world with no rime or reason and then the second one where you are too weak to do anything on your own and always need a group. This is also why tools for automatically making groups are needed because groups are not formed naturally as you play but only at designated points that you may or may not engage with.

 

[Norfleet]

Not necessarily. MMOs should be about the world, the social connections are then a direct consequence of a well designed world.

Yes, but the world should ultimately be aimed at creating this in some form. Not necessarily always the same form for everyone, as in the group-to-raid example, but some form. Otherwise, what you have is a poor-quality single player game, and the people playing it as such eventually see this and quit.

Modern MMOs struggle with this concept because they are not designed to be "worlds" but "treadmills". So instead of something natural like those 9 quests in a chain that can be done sole and then the final one being meant for a group they create two entirely separate gameplay modes. One where you are steamrolling everything in the open world with no rime or reason and then the second one where you are too weak to do anything on your own and always need a group. This is also why tools for automatically making groups are needed because groups are not formed naturally as you play but only at designated points that you may or may not engage with.

This is also true: A fair number of modern MMOs are trying too hard to force the issue in a very specific way, and this isn't really a desirable outcome, either.

 

[Ravielsk]

Yes, but the world should ultimately be aimed at creating this in some form. Not necessarily always the same form for everyone, as in the group-to-raid example, but some form. Otherwise, what you have is a poor-quality single player game, and the people playing it as such eventually see this and quit.

True relatively speaking but from a developer standpoint its a bad goal to pursue. Trying to socially engineer your game is a sure fire way to end up exactly where modern MMO are right now. A organically designed world(or gamespace if you want to be autistic about it) will naturally facilitate social interactions while something engineered to do it will always inevitably devolve into a RDF treadmill. Some things have to occur naturally and forcing them in any way will always do more damage than good, if not in the short term then definitely in the long term.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

I hate other people, I play MMOs for a shared, persistent world not to actually interact with them.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

Can't wait until AI technology lets me duplicate myself so I have someone interesting to play games with.

 

[Norfleet]

True relatively speaking but from a developer standpoint its a bad goal to pursue. Trying to socially engineer your game is a sure fire way to end up exactly where modern MMO are right now. A organically designed world(or gamespace if you want to be autistic about it) will naturally facilitate social interactions while something engineered to do it will always inevitably devolve into a RDF treadmill. Some things have to occur naturally and forcing them in any way will always do more damage than good, if not in the short term then definitely in the long term.

You can't have something that is "designed to naturally". It is something that is intended. The only question is how blatantly or subtly you do it, and it is clear that blatant, hamfisted attempts, generally fail miserably and create resentment and rusty_shackleford.

I hate other people, I play MMOs for a shared, persistent world not to actually interact with them.

This is actually pretty much my perspective. Except that in this shared, persistent world, I want to take their money. I have this really deep aversion to randos on my team, though. Ultimately, even if you regard the masses with almost as much loathing and disdain as I do, seeing them as little more than filthy barbarians at the gates, they're still sort of necessary to HAVE anything worthwhile to build gates against and keeping them out is its own thing.

Can't wait until AI technology lets me duplicate myself so I have someone interesting to play games with.

I used the organic method instead. The problem is that an entire group of people who have been indoctrinated to be like me apparently really, really, looks like robots. Especially to Craptic. I mean, the jokes about me being an AI are rife already.

 

[Ravielsk]

You can't have something that is "designed to naturally". It is something that is intended. The only question is how blatantly or subtly you do it, and it is clear that blatant, hamfisted attempts, generally fail miserably and create resentment and rusty_shackleford.

Not really. You dont need to intend to create a certain type of experience or interaction for it to occur. A very simple example of that would be the dungeon design in Vanilla WoW, the developers made them huge because they assumed players would run them only once but since they did not place any limitations on the number of runs players started doing them repeatedly. Further today we see an evolution of that approach where player get EXP boosts from mages by re-running the same dungeon over and over.
Mount were also not made to be a collectible thing but player came to like collecting them so much that Blizz made a mechanic with its own tab and achievements.

The whole problem is that the devs need to be open to the idea that the players base can and will do things they did not intend them to do and make a game around that philosophy. Modern MMOs suck specifically because devs want the exact opposite.

 

[TedNugent]

So, I noticed on wowhead, which I occasionally peruse, that one of the lead designers of WoW, Starcraft 2, and Diablo IV, David Kim, just left and joined Mike Morhaime's splinter company which has been poaching talent from ActiBlizz for a couple of years since Mike left as CEO.

https://www.wowhead.com/news/former...me-designer-david-kim-leaves-blizzard-321904?

Just stumbled on this video which has an interview with Mike Morhaime talking about MMO/Blizz decline. He specifically talks about group content being de-emphasized. The interviewer asks some good questions about why group size is dropping and community may be beginning to be exchanged for accessibility. He also talks about being a bridge between design and corporate.



Just did some brief reading about his new company, Dreamhaven, and they are apparently being very particular about self funding and withholding outside investment unless it is in line with their "core values." Interesting...

Doesn't take much to read between the lines, here. Maybe something will come of the new company and it doesn't just become a shell company with ex-Blizzard employees.

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

These aren't helping



This dude lies.. he loves these shit games.

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

Oh look... a part two. I think I would have avoided this pos from the start.


Observation: Bent over Icecream Giant showing her sweets (well in my mind... that's a suggestive landmark there)

 

[Nirvash]

If you "only want a persistent world(ranking) and human competition" then just go play some mobas/fortnite.

Good and memorable MMORPG are just a "chat" with some rpg game world attached, no one fucking miss the dumbass "gameplay" of old DAOC/RagnarokO/LegacyWOW/Ultima, what you miss are your old buddies and the server drama.

Modern mmorpg missed the point so hard.

 

[Neki]

Never got the appeal of mmos, Complete number requirements that you can get more number completion requirements but on a different map.

I do unironically think though that its the most evil genre of game out there, really dislike their predatory and addictive nature on the fat retard demographic, Had 2 friends that were addicted to wow, haven't seen them in about 8 years
Young men with nothing to do wasting their 20s on some fake herofantasy shit while their lives go downhill by the minute, no job, no friends, no girls, leeching the parents, etc. Nothing to live for just vidya, doritos and getting their parents to buy them figurines.

Its MK ultra brainwashing but on the comfort of your pc screen.

Can somebody tell me whats the appeal of playing an mmo?
I tried but its the most boring shit ever.

 

[ADL]

Depends. Are you talking about MMOs where meaningful player interactions take place and shape the world (UO/Asheron's Call/Star Wars Galaxies/EVE Online) or are you talking about recent examples where you only talk to the 4 people in your party and if you're feeling really sociable, the 50 people in your guild and eRP in the inn?

Because if the latter, fuck if I know those games suck but UO was awesome. Being able to shape the world for thousands of concurrent players and the appeal of those games being life simulators in fantasy settings should be self evident.

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

Funny that players continually "broke" UO according to Richard. Maybe he hates players that are innovative.

 

[Gerrard]

Elder scrolls online allows you to join up to 5 guilds simultaneously

I love this system, means I can have one for trading, veteran dungeon runs, trials, Cyrodiil PvP and another one just for fun.

What? Considering the degree of autism some of those guilds present and expect you to treat the game literally like a second job I don't see how that would be possible.

Just did some brief reading about his new company, Dreamhaven, and they are apparently being very particular about self funding and withholding outside investment unless it is in line with their "core values." Interesting...

Doesn't take much to read between the lines, here. Maybe something will come of the new company and it doesn't just become a shell company with ex-Blizzard employees.

Let me guess, they are going to make a new and better hardcore WoW clone? Guess they missed Wildstar's spectacular failure.

 

[ADL]

Some of the trading guilds on PC-NA have truly obscene minimums and even some of the tryhard PvE guilds have attendance and parse minimums but there's definitely good ones out there that are extremely reasonable. Just gotta spend 10-15 minutes on the forums looking for them or reading their introductions in guild finder. It's definitely possible.

 

[Myobi]

I hate other people

Oh boy, ain’t that a funny coincidence!

 

[Zombra]

A few simple things.

First, no one wants to play a "dead" MMO without people around. The model only works when there are lots of players on all the time.

Therefore, you must make a game either so good or so addictive that people don't want to stop playing it, just to keep your population stable.

Very few games can actually be good enough to keep someone playing for 2000 hours.

Therefore, unhealthy Skinner box manipulation tactics are in essence required to maintain ultra long term player interest. These techniques can make a very addictive game, but not a good one.

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

 

[Fishy]

Funny that players continually "broke" UO according to Richard. Maybe he hates players that are innovative.

FTFY