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So, What MMORPG's are Doing it "Right?"
rexcelestis
Posts: 194 Arc User
Folks,
I've been playing MMORPG for six years now, but I still feel a bit naive about the market. My experience has been limited primarily to CoH, CO, STO, and now, NWO. I dabbled a bit in both DCUO and TOR. Reading the forums of any of these games, one would tend to think developers little more than trained chimpanzees under the management of a tribe of mangy, syphilitic baboons, no matter what house they work for. (The bonobo's all work for a more sexy company, like Apple.)
Personally, I tend to believe that most professionals do the best with what they have in any situation and am pretty content with Cryptic's offerings. I've spent the most time in their games and haven't been really hooked by any current other offerings out there or in the pipe.
Looking at the common complaints around bug fixes, content updates, RP support, etc, can anyone offer up an example of a company producing MMORPG's or a specific MMORPG that does it "right?" What do they do that's different? Fill in the blanks, if you will. "Cryptic should work towards acting like ______, because ________."
Thanks in advance for the discussion.
a
I've been playing MMORPG for six years now, but I still feel a bit naive about the market. My experience has been limited primarily to CoH, CO, STO, and now, NWO. I dabbled a bit in both DCUO and TOR. Reading the forums of any of these games, one would tend to think developers little more than trained chimpanzees under the management of a tribe of mangy, syphilitic baboons, no matter what house they work for. (The bonobo's all work for a more sexy company, like Apple.)
Personally, I tend to believe that most professionals do the best with what they have in any situation and am pretty content with Cryptic's offerings. I've spent the most time in their games and haven't been really hooked by any current other offerings out there or in the pipe.
Looking at the common complaints around bug fixes, content updates, RP support, etc, can anyone offer up an example of a company producing MMORPG's or a specific MMORPG that does it "right?" What do they do that's different? Fill in the blanks, if you will. "Cryptic should work towards acting like ______, because ________."
Thanks in advance for the discussion.
a
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Conclusion: unless you're a HUGE fan of DC heroes don't waste your time on this crap. And even if you are, still don't waste your time on this crap, your good opinion of DC heroes is more important.
WoW is just a mess of basic MMORPG concepts in a fancy wrapping. Sure, it has an actual story behind it and a remotely balanced PvP, but...I personally find it lame, even though I like the cinematic trailers they make.
Cryptic should work towards acting like pre-alert Cryptic because back then we were getting either a new travel power or a costume set every week! And they seemed to actually care about the game.
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
But I will say this: Cryptic should start working like a company that wants to keep customers because they are losing customers.
They did, however, release a great game. Champions remains to be the only game I've ever subscribed for despite its current state.
But some games get more right than others.
But ...
Some games get things right that are irrelevant to you while getting other things tragically wrong.
The problem with CO, I think, is that it has more wrong with it than right for most players. But that emphatically isn't the same thing as saying CO sucks -- it just means that CO hits the sweet spot for relatively few people.
CO falls down for me because I like PvP, crafting, stories, and marketeering. CO's particular strength, customization, isn't that big a deal for me.
Any time there's a patch, something will break and everyone blames the developers, "they should have tested it before release", etc. Both CCP (EVE Online) and Turbine (LOTRO) both completely overhauled their launchers this month -- good games in my opinion -- but in both cases, seemingly obvious things were (may still be) broken in the launchers. And in both cases, player response is "well you know, it IS <company>, and they are well known for screwing everything up".
And then there's Blizzard, all they have to do to lose people is release an expansion for World of ********. The game is obviously great, but everyone has their gripes.
ArenaNet, when GW2 first came out they banned people for just owning the game. Oops.
If you're looking for an MMO from a team that "does it right", I don't see it. Trion with RIFT maybe...
Anyway... from what I've seen from Cryptic, you might not have top-notch graphics in some of these games but as a developer myself I am actually happy about their game engine. The game clients get features from Cryptic's engine that we're still dreaming about in other games. For example the key binding commands and being able to load/save from files, in all of Cryptic's games, is just beautiful.
I agree with this, I loved co when we got weekly updates. I didn't even mind a monthly update.
however what I don't like is how this game was tossed aside, we don't get any of the high ranking "leaders" like jack on the boards. I understand he is busy. but he could just pop in and tell us what cryptic has planned for us.
I respect trail he is doing the best he can.
your 2nd point is why I stopped playing this game, and why I am waiting for final fantasy arr.
I love superhero games, I cut my teeth with my 2nd mmo city of heroes. I just hope it is not to late for cryptic to right this sinking ship.
No one else has ever compared.
Champions Online nailed character customization. There could be some improvement with the faces, but otherwise it's great.
Guild Wars 2 nailed 'zone content' and the 'big monster out of nowhere' thing. I'd love to see this in a superhero setting more often- a random supervillain or giant monster marauding the city.
Star Wars: The Old Republic has a pretty awesome story idea. It at least kept me entertained.
City of Heroes/Villains had the twofold alignment and pretty sick stuff coming out regularly.
DC Universe has a combined 'attack power' and 'role power' setup that I kind of liked.
WoW has a big, expansive world.
a
WoW was about the same.
I'd honestly say as far as content goes- if you can think of them, they're pushing more out than CO.
It's actually my first P2P MMO back when it was still P2P even before I had an interest in CoX. It's now F2P. I'm also a lifetimer there.
What LOTRO did right was immersion. It makes you feel that you really were in Middle-Earth and the game is rather faithful to the source material. The classes also felt balanced and each had an integral role when it comes to partying. LOTRO is also the success story when it comes to converting to the F2P business model.
What it also did right was content and boy does the game just ooze with it. Towns and even continents to explore, along with lots of lairs. Replay value is definitely there.
Also, what it did right was PVP. The cool thing about PVP for LOTRO is that you're able to play on the enemy side and fight against player heroes. Ever wanted to play an Orc archer? Go on ahead. You also start at max level and go toe-to-toe with the best the heroes can offer right away regardless of whatever level of heroes you actually own yourself.
Only real downside I can say is the travel time. It's a real time-sink for that game. Even on horseback you can take up to a full 15-20 mins to get to one place to another for certain journeys. There are "fast travel" mounts that get you from point A to B at an instant, but those aren't available everywhere and they usually are pretty costly if the distance is very far.
Champions Online (and Cryptic, generally speaking) really hits the nail on the head, for me on two specific issues: Character customization (we'll just ignore Notawinner here) And their social/chat system. Cryptic's chat system, specifically just blows me away, and I wish it were a model every other MMO developer would look at and recognize as a gold standard. Customizable color coded channels, XMPP support, etc etc, it's a fantastic system.
The Secret World shines for me in a number of ways, first, dev communication: TSW's game director is constantly on the forums, he answers questions, posts updates, regular game director letters are posted to the main site. Their content delivered, while not as fast as it was originally envisioned, is *always* of the highest quality. The writing of each and every one of their stories is phenomenal, and it's an absolute thrill even after the first time going through it. The other big thing that stands out for me is the difficulty level, more specifically, what is required to succeed. It does not hold your hand, and does not let you lean on gear/build like a crutch. If you stand in a ground based AoE, you will die. Whether you have the worst, or the best gear, it will not save you from stupid.
Guild Wars 2, while it did not hook me like Co or TSW did, has it's good points for me. Excellent world design, fluid, beautiful animations (just the way the character's feet/stance shift depending on the terrain you are standing on is absolutely fantastic) and IMO, definitely the best, fairest pricing model in the industry as it stands now.
Age of Conan: Combat, everything combat. There is still not a single MMO today that can match the complexity, and fun of AoC's combat system, it stands in a league of it's own.
These are just a few things that come to mind immediately when posed with this question. I don't think we will ever see one MMO that can have all of these things, but, we pick and choose what is most important to us.
And playing by myself since Aug 2009
Godtier: Lifetime Subscriber
This is because, for the most part, it's an accurate description- if greatly exaggerated- of MMO devs as a whole.
In other words, of all the incompetent dev teams I've had the pleasure of following in some manner, MMO devs always somehow manage to rank the highest. Sometimes it's not strictly MMO, LoL for instance is a game that utilizes some RPG style systems but isn't an MMO that has devs that display all the usual things we hate about MMO developers.
Here's the kicker, though: Cryptic WAS one of the better ones. While we haven't seen a MMO dev team that reaches VAVLe's level of awesome, after Cryptic's crash and burn launch back into the ring with CO, they started to correct many of the failings we commonly see with MMO devs as well as those unique to them. Maybe it was a little too late, maybe it wasn't quite enough, but things were looking good at least on the development side of things for a while there. I have to say that a development house pulling a 180 like that is incredibly rare, especially with such an abysmal failure to begin with.
Sometimes however, you can do everything right and still fail. As such, then PWE happened, for one reason or another. Much of Cryptic's failings since then aren't necessarily their failings. We don't know how much of this is Cryptic's fault, and how much of it is PWE's fault, but I'm willing to wager PWE has a great part in it because EVERYONE, and I mean EVERYONE I talk to about this game basically says the same thing: "Man, I played that game for hours and hours before PWE took over." Cryptic came to understand their customers, while PWE seems to be in the practice of actively trying not to.
...I just recently realized something really disturbing. We're all eating Sodapop3's "humble pie."
CO, STO and Neverwinter.
Nepht and Dr Deflecto on primus
They all thought I was out of the game....But I'm holding all the lockboxes now..
I'll......FOAM FINGER YOUR BACK!
Rune scape has the most interesting PvP team queue I know of. Three factions: Law Chaos Balance. Instead of waiting for 10 each law and chaos players, or heor-villian, alliance-horde, fed-KDF, people can queue up as "I don't care just let me kill people" aka balance. So, if you have say 5 law, and 17 chaos, the queue never pops. But with 5 law, 7 chaos and as a few as 8 balance, 3 balancers sent to the chaos team, the other 5 to law and BOOM, queue pops in a 10v10 game. Bloody, fing, brilliant.
Rune scape has the best afk systems and anti-botting I know of. If you do the same thing for a while, a random event happens. When you're mining the head might fall off your pick, or an elemental might rise out of the ore and attack you. Or a wizard might teleport you onto a stage where you get into an emote contest with a mime. There's dozens of random events and many of them give you unique prizes like new emotes or costume bits. Stops gold farming bots dead, rewards players, and it's fun.
SWTOR had great voice acting, and I loved the compainion story arcs.
STO has brought back several of the actors for voice work. I love hearing Leonard Nemoy give overviews of each sector as I explore the first time, and with the expansion we now have a few by Denise Crosby aka Empress Sela.
I truly adore the unique blend of action, voice, and still images in CO's action pack cut scenes. Whiteout and Aftershock in particular. The still frames are iconically comic book and worked into the cutscene really well. Plus some of the voice actors have done a really good job. I wish the technique was used more in the Malvanum Alert really.
Mankind.net (dead for many years sadly) was the first MMORTS I know of, and it was the best sandbox RTS I've seen still to this day. There were literally two NPCs in the game. Everything else was a Player owned resource. IT had no automation. You couldn't tell your harvested units to mine that ore until it's gone. You had to click them each time. Sounds annoying right? Not at all. Powerful players would "hire" new players to BE their automation. I got paid tons of resources to manage a planet and it's moon for one guy for three months when I was just getting started. Before I moved off to set up my own territory I trained two people for him. Combat needed work as the best strategy was just to flood an area with so many resources computers couldn't render them. but Meh. Loved the sandbox and loved the way it rewarded powerful elite players for supporting newbies.
Dark Age had the best quest engine ever. No "of camelot" no "ages", just Dark Age. It was an old MUD which got a facelift by adding a 16-bit sprite graphic engine onto it. Set in Lovecraft's Dreamworld of Kadath. Pretty standard fantasy sword and sorcery game. Until you realized that your quest givers were AFK or Offline Players not NPCs. If I got voted in as the mayor of a town, I could set up a contest for crafters to make some magic weapons. Then I could set a quest for heroes/adventurers to go kill a nearby monster. The reward for killing the monster was the item the crafters made. I could set the quests up and anyone who wants to could take them by talking to my character while I was AFK or logged into another one. I got exp based on how many people participated in the quests I set up. I've never seen anything else half as awesome.
If the answer is yes, they are doing it right.
If the answer is no, they aren't.
Yeah, perhaps it's a simplistic view, but I just don't feel like it's worthwhile getting so worked up over a game like some people.
(Incidentally, I use the same criteria for movies.)
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Coh/v and co do have one impressively hookish hook of giving pretty thorough customization for your characters, and not mucking up your back-story from your own creativity's freedom. Now, that may not sound like a lot, but like many of you, I cant draw very well, not a great dialogue writer either so i have about as much chance of making my own comic as i do of making a vaccine for the hiccups. but, the co /coh thing gave us a a large number of costumes that were evocative of enough popular art styles from gaming comics and mang that i could take their professionally made stuff and use it to make the characters that are in my head and are far less well drawn.
that sense of ownership is something i really dont see in other games where customization tends to biol down to fairly specific facial sliders and body sliders that allow for a lot of fine adjustments but in the hands of a non graphic artist, basically exst to mock my inability to make someone good looking with them.
As evidence by both the dogged fight to save coh and the dogged remaining of players here despite the somewhat relaxed content schedule, a feeling of "ownership"of your characters is what drives fan art, drove some good, and many many bad, fan stories and basically allows players to like their characters. now, over the past have played a good portion of the games on the market and if you asked me to describe my character from granado espada,or TERA, or everquest, or even wow in any detail i'd probably not get very far, but the sizable roster i had in both coh and here(sort of cheating now since a lot of my chars are coh transplants)i could describe in fairly specific detail, even though they had far more variables to their appearances.
I cant reiterate enough, i hate mmos, their gameplay is stilted and hasn't evolved for far too long, they devalue the power of individual characters to encourage/force teaming and they can be taken away from you forever by a uncaring publisher. so the usual mmo "hooks" dont work on me, but give me the ability to intersect my imagination with the skills of someone who can actually make great looking art, and hell yeah.
funny thing is i never tried secret world, seems kind of customizable, but how in the @#$% do you make a modern day themed mmo and not have a martial arts powerset?..and no, their wolverene claw set does not count.
WOW- elitist jerks abound. and my intro to the game, a high level camping outside the start area mission giver and ganking all the new characters until they stopped respawning. No idea about PvP cause I was never interested in it. Teaming , I levelled solo. Only ever had to report the Ganker at the start.
Rift- that was fun- being able to get 3 (effectively)different classes on the one person with the skill/spec system. And the invasions, mad dashes around as we tried removing them before the Boss turned up. never had to use customer service for them
Evony- well it's an MMO, thats all that can be said for. The fact that it has a 1 week grace period at the start before people can attack you, pretty much describes the game. Joinging a guild can be useful but if ONE person attacks soemone from another guild or their allies, war starts and you find out when you lgo on and have no cities left.
GW2- pretty pictures, dead boring missions. and the BOT plagues...shudder. And my childhood friend the imbecile, I with great dlight picked"allow him to die"
TSW- looked interesting but my internet speed wasn't up to it. When I c ancelled it, they asked what was the probelm and could they help?
Champions- so half an hour picking your start costume is normal? isn't it? I started as silver, bought some AT's, chnaged to gold. Got a spare acct, changed that to gold, changed first to LTS. I like being able to make up weird combos.
Customer service, I've never had a problem with. I find a concise, polite email, detailing exactly what the problem is and they get back to me with a solution. This includes accts, characters, bugs, what they heck is my login(I forgot which was my login and handle on my second acct )
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Base on what I've read so far, it seems like the answer is "no." No MMO RPG company really gets it "right" in these areas. I understand Secret World and WoW respond quickly to individual user issues and that Cryptic used to be at the top of the heap when it came to a lot of these topics. Still, their doesn't look like any company can be held up as the gold standard.
Does that sound about right?
It put things into an interesting light, for me. I like Cryptic with regards to communication and content, in NWO and STO. They used to be better in these area with regard to CO. I find it ironic that I feel hooked into Cryptic games and still value my time in CO so much, even though, as far as Champions Online is concerned, the company's fallen pretty far.
After reading all this, I wonder. Is poor customer service, lackluster development, and poor communication the correct set of expectations for an MMORPG house?
a
I would argue that Blizzard do do things "right". Even with the recent drop-off of far east players WoW still has a subbed customer base of around 9 million players. I very rarely hear of bad customer service, in fact the majority of customer service stories I have heard are very positive.