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How to fix MMOs
nectarprime
Member, Neverwinter Beta Users, Neverwinter Guardian Users Posts: 0 Arc User
1. get rid of fast travel
2. get rid of "end game" - it should be about the journey, not the destination
3. different races should have starting cities far away from each other - it should be rare to see, say, a lvl 10 dwarf in a human city
4. loot should be harder to get - no guaranteed rare items ever, off anything
That should get rid of most of the kiddies. Thoughts?
2. get rid of "end game" - it should be about the journey, not the destination
3. different races should have starting cities far away from each other - it should be rare to see, say, a lvl 10 dwarf in a human city
4. loot should be harder to get - no guaranteed rare items ever, off anything
That should get rid of most of the kiddies. Thoughts?
Post edited by nectarprime on
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Yeah...not likely.
Yes it should have more of an emphasis on the journey, but what do you do at the end? What is your plan for player retention? Reroll? Not everyone see's that as a viable option.
Nothing wrong with wanting/making a niche MMO that caters to a specific crowd. Sometimes the ones that try and cater to everyone for profits are the ones that fail.
There shouldn't be an easily reachable end.
But when you get to the end what do you do, you are avoiding this question.
My map has two difficulty options for the player, Easy and Hard. Other maps have been using the same feature.
I miss those days of when MMOs were pretty much what you describe. Those were the ones that kept me playing for years instead of days/weeks.
Today's MMO is so focused on instant everything (travel, dungeon, etc) that it feels like very few people actually play the game. Then again, the way the games are designed also helps encourage the rush rush rush to the top.
Companies who make these games know that if they make their game easier, and make it give rewards all the time, more people will play. This was the downfall of awesome games like EQ and UO and this is the reason WoW became so popular and every MMO released now is just like that.
Ah, the good ol' days. Back when MMO's were great. I would like to see those changes too.
As for "end game". There will always be people that make it to the top so you keep those people busy with an endless series of character progression that has diminishing returns. You can do like Asheron's Call and have skills continue to go up forever (though the game did end up capping at level 126 due to a design flaw). You can have Alternative Advancement like in Everquest. You could simply have experience used as a currency to raise every skill, stat, resistance, and character feature you can think of. You could say the first 1% of built in fire resistance costs 10000 exp, the second costs 15000, etc.. Upgrading the same feature just gets more and more expensive (diminishing returns). You could give people spell like abilities (costs 10000 exp to be able to cast cure light wounds once per 24 hours) and people can buy multiple copies of every spell like ability. I can think of hundreds of ways to upgrade a character without changing his clothes (since unfortunately end game in current MMO's is little more than a fashion game where you grind new dungeons just to earn a new outfit and throw away your old one). If character progression never stops then you never actually reach the end game. The game simply continues.
End game is basically defined as reaching the character progression cap (e.g. the level or skill cap) where there is no more advancement except for gear. He did not avoid the question. He stated that any good game should never have an advancement cap. You can't reach the "end game" if the game never ends. As long as there is more character progression you are not done. A system of diminishing returns only has to have an end if you program one in.
Yeah Call of Duty, WOW are such fails.....oh wait they sold a lot
1) Fast-Travel: If I have to slog across a continent, which in some MMO's can literally take an hour, to get to the spot I want to hunt, I'm not going to do it. It might be fun once or twice, but after the 20th trip would get mighty old.
2) End Game: You have to have something. It may not be Raids, but you need something. I am an altaholic, I'll thoroughly enjoy making new alts, but not everybody is like that. I know many players who grow very invested in their characters, and they don't want to do an alt. You have to have something for them, or they'll leave.
3) I like the flavor of different cities, but there has to be a way to meet up. If my wife rolls an elf, and I roll a dwarf, we're still going to want to play together. If we have to wait 15 levels to meet up. That's not going to make us happy. Early WoW was like that, and we were willing to put up with it to a degree, but it was a nuisance.
4) I do think epic loot has gotten a bit crazy. Blue is the new Green, and Purple is the new blue. We need to tone down the Monty Hall looting, but there's got to be something, and something pretty cool. If I spend 4 hours with a large group slogging through a raid and finally kill that epic boss at the end, it had better **** well drop something. It doesn't necessarily have to be something for me, but somebody better get some loot.
Just my thoughts, you can agree or disagree. There can, and have been games like you describe. City of Heroes leaps to mind (minus the race part) I played that game for years, and it truly catered to the altaholic, but it was never a blockbuster.
Me fail english? Thats unpossible!
1. The problem is that "general public" have a limited time they can play. Getting rid of fast travel will kill that market (remember that bigger market = bigger chance to make money) Niche market is nice, but then you are depending on a smaller pool (depending how small of a pool EVE usually have around 35k-40k of players in a single world)
2. End game - you must have something that require a group to get "something" that people will want to show off. It is the carrot mentality and EGO. It is all about the next Shiny
3. Different starting area is nice BUT you have to have a large pool of players to even do that. It is very expensive to host more server instead of "cramming" into an instance. It is also easier (and cheaper) to create a single place (in our case PE) and spawn instance instead of creating 6 unique areas and quest.
4. Rare items is what get people to play longer. The harder the loot, the greater the draw
Remember game USE to be this hard, but MMO changes to cater to more people and making it free. you can't have a free to play game and cater to a small crowd. It is just too expensive to do it.
you have to decide between:
Artist (costume, add-ons, city/landscape)
programmers (add-on groups, bug fixing group, costume group) it all depend how large your MMO is.
Support team (GM, Leads, tech support)
If you have small income (niche group) then your team will be small. Expansion will be small and far in-between. Support team is also hinder when you have a small budget. You can only afford so much AND trying to make a profit.
Please review my campaign and I'll return the favor.
I know what end-game is, and how it should be reached with a longer journey then most other games. And a MMO never does end, things are always in development and if you can keep the pace that a player progresses to be longer then it takes to develop something then congrats for you. But there are people out there who will power game to get to the end of the current dev cycle. Do you alienate them and give them nothing to do then?
Same here, when MMORPGs were like what the op described I played those for years, one Isteria Still playing since 1998. Miss having a large world to explore with your race's unique city and starting area.
What I was trying to portray is that those games are very, very mainstream nowadays.
Never said they were niche. I meant going mainstream will most likely yield a bigger customer base and hence profit.
It was a response to Jlander advocating this change and advocating losing a lot of the playerbase.
That is the playerbase with the most money
Please review my campaign and I'll return the favor.
Dont understand the word sometimes?
Personally I never got into that game mostly because I'd rather strangle myself to death with my mouse cord then suffer that horrible play control and the whole sitting in one spot 24/7 for days on end to camp a monster spawn and GM reporting people who tried to steal the "spawn" that was kind of a turn off to. To each their own I suppose would be nice if former EQ players did not make this exact same thread over and over in every new MMO forums ever and forever.
Really!?
Im not advocating to change this game. I just pointed out that there is nothing wrong with any company catering to a single play style. PoE comes to mind. They are a niche game that the people playing it love. No idea how you got all that from my post, probably just trying to pick a fight.
I would like to say youre right.