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Harrow posted:As for EverQuest, really, I just don't think that kind of MMO is going to take off again. Most of the players who loved EverQuest back then just don't have the time or patience for the pace that a game like EverQuest requires. People generally want to log in and get right to actively doing something these days, for better or for worse. I don't think that's necessarily an inherently bad thing, either. The popularity of ARK, DayZ, Conan, Fallout 76, etc. shows that's not necessarily the whole story. Some people sure do love sitting around doing gently caress-all for hours. You just gotta frame it in a way that captures their interest. Also you don't have to be a 10M subscriber game to be a 'success', EQ had tiny populations at its peak compared to WoW but they were still good enough numbers to keep the game going back then. I think you can target a niche and make a really successful game if you did it right. A part of MMOs though is that since most of them have subscriptions, the industry is inherently very crowded. Most people don't want to pay for subs at all, and some won't ever subscribe. Of those who do, the vast majority will never subscribe to multiple MMOs at the same time. That means in order for someone to buy your MMO, you not only have to appeal to them, you have to convince them to drop all the hours of progress they've invested in another MMO to even give yours a chance. That's really anti-competitive. WoW is like a drug that gets you hooked and then you can't easily get off. Which is why I think games like Destiny and Division and GW2 getting off subscriptions is part of the necessary future of MMOs. There was a whole fleet of MMOs like D&D Online, Lord of the Rings Online, Star Wars The Old Republic, etc. etc. that came out as subscription games, bombed pretty hard, and then turned around and went free2play and actually saw modest success and profit. That said, free2play games can have a really icky exploitative feel to them (give us your money!) which turns some people way off. So more need to embrace the GW2/Destiny model of $60 boxed game, plus expansions. (Although even with Destiny I would argue they're charging more money than the expansions are worth. While also double-dipping and having micro-transactions they try to get you to buy)
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Sep 6, 2018 23:42
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Zaphod42 posted:TWhich is why I think games like Destiny and Division and GW2 getting off subscriptions is part of the necessary future of MMOs. There was a whole fleet of MMOs like D&D Online, Lord of the Rings Online, Star Wars The Old Republic, etc. etc. that came out as subscription games, bombed pretty hard, and then turned around and went free2play and actually saw modest success and profit. I generally support getting away from the subscription model, but it's worth noting that both GW2 and Destiny get their money one way or another. Destiny's expansions are what ESO would call "DLC" and what WoW would call "a major content patch." Like, imagine a version of WoW: Legion where, instead of paying a subscription, you would have to individually purchase the content that was released in patches 7.1, 7.2, and 7.3 as DLC. That's how the Elder Scrolls Online does things. Explicitly, in fact. They used to do content patches like WoW back when the game had a required subscription, but part of dropping the required subscription was instead packaging those content patches as DLC that players would purchase (or get as part of an optional subscription). One way or another, you're getting charged for content updates. GW2, meanwhile, doesn't charge for its content patches*, but instead has a somewhat prominent cash shop, and also lets players buy microtransaction currency to sell to other players for in-game gold, so there's plenty of real money going into ArenaNet's pockets at any given time even without a subscription. So that's how they're paying for continued content development in place of a subscription. It's kind of a double-edged sword, because the continued creation of art assets just for the gem store kind of robs the rest of the game of unique rewards (like mount skins, which are only ever in the gem store), but at least there's no subscription. (It's worth noting that ESO also has a microtransaction shop, but generally is much more "generous" with putting cosmetics in the actual game and not just into the shop, probably because they're also making money either from that optional subscription or by selling DLC.) Destiny's kind of the worst of all of them, in my opinion. They sell their content patch DLC for far more than it's worth, continually push players towards their cash shop, but worst of all: they release sequels instead of true expansions. Why is that worse? Because it makes you leave behind everything you did in the previous game, including paid microtransaction stuff, so that Bungie can sell it back to you. At a certain point, I'd really rather pay a subscription. That said, I know that isn't the majority opinion. You're right that the games that succeed in the future will very likely need to do so by abandoning the subscription model and will look a lot more like Destiny than WoW. I'm not convinced that's a wholly good thing, but I guess more of a lateral move. * - Technically, GW2's content patches--which they call Living World episodes--are paid content if you don't log in while they're the current episode. So like if you log in right now, you get Living World Season 4, Episode 3 for free, but if you log in after Episode 4 comes out, you get Episode 4 for free but would have to pay for Episode 3 if you didn't already unlock it. But that's kind of a weird technicality that isn't super relevant to this discussion.
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Sep 7, 2018 00:11
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All that is fine. The 300 pound gorilla in the room is the dogshit combat mechanics. As soon as I see hotkeys I don't bother. I cannot play a game that has me jamming the 1 key until kingdom come. Worse yet is setting up macros, etc. Blah. Elite was brought up and it's a cool immersive game but one of the most hostile when it comes to doing anything meaningful or interacting with other players.
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Sep 7, 2018 02:00
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Yeah Elite is no perfect mmo but if you're looking for EVE but letting you pilot the ships yourself, that's loving it RPG combat is pretty bad and yeah, mixing any other kind of combat in with the mmo virtual world and the rpg character progression makes it way better. EQ was basically turn based because they based it on D&D, games were simpler back then, and they had to be much more tolerant of high latency. Planetside 2 has tons of flaws but it lets thousands of people play FPS together, that means any other kind of combat should be technically feasible too.
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Sep 7, 2018 02:23
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PlanetSide 2 is a mechanically fun game that has nothing going for it in terms of metagame. The next fantasy MMO that will do well needs a simple but fun melee mechanic like the original dark souls with even the same leveling system but much slower to level. I think you'd find players accommodating to lag and latency if the reasons were sound, like being in an enormous battle or populated city.
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Sep 7, 2018 05:42
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I've come to the conclusion that personally I don't really give a poo poo about the "massive" part of MMOs. I like buddying up with 3-20 likeminded strangers, exploring strange places, meeting strange new creatures, beating them up and taking their pants. I don't want a sandbox, or a living world, or any of that junk: I want a directed experience and a solid narrative, thanks. That gameplay has traditionally been an MMO thing but I think there's a niche for a game that focuses on doing those things real well. Vermintide or L4D, but with more variety, a solid progression system, real bosses and some nice, floaty RPG gameplay. Ideally with decent bots for when I don't feel like dealing with people. For now, eh, themeparks it is.
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Sep 7, 2018 07:37
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Xerophyte posted:I've come to the conclusion that personally I don't really give a poo poo about the "massive" part of MMOs. I like buddying up with 3-20 likeminded strangers, exploring strange places, meeting strange new creatures, beating them up and taking their pants. I don't want a sandbox, or a living world, or any of that junk: I want a directed experience and a solid narrative, thanks. Secret World Legends? One of the better MMO storylines out there, good voice acting and NPCs, and zone maps have a low max population by design. You won't be able to zip through the storyline without doing side quests, but many of those explore the lore of a world on the brink of supernatural apocalypse. Hello Sailor fucked around with this message at 07:49 on Sep 7, 2018 |
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Sep 7, 2018 07:45
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Hello Sailor posted:Secret World Legends? One of the better MMO storylines out there and zone maps have a low max population by design. You won't be able to zip through the storyline without doing side quests, but many of those explore the lore of a world on the brink of supernatural apocalypse. That (along with Guild Wars 1) would be one of the theme park mmos that goes the most in that direction, yeah. Secret World's problem is that while a lot of its quests, investigation and mysteries for the world content are legit great and the backstory and writing is fantastic, the dungeons and bosses aren't quite up to snuff. At least, that was what I thought pre-Legends. I haven't played for well over a year now.
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Sep 7, 2018 07:53
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The problem is that immersiveness and fun can be opposing forces in these kinds of games. Old MMOs like Everquest felt more like real worlds, because they weren't instanced and travel took a long time. This forced you to get in contact with other people. Can't solo stuff all that well, better find a group. Travel takes a long time, better find someone who can teleport. Travelling to a dungeon, meeting strangers to group up with and making friends that way really was the charm of these old games. But it comes at a cost. If you spent an hour getting to a dungeon and all groups are full, you're poo poo out of luck. If you only have an hour to play, it might not even be worth it. If you want a big open world that feels like a real place, better be prepared for the commute.
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Sep 7, 2018 10:29
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EvE, but run by Paradox.
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Sep 7, 2018 13:33
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Dark Souls, but MMO. I'm being serious too.
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Sep 7, 2018 15:26
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Speaking of, I just remembered Deep Down existed. How long has it been since that went quiet?
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Sep 7, 2018 16:38
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Glenn Quebec posted:The next fantasy MMO that will do well needs a simple but fun melee mechanic like the original dark souls with even the same leveling system but much slower to level. We definitely need more fantasy MMOs where the combat, more than anything else, is direct. When people complain about tab-target/hotbar MMOs, I think part of the issue is that combat just becomes too abstract in that case. You're not doing a move because it's the right move in the situation--you're doing it because it's the next move in your rotation. In an effort to alleviate the boredom of standing around autoattacking, even melee classes get turned into "press buttons in order to do canned animations" mini-games. There's nothing wrong with special moves, obviously, but I think the best solution isn't so much to make every move a special move (which is functionally how most hotbar-based MMOs work) as it is to make the process of doing your basic attacks something that's engaging. You know, like any single-player action game does, whether it's Souls or DMC or God of War or anything else. If you can do a lot of engaging things by stringing your basic attacks together into combos, manually aiming ranged attacks for locational damage, and things like that, you don't need to rely as much on special abilities to keep combat engaging, so those abilities can be more, y'know, special. There definitely are MMOs that do this, often the Korean or Japanese action-MMOs like Vindictus, Blade & Soul, or Dragon's Dogma Online. I'd love to see a version of these that takes steps away from the rest of the Eastern-style MMO formula, though. I don't necessarily want this hypothetical game to conform to the Western-style MMO formula, either (heavy focus on repeatable instanced dungeons and too much focus on making the player go through a single-player-style story), but I'd prefer that to the "just grind mobs endlessly in the open world" PvE that games like Black Desert has.
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Sep 7, 2018 16:51
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Glenn Quebec posted:Dark Souls, but MMO. I'm being serious too. Nah, of course its serious. It'd be work but its a great idea. I said the same last page.
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Sep 7, 2018 17:00
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Also I think 'levels' are a design crutch. Wanna see more MMOs without any levels. Other forms of progression are better and don't result in people with no life being unkillable.
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Sep 7, 2018 17:01
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That's why graal was great. Graal was just a link to the past but online and with custom maps and the zelda stuff filed off enough to not incur nintendo's wrath. You could go and find heart containers and upgrades to power yourself up but you also had a bunch of different items that didn't really do much other than just exist and be neat and you could also just mess around with the map creator and make your own content that you could get put into the game if you went over it with the head of the server.
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Sep 7, 2018 17:09
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Zaphod42 posted:Also I think 'levels' are a design crutch. Wanna see more MMOs without any levels. Other forms of progression are better and don't result in people with no life being unkillable. For sure. Just make space, make interesting. Dragon's Dogmas map comes to mind that was expansive and not very 'level' like. That said, I do understand instancing in the case of dungeons or small, tightly packed areas. but it needs to be more of a ... Let's say, 50 - 100 people in the instance as opposed to 5 - 10.
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Sep 7, 2018 17:16
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I want the gameplay of Neverwinter, the politics and community and company developer style of EVE Online and the freedoms therein, the player housing of Wildstar, and the transmog system of WoW. I also want it to be a subscription only game to keep the riff raff out. So with my high standards, I'll probably never be happy. 
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Sep 8, 2018 18:58
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FirstAidKite posted:That's why graal was great. Graal was just a link to the past but online and with custom maps and the zelda stuff filed off enough to not incur nintendo's wrath. You could go and find heart containers and upgrades to power yourself up but you also had a bunch of different items that didn't really do much other than just exist and be neat and you could also just mess around with the map creator and make your own content that you could get put into the game if you went over it with the head of the server. true that. i always thought that including the map editor and scripting stuff helped that game survive. Neverwinter's persistent worlds were kind of the same way. i've love to see more games crafted around player bases of 100-300 people rather than shooting for thousands or whatever. obviously there are economies of scale that make it hard to do that so whatever.
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Sep 8, 2018 20:21
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I'm honestly fine with hotkey style MMOs, what really annoys me is having to press a button constantly for 30 minutes straight. In FFXI the challenge was more in coming up with tactics to cheese a monster fight and also simply navigating there through zones of monsters that would destroy you if you had to fight more than two at a time.
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Sep 8, 2018 23:42
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I don't think it will ever happen on a huge scale, but I think that tactics games are a great model for MMOs. The basic gameplay of Dofus and Wakfu are both a lot of fun, and offer a lot of what other MMOs lack for me: good reasons to actually interact with other people. Typically you can solo a pretty limited amount of enemies at any level range, but level much faster and easier with even one other player. I always wondered why a more competent company than Ankama never got into the genre.
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Sep 9, 2018 01:55
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Here is that idea in a space game and awful https://store.steampowered.com/app/574070/Space_Wars_Interstellar_Empires/
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Sep 9, 2018 02:17
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FirstAidKite posted:That's why graal was great. Graal was just a link to the past but online and with custom maps and the zelda stuff filed off enough to not incur nintendo's wrath. You could go and find heart containers and upgrades to power yourself up but you also had a bunch of different items that didn't really do much other than just exist and be neat and you could also just mess around with the map creator and make your own content that you could get put into the game if you went over it with the head of the server. Graal loving owned so hard. I miss Unholy Nation. I just want an MMO where I can work on getting rich without an auction house.
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Sep 9, 2018 02:28
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Agoat posted:Graal loving owned so hard. I miss Unholy Nation. if Trion hadn't hosed Archeage into the ground with pay to win, that would have been the game
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Sep 9, 2018 02:40
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eonwe posted:if Trion hadn't hosed Archeage into the ground with pay to win, that would have been the game I'm heartbroken. Are there games worth messing with with auction houses aside from RuneScape?
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Sep 9, 2018 02:52
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Agoat posted:I just want an MMO where I can work on getting rich without an auction house. Star Wars Galaxies was the poo poo man I mean it was buggy half-finished poo poo, but it had a golden environment for people who just wanted to play mmo economy all day
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Sep 9, 2018 06:31
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Nazgul posted:I want the gameplay of Neverwinter, the politics and community and company developer style of EVE Online and the freedoms therein, the player housing of Wildstar, and the transmog system of WoW. I want the game to be subscription only because that way the developers don't have any incentive to make non-cash shop gameplay aggravating. If they sell exp potions and extra inventory space, you can bet going without those is annoying.
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Sep 9, 2018 11:44
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Anyone else play Fallen Earth? It had potential before it went totally belly up
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Sep 9, 2018 13:57
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Philonius posted:I want the game to be subscription only because that way the developers don't have any incentive to make non-cash shop gameplay aggravating. If they sell exp potions and extra inventory space, you can bet going without those is annoying. Being subscription doesn't prevent them from selling inventory space though
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Sep 9, 2018 15:22
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Zaphod42 posted:Being subscription doesn't prevent them from selling inventory space though Being subscription doesn't prevent them from anything, gently caress you, we want ALL THE MONEY! ALL OF THEM!
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Sep 10, 2018 08:35
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It's funny cause I'll spend so much loving cash on costumes etc but not a dime on gameplay boosters
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Sep 10, 2018 12:11
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Nazgul posted:I want the gameplay of Neverwinter, the politics and community and company developer style of EVE Online and the freedoms therein, the player housing of Wildstar, and the transmog system of WoW. Believe it or not, this is one thing that Elder Scrolls Online does way better than WoW. ESO's outfit system is pretty great. You can transmog any armor appearance over any other kind of armor, regardless of weight. Want to wear all light armor but look like you're wearing full plate? Go right ahead. Want to wear a mix of medium and heavy armor and look like you're wearing robes with a few pieces of plate? Yeah man, go for it. And the best part is that you don't have to redo your outfit every time you get a new piece of equipment like WoW does, because you're not actually changing the appearance of any of your items--you're just creating an outfit that you wear over whatever armor you have. Your outfit doesn't have to change when you change the armor you're actually wearing because it's not tied to those items at all. And you can have multiple outfit slots that you can switch between at any time. The one downside is that they do make you work harder to unlock armor appearances (you have to find the crafting motifs for those appearances, rather than just finding the item like in WoW) but it's a really flexible and good transmog system in general. Also is Neverwinter's gameplay actually good? From what I've seen of games I'd rather have the gameplay of Dragon's Dogma Online or Black Desert or something but if Neverwinter's combat is rad then cool
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Sep 10, 2018 15:14
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Frog Act posted:Anyone else play Fallen Earth? It had potential before it went totally belly up It got bought by a new company who's CEO considers it his personal pet project. He's being pretty upfront about the problems they are having trying to get it to a point where they can even consider improving it, it is interesting to see.
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Sep 10, 2018 16:59
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Agoat posted:It's funny cause I'll spend so much loving cash on costumes etc but not a dime on gameplay boosters Same, although they also need to be reasonably priced. If tf2 hats were like .50 cents I'd have bought every one and spent like $80. But they were like $15 each so fuuuuuuuck that, never bought a single one, only traded.
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Sep 10, 2018 18:50
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Nazgul posted:I want the gameplay of Neverwinter, the politics and community and company developer style of EVE Online and the freedoms therein, the player housing of Wildstar, and the transmog system of WoW. so you want a lovely community of humorless nerds who threaten each other with death over ingame slights, ran by drunks who know so little about the code for their own game they can't fix things like ingame billboards and instead of reinvesting the profits to improve their game piss it away on poorly thought out ventures that all hilariously flamed out forcing them to sell everything to koreans high standards indeed 
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Sep 10, 2018 22:14
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i am developing an open world player driven build your empire crafting fantasy MMORPG that features a time based passive classless skill progression system and ruthless player on player interaction
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Sep 11, 2018 03:20
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1001 Arabian dicks posted:i am developing an open world player driven build your empire crafting fantasy MMORPG that features a time based passive classless skill progression system and ruthless player on player interaction Except for the time-based passive skill progression, you've just described Ultima Online.
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Sep 11, 2018 04:46
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Zaphod42 posted:Same, although they also need to be reasonably priced. A lot of them are in that price range. Aside from unusuals a lot of them are less than $3, with one's from the pre-rarity system being dirt cheap.
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Sep 11, 2018 09:28
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Glenn Quebec posted:Dark Souls, but MMO. I'm being serious too. I would pay good money for that poo poo. question for you guys, if an mmo has no option to play as a human, would it fail?
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Sep 11, 2018 16:57
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Fruity20 posted:I would pay good money for that poo poo. I think you'd need something reasonably human-like for people who want to make their pretty characters but I also don't know if it would "fail" without it. Really depends on what "fail" means and how strictly we're defining "human." Like if there was a Zelda MMO and the closest thing to human was Hylian, it'd be fine, because they're basically elves so they're human enough. But if it was WoW, only there was no Alliance and they never added blood elves, then I really don't know how many potential players would be lost.
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Sep 11, 2018 17:09
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