What the fuck happened to MMORPGs?
They started off simple enough, it was about the thrill of adventuring and discovery.
But look at it now, nobody talks, everyone is in their exclusive little clubs, datamining has become so norm that its actually frowned upon not knowing everything about a particular game before starting it, min-maxing elitism which used to comprise less than 1% community is now widespread, nobody is allowed to have fun, experiment or play around any more.
MMOs have become no fun allowed serious business. Its a miracle the whole genre hasn't died off completely.
You would think they would be the next step in video games - The idea that several hundreds to thousands of players playing in the same (in-game) region sounds like gaming in the future...
However, we've had MMOs for a long time and don't seem to live up to that ideal.
I think we COULD have good MMOs, but the problem is companies are short-sighted and keep the genre from progressing.
catering to casuals is literally the nail in the coffin for any mmo. once you start nerfing content so any schmuck can steam roll it you've lost.
any pay 2 win kills many mmos because they know their game won't be around long enough to make money any other way
>>333858682
1. Too much theme park, not enough exploration and mystery
2. Lack of real danger when leveling. Vanilla WoW, Everquest, etc. had shit that would fuck you up early on, which meant you had to learn from your mistakes.
3. Too much focus on the endgame instead of making leveling fun, rewarding, and hard. Everyone breezes to max level and then complains about no content.
4. Developer teams are too small. I *still* don't fucking get this. Why is WoW's team not at least triple the size? Those wages can't even begin to compare to what they could have reaped from it if 3x the team meant they could push updates and patches out 2x as fast.
5. Making old content trivial for *everyone* through sheer character levels. Why doesn't a game just stick with its level cap? Just make everything hit harder and have higher hp the higher "tier" it gets. The gear is what should let you survive and beat it.
6. Culture change. Casualization has worsened things for everyone.
7. Cross-server anything. As much as you hate to sit in town shouting "LF tank", there was a time when you could actually know everyone of import on a server and if you were of import, they would know you. That died very fast when you could pug any random nobody from anyhwere.
blah blah etc.
>>333858682
Read >>333859223
And keep it to one thread.
Gamers will socialize when they have a reason to do so - in MMO's, this is overcoming a problem that one person cannot solve by themself. If an area has mobs that have a decent chance of killing solo players, and the player needs to go through the area in order to level, they will try to form groups so it is easier.
Recent MMO's have tried to cater to solo players, thinking that by making everything easy, it will make people want to play more. This defeats any reason to group, which is the reason why people begin socializing.
They have also removed strategic elements of grouping. In wow there is almost no crowd control used anymore, it is just pulling a big group and aoeing it down, or pulling one guy and using your rotation to kill it. This makes it so that even when grouping, there is no need to coordinate things in chat, so everyone is silent.
It is sad, but this is what the predicted outcome of casualization was.
>>333859021
>You would think they would be the next step in video games - The idea that several hundreds to thousands of players playing in the same (in-game) region sounds like gaming in the future...
I thought so too, i've been playing videogames since I was 7, that's 23 years of just gaming and as a kid I used to look at so many games and imagine how fun it would be if those other characters were actual people, its actually disappointing that its going the other way.
But honestly, more than companies I actually blame the playerbase, two of the practices that used to be so rare, datamining and min-maxing used to be something only done by elitists and fairly unknown, but now its such a common practice, I used to look at Destiny when it just launched, 12 hours after the game launched datamine was already out and there was no mistery, it being a social game was the problem, even if you wanted to ignore datamining, there were always a dozen people on your party chat that wouldn't shut the fuck up about every weapon and armor piece in the game. min-maxing too has just reached critical mass, Tree of Savior is a perfect example of this. Its gotten so bad over there that you'll get shitposted no matter what build you use. Not to mention petty shit like killstealing is just a commonly accepted practice these days, that is, like you said problem of the companies, they can't design a system properly.
>>333859836
Cool it on the backseat moderation, nobody's forcing you to read a thread.
>>333859198
>catering to casuals is literally the nail in the coffin for any mmo
As is balancing content that caters to a single uber raiding guild.
I don't know, I hardly, care, but apparently Spiral Knights is getting its old devs back and this time Sega won't have them by the balls.
Apparently there's a /v/ group but I can't find it. They say go to haven 7, but I can't FIND haven 7.
My faith in MMOs died when they Killed XIV and replaced it with that realm reborn piece of shit instead of just fixing the server issues.
>>333860085
>I don't know, I hardly, care, but
Had a little seizure with the comma button, have we?
>>333860557
It had far more problems than just server issues. And both the media and fans were running away from it.
Though now fans are doing the same thing to FFXIV. Seems to have 10% of the players it had at launch. Clearly both versions have issues. Should have just brought Dragon Quest X over.
>>333860737
No, what, are you, tal,king,about,,,,?,,,
>>333858682
World of Warcraft happened.
It comes out, destroys records for amount of people playing, completely and inadvertently changes many aspects of MMO's. In the future people would find many of those aspects to be requirements, but those games wouldn't offer it.
Games either tried to mimic it or keep doing their own/normal mmo thing, they were seen as failures compared to WoW.
Luster faded as every MMO is the same and to stand out you have to make super retarded shit.
WoW also came out during the golden age of gaming, gaming was starting to become casual and many people that normally wouldn't game were gaming, it became a social phenomenon, and when you can see there's tons more money to be made for doing something xxx way, studios will do it, especially when you have a publisher controlling you because they have investors/stockholders to answer to
>>333860557
>FFXIV comes out
>Has a beautiful complex crafting system that requires multiple crafters working together
>People cry that its too complicated and they can't solo the content
>They turn it into simplified two material crafting
XIV was actually trying to bring back that old-school MMO and people just shat themselves and screamed it out of existence.
>>333860887
It really didn't. The only two actual problems were everything being serverside with bad communication making everything, from hit detection to menu interfaces lag. And second problem was The engine wasn't intended for MMOs so only 14 players/NPCs total could be displayed on-screen at the same time.
Everything else was fine and different, EXP was gained per action rather than per kill, there were no global cooldowns, crafting system was complicated, those were fine.
Yes there was daily teleport allowance, but that wasn't so much a problem as it was a mechanic to encourage traveling by foot, they wanted it to take a long time to travel across the continent, they didn't want people just fast traveling everywhere, again this was made to seem like a problem by casuals, who just wanted to go everywhere and do everything in one day. Leves had a daily allowance but, again, this was to prevent you just grinding them out endlessly.
People kept crying things were too complicated or take too long this is not a lgeitimate complaint. It was an Old-school MMO and as such it was fine.
I hated seeing the arguments against it too "I only have an hour a day" see this is called casual pandering. And this is a part of the reason gaming is in decline overall, that Developers and Consumers forgot that not every game needs to be for everyone, its fine to have skill ceilings and inaccessibility. Its the same reason I"m so fucking tired of these hybrid games that try to be a tactical action RPG racer whatever, stop trying to make everything one thing for fuck's sake.
>>333860557
XIV was pretty damn good besides the god awful fatigue system. Punishing players for playing a lot is fucking terrible
>>333862196
I never actually hit fatigue.
I did genuinely love XIV, thinking back, that was probably the last time I genuinely felt fun in an online game.
1) Classic MMOs are such a deep and time-consuming genre that the developers in charge of today's MMOs haven't played enough of them to get a feel for what works and what doesn't.
2) Pandering to the lowest common denominator sells.
Today's MMOs are even more limited than single player RPGs just with a chatbox to the create the illusion of not being alone
>>333861886
XIV 1.0 had a good foundation but the game's fate was sealed y the fact that it was obviously incomplete. The game launched with literally nothing to do except Levequests and by the time they added primals it was already on the downward slope to ARR style.
Don't blame players for rejecting XIV, blame S-E for rushing it out before it was done.
>>333863587
>Don't blame players for rejecting XIV, blame S-E for rushing it out before it was done.
Its more about SE being incompetent. They were working on FFXIV 1.0 for like 2 /12 years. And the final product had less content than ARR at launch. Whole ARR was a complete overhaul done in about 10 months.
This is why the head team for FFXIV as well as Wada were demoted and run out of the company. They were pretty much lying to shareholders and other heads in the company about the FFXIV project going well. When in reality, it was a huge disaster all through development.
>>333858682
>implying the whole genre hasn't died off completely
Power of money!
>tfw RO used to be good until the 3-X jobs
fuck you gravity
>>333863882
>for like 2/12 years.
For two months?
>>333864295
2 1/2
>>333864295
did you have a point to make or can you really muster up nothing beyond pointing out an obvious transposition error
Sorry, "transposition" means the location of two letters/numerals has been swapped.
XIV 1.0 is overrated, yes it was leagues better than Realm Reborn but it still had a ton of stupid design decisions that only sound good on paper but anyone who ever played an MMO before could tell were retarded.
>Main quest consists only of fetching and talking because we want crafters to be able to complete it too.
>Anybody can wear any armor at any time! Except it looses effectiveness if you're not a specific job/level range so it's pretty much just a traditional system with the illusion of freedom.
>Use abilities from any class you have leveled! Because having level 50 people with 5+ other classes be infinitely stronger and more useful than new level 50 players is in no way a balance issue right?
>Choose between cross classing many abilities or equipping a dedicated job to specialize! Because it's not like every MMO in history has favored specialized classes over jack-of-all trade types!
>adventuring and discovery
The proliferation of the internet has destroyed even the slightest notion of either of these. It's done, it's gone, and it won't come back.
The internet got too big and organised.
Every game is solved in a matter of weeks, dedicated websites will provide the most efficient way of playing to players and they will follow because they're bored of losing to other people minmaxing.
>>333858682
The fuck are you talking about? I have fun in my shitty MMO Dead Frontier
You are just jaded as hell.
>>333864492
Jesus dude, how about you get that stick out of your ass?
>>333858682
WoW is dead and FFXIV is taking over.
>>333864726
Oh ok, I thought you were pretending, turns out you must actually be retarded
>>333864492
I've never in my life seen a person turn into this much of an asshole over someone point out their mistake.
I'm sorry "transposition error".
I think players and devs need to be honest with themselves and realize that they don't want an MMO so much as a pick up and play raiding game.
If they could just realize this they could cut out fetch quests or beating up the local fauna and just focus on the parts that are normally gated behind the endgame many players are rushing to reach.
Then when those people are satisfied we can have actually MMORPGs again.
>>333864940
WoW still has 12x the amount of people playing than FFXIV does, despite losing half its subs. And FFXIV is also losing subs. Since people rushed through the Heavensward content (which sucked) and most quit the game again.
>>333864707
Simply procedurally smoothly rearrange dungeon layouts and rewards. Make dungeons very large so that it takes too long to map the whole thing before a new rearrangement. Also make dungeons open-entry so that people (especially bots) can be pk'd. Finally, make the game heavily item- and playerskill-based instead of characterskill-based. Problem solved, people now build based on the rewards they obtain and respec later into something else. When that "later" point is known, it becomes easy to analyze and rebalance.
>>333864568
>XIV 1.0 is overrated
Since when? Before this thread I've literally never seen anyone say it was anything other than complete shit
>>333861628
Blizzard ruins every genre the make games in by striking the perfect balance between content and accessibility, then milking it until every game in the genre is a clone of their game
Diablo with ARPG
Warcraft and Starcraft with RTS
WoW with MMORPG
Hearthstone with CCG
soon Overwatch with class-based FPS
>>333864949
What the actual fuck is wrong with you?
I don't know how long the game was in the making . Then you say 2/12, somehow now I'm a retard because you can't type and have anger issues? Congratulations, you're smarter than everyone here.
Too bad you're a fucking autistic little shit that gets triggered by a sneeze.
So you wanna tell me exactly what the fuck your problem is?
Do you really wanna do this? Do you genuinely and actually wanna make an argument and try to take a high ground over someone asking you a question and you getting so triggered that you posted to consecutive insults without any contribution to the actual discussion? Do you actually want to fucking broadcast to the entire world that you're autistic?
Please tell me, because I would love to know just how in the fuck did you get so triggerd by someone saying "two months?"
>>333858682
they became mainstream and big-money, so everyone wanted to make the next great hit instead of making a good game that might not be played by millions of people.
wow essentially killed mmos.
>>333858682
>What the fuck happened to MMORPGs?
Videogames stopped being about fun and became "I'm better than you n00bz" contests. Also see: /v/
>>333865514
I think I spent more time idling and talking to strangers in RO than actually playing the game. Why was this game's community so good?
From the small sample of MMOs I tried, I think I could generalize the genre can't handle good gameplay because of it having to be for a massive number of simultaneous players. Because they can't have good gameplay, they have to resort to have compulsion loops in the form of grinds in order to hook people, because nobody would play otherwise. And because they usually charge by the month, the extend those treadmills as much as possible.
I'm willing to admit I'm wrong if that isn't the case. I'd like to see a MMO where you don't grind for xp, credits, equipment, etc. A MMO where just skill matters.
If it doesn't exist, why do people pretend modern MMOs are bad and past ones were good?
>>333858682
It has been found by people who take games too serious.
>>333865858
It wasn't that game's community, it was the fact that it was an MMO and not a MSO (massively singleplayer online).
I dislike how I can't grind anymore. killing monsters barely gives any exp whilst doing a shitty fetch quests levels you up by 50%
You spend the game just following the conveniently placed quests as it is 10000x more effective than fighting
>>333861628
>completely and inadvertently changes many aspects of MMO's
such as
>>333865253
hard to say since blizzard's method of counting subs is "interesting" and they otherwise keep a tight lid on the numbers
WoW killed the genre. Not the tryhards, not the RPers, not the koreans. WoW did it.
>>333859021
The problem is that the potential audience for such a game is rather small. There just aren't all that many people who want to play a real MMORPG - as can be seen by the multitude of features that have been introduced due to requests from the community and remove the social and exploration aspects.
>>333866148
Same with SquareEnix really. The last official numbers we heard from SquareEnix was the game had 2 million units sold, but only 600,000 registered subs remained. And that was all the way back in 2014. Data miners and estimations on MMO sites have claimed FFXIV has anywhere from 500,000-1 million subs. But we can't really say any of those are accurate. But even if FFXIV had 1 million subs, its a fraction of the lowest estimate for WoW.
MMO Wikis happened.
>Go collect 15 bear anuses
Rinse and repeat
I'll tell you why - because we grew up.
Playing an MMO is like a second job that a lot of us don't want to do considering we're actually working real jobs.
Kids nowadays are also used to getting stuff handed to the for free in casual games, grinding for cool stuff for hours in an MMO doesn't appeal to them
>>333858682
>datamining has become so norm that its actually frowned upon not knowing everything about a particular game
It's 2016 yet we still have MMO servers operating like the ones from 15 years ago.
If devs didn't want datamining to be an issue on week-1 of new content, then stream in content from the server on a need-to-know basis rather than having content updates dumped to your hard drive to be available to dig through before the servers are even up.
MMOs stopped forcing players to work together to get shit done. That's really the core of it. The only time you have to group up in MMOs these days is for dungeons and raids, and even then it's automated by some kind of queue system in most games so you likely won't even play with the same people more than once.
Instead of games having a community that you interacted with on a constant basis, taking advantage of literally the one thing MMOs can do better than other games, they're basically just a glorified lobby system now.
>>333866419
The only issue with small playercount is money. I started playing RO on the old EU server, which never had over 4000 (IIRC) players online at once, which included player shops (which were logged in but not playing).
It's thanks to WoW that people now believe that an MMO needs millions of players to be considered good/fun.
>>333866850
I miss playing FFXI while in high school :(
>>333866891
>they're basically just a glorified lobby system now
And the genious part of it all is that people will still pay a sub for them.
>>333867138
>It's thanks to WoW that people now believe that an MMO needs millions of players to be considered good/fun.
That and developers spending 300 million dollars developing and marketing the game. Its developers who put us in this mess for the most part.
"If we put even more money into it than WoW had, it's gotta be more popular than WoW!"
Which has never happened yet.
They devolved to "Don't stand in red circle" simulators rather than a battle of stacks, basic positioning/ranged, and enhancing/enfeebling/mitigation/resistances.
>>333866534
Don't worry, Blizzard is trying their damned hardest to turn Legion into WoD 2.0, soon no one will be playing either.
>>333865390
wasn't me bro
stay mad
>>333865390
also you have to be a special kind of dumb fucker to think a game is in dev for 2 months rofl that alone should have clued you in, moron
>>333864940
>FFXIV is taking over.
What, it's spot in line to it's certain death?
XIV is dying.
>I make a simple typo
>turns into as huge dick waggling contest
Holy shit. /v/ really will turn anything into an argument. Glad you guys didn't see my second typo in that post. You'd probably go blow yourself up.
>>333870683
>XIV is dying
so why is the game still sub fee only and servers are still full as ever and they aren't closing them down because of inactivity
>>333870807
>yourself
>>333870985
Sank u mista yamamoto, hea is pay in bank, 2000 yen. Arigatou yes.
>>333870985
>so why is the game still sub fee only
Because they're too fucking stubborn to ever get rid of it. Look at XI for christ's sake.
>servers are still full
Like fucking hell they are. Whatever horseshit that indicator says is a different story from actually logging in on them and taking a look around. There's a reason that they, and Blizzard much the same, won't actually report sub numbers.
>>333871235
bruh I log into leviathan every day and that server is full as hell
>>333866608
This.
>>333858682
get on black desert then or quit bitching that any of the mainstream popular ones are casual shit
>>333871892
Why is that game the messiest piece of shit MMO? God damn, the UI is such a fucking mess of a design you don't even know where to begin criticizing it.
>>333871892
Does Black Desert have anything to offer that isn't a character creator?
>>333860557
>>333861886
>>333862196
>We've got the 1.0 apologists now
Ahahahah holy fuck, this is as beautiful as people saying Cataclysm wasn't as bad as Mists. Fuck you contrarian faggots.
some are still pretty fun especially with friends
