Vapourware What would a new MMO need to do to get you hooked?

[Stormcrowfleet]

Ultima Online

 

[ADL]

Ultima Online

Raph Koster (UO/Star Wars Galaxies) is developing his own "next gen" MMO so you're probably getting your wish in a couple years from now.

 

[Mortmal]

ive got conan exiles and elder scrolls online on my gaben but havent touched them

have i already got the ULTIMATE mmo in my collection?

Elderscrolls online is one of the most popular theme park MMO now, and Conan is one of the best sandbox survival/minecraft/mmo like. Other option would be ark or 7day to die i think. So yes you maybe already have the ultimate mmo , for whats its worth...

 

[gurugeorge]

Well Vanguard had one giant world with no zones so I liked it. It didn't feel like some game you were playing it felt like a huge world. You could go and kill a noob in noob town if you wanted to. Then City of Heroes added a good degree of freedom in moving about the environment and making your character unique with powers. The whole point is to make you try to survive a harsh world, not be hand held the entire time. Becoming a Lich in Vanguard was the high point of my short MMO career. I had to travel to enemy territory to do quests which meant I would need to avoid the other factions that lived on that continent. I went over there with a friend to grind out the enemy faction quest that let you get a panther transformation and run real fast. We fought off multiple waves of whatever faction those guys were playing as while farming some mobs to get the points to get the reward. Why the game got so much hate I will never know. MMO's always have bugs. Vanguard offered freedom unparalleled in MMO's, but WoW existed so everyone went to playing it or Dark Ages of Camelot.

I think Vanguard's sad demise had more to do with the game being a somewhat unfinished mess at launch, because whatsisname was (according to a retrospective I read ages ago) an inexperienced manager and coke-head to boot. Also, I think even if it had been as good a launch as an MMO could have, it still would have had a more limited audience than WoW because of the heavy system requirements (I could barely play it on my toaster at launch).

But boy, was that one excellent MMO. The virtual world, the art design, the classes, the gameplay, everything. It really was so close (yet so far) to being the best MMO of the time IMHO.

As to the OP, I don't think I could ever get into a new MMO. The MMORPG was a phenomenon of its time, and you can only pop your MMO cherry once, when it feels like a truly amazing experience (my cherry popped with City of Heroes, which I still enjoy from time to time on the unofficial server Homecoming).

Maybe when tech has taken a few more iterations, they'll be able to do more to make player interaction more meaningful again one day.

 

[Bigg Boss]

I had to upgrade my shitty computer to play Vanguard at launch, so I can agree with that being the problem, but it also helped to load up that massive world they had. Good to see I am not the only one that saw how great it was or could have become. Dammit you could play as a fucking Giant even.

 

[Gregz]

I think the reason why MMOs as we knew them have/are ending is because the core of what made them special (social interaction, shared goals/cooperation, competition, a sense of discovery and progress) has fractured into other forms of online media or other games. MMOs were very much a fixture of the pre-social media age. I think in order to make an MMO (as we understood them before) you would have to enforce a sense of exclusivity and culture around their communities, as it's the communities, and the nature of the internet, that have changed.

I agree with this 100%

Also, nothing destroys immersion like hearing a bunch of basement dwelling edgelords chatter over voice comms.

The way players communicate can radically alter the gameplay experience.

 

[Norfleet]

Capture lightning in a bottle, basically. For me to want to jump to a new MMO, it has to open at the right window of opportunity (read: I am not currently invested into another game), be sufficiently familiar in nature that I think I have a reasonable grasp on playing it (whether or not this is actually true: I'm disinclined at this point to chase something strange and unfamiliar, particularly when at a competitive disadvantage against those who already know the system), and, of course, NOT COST MONEY, since if I were the kind of chump who paid for games, I wouldn't currently be playing a shitty F2P MMO instead.

Take, for instance, games that I passed on, that I might have otherwise played, like Eve. Eve cost money, so was immediately hardpassed on that. It otherwise would have been a game I would have played...but by the time of F2P, it was now too far gone: An unfamiliar game I would only be able to play at a serious competitive disadvantage against people who already were established and familiar with it. Thus, pass. I don't need to play a game to lose at it, that can be accomplished effortlessly by not playing.

 

[Sjukob]

I would like to see a spiritual successor to Warhammer: Age of Reckoning. MMO that is about large scale mass PVP with heavy focus on team play, I don't care for PVE.

I don't belive that Camelot:Unchained or Crowfall developers will ever deliver.

 

[Gerrard]

No lockon/"tab target" combat. Git gud or git left behind.

 

[taxalot]

A "pause" button.

 

[gurugeorge]

No lockon/"tab target" combat. Git gud or git left behind.

See, now that's where I think MMOs went wrong, moving from tab targeting to action combat. It seems like a good idea, but it kind of destroyed community because not everyone has comms, so developers were immediately making the audience smaller. Plus even if you do have comms, typing is actually better because it retains an air of mystery as to who's behind the keyboard, an air of mystery that's shattered when you hear some 12 year old bawling down the mic or some gruff elder with an annoying accent.

To put that another way, tab targeting is more relaxing and makes text chatting relatively easy, so people do it more. Action combat is more exciting, certainly for single player, but by that very token it's more frenetic and takes up mental space that could otherwise be used for chatting.

That's what I mean by the MMO being a creature of its time; in retrospect, it existed in a narrow window of opportunity when the tech constraints made it possible but also gave it the limits that actually created the genre as a thing. Even re. the text chatting, that too was an artifact of an early adopting audience that was somewhat nerdy and techy, and accustomed to using keyboards.

 

[flushfire]

Good character system. Most of the recent MMOs I played don't even have stats. The only choices were class and which skills to level. Resets are common. I'd like to see a system like Ragnarok Online's, where although skills were simplistic, the attributes were significant, even more so than some single player games. As for the aforementioned simplicity of skills, I prefer something simple & repetitive over WoW's 48-icon action bar.

Less housing and base building bullshit.

It's counter to massively multiplayer, but I'd like to be able to progress even when playing solo. IDC if the balance is shifted towards grouping, but the possibility to play solo has to be there.

A good mix of open-world and instanced content. Back when I played korean MMOs instances were rare, and competition for even regular monster spawns was common. Almost every game was like this. It was frustrating. Then instances came, and some games went full instances, some forced grouping to be able to enter. I'm sure there's a good balance in there somewhere.

Less focus on a main story/campaign, but not full sandbox either. I recently tried some mobile mmos and all of them had cinematics playing every 30 minutes and 'quest' notes filling up half of the screen. I appreciate quest exp more than grinding & if there's a story going on, but leave it in the background whenever possible.

Open economy/free market. I hate games that limit trading.

And finally a good subscription model. Preferably F2P with QoL like quick travel, mobile storage, bonus exp and other minor advantages for sale.

 

[Norfleet]

To put that another way, tab targeting is more relaxing and makes text chatting relatively easy, so people do it more. Action combat is more exciting, certainly for single player, but by that very token it's more frenetic and takes up mental space that could otherwise be used for chatting.

It also limits the depth of the combat to what can be managed in twitch-action, and makes the game a LOT more lag-sensitive.

 

[baud]

A good mix of open-world and instanced content. Back when I played korean MMOs instances were rare, and competition for even regular monster spawns was common. Almost every game was like this. It was frustrating. Then instances came, and some games went full instances, some forced grouping to be able to enter. I'm sure there's a good balance in there somewhere.

I think SWTOR used map-wide instances, with the number of instances depending on the number of players and players being sent to each instance, depending on the population on each one. You can also change instance at will (but limited by a cool down). Then there's a lot of small instances, but you can enter them solo or with a group

 

[luj1]

I think the reason why MMOs as we knew them have/are ending is because the core of what made them special (social interaction, shared goals/cooperation, competition, a sense of discovery and progress) has fractured into other forms of online media or other games. MMOs were very much a fixture of the pre-social media age. I think in order to make an MMO (as we understood them before) you would have to enforce a sense of exclusivity and culture around their communities, as it's the communities, and the nature of the internet, that have changed.

I agree with this 100%

Also, nothing destroys immersion like hearing a bunch of basement dwelling edgelords chatter over voice comms.

The way players communicate can radically alter the gameplay experience.

People were less toxic 15 years ago too. I never once had an argument during the years I played GW on and off (my only MMO).

 

[Wunderbar]

Offline mode

 

[Garyxeao88]

I think I'm looking for a new MMO that is:

1. Heavy customization on the classes themselves.

2. High amount of difficulty, with somewhat smaller team size requirements.el is enough.

3. Very strong communication tools in game or through an easy to use client.

Actually, I'm a little bit hooked by New World after playing the closed beta. Anyone?

 

[Norfleet]

Offline mode

I've actually kinda pondered, "What would make such a thing even possible?". In order to remain an MMO, the game has to interface with some kind of shared world at some point. Otherwise it's not MMO. In order to have an offline mode, and not simply be a single-player game with an online capability, it needs to somehow retain data integrity (not be hacked/cheated) while running on a completely hostile platform (the client PC). Otherwise, because the client PC must be regarded as completely hostile and enemy-controlled, if this player is allowed to return to the multiplayer world, he can cheat (and if the player is not allowed to return, it's not an MMO with offline mode, it's a single-player game with an online mode).

So, the game would have to be balanced around and operate with the premises that:

1. The player knows everything he cares to know about the state of the gameworld. It's on his computer, so if it's there, he knows about it. Nothing can be hidden. If an item may or may not be there, the player knows about it before he even attempts the level.

2. The wider world must have some means of validating a player's state on return: A player can only return to the multiplayer if his state can be validated as "legitimate". But...

3. The player has total control over what state he submits back to the world. It is, after all, generated on his computer. That means he could have done anything: He could have save-scummed, or outright modified or fabricated the data he submits, although in all such cases, he would have to uphold Maskirovka, as the data submitted must still pass validation. Somehow, therefore, none of these actions must grant the player advantage, even though any player can basically submit what amounts to a tool-assisted speedrun.

So...what kind of game would this be? I imagine that the game would be rather Chess-like. Chess can be viewed as an MMO. Players inhabit the wider Chess world, competing against each other for ranking. Any match a player submits can be validated as legitimate: The sequence of moves and their outcomes can be independently validated posthumously, so the player doesn't have to be "online" the entire time. Turns and even entire matches can be validated as belonging to the players submitting them by cryptographic signing, so you can't claim to have defeated an opponent unless the moves in his game were signed by his key.

I am thinking that all this is POSSIBLE, but I am not sure whether you would necessarily like this as an MMO, since at the highest levels of play, your opponents and competitors are supercomputers that analyze every possible legal move and submit the best ones.

 

[J1M]

Alternatively, it is a sandbox mode with no consequences. Where you can try out character options and other features without anything persisting back to the server.

Exploration-based gameplay is still valid. As would something like 'training' for a speed run. Potentially with offline-only tools.

 

[Norfleet]

Well, that would certainly be a much less stringent demand, if what he asks for is merely "an offline sandbox mode attached to an otherwise MMO game". But I was just reading it as "the guy hates the nature of online play" and was wondering as a thought exercise if it was even POSSIBLE to create a game that was still an MMO yet somehow catered to this deep aversion to being online, dealing with the public, the lag, etc., enabling such an audience to still play the game as an MMO but strictly limit the need to even be online at all. Because unless you just have this deep antipathy for online-ness, a simple sandbox server is not uncommon within existing MMOs. They are, of course, still online, but if what you simply want is a no-consequences test sandbox, this is already offered, just not offline.

 

[Scruffy]

a way to stop russians and brazilians from joining

 

[J1M]

Well, that would certainly be a much less stringent demand, if what he asks for is merely "an offline sandbox mode attached to an otherwise MMO game". But I was just reading it as "the guy hates the nature of online play" and was wondering as a thought exercise if it was even POSSIBLE to create a game that was still an MMO yet somehow catered to this deep aversion to being online, dealing with the public, the lag, etc., enabling such an audience to still play the game as an MMO but strictly limit the need to even be online at all. Because unless you just have this deep antipathy for online-ness, a simple sandbox server is not uncommon within existing MMOs. They are, of course, still online, but if what you simply want is a no-consequences test sandbox, this is already offered, just not offline.

At a certain point people are just asking for a single-player game.

For many modern MMOs I think you could simply limit the offline experience to second-class content. Instead of freezing all progress, just prevent meaningful progress. For example, allow offline leveling, but not max level play. Most MMO systems have a breakpoint like that.

 

[zaper]

Ultima Online

Pretty much this. Pirate UO servers still exist to this day in Brazil.

The thing is, I've spent more hours in UO than in all other games combined(and I have around 6k hours in DOTA 2). Yet I never played on an official UO server. None of my friends did.

The thing we long for isn't even an actual representation of what UO looked like back then. So the chances of we having something like it in the future are really slim.

A friend got hooked on LoA for a week or so, for the UO nostalgia. Didn't last.

I've already resigned myself to the fact that there will not be anything like it again.

 

[cvv]

If Mass Effect was an actual RPG and they turned it into an MMO. Space magic + shooting with sprawling story-based quests and deep chardev. Kinda like Warframe is but without the edgy aesthetics. Also without turning into a shitshow like Warframe did.

 

[baud]

If Mass Effect was an actual RPG and they turned it into an MMO. Space magic + shooting with sprawling story-based quests and deep chardev. Kinda like Warframe is but without the edgy aesthetics. Also without turning into a shitshow like Warframe did.

I'm playing SWTOR at the moments and I feel like a story focus is really at odds with the idea of MMO, because most of the story can't have any far-reaching consequences or just in instanced zone specific for each players.