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

[Scruffy]

On a more serious note, I am currently playing on a NWN2 persistent world and it has almost everything i care about: slow pace so I don't have to be constantly grinding, good community, good exploration, balanced classes. If it only had a decent crafting system it would be perfect. I can log in when I feel like it, play an hour and log out having had fun, no need to grind or anything. You literally make xp sitting around a fire, talking.

 

[Norfleet]

slow pace so I don't have to be constantly grinding

I don't actually see how that follows. In games where the output of grinding is fairly low, don't you have to grind MORE? In a game where the pace of levelling is slow, you have to GRIND YOUR ASS OFF to reach level cap. In a game where a typical player hits level cap in a few days, you're only looking a few hours of GRINDING to pound that out and then you're done and can start doing your thing.

 

[Scruffy]

slow pace so I don't have to be constantly grinding

I don't actually see how that follows. In games where the output of grinding is fairly low, don't you have to grind MORE? In a game where the pace of levelling is slow, you have to GRIND YOUR ASS OFF to reach level cap. In a game where a typical player hits level cap in a few days, you're only looking a few hours of GRINDING to pound that out and then you're done and can start doing your thing.

No, because your level does not matter that much. There's good enough content for all levels, you don't have to rush to end level or anything like that, you can simply enjoy the levelling up slowly because you're not really "missing" the best content if you're low level.

 

[luj1]

In games where the output of grinding is fairly low, don't you have to grind MORE?

No if there are more ways to earn EXP (e.g. RP servers for NwN 1-2)

 

[luj1]

On a more serious note, I am currently playing on a NWN2 persistent world and it has almost everything i care about: slow pace so I don't have to be constantly grinding, good community, good exploration, balanced classes. If it only had a decent crafting system it would be perfect. I can log in when I feel like it, play an hour and log out having had fun, no need to grind or anything. You literally make xp sitting around a fire, talking.

The best server I played on was Noctar's Noble Realm for NwN. I think it was the best RP/social PW out there content-wise, very detailed and handmade, picked up a prize by the NWNVault back in the day. The crafting system was very addictive too. NNR was founded in 2003 and the world was HUGE, on a level of a full game.

 

[Norfleet]

No if there are more ways to earn EXP (e.g. RP servers for NwN 1-2)

It doesn't matter how many "ways" there are to earn XP, it only matters what the best way is. All the others are just false choices, being strictly worse than the one choice.

 

[Norfleet]

Look, it's simple to understand: If there's two ways of doing something, one of which is, say, running around an interesting and colorful map fighting different monsters, and one of which is sitting in one place autofiring into a dark cave over and over, you're going to go with the latter. The former option becomes a false choice by virtue of being worse than the latter, and thus irrelevant. It doesn't matter how many of those options there are. Shut up and camp that cave! Do you people even know how to play MMOs? Even my kids know this.

 

[Scruffy]

That's autism, what you are describing is autism. Preferring autofiring in a cave to actually playing the game is autism.

 

[Norfleet]

That's the thought process of MMO newbies. Once you become an MMO veteran, you'll be down there autofiring into that cave with the rest of us.

 

[Borian]

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.

You're so right. Here and there a niche thing comes out to exploit a section of the market. Planetside 2 can be thrown into that tally as an example. If I was an asshole, and I am, I'd mention Wurm Online, so I do. None can hold onto much fandom for long.
I'm certain that something really special is brewing within VR. A really good MMO built for and fully utilizing VR has true potential to make bank capitalizing on a newly emerging desire for social-oriented games. Some of the experiences you can get in these social VR games can feel somewhat like what you can get out of an MMO. For now, a lot of them are modeled on Second Life-type games. The popularity of VRChat shows a growing demand for the social aspect of video games that, until VR, were consigned to MMOs, large gaming groups, and garbage like Second Life. Now there's a fourth way to do that, or maybe an expansion upon the sorts of games like Second Life.
VR is still in its infancy. Only a fool would predict what VR will look like in twenty years, but I'd like to think that I'll be zooming around in a VRMMO. Otherwise, MMOs are just worse versions of better genres. VRMMOs will probably be the same, but then again, what was Everquest but an endless grind with a chat?

 

[urmom]

I wish there were a chart listing the best examples of MMOs in each category:

* combat
* c&c
* social/friends
* narrative/storytelling
* emergent gameplay
* level/landscape design
* etc.

 

[deama]

- Action combat, similiar to black desert online, vindictus, etc...

- I hate mounts in MMOs, I would much prefer to have some sort of QiQong system like what Age of Wushu had or Blade and Soul, but more expended upon as I thought it was a bit too limited in those games.

- Big interesting open world with not only land but sea exploration.

- Some interesting stuff added to the open world to incentives exploration that enhance your character in some way, e.g. random chests that appear at random locations all around the world and drop RNG stuff. Or better yet, have crystals that you collect (these crystals spawn randomly on the world map every week or so) and each crystal will give you a perk point on the exploration skill tree wherein you'd be able to get some movement speed buffs, climbing buffs, flying buffs, life skills buffs, etc...

- Things to do other than combat, e.g. fishing, composing and playing music (LOTRO), farming, mining, crafting, etc...

- No fast traveling, except for e.g. a class can create teleportation portals like the mages in WoW.

- No dailies event/quests, I hate that shit, so annoying. I think monthly events/rewards is fine though, maybe weeklies.

- Some sort of interaction with npcs, and plenty of npcs in obvious locations e.g. cities so it doesn't feel so dead, even with low player counts.

- Giant passive skill tree that all classes have access to, in addition to class specific trees, similiar to path of exile but with some of the fat trimmed.

- A decent amount of PVE group content, e.g. dungeons, raids, world bosses, group events, etc...

- PVP in the form of taking over cities in guild battles; owned cities would pay tax to whoever owned them daily.

- Some sort of PVE super boss that is held like a few times a year that rewards the player who beat it, or the guild leader, with a prestige skill tree, in addition to some exclusive gear.

- Some sort of main story or campaign that isn't too long (around 6 hours) that introduces you to the game and gives you some sort of explanation story-wise for your existence and some basic lore dumps.

 

[Humanophage]

It's easy enough to get hooked on a lot of MMOs. Addictive gameplay isn't necessarily very good, it just needs some cheap dopamine stimulation and it must be arranged in a way that makes quitting difficult in practice. For example, a game may have short 10-minute battles with brief queues, but you can't quit during the battle. You're constantly in a "one-more-turn" trap that builds up into a lot of time. I was hooked this way on PvP in Elder Scrolls Online and on Crossout, which is like a more fast-paced World of Tanks where you can build your own vehicles.

The good thing about Ultima Online wasn't that it was addictive, it was that you do not really regret playing it because it was so rich, you left some impact on the world, and the gameplay was varied.

 

[Saerain]

More about what it needs to not have. The F2P cash shop trend is a plague, and I've always disliked quest-driven design in MMORPGs, but these things define the genre at this point, for a long time now.

Use a subscription model. Monetize character slots, renames, respecs, and transfers. Even races and classes, I don't care. But not items, inventory, locations, XP, travel, or cosmetics. Stop.

On top of that, quests should be closer to Easter eggs than the driving force of play. Discoverable curiosities, a reward for going out of your way, not a chain of park attractions.

Yes I'm a butthurt EQfag.

 

[Norfleet]

Subscription = pay to lose + mandatory addiction. Immediate dealbreaker. If you're paying for an entire month of something, you're now obligated to USE the entire month of it, as it goes to waste if you fail to use all 24/7 of it. Same as when you pay for Internet, you never disconnect from it and just Internet all the time. This, however, works better because you can just passively download shit even when you're not at the computer. Buying an entire month of a game, on the other hand, means you're stuck poopsocking it for the entire month. Otherwise you're just throwing your money away.

And the worst part of it? You aren't even winning. You're paying merely to lose.

 

[urmom]

Which is better, poopsock or chogglepants?

 

[GhostCow]

The perfect mix of Shadowbane and EQ with a bit of Gothic thrown in

• Classes balanced for PvP

• Classless skill based system like UO or Darkfall Online works too

• PvE balanced around the player abilities after PvP balancing is finished

• Characters must play the same in PvP and PvE. No separate gear sets or skills that work differently vs players or npcs.

• Open world PvP with full loot and very limited or no safezones

• I'd settle for inventory looting only

• Player built cities that can be destroyed in GvG battles

• Build anything you want anywhere but be prepared to defend it or have good traps and guards for when you're not around.

• NPC cities that feel alive. Full of NPCs that have daily routines like NPCs in Gothic

• Good character progression. Stat points to assign, skill trees, something more complicated than just leveling up

• Raid battles that need large groups of people. Planar raids against gods and earthly raids against dragons, litches, ect.

• No instanced PvE or PvP

• Good NPC interaction. I don't want to just right click on an NPC and then click accept to get a quest. You should have to talk to them like in Everquest.

• No stupid markers above NPCs to tell you they have quests

• Multiple equally good places to do PvE at every level

• More action oriented combat than most MMORPGs. Something along the lines of Mount and Blade combat.

• Don't have tons of bars filled with buttons for abilities. 10 at the most.

• No annoying skill combo shit where you're constantly hitting some combination of 1-0 on the keyboard for the entire fight (FFXIV took that shit way too fucking far and had obnoxious combat)

• Clone the EQ bard class for people who disagree with the previous point

• Interesting ways to be an asshole like setting traps in random places and picking pockets while stealthed.

• No GMs. Make the players settle their differences themselves

These are the main broad things I really want to see. If I really wanted to go in depth I could probably make a pretty sweet design document.

 

[Jrpgfan]

Basically Archeage with Mount & Blade combat and no p2w.

I'd play that game even if all there was to it was boarding ships and killing people.

Now that I think about it, it's kinda sad no one has even attempted to do something like that. We're in 2020 and verticality still is something largely unexplored in videogames.

 

[Norfleet]

We're in 2020 and verticality still is something largely unexplored in videogames.

Humans are not fundamentally very vertical creatures. Which means that a highly vertical game would probably be an aircraft game. But for some reason, apparently World of Warplanes didn't gather quite the same following as its more vertically-challenged brethren and full 6DOF games are even less popular. Apparently, most humans are just not well equipped to handle 3D and even fewer are equipped to handle totally unoriented 3D. If we restrict ourselves to verticality without flight, what's that give us? Squirrel Online?

Additionally, 3D greatly complicates level design, since you can no longer contain your players in the playspace with a waist-high fence.

 

[Damned Registrations]

Squirrel Online?

Well I couldn't think of anything to respond to this thread with, but here it is. This would get me hooked. I want raids on epic level bird feeders.

 

[ADL]

Basically Archeage with Mount & Blade combat and no p2w.

I'd play that game even if all there was to it was boarding ships and killing people.

Now that I think about it, it's kinda sad no one has even attempted to do something like that. We're in 2020 and verticality still is something largely unexplored in videogames.

Minus the verticality and ships, Mortal Online is literally that. Mortal Online 2 is coming out this year and it looks decent.

 

[Ninjerk]

Man, I remember checking out Darkfall and Mortal Online when they were brand new or EA or whatever the trend was back then and thinking they had no future (even though I wanted to participate somewhat).

 

[ADL]

Darkfall was PvP gankbox shit where the community jerked themselves off over who was the most hardcore so you dodged a bullet on that one but Mortal Online at least tried to bring people in. Would recommend the new one if and when it comes out at a reasonable price. I believe it'll be buy2play.

 

[Ninjerk]

Darkfall was PvP gankbox shit where the community jerked themselves off over who was the most hardcore so you dodged a bullet on that one but Mortal Online at least tried to bring people in. Would recommend the new one if and when it comes out at a reasonable price. I believe it'll be buy2play.

I got the bolded impression especially (as I recall) and it seemed like these people didn't understand that the days of UO PKs mixing with normies is just not going to happen again.

 

[Jrpgfan]

Basically Archeage with Mount & Blade combat and no p2w.

I'd play that game even if all there was to it was boarding ships and killing people.

Now that I think about it, it's kinda sad no one has even attempted to do something like that. We're in 2020 and verticality still is something largely unexplored in videogames.

Minus the verticality and ships, Mortal Online is literally that. Mortal Online 2 is coming out this year and it looks decent.

It looks decent actually. I've heard about it but without taking a closer look I thought combat was more like Skyrim where you just spam left mouse buttom.