The future of MMO's

[Inactive]

Maybe I'm just cynical, but I can't remember these golden age communities of the old days. People are people, and there were assholes who were vocally annoying back then and still seemed to get by, even thrive.

I'm not saying it was perfect, far from it. But in WoW for example, ever since server transfers and cross-realm everything you can go 1-85 and do every raid in the game without ever needing to truly interact with anyone. Queue up from town, don't speak unless something drastically bad happens in which case most people just leave, dungeon/raid ends come back to town and never see those people again. I feel like I'm playing a single player game next to a bunch of other people. Assholes and bads were a huge part of the community, the fact that you even knew and could point out the assholes on your server is exactly what I'm talking about.

[Lucavi]

Sounds like playing a MMO version of Diablo 2 to me, and I wouldn't mind that at all.

Hell, I'm still praying for a MMO based off of Dungeon Siege 2.

[Charismatic]

A MMO based off of Monster Hunter with better combat would be amazing. Don't call it an RPG if you don't want to... I don't care. I just want a good game, not necessarily an RPG.

[Rhyis.]

Yeah I don't give a shit what you call a game. As long as it's enjoyable to play.

[Arelian]

Pretty much. The absolute most important factor of a game is that fun factor. Sadly, most game developers have forgotten that. Most players don't care if they take 5 hours or 20 minutes to clear an event, as long as they have a massive amount of fun while doing so. Granted, the time it takes does factor into how much "fun" you have but that's an argument for a different day.

It's more or less the reason I've been dickriding GW2 so hard, honestly. During the future of MMOs panel at PAX East the whole hardcore vs casual argument came up, and all of the devs basically said, "Well... you have to strike a balance of sorts..." or "You really have to learn to cater to the casuals in x but keep the hardcore players happy with y."

Arena.Net, on the other hand, straight up said, "Who cares how hard or how easy a game is? As long as it's fun, right?"

Edit: It's also why I'm such a big proponent of doing B2P games (when done correctly, see GW1). The devs don't particularly care about keeping you around forever because their business is based around selling you an amazing game out of the box and adding in content as they see fit. With the P2P model, devs have more of an obligation to pump out content updates regularly. With the B2P model, the developers need to focus on making the game fun and functional immediately, which always provides a superior experience when compared to waiting for the "savior patch" that will fix the game in a P2P model (See how most people feel about SWTOR).

[Ambrosia]

Yeah if Diablo 3 and Guild Wars 2 end up being fantastic hits, that may very well spell doom for the P2P business model and shove in that final nail in the coffin (or the one prior) for the NA/EU markets. I've already given in the past quite a few examples and I'm not going to rehash them here, but this year will certainly be an interesting one to see how the MMORPG genre pans out. Even in the Phantasy Star Online 2 thread Insane posted the reasons as to why SEGA decided to go F2P instead. They actually took the time to look at the current MMORPG trends and decided against a P2P model. It's a shame TERA Online and especially The Secret World didn't get the memo.

And considering that The Secret World has the "Life Time Subscription" that in itself is a huge red flag as far as how well that game is going to do. For anyone that has followed MMO history, they should know the reasons as to why.

Trendy.

[The Stig]

Big Post

Well I read your big post, nodded, agreed, and I don't have any counter points/arguments that isn't discussed in further posts (I'm surprised it jumped 2 pages between me sleeping and getting to work).

Although:

I'd like to see slower and more meaningful leveling. Raids that are more challenging, memorable, and fun. Stuff like that.

FFXI had that, somewhat. Although we can't classify them as raids, but levelling felt meaningful (despite the level cap at the time)

Your first 2-3 fight
Your first group for 5-1
Shadowlord at 5-2
Divine Might
All of the CoP cockblock missions (the 3 dudes on the floating island, I forgot the name now, diablos, snoll, omega/ultima, tenzen, kinda)
Limit Breaks (for a lot/most it's finding someone who would come to you and farm the skull at 50, sneak you around the 3 beastmen dungeons at 60, farming tests at 70)

Does WoW/Star Wars have this? For WoW I really can't think of any, maybe except my first dungeon only (starting from the lich king era, I suspect older players would have fonder memories).

---

I also still would prefer FFXI's single character model and discourage alts (by adding to your sub fees).

These days I adopt a naming model of naming all my chars the same but with a slight letter change if I need to make alts. This worked good in a way, as a few "regular" people on WoW who played with me would always search for the first 4 letters of my name and find me and ask me to join their raids. And if I randomly end up in a purely random pug, occasionally people would know who I am instantly (as I always tank) which seems to make the group fun.

[Greatguardian]

I want The World: R1 as it was canonized (as opposed to the PS2 interpretation). Combat system would be closer to TERA's. EXP curve would be massive, rather than the single player curve built into the PS2 games, but it wouldn't much matter because there's no need to rush to endgame to actually get to the real fun content like most MMOs.

Otherwise, randomly generated dungeons, true rare weapons (not shit you grind for hoping for a 1% drop rate, but shit you just randomly find anywhere), Developer events, browser, voice, and web integration directly into the UI, and things to actually do in town outside of battle content create something more akin to a second world than a game that you turn on or off. I think that has a much bigger, more sustained hook.

The community is what ultimately makes or breaks the non-combat portions of MMOs, though. This is part of why you see a lot of modern MMOs completely ignoring anything that isn't combat or crafting in their gameplay model. The MMO community is filled with shitheads. This can be addressed to a degree by changing the way people interact. Instead of treating The World like a game, where you have zone chat, area chat, party chat, etc, it can be treated like a World where you just have voice chat whose volume scales based on the distance from the speaker and private text-based messages that can only be sent to people on your friend list. Bustling areas would really feel bustling, and people would generally be less inclined to run around spamming the word shitcock when they'd have to be shouting it into a microphone.

[Renzokuken]

Speaking of online gaming communities, Extra Credits just put up a new episode on harassment at http://www.penny-arcade.com/patv/show/extra-credits

They bring up some ideas, not directed at mmo's, but would probably work well with them.

On a side note, if you're interested in game development and the like, check out the other episodes, they're all pretty good.

[arus2001]

I'd probably be one of the first to "white knight" methods of kinder internet community encouragement, and while I don't exactly agree with the methods the video proposed, I was perhaps more saddened by the related forum commentary and the unfortunate consequences internet culture has propagated. Be it the "grow a thicker skin" line, hitting the mute button, "it's just a joke!" or whatever common defense the instigators are fond of flinging, none really step up to address the issue of harassment or cyber bullying. It's just tolerance through ignorance, and a lacking slap on the wrist and eventual harsher punishments (termination and future refusal of service at the extreme end) just doesn't help a community where anonymity has spawned this false sense of freedom and power, often running contradictory to ToU/EULA policies that are failing in being enforced.

Race, gender, and sexual orientation were the commonly cited methods of antagonizing, but I've seen it go further--even here in stuff like the old "Alla pics!" thread or the more recent "Official Forums" variants. All it takes is an ideological difference for a small group to come together and gang up on an individual expressing that difference of opinion. Why? Surface reasoning might suggest they believe they're in the right, but my near 30 years of living have me feeling there's often more to it than that. And even if they are right in matters that aren't opinion, their delivery needs work. Insults, personal attacks, goading... it doesn't help their cause. And while some unfortunately come to wear the "troll" status as a badge of honor, I can't help but feel they're proof of those who've fallen through the cracks, who weren't corrected early enough and came to develop the bad habits that perpetuate the hostile internet culture. They then become the model the next generations mold themselves around, as apparently it can be gotten away with, and the cycles inevitably repeat. I can't pretend to know all of the reasons why someone may behave in a given negative manner. I can think of a few, but it's always more complicated. Unsurprisingly, these individuals will rarely ever concede there's anything wrong with themselves. In fact, they'll probably go to great lengths to assert their superiority.

Even if it is complicated, there's nothing guaranteeing a bad apple that finds themselves silenced will learn. From the forum perspective, if they're muted or ignored by a majority, too often it's easy to just make another account and repeat the process, if not move to another community entirety. Site/IP bans aren't flawless, though often potent enough for the less net savvy of miscreants. When it comes to MMOs, people may just alt hop or eventually jump servers. It's like companies are too afraid to ban one person, or a small group of them, who could chase off dozens or more because they don't want to lose their subscription fee. Like some of the posters I mentioned earlier, their GMs just default to using the ignore function, even if it's easily bypassed by the alt-hopping or gang summoning. Maybe eventually the troublemakers get the boot, but by then damage has long since been done. This actually has me wondering if F2P models may be more beneficial in the future of fostering healthier communities. Yes, some may argue the loss of a subscription may make it easier for troublemakers to enter, as they effectively have nothing to lose, but this doesn't exactly rule out initial potential game costs, though it does lessen the developer defense of them being a paying customer. Micro-transactions between players are unlikely to ever be equal unless something is an absolute must. I'm unlikely to ever buy a fluff item, for example, but an extra dungeon? More likely. Such things are often what the P2P market comes to view as expansions or add-ons, anyway.

I digress for now. Part of the issue will naturally hinge on the nature the game. A degree will then apply to how the game is designed. Rest is purely on people, both playing and serving as figurative referees.

[Rhyis.]

What you're talking about isn't an MMO problem, it's an internet problem. Penny Arcade had it right:

Normal Person + Anonymity + Audience = Total Fuckwad

[arus2001]

Not gonna dispute that. Doesn't mean that games, as accessed through the internet, can't take their own steps to clean up the mess.

[Rhyis.]

Easier to do with a small community. MMOs today have way too many people to properly keep that shit under control, unless you hire a gazillion GMs to enforce the shit.

I mean, don't get me wrong, I'd like to see it all cleaned up. I'm just realistic enough to realize it's probably not gonna happen when there's half a million people playing your game. If you ever GMed a small online gaming community, which I have, you'd know that keeping 50 people under control is hard enough. Forget 10 thousand times that.

[arus2001]

When going through the related thread, I saw a couple things some other companies have done as well something, I think Valve, intends to do. In the first cast, League of Legends has some kind of player-run tribunal where max level characters can receive reports on problematic players and go on to pass judgments. Basically they do the job we might expect of GMs. As incentive, they're basically given some in-game currency relative to if they'd played a certain amount of time. I can't pretend to know the finer details, but it's a start. What Valve is looking to do is actually rewarding "good" players by maybe letting them play for free, or at the very least a discount. I can only interpret it as some attempt a karma system, but the general intent seems to be that troublesome players will be paying full price for whatever, maybe even more if they're truly rotten. Naturally, I'd suspect such subject to circle jerking if done poorly, but that's also something where maybe the power of numbers could prove useful if scaled properly. Basically, it shouldn't be possible for a guild of like 20-50 people to budge someone's record, but if the overall game design leads up to being paired with hundreds, even thousands of players over your gradual play span... it could add up.

[Cleverness]

The Tribunal for LoL is a good example of putting alot of the work on the player to help fix their community, although there is some issues with it still. There isn't really much circle jerking there, if you somehow vote against the majority on an issue you can actually get access removed from the Tribunal. And apparently it doesn't include the chat from the pre + post game lobby where alot of the trolling and stuff occurs. It's a good idea though, since it's something people dont need to be ingame to do + gets them a small amount of ingame currency. And you can remove the issue of potential circle jerking if this was used in a MMO setting by only letting people review cases from a different server, or randomize the cases viewed per person so people within the same guild don't all get the same one, etc. Since there's bound to be thousands of available cases.

And realistically I don't think it's possible to get rid of assholes in games though. Even the nicest people are susceptible to asshole behavior at times if their buttons are pushed. But I think the main issue is that most don't have a real policing system since the usual "calling a GM" thing tends to yield no benefit but someone taking down your report unless they did something terrible. The Tribunal is effective but making a LoL account is free, someone could make a troll account to fuck around with and piss people off with while keeping their main safe. So in the end rather than learning their lesson, alot of people find loopholes to get around this problem if they want to be asshats. If LoL accounts required a startup cost like majority of MMO's do when you purchase your CD Keys it'd probably be more effective at deterring constant shitty behavior.

[arus2001]

Ultimately, whatever systems in place need to be tailored toward the game. The majority of FFXI instances I saw where people turned into dicks usually involved competing over a limited resource like a(n) (H)NM. If someone could MPK, they would. If they could jack a mob that briefly turned yellow, they would. Hell, I remember people who'd super stack buffs and stand by Sandworm just so a rival would have to dispel a fuckton of buffs when it absorbed. Annoying chat may be the easiest behavior to police, but it's not the only negative or "unsportsmanlike" aspect of gaming.

[Renzokuken]

I'd like to see an MMO add a whitelist system that you could toggle on in place of a blacklist. Everyone not on the whitelist gets blocked out with a laughing man symbol from GitS... One can dream...

[braelyn]

It's more or less the reason I've been dickriding GW2 so hard, honestly. During the future of MMOs panel at PAX East the whole hardcore vs casual argument came up, and all of the devs basically said, "Well... you have to strike a balance of sorts..." or "You really have to learn to cater to the casuals in x but keep the hardcore players happy with y."

Arena.Net, on the other hand, straight up said, "Who cares how hard or how easy a game is? As long as it's fun, right?"

I really don't understand the logic here.

I personally will only find something easy "fun" for a very short time. If I wanted to instawin at games, I would just play tic tac toe off in the corner somewhere. Despite the games limitations,
sSomething I really enjoyed about GW1 was the easy, quick leveling (compared to some other titles), and the fact that performance was more based on player skill, rather than how many times I ran X dungeon for phat lewts. If you were an idiot and had no idea what you were doing, you failed pretty hard in the endgame content. If you honed your skills and actually learned from your mistakes, you did well. It was a very rewarding experience in itself.

Before this next part I need to clarify; I am not anti-casual or anything like that.
I personally feel that a lot of companies have moved to this appeal to the casuals model, especially in the p2p market. They make their games have a very easy learning curve with a very low skill cap, and draw in a lot of customers who might otherwise not be gaming at all. For the more serious, "hardcore" gamers, or whatever you guys want to call it, there is very little room for improvement as a player. You are rewarded for time spent grinding relatively simple content, rather than succeeding at challenging encounters.

"Player A" goes into -sample dungeon- many times, mashing buttons and clicking things. He watches some TV during the dungeons. He wins, and eventually has a nice stack of loot. Shiny loot of awesomeness. He "won" the game.

"Player B" works hard on optimizing his gameplay. He runs the same dungeons as player A. His performance is marginally better, and he receives the same loot over the same amount of time. He "won" the game, saving the realms from great evils that semi-afk player A also defeated with him.

Sounds like a lot of fun to me. It is a great balance of content for casual and hardcore players alike. How long will Player B continue to play this game?

[Arelian]

The logic behind it, I think, is that hard or easy doesn't always have to factor into how fun the game is. GW2 accomplishes this by having multiple "difficulties". The harder difficulty stuff will award different looking gear as opposed to stronger gear. ANet is taking a large gamble in trying a system that's relying on players wanting to look cool rather than have their numbers go way, way up. Personally I think they're spot on. Check out most WoW threads around patch times and you'll find people talking about how "cool" or "stupid" the new tier gear is. Sure, aesthetics does play a part for everyone and nobody wants to look stupid... but I honestly think most of the reward from obtaining new gear is thinking, "Hey, I look awesome," rather than, "Fuck yes I'll do 2-3% more DPS!"

[Lucavi]

I'll say this:

After the beta this weekend: After the overtuned mobs (fucking Dynamis Lord Queen Wasp and Red Fucking Shaman), after the wonky PVP, after the awesome graphics and amazing immersion, after the quality NPCs that actually do more than stand around (hint hint they rez one another and I was even rezzed by one in the middle of a fight); after everything good and bad that went on in regards to GW2... ArenaNet is getting close to where we want things to be.

Between the fun I had killing BAMs and running instances with SPD, Tisi and Petri this weekend in TERA, and the amazing time I had playing with Nobody on BG and none of my IRL friends or anyone I know at all, simply random souls in the world in GW2, I am officially satisfied for the moment. Both games do things that I've wanted for awhile, and while neither game is perfect, both games, in their own rights, are far ahead of the curve. TERA, IMO, is one of the best games to play if you feel like the only fun you can have is in a group of good friends, beating the shit out of things. GW2, at least for me, is a game where I could play with none of my friends; with none of BG or anyone else, and still have an amazing time, either by myself, or through the random help of others.

I'll end all of it with this: I've never, in my life; in my entire history of playing games online, regardless of the genre, heard more people saying "thank you" to one another, than I did during this GW2 beta. The amount of cooperation and unselfishness, not through the strength of human character, but through the clever design of the world and the engine by ArenaNet, is staggering. I truly give my hat to AN for crafting a system that absolutely encourages and espouses the very sort of cooperation and teamwork that they talked about. They've done everything that EA/Bioware didn't do; they backed up their words and bluster. Regardless of the reasons why (and they are both brilliant and well-documented both in their common sense and in their execution), the fact that people are more than willing to help others with anything from reviving their freakin' pets, to assisting on just about any kill or public quest, to the simple acts of tossing a drive-by cure or helping someone to finish a tough quest, is amazing, and hasn't been done on such a wide scale ever. I can't think of even one person that acted like a douche at any point. No fighting, no bitching, no ranting; not even any barrens chat or troll comments on my server; just people enjoying the game and soaking it all in.

The fact that there's no monthly payment on the game is simply icing on the cake. It is by no means a perfect product, as perfection does not exist (some of the voice acting is iffy, and some of the plot-lines fall flat, among other things), but good gravy, this is a game to get lost in. For hours. For days, even.