lungdisc's page

Yes, an extremely vicious cycle. So vicious that participating in it nets you millions of dollars. How terrible.

It is clear you only see the dollars. Please stop posting in my thread. It's not personal, it's just that everything you post is backed up by financial reasons with a complete tunnel vision for everything else. We all know what MMOs are successful and who are not.

You are absolutely right...just because WOW does something is not a reason not to do it....but neither is it a reason to do it.

I didn't want to talk about wow and its subscribers at all, but I was a bit pushed into that direction. You are right, just because a successful MMO implements a feature, doesn't mean that the feature is flawless and everyone should copy it.

In MMOs people can see your name and usually class/level floating over your head, to many who RP, this is a major violation because it is forced metagaming

Well, it could be nice to not see anything above a player's head. If the levels are balanced and a more skilled level 1 player is able to take down a max level player, then it's not really that important to see the level of players. The player's class can be guessed from his gear, especially if the mmo has a balanced system for the equipment. As for the name, you could just have it that text will pop-up over the head and not in the chat box. Chat box will only be used for shouting and private messages, where you will see the player names. We can also have duplicated names like in Ultima.

Every pve MMO that came before WoW was an Everquest clone. And every pve MMO that came after WoW is a WoW clone. People toss this term around, but they are referring to the kill 10 rats MMO, the pve MMO.

Even if you innovate something like Public quests (WAR), Voice overred quests (SWTOR), Dual classing (RoR), you are still a wow clone. This term "wow clone" has become almost similar to MMORPG and it's very degrading for all the MMOs that focus on PVE.

In order to have an unique MMO, we need to focus on the ugly step child feature of the MMOs, the PvP. If the combat feels great and is done for a meaning like capturing areas in a field of battle and getting rewarded, then people will play the game.

Basically you are swapping killing NPCs with killing players. But it needs to keep the entire rewards system from PVE MMOs like titles, achievements, new skills, gear, xp, unlockables, ranks, etc. Pve MMOs have demonstrated what works and what doesn't work. All we need to do is break the monotony of killing 10 rats with killing 1 player. You can even throw quests at it and even public quests.

And for this to work, the PvP system needs to be as easy to get into as with PvE. Hey someone killed me, no problem, I will just re-spawn 10m away. Death should be embraced and seen as it is in a game: a simple restart from a certain point. No xp loss, no full loot, no death sickness debuffs, no buffs loss, full hp/mp recovery and maybe even a pat on the back saying "hey, don't sweat it, it happens to the best of us".

I believe death penalties were introduced to increase the PvE difficulty so you don't agro too many mobs, but I guess it servers no purpose when your fighting players (it's challenging enough).

Heed my words...there will be one day when a WoW-clone doesn't make money...hopefully soon....

SWToR kind of proves me wrong...but there will be one day...

I'm quite sure SWTOR will fail from 3 reasons:

1) They spent way too much money and the income needs to be very large to turn into profit

2) Players will burn through the content like there's no tomorrow and a lot of players will finish everything in 1-2 months. And they released the game during holidays when people are in vacation.

3) And when the voice overred content is finished, players will have to resort to repeatable activities like raids, arenas, etc but these are similar to WoW and people will get bored fast.

This is why I'm saying PvE is not good for long term play, because like any good story or movie, it needs to end at some point. If it doesn't end it will be boring, and if it ends people want more. But to make more, you need to spend more time/money on PvE. It's a very vicious cycle.

So the question is this: do they give the most people what they want (which causes the self-appointed "true" fans to be pissed off) or do they cater to the narrower, nichier market to make them happy but produce something that isn't widely popular or profitable?

The problem right now is that if you want to appeal to the already established player base, you have to make a wow clone to a certain degree. Making a wow clone means focusing a lot on PvE, which means more quests than Wow (9500+) and much more polished content. But this is very hard since no one has the budget and time that Blizzard put into WoW.

Now, another take on WoW could be to provide the same experience as WoW, but in a different environment, for people that are bored with WoW. Rift tried it, now SWTOR tries it too, to some degree. Both of them have something unique to WoW, but it's pretty much the same type of MMO. As for Rift we know that they haven't succeeded in beating WoW and I'm pretty sure SWTOR will not succeed either.

This is the problem when you go head to head against a giant equipped with the same weapons the giant has too. In order to come with something new, you need to have unique features in your MMO, right at the very core of it.

If you make an MMO that focuses on killing 10 rats every 10 minutes for the sake of an NPC, leveling and getting new gear, you are offering the same experience as WoW.

I believe a good way to beat WoW is to focus on PvP, the element that doesn't require that much time and content. Basically the content is generated by players and will feel very different each time, because people are unpredictable.

An idea could be that people start by doing a tutorial that will take let's say 24 hours (a week of playing 4 hours a day), where you basically play WoW to a certain degree, but also introducing you with the PvP content, house building, sieging, etc. After one week, players will be able to phase out the grind of killing 10 rats and start building their own house, forming cities with others and attacking other factions.

Basically the tactics and capture points will be similar to Planetside, while the Realm vs Realm will be similar to DaoC, with 3 factions at war.

The differences to DaoC and other MMOs will be:
- there will be no grind for leveling or gear
- the level difference will not be that high (a level 1 player has a chance to kill a level 20 [max] player)
- gear will be like in GW where the stats stop at some point, and then the difference is only cosmetic
- skills will not have any randomness to them, similar to Bloodline Champions
- pvp will be done by flagging. Unlike L2 you will only flag for that person, not universally.
- you will see the level and class of your enemies so you can asses the odds better
- death penalty will only make you re-spawn
- building your house
- merging your house with others and forming cities; managing cities will be done by vote or appointing people to certain functions; cities can evolve by building walls, towers, garden etc.

Similarities to other MMOs:
- leveling but it stops pretty quick (in a week)
- gear, but everyone has the same stats in the end (cosmetics will change)
- no specialized healer or tank, no hating/agro skills; mobs will attack players that are closer, not who make the greater dmg
- classes with skill trees and dual classing at level 10 similar to Titan Quest
- crafting classes with the same dual classing system, but kept apart from the combat class; crafting will let you craft different armor/weapons with different appearance, but the stats remain the same (like GW)
- harvesting resources similar to Ryzom where a bit of skill and randomness is required

Some of these features might look casual, but we are interested here in ease of play, but hard to master, kind of like Starcraft. In Starcraft 1 Jaedong wasn't the best zerg because he grinded like a champ and had top gear and he based his chance on scoring critical hits with his mutalisks. The only way to crush an opponent was to control them better (better micro). Translated to our MMO will mean, who ever has the better skill will have a greater chance to succeed.

Crafting, harvesting and building will be activities that non competitive people will be interested in.

If you read all this, you might think GW2 will provide most of this, and you are absolutely right. If you are hardcore you will level yourself in one week probably and skip the entire dynamic events, exploring, achievements thing and get right down to PvP. What I'm worried about is that this PvP could be highly instanced and pose no scope in the actual world you play in, unlike DaoC. But we will see.

why are tens of millions of people paying money to play them?

I already brought Farmville as an example to point out that millions of subscribers/players does not make a game necessarily interesting. Yes, it's profitable, but we're not corporations here talking about marketing and how to squeeze the last cent of from peoples' pockets. We are people that love games and we want to talk about what makes games tick, how can they enrich people's experience.

Does wow and farmville provide fun ? Yes it does, but it's a kind of fun that's addictive and unhealthy and I'm talking here about people that spend to much time playing these games.

When players invest that much time and money in grinding for the top gear and maxing their level, you will not see any fair play from them and they will love to kill lower level or lesser equipped players, also called noobs.

Allow players to create content and stories for others. Of course you have to develope advanced tools for this, in order to not imbalance the game world.

This is a great idea. Basically MMOs should only circle around players, the content they make, the faction wars they create, the politics. Some of these things should make a great sandbox MMO where people can contribute and changes made by them are directly reflected in the world they play in.

Again. 14 million subscribers. No one is admitting anything.

The most subscribers ever were 11.5 mil and now they are 10.3 million players if you do your research right. And 50% of these 10mil are from asia which pay by the hour not monthly, but these 5 mil people only count for 6% of the total revenue - source. It looks like Activion-Blizzard gave WoW to the asian market for free almost, just so they can double their numbers, where in fact only half of the subscribers pay the monthly cost and the game+expansions on dvd, while the chinese only go to an internet cafe and pay for a couple of hours, like you would pay for coffee in a starbucks place.

Anyway, even 5 mil subscribers is still a lot.

Do I really need to provide you with actual reasons behind what's so compelling about a game with

Ohh so Pathfinder Online is actually looking to make just another "wow clone" because WoW has 20mil subscribers. I thought we're trying to do something different by discussing in this forum, something that actually is about player interaction, not amphetamines disguised as achievements in a single-player grind fest for who has the bigger and the better stats and gear.

But if you want to talk about numbers lets talk about Farmville which has more than 80 million players. Let's make Pathfinder a Farmville game because they have the biggest numbers, and implement all the features they have because that's what people want.

Saga of Ryzom has an unlimited free trial...and it is much further along the sandbox scale than most games I have ever played.

I played Ryzom back when it was launched and I also played it again this year when I downloaded their open source game and messed with it a bit. I will try to get into it again, thanx.

1. Player-driven economies (and no, Diablo 2's SOJ-based "economy" doesn't count)

2. Auction houses
3. Large-group play experiences
4. A sense of persistent, in-game community
5. Guilds as a game feature

I'm sure you can come up more if you spend some time on it.

1. People have traded items in single player games too.

All your points address only one functionality of the MMO which I already stated - "seeing a lot of players in one place". You can dress it with as many pretty words as you like, but it still comes down to the same thing.

I'm not necessarily decrying your argument here, but you're starting out poorly. MMOs already have unique, compelling features to offer, and you're only going to shoot yourself in the foot by ignoring them. And persistent character advancement/progression is a good thing.

Let's say you don't agree with how I addressed the 5 points above. Please tell me then, what's so unique and compelling about the features you mentioned above?

Let's admit it. Current MMOs are a crappier version of single player RPGs. They trivialized everything about the story, cutscenes, dialog choices, meaningful quests, persistent changes on the environment, freedom of choosing a path, etc, and left us with what? Become the max level PWNZOR that kills everyone in one shot.

I don't know, why is that? Join a guild, and start participating in raids or battlegrounds with dozens of other players.

Yes, let's join a guild and grind together for the same gear and xp; that makes it much more fun indeed. Or let's play pvp in instanced scenarios or even in open worlds to really see how simplistic and unbalanced classes really are, and how ganking is king. Like I said in my previous post, if you want the thrill of competition, there are better games that provide that.

I don't want to sound like I hate MMOs. I love what MMOs stand for, which is bringing people together in meaningful activities. But sadly these days it comes down to masking a single player experience with achievements and prizes every step of the way to keep you hooked. But when the "game ends", so is your addiction to it ends, unless new expansions are added and they always are.

Mostly the theme-park MMOs do this, while sandbox, open world MMOs provide more freedom to how you want to play the game. R.Bartle, in "Pleasing the teller", suggested to offer the theme park experience in the begging, to guide the player, and then show him the great sandbox you have.

Note, I'm not arguing against systems that appeal to the Achievement aspect...but it shouldn't be pretty much the SOLE design focus of a game.

I agree that current MMOs appeal more to achievers, while socialisers can be entertained a lot of simply playing it very casual and maybe never reach the max level and gear. Explorers can be mesmerized by the beautiful graphics and maybe quests too, while the killers might get a good enough doze of thrill by engaging in arena pvp.

For all of them the game ends when the level/gear progression ends. Achievers have nothing to achieve anymore, explorers explored everything, socialisers can't socialize anymore if the quests are done and the level/gear has reached the end and of course the killers will leave too when no ones is playing in the arenas.

Right now this problem is patched by increasing the level/gear cap with each expansion, but it's a never ending loop.

The focus of MMOs should be something that never ends, unlike a story or a max level. Why do people play Starcraft for 12 years and still enjoy it, or Counter Strike or Dota for 6-7 years? These games are very quick to learn, but very hard to master mostly because of the twitch mechanics involved. If MMOs can combine this with the persistent nature of player characters and loot, maybe we will get something better than single player RPG level/gear progression.

MMORPGs have been made by taking all the features found in the single player and co-op RPG games and then adding a lot of players into one server, interacting with one another.

Single player RPG specific features:
- story and quests
- level progression and skills
- items and crafting
- killing mobs

Co-operative RPG specific features:
- grouping with your friend(s) (ofcourse)
- chatting
- pvp (dueling) -> Diablo 2
- finding players to group with -> Diablo 2 when in the lobby
- guilds -> done outside of the game, but still

MMO specific features:
- seeing a lot of players in one place

MMOs only makes you believe that you are doing your adventuring with millions of players, when in fact you are barely interacting with them.

And why is that?

It's because players are too busy doing their routine tasks (killing 10 rats) to progress with their character level. But once they reach the maximum level, then they start maxing out the other progression scheme (gear). And once they get the epic gear by doing instances, players usually stop playing the game with that particular character.

And why is that?

It's because the entire focus of the game is on level progression. PvP is just an activity like others (fishing, mini-games) and there's not much to it, because it has no consequences over your character like level and gear progression does. And if you really want some adrenaline pumping, playing an FPS or RTS game is more thrilling, more skill involved and much more balanced, ie: Battlefield, Starcraft.

Yes, some games like Lineage 2 and others do give purpose to PvP like faction wars, castle sieges, locking down farming spots, etc. But remember that players only do these things to help themselves and their guild mates to be more efficient at maxing their level and over enchanting their gear.

So let's try here and figure out on what can MMOs focus on, besides level/gear progression.

First of all the difference between RPG and FPS/RTS games is that your character is persistent. You can't login everyday in your favorite MMO and start the game at level 0 like MOBA games do or getting your character perma-killed. So, let's stick with the level and gear progression, but make it come second in importance: a more skilled level 1 player could kill a less experienced level 60 player.

This topic is only about creating awareness. I don't have the answer for it, but maybe with your help we can come up with some decent ideas.

My idea is to focus on player interaction like PvP, but with persistent rewards that are not tied to level/gear progression. The level and gear should only help you in reaching that main goal and not the other way around.

I believe if we solve this problem we will not be having the issues that current MMOs have like endgame activities, PvP rewards, boring quests, etc. And we will also make the jump from the WoW clones era to another era of MMOs, hopefully a better one.