Why do ALL MMORPGs go to shit? If you ask anyone about their favorite memories as a gamer, most people would say the memories that are dearest to them are from early days of MMORPGs. But how come this doesn't last? Is a MMORPG inherently a genre that is destined to go to shit, no matter how good it was at the start? Or does greed get in the way? I'm a game designer and I'm fascinated by this problem.
Why do ALL MMORPGs go to shit? If you ask anyone about their favorite memories as a gamer...
Dominic Smith
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Juan James
You can't design friends.
Robert Sanders
MMOs allow for more personal connections than other genres allow for. Game design for the perfect mmo is 50% social 50% Gameplay. Give a reason for people to come together.
Kevin Green
it was the new concept of a continent to explore
wanna know what i asked my friend when he helped me make my first L2 char?
how do i save?
mmo's in the 00's where great because it was a magic world of exploration and you didnt know what the other players where doing
now its marker that, go where this arrow points, auto everything, rush to cap and find 1000 guides how to min-max
>t. +18 homunculus
Landon King
In my experience it's because early MMOs focused more on players interacting with each other. After they get more popular it seems like they always start adding more NPCs that give out boring quests, and a bunch of other fluff that causes less players to actually play with each other, and it becomes a lot less fun to play overall.
Christian Turner
MMOs are essentially living games.
Life will always be susceptible to entropy.
You cannot escape it.
Colton Reyes
OP here, read the comments on this video to see exactly what I mean youtube.com
You can do this with [any MMORPG soundtrack]. The comments on these videos are the most positive imaginable. I didn't play half of these games but these comments alone make me nostalgic for the bygone golden era of the MMO
Matthew Ramirez
Because EVERY game that works as a service will eventually get worse.
Blake Campbell
i cry everytin
Caleb Anderson
Smartphones killed 99% of all mmorpgs.
Just check NCSoft revenue.
Why bother with PC MMORPG if the auto-play mobile "mmorpg" generic template can generate huge amount of profits out of thin air ?
Oliver Diaz
because Dicksored means they don't have to chat in game anymore
Dylan King
Greed and apathy.
Adam Cox
Because MMOs now aren't social anymore, and are railroaded friendless experiences designed to keep you grinding out stuff each week. MMOs from 20 years ago are more true to the spirit of the genre than anything we have today.
Angel Evans
>Smartphones killed 99% of all mmorpgs
Man, I am playing Toram Online right now on phone, I feel like I traveled back in time.
Julian Reed
>talking in chat when easily offended zoomers exist
asking to get banned
Gabriel Foster
>listening to crowds that want more instanced content and instant gratification
>time gating things("5 dungeon runs a day")
>datamining
>focus on endgame
>free2play business models
>terrible performance and netcode
And the biggest of all: designing your game like a Themepark.
Brody Wright
Speck for yourself user FF14 has gotten better with age
Nicholas King
Look at that fucking image. Most of the screen is fucking UI elements.
Give me BotW but as an MMO.
Colton Allen
Running out of substantial content that everything is reduced to dailies and gear treadmills.
Liam Ramirez
>resetera the MMO
Anthony Barnes
William Cook
MMOs need normies playing, they don’t work if the majority of players are autists playing 15 hours a day and unfortunately normies moved to other games
David Stewart
If you want a clean screen MMO play Ragnarok Online.
Jeremiah Howard
You forgot
>Instancing
Christian Mitchell
For someone who primarily enjoy battle related content I think the game is lacking severely in quantity in that regard
Landon Myers
Its not a meme when people say MMOs lack immersion.
If you did this shit in any other genre no one would touch your game, and yet in MMOs everything is a spreadsheet.
Eli Cox
Lineage 2 was amazing back in the day
Brandon Reyes
Imagine playing humie or elf, flesh is weak.
Jason Roberts
Anime is the worst aesthetic on earth
Andrew Smith
Just kill them animeys with rocket launchers and flamethrowers.
Christopher Morales
You can get RO to get full of meters and bars if you use external hooking programs but usually you would not because it's not necessary often. And in huge siege situations the screen can easily become like picture related. These are all players.
MMOs are the lowest skill ceiling games but at higher levels it does require you to keep paying attention to several simultaneous things and reacting to them. Keeping buffs up, healing members, watching enemy movements, etc. And chat bars, perhaps more than one (open chat, guild chat, party chat, private messages, etc).
Liam Reyes
Everything that makes the game more convenient is a double edged sword that inevitably kills an MMO. Whether it's gear score or party finder or flying mounts, fast travel, quest trackers, 3rd party apps like discord, mods, and even wikis. These things serve to smooth away all the "rough edges" of an MMO even though those quirks, oddities, and difficulties are what gives the world character and life. A successful MMO would need to walk a tight-rope between the two extremes because making your MMO arcane and impenetrable to new players is just as bad as making it a smoothed out, polished Disney themepark ride.
The other knife in the back of the MMO genre is free-to-play and cash shop business models, I don't think I need to explain why.
Levi Garcia
you cant play a themepark forever
Benjamin Stewart
sometimes it's fun to play weak
so you might as well take the shota pill
Hunter Sanders
I was maining Super Novice in RO.
Austin Thomas
>Everything that makes the game more convenient is a double edged sword that inevitably kills an MMO
I saw this happen real time in Tree of Savior.
>5 man parties for dungeons
>people gather in huge groups in front of dungeon entrance, make chats and form up their own parties
>meet people, make lots of friends and enemies
>dungeon entrances are a social hub
>dev announces it's going to add an auto-queue
>after it is implemented those social areas are gone
>enter queue, wait a few minutes to party, everyone rushes to the end and never says a word
Anything that removes the need for social interaction is bad for an MMO. I hate it when people pull out the "quality of life" card, they don't know what they're talking about.
Landon Morgan
>Super Novice fan
I like your style, Super Novices are cool.
I'm a private server developer, I run my own RO servers occasionally. When I do I always go and give Super Novices better HP and SP pools, makes them a non-joke class. Super Novice basic gear is unironically some of the best in the game, it can get pretty broken.
Thomas Adams
Lineage 2 was fucking amazing.