The Elder Scrolls Online

[Modern Angel]

Yearly expansions with significant content (even if it's mostly leveling content) are pretty concrete signs to me.

Where did you come from and why are you so angry about MMO subs?

[Tannhauser]

Ingmar and MA better step up their game, the new guy has moxie! 

[Modern Angel]

I'm too old for moxie anymore. I just don't give a shit about raw numbers anymore. Is MMO X able to crank out regular content updates? Are the servers still up? Are their employees able to maintain steady positions and can they feed their families?

None of those things have to do with the quality of the game. MMO nerds have this weird tendency to conflate the two, drifting in and out of treating them as the same thing. Nobody cares anymore. Why in the world do raw sub numbers matter at all?

[Wizgar]

If we're talking about the experience of being a player dicking around in one of these games, subscriber counts obviously mean nothing. If we're talking about the health of the genre (as I was) then they matter quite a bit. A whole huge, huge, huge shitload of money has been lost betting on this genre over the last six or eight years.

[kildorn]

If we're talking about the experience of being a player dicking around in one of these games, subscriber counts obviously mean nothing. If we're talking about the health of the genre (as I was) then they matter quite a bit. A whole huge, huge, huge shitload of money has been lost betting on this genre over the last six or eight years.

A shitload of money has been lost betting on this genre, but not by lotro. You are looking for much MUCH larger budget targets for that ire.

[Wizgar]

A shitload of money has been lost betting on this genre, but not by lotro. You are looking for much MUCH larger budget targets for that ire.

No, that much is correct, LOTRO was first put into development when EQ was still king and was presumably budgeted to compete at that level. I just ungracefully listed it alongside a bunch of really awful post-WoW flops when I was throwing together my off-the-cuff list of MMOs that didn't set the world on fire. Then we had to have a fight over whether it was at the EQ level or not for some reason.

Edit: What the hell is even in the pipe these days, past ESO, Wildstar, and EQN?

[Modern Angel]

A shitload of money has been lost betting on this genre, but not by lotro. You are looking for much MUCH larger budget targets for that ire.

Right. And the budgets involved are WAY more what people need to look at over subs. Looking at subs is doing the wrong thing.

And define "set the world on fire". Why does any MMO need to do that? Nobody's freaking out over non-MMO games not "setting the world on fire". I'm questioning the basic premise that anyone needs to give any more thought/angst to MMOs than the broader PC game market. They're just another genre (or medium, whatever) of game.

I used to care about this shit. So I'm saying "make me care again". Tell me why I should care about raw subs, how much money people lost, etc when MMOs are no better or worse off than most other PC games.

[koro]

Edit: What the hell is even in the pipe these days, past ESO, Wildstar, and EQN?

Nothing we know of. But by the time they're out, there will be one or two more new whiz-bang MMOs announced that people will then ask "what the hell is even in the pipe these days, past..." about.

Just like it has been for the past five or six years.

[Wizgar]

And define "set the world on fire". Why does any MMO need to do that? Nobody's freaking out over non-MMO games not "setting the world on fire". I'm questioning the basic premise that anyone needs to give any more thought/angst to MMOs than the broader PC game market. They're just another genre (or medium, whatever) of game.

Because it's a genre that hasn't had a genuine unmitigated smash hit in almost a decade now. A stumbling, tired, ailing thing only being saved from total irrelevance for the moment by the existence of World of Warcraft.

I mean after enough years of repetition the whole rueful forumgoer's refrain of "Ugh, gosh, they just need to innovate! Give me something besides levels and quests!" just starts to sound like some kind of sick joke. It's not happening. They are never going to innovate. The entire existing genre is going to have to die off before there's even a chance of some mammal squeaking up between the dinosaur bones to make it happen.

[Paelos]

I disagree. Innovation comes with acceptance of risk, not a complete death of a genre. It comes in the indie games market usually and gets fleshed out at the top.

The reason you haven't seen innovation in the last 6 years is the financial collapse of the overall economy. The only companies making money in that stretch are those that had an already established franchise, and repeated the ever loving shit out of it. Activision is the classic example with WoW and CoD. EA has tried to do the same thing with their franchises, while putting pressure on BioWare to crank out crap.

However, you're going to see more risks in the next 5 year pipeline, because the market can now afford to take risks. Projects can start today that couldn't be started in 2009. Hell, the DOW is up over 16,000 today.

[kildorn]

And define "set the world on fire". Why does any MMO need to do that? Nobody's freaking out over non-MMO games not "setting the world on fire". I'm questioning the basic premise that anyone needs to give any more thought/angst to MMOs than the broader PC game market. They're just another genre (or medium, whatever) of game.

Because it's a genre that hasn't had a genuine unmitigated smash hit in almost a decade now. A stumbling, tired, ailing thing only being saved from total irrelevance for the moment by the existence of World of Warcraft.

I mean after enough years of repetition the whole rueful forumgoer's refrain of "Ugh, gosh, they just need to innovate! Give me something besides levels and quests!" just starts to sound like some kind of sick joke. It's not happening. They are never going to innovate. The entire existing genre is going to have to die off before there's even a chance of some mammal squeaking up between the dinosaur bones to make it happen.

Define smash hit, and why it's needed? You seem to be singularly focused on "must be bigger than the current largest" instead of "must make dickloads of money"

The genre is alive because it's profitable as all fuck. Everyone and their dog wants recurring revenue, because normal gaming studios have a huge problem with having to drum up cash to start up 2-3 year development runs. This is also why you see things like Ubi and EA moving to yearly installments of their best sellers. It's lower risk. Just like MMOs are if you don't dump 60 million into trying to top WoW's sub numbers on an untested IP.

[rk47]

Whoah so much heat in this thread.
Look at the mods we can have in skyrim tho, so much goodness in one game.

[Margalis]

I largely agree with new guy.

Innovation is as likely to come from other genres moving towards MMOs as from actual MMOs. A lot of games these days are online in some fashion. In addition the subscription model is no longer the holy grail - 5 years ago everyone was moving towards subs because of the allure of recurring revenue, but now other monetization schemes also promise recurring revenue, apply to more kinds of games, and have higher upper bounds on spending. All the people that were super keen in investing in MMOs 5 years ago are probably now putting that money into mobile games.

The MMO development landscape is very incestuous - I mean how many times is someone going to make an MMO out of Austin employing the same people that made the last 10 failed MMOs? Part of the reason there's little innovation is that it's the same people moving from one game to the next. They are going to keep making the same games and non-MMO games are going to be multiplayer enough to come in and eat their lunch.

[Wizgar]

Define smash hit, and why it's needed? You seem to be singularly focused on "must be bigger than the current largest" instead of "must make dickloads of money"

Bigger than the current largest? Shit, I'd settle for something that convincingly outperformed EQ1, a game that came out during the Clinton Administration and punched the user in the dick every time it was booted up. Even by that pathetic standard, the Western MMO industry outside of Blizzard has done exactly fuck all in the last eight years. Their biggest success story is Eve, a weird little decade-old outsider game with something less than five percent of WoW's peak subscribers.

There's nothing happening here. It's just wreck after wreck after wreck. Nobody is impressed that Fuckwaffles Online or whatever random-ass game some fanboy wants to stick up for finally limped its way to breaking even two years after being crucified in the press as the disgrace of the century and three years after anyone quit giving a shit. Developers pour money into these games expecting a return on investment, and that return isn't supposed to take the form of "Gosh we're turning a steady little profit now that we've layed everyone off and scored some interns to make hats for the cash shop!"

And hey, look, if you can't wait for the big money and all their stupid expectations to fuck off so you can enjoy a weird beardy little world of low-budget grinders, you know, that's great. That's perfectly valid. There are still people making and playing hex-based wargames, too, you know? But let's not pretend hex-based wargames aren't a moribund genre.

Innovation is as likely to come from other genres moving towards MMOs as from actual MMOs. A lot of games these days are online in some fashion.

Also, everything this guy said. If we're playing anything that resembles an MMO in 2020 and anyone gives a shit, it'll be because Rockstar or Nintendo or someone like that co-opted what was left of the genre and adapted it to their own model, not because the current crop of dipshit MMO developers ever pulled their heads out of their asses. It's been almost a decade since WoW, we've seen their best.

[rk47]

Dear Wizgard

Would you like to join RPGCodex.net?

Regards,
RK47

[Kageru]

GW2 kind of solved it, but they constantly have to develop content and put it in whatever place on the world map. However people aren't coming back for the constructed combat, they are coming back because there happens to be a new shiny in the zone. Otherwise, they would be there at all.

That isn't really connected to levelling, that's the issue with static content being consumed and getting boring. Which is really the big challenge.

GW2 made a weak effort. Daily quests include a region requirement and many of the zones have high level events that pop. But as in WoW and EQ that just means the players work out their spawns and do a drive-by as soon as they pop (or ignore them).

[Stormwaltz]

There are still people making and playing hex-based wargames, too, you know? But let's not pretend hex-based wargames aren't a moribund genre.

Matrix/Slitherine is as big as SSI ever was back in mid-late 80s. Hexes have crept into mainstream casual-strategy titles like Civ5 and GalCiv3. I'd venture wargames in general are far more alive than space sims are these days.

This is interesting. It's rare to see a new poster chuck as many indiscriminate grenades as this.

[Modern Angel]

Okay, but why should anyone fucking care if a game outperforms EQ1?

Again, you're going off about "flaming wrecks after flaming wrecks" and numbers. Nobody gives a shit. Nobody cares. They do not matter. It does not matter if a game is hyped up and gets "only" 100k subs if "only" 100k subs is profitable for them. Whether a game brings in more subs than EQ1 is not a marker of a) innovation or b) success, it's just a marker of if they got more subs than EQ1. And if investors want more than a steady profit as a return then I really don't give a shit about that, either; I'm pretty past the point of shedding tears for capitalists wanting to break big with a gamble. MMOs are steadily profitable, they're usually not very good games, sometimes one turns out alright. The End.

You're really het up over the least important number on the scoreboard.

[Sir T]

Eve is an interesting example, I was thinking about this last night. One of the unusual things is that you never stop leveling. When I started eve people said it would take you something like 3 and a half years to master every skill in the game. But they kept adding new skills, so you were always on the treadmill. Granted it was passive leveling where you just had to click a button every so often and at most grind up the cash for the skill book, but it was there. And it meant that you were always on an unassailable pedestal compared to people who had joined the game after you. So you would always be "better" than that git who's only crime was joining a week after you. And then of course you had all the killier equipment that you could use because you had Skill X and the other guy didn't. So you always have the ability to punch someone in the dick harder than he can punch you.

Its a pretty sadistic model. And I only played the game for 5 years, what does that say about me? 

[Yegolev]

Whoah so much heat in this thread.
Look at the mods we can have in skyrim tho, so much goodness in one game.

need beta invite plz

[Surlyboi]

Izzat Battletoads?

[Falconeer]

Relevant: upcoming hex based MMO, Dogs of War.

And a gameplay video.

Anyway, this new person talks like that friend of mine who whines all the time about his present relationships because they are not, and they will never be again, like that first few times he fell in love in high school and college. So nothing (in the MMORPG genre) will ever be to them like EverQuest and World of Warcraft. Nothing will ever hit that hard again.

Strictly money-wise, and only if we keep strict to the old definition of MMORPG, it is possible. Then again, who cares? Why should anything else hit that hard again? Times were right for those homeruns, and now they are right for very different ones. It is certainly interesting to speculate about the direction a certain, relatively new, genre will develop towards. But to call it dead simply because the times have changed enough (and the ever growing customer base has fragmented over hundreds of titles) to make a new monopoly like the EQ and WoW ones impossible is merely an exercise in dramatization.

[Modern Angel]

Yeah. To act like the EQ1/WOW sub levels are the main marker of success and shearing that marker from all historical context is bonkers. It's not just that WOW was solid, it's that it came at a time before a lot of other time wasters and we were all 10 years younger.

It reminds me a bit of the days when pen and paper RPGs were big. We're arguably in a golden age of tabletop gaming but there's a ton of whining because it doesn't feel like the old days with million copy selling games and hobby stores on every corner. Well, no, but that's the wrong fucking comparison. People grew up, different things filled the space that 22 year olds used to fill with that particular strain of gaming, and that's okay. It's okay that Well-regarded Game X doesn't sell as much as AD&D 2nd when it launched because it's a totally different world.

And it's okay that LOTRO (since we need an example) doesn't sell as much as WOW or EQ1 or whatever. People are employed, content is created, the lights are one, people who enjoy it are enjoying it. Everything related to past successes is frankly off-topic of anything which matters.

[Falconeer]

Or TCGs are dead because there hasn't been any other hit like it since Magic: The Gathering, and that was twenty years ago? 

[Threash]

A shitload of money has been lost betting on this genre, but not by lotro. You are looking for much MUCH larger budget targets for that ire.

No, that much is correct, LOTRO was first put into development when EQ was still king and was presumably budgeted to compete at that level. I just ungracefully listed it alongside a bunch of really awful post-WoW flops when I was throwing together my off-the-cuff list of MMOs that didn't set the world on fire. Then we had to have a fight over whether it was at the EQ level or not for some reason.

Edit: What the hell is even in the pipe these days, past ESO, Wildstar, and EQN?

Some korean stuff like archeage, black desert, blade and soul? they look purty at least.

[Khaldun]

New guy is basically right, I think.

It's a case of path-dependence. MMOs built their entire DNA up out of Diku and there are fundamental problems in that basic ancestry that have gotten more and more lethal with each successive generation from the parent. It's a cul-de-sac.

Basically, there are only three ways in my view to satisfy the desires and expectations that players carried into MMOs way back when the genre first became commercially viable with UO. 1) is single-player open-world games like Skyrim, Red Dead, etc., though they might have limited multiplayer components like Dark Souls does. 2) is a procedurally-generated environment focused on collaborative building w/deformable terrain and various bots or NPCs, like Minecraft. 3) is something like EVE--persistent-world PvP with limited PvE components.

It's not impossible to imagine that some advances in AI, etc. could allow for a hybrid of these approaches--something that looks as good and/or has good storytelling like Red Dead but that is procedurally generated and populated. But to get there, you have to back up all the way to the beginning and completely abandon almost the entire history of MMOs as a dead end, and start with something simple but powerful. Minecraft kind of already did that, but I'm not at all clear that there's anyone out there capable of making the next step from that beginning.

The other thing that has to be abandoned that is somewhat separate from the diku template is the "massively" part. There are only a few kinds of games that are fun to play with total strangers of the XBLA sort, and they are all by their nature ephemeral and short. Nobody wants to spend night after night, week after week, playing with a bunch of misanthropic assholes. Virtual worlds need to be minimally multiplayer, the equivalent of a pen-and-paper campaign with a group of trusted friends.

The killer ap that I honestly think would be a huge hit would be:

a) extremely large procedurally-generated world.
b) world filled with tons of miniplots, quests, NPC factions, and autonomous-agent AI NPCs with a constant flow of DLC adding new stuff on a monthly basis, seeded into existing worlds or into new ones.
c) intended for groups of trusted friends between 5-50 people or so to participate in a single persistent iteration of such a world.
d) maybe allow for the initiating 'host' of a given generated world to hand-edit, customize and otherwise mod a world.

And I think it's possible. But getting even close to this requires forgetting every MMO that has ever existed, and it requires abandoning the idea of thousands of strangers playing together in a given world.

[Draegan]

In my opinion, the way for the genre to move on is to get rid of two things: Levels and Quest-Treadmill based content.

Leveling is indeed content that will only be consumed a couple of times, you're right. But that doesn't matter. Let me put it this way. Back in the early 2000s there were a bunch of multiplayer-only shooters, like Quake 3 Arena and Unreal Tournament, a bunch of Battlefields, Quake Wars, etc. None of them were particularly successful. They did OK, but nothing like Modern Warfare, Battlefield, etc, do today.

That high quality quickly consumed content is the hook that gets people in the door. It's what gets them to buy an expansion, or a new entry in your franchise every year. Multiplayer Call of Duty: Ghosts isn't particularly different from the last CoD. So why did CoD:Ghosts sell through so many copies? It's a known recipe for success. If you tried to release a MMO that was only the endgame, you'd face a similar challenge. The cost of entry is so much higher for MMOs that nobody can take the chance.

There's more to it too; the leveling portion is usually the best part of the game. I buy each WoW expansion as it comes out, level up my guys to max, do a couple dungeons, then quit until the next expansion or patch comes out with new content. That's how I consume MMOs-- it is what I believe to be the healthiest way.

And lastly, procedural content is fucking boring.  Everquest Next is not relying on procedural content; it's the exact opposite. They're relying upon player-created content. And that is the right answer. Whether EQN will execute on its promise is another question entirely.

I don't think you can compare PVP and PVE games. The majority of CoD players play multiplayer PVP matches right? (I'm not an FPS guy so correct me if I'm wrong) PVP games can usually outlast other games because you are just creating maps and rulesets. Same thing with MOBAs.

As far as leveling, WOW's leveling is the most fun to a lot of people, because that is the game they are buying in to. I'm talking about future games. And I don't think the genre will ever evolve until that's taken out. But you can always go back to WOW and play what they always did best: Leveling.

Procedural content, player create content, whatever. To me that falls into the same classification as "shit is a bit different than the last time I came around these parts - let's see what's different". Because exploration in MMOs is non existent after the first time your run around. I want to be able to play a game so when I come back to an area there might be something else going on, maybe. That means the world map needs to be bigger so people aren't running around the world looking for new events and then globally announcing them like Rift invasions.

[Nebu]

The issue that I see is the conflict between theme park and open world philosophy.  WoW players enjoy a theme park while UO enthusiasts prefer a more open world.  You're NEVER going to appeal to both crowds, so you just have to get over that before release.  Pick a concept and stick with it.  Stop trying to be everything to everyone.  Learn from your predecessors (GW2, CoH, UO, WoW) but don't emulate them too closely. 

I think that open world pvp can also be fun, but you'd have to adopt the GW2 map mechanic of scaling people to the zone.  It would eliminate the high level gank problem so common in mature games making entry much more palatable.

[Mrbloodworth]

I still think Mount and Blade combat in an MMO setting would fly off the shelves.

And if it already exists, it needs better marketing.

Persistent World 4.4.0 - download and general discussion

Not for the Faint at heart.

My Friends and I have been playing this, and it kinda took us a bit to get over a death. Once we realized its not as harsh as it sounds, and could shake what other MMO like games have tought us ( Death is bad, you now must spend 20 hours grinding ), we have had some incredible fun.

[sam, an eggplant]

Procedural content, player create content, whatever. To me that falls into the same classification as "shit is a bit different than the last time I came around these parts - let's see what's different". Because exploration in MMOs is non existent after the first time your run around. I want to be able to play a game so when I come back to an area there might be something else going on, maybe. That means the world map needs to be bigger so people aren't running around the world looking for new events and then globally announcing them like Rift invasions.

Yes, you want to consume new content each time you play, and that is totally key. Player-generated content is the only way to get there. Text MUDs had that back in the 80s and 90s, you could graduate to "wizard" and create your own rooms and encounters, but it was lost in translation to graphical MUDs with EQ1. We're just now starting to really explore that space in graphical MUDs, with Neverwinter's baby steps. EQ Next promises to embrace it, which would be very exciting if we weren't already aware of SOE's track record.

Procedural means "automatically generated". Like when you generate a new minecraft world, or random dungeons in a roguelike. That shit is boring. Very different from rich lovingly player-generated content.

[Draegan]

New guy is basically right, I think.

It's a case of path-dependence. MMOs built their entire DNA up out of Diku and there are fundamental problems in that basic ancestry that have gotten more and more lethal with each successive generation from the parent. It's a cul-de-sac.

I would definitely agree that the DIKU based MMORPG is completely hacked up and dead at this point. Completely over-developed and saturated. There have been way to many interations on the the standard problems of the genre that you have a stack of 50 bandaids on top of each other and it's sloppy. Proof in point in a lot of what they're doing in the WOW expansion. They completely ripped out some old systems.

The next interesting DIKU game is one that goes back to basics most likely.

Also your a-b-c list almost describes what I know of Trove by Trion. Heh.

[Draegan]

Procedural content, player create content, whatever. To me that falls into the same classification as "shit is a bit different than the last time I came around these parts - let's see what's different". Because exploration in MMOs is non existent after the first time your run around. I want to be able to play a game so when I come back to an area there might be something else going on, maybe. That means the world map needs to be bigger so people aren't running around the world looking for new events and then globally announcing them like Rift invasions.

Yes, you want to consume new content each time you play, and that is totally key. Player-generated content is the only way to get there. Text MUDs had that back in the 80s and 90s, you could graduate to "wizard" and create your own rooms and encounters, but it was lost in translation to graphical MUDs with EQ1. We're just now starting to really explore that space in graphical MUDs, with Neverwinter's baby steps. EQ Next promises to embrace it, which would be very exciting if we weren't already aware of SOE's track record.

Procedural means "automatically generated". Like when you generate a new minecraft world, or random dungeons in a roguelike. That shit is boring. Very different from rich lovingly player-generated content.

I know the difference between procedural and player generated. I want both and I think both can work. EQN will have both so it'll be interesting to watch to see if it works.

[Khaldun]

I think the way I see player and procedural content relating is what I might call "curation". If players have to build adventures/worlds from scratch but with a bunch of already-made objects (or if building from scratch means doing a lot of coding), you get mostly crap (Spore Galactic Adventures or NWN). If an environment is 100% procedural, even when it's fun (Minecraft) it ultimately has a sameness to it. What you need is a procedural environment that then gets populated with a lot of hand-made objects, miniplots, NPCs and so on created by players and developers and where the overall game keeps things in motion and makes the world persistent.

So I want not just a sense that the next time I visit a place, things are different, but that:

a) the difference "makes sense"--isn't just random
b) the difference has something to do with what happened the last time I was there

-------

I also don't think there are that many people who really do want a theme park with lots of static rides. I think there are a lot of people who got used to settling for a theme park when what they were really looking for was an open world.

[amiable]

I think there is plenty of room for innovation, it's just that no one has taken the leap yet.  Hell, just steal the good systems for other games:

-  Horizontal instead of vertical advancement a la EvE.  If you want to specialize in an area it won't take you very long to get decently good at it, it will take longer to get to true mastery (and the difference between mastery and decently good being between 2-5%).  Mastery in all areas will effectively take forever.
-  PvE gameplay via events and and living story a la GW2 focus on open world content to give the feel of a large community.
-  PvP gameplay featuring large world PvP segregated from small group PvP.  Small group PvP has standardized gear to appeal to the "skill" based community.  Greater than 2 sides for larger battles (ala Eve and GW2)
- Player housing, crafting and wardrobe assets ala LOTRO  Trophies from PvP and PvE can show up in your houses and guild halls.

I would play that game.

[Ingmar]

I guess it wouldn't be f13 if we didn't have to have the "but really what people want is open world" conversation around every game. Based on this discussion I assume you all backed Pathfinder.