I actually think that designers should stop trying to shoe horn this type of game into the massively multiplayer environment. Step away from trying to include as many 1000s of players at once on a single instance of the 'virtual world' (ie a server) and maybe look at designing the game to handle 200-300 players at once. Either that or radically change how you are designing these games.
I couldn't agree more.
There’s no “game” in these MMOGs anymore. Since progression (and everything else) seems to only be gauged by combat, you’d expect something a little more engaging than a boring Rock’em Sock’em Robot fest where victory is usually pre-determined from stats (Level 20 characters will ALWAYS defeat Level 1 opponents).
Haemish’s points about time-shifting between mediums are also right on the money when we start to dissect the very basic nature of Combat. What created suspense and tension in the PnP universe was only a blink of an eye for the CRPGs. This would probably mean an entirely new combat system may be needed if developers ever hope to destroy the barriers, clichés and overall bad feelings surrounding the current crop of CRPG combat.
I’m with the “Quality not Quantity” idea myself and hope more developers start realizing that: just because you can place 100,000 people together in a stadium, that doesn’t mean they’ll make their own fun.
These games are financially demanding to the consumer and many find it insulting to pay $180+/year (+ retail) on a subscription-based “service” that just doesn’t deliver the entertainment promised. Could you imagine how poorly received a MMOG would be if it was passed off as a single-player game? Things like: “This game makes watching paint dry more appealing as an avenue for entertainment” and “The AI was akin to a retarded Monkey on crack suffering from severe head trauma” would probably be seen in a few reviews.
As a whole, this genre’s painted itself into a corner and will begin to rapidly lose customers when the bubble bursts. Someone pointed out that “customers are sheep” and, for the most part, they are. However, when the flock is led back to greener pastures from genres offering more for less, all these sheep will move in rapid succession and the genre will be devastated (especially with how bad the American economy will be devastated in the coming years due to out-sourcing and tech-jobs becoming offshore opportunities). It’s only going to take one or two Killer Apps to draw this flock away and I’m not going to be the one who has to deal with the aftermath.
Until the industry as a whole gets its head out of its ass and stops being so full of itself (The GDC is now just an annual award show of self-congratulatory industry members spouting about what makes them so great…little do they realize, most of them are driving at extremely fast speeds down the road to obsolescence), genres, markets and games we enjoy will be racing through sequels and rehashes to collect cash in short-term gains (long-term loss). Companies will vanish or merge to stay afloat and eventually, we’ll only have one or two companies to turn to for games and we all know what happens when that occurs (consoles: Atari 1984).
Yeah, yeah: “The sky is falling!” and this rant probably comes across as some know-it-all, jaded asshole bitching about things without trying to fix them. Why bother try fixing them now? It’s the “big kids’” ball now and they don’t want to play with the rest of us.
I’ve played Flash games offering more entertainment value and interactivity than most of the MMOGs and it’s obvious that these games will stay this way until they stop making money. No matter what we say or attempt to do, Money will always speak louder than us and critiquing, bitching and shitting on games and their outdated, stagnant and downright boring systems only serves as a vent of frustration… companies could give a flying fuck about what angry nerds who may have “better ideas” really have to say, because the money is still rolling in and the game designs haven’t changed in 20+ years.
/end rant
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