What do people want from MMO's?

[AgedGrunt]

I want more MMO's like Guild Wars 2, really.

GW2 has a number of things right but fails in many aspects. A lot was done right with GW that didn't carry over to GW2 (e.g. guild halls). Other things were hyped but nothing came (player housing). Community messaging is one of my biggest complaints against ArenaNet and one thing desperately needed in an MMO. It's intensely frustrating as a player when a company holds its cards close and you've no idea what's coming or what they're thinking.

There's always been displeasure with GW2. It's model, which most prominently carried the acclaim of being anti-grind, began with and expanded a mountain range of grind. Everything from leveling (level cap = 80) to legendary weapons to achievements is done by repetition and hoarding items. Crafting was promised to be simple, innovative and designed so that players wouldn't be factories producing junk; that's exactly what it is.

The "Living Story" is a slow trickle featuring characters I feel no attachment to, which is particularly aggravating as the featured protagonists, Destiny's Edge (you know, who were supposed to be the whole point of the main game but were somehow marginalized to episodes in dungeons), have all but been forgotten (along with the dragons, save for the new one introduced out of thin air). The personal story that preceded it was maligned for several reasons, but us veterans have accepted that bitter disappointment long ago.

The game's model of "end game" content is also upsetting for many of us as we look for things to do (there are no expansion packs), and the current state of PvP/WvW is embarrassing to say the least. GW2 only just got a proper combat log and trade post features, two years along.

I've gone this far without mentioning that absolute succubus that is RNG? Shall I get into the gem store and how lame and expensive that is, and how it makes more sense to farm gold than purchase gems that cost (a lot of) real money? How about the low-level gambling operation of Black Lion chests that have an extremely low chance to drop a weapon ticket (or a scrap of one), where *five* are needed to acquire just one weapon skin? Not a weapon, just a skin applier - you have to grind out your (incredibly expensive) ascended weapon on your own.

GW2 does a lot right - visuals, combat, details, intuitive design, and it's true the game is far better now than it was at release. But it's also proof that no matter how good a game looks and feels, it needs to resist the worst holes so many MMOs fall into: grind, RNG, weak development and stagnation.

 

[Artaneius]

I want an MMO to have the complete freedom that the first MMO Ultima Online had where I can do whatever I want, whenever I want, and kill any player I want and take their stuff. Go into towns, run governments, control economy, kill weaker players, force them to work for you etc.

 

[The Random Critic]

Fighting grinding in a mmo is like a dog chasing it's own tail...

Personally I just want a fantasy version of EVE. (Which is actually one of those games that successfully chased it's own tail, btw)

Will try FFXIV soon though, heard enough good comments about it.

Edit: Actually, it could be a bad idea depends on how it's executed, but here let's just say everything goes according to my vision. (Sandboxy? character devolpment, like the one's in TES, but EVE-ish)

 

[RandV80]

How about not screwing up games that are better off single player? Problem is when developers/publishers figured out that if you do it right you can get people to buy the game up front and continue to play $15 a month to play and some people will do so for years, then those people can become all they care about. Even though what may hook someone to an MMORPG amy not be the same thing that hooks someone to a single player focused RPG.

Consider the Final Fantasy series. I believe the most successfully financial FF was FFXI... and this was with a consistent player base of what, 500,000? A regular single player FF will sell 5,000,000-10,000,000. So you can understand why Square would do it but it kind of sucks for the larger non-MMO player base when they drop everything for a few years to devote to FFXIV.

Speaking of FFXIV, I tried it for a month hoping for something like FFXII with people but was horribly disappointed.

-FFXII was supposed to be MMO like combat but still felt FF/RPG-ish, FFXIV was just straight up MMO.
-in XII to progress the story gameplay involved a lot around traveling from point A to point B which covered a great deal of ground and could be challenging, taking a few hours. In XIV every region only had 3 big zones that were chopped up into specific level areas that were all sitting right next to each other. Progressing story meant teleportnig to the closest one, walking 30 seconds to the new area, then performing some basic fetch quest.
-chat box instead of text... talk about impersonal

For what's supposed to be an online game the whole thing just felt very anti social. Feels like the 'story' is just something there to occupy yourself as you rush towards end game content. From what I get talking to other MMO players the fun/social part is supposed to be when you get to the end game and join raiding guilds. That seems to be the 'hook' that gets people playing for years and gets all the emphasis in MMO's, and they focus on that to the detriment of everything else which is where they tend to lose me.

 

[Arina Love]

Well i want open world without any sort of loading screens. Unregulated economy without auction houses, you can only sell by setting you character as a vendor. Unregulated killing, meaning you can kill whomever you like, PKing included. No group finders people will have to talk to get in to a group. City/castle sieges and guild who owns a city/castle get a rent cut from all Guild Halls located in that City/castle. As you can see i have a MAJOR boner for Lineage 2 pre Goddess of Destruction(they done f*cked it up with it). I want that hardcore MMO just little bit modernized and less grinding coz i don't have all the time in the world anymore .

 

[KaZuYa]

The utter removal of micro transactions, It doesn't matter how well intentioned a game is the publishers know where the money is and that's by sacking 90% of the dev team and putting the rest into product development for their cash cow online stores.

Also the return of elitism and by the that I mean some actually goal in the game be gear or access to a unique class, it made these games enjoyable when you always had a goal to strive for and it inspired me when you saw people wearing awesome looking gear you couldn't buy for $10.

Lastly active and in game GM's who would wonder around the player world responding to issues and actively watching and banning exploiters instead of waiting 72 hours for a automatically generated email which doesn't help at all.

 

[Aesir23]

Honestly, FF XIV hit a lot of my buttons for what I like in an MMO. Beautiful visuals and animation, I recall the quests being pretty fun, I actually enjoyed the crafting which has never happened to me before, and I loved the feeling of the Fates where you got just this mass of players working to bring down this huge creature. The only thing I think I disliked about XIV was how it forces you to get into a group in order to complete a Level 17 story quest. I don't think I would have minded too much except that I didn't know anyone else who played and I'd heard some major horror stories with the game's grouping mechanic. Between being a DPS class and a new player who didn't have expert level knowledge of MMOs, it was an experience I was really dreading.

Also, this may seem really odd, but I really enjoy stories in MMOs. For the most part MMOs have never really interested me because it was a lot of the same stuff over and over for what? To reach a level cap and get better stuff? A story definitely helps give me motivation even if it's only "I want to see what happens next".


Archeage looked really interesting but you essentially have to pay a sub to enjoy it. I don't mind paying subs since I've played WoW, FFXI, and FFXIV before but I'm also not the type of person to pay for a sub unless I'm 100% sure I'll enjoy it. Between Archeage's horrendous community and their very poor F2P/trial content, it just did not sell me on buying a monthly sub.

Guess I'm waiting on Black Desert now.

 

[Ryan Richert]

I want an MMO to make me forget I'm burnt out on MMOs. I want an MMO to erase my previous MMO experience so I can enjoy MMOs again. I want an MMO that is so radically different from Wow-clone number mashing UI's that it will seem like something completely new and I will be filled with euphoria because this new type of MMO is something I have zero tolerance for (zero tolerance meaning I get a crap ton of enjoyment out of it because I never experienced something like it before, as opposed to WoW, which requires hours of mindless grinding just to feel 'baseline'.)

I want an MMO that, at launch, general chat is not filled with scores of people bitterly complaining about that MMO, or MMOs in general. I want an MMO that doesn't make me feel compelled to sarcastically bite back at these bitter, unsatisfied people, because I am bitter and unsatisfied, myself.

I want to go back to 1998 and do it all over again, haha.

 

[Gray-Philosophy]

Thank you everyone for your lovely and constructive replies.
This has been a lot more positive than I had expected with experiences from previous forums, and a lot of what I'm reading here is consistent with what I'd want from a game myself as well.

For those that are interested in these things, I'm actually working on a bit of a project where I intend to design my own multiplayer RPG
"Hang on, you can't just make your own game like that and expect it to Work"
I know this.
When I say "Design my own RPG" I'm really just writing a long and elaborate text document explaining all the elements of the game from features to mechanics and the reasoning behind them. This is an entertaning thought process to me, and I enjoy figuring out how to make things work together. I also have no genuine aspirations of ever actually producing anything, but it's a tremendously satisfying creative outlet.


You can read more about this project of mine, here.

Spoiler

Your interest is appreciated, this will be a summary of some of the core elements of the game, that has yet to even be given a proper name. lel

A lot of my inspiration comes from what I see in existing games already, so there is likely to be a lot of comparisons to other games throughout.

I wanted to move away from the often seen 3rd person, hotbar, tab-target, hack'n slash, gear grind MMORPG's and go more in the direction of an immersive singleplayer-worthy experience in an open World.

I try considering everything from a "realistic" perspective to support it with logical reasoning within a fantasy universe. My intentions with this is to get rid of illogical or outright silly mechanics that make no sense, other than to restrict the players instead of making consequences for stupid decisions.

It's an unrestrictive 1st person open-world sandbox with themepark sprinkles, in which players are pretty much free to do whatever the bloody hell they want. Explore on their own, make a guild, build a city, engage in politics, wage war, whatever. With the addition of more themepark-ish events occuring like threatening boss monsters showing up or something like that.

I seek to make core mechanics, like moving around, combat or spellcasting, be interactive and fun to play around with.

I seek to eliminate stat dependency on gear, and instead design these things from a logical perspective where different types of armour functions a lot more like utility rather than an armour score that reduces xx% damage. Such as heavy plated armour being virtually impervious to bladed weapons while being vulnerable to maces, and lighter armour being less impairing allowing for more acrobatic performances, albeit much less viable on an actual battlefield.

I also seek to completely eliminate the massive gap between lower level and higher level players. A sword is going to hurt no matter who's holding it, a low level player should be able to play with or against higher level players provided he's good enough. There won't be massive differences in stat scores to set players apart, the biggest difference will be that higher level players will just have unlocked more "toys" (skills or whatever) to play with.

I want to make crafting (both equipment and buildings) focus a lot more on the creative aspect of it, allowing players to customize the appearance of the items they make.

Interest, questions and suggestions from my peers are a major motivator. If you're the type that likes these things like I do, you're more than welcome to see the full current document

 

[bliebblob]

I could list all sorts of mechanics and stuff, but what it all boils down to is this: I want a second life in an interesting world. The actual massive multiplayer part of it doesn't really interest me. The presence of a bazillion other players is mostly something I put up with rather than enjoy. They're necessary to make it all financially possible, but I'd rather just only have the peeps from my friends list and then also their friends list around.

 

[Genocidicles]

It's just the payment methods that piss me off.

Too many subscriptions or microtransactions. Not enough one time fees. I could get behind a subscription service if I actually got that amount of time out of the game. Say I buy a month of game time for my account... I wouldn't have a problem with having to do that if the 'month' of gametime only counted when I was logged in, getting my money's worth.

With a regular sub I'm paying for a month, but I cant play it for a month. I have social or educational obligations, or a new game comes out that steals my interest, all the while that remaining gametime I paid for is slowly ticking down. It feels like I'm wasting my money.

 

[Me55enger]

Greater focus on writing in relation to the player.

MMO's are very good at becoming narrative rich - the Lore of Azeroth, for example - but are lackluster in being narrative rich - the role of the player and their avatar.

EVE I think overcame this simply via their extensive economy system which was capable of supporting organizations and, more specifically, personalities. WoW doesn't do this, and never will.

Hoping that Star Citizen will be a giant step in the right direction. It's looking that way.

EDIT: Ironically cliche as it sounds, I'd also like originality. That's what brought me to Firefall.

 

[stroopwafel]

MMO's certainly have elements I like but in general I play games to get away from people, not interact with them(and from what I understand it's almost impossible to completely solo an MMO). Now I do like PvP and sometimes random co-op so it's not like I completely shy away from online multiplayer it's just that when group play becomes mandatory to clear(parts of) a game I get completely turned off.

I personally like that whole concept of 'shared world' a lot more. Like you still play a single-player game but it's loosely connected to the adventures of other players. For example the upcoming The Division has a lot of these elements I really like in an online game.

So yeah, 'traditonal' MMO's aren't really for me but I do think its really cool to see elements of MMO's integrated into games I do like. Though, I still wish they could make like an MMO that is suited to any kind of preference. Like for example the world organically adapting to your presence, like when you enter a dungeon solo the challenge becomes tailored to solo and vice-versa when you enter as a group. That way you can easily blur the line between single- and multiplayer while still keeping the best of both worlds.

I would also like to see an MMO in a purely medieval world, without most of the fantasy. Maybe some form of magic but it should be really low-key and rare. And ofcourse a host of weird creatures and monsters but their presence should be really illusive and 'on the horizon'. Most of the enemies would be other players(or AI controlled other players) who want your shit. Kind of like a survival RPG where you don't seek the challenges, but the challenges seek you. So you constantly have to move around to get away from danger while leveling up enables you to be more pro-active(so you constantly have an incentive to engage other players as well) and seek out the bigger threats lurking somewhere in the labyrinthine world, which I think would make for a really interesting progression system.

Make the world and visuals more interesting, the combat weighty and real-time, the quests more intriguing and imaginative, the progression system more rewarding than just grinding for levels and loot and integrate a single-player experience into the trappings of an MMO and such a game would be awesome!

 

[WhiteFangofWhoa]

I... I don't know.

After experiencing 5 different MMORPGs I've come to the realization that there may be some inherent things in the style of game that can't be fixed, foremost the human factor. Not that I don't still enjoy SWTOR, but it's definitely a more single-player/story focused one than most.

Lots of MMORPGers like PvP, yet the combination of lag and poor teamwork and communication skills usually guarantees a miserable time for the losing team. Lag is likely a major part of the reason why most MMORPG combat is usually so boring and simplistic compared to a single-player game, since you must try to allow for the slowest connections possible. I don't mind sub-par graphical fidelity to compensate, but a lot of people do.

People say they want to eliminate the grind, but if it was all story quests you'd be able to finish it in a week. You should want to go out and explore the world, find new places and missions. If you're impressed by a new area or a raid boss' attack, you're probably going to get distracted and die since it's your first time, prompting abuse and kickage shortly after. Unlike a single player experience, where you could use trial and error for things and take your time to explore the environment. Days after new content comes along you are expected to know it inside and out (many is the time I've seen the cry of 'SPACEBAR!' to hurry text along even if it's a player's first time in a Flashpoint).

Maybe the party system in GW2 is a partial solution, at least outside of dungeons. You're automatically part of an area-wide party the moment you step into it and you can't really sabotage everyone else's questing. You can see player's locations and know wherever there's a gathering there's probably a group mission going on that you can help with if you like. I forget if this is the case in GW2, but in SWTOR every class has at least one support ability that can contribute to a group beyond the chosen role (beyond the unique buffs, Jedi Sentinel gets Transcendence, which can be used after striking enemies a certain number of times that significantly boosts the entire party's attack power for 10 seconds and can be used often at high levels). I'd like to see more interlinked class benefits like in Team Fortress 2, where a party of 3 people is automatically far stronger than 3 individuals due to the benefits each one can provide for the other. I liked City of Heroes' combat too due to the huge variety of abilities used by both the players and enemies- it probably has the most diverse (and some of the most difficult) enemies I've seen in a MMORPG. The Yakuza-style Tsoo gang had a bunch of enemy types that pretty much copied the common player roles and had to be approached as such, and this is only at level 20- there were other gangs with even stranger talents.

Anyway now I'm just rambling on now about good past MMORPG experiences, and with work I don't really have the time for major commitment to an MMO anymore anyway. Theme-wise, I've dreamed of a feudal-style MMORPG where both demons and the armies of enemy warlords are your opponents, perhaps beginning with you doing tiny intro fetch quests for people around your town, getting to know them before your town gets burned down by a rival warlord seeking to become Emperor. You survive, and are trained by your nation's military to defend your realm from enemy fiefdoms and demons. Another thing to borrow from Eastern RPGs- the inclusion of a 100-floor gauntlet dungeon that requires endgame gear and levels to complete. If something like this came out and got positive reception, I'd ditch SWTOR for it.

 

[Grumman]

If I was going to invent the MMO I wanted to play, it would be a Wild West frontier-like sci-fi setting. Think Gorkamorka, Necromunda, Mad Max, Fallout and Borderlands. "Dungeon crawling" would involve you and your "adventuring party" piling into a vehicle - or a convoy of vehicles - to head out into the wastes. Logging off would incur a small penalty which can be avoided by doing so in areas of "civilisation" - within walking distance of a town (easy), around a friendly convoy (needs friends and money to get started), or in a camp or oasis out in the wilderness (inconvenient). The idea being to make the towns the focus of the world, with low level characters staying in the shadow of their starting town until they find someone willing to give them a lift, join a "guild" or save up enough money to buy themselves a vehicle to make the trip themselves.

 

[NeutralStasis]

This is a pretty great thread.

I played EQ up until the release of Gates of Discord. I played a lot of other games since that time, including City of Heroes, World of Warcraft, Dark Ages of Camelot, Lord of the Rings Online, Star Wars Galaxies (before the NGE garbage) and I am sure that I am forgetting a few others. I decided to take EQ out for a spin a summer ago. I took a new character and made some new friends. I played pretty regularly, joined a guild for fun and genuinely enjoyed the nostalgia. This was until I hit the GRINDING WALL!! Which I overcame the first time I played EQ back in 2000, but found myself not loving the painstaking grinding that was going to be needed to make max level.

I know that I will be assaulted for not been H@rdC0RE enough to make the grind, but seriously, it was not fun anymore.

I am looking for a game that has a good social base, friendly enough mechanics, and the ability to make visible progress when you play. For me it was not about making max level, but to see things progress reasonably for the efforts I was able to muster. So here is my top 5 list of things I would want an MMO to have.

1 - GREAT COMMUNITY! Social and few if any trolls to deal with.
2 - Solid and accessible game mechanics
3 - Well thought out lore and use of that lore to drive further expansions
4 - Reasonable pace for game progress.
5 - Minimal pay to win mechanics.

 

[Nomanslander]

I want what vanilla WoW gave me when I first started playing the game in 2005, a fully realized world made by the only developer that's mattered in this genre for the past 10 years. Vanilla WoW had everything with none of the drawbacks of today. The game was still new, gamers still didn't know what to make of it, so there was a lot of room for experimenting; this was way before players ended up fixating on gear grinding which is the state of the game now. And with experimentation, players did everything and anything to make the game worthwhile. Raiding enemy cities, fledgling server wide guild rivalries going so far as to place bounties on certain Horde or Alliance player's heads. TM vs SS. When I started playing, it was even before battlegrounds, so you can only imagine how nuts things got. GMs having to get involved when raiders would roam contestant zones ganking every enemy faction player they came across. Before cross server anything. Every server had it's own community. Everyone knew everyone. And DRAMA!! Lots and lots of drama.

Today...

WoW... and many MMOs in general are like single player games played in a massive setting. I know there's a lot of MMOs that have tried to recreate those early glory days of MMOs, but none have succeeded. And the problem aren't the games, it's the players! MMO players today? All they care about is gear grinding, and avoiding conflicts with other gamers, unless they enter a battleground setting, then it's just another team based deathmatch without the social implications that vanilla WoW had before battlegrounds and cross server crap took over.

I've played a lot of MMOs. Eve bored the crap out of me. Guild Wars 1 and 2 gameplay was crap (I thought). Warhammer: AOR and that one Conan game were just water down versions of WoW at best. Aion was almost there... but Aion was unfortunately a grindtastic Korean MMO, that was way to freakin' grindy for its own good.

So to answer your question...

I want 2005 back... because MMO will never... EVER! Be that way again.

 

[themyrmidon]

I wasn't overly thrilled with Destiny when I rented it, and I absolutely hate Bungie.

That said an open world Destiny with better story elements and a progressive endgame would probably be my favorite MMO. I was a big fan of Tabula Rasa back in the day, and mycurrent favorite is probably The Secret World. While I love TSW it doesn't have the combat to hold my attention for more than a few weeks at a time

 

[someonehairy-ish]

I had an idea for an MMO which I think could work, although it would be very unusual. It's a mix of randomgen ala No Man's Sky or Minecraft with more traditional MMO and fantasy elements.

The core idea of the gameplay is to capture a feeling of adventure. I don't want the players to feel like they're in a theme park, I want them to feel like they're explorers in the arctic circle, or the amazon rainforest.

Spoiler: How is it going to work?

You have a big central city which acts as a 'hub' and is built by the developers, and then everything outside of that is randomly generated wilderness. Each server will consequently have a different wilderness. The generation is such that the further you get from the city, the more dangerous and powerful creatures are, the more magical in nature the world gets, and the more hostile the environment itself is. The world will be finite but very very large, but because each server will be different the overall opportunities for player exploration and discovery will be more or less infinite. Also, only mundane enemies like wolves and bandits will respawn. Anything arcane or rare will never respawn though - if you find an abandoned castle where a necromancer has made his home, and you kill him, that's that. Nobody else gets to kill that exact same necromancer ever. Each server will have its own 'map' with a fog of war type thing, shared between all players, so you won't ever trek to a distant fortress only to find that it's already been visited. Obviously this will lead to old servers becoming 'civilised' because all the big threats have been killed off, so there will be a constant server cycle - old ones will be closed, new ones will be opened. Players will be free to move between servers ala Runescape, so nobody will be bored and stuck on a dead old world.

It may also be possible for very powerful entities to actively wage war against the city itself, I'm not yet sure.

Minor survival elements are to be included - you won't have to keep your character fed or sane or anything, but you don't regenerate health and only very slowly regenerate mana, and you can be killed by things like blizzards or drowning or poison. You'll want to stock up on health restore items, mana restore items, antidotes, and protective clothing before each adventure into the wilderness. This will constitute the main 'grind' portion of the gameplay in place of the usual level grind, although it will overall be very light on grind compared to themepark MMOs. The environment will follow certain patterns - the extreme north will always be very cold, the extreme south will always be very hot, so you'll have some idea of what to bring.

Monsters and loot will also have a certain level of randomgen. Some features will occur more rarely than others, with the most rare being magical effects such as weapon enchantments.

When you die, you drop what's on you save for a handful of valued items, and you respawn at the city. You also have access to a hearthstone-like item that lets you instantly travel back to the city, but you can't bring all of your items with you. Why do this? The idea is to encourage player parties to cooperate, and to encourage pvp interactions in the wilderness. You can't put a group together, get out there, kill a monster and then just teleport home to stash your loot. You have to stick together to survive the return journey- especially as there may be other players acting as highwaymen on the road. It also encourages you not to stab other people in the back to grab all the best loot (although it's an option) - you're going to want them on your side if you get attacked on the journey home.

There will also be PVE servers where hearthstoning home has no penalty, but characters and items from a PVE server won't be transferable to a PVP server.

The city's purpose in the game isn't so much to act like a traditional quest-hub, because there aren't going to be any traditional quests. Instead, the idea of the city is to have a safe-haven where you can't be killed by monsters or other players, and you can safely store your stuff so that it won't be lost if you die. It'll also be where you want to gather other players in preparation for a big expedition into the deeper wilds. The ingame economy will also be determined by what goes on in the city. Shops will be linked cross-realm (with PVE and PVP separate) and will only stock the basics - anything more esoteric will have to be put into trade circulation by players.

As for the moment by moment gameplay, and especially the combat, I'm not yet entirely sure. I want it to be as skill based as possible. There shouldn't be any reason why an insanely good player couldn't take down the hardest boss in the game by themselves. To that end, the combat will probably be far more Dark Souls than WoW, although it ideally won't look to much like either. I've been toying with the idea of how magic could be used. Seeing as the game is randomgen, it could be possible for players to permanently change terrain... hmm...

As for MMOs in general, I'd just like to see fewer wow clones and more real innovation. It's pretty much that simple.

 

[Kittyhawk]

I think its simple.

Fun gameplay with battles big and small.
Decent evolving story and huge world to explore.
Decent combat animations and systems.
Cool loot and rewards for quests.
Online and offline content.
Crafting/mod stuff that you can sell in game stores for money (like DotA, TF2 etc
Optional ontroller support.
No dick head players spoiling your game.
And all for a decent price.

Nearest to this so for is Archeage, which i'd like to check out. I think Sth Korean MMOs are way ahead of western ones. Check it out.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4t5dYIrEVOs