Green Monster Games (Curt Schilling)

[Casti]

Originally Posted by rangoth

From reading this thread it sounds like most people want second life with better graphics, more fluid controls, and some kind of combat and general NPC's with AI.

I am not completely familiar with Second Life, but as to what I've read about it, it sounds like a 3d chat client.

My ideal MMO - and what I think would be a natural progression from the games we have today - would be present day MMOs (WoW, EQ ect.) experience, loot and dungeon systems, combined with a EVEish open ended world, only with a more solid framework. Thus giving the players more way to influence the game.

Just imagne, not only "pwning" people in the battlegrounds with the items you've grinded, but also having several others means to influence/gaining advantages in the game world.

[Zhakran]

Boy is my face red. Wrong thread /cough

[Cadrid]

Originally Posted by Zhakran

Awkwaaaard...

Call me crazy, but I think you're in the wrong thread...

[rangoth]

In that case the best answer I saw was an MMO where everything is optional and the user picks what to do because it's fun. That's just perfect.

For me however, the single thing I hate most in an MMO is the dividing of people. Uber guild or not, high population or low and cant find groups, level x or y. You are taking a player base and telling them they cant play together. Most stupid idea ever. And each expansion puts a newcomer further and further behind in skill/knowledge/level/gear.

I can deal with bugs, quirky mechanics, poor animations, sure they all bother me at some level but if the game is fun and I am playing with other people then who cares? It's been repeated so many times I'm shocked but FFXI did this one thing right, at least in concept.

You change jobs, therefore are at level 1 so you go back through low level areas, maybe even one you didn't get to do when you were low level for the first time. And you can change your jobs as many times as you want to try new classes all under the same character name. Friends can still reach you, you can play your low level mage and then head back to town, swap and go on the raid. Plus it makes it seem like there are always people around even without truely new subscribers.

Now Im not saying copy FFXI exactly, but learn from the damn concept anyway.

[Faelor]

Originally Posted by Ngruk

On another note. I am very curious to hear from the masses on many topics. Having said that, and I don't want to start a Q&A that gets 51423 five word one line responses, but if you had to make one gripe, you only had ONE, about MMO's, what would it be?

What is the ONE single thing in MMO's today that you see, and think is the absolute suck?

I think I need to set up a timer to ensure I don't write an epic post. There are a lot of good things I've seen over the years in the MMO genre, but I think everyone can agree there has also been a lot of bad things. Thankfully we can reflect upon these decisions and improve upon them. God knows there are some really neat ideas that have been great concepts put in to a MMO but implemented horribly.

As for what I think, I agree with a lot of the posters here (go figure, MMO players and all). I like Tad's list.

1. Harvesting
2. Durability
3. Tiered quests all the steps of which must be performed sequentially.
4. BOE
5. Lots of other things.

As I mentioned above, a lot of concepts are cool but damn, they're so damn tedious sometimes. For example, I think the concept of harvesting makes a lot of sense, but trying to make it realistic where you go out and harvest the raw goods is very annoying. I do like how in some games you can get resources off various mobs (killing a rock elemental allows you mine it, etc). I also agree with what Cuppy said about EQ being a very straight-forward and /nice/ path of having the mobs drop all the components. While I don't think that should be the only way, it sure makes life easy (as compared to running around for countless hours trying to get your skill up, throwing away common resoures). Like many tedious things in games, there needs to be more options (kind of like character development, which is something I'm -really- in to, I can talk about that topic all day). Hrm, maybe I should add character development to the list

The list could be expanded tenfold I'm sure, but those are some of the top dogs for sure.

[ZProtoss]

My #1 complaint with MMO's?

They lack the one element that carries other online games all by itself.

Skill


What keeps gamers coming back constantly to games like Counter-strike and Starcraft even though they're long out of date? Is it the amazing loot? Is it a development team constantly producing new content? No, these two games have none of that. What they do have however, is a a game that fosters a nearly unlimited skill curve. That skill curve drives people to personally improve themselves, and keeps them playing the games long after developer interaction has all but ceased.

So the question remains, why not make an MMO that combines the best draws from both MMO's and skill based games? Where when you look at player skill it's rich and diverse, rather than "oh is he competent enough to follow raid instructions?". If you could combine a players personal desire to improve himself, with the carrot on a stick rewards that a loot system has, you'd have a game that'd be compelling to which no other MMO has achieved.

[Zhakran]

Jesus christ guys, read what the man wrote.

He didnt ask you to bitch about shit you want in MMOs or think is lacking.

He said

WHAT IS THE ONE FEATURE THAT *PISSES YOU OFF* THE MOST.

All games require skill. Yeah, FPS games require more than your standard MMO level grind? No fucking way, who knew?!

And you know what, highend WoW raiding right now does take a lot of skill. It can't require the same kind of twitch skills as FPS because of latency issues, but there is still skill. That's not really on topic, even though you tried to make it sound like it is.

[Duppin]

Originally Posted by Vatoreus

Or, now stay with me here, it's gonna get tricky. You make THE WHOLE GAME INTERESTING!



OMFG Revelation, amirite? Leveling is fine, in fact, it's the fucking STAPLE of RPGs, even the MMO variety. Just make the whole trip fun, filled with interesting stuff, and then you can enjoy the trip. Honestly, EQ2 comes the closest with the leveling thing, I have tons of fun and never feel rushed to see the end game because there is so much to do and see. It's only when leveling is used as a time sink (Hello, WoW, etc.) that you run into the "OMG need to max level!"

Good luck with making collecting bear asses interesting.

We'll wait here while you try.

[Faille]

the one thing I would want to see removed from MMOs is developers asking what the 1 thing players hate about MMOs. Seriously, MMOs are far to complex to be summed up into 1 major flaw that if solved will drop everything else into place. These things don't exist in a vacuum, and very few of the people complaining about any particular thing can see beyond the thing itself to how its removal is going to effect other aspects of the game.

[Cadrid]

No one is proposing that fixing one issue will solve all the problems in a game. There are, however, major points of discontent among the player base that need to be addressed, even if it means having to tweak and balance other portions of the gameplay in response. Asking the general public for their opinions on the unappealing characteristics of current MMOs seems like a good start to applying those fixes.

[Flanders]

I want to make a comment on the question of the "One feature that pisses you off the most". Albeit not a feature, the biggest thing far and away that has pissed off most gamers the past 10 years hasn't been bugs. Bugs, stopgaps, timesinks etc are all hot button issues, but not the main thing imo. What really pisses people off is the ignorance, the pride and the ignoring of the player base from the devs and the customer relations team.

If there was one thing I took away from the whole VG breakdown these past few months is that too many developers suffer from group think. Not enough people who can make decisions are willing to take advice from the so-called little people, the players. Whether the devs like or not, we are the MMO Senate and we can dilligently hold any AAA mmo accountable. In EQ, they didnt listen, in VG they didnt listen in EVE they arent listening. The inner-circle of upper managment and game designers refusing to hearken to the voice of the community and force-feeding us with game content becuase God hath bestoyed them the immortal honor of decision maker and almighty game designer - and them, not us know whats best for us. Thats what pisses us off most above anything else.

Just dont forget who pays who.

The Golden rule: he who has the gold, rules.


my opinion.

[Havelock]

Number one complaint? Lack of player cities. SWG sucked ass in so many ways, and even its player city implementation was half-assed, but despite its shortcomings it still added a dimension to the game that made it fun to play for hours and hours on end despite the appalling lack of dev-made content. PvP + player cities = hours of fun. Even if all you can do is stand in the middle of their town talking smack and keeping them in their houses, that's good fun.

[Vatoreus]

Originally Posted by Duppin

Good luck with making collecting bear asses interesting.

We'll wait here while you try.

Anyone with common sense would read what I wrote, see that bear-ass collecting isn't interesting, re-read what I wrote, and see that it not being something fun, would fall into my "needs to be changed" area of "lame MMO design". But, again, that whole common sense thing.

[Andric d'Regor]

Thing that pisses me off the most is to be asked to get x number of heads from boars or whatever, and then find that only 1 in 5 boars has an effing head, I mean its bad enough to have such lame kill task quests but ffs make it at least coherent in purpose.

[Miele]

My biggest gripe with current MMOs is the "low common denominator" applied to everything, but maybe the top end raiding content.
Everything is accessible by everyone because having the lowest skill bearable player or the above average player, doesn't change the outcome of a fight 9 times out of 10.
You can have a barely decent tank or a great tank, but it doesn't matter, both are going to finish the dungeon crawl.
Playing has become a lot more gear based than skill based and that imo is the wrong approach.

I'm not against content that is for everyone, but there should be some content that is for the best ones, the worse ones can and usually will learn to play better and finish the dungeon as well, given enough trial and error.

Think of a dungeon: the entrance area is something even semi retarded people should be able to face, after that there is an area where you actually need to know what a tank and a healer are, then you should progress down meeting harder and harder encounters, to the point where the last boss is a fight that requires a good degree of skills (and not just gear checks).

This trend has to do with the old paradigm of fight durations; I think all devs around the world have a golden rule that says: "have them meet 100 encounters before reaching the end", where 99 of them are 8-15 seconds fights. It's wrong, period. You cannot toss enough DPS on something and be sure to kill it. Less fights, more strategic decisions to be made.

If you ever bothered to do dungeons in 2 or 3 players, in both WoW and EQ2, you discovered how a fight should be: longer, harder, adds play a major role, roamers are more dangerous and the whole thing is more rewarding (loot-wise at least, if not just for the e-peen factor).

Developers balance "pulls" based on the average full group, but it's not "average" enough. If you want to win every fight in every game (group content only), bring enough dps and you win. There are exceptions, but not enough of them to be worth mentioning.