What's holding MMOs back?

What's holding MMOs back?

Why hasn't there been one that's an actual WoW killer? Is WoW just that good?

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the very nature of them - online

its either pay or free and if its free its going to have bs pay2win items and sometimes even if it is pay, you still get that shit

eventually it'll go offline. im not just interested in investing time that ultimately sits on a server somewhere which im not running.

>What's holding MMOs back?
sandbox mmos are the only good ones and not many people have a taste for that kind of stuff anymore, hence less developers trying to corner that very niche market

>Why hasn't there been one that's an actual WoW killer? Is WoW just that good?
Nothing has come close to recreating the fluidity and responsiveness of WoW. No matter how autistic you make the grind, nothing will stick if it doesn't "feel" good to play.

What is this?

mmo's wont get good in our lifetime

VR will revitalize the genre once tech vastly improves

MMORPGs are 'held back' by their incredibly monotonous gameplay. The amount of time you have to put in to an MMORPG compared to the amount of time you are actually having fun is abysmal.

MOBAs reign supreme for a reason, and it's not just pricing models.

>The tri-fecta of dps, tank, healer and the mmo style hotbar combat has been done a million times by now
>No one is willing to risk money on straying from the formula that kind of works but everyone complains about so we're stuck with samey mmo's


It's literally just that. Every new mmo is just a spin off of "wow but it has this [insert random gameplay feature here] to make it fresh"

Some companies here and there try to innovate, sure. But until more people try to break the mold there's gonna be no change

>vr mmo
yeah right. because the hardcore mmo crowd sure would love games where they actually had to move.

>What's holding MMOs back?

MMOs are pretty much dead now.
I know some cucks playing Tree of Savior but the game is pure trash and the population is decreasing with every week.
Other MMOs are no better.

I'd probably try Destiny 2 later, not sure about it though. First Destiny was very boring.

This
The fact that there is always a portion of the gameplay where you can only mash 1 is unforgivable.

>either too much grinding and other bullshit
>or too easy and every scrub has good gear

theres no proper balance. I hate grinding but i also hate having gear thats easy as fuck to get.

>what's holding mmos back
Lacking creativity, immature playerbase, bad decisions.
>why no wow killer
Because no mmo has been better than WoW yet, wow is simple game that is easy to get into.
And it has a old engine and old graphics, meaning any slav with a toaster can play the game fine

>What's holding MMOs back?
their audience.
people think they want MMOs, but when there's a multiplayer game with any sort of challenge inbuilt, they get bitchy and start to cry waaah, so unfair.

this, its like every game company these days just want to copy wow success rather then create something new. I mean they all feel the same despite having different textures and few new additions

devs need to stop asking retards what they want and make something better instead

Like wheres a dark souls mmo? imagine running around in a world like witcher 3 fused with dark souls areas. How sick would it be to fight other players and monster bosses, imagine seeing 20 people fail roll and get one shot by a boss. That shit would be intense

The target audience

Or take a world like borderlands/fallout and fuse it with the combat of rust, how intense would gun fights be against npcs and other players.

Mortal Online already has vive support

I think a big problem is devs try to do both pvp and pve games, where if you really wanted to do either particularly well you need to focus on one aspect.

>Is WoW just that good?
Nope, WoW wasn't even good compared to its competitors when it first came out. EverQuest was simply better in every way. It got popular because it appealed to the lowest common denominator by copying EQ but making it easy and removing any kind of threat from the game world.

There's nothing to do.
Once you grind and pvp you're bored.
WoW players have created their own niches.
Roleplay communities are the most popular ones.
But even non-roleplayers can do shit like play games, socialize, etc.
Few MMOS have the same community as WoW.

Even looking at upcoming mmos is just a disappointment youtube.com/watch?v=eOdU6gJ07rQ

just a bunch of early access scam kickstarter bullshit is being developed by western devs these days (scamcitizen)

again it wont be in your life time

you're thinking too small

MMOs need to be more social, while giving you the tools to express yourself.
they also need to stop implementing more active combat like wildstar and black desert.
more action doesnt make the game better.

fpbp

MMOs are a fairly bad value proposition as well. 15 dollars a month isn't a good deal for a comparatively boring and mindless experience when there's tons of good games to be had for the same price. MMOs are just inherently flawed and cannot be fixed. It's more productive to take some persistent multiplayer aspects from them and apply them to other games.

I think I agree with this, I see plenty of strong art assets and decent gameplay (sortof) but it seems like the business side of things always flops.

Looking forward to this attempt, it's going to be pretty risky regardless of who does it.

dark souls is skyrim, skyrim became an mmo with elder scrolls online.
its popular but not that popular.

>mfw not realizing vr is just a gimmick like 3D

Players don't want hard shit or a challenge. Look at Secret World, its too difficult for kids. So it remains with a small adult population because you have to pay attention.

It's this and the huge investment a proper MMORPG needs. We have seen MMOs that tried to veer from the WoW-formula, such as AoC with its directional blocks and manual attacks, and Warhammer online with it's pvp focus. Both these game, while having good ideas initially eventually failed because they simply weren't complete. AoC just fucking ended around level 30, quests stopped and the whole game died. Warhammer was just a mess from the start and they had no answer to the fact that most open world battles where decided on which side had the biggest death ball and not individual skill. The battleground pvp was way superior to WoW though.

Honestly, I'm thinking about getting Destiny since I didn't own a PS4 back then.
The Collection with all the DLCs costs ~40€ but I can get the base game used for 10€

Dual problem.
Too casual, and it gets populated by korean shitters and mom's-credit-card 12 years old.
Too hardcore and you lose above demographic. The game can be 'good' but that doesn't matter if it's not making enough for server and dev upkeep.

Also, fuck the Holy Triangle. That shit makes all the MMORPG the same.

One other important aspect, do no stifle the players with overbearing moderators and rules. Let scammers scam in the open. Let PK happen wherever, whenever organically other than the very first starting location. Let people do whatever they please with the mechanics instead of trying to throttle them back whenever they find an 'exploit.'

don't do this.
i don't want to write a paragraph on why you shouldn't.
just trust me and don't, get Destiny 2 instead if you are that curious.
Destiny is actually a really good MMO with great endgame content,

>WoW killer
This thinking is what's holding it back. You just can't beat it by imitating it.

The base game has next to no content, if you're going to get it get the collection instead. It's a good game but only with all the DLCs.

I'm getting mixed vibes.

Destiny 2 comes out late september, right? So waiting would delay my suicide

I like those ideas, but I'm also a fan of what RS tried to do with most of the world being safe from PvP, except for the wilderness which is full of incentives like high exp rates or lucrative shit. Maybe have a dueling function to fight anyone anywhere if they accept, and a faction you can join to PvP anywhere provided you don't mind guards in cities becoming hostile when you do.

Games like Division/Vindictus/Desitny/PSO2, are what should replace them. Similar to how Guild Wars 1 was. That is what the industry needs.

Fantastic worlds to explore in parties with a mmo hub world. and multi-party raid/dungeon content to fill the gap of "massive online".

what do you even replace the holy trinity with?
gw2 tried and failed by just making everyone dps and then adding the trinity in the raids anyway

SWGEMU is the best only mmo worth playing desu

There's been no WoW killer because everyone tried to imitate WoW after its success. What's the point of starting over in a game that's virtually identical to the one you're already playing?

Of course this isn't the only reason. There's also the fact that a lot of people play WoW because their friends play WoW and it's hard, if not impossible to get everyone in a group to drop another $60 for a new game to move to.

Open World design.

It's retarded now.

So similar to DDO then?

if you remove the holy trinity you start recruiting players based on skill and gear (aka. time spent in game)
Destinys classes don't follow any trinity, they are barely different only with their Ultimate ability being really different.
and with that you only had the titan class that actually had an ultimate that was super helpful for raids, the others just do damage.

either way, raids and dungeons work perfectly fine in Destiny, everyone is just a damage class, health recovers over time, and people can be picked off the ground like in Guild wars 2.

also removing the trinity makes PvP more fun.

The perfect MMO would be a mix of WoW & Second Life. With a setting similar to that kids game Free Realms. Where you go into different settings and your characters look changes. But you're able to control the looks yourself per setting. Not just regular grindage either. Plus all the socialization capabilities of SL which players create themselves in mmos. Only difference is they can actually build it themselves or pay someone too.

my favourite MMO over the years must have been Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning.
it had a great dark athmosphere and a ton of classes.
and the open world PvP Areas were FUCKING AMAZING just randomly going into the center of the zone to take part in a giant castle siege was really fun.

Pretty much yes.

You don't need an open world with everyone in it to get the same mmo experience.

Hell no one plays a MMO for the experience from 0 to max level. They play to get to max level.

However in these type of games (the instance based ones) everyone plays them for the leveling, plus the end game content. Simply because while it may be go kill x mobs, It has a finish to it. Killing mobs in a dungeon with a dungeon boss is way more entertaining than kill x mobs in the open field.

Plus all the spice of life shit like crafting, socializing, housing can still be added to the games without problem.

MMOs lived and died with WoW. The genre is a literal dead genre. No one is competing with WoW anymore. They're just trying to stay afloat. Very few MMOs right now can pull in any kind of numbers. In fact, only WoW, FFXIV, and ESO make any kind of money and have decently sized playerbases.

Everything else is F2P garbage kept alive by the few rich people that are happy to continuously spend shit loads of money on trivial things in game.

Holy Trinity + utility classes like Enchanters and Shaman. The game world needs to be varied and threatening enough that things like crowd control, travel spells and shit like levitate actually matter. If you aren't absolutely forced to co-operate and talk to people then it's a shit MMO.

Oddly it's completely different in PSO2, there is a way to play a tank, but everyone laughs at them for doing so. Everyone is a damage dealer, even people who can cast heal spells are damage dealers.

You're entire life is making sure you do enough damage and know how to either block, or i-frame dodge.

>no one plays a MMO for the experience from 0 to max level. They play to get to max level.
Is this why other games have superseded MMOs, where it just cuts to the chase and gives you all the cool shit at the start?

Up to you. You might have just enough time to get fully invested in the first game by the time the second comes out, and they've said pretty much nothing will carry over.

It's also the reason mmos offer end game buy ins. Why level up when you can spend a few dollars to get right to the meat of the game in a mmo.

Meanwhile though, Instance based games are built around the experience of leveling.

Everyone wants to copy WoW and FFXIV by making linear themeparks.
If you're not an AAA company that can continuously pump shit out to sustain it, it will very quickly die.

The best way to make a good, long lasting MMO is to make a player driven sandboxy game.

The thing holding modern mmos back is modern gamers

Because the genre hasn't learned from it's mistakes. I'd elaborate specifics but I play to make this MMO in the future, suffice to say the ideal solution takes parts from several MMO styles.

The genre has a lot more to give, much more room to evolve.

>Hell no one plays a MMO for the experience from 0 to max level. They play to get to max level.
being max level used to mean something.
leveling in Vanilla WoW was fun, proven by Nostalrius and shit.
as long as you get access to group content and PvP early, the leveling is usually fun.
also constantly getting new skills and new gear helps.
seeing the numbers get higher is enough satisfaction for most people.

Wow killed itself, it didn't need help

None of them have the built in audience from a not-MMO titles full of lore people cared about beforehand to match WoW.

The FF MMOs come close because they had the FF name power.

>It's also the reason mmos offer end game buy ins.
Like DDO?
Unless we weren't talking about Dungeons and Dragons Online.

MMO's migrated into a different genre. Games like Rust, Ark, DayZ and that player unknown crap.

They need to ditch the whole tab targetting D&D type bullshit and be more creative. Imagine a mount & blade MMO where every player is a single soldier in an army?

Seeing the numbers get higher is pretty great. But it just doesn't hold though. especially when you are just fighting in a open world where the mobs respawn over and over.

Instance based games let you run a dungeon always, this gives the feeling of actually clearing something or a end goal.

Sure there are dungeons in most mmo titles. But do they ever have people in them? rarely because the majority of people do raids with communities, not dungeons. They are off doing other crap, making the entire point of the open world null.

I thought you were talking about Dragons Dogma Online.

Tiger Knight: Empire War

though it is more like playing wold of tanks

Oh okay, we just had a misunderstandment there.
What's Dragon's Dogma Online like, outside of being instanced?

Chronicles of Elyria I think, it's far from release but the concept sounds really interesting.

Basically you live an entire life in your character and can do basically anything in the game, any role etc.

Very ambitious but I'm still interested.

1. WoW has been polluting the general MMO audience so inevitably every MMO is compared to WoW in some way

2. The general MMO community is now utter shit because of it. To accommodate for solo players, there's little to no focus on promoting party play outside of instanced dungeons and even in those dungeons, because players treat the world as if they're the protagonist instead of a world that you share with other players.

3. Content gets downgraded more often and instead of the thought process of "I'm not good enough" for difficult raids, "I don't have enough time" for grinding/waiting for rare mobs; People now bitch and whine until these things are lowered down to their level. Everything is feasible, nothing is really special anymore.

4. MMO devs are pressured to cater to the new shitty MMO audience and so have to balance their ideal MMO gameplay mechanics with a shitty community that thinks that if it takes 2-3 extra clicks to do something, it's intuitive and frustrating.

5. MMOs cost a lot to make and risks naturally don't happen. As a result the most popular "MMOs" of today tend to be just MP games that carry MMO carrot on a stick mechanics.

I haven't played it directly. But it's pretty much like the other titles I listed. You get some quests, you run instance based dungeons to kill mobs and bosses, you get gear and level up.

These all have another thing in common as they are all action titles, from fps/tps/rpg instead of tab-target or partial action like Tera/B&S. Meaning that base level mobs can fuck and will fuck you up based on your own skill level. Unlike tab based which its all based on stat rolls.

Too many games. MMOs require a good and active playerbase. People are too distracted by constant new overhyped game releases.
MMOs worked when gaming wasn't as popular as it is today.

The biggest problem with mmos is hardware and network connectivity. Until better network speeds are standard, and the hardware to keep people better in sync is developed, mechanics will remain stagnant. The thing that keeps games like Battlefield or Dragon's Dogma from becoming mmos is hardware

please dude planetside 1 released like 100 years ago

>you're thinking too small
The anthem of "futurists" who've never built anything themselves.

And its shit

yes im sure you have impeccable taste on par with your networking knowledge

MMO's take a lot of man hours to fine tune every little detail. A buggy quest or item can ruin a players experience. Basically nobody wants to invest a ridiculous amount of money to make a good looking and smooth gameplay MMO. You could make a shitty mobile game at 1/10th of the price and print money.

New gaming crash when?

>1/10th
Mate do you know how much it cost to churn out a good whale bait on mobile? It's so fucking cheap you wouldn't believe it.

VR is as much of a meme as 3D televisions was.

This
Also, modern MMOs are much more difficult and taxing to make now. So hard in fact, we are seeing less and less MMOs coming out for that very reason alone. Why spend fucking 5+ years making some MMO and not make it anything other than a game playing it safe either copying WoW or finding the best way to suck as much money as possible to make up for time.

Another thing on MMO development complexity is the fact that MMOfags are also some of the most entitled shitters on the planet. On top of consuming your content faster than a whore sucking cum daily, they are ever more demanding for better experiences and better looking MMOs.

People are too invested in their current MMORPG to quit, they might tourist around in your new game but few will stick around.

Not to mention I'm willing to bet 90% of the current WoW playerbase only plays to collect transmog and mount, you can't compete with the amount of content retail WoW provides for the casual shitter. The remaining 10% are the mythic raiders and you're not gonna lure them because they're also too invested in their game to quit.

Wrathbabies pretty much killed the genre, WoW used to be a game you'd play for endgame content and it was fairly accessible because everything you did in the game was designed around it. Unless you had mom aggro back in the days there wasn't really anything holding you back from at least trying some raids.

With our autism combined we should create an mmo.
Lets ask Sup Forums to draw the logo.

uninspired cashgrabs brought now faith in new developments of everquest clones
koreans attempted something different but failed utterly to captivate western audiences because of endless vertical grind mixed with p2w elements

star citizen and camelot unchained will usher in a new age in 2027

Puzzle MMO when?

The issue is the playerbase has stagnated, there are not many new players picking up MMOs as a genre to play, it's the same userbase getting smaller and smaller. Exactly the same fate as RTS.

Games like Rust and Ark are killing MMOs, same basic experience (lots of online players on one map, things to achieve as a group, character progression and PVP) yet it's much more accessible and fast paced. In the same way MOBAs killed RTS.

People just seek the same experiences in easier formats to play and be a part of. That's why every new RTS has a MOBA or SC twist to it. And soon every new MMO will have a survival PVP base building twist to it.

>not many people have a taste for that kind of stuff anymore
I don't think this is far seeing how immensely popular Archeage and Black Desert were during their launches in the WEST.
They could've seen WoW growth if not for gross incompetence by both developers and short-term interests that "killed" both games after their first months.

The problem now is that there's no large developer creating a sandbox game, so we see these tiny studios doing work on games that are so obvious in their lack of production, such as Chronicles of Elyria or Camelot Unchained. But it might be a positive in terms of actual gameplay.
No way to judge since all of these games are in "early access" and we'll have to wait however many years until their completion.

>far
fair

You mean puzzle pirate?

Having a good time with Elder Scrolls Online lately. It's how brimming and alive the world and cities feel and how much stuff there is to do that makes me run around and adventure non-stop and enjoy myself. Been playing this for 4 months now and still have stuff to do and that's with 10 hours a day spent on it without breaks.
Only downside is the UI (you need to install addons to make things more bearable) and some performance issues when you let the client run for too long without restarting it.
It's probably the most content rich MMORPG I've ever played (and I played many of them since 1998) because it has horizontal content once you're done levelling, not vertical like the other games where you replace gear with higher level stuff constantly.

Kinda wish someone would make something similar in a sci-fi setting though. Could get off on that big time.

MMOs try to copy WoW and only look at certain aspects of it. Most MMOs lack polish, combat systems are clunky, graphics are usually decent but it'll run like shit, there's no real "open world" just different areas and loading screens. Then there's not enough content to keep people sated because they put in dungeons but no real incentive to do them.

stagnation. everything is just copying WoW. it's too expensive to make games now, let alone MMOs, so the only way to get a MMO made in this day and age is to pitch a "sure thing" to publishers and that means making a WoW clone. the other issue is the "gamer identity" became a thing attracting the most basic, bottom of the barrel morons to the hobby, so now that's where your money comes from. it has to literally hold the player's hand and give them free shit all the time to entice people and that's not why MMOs are good.

Because people dont build mmos for a small group of 500-1k people at best. They build shitty open worlds designed for 1 person, make it look totally devoid of life and have other people just in your way.

an MMO is a world with other humans who are there doing their thing too. You cannot all be the chosen one. You cannot all save the world. Every story is about 1 person and that person is you but how does that relate to every other player in this world? It does not and thus you have a giant single player world with others just in your way and thus its not a true mmo and thus its a broken shitty lie.

>I don't think this is far seeing how immensely popular Archeage and Black Desert were during their launches in the WEST.
don't know about archeage but nobody ever cared for bd aside for the character creator

The "complex" lifeskills and exploration were a huge grab for many.
Both games were realized to be shit within the first month.

Too many posts for me to bother reading what's likely all drivel but I'll tell you the truth. MMO players are holding MMOs back. They think they want Sword Art Online, and World of Warcraft endgame, and EverQuest crafting, and this and that and Bob's your uncle but they're wrong. They have all these stupid demands developers have to fill just to get some goddamn players to look at their game, and these things are bad. We don't need them but people insist on them. This is compounded by the astrological overhead an MMO needs. You simply cannot have an MMO with 500 players, by definition and by profit margins. So to appeal to all these faggots you need to give them what they thino they want, which is shit, and then they hate it. Go ask about whatever "promising" MMO came out recently and died within a few years. I'll bet there's a few and I bet they'll tell you all about this neat shit it had that everyone thought they wanted but didn't. If they really wanted it the damn game wouldn't be dead.

MMOs are a scam genre. There has literally never been a worthwhile MMO, ever. Prove me wrong.

It's because to make a good MMO you need to actually work and be smart, which is hard. It also implies that the game isn't built to scam people, so making good-looking trailers and fan service won't be enough.

500 players per world is optimal, break it into separate servers. Stop overpopulating these worlds with more obstacles (players). Don't listen to the "players" when it comes to what you want to give. You are a developer giving other people your world. Give them your world or shut the fuck up.

what MMO has ever listened to what the players wanted prior to release

I'd add to what you said the fact peoples don't wanna pay when they demand something.
If you tell them it's gonna be 15$ a month they'll tell you to fuckoff and proceed to REEEEEEEEEEEEEE when you go make a game for whales who keep giving you buckets of money when you had paid shit.

Black Desert was popular at first thanks to the character creator as the initial draw. Then people quit because they got confused by the gameplay (seriously), got bored because in the end it's a Korean grinder, and those who stuck far longer ended up quitting when they got tired of the incessant RNG. A handful of people still play it, I imagine, but it's pretty dead.

After release they fall into it.