Is the MMO Market imploding?

tad10_sl said:

It's just a take on the Public Quest idea. I never saw any problem with it and you could argue that GM Events in early EQ were a form of PQ/Rallying Calls. I wish I had played EQ in 1999 during the Halloween Event. By all accounts it was the tits.

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Honesly RIFT & WH had a good idea about "public quests' you can design 3-4 "random events" for "random zones" and broadcast an alert to adjacent zones.
"You feel a disturbance in the force North East" and after 2 3 events have have happened in the same zone, you change the zone Nektulos, AQ Style.
Randomize the event (anyone remember D1 map & monster generation ? .. hoping to avoid acid dogs & lava golems).

Imagine a "Prince of Nurgle" summoned in the middle of "random zone01" and if not killed within 72H he'll depop.
However every single resource (mob, plant, harvest) will have changed, and some unique items (within the old zone) will be removed from the game.
However, you can return the zone to it's old status, by burning the heart of a "Prince of Khorne" (which pops kinda in the same manner) at the point where Nurgle's Prince depoped.

Would be fucking crazy, i mean, something similar was done with Nektulos depending the time.
So why not do it semi-randomly and make players have an even bigger impact ?

EmiliaEQ_sl said:

Honesly RIFT & WH had a good idea about "public quests' you can design 3-4 "random events" for "random zones" and broadcast an alert to adjacent zones.
"You feel a disturbance in the force North East" and after 2 3 events have have happened in the same zone, you change the zone Nektulos, AQ Style.
Randomize the event (anyone remember D1 map & monster generation ? .. hoping to avoid acid dogs & lava golems).

Imagine a "Prince of Nurgle" summoned in the middle of "random zone01" and if not killed within 72H he'll depop.
However every single resource (mob, plant, harvest) will have changed, and some unique items (within the old zone) will be removed from the game.
However, you can return the zone to it's old status, by burning the heart of a "Prince of Khorne" (which pops kinda in the same manner) at the point where Nurgle's Prince depoped.

Would be fucking crazy, i mean, something similar was done with Nektulos depending the time.
So why not do it semi-randomly and make players have an even bigger impact ?

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who knows.
Rift dialed back and nerfed their Rift events due to noobs crying about towns getting overrun apparently. Incredibly lame. Rift's rifts had a chance to be game changing really.

GW2 talked a big game about PQ events being these massive chains with multiple "paths" they could take. Which led many of us on flights of fancy of how big they would be. And in the end, turned out to be little more then 5 man, 2 hour events at MOST.

GW2 dropped the ball big time on their events. I wonder if they were meant to be more then what they released and scaled back for the same reasons Rift did that, or if it was all WAR -level marketing talk.

From a psychology perspective, quest grinds work better than pure NPC grinds because you have a more concrete end goal in sight.

For instance, lets say a zone has 30 quests. This is approximately the number of quests you will need to level up (taking into account the XP from the quest as well as the NPC deaths). For argument's sake, lets say during the course of these 30 quests, you kill approximately 150 NPCs. To complete these 30 quests, lets just say it takes 5 hours total.

In this same game, lets just say it takes approx 900 NPC kills to get the same amount of XP. Lets say this also takes 5 hours.

From a human psychology perspective, the quest situation works better because the player is given milestone rewards (completing the quest and being given very large chunks of XP), essentially positive reinforcement. To make an analogy to food, it would be the equivalent to a human finding a trail of single berries, then finding a big pile of berries at certain increments. With the pure NPC kill method, it's a trail of single berries the entire time without the big piles. Even if in the end you get the same amount of berries, your brain gets excited at the prospect of finding the big stash.

Cybsled_sl said:

From a psychology perspective, quest grinds work better than pure NPC grinds because you have a more concrete end goal in sight.

For instance, lets say a zone has 30 quests. This is approximately the number of quests you will need to level up (taking into account the XP from the quest as well as the NPC deaths). For argument's sake, lets say during the course of these 30 quests, you kill approximately 150 NPCs. To complete these 30 quests, lets just say it takes 5 hours total.

In this same game, lets just say it takes approx 900 NPC kills to get the same amount of XP. Lets say this also takes 5 hours.

From a human psychology perspective, the quest situation works better because the player is given milestone rewards (completing the quest and being given very large chunks of XP), essentially positive reinforcement. To make an analogy to food, it would be the equivalent to a human finding a trail of single berries, then finding a big pile of berries at certain increments. With the pure NPC kill method, it's a trail of single berries the entire time without the big piles. Even if in the end you get the same amount of berries, your brain gets excited at the prospect of finding the big stash.

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except that in the quest grind like WoW, brand new meaningless loot is shoved up your ass every twenty minutes, only to become obsolete by the time you complete the next quest. in the NPC grind like EQ, you killed NPC's in certain areas, but sprinkled in those certain areas were rare NPC's with their rare loot, which gave you a huge incentive to want to keep playing, and keep grinding. also, because the loot was rare and also tradable, you had a great player driven economy. so from a psychological perspective, the rare NPC's with the rare loot, along with the rare, well thought out quests with meaningful rewards (not just bland loot and a pile of exp) is the real hook in a MMO.

The toned down rifts really turned me off the game.
Instead of going the route they did , could have tweaked it to go the other way. Let the rifts go fucking haywire , burn down the whole damn forest where the castle guards are constantly fighting them off to keep them out of the city. Have it scale high levels down somewhat when they come to help it still gives loot and xps to current level folks and also makes it where the lvl 50 can't tank and two shot the rift boss mob.
Have an actual war and struggle going on in all sorts of areas.
Timmy could have gone to play one of the other 100 mmos that catered to him instead of nerfing the rifts like they did.

etchazz_sl said:

except that in the quest grind like WoW, brand new meaningless loot is shoved up your ass every twenty minutes, only to become obsolete by the time you complete the next quest. in the NPC grind like EQ, you killed NPC's in certain areas, but sprinkled in those certain areas were rare NPC's with their rare loot, which gave you a huge incentive to want to keep playing, and keep grinding. also, because the loot was rare and also tradable, you had a great player driven economy. so from a psychological perspective, the rare NPC's with the rare loot, along with the rare, well thought out quests with meaningful rewards (not just bland loot and a pile of exp) is the real hook in a MMO.

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Right, but that isn't an incentive to level. The quest and grind games typically both have the "rare mob/rare loot!" feature. It's a bonus to be sure, but there is nothing stopping a max level character from going back to the same area and slaughtering stuff more efficiently. That type of stuff would be considered more of an end-game hook.

And on your topic, WoW actually has a bunch of fun items from quests that you can only get from quests (some of which get grandfathered and remain exclusive, like Daratol's Rod). They also have rare loot from rare mobs out in the world (moreso in Pandaria than previous expansions, where you had world drops that came from certain level NPCs).

Mr Creed_sl said:

GW2 dropped the ball big time on their events. I wonder if they were meant to be more then what they released and scaled back for the same reasons Rift did that, or if it was all WAR -level marketing talk.

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that is an interesting question. Anyone that was in beta or alpha have any idea? was high level cut off?

we can look at RvR and its 2 week rotation claims. And when it went live sat at daily for what 3 months? And ended up at 1 week intervals.

The MMO market as we Knew it is gone. My guess is these new games are making more $$ than the old ones.. with a cater to casual, casino like atmosphere... Its funny how there is gambling in nearly every MMO now... its there.

Fuck you WoW, Farmville and every person in the game industry that does not game.

Quests are good and necessary. Their main purposes are to tell a story and to give players a sense of direction, to help introduce new characters and locations. The issue is there isn't a lot you can do with quests outside of 1) Go here and talk to this person, 2) Go here and collect x of these and 3) Go here and kill this person or x of these. So it becomes important that the quests tell a good story. Unfortunately, if an MMO is consumed too quickly by players it will not be very profitable. It has to take time to level up and get to the end game, so that the end game itself can not be consumed too quickly. Its up to the designers to strike a balance between too many filler quests and not enough quests.

Personally I like how TERA handled its quest system. You have your typical grindy "zone" quests that are always collect or kill x of something. Then separately they have their main story quests, the ones that are actually worth reading and paying attention to and generally the ones that give the best rewards. These story quests give players a good idea of where they need to go in the world, and at the same time players can pick up the zone quests as they see fit. Often times the quests will overlap and you get to double dip, and other times you might have to do 2 quest hubs worth of quests to get the breadcrumb to go to where the story quest is, so the player has the option of either skipping right to the story quest or if they feel they want to explore or if they need to level up some they can do zone quests.

Either way, I think a game without quests or with too few quests sucks, but just as bad is needing to do hundreds of "Please go kill [arbitrary number] of [evil humonoid, ethereal creature or wild animal] that is [stealing, destroying, pillaging, eating, raping] my [tools, crops, home, livestock, wife]."

I don't think there needs to be a quest giver and a return trip for "Kill X" or "Collect Y from killing X". Probably doesn't need to be as spelled out as FFXIV Hunting Logs but giving kill bonuses for slaughtering each new enemy type encourages exploration and species diversity.

Actual quests can be involved for story, lore, or information about the area they are in. They can make these more involved and provide more rewards than experience or cash.

Dahkoht_sl said:

The toned down rifts really turned me off the game.
Instead of going the route they did , could have tweaked it to go the other way. Let the rifts go fucking haywire , burn down the whole damn forest where the castle guards are constantly fighting them off to keep them out of the city. Have it scale high levels down somewhat when they come to help it still gives loot and xps to current level folks and also makes it where the lvl 50 can't tank and two shot the rift boss mob.
Have an actual war and struggle going on in all sorts of areas.
Timmy could have gone to play one of the other 100 mmos that catered to him instead of nerfing the rifts like they did.

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This. I like level sync in ffxiv, but it does feel a little forced and arbitrary, it'd be nice if an even better solution could be created. (I'm not creative enough to think of it), But dynamic world should be the GOAL not something to be avoided.

Caliane_sl said:

rofl.
is this a joke?

"I have this great game idea. we make a game about nothing!"
"nothing? how do you play nothing?"
"thats the beauty of it! You don't! while NOT playing our game, the player gets bored and plays other games, or watches TV, reads books, chats on irc/skype/twitter!"
"BRILLIANT!"

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Seinfeld: The MMO.

FFXIV: The 1017 Quest more like it.

No, what we think of as the "MMO Market" is not imploding. It's already imploded. Like it or not, that market lives and dies with WoW. Online games are moving in a different direction.

If you don't like LoL or Minecraft that sucks for you then. The graphic-diku muds are gonna be real slim pickings for the next 10-15 years. Oh there will still be a few to choose from, but there's not some looming golden age of diversification and prosperity. There is a limit to how much good money even evil corps are willing to throw after bad.

Iannis_sl said:

No, what we think of as the "MMO Market" is not imploding. It's already imploded. Like it or not, that market lives and dies with WoW. Online games are moving in a different direction.

If you don't like LoL or Minecraft that sucks for you then. The graphic-diku muds are gonna be real slim pickings for the next 10-15 years. Oh there will still be a few to choose from, but there's not some looming golden age of diversification and prosperity. There is a limit to how much good money even evil corps are willing to throw after bad.

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Pass the bong, bro.

http://www.polygon.com/2013/5/7/4309...d-free-to-play

http://massively.joystiq.com/2012/01...ecures-new-fu/

http://massively.joystiq.com/2011/01...nce-going-f2p/

You're linking Tortanic as support for a "this is profitable" argument. You're linking Rift -- which underperformed by most metrics and went f2p a while ago. Meanwhile Trion are pretty much chopshopping themselves in a desperate attempt to remain solvent after Defiance managed to do absolutely nothing for them except cost a lot of money to make. I don't think things are so rosy over there as all that. The third link is a turbine f2p model link. Yeah, microtransactions pretty much are the way to go. People have been saying that for the past ten years, and they've been right. But you overlooked Diablo3 and the communal rejection of RMAH as an integral game component.

Nope, I'm sticking by it. There will be some here and there, but the AAA sub service mmo market (at least what I think of as the "MMO market") is done for the most part.

I suppose it's largely semantic because it depends on what you view that MMO market to encompass really. If you want to include those (and there will be plenty of them) then sure I'll agree you're right. There will be plenty of them because those will require minimal investment and feature a steady, quick return. I don't include them because I don't believe that is the assumption most people are making when they're talking about "the mmo market". They're talking about the big games.

Edit: Basically Jack Emmert games are not MMO's to me. And there will be plenty of Jack-alikes. That man sucks at everything except for relieving really stupid nerds of their excess money and providing an eHarmony for furries.

Iannis_sl said:

You're linking Tortanic as support for a "this is profitable" argument. You're linking Rift -- which underperformed by most metrics and went f2p a while ago. Meanwhile Trion are pretty much chopshopping themselves in a desperate attempt to remain solvent after Defiance managed to do absolutely nothing for them except cost a lot of money to make. I don't think things are so rosy over there as all that. The third link is a turbine f2p model link. Yeah, microtransactions pretty much are the way to go. People have been saying that for the past ten years, and they've been right. But you overlooked Diablo3 and the communal rejection of RMAH as an integral game component.

Nope, I'm sticking by it. There will be some here and there, but the AAA sub service mmo market (at least what I think of as the "MMO market") is done for the most part.

I suppose it's largely semantic because it depends on what you view that MMO market to encompass really. If you want to include those (and there will be plenty of them) then sure I'll agree you're right. There will be plenty of them because those will require minimal investment and feature a steady, quick return. I don't include them because I don't believe that is the assumption most people are making when they're talking about "the mmo market". They're talking about the big games.

Edit: Basically Jack Emmert games are not MMO's to me. And there will be plenty of Jack-alikes. That man sucks at everything except for relieving really stupid nerds of their excess money and providing an eHarmony for furries.

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what are you trying to say with D3?

it sold 9million fucking copies on pc, made billions in the RMAH, despite peoples "rejections", and is now going to sell another 5 million Console copies.

Where the hell are you getting Rift underperformed as well. it stayed sub fee for 2 or 3?YEARS, in a f2p market. It was clearly performing pretty damn well to justify that.
And all of these games still have much higher player bases then EQ did. Sure WoW might not have 12million subs anymore. but there are like 50 mmos on the market now. and each is at like 300k-1m. There is no one reigning king anymore. That is what happens when you have competition. And the top dog isn't heads and tails above the rest in quality like WoW was.

Bring back the hardcore MMO. Bring back the crack that smacks your life and makes sad kids kill themselves when their shit gets stolen, because there's a place in this world for fun shit that's bad for you.

Caliane_sl said:

what are you trying to say with D3?

it sold 9million fucking copies on pc, made billions in the RMAH, despite peoples "rejections", and is now going to sell another 5 million Console copies.

Where the hell are you getting Rift underperformed as well. it stayed sub fee for 2 or 3?YEARS, in a f2p market. It was clearly performing pretty damn well to justify that.
And all of these games still have much higher player bases then EQ did. Sure WoW might not have 12million subs anymore. but there are like 50mmos on the market now. and each is at like 300k-1m. There is no one reigning king anymore. That is what happens when you have competition. And the top dog isn't heads and tails above the rest in quality like WoW was.

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Really? 5 million console copies? I'll be surprised if it's anything above 1 million. Games that have been out on other platforms for a long time have traditionally done very poorly, "kids" don't want what was cool last year, they want the new hotness.