I've heard MMOs are dead. What is lacking in MMOs nowadays?

>>386517374
P2W, boring quests, absurd mechanics, way too much farming, everybody wants to go action RPG now (I like this but is a flooded korean market already). WoW was so good it died slow and killed the chances of having a future equivalent, now that became shit we have nothing but hack n slash MMOs and Diablo-likes in the future

Don't wanna spawn more threads than needs to be, but are there any good non-wow-esque MMOs? I kinda want to try out Sea of Thieves and\or Gloria Victis but I remember all too well how tedious and time consuming mmos can be, so I'm really not looking to grind a thousand of daily quests.
Anyone played them? Or are there anything better?

I'm always on rails, both in the world and on my character. I don't get to explore and I don't get to have opinions about gear or talents. Just grind your ilvl until you can get better ilvl so you can get better ilvl. Instead, I play Cookie Clicker.

>What's lacking in MMOs nowadays?
Community.
People aren't social like they used to be. The genre has adapted to reflect this. Everything is automated, streamlined, soloable... They aren't exactly open-ended like they used to be, they're typically designed as single player games now with the option to play multiplayer.

If you ask me, I think open world survival games are replacing them. They have exploration, PvP, crafting, and no leveling--which now seems like the big thing that keeps people away from MMOs, grinding.
There are even two new games in this genre with a fantasy setting like MMOs typically have.

MMO was just a failed experiment like RTS. The idea just doesn't work in reality and ends up completely different from the vision in practice.

>>386518328

Need an MMO with a heavy emphasis on survival based on RuneScape's Wilderness from like 15 years ago. Lots of benefits from going deep, but shit is more dangerous, and you could lose whatever shit you have on you at any time.

>>386518536
good idea ill think about implementing something of the sort

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Exploration, the lack of a wiki and discovering things on your own for the sense of adventure. The social aspect and community that forms around those games which was indicative of internet culture around that time and will never form again in any game, and the gameplay which still suffers from everyone following what world of warcraft did expecting results but being met with failure and stops them from diversifying or making an identity for themselves. If they focused on making a good game first instead of another cash grab mmo we wouldn't have such a deficit with the genre

MMOs are lacking because there was truly ever a small audience for them: neets and teenagers. By trying to capture an audience outside of these people they've cannibalized everything that ever made them special, you can't keep casual players around in a game that only people with no lives have the amount of time necessary to play; as a result there's no community, no real sense of being in a world, and no feeling of accomplishment.

>>386517374
just clone guild wars 1 but make it more modern, had a great skill system, best ive ever played desu

they should make dark souls as an mmo

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MMOs are not dead, see:
>>386505087
>>386505087
>>386505087

They aren't like EVE, Runescape and Wurm.

Theme park " you da hero! " MMOs blow dick. Player created economies, guilds, vendors etc. are always more interesting and more in the spirit of the genre.

>see that space station
>it's player owned and stocked
>start a courier business
>or just buy low sell high
>manufacture a ship from raw materials
>decide to start building and selling ships
>etc

>>386518830
What gaem?

My favorite thing about WoW from vanilla and bc was the endless sense of direction, paced by the strength of your character against a difficult world. It was not easy. You could regularly die in Silverpine. Flight paths were terribly inconvenient, and always took scenic routes. Getting people together at a dungeon meant getting people together AT a dungeon. The rewards were not consistent, or even always useful. Epic gear felt epic. The grind to 60 was miserable. All of these qualities, which by todays standards would add up to a failed project birthed a game still reminisced about by a those who were around for the experience. It was an escape to a different world, and not one that cottled you through its contents. I loved it. Some say the feeling is just nostalgia for my childlike wonder, but I know it isn't. It was perfect. The one thing that will fix the modern MMO is taking away the modern comforts of teleporting, auto group find, linear quest lines that make sense, and evenly paced leveling. It may seem like what the player wants, but it's most definitely ruining the experience at least for me.

TL;DR my wall of text. WoW was great because the original devs had no idea what they were doing.

>>386519162
Dragons dogma online. Its classified as a mmo it isn't in the traditional sense but its an example of using a different gameplay style to support everything as a base. Same with MHFO.

What I could do without though is this UI that keeps popping up in every mmo

MMOs are dead because online culture has changed. You used to be able to hang out, meet new people and have a good time escaping into another world. Now its painfully clear that world is just a facade, as no one bothers to try to interact or strike up a conversation.

>>386519241

It's true though. All the queues, auction boards, etc just strip away layers of interaction between players until you feel like you're playing a single player game with 9 strangers.

>>386519143
>grinding
>interesting

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I had around 5k hours in runescape.

1. don't make all of the best gear degradable
2. don't put spells/items behind arbitrary gold paywalls
3. customization of the character needs to be extensive
4. more than two or three viable builds for each style of combat
5. longform storytelling quests in a series are amazing
6. don't ever have a skill tied to spending fuckloads of money
7. don't make the power creep too fast. make the best gear the best gear for a few years at least. none of this every 6 months shit
8. have a good system for banning cheaters and bots

>>386519076
>shilling Japanese wow

>>386517374

Make the combat more technical and skill based.

Balance the classes instead of randomly buffing one each month to ludicrous heights

There, MMO of the century

>>386519646
he must be joking because ffxiv is complete trash

too heavily dependent on holy trinity
gear treadmill usually ends in daily-limited raids with abysmal droprates
community element skipped in place of convenience (you can finish games completely without actually talking to people)
pay2win mechanics (xp boosters, storage space, etc)

>>386519520

Even shitty themepark MMOs are basically nothing but grinding.

One of the coolest shit I've ever heard about in an MMO was how Jedis worked in Star Wars Galaxies before the patches that ruined the game.
>it took weeks (maybe months?) of effort
>there was a bounty on force sensitives so if anyone you didn't trust caught you trying to become one, they'd be on your ass
>but if you used powers or wore your robe/lightsaber around npcs and players, you might end up on a bounty hunter terminal so players with the bounty hunter class would get missions to hunt you down
>it took a large group to take down a single Jedi, and if the Jedi died the character was permadead
This is probably full of inaccuracies since I only heard it second hand, I didn't get SWG until after the NGE and CU patches allegedly ruined the game. I've never heard of another MMO that allowed for individual autism to accomplish something great.

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>>386517710
>WoW was so good
stopped reading from there

>>386519076
FFXIV tricked me. I played the free trial to level 28 and had fun, so I bought the game.

Then as soon as I turned 30, the story just shit all over itself and even if you skip it all, it sends you running from point A to point B 99% of the time. When I asked people when it got better, they'd say it doesn't. It gets worse at level 40 and then even worse at level 50.

I got to level 37 before I couldn't bear to play anymore.

>>386517374
MMOs aren't dead. Nigga there's like 20 new F2P MMOs every year

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>>386517374
I'm going to give the same opinion that I give every thread and then leave, because it's late. Most of the time I post this and most of the time I get bitched at.

MMORPGs are meant to be social experiences. The whole point of them stems from MUDs which was meant to be a goofing-off-with-your-friends simulator. The Themepark MMORPG is a great idea if you only care about the experience of one single player. But no one plays MMORPGs in a vacuum. At some point, other people have to come into the equation.

MMO's are dead because all of them, all at once, decided they wanted to be shitty single player games. To find parties, there are tools that just put you in random groups. No need to talk to them to understand if they're dickheads or not, no need to talk to them at all, really. Just get dropped into a random party and take your gruel. If you want a dungeon done, then there's plenty of finders for you to get grouped with random people from other servers that you'll never see again. Even if you want to see them, they'll be separated by an impenetrable wall which keeps you from ever enjoying the game with them ever again. If you want to do raids, there are plenty of guilds that are likely open and readily accepting literally anyone if you're capable of keeping your dick in your pants.

The dumbing down of MMORPGs to make them stupid single player games because That's-what-WoW-did completely killed any kind of community or empathy the average player has with other players. No one wants to talk, no one wants to try and work together, no one even wants to acknowledge you. It's a giant skinner box where you're told that you're having a multiplayer experience while being completely alone.

The sad part is: The attitudes and communities which once made MMORPGs vibrant social hubs has long since died. Now everyone wants those shitty single-player shortcuts like quest markers and party finders; because every other MMO has them. So why wouldn't you?

>>386519989

This. I play a little browser based grid game with a text based RP community attached, and it's the most engrossing multiplayer experience. WoW is a joke in comparison. There is no political intrigue between factions, power struggles etc. There isn't a lot of player agency in what is going on.

>>386517374
Allow players in an MMO to be evil by working for Hollywood's version of fascists, bandit organizations, or demons. Basically allow players to become pirates. Let them choose an alignment at the start of the game using the standard 3x3, and if they ever want to change their alignment give them a quest that shares a 30-day cool-down with eight others so they can shift a bit. (For example, a Chaotic Evil character can only become Neutral Evil or Chaotic Neutral, and can't change their alignment for another 30 days, real-time.) Make Lawful cities have a ton of guard NPCs while Chaotic cities have hardly any patrols. Let Good characters be unable to enter Evil cities and vice-versa. Let Neutral characters be able to enter Good and Evil cities, but they can only trade with merchants and use profession equipment and cannot accept quests within those territories. Let there be a reputation system in place to adjust prices, unlock quests, and allow NPCs to sell equipment to players. If too many people join one alignment, let "an angry god" buff mobs within territories owned by that alignment so it becomes much more difficult to quest, motivating people to not just stay True Neutral and get as many benefits from capital cities. Bring back WPvP.

>>386518328
This.
You can't strike up a conversation with random people anymore. Most people don't want to be bothered and will actively act hostile if you go out of your way to be social with them.

Most people either start games with a group of friends or try to form cliques in the form of guilds or free companies. When in these cliques, they view everyone else as being an inferior, as someone who shouldn't be conversed with, because what value would they have when they have all the social interaction they want in their guilds?

It's a perfect storm of isolation where the only people to talk to are people who are in completely different parts of the progress chain, to the point where they may as well not even be playing the same game as you.

The devs only see dollar signs instead of trying to make a fun game. Action combat is a meme too, tab targeting is fine and ends up taking more skill in PVP.

Try and replicate pokemon go but with actual gameplay

>>386517710
WoW is nothing more than a fucking horrible casualized EQ, even vanillia WoW
Absolute garbage 0/10 apply yourself underaged

>>386519804
>too heavily dependent on holy trinity
If you give players the ability to heal, some will naturally min/max and dedicate themselves to healing. If you give players the ability to withstand a few hits and keep enemies distracted, some will naturally min/max and dedicate themselves to doing that.

You can't avoid the holy trinity unless you prevent players from min/maxing into the specialized shit or make every character capable of healing themselves, or making death an acceptable occurrence in a fight, or make the fights so short that healers aren't needed and it's purely a dps race.

>>386520284
I like what Guild Wars 2 attempted, giving each class the ability to tank, DPS, focus on crit, heal, and make their class more niche. I never played at higher levels since I had a toaster and the graphics were perpetually fucked when I tried to play, but is that a system that can be improved on? Focusing on the standard fighter / thief / mage and giving them all the ability to tank, heal, and DPS?

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Adding onto the anti-social sentiment; my favorite MMO of all time is Shattered Galaxy, a game that is 99% pvp (1% PvE for the tutorial and the low-level sections) and has no quests or raids. You just level up units, and you buy their gear from money that you earn from battles.

I'm yet to find a game as socially vibrant as that game. A game where you can sit in a single part of the map all day long and have a blast because you're doing it with other people.

>>386520534
I was about to add in (GW2 tried this and failed) after "make every character capable of healing themselves" but i took it out because GW2 is still going and just because I think the system makes the game feel more bland and homogenized doesn't mean it failed

>>386517374
Another big problems with MMOs is that developers are too scared to give players meaningful choices anymore.

Everything has to be 'hotswappable' like CoD.

I mean MMO's were meant to be an electronic prepetual game of dungeons and dragons. How SHIT would dungeons and dragons be if you could hot-swap your spells and all of your other rolls?

They need to make games WITHOUT soulbound items so the economy can be interesting...

They need to make the game filled with meaningful hard decisions that you CAN fuck up your character with.

Think something like POE in a fully MMO setting, without the skills=gems idea.

>>386520719
It could be that we're so used to the same mechanics we're just dog-tired of playing games. MMOs have a gameplay limit since they need to run hundreds of equations at the same time, so it's almost impossible for developers, who are looking to streamline and make the game processing simpler, to think of something new.

We all know that healers can either have a full-kit of heals, be focused on single-target healing, be focused on group healing, be focused on healing over time, or focus on just preventing damage from being dealt in the first place. What other form of healing is there? It's difficult to think of one, especially for a developer who probably grew up on WoW. That's why, if you tried to make a new class in a new MMO that focuses on group healing, it's just going to be reduced to WoW's shaman mechanics.

There's nothing new to be done in an MMO when it comes to PvE content, because it's been done to death over the past twenty years. If an MMO is to thrive, it needs to focus on the PvP aspect, which is ephemeral, always changing.

>>386520901
You're jumping through a lot of hoops to make eternal grinding sound like a good thing.

>>386520719
In that sense it did fail though. The entire point was to make the game more fun but instead it got more boring. I don't know why I ever bought into removing the trinity as a good idea.

>>386521016
MMO's have to have some aspect of grinding to it.

The thing is that grinding has to be tempered with creativity and actual meaningufl control over your character.

Look at this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bY3FAwPAeqI

This is a build that the developers of the game never intended to be in the game.

This is what MMO's need... More of giving players the 'tools' to build the character they want and letting them go ape.

Most MMO's these days are far too on-rails.

>>386521068
Probably because the way GW2 did it, they didn't revolutionize anything. Remember how WoW used to allow warlocks to use Demon Form that let them off-tank and then gave them an Inscription to let them actually tank, and people were having too much fun so they removed it from the game? It would be nice to have a caster class that can shift over into tank mode while having a friendly-fire AoE ability so they can't work with martials. It would be nice to have another caster class that focuses on summoning constructs to tank FOR them, but since they're powerful magical beings they absorb most magic to regain health, preventing other casters from working at full efficiency, too.

>>386521185

AKA emergent gameplay opportunities in MMOs = good

I agree.

>>386521185
>>386520901
This.
The solution is to make grinding fun. Idiot mobs wandering around in a field isn't very fun when you have to actively seek them out to kill them. It feels like a chore. Especially if you're doing it by yourself.

There was an MMORPG called 'Tabula Rasa' (in b4 lord british memes) that had an overarching 'AI Command' that would actively tell the mobs where to go and how to behave. They would form into groups, into fireteams, there was one part of every map that was the AI's 'base' (essentially a raid dungeon) where units would spawn, would be taken by transport over the grinding fields, and then assemble and form-up when they landed.

I'm sorry that game failed, really. No other game has ever tried it before, but it was the only time I genuinely felt happy to grind. It felt like I was fighting a war instead of ambushing retards slogging around in a field. By myself. With no help from anyone. In that game, you had to work with other players, because the mobs could easily overrun you if you didn't.

>>386517374
The grind needs to be fun, or at least worth it. Some progress to work towards.

It wouldn't hurt for the content along the way to be engaging and memorable

>>386521185
Reminds me of why GuildWars was good. 55 Monk was never meant to be a thing, but rather than nerf the skills that made it good, they changed the mechanics of some areas to counter the build. Basically enchantment removal killed the build, so some popular areas to use it in got more enchant removal, and future content made sure to have at least some major threat with enchantment removal. This didn't kill the build, for the most part it just meant you had to be creative with your routes to avoid the packs that included such threats.

>>386520985
The Secret World had one of my favorite healing systems. The game allowed you 2 targets: one offensive and one defensive. You didn't have to switch from an enemy to an ally to buff them, you could have both targetted at once. It also didn't have classes, it took the GW1 approach where you could pick 2 weapons to level up and set their active and passive skills up to synergize.

One of its weapons allowed you to attack your offensive target, then it would take some of your damage and do it as healing to your defensive target. It was pretty gear dependent, you had to have the right proportion of +damage and +healing for it to work. The other healing weapons were your typical HoTs and Shields, and one had support buffs rather than heals, but there were no direct-heal-focused trees at all. Only an "oh shit" button at the end of a couple skill trees.

It's too bad the combat felt clunky and the f2p remake only fucked it up even more.

>>386521451
That sounds neat as fuck. It would be nice to have the mobs have passive buffs where the more there are in a group, the stronger they are, to the point where they can overrun towns, and the more towns they control, the stronger they get as well. It would give even higher-level players a reason to fight off mobs while at max-level, since the mobs could theoretically get so strong they can just take over the world since no one kept them in check.

>>386521068
The problem with GW2 is the game designers had no idea what they were doing.

I mean ALL of the spells feel extremly bland, and the 'effects' they do .. well, retarded...

"Fire an arrow that grants you stealth when it hits an enemy. Your pet gains swiftness."

It grants YOU stealth?.. But you have to shoot at them to get it... and your pet gets faster? Why?

It's like.. fire an arrow you go invisible, your pet gets faster, the guy down the road finds a quarter and your CD tray ejects.

Fire a slow, arcing arrow which explodes on impact to burn targets and sear a symbol of energy into the ground.

Everything here just seems to be a random combination of buffs and debuffs that last literally 1.5 seconds, and do ambiguous things.

The player is given ALL of these skills except a few 'ultimate' skills.. by level fucking 10? What happened to character development?

>>386521185
How do you magically prevent people from trying to play optimally?

"Choice" really means "baiting people into doing the wrong thing."

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Pretty much every MMO is a theme park with zero character customization to protect casuals from hamstringing themselves.

Every player character is essentially an identical clone of all other characters of the same class, doing the same dungeons, looking for the same loot. Millions of faceless clones are chasing the same worthless dream so they can finally be done with a game they don't even really like playing.

So I guess the problem with MMOs is that they're too much like real life.

>>386521647
This is the worst part of GW2. If you ever paused to look at the game manual, you would see that there's about 25 different spell effect combinations to create crazy effects, but with how fast buffs and debuffs last and with how specific everything has to be, it's almost impossible to get them done, except by accident, and since they don't do anything exceptional there's no reason to perform better.

Using this fire spell creates a heat-area effect that allows an air spell to deal a gorillion damage? Who cares, the mob is already dead!

>>386518536
Albion Online

>>386521451
I think MMOs could use more creative mechanics like this.

Also.. PVP MMO's need to explore PVP in more ways than just 'Fight the enemy".

I'm talking PVP dungeons where you don't always just FIGHT the enemy players.. but you compete.

ie; you can see the other 5 man team behind a glass wall.. and both teams each get to a boss. When one team damages their boss.. it HEALS the other boss. The first team to kill it gets loot, the second team doesn't.

And other competitive 'events'.. that would encourage actual co-operative play in dungeons while still making it a mostly PVE experience because your never actually hitting enemy players.

Another Idea i can't believe hasn't been done yet is a PVP battleground.. where the highest ranked PVP player on each side... is offered a 'commander' position.

The player plays the battelground from a top-down RTS view. They can place buldings, they can click on the other players and give them commands to move here, attack that, or build this).. the commands appear as arrows on the individual player's screens like quests.

there would be resource gathering, (like build a mine that generates 2 resources per second)... which you could use to build faster spawn-rates, NPCs, Bosses that fight for you (Alterc Valley style).

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>>386521647
>It's like.. fire an arrow you go invisible, your pet gets faster, the guy down the road finds a quarter and your CD tray ejects.

>>386521846
Day 0: Release content
Give players a week to test content
Day 7: Receive feedback from players
Take the time to figure out what is good and bad for the content
Day 14/0: Tweak the content, release the content
Give the players a week to test the content...

tl;dr have active developers who aren't focused on releasing the next expansion for more jewgold.

>>386522025
Sounds like a little like Savage, not that it's a bad thing.

>>386522025
Why do you line break every sentence. Paragraphs exist, use them.

>>386522050
I hate it when games do this. I hate coming back to a game a month later and everything's different.

>>386522114
Ignore the redditor.

>>386522025
You could also have PvP ranks matter. If a player is "Rank 10", make him in charge of ten "Rank 9" players in a special grouping, and give them advice, tactics, and strategies so they can better rank up. That Rank 10 player gets a bonus score based on the performance of those Rank 9 players, on top of the score he earned for PvP, which will determine whether or not he will become Rank 11. Similarly, those Rank 9 players are in charge of ten Rank 8 players, and so on down the line.

>>386522163
That's funny, I hate it when I'm paying a 30-day subscription only to find that the literally-unplayable content in the game is going to be stuck that way for three months because the devs can't be assed to fix something.

>>386521846
You create such a wide choice-space that the 'optimal' build is illusive and situational. Not just a flat 'this is the best stats possible' thing.

ie; Having so many builds, mechanics, and combinations that 3 years after release someone posts a youtube video that showcases a completely different style of play that changes the whole 'meta'.

min-maxing is easy when you give people a 1 in 3 choice, with +5 str +5 attack dmg or +5 speed.

It's much harder when it's a 1 in 20 choice per tier.. of things like your characters mana now is set to be EQUAL to your characters life every 3 seconds.

and then something much further down (or even an item effect) that says spend 10/20/30% of your mana in aoe damage.

You don't need to worry about balance if there are so many OP things in the game that everyone's OP as shit. That's what fun feels like.

>>386519989
My first MMO was Rangarok Online. Thinking about playing it feels like stepping into a different reality.
There WAS no content like exists in themepark MMOs. The quests were extremely barebone and had no UI assistance whatsoever. Dungeons had no structure, they were just areas with multiple floors and lots of monsters, and typically one big monster at the end that took 30 people to kill. PvP was a once-a-week affair where you fought over castles that give you crafting components and your guild's emblem on a dick-waving flag in a city.

And yet people loved it, they played all day. When they didn't feel like going to a dungeon to level grind or travelling to kill an MvP (boss), they would just sit around in town and goof off. And they did not just contain themselves to parties, people would sit in big unorganized groups of strangers and socialize.

The ONLY place this still happens in modern MMOs is Goldshire in WoW, where some people still inexplicably just go to hang out for the hell of it. It's rare as shit these days, but thinking back, old MMOs were full of interaction like this.

>>386522320
on an unrelated note, should I try Atlas RO?

>>386522408
I dunno. People on /vg/ seem to be playing RE:Start.

I can only speak from my experiences, but for me two things that are big issues in modern day MMO's are:

>Such an extreme emphasis on endgame that the experience in between is simply made as a boring solo grind timesink

What I loved about Everquest 2 and a few others was that leveling up itself, exploring the world, meeting new people was all a part of the experience, I had as much of a blast just working my way up to max level as I did doing stuff at endgame, there was interesting content to do and it didn't really feel like a grind. That leads to my next point

>Driving out the need for socialization

Servers used to be full of communities, well known names and groups, you would meet people by chance leveling up and make friends with them. Public dungeons provided a unique dynamic of groups farming, groups exploring, people dragging trains of mobs, people helping a group about to wipe, and other things. Instanced content doesn't really have as exciting a thrill of going through a dungeon, after the first time it's the same experience over and over. MMO's in general these days don't really make you interact with people a lot, the leveling process is more solo orientated so you don't need to group up. There seems to hardly be a reason to interact with people in MMOs now.

Most of em are designed as singleplayer games with some matchmaking for dungeons
It'd be niche these days (aka a few hundred thousand players at most, but there needs to be an MMO where a significant chunk of shit even outside of instanced areas (if there are any) either requires at least one friend or a lot of preparation if you want to solo it.

And this is just a personal thing but I wanna see an MMO where there's a ton of items with on-use effects that you don't necessarily have to equip, kinda like Dragon Quest. I also want Dragon Quest X fucking hell you goddamn slant eyed jews

You need an MMO that's made for and by people who love the genre, and that's all you focus on. You don't want the general audience, you want a specific type, you encourage the game to be about the community.

>>386522312
GuildWars has a developed meta, it most certainly didn't take 3 years for it to hit that point, and most of the game breaking stuff was discovered early on. It also has significantly more choices and options than you're proposing. Metas will always exist. Optimal builds are something that can be solved for in any given system. What makes a game good is how many options sit at the top of that meta.

See:
https://gwpvx.gamepedia.com/Category:Meta_working_PvE_builds
https://gwpvx.gamepedia.com/Category:Meta_working_PvP_builds
https://gwpvx.gamepedia.com/PvX_wiki

Their categories are Meta, Great and Good. The Meta builds are the undisputed best at what they do, but even builds from the Great and Good sections have their place.

>>386522312
That doesn't address the issue. You're still forcing mandatory homework on the players. The top build being illusive doesn't make everything equally viable.

>>386522694
>https://gwpvx.gamepedia.com/Category:Meta_working_PvE_builds

Guild wars 1 did a lot of things right in this respect.

GW2 however..

ESO is pretty okay these days.

>>386522569

Also I am still hoping Pantheon can make it through development, it really focuses on those two issues and definitely hearkens back to games like EQ1, EQ2, and Vanguard.

>>386522279
There's a difference between releasing the game in a broken and unfinished state and constantly, sometimes drastically, changing gameplay and balance.

>>386522737
Some people enjoy learning about the game though.

I mean what kind of shit game would we be building if the learning the best ways to play the game.. had no effect on actually playing the game?

This is the trap a lot of modern developers fall for. Casuals aren't worth targeting in the long term, only for the next quarter's profits.

Casuals will always do what makes them casuals (quit the game and move on). It's the 'hard-core' theorycrafting nerds that took WoW from 1Million subs to 10 million. It's the "I won't read anything outside the game" casuals that took it from 10Million to 12 Million and then back down to 2 million or whatever the fuck it is now.

>>386522694
>>386521569
https://gwpvx.gamepedia.com/Build:Mo/any_55hp_SoA_Farmer
>The health reduction is accomplished as follows. A level 20 monk with no runes has 480 health. Adding five Superior runes, one for each monk attribute and one duplicate (the duplicate is not effective toward the attribute [runes do not stack] but the -75 hp is in effect), reduces the 480 HP by 375 HP (75 HP times five superior runes), leaving a total health of 105 HP. Additionally, the invincimonk uses the Cities of Ascalon quest reward Grim Cesta, which has a -50 HP modification on it to reduce his health to 55 HP.

A build based around reducing your max health as low as possible and stacking flat regen. All because Protective Spirit exists. PS = You can't take more than 10% of your max health in damage per hit.

>>386522985
>It's the 'hard-core' theorycrafting nerds that took WoW from 1Million subs to 10 million
I don't understand what reasoning led you to this conclusion.

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>>386523069
HOW DO YOU KILL IT

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>>386522637
I understand, but when the production cost is 50 millions you kinda have to appeal to a larger audience as well. ways to include them.

The kiddies that grinded the skinner boxes back in the day are all grown up now with jobs so they don't like MMO time sinks anymore. And the little kids now-a-days are all playing minecraft and those survival shooter games.

>>386522985
You've got things backwards. Every game made today is filled with autistic mechanics. It's the autism-free games that aren't made anymore.

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Unfortunately MMOs went to shoot around the same time internet gaming went main stream, there's just too many fucking idiots and generally awful people playing nearly every genre now that almost every online gaming experience feels like a fucking chores and almost never feels like you are playing the game it was intended to be played, it's always either avoiding some reject trying his fucking best to ruin the experience of babysitting some faggot that couldn't be assed to even read what the fucking mission was before he joined or some other form of retard easily avoided problem.

MMOs that were great were great because they were a community of like minded people that socialized and worked together. People who were fucking dipshits or just generally awful to be around were ostracized and ignored. You didn't have to have a setgroup of people you played with just to know you would have people who knew what they were doing, even the random pickups were skilled and there for a purpose.

TLDR; The only way to have a great MMO is to focus on entertaining and maintaining a very specific type of audience and not aim to be the we want everybody game.

>>386523171
Enchantment Removal
Degen Stacking
This isn't a "Meta" build any more, it's a "Great" build, for PvE. Pretty sure it's always been shit in PvP. Any area with a decent amount of Necro or Mesmer enemies is basically a no-go for this build. Again, rather than nerf the skills or items that make the build good, they simply added a few wandering mesmers to a few popular profitable spots that people used to grind, and included a little more degen/enchantment removal in future content.

>>386517374
>What is lacking in MMOs nowadays
The MMO part.

>implying MMO's were ever good
literally the worst genre ever

>>386517374
>What's lacking

Difficulty, community and the Japanese style. Japs don't even bring their MMOs over here anymore because Millennials are anti-social retards.

>>386523361
Went to shit. Fucking auto correct.

>>386523069
See why do WoW and Guildwars2 not have choices and builds like that.

Is it any wonder that people are bored to death when ever class has the same reskinned:

"Fires a bolt of magic that deals 450-600 damage to the enemy".


Is it any wonder that people are bored to death when ever class has the same reskinned:

"Fires a bolt of magic that deals 450-600 damage to the enemy".

"[s]Fires[/s] Throws a bolt of [s]magic[/s] metal that deals 450-600 damage to the enemy".

Or Pick 1 of 3 skills that you can hotswapp whenever you want!

-Run slightly faster (And do dmg).
-Shoot a different colored bolt with slightly more different damages!
-gain extra armour for 4 seconds.


I mean let's cut the crap. THis is basically the call of duty weapon attachment system applied to MMO characters.

>>386523473
Dude, it's not fucking fair that someone like me, who can only play an hour each day, doesn't have the time or resources to spend to do this kind of testing, while some poopsocking no-life NEET can figure this all out. I should have everything available to me from the start without a high learning curve, otherwise it's a waste of my time and money.

No real rated PVP in like arena. WoW has been the only relatively big MMO with rated arena that actually mattered and actually separated the top players from the rest.
Even if there were some specs and comps that were better than others, you actually still had to be good to get Gladiator.

>>386523171
Dispel of enchantments.

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>>386523331
Pretty sure you've got things backwards. Modern MMOs are all just do the daily grinds, have nothing else to do, repeat. Mechanics are simplified as much as possible for mainstream appeal. Gone are the days of games like FFXI, where for over a decade people believe the direction you were facing while crafting, in relation to the crystal used, current in game day, and in game moon phase affected crafting results. The original dev response when asked in a Q&A was "Face whichever direction your heart desires and hope for the best". It wasn't until they canned most of the dev team and hired people who don't give a shit about the game that we got an answer... last year? the year before? The direction you're facing while crafting has no impact on craft results in any way.

Pic related, it's one of the charts people swore by when crafting.

>>386523235
Yup. That's kind of many MMOs that I liked are dead. What you really need is some rich asshole that pays for the game he wants and the community he wants and doesn't have corporate fucks to answer to.

I've been playing.mmos since meridian 59, the very first, and the genre is dead. Most people think most people who loved MMOs just have no snow and don't have the time for that shit ( which is partially true holy shit I can't do that vanilla EQ grind any more) but it's mostly there's no appealing games to play, and most games communities are fucking chores to be around.

You need a game for MMO people, by MMO people.

>>386519525
mah nigga, I agree with you on all points.
Additions for the nonexistent developer that would be reading these posts and thinking of making a better Runescape:
-Make the journeys through wilderness (not just The Wilderness) between towns or other points of interest more perilous, going from Varrock to Clan Wars with the revenants throwing shit at you was harrowing, just like going from Lumbridge to Varrock with dark wizards throwing earth strikes at you
-Give every material you can procure multiple purposes, like steel bars making cannonballs and lanterns, not just armor
-Don't have super fast korean-tier APM combat (at least not for PvE) in a game about slow paced progression and sleep inducing grindan. Bosses and shit should be gear and character skill checks, not adrenaline fueled spasmodic twitch gaymen player skill checks yes I'm still fucking mad at Jad
-Have multiple ways of training skills at any given level, with different playstyles for each (slow and steady vs concentration required but slightly faster exp)
-None of that tier shit, certain weapons should fulfill certain niches, and they certainly shouldn't be balanced out so that two daggers provide equivalent damage to a two handed sword
-Don't plop bank chests right next to 'place where you're likely going to die,' you should have come there prepared
-Don't make areas that are fucking empty save for one or two monsters/resources/NPC types that are only found there, add stuff for a wide range of levels so newbs can be grinding alongside whales and so it's not so obviously a themepark
-Don't make the player's character the chosen one who interacts with literal gods on a regular and casul basis. Keep those niggas mysterious

Personally I don't like MMOs because the gameplay is usually boring, endgame is just grinding, and making a new character in a different class is not worth the time. For example DFO could have been great if the combat didn't devolve into enter room=>press skill(s)=>room dies, and all of the newer classes being overly flashy garbage. That and the endgame is boring as fuck. Leveled an Fgrap to cap then quit.

>>386523646
But how is that kind of autism related to the game's popularity?

Older MMOs like FFXI and Everquest never got more than a few hundred thousand active subscribers, yet you're asserting that theorycrafting is what made WoW not only blow those two out of the water five-fold within a few months of its release, but blow up even further.

>>386523594
>wanting games to cater to the lowest denominator and those who wont truly appreciate the game
if you cant play the game how it should be, dont play the game. dont ruin it for everyone else by making people who actually care to put the time and practice in. im so sick and tired of the masses

>>386524038
The developers are getting my money, and therefore they are obligated towards me, as a patron of their services, to create content for me. If you have a problem with that, then don't play the game. Stick to your private servers or your sprite MMOs.

>>386524112
>buy gun
>damn why is my gun not pink!!!

fuck off, go design your own game faggot

>>386524112
> obligated
they arent obligated to do ANYTHING you entitled child, especially when you barely play the game. like I said, dont ruin the game for everyone who really cares enough to put time in. its ridiculous to insist on being equal after 1 hour with someone who put in 100 hours

>>386524112
This is like saying "I don't have time to watch game of thrones, but Im still buying the seasons.. so the producers have to kill off all the characters in a 3 hour special so I can experience the content"...

I think when it comes to MMO's you have to be clear in what your buying. It's not a single player game. Your not paying to experience the 'whole' story and all the content.

Your paying to enter the world and be a participant.

>>386523907
>Every game made today is filled with autistic mechanics. It's the autism-free games that aren't made anymore.
I'm asserting that every game today is NOT filled with autistic game mechanics

I'm asserting that games of the past WERE made with autistic game mechanics.

Never said shit about their popularity.

>>386524325
>Never said shit about their popularity.
My bad, I thought you were >>386522985 who said
>It's the 'hard-core' theorycrafting nerds that took WoW from 1Million subs to 10 million.

>>386524112
>pay lawnmower
>hey dude go build me a house

youre completely retarded

>>386524112
no, if YOU have a problem with the game dont fucking buy it retard

>>386524112
I bet you're the type of person who asks to see the manager

>>386524112
Blizzard caved to retards like this and that's why WoW is a shadow of itself. They killed the genre by demanding the RPG part be removed from the MMORPG.

>>386517374
>What is lacking in MMOs nowadays?
the kind of playerbase i used to enjoy

>>386524112
you dont get to be part of the design team because you paid 60$. dont like it dont buy it.

>all this butthurt

>>386517374
make them not tap 1 2 3 4 then 1 2 3 4 simulators, gameplay wise mmos are so bad only old fans of the genre can bear with it, a little more action would be welcome, games like Warframe may be what peoples want, more action, the a ability to move and actually dodge say Nier Automata but slower and with magic, controls also need to be not shit and the map more than a walled garden where you can't jump past a 50cm fence, that shit destroys the feeling of a living world.

Also mmos need to stop with the "forces of evil and shit" ,seriously I could feel my brain shut down during the Wow and ff14 intro cutscenes.

>>386525510
>tfw no MMO where you can be evil

>>386525510
The original WOW was pretty good cutscene wise because it made no asertions who was the 'big bad evil'.

I don't think th egame even needs to be 'action' combat...

they just need more thought out combat where spells/abilities can combo with others in a lot of meaningful ways.

GW2 is the WRONG way to do this. The combo is literally "Put down the aoe fire spell and shoot through it for fire arrows".

Great.. but what do fire arrows do? Imperceptibly more damage? Is there ever a moment where you find yourself putting the fire down first because you can't succeed without it?
Is there a big visual effect or damage numbers communicating what it's doing to the player? How often is this mechanic used?

A good example of a mechanic is WoW frostmages and their shatter combo.
>Perceptibly more damge.
>BIg visual indicator/numbers
>Core to the playstyle to the point where every fight it's used multiple times.
>Satisfying to use.

>>386525510
yeah because vindictus was so fucking great
>instead of tapping 1 2 3 4 I get to tap left mouse click left mouse click left mouse click right mouse click spacebar/shift left mouse click left mouse click left mouse click right mouse click spacebar/shift left mouse click left mouse click left mouse click right mouse click spacebar/shift left mouse click left mouse click left mouse click right mouse click spacebar/shift

>>386525510
>warframe combat
>99% of missions: w+m1
>shift+w -> ctrl+space to get away from shooty guy or go fast
>occasionally press 4
>other missions: stand on point+m1
>occasionally press 4
>play as trinity
>aim at guy, press 2, then press 4 when people are dying

>>386526351
It was a step in the right direction, the issue of that game was the massive healthbars on everything and everything boiling down to stats in the end.

>>386525510
Is the problem the lack of input complexity, or the lack of combat complexity? How would you fix the later?

>>386517998
depends what you define "non-wow". they are all more or less a themepark unless you want to suffer through open-world "pvp" (=getting ganked while questing).

ESO has the most non-retarded setup and grind is optional, not perfect but the least amount of shit depending on your POV.

>>386521647
>The problem with GW2 is the game designers had no idea what they were doing.

THIS. non-trinity can work if pve is build around it, but everything in gw2 just feels like it was planned with trinity and then last minute someone said "guys, wouldn't it be cool if everybody could be a retarded DD?"

in the whole game there was ONE fight were the system worked well, but it was locked aways in a story mode (the forge guy in the russian mole people instance)

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So I read all the thread and here is what I got for my game:
-design the game in a way that would allow small guilds to survive and have fun even if the game is all about boundless power
-no teleport of any sort (unless maybe some super high tech thing that requires super tier materials and stuff to make which would make it a rarity in any, but do tell if no TP at all is preferable)
-multiple purposes for materials
-always have a sense of adventure and danger in the wilderness

last but not least, I'll add fucking monsters to the planets. Why didnt I think of this? this will add much more depth to the PvE element of the game, which revolves around PvP and mainly human to human combat. but monsters is a great fucking idea. thanks everybody, youve all been heard.

>>386524112
Fuck off, cunt. Don't buy something you don't enjoy it in the first place and expect the developers to change it to cater to you. There's billions of babby tier games designed to cater to people who can't use abstract thinking, play those instead.

>>386526920
I think Morrowind did an alright job of teleporting (at least with the mage's guild), where the locations you teleported to were only select major towns, far from any exciting places (IE grinding areas in an MMO), but could still free up some time from walking literally everywhere.
Maybe up the cost on teleports, require favors/errands/quests to be run, or have some unique, nontradeable (maybe) material that's consumed on TP.
Teleports in Runescape (at least in F2P) were huge since the necessary magic exp wasn't too easy to get unless you knew what you were doing and had the money for it, but being able to skip walking a few minutes made it all worth it. Maybe have it on a long cool down, so you can't TP to one place, fill your inventory with valuable bear asses, TP to a banking area, and repeat, you'd have to go into the wilderness at some point.

>>386527082
Thing is in warfarm you can use literally any weapon short of mk1 shit (could probably manage with those) and wind up doing perfectly fine provided you have the right mods. If you don't have those mods, or don't have them maxed (or at optimal ranks for corrupted mods on certain frames), you've got to rely on the cheesiest shit you can get your hands on, or hope that you can get carried.
It's not helped by having so many mods in the game yet there only being 2 builds (crit or status) for all weapons.
Instead of a 1234 it's your 1 is useless, your 2 is situational at best, your 3 was made obsolete or useless five updates ago, and your 4 is so goddamn OP that if you don't bring a guy that specifically uses it you're gimping yourself.

>>386526920
To add to this, if you want your economy to actually be fun to participate in, make sure that trade skills actually yield some sort of reward. By making resources limited or scarce, it means finding that resource actually feels like an accomplishment. Make it so that you actually need a skill to be able to harvest certain resources too.

GW2 went in the opposite direction of this, and as a result, your labour wasn't worth anything because literally anyone can go out and get these materials, not to mention that nodes weren't limited.

>>386527571
>Make it so that you actually need a skill to be able to harvest certain resources too.
cant do, my game has no skill, but players will definitely need the right tool to gather X material, or even more than a mere tool, but build an actual mine of some sort and etc.

>>386527407
>Thing is in warfarm you can use literally any weapon short of mk1 shit (could probably manage with those) and wind up doing perfectly fine provided you have the right mods.
Which is a good thing, being able to use every weapon is good for variety.

>If you don't have those mods, or don't have them maxed, you've got to rely on the cheesiest shit you can get your hands on, or hope that you can get carried.
Lad you can do every single mission in the game solo with any frame running on pure basic r5 mods if you have skills at shooting.


>2 builds (crit or status) for all weapons.
Frame builds are far more diverse and the weapon "build" is the gun/melee itself. You can use a throwing spear that explodes, granade launchers, bows, daggers, pistols, automatics, semi automatics, greatswords, etc etc. That is your "build", crit and status are just your damage multipliers.

>Instead of a 1234 it's your...
You can change what ability is good or bad based on the stats you run. Just because your a tryhard who wants to ez mode everything in the game doesn't mean there aren't more builds.

>>386518328
>People aren't social like they used to be
I don't think it's about this. Human nature doesn't change just like that in half a generation. You can still try vanilla WoW private servers, and people are just as social there as they used to be, at least based on my experience.

I think it's more about how games have changed with more experienced developers, better tech and player feedback. These things have reduced the amount of inconveniences the game have, and thus a need for social interaction. If you have to run 10 minutes to a dungeon, you might as well talk with your group members since it's not like there's anything else you can do. Good for fighting the boredom. If you add an auction house that requires no social interaction, most people will use that instead of bothering to try to find people to sell to/buy from themselves. If you make all the content soloable, very few are going to go through the extra effort to do the content with someone else, unless they're friends with some in the first place.

These changes didn't come from trying to adapt to a less social playerbase. They came from trying to improve the games by removing the "boring" or "pointless" parts, and only leaving in the "fun" parts. The problem with this is that in MMOs, a large part of the player's motivation comes from the carrot you offer them. Better gear and all that shit. They aren't generally games that you play simply for fun, like you would play a board game with friends, for example. So when you remove most of the inconveniences of the game, not only do you harm the social aspect of the game, but you also make the carrot a lot less rewarding, harming player motivation.

It's important to understand that people will, in general, take the path of least resistance, even if they know it results in less enjoyment. Humans don't like putting in effort by nature. This is why you can't give them that option.

>>386521586
Vanguard: Saga of Heroes did that too.
It made healing far less of an unfun chore when you were doing that while doing your rotation

>>386522102
Savage was so good in what it attempted but I don't think I played past the beta

>>386528063
>These things have reduced the amount of inconveniences the game have, and thus a need for social interaction.
but that's the shit you need, the whole point is to overcome obstacles together, which doesn't just mean a DPS threshold.
else why play a mmo in the first place, might as well play cookie clicker and remove all those "inconveniences"

>They came from trying to improve the games by removing the "boring" or "pointless" parts
you mean the parts the majority of their casual audience deemed so?
the whole crux of MMORPGs is that it's the most expensive genre to make but only actually has a fraction of players that actually want it. the rest is just looking for a idiot-proof skinnerbox, not even with a chatbox anymore.

>>386528063
The solution obviously isn't to make everything as inconvenient as possible. There have been a ton of Korean MMOs that have made everything as grindy as possible, and that will simply turn off a lot of people from the games. There is a very fine line between what is inconvenient enough and what's too much, and I'm afraid that experience people have had from other games may affect that a lot. "Doing X was so much easier in Y, why is this game so shit?" is probably something you'd hear a bunch. I imagine people expect shit like quest markers these days, because spending a little time and effort exploring is too much. In a way that's almost unavoidable due to the growth of the internet and information being more easily available than ever. Rather than searching for something yourself, you just alt tab, check the wiki or some other database and see what some kindhearted person has written there.

Essentially, people actually get rid of the parts of the game that would make it kinda fun because they want to avoid the effort. Instead, they just want to do all the necessary things with no thought of their own, just to get the carrot that is being offered.

>>386517374
>What is lacking in MMOs nowadays?
Player interaction. Everything is instanced, solo-able, and non-combat stuff has been crammed into the corner. There is zero reason for players to interact with one another, even raids can be done in total silence while each player just does their job.
MMOs have gone from being like their own world, to a fucking "job". Routine and by the numbers.

There's no sense of exploration, each player gets the same experience, no "emergent gameplay". Anything you don't know, there's a wikia or two with everything you need to know.

That's where Minecraft and similar games have come in. They've scratched the fuck out of the itch for actually exploring a world and having reasons for players to work together in organic ways, as well as the desire for productivity through building things. Even if you read a wiki and know the exact process to move up to the top end game gear, you still have the explore, search, dig and fight to reach that point.
Also why Roguelikes have appeal - you know the destination, but the journey is not set in stone.

MMOs post-WoW have killed the main reason to be an online game, and they're all just singleplayer games in disguise, other players on the horizon are no more relevant than NPCs.
Just play Minecraft or Starbound or whatever on a big server.

ro clone when
death of ro private and officials when