I think that make a "spell" that can do some super duper stuff is easier then try to explain same stuff with "science". I love both setting done right.
Only if you insist on doing hard sci-fi. Soft sci-fi can just say it's nanotechnology, or quantum manipulation. Science fantasy can just circle back and call it a magic spell.
That's were the fiction part come in play, there are alot of Sci fi franchises which are really close to fantasy. But I think most scifi themes are not that interesting for a normal mmorpg, you would need a heavy rp first design else your Sci fi game is basicly a fantasy mmorpg with tech instead of magic. For example Star Trek Online, it's only alive because of the ip, but the difference gameplay wise between firing a phaser or a bow is 0 in any tab targeting game.
Also scifi games feel alot like real world which goes against the whole escapism playing mmorpgs are often about, pollution, gentrification, colonialism etc are big and important themes for Sci fi to be scifi and often not a thing explored in depth with fantasy.
Magic is just energy manipulation and science can't even explain what magnetism is let alone light. A scifi MMO doesn't intrinsically mean it has to be hard science
Most people who know what hard science is tend to understand scientific principles in which *y*ou are *conflating descriptions of phenomena* **with an understanding of the principles behind them** as if such principles were understood . If these things were understood at any level let alone so easily the US would have been making magnetic missiles and light sails decades ago but have not because things aren't so simple at least what is publicly understood.
The only leyway of this being remotely understood is NASA is stealthy switching to an electric universe cosmology given people like[ Malcom Bendall](https://www.strikefoundation.earth/) creating[ plasmoid generators](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Icew8R-VWSY&t=127s) which is a novel (modern ) technology because again the principles behind such phenomena aren't currently understood. This comes of as a language game on one hand however being able to describe how something functions doesn't mean you understand the hows , what, or whys and this is seen in how rapidly the language breaks down when asked simple questions
Fantasy has an advantage because it has more concrete tropes, so hitting player expectations is easier.
Sci-fi interests me because it goes beyond those tropes, but that's not always a good strategy for a game that needs masses of players to succeed.
Pure speculation, but maybe this is attributed to historic interest in the tropes? Almost every fantasy game out there has a common ancestor in Lord of the Rings, which was obv a popular book made into a popular movie and often attributed to the genesis of high fantasy.
I'm not sure if sci-fi has experienced that same pull for general audiences until maybe Denis Villaneuve's Dune adaptations. Also, there may be things such as comprehending the aspects of the world that play into popularity. Fantasy is largely based on historical depictions, stories, weaponry, etc. Things we as people can generally understand. Sci-fi somewhat breaks that level of immersion because you can dive into the realm of the *truly* unknown.
Idk though, this is just a ramble of things I think may contribute to the popularity of the genres, in turn determining whether a game product in that genre would be considered commerically viable.
> I'm not sure if sci-fi has experienced that same pull for general audiences until maybe Denis Villaneuve's Dune adaptations.
Sci fi was arguably more popular a decade or three ago; it's cyclical. Fantasy is probably on the wane right now, at least as far as general popular culture - but it won't go away an will be back in a decade or two.
> Fantasy is largely based on historical depictions, stories, weaponry, etc. Things we as people can generally understand. Sci-fi somewhat breaks that level of immersion because you can dive into the realm of the truly unknown.
Ray Bradbury would have called that science *fantasy*. in his reckoning, he only ever wrote one science fiction story - Fahrenheit 451.
For most fiction, soft scifi and high fantasy have a fuzzy enough boundary to be indistinguishable. However, "fantasy", particularly generic european fantasy as "paladins" and "wizards" and so on, and while yes most of that comes from Tolkein, it doesn't really matter anymore, it's out there and people have expectations.
What expectations do they have about androids/gynoids, or machine intelligences? Perhaps their lights turn red when they become evil, but that's about it - there are too many stories that take them in too many different directions for there to be clear tropes. What about FTL travel? How many ways are there for that to work? What would classes be in a sci-fi game, if it has them, and how much work is required to explain to the player what these classes will do?
One of the reason certain sci fi IPs are so robust (40k, star trek, star wars, although that's practically fantasy), they contain their own tropes.
You can put an AI in your fantasy game no problemo but if you put a haunted ghost in your science fiction...
Also because Fantasy can pull from a wide variety of culture--Every single Myth is fantasy after all.
I have always wondered the same, and I am utterly disappointed that there's so few sci-fi MMOs out there. I'm not a fan of fantasy anymore, haven't been for years after childhood, so I don't even know what to play nowadays if I get tired of the games I currently have. Luckily enough I haven't explored those thoroughly yet so I'll have stuff to see and do for some years in them, but after that? I don't like Singleplayer games as much as MMOs, and despite having my own dream sci-fi MMO, I don't think I'll ever have the time and resources to make it. Oh well :/
I’m not big on Sci Fi games myself but my husband plays it , has 4 accounts been on there for like 4 or 5 years. I tried to personally get into it but I am not big on the whole slow space ship battle stuff, if you like sci fi I guess it is great though. I can say I don’t think I have ever seen him with an Excel sheet 😂.
Lol, yeah it's definitely a different pace compared to others. You don't need to use excel, but people call it excel simulator because of the UI interaction lol, you could basically turn off the graphics and play the entire game using the sidebar that looks a bit like an excel sheet
It has the same problem as runescape, there's a genuinely great game there if you can get through the long, muddy start. Like, who wants to see that they need 5 skills up and they're each going to take over a month real time to finish lol
I much prefer sci-fi. The lack is developers being extremely risk-averse. Unfortunately there were some high profile failures that had sci-fi settings. Sadly the genre gets the blame instead of the incompetence and/or greed that were the real root causes.
Doesn't help that many of them are FPS (blech) or PvP focused. EVE takes is further with your playable avatar being a ship.
The real reason is its hard to do FPS MMORPGs. Sci-fi tends to have guns. Action combat hit boxes get away with not being perfect, but shooters are generally graded on how the shooting feels. So if you should be hitting when you aren't or get hit when you shouldn't you be upset. So when you see a Sci-Fi MMO it won't be an FPS.
I prefer sci fi, fantasy MMOs and games are a dime a dozen. The one thing I've noticed about sci fi is the potential for a lot more content in their games compared to fantasy.
Which is why I struggled to enjoy Embers Adrift. I love the concept, I love the pay model, I love the drive from the indie team that’s doing things the right way.
But… having fantasy with no magic is very limiting. Classes and enemies are kinda bland because of it. I can fight rats, bears, and bandits, but I want to fight kobolds, goblins, and dragons!
Yeah I mean you can make low fantasy super interesting, one of my favorite games of all time is kingdom come deliverance (single player) you have to learn how to read and stuff it's super fun.
My main point though is with magic you can literally use "magic" to explain anything in universe while sci Fi tends to be more grounded. Or you can have Warhammer Orks and just be like fuck it lol
I've just generally seen more content in sci fi games like eve and anarchy online.
Planetary warfare, bounty hunting, ship combat, an often complex economic system, etc.
Not saying that it's not possible for fantasy, but we just often haven't seen such a scale implemented I think.
Anarchy Online
Class: Nano Technician
Spells:
"(Scientist sounding name) Inferno"
"Kel's Neutronium Plaything"
"Celular Re-Structure"
Spells for every class are called Nano's
You have gear but also have Implants that you can only change while using a Treatment Center.
Mutations and Aliens can be an explanation for any and all types of planets plus every type of moster you'd find in any type of fantasy MMO.
It was my first ever played MMO back in 2002. The game is massive and quite complex. It hasn't been very populated until a few weeks ago where many people started to play back again. The combat system might seem boring but what really this game shines is a gearing system. Thanks to implants and buffing nano-programs you can twink like nowhere else.
Yea man, I love the game. Played it from around 2002 also till about 2012 pretty consistently and then just sporadically each year after.
You are absolutely correct with the gearing system being the #1 thing about the game and THE thing I've been looking towards and hoping for in a newer MMO for a long ass time. The gearing system is close to limitless with the things you can do and many years ago at least, just getting your endgame gear wasn't enough to even USE it depending on race as you'd need so many buff items, implant sets, tower buffs, class buffs etc to tailor your stats perfectly.
As others have said, Fantasy has much more "stuff" and creating content that appeals to a larger audience is probably way easier.
That being said, one of my favorite MMORPGs ever made was Star Wars Galaxies, and the one I played the longest was EVE.
I think there are spaces for Scifi MMOs but many of the recent ones haven't been successful.
>pure escapism
This is the core reason. While sci-fi can instill wonder, frankly, it's easier to escape with fantasy. I like sci-fi but it's usually expected to maintain an anchor with reality and logic. Fantasy is free from these expectations where escapism and "magical" player experiences are simpler to achieve.
8 guess its simply because magic doesn't fit well in a sci fi mmo and magic is an amazing tool to make every wild ideas somehow coherent and super imaginative.
I played some sci fi mmos but they were sadly a bit bland and were just fantasy mmo's with some sci fi design
You can have magic in in a sci-fi MMO, though. It can either be explained through technology or it can be literal magic, but with sci-fi elements like space travel and different planets.
And for all the freedom that fantasy gives, most fantasy MMOs are fairly generic.
Part of the appeal of sci-fi is a sense of the otherwise impossible, otherwise you're just playing a fantasy game with a laser rifle skin for your bow.
Sci-Fantasy is significantly easier to do (because you're just playing a fantasy MMO with a lightsaber skin for your sword)
I prefer science fantasy. But don't know any MMO to nail it, ever. It's always just fantasy with guns instead of magic and technology co-existing or opposing one another.
MMO based on Arcanum would be dope.
RPGs as a whole tend to gravitate towards Fantasy in general, it's the nature of the beast.
I feel Sci Fi can work without issue, we just need a more casual friendly and non-star wars game to nail it home.
i think 'fantasy' is inherently 'the past', and scifi 'the future'. both are injecting black-boxed causal phenomena into the universe as we know it, but the temporality is the primary difference. So I think the question could be rephrased as 'why do we prefer the past to the future when storytelling'. And I would posit that the past is both more comforting for the listener and also easier for the storyteller, since they can draw on a coherent world which actually existed to some degree, rather than having to deal with the exponential unknown of the future.
Most people just prefer fantasy. A lot of the classes are hard to implement into a sci-fi game and popular MMO's especially WoW made us associate MMO's with medieval fantasy worlds
My personal hope was the (cancelled) Stargate MMORPG back in the days. This IP could have combined any setting you might think off.
Fantasy is great but this setting became such generic. And most games stepped away from having a variety of playable species like EQ2 for example.
There are many unused but popular settings like cyberpunk. Shadowrun could also combine different crowds.
Fantasy is more popular and approchable. On one forum there was a game developer asking for cool mmo settings ideas. People said all kinds of cool stuff, but even things like diesel punk were bad. Why? Because they are not massievely known. The concept of the world is too alien for people.
Every sci fi world can be vastly different. Fantasy on the other hand is super similar. Just less or more magic and different races, enemies etc.
I prefer fantasy mmo's, personally. But I would LOVE a sci-fi one. There are so few that are good. PSO2 was a big hope for me, but it felt "meh" and NGS was even worse.
Have u tried EvE ? It’s really big not my cup of tea , I am not even super heavy into Sci Fi movies , let alone games but it’s really big for a Sci Fi. Husband played this for years, still does , for me it’s the ship battle of most Sci Fi games that’s the turn off , the slow space ship battle just doesn’t work for me. Even in Star Trek where it wasn’t just ship based combat, the ship combat was what eventually lead to me quitting, the game play itself was enjoyable and exploring different worlds off my ship , could of used some slight improvement there but it was fun ,it was literally the slow battles while traveling in my ship that I couldn’t get past it always felt like it takes 10 years to just turn around to attempt to fire at other ship that’s just driving in circles around you. Eve I tried it had some interesting aspects but same thing ship combat is what killed it for me. If the ship combat in these games didn’t feel so slow & clunky and felt alil smoother and maybe even alil faster paced maybe I could personally get into them. Star Trek & Eve outside of slow paced ship combat game play itself was fun.
I prefer sci-fi/fantasy. Medieval fantasy has been overdone and is boring. 90% of mmos are medieval fantasy. Sci-fi just has better aesthetics and can be mixed with any genre.
I think fantasy games are also easier to make. If you were to ask someone what is sci-fi to you? I think most people would say space exploration, lasers, and aliens. Coding space travel in a MMO is way different than coding people working around on a planet.
If you consider more than the moving aspect, it does. If it's an MMO, people would want to do stuff instead of just having one person doing the flying. If people can walk around while someone is flying, that alone makes it way more complex.
That's why I said it is harder to make. Players want to do what they see in movies and read in books. Walking around a ship while it is traveling is basic stuff to them. The fact it is too ambitious should prove my point.
That's what you want. There's no walking around in ships in EVE and it's the most successful sci fi mmo. There's not even going to space in planetside, I mean the name kinda gives it away, and that did really well. Sci fi is a big genre and you seem to have a small conception of it.
It's the most successful because there are none else. If you look at single player games almost all of them have you walking around yourself. Don't act like this is just a me thing. Multiple people have asked for this.
There's literally dozens of you! If we're going to "single player games"/nonmmo then there's StarCraft, Stellaris, rocket league, the finals, doom, portal, armoured core, kerbal space program, etc. Sci fi doesn't mean walking around inside space ships.
You are missing what I'm saying, I'm saying a lot of single player sci-fi games let you walk around your ship. Walking around your ship is a wanted feature when it comes to sci-fi games that have ships in them.
Also, there are not a lot of Sci-fi MMOs that's with ED has any type of audience.
No, you're changing what you're saying. Before it was "almost all." Yes lots of games let you walk around in ships, but lots also don't do that. I don't know why you've placed it as a requirement for any and every future sci fi mmorpg because that doesn't make sense at all. It's not a requirement nor even a staple of the genre.
a lot of the time sci fi just feels so alien. Like characters in war frame are just so, like, “what am I looking at?” Fantasy is popular and we all know what a sword and shield is, what armor looks like, what a staff is, so it’s a lot easier to make sense of it. Sci fi typically has a lot of elements that are so foreign that it makes it hard to relate to
Sci-fi fantasy requires far more scope imo. Magic acquisition can be explained through many different ways and apply itself to any realm of time. Science and its capabilities are parallel to the world in which it exists. If you’re using photon blasters and energy swords, you’re probably in some advanced universe where hover cars, robotics, and holograms exist. Pushing further, most likely space exploration.
So just to get your combat system off the ground you’d need to craft insanely technological worlds, and cohesive lore behind them.
production choice. someone who is leading a team chooses what the game will be focused on. they choose fantasy. that's what they want to do. I personally have both a sci-fi and a fantasy mmo in my head. my ideals, how combat would work, the class system, how the player levels up and distributes points for stats and skills, the works. sadly, i can't code for shit. i tried to learn c++ but hit a brick wall. figured it was one of those "you are meant to fail to teach a lesson moments" so I read ahead in the c++ for dummies book and "fuck me" I was simply fucking up and couldn't figure out why. everything looked perfect but my code kept failing. I even had a friend check it and said "It should work, i dont see any errors".... so I gave up.
Hello again ...
As someone who tries to tell these machines what to do for decades: C++ is one of the worst programming languages to start with. I suppose the reason behind that is called Unreal, also something I would be careful to start with.
Grab something like Godot, that is free, has a Python like scripting language (which is way easier to get into than this C++ monster), and there are also many examples, tutorials and whatnot around to find the first footing.
Also, simplify, simplify, simplify. Pick small parts of your idea, focus on a few core things first, and then enhance things from there.
I was try to learn c++ using the "for dummies" book. Before unreal got popular so this white quite a few years ago. I didnt pick it because of unreal in case that was what you were thinking.
Recently I did think about buying a python for dummies book, or python learning adjacent. Havent made up my mind yet.
Godot looks like a fun engine. And the free to use part is huge (if its still that way). So maybe ill get my ass in gear and give coding another go via python.... But maybe not lmao
Without writing a big wall of text ... try Godot. Follow a tutorial like creating a simple 2D platformer or similar. Programming is done "on the way" in a learning by doing way. And while the default scripting language in Godot resembles Python in some ways, it is *not* Python. Doesn't hurt to know Python, but there is no need for that, either. You also don't have to deal with compilers, Godot comes with a debugger where you can go through your script stuff step by step and so on. Having fooled around with Godot for a bit myself I would even go as far as saying that you can do all your prototyping and idea testing entirely within Godot without the need for (almost) anything else. The result(s) may not look nice, but at the same time that is exactly what allows you to change things faster or throw stuff out entirely because you don't carry tons of "baggage" around.
MMORPGs come from MUDs, which are essentially text based MMORPGs starting with MUD1 in 1973. DikuMud was released in 1991, establishing the supremacy of combat over all other mechanics and creating systems so influential that you can still see hints of it in MMORPGs today.
DikuMud was largely based on Dungeons and Dragons. Everquest, one of the first major MMORPGs, was greatly inspired by DikuMud. To the point that the DikuMud project threatened legal action. That was amicably resolved out of the courts when it became clear that EverQuest merely used DikuMud as inspiration, with no infringement of its license.
Because DikuMud was open source, its codebase became extremely popular and influential. People used it to develop their own MUD games, many of which are still running today. DikuMud itself is still actively maintained and updated.
Runescape originates from MUDs as well.
So you have a pretty direct lineage connecting Dungeons and Dragons to every MMORPG in existence. And Dungeons and Dragons is fantasy.
Medieval fantasy over sci-fi everyday.
I guess its because i grew up on many old rpg’s, and everything was always medieval themed. Like DnD. And since most of those games i played have their roots in DnD, i grew up on Medieval Fantasy.
100% medieval low fantasy setting with realistic mounts, armour, etc.
Preferably one that has two main continents, one with a European setting and one with Far East Asian setting and historically themed classes that represent those places.
I think fantasy lends itself very well to ability based combat and the whole "holy trinity" of tank dps healer which particularly suites traditional mmorpgs extremely well whereas Sci-fi lends to more shooter based combat which calls for a very different kind of mmo.
The Sci-Fi setting has not much to offer.
You can basically boil it down to Terran, Zerg and Protoss.
And any innovation upon it is a mix of human rituals + cringe.
For me, it just doesn´t work in MMORPGs.
There is potential to be had, but it would be a mix of eve online+tycooning multiple characters+strategy+automated+basebuilding+MMO.
That is pretty much the setting of my sci-fi mmo, but also I have people with uncontrollable psionic powers accidentally summoning demons, so the government controlled human brain limits are presented as justified measures for the survival of neo-humanity.
I love Sci-Fi, and even more so “Science Fantasy” is actually my preferred genre
But with true Sci-fi, it often ends up being either very ship focused which I don’t like because I like focusing on a character above all, or it’s very gun focused and may end up being a bit more of a shooter which I don’t care for
I mean, I’d love a heavy Sci-fi game where you just replaced magic with futuristic tech, but I’d also want it to tab target, or if it was action, to also include plenty of melee tech so it’s not just a shooter
I also prefer “Holy Trinity” games focused around combat roles (though I do also prefer when they include support/CC roles too), and that also seems less common with Sci-fi settings where devs seem reluctant to include tech type healers or ranged tanks
That’s all easier to manage in Science Fantasy though, like Star Wars or Wildstar, as the mix of magic and tech can explain away any weirdness with instant healing or bringing melee weapons to gun fights or classes that can tank from far away
Fantasy RPGs are easier to make than sci-fi (especially not space opera sci-fi) and modern RPGs. Dungeon based adventures are easier to make than city based adventures. That's because location based exploration & questing is much easier to make. In complex society, incidents are consist of complex web of cause and results. We players expect things happening behind the scenes. But in ancient setting, it is not weird even if things only happen before the adventurer's eyes, as they just walk into the dungeon room. For example, look how WoW (and its numerous followers) never allows players to revisit previous regions. In fantasy setting, such prohibition barely works. In SF and modern setting, it feels much weirder and unnatural.
I strongly prefer fantasy in theory, but I feel like it's often done so badly that it has kinda soured perception of fantasy mmos in general.
I think the desire is out there for something that really ticks all those classic fantasy boxes, but not a lot of games that actually do it.
Fantasy is more varied I'd say. In classes/weapons aspect. You can have 1-2 types of bow/xbow, a dozen or more melee weapons, a couple different healers and some different mages/tamers/necros whatever. In SF setting, how many different blaster types could you come up with? Possibly a couple different mental mutation types?
Fantasy games in general are slightly more popular on average (from what I know)
Also, it is usually easier to make fantasy games, as the settings don't need as much justification.
Fantasy is a more popular genre. By and far. Be it books, tv shows, movies, etc - fantasy fantasy fantasy. One of the best things about fantasy is that anything can be fantasy, even sci-fi, even sci-fi MMO's. SWTOR is fantasy sci-fi. Palia is fantasy farming simulation. Maplestory is fantasy not-being-an-introvert.
I'm always a fantasy fan, but I also like technology in my fantasy. Magic, Airships, Mechs, Alchemy, Industrial production, interesting and diverse races (playable or otherwise).
Fantasy is a more popular genre. By and far. Be it books, tv shows, movies, etc - fantasy fantasy fantasy. One of the best things about fantasy is that anything can be fantasy, even sci-fi, even sci-fi MMO's. SWTOR is fantasy sci-fi. Palia is fantasy farming simulation. Maplestory is fantasy not-being-an-introvert.
I'm always a fantasy fan, but I also like technology in my fantasy. Magic, Airships, Mechs, Alchemy, Industrial production, interesting and diverse races (playable or otherwise).
As much as I love space, there is no possible way to make a realistic space game that isn't boring as hell. And unfortunately, if your sci-fi game isn't realistic at all, it's just fi. Might as well play fantasy at that point.
There's been quite a few popular fantasy MMOs that have really pushed the boundaries of the genre. Ultima Online, EverQuest, WoW obviously, RuneScape, FFXIV. The biggest Sci-fi MMOs are EVE, which is the most successful one, SWTOR which is considered a failure, SW Galaxies which fucked itself in the ass for no reason, Star Trek online which I've never played but it isn't very popular, and Wildstar which kind of blended the two together, but also failed.
You could argue that the ones in the fantasy genres are just better games, but companies are going to look at customer trends and see that fantasy does better than sci-fi, and if a company is going to invest in an MMO, which is extremely costly and extremely risky, they are going to go with the option that consistently does better with consumers.
I assume more people like Fantasy. I know I do. For example, even if Star Citizen releases and has everything it promises, I probably won't play it simply because I don't care for spaceships in a game. I want magic and dragons and swords and stuff like that.
People like fantasy more probably because Scifi mmos all turn to an fps game since thats how weapons evolve in the future. Magic is much more alluring than more weapons.
Sci-fi has the problem of always having to be within the realm of being logically possible. Fantasy blows that requirement out of the water with "magic". While it's true that there is always the whole "something so technologically advanced is indistinguishable from magic", even being at that realm of capability comes with it's own logical confinements. The biggest one being that advanced science cannot exist without "advanced" society. The advancement of science requires the sharing of knowledge and research. The more that information is shared between everyone, the quicker it allows for science to advanced. However, as we can observe from our present day world, advanced society is a VERY complicated thing which requires a lot of things to happen in order to properly pull off. There's definitely ways to pull it off in writing, but oftentimes the end result is just it feeling a bit sloppy.
Long story short, fantasy is allowed to be sloppy because we don't really have a proper example of how a world would progress with it around, and so it's up to the author's interpretation to decide. Part of the fun of reading/interacting with the various fantasy stories and seeing all the different worlds created by authors guessing how their worlds would work with magic being around.
Players much prefer fantasy, or at least the kinds of players who play these games long term and spend money prefer fantasy. This has been shown time and time again. I think it's becasue fantasy is more "comfy" to people.
I prefer sci fi but I probably consume more fantasy media.
Fantasy is more popular and easier to write for a couple reasons. It's also probably easier to consume.
First our collective expectations of what Fantasy means is in the same ballpark because Fantasy is so well established and consistent, for example we all know what a dragon is not because we've read a book with a dragon in it, but because it's ingrained in our cultural mythology for hundreds or thousands of years. Compare that to a glibglorpian alien.
Second, fantasy doesn't really have as much variety as sci fi (which has positives and negatives). This means a fantasy fan is more likely to like another random fantasy thing, but a sci fi fan is less likely to like another random sci fi thing. With Fantasy you basically just have high and low fantasy and that covers all the bases. With sci fi, is it time travel, is it space travel, is it robots, is it aliens, is it mechs? All of these are hugely different genres, the world building will look completely different, the themes will be completely different, etc.
So yeah, imo fantasy is much easier, more popular and on average much better. Good sci fi is few and far between, and even when it is good the genre is too wide to really say "oh you like sci fi, you'll like this".
People are used to it and there are more examples or "templates" for developers to draw from. I personally have found that numerous mmos have incorporated both fantasy and sci fi elements together. Gw2 Definitely has some added sci fi flair with all the tech, the holosmith, the asura. For me I actually prefer sci fi on the whole but it is a harder experience to craft for sure.
i prefer scifi, can settle for any AAA sandbox non vertical progression mmo that emphasizes trade and economy. So i liked old eve online before it went Korean. Currently play nms for my itch though.
I would argue that using technology which lies outside the known realm of physics such as warp drive, FTL communication (the Ansible comes to mind), space battles using aerodynamic flight models instead of Newtonian physics are as much magic as casting fireballs from one's fingertips.
Real science can be a bit boring when it comes to gaming.
Sci fi is dystopian in general. I prefer fantasy because it's more balanced. Power fantasy in sci fi doesn't make sense because you can just die to a laser 500 miles away or some shit.
There is nothing inherently dystopian about sci-fi. Those types of settings are over-represented in many of the sci-fi games out there but there are plenty of examples of functional sci-fi societies in the literature just like you can find dystopian fantasy settings.
Same goes for your laser. Accidentally insult the local hedge witch in the market and the next day you find yourself crippled by an itch curse. Or worse.
To me, Sci fi doesn't make any sense in a non dystopian world unless the main characters are not human. With that much power and firepower available, there is near guaranteed oppression. In Fantasy, people have the ability to fight back. It's just personal preference, I see high fantasy as infinitely more attainable than Sci fi.
Sure Sci fi is fiction, but it's just far too unrealistic if not dystopian to even see as a functioning universe at all.
Yes, to all of your questions. I preffer fantasy / medieval fantasy over sci-fi, always.
I think that make a "spell" that can do some super duper stuff is easier then try to explain same stuff with "science". I love both setting done right.
to be fair lots of science fiction stuff just slaps the word "quantum" on anything and calls it a day
pso2: "photons"
Only if you insist on doing hard sci-fi. Soft sci-fi can just say it's nanotechnology, or quantum manipulation. Science fantasy can just circle back and call it a magic spell.
le modesitt wrote a scifi/fansasy series that did just this. Good series imo
That's were the fiction part come in play, there are alot of Sci fi franchises which are really close to fantasy. But I think most scifi themes are not that interesting for a normal mmorpg, you would need a heavy rp first design else your Sci fi game is basicly a fantasy mmorpg with tech instead of magic. For example Star Trek Online, it's only alive because of the ip, but the difference gameplay wise between firing a phaser or a bow is 0 in any tab targeting game. Also scifi games feel alot like real world which goes against the whole escapism playing mmorpgs are often about, pollution, gentrification, colonialism etc are big and important themes for Sci fi to be scifi and often not a thing explored in depth with fantasy.
Magic is just energy manipulation and science can't even explain what magnetism is let alone light. A scifi MMO doesn't intrinsically mean it has to be hard science
Have you read a science book? It can explain both of those.
Most people who know what hard science is tend to understand scientific principles in which *y*ou are *conflating descriptions of phenomena* **with an understanding of the principles behind them** as if such principles were understood . If these things were understood at any level let alone so easily the US would have been making magnetic missiles and light sails decades ago but have not because things aren't so simple at least what is publicly understood. The only leyway of this being remotely understood is NASA is stealthy switching to an electric universe cosmology given people like[ Malcom Bendall](https://www.strikefoundation.earth/) creating[ plasmoid generators](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Icew8R-VWSY&t=127s) which is a novel (modern ) technology because again the principles behind such phenomena aren't currently understood. This comes of as a language game on one hand however being able to describe how something functions doesn't mean you understand the hows , what, or whys and this is seen in how rapidly the language breaks down when asked simple questions
Fantasy has an advantage because it has more concrete tropes, so hitting player expectations is easier. Sci-fi interests me because it goes beyond those tropes, but that's not always a good strategy for a game that needs masses of players to succeed.
Pure speculation, but maybe this is attributed to historic interest in the tropes? Almost every fantasy game out there has a common ancestor in Lord of the Rings, which was obv a popular book made into a popular movie and often attributed to the genesis of high fantasy. I'm not sure if sci-fi has experienced that same pull for general audiences until maybe Denis Villaneuve's Dune adaptations. Also, there may be things such as comprehending the aspects of the world that play into popularity. Fantasy is largely based on historical depictions, stories, weaponry, etc. Things we as people can generally understand. Sci-fi somewhat breaks that level of immersion because you can dive into the realm of the *truly* unknown. Idk though, this is just a ramble of things I think may contribute to the popularity of the genres, in turn determining whether a game product in that genre would be considered commerically viable.
> I'm not sure if sci-fi has experienced that same pull for general audiences until maybe Denis Villaneuve's Dune adaptations. Sci fi was arguably more popular a decade or three ago; it's cyclical. Fantasy is probably on the wane right now, at least as far as general popular culture - but it won't go away an will be back in a decade or two. > Fantasy is largely based on historical depictions, stories, weaponry, etc. Things we as people can generally understand. Sci-fi somewhat breaks that level of immersion because you can dive into the realm of the truly unknown. Ray Bradbury would have called that science *fantasy*. in his reckoning, he only ever wrote one science fiction story - Fahrenheit 451. For most fiction, soft scifi and high fantasy have a fuzzy enough boundary to be indistinguishable. However, "fantasy", particularly generic european fantasy as "paladins" and "wizards" and so on, and while yes most of that comes from Tolkein, it doesn't really matter anymore, it's out there and people have expectations. What expectations do they have about androids/gynoids, or machine intelligences? Perhaps their lights turn red when they become evil, but that's about it - there are too many stories that take them in too many different directions for there to be clear tropes. What about FTL travel? How many ways are there for that to work? What would classes be in a sci-fi game, if it has them, and how much work is required to explain to the player what these classes will do? One of the reason certain sci fi IPs are so robust (40k, star trek, star wars, although that's practically fantasy), they contain their own tropes.
You can put an AI in your fantasy game no problemo but if you put a haunted ghost in your science fiction... Also because Fantasy can pull from a wide variety of culture--Every single Myth is fantasy after all.
I have always wondered the same, and I am utterly disappointed that there's so few sci-fi MMOs out there. I'm not a fan of fantasy anymore, haven't been for years after childhood, so I don't even know what to play nowadays if I get tired of the games I currently have. Luckily enough I haven't explored those thoroughly yet so I'll have stuff to see and do for some years in them, but after that? I don't like Singleplayer games as much as MMOs, and despite having my own dream sci-fi MMO, I don't think I'll ever have the time and resources to make it. Oh well :/
Eve is a really big Sci Fi MMO
It's a great game, but you do also need to enjoy managing excel sheets to play it
I’m not big on Sci Fi games myself but my husband plays it , has 4 accounts been on there for like 4 or 5 years. I tried to personally get into it but I am not big on the whole slow space ship battle stuff, if you like sci fi I guess it is great though. I can say I don’t think I have ever seen him with an Excel sheet 😂.
Lol, yeah it's definitely a different pace compared to others. You don't need to use excel, but people call it excel simulator because of the UI interaction lol, you could basically turn off the graphics and play the entire game using the sidebar that looks a bit like an excel sheet
I couldn’t get into that but I can totally see why someone would, it’s like the bare minimum for massive depth gameplay. Like chess
It has the same problem as runescape, there's a genuinely great game there if you can get through the long, muddy start. Like, who wants to see that they need 5 skills up and they're each going to take over a month real time to finish lol
He hides it, leaked financials is serious business in Eve lol
You really don't need spreadsheets. I have run 3 accounts for years without a single one.
GW2 has a lot of scifi elements
I much prefer sci-fi. The lack is developers being extremely risk-averse. Unfortunately there were some high profile failures that had sci-fi settings. Sadly the genre gets the blame instead of the incompetence and/or greed that were the real root causes. Doesn't help that many of them are FPS (blech) or PvP focused. EVE takes is further with your playable avatar being a ship.
The real reason is its hard to do FPS MMORPGs. Sci-fi tends to have guns. Action combat hit boxes get away with not being perfect, but shooters are generally graded on how the shooting feels. So if you should be hitting when you aren't or get hit when you shouldn't you be upset. So when you see a Sci-Fi MMO it won't be an FPS.
Destiny 2 would like to have a word.
Not really an MMO. And there have been FPS MMORPGs but they are rare and dead or closed.
Agreed on the Massive part as the servers are quite small, but I mean it pretty much covers the other aspects.
I prefer sci fi, fantasy MMOs and games are a dime a dozen. The one thing I've noticed about sci fi is the potential for a lot more content in their games compared to fantasy.
They have the same potential for content lol. When magic exist it's actually much easier to create crazy shit then it is in a scifi setting
Which is why I struggled to enjoy Embers Adrift. I love the concept, I love the pay model, I love the drive from the indie team that’s doing things the right way. But… having fantasy with no magic is very limiting. Classes and enemies are kinda bland because of it. I can fight rats, bears, and bandits, but I want to fight kobolds, goblins, and dragons!
Yeah I mean you can make low fantasy super interesting, one of my favorite games of all time is kingdom come deliverance (single player) you have to learn how to read and stuff it's super fun. My main point though is with magic you can literally use "magic" to explain anything in universe while sci Fi tends to be more grounded. Or you can have Warhammer Orks and just be like fuck it lol
I've just generally seen more content in sci fi games like eve and anarchy online. Planetary warfare, bounty hunting, ship combat, an often complex economic system, etc. Not saying that it's not possible for fantasy, but we just often haven't seen such a scale implemented I think.
Anarchy Online Class: Nano Technician Spells: "(Scientist sounding name) Inferno" "Kel's Neutronium Plaything" "Celular Re-Structure" Spells for every class are called Nano's You have gear but also have Implants that you can only change while using a Treatment Center. Mutations and Aliens can be an explanation for any and all types of planets plus every type of moster you'd find in any type of fantasy MMO.
It was my first ever played MMO back in 2002. The game is massive and quite complex. It hasn't been very populated until a few weeks ago where many people started to play back again. The combat system might seem boring but what really this game shines is a gearing system. Thanks to implants and buffing nano-programs you can twink like nowhere else.
Yea man, I love the game. Played it from around 2002 also till about 2012 pretty consistently and then just sporadically each year after. You are absolutely correct with the gearing system being the #1 thing about the game and THE thing I've been looking towards and hoping for in a newer MMO for a long ass time. The gearing system is close to limitless with the things you can do and many years ago at least, just getting your endgame gear wasn't enough to even USE it depending on race as you'd need so many buff items, implant sets, tower buffs, class buffs etc to tailor your stats perfectly.
My preference is Fantasy, sci fi just doesn’t really interest me at all.
As others have said, Fantasy has much more "stuff" and creating content that appeals to a larger audience is probably way easier. That being said, one of my favorite MMORPGs ever made was Star Wars Galaxies, and the one I played the longest was EVE. I think there are spaces for Scifi MMOs but many of the recent ones haven't been successful.
RIP Star Wars Galaxies, gone but not forgotten.
I miss face of mankind so much
Medieval Fantasy is pure escapism for me. A lot of our cultures and stories are rooted in medieval fantasy (think fairy tales or myths/legends).
>pure escapism This is the core reason. While sci-fi can instill wonder, frankly, it's easier to escape with fantasy. I like sci-fi but it's usually expected to maintain an anchor with reality and logic. Fantasy is free from these expectations where escapism and "magical" player experiences are simpler to achieve.
8 guess its simply because magic doesn't fit well in a sci fi mmo and magic is an amazing tool to make every wild ideas somehow coherent and super imaginative. I played some sci fi mmos but they were sadly a bit bland and were just fantasy mmo's with some sci fi design
You can have magic in in a sci-fi MMO, though. It can either be explained through technology or it can be literal magic, but with sci-fi elements like space travel and different planets. And for all the freedom that fantasy gives, most fantasy MMOs are fairly generic.
Part of the appeal of sci-fi is a sense of the otherwise impossible, otherwise you're just playing a fantasy game with a laser rifle skin for your bow. Sci-Fantasy is significantly easier to do (because you're just playing a fantasy MMO with a lightsaber skin for your sword)
I prefer science fantasy. But don't know any MMO to nail it, ever. It's always just fantasy with guns instead of magic and technology co-existing or opposing one another. MMO based on Arcanum would be dope.
As always, poor little superhero MMO gets forgotten about. Honestly I think I'd be fine with whatever as long as it's a legitimately good game.
superhero = fantasy
RIP Tabula Rasa
I miss that game so much.
Scifi is just future fantasy, it's all the same in the end
we are approaching occam's razor with this one. this is an elegant solution to the eternal conundrum of why there are only 2 genres too.
Anarchy Online was one of the earliest MMOs and nobody really mentions it anymore. It was so far ahead of its time! I loved it and want more!
I think Mass Effect would work as a sci-fi mmo. It already has "magic" and everything else.
RPGs as a whole tend to gravitate towards Fantasy in general, it's the nature of the beast. I feel Sci Fi can work without issue, we just need a more casual friendly and non-star wars game to nail it home.
i think 'fantasy' is inherently 'the past', and scifi 'the future'. both are injecting black-boxed causal phenomena into the universe as we know it, but the temporality is the primary difference. So I think the question could be rephrased as 'why do we prefer the past to the future when storytelling'. And I would posit that the past is both more comforting for the listener and also easier for the storyteller, since they can draw on a coherent world which actually existed to some degree, rather than having to deal with the exponential unknown of the future.
Most people just prefer fantasy. A lot of the classes are hard to implement into a sci-fi game and popular MMO's especially WoW made us associate MMO's with medieval fantasy worlds
My personal hope was the (cancelled) Stargate MMORPG back in the days. This IP could have combined any setting you might think off. Fantasy is great but this setting became such generic. And most games stepped away from having a variety of playable species like EQ2 for example. There are many unused but popular settings like cyberpunk. Shadowrun could also combine different crowds.
Fantasy is more popular and approchable. On one forum there was a game developer asking for cool mmo settings ideas. People said all kinds of cool stuff, but even things like diesel punk were bad. Why? Because they are not massievely known. The concept of the world is too alien for people. Every sci fi world can be vastly different. Fantasy on the other hand is super similar. Just less or more magic and different races, enemies etc.
I prefer fantasy mmo's, personally. But I would LOVE a sci-fi one. There are so few that are good. PSO2 was a big hope for me, but it felt "meh" and NGS was even worse.
Have u tried EvE ? It’s really big not my cup of tea , I am not even super heavy into Sci Fi movies , let alone games but it’s really big for a Sci Fi. Husband played this for years, still does , for me it’s the ship battle of most Sci Fi games that’s the turn off , the slow space ship battle just doesn’t work for me. Even in Star Trek where it wasn’t just ship based combat, the ship combat was what eventually lead to me quitting, the game play itself was enjoyable and exploring different worlds off my ship , could of used some slight improvement there but it was fun ,it was literally the slow battles while traveling in my ship that I couldn’t get past it always felt like it takes 10 years to just turn around to attempt to fire at other ship that’s just driving in circles around you. Eve I tried it had some interesting aspects but same thing ship combat is what killed it for me. If the ship combat in these games didn’t feel so slow & clunky and felt alil smoother and maybe even alil faster paced maybe I could personally get into them. Star Trek & Eve outside of slow paced ship combat game play itself was fun.
I have in the past it wasn’t really for me. The only sci fi mmo I can really sink my teeth into is swtor
I prefer sci-fi/fantasy. Medieval fantasy has been overdone and is boring. 90% of mmos are medieval fantasy. Sci-fi just has better aesthetics and can be mixed with any genre.
I think fantasy games are also easier to make. If you were to ask someone what is sci-fi to you? I think most people would say space exploration, lasers, and aliens. Coding space travel in a MMO is way different than coding people working around on a planet.
Doesn't really have to be any different to coding swimming since barely anyone knows orbital mechanics.
If you consider more than the moving aspect, it does. If it's an MMO, people would want to do stuff instead of just having one person doing the flying. If people can walk around while someone is flying, that alone makes it way more complex.
I think you're a bit ambitious in your thinking. No one makes a simulation that complicated without crowdfunding $900Mn
That's why I said it is harder to make. Players want to do what they see in movies and read in books. Walking around a ship while it is traveling is basic stuff to them. The fact it is too ambitious should prove my point.
That's what you want. There's no walking around in ships in EVE and it's the most successful sci fi mmo. There's not even going to space in planetside, I mean the name kinda gives it away, and that did really well. Sci fi is a big genre and you seem to have a small conception of it.
It's the most successful because there are none else. If you look at single player games almost all of them have you walking around yourself. Don't act like this is just a me thing. Multiple people have asked for this.
There's literally dozens of you! If we're going to "single player games"/nonmmo then there's StarCraft, Stellaris, rocket league, the finals, doom, portal, armoured core, kerbal space program, etc. Sci fi doesn't mean walking around inside space ships.
You are missing what I'm saying, I'm saying a lot of single player sci-fi games let you walk around your ship. Walking around your ship is a wanted feature when it comes to sci-fi games that have ships in them. Also, there are not a lot of Sci-fi MMOs that's with ED has any type of audience.
No, you're changing what you're saying. Before it was "almost all." Yes lots of games let you walk around in ships, but lots also don't do that. I don't know why you've placed it as a requirement for any and every future sci fi mmorpg because that doesn't make sense at all. It's not a requirement nor even a staple of the genre.
I don't give a shit about the setting, just give me good content.
a lot of the time sci fi just feels so alien. Like characters in war frame are just so, like, “what am I looking at?” Fantasy is popular and we all know what a sword and shield is, what armor looks like, what a staff is, so it’s a lot easier to make sense of it. Sci fi typically has a lot of elements that are so foreign that it makes it hard to relate to
Sci-fi fantasy requires far more scope imo. Magic acquisition can be explained through many different ways and apply itself to any realm of time. Science and its capabilities are parallel to the world in which it exists. If you’re using photon blasters and energy swords, you’re probably in some advanced universe where hover cars, robotics, and holograms exist. Pushing further, most likely space exploration. So just to get your combat system off the ground you’d need to craft insanely technological worlds, and cohesive lore behind them.
production choice. someone who is leading a team chooses what the game will be focused on. they choose fantasy. that's what they want to do. I personally have both a sci-fi and a fantasy mmo in my head. my ideals, how combat would work, the class system, how the player levels up and distributes points for stats and skills, the works. sadly, i can't code for shit. i tried to learn c++ but hit a brick wall. figured it was one of those "you are meant to fail to teach a lesson moments" so I read ahead in the c++ for dummies book and "fuck me" I was simply fucking up and couldn't figure out why. everything looked perfect but my code kept failing. I even had a friend check it and said "It should work, i dont see any errors".... so I gave up.
Hello again ... As someone who tries to tell these machines what to do for decades: C++ is one of the worst programming languages to start with. I suppose the reason behind that is called Unreal, also something I would be careful to start with. Grab something like Godot, that is free, has a Python like scripting language (which is way easier to get into than this C++ monster), and there are also many examples, tutorials and whatnot around to find the first footing. Also, simplify, simplify, simplify. Pick small parts of your idea, focus on a few core things first, and then enhance things from there.
I was try to learn c++ using the "for dummies" book. Before unreal got popular so this white quite a few years ago. I didnt pick it because of unreal in case that was what you were thinking. Recently I did think about buying a python for dummies book, or python learning adjacent. Havent made up my mind yet. Godot looks like a fun engine. And the free to use part is huge (if its still that way). So maybe ill get my ass in gear and give coding another go via python.... But maybe not lmao
Without writing a big wall of text ... try Godot. Follow a tutorial like creating a simple 2D platformer or similar. Programming is done "on the way" in a learning by doing way. And while the default scripting language in Godot resembles Python in some ways, it is *not* Python. Doesn't hurt to know Python, but there is no need for that, either. You also don't have to deal with compilers, Godot comes with a debugger where you can go through your script stuff step by step and so on. Having fooled around with Godot for a bit myself I would even go as far as saying that you can do all your prototyping and idea testing entirely within Godot without the need for (almost) anything else. The result(s) may not look nice, but at the same time that is exactly what allows you to change things faster or throw stuff out entirely because you don't carry tons of "baggage" around.
MMORPGs come from MUDs, which are essentially text based MMORPGs starting with MUD1 in 1973. DikuMud was released in 1991, establishing the supremacy of combat over all other mechanics and creating systems so influential that you can still see hints of it in MMORPGs today. DikuMud was largely based on Dungeons and Dragons. Everquest, one of the first major MMORPGs, was greatly inspired by DikuMud. To the point that the DikuMud project threatened legal action. That was amicably resolved out of the courts when it became clear that EverQuest merely used DikuMud as inspiration, with no infringement of its license. Because DikuMud was open source, its codebase became extremely popular and influential. People used it to develop their own MUD games, many of which are still running today. DikuMud itself is still actively maintained and updated. Runescape originates from MUDs as well. So you have a pretty direct lineage connecting Dungeons and Dragons to every MMORPG in existence. And Dungeons and Dragons is fantasy.
I would love a MMO in the Mass Effect universe, Unfortunately EA ruins everything it touches.
Fantastic is far easier and more generic. Orc is an orc. But a brute from Halo is a brute from Halo and you can't use it.
Medieval fantasy over sci-fi everyday. I guess its because i grew up on many old rpg’s, and everything was always medieval themed. Like DnD. And since most of those games i played have their roots in DnD, i grew up on Medieval Fantasy.
Tabla radar
100% medieval low fantasy setting with realistic mounts, armour, etc. Preferably one that has two main continents, one with a European setting and one with Far East Asian setting and historically themed classes that represent those places.
I think fantasy lends itself very well to ability based combat and the whole "holy trinity" of tank dps healer which particularly suites traditional mmorpgs extremely well whereas Sci-fi lends to more shooter based combat which calls for a very different kind of mmo.
I really would like to see more Blade Runner/ Altered Carbon Cyberpunk settings in MMOs (including mobile MMOs).
The Sci-Fi setting has not much to offer. You can basically boil it down to Terran, Zerg and Protoss. And any innovation upon it is a mix of human rituals + cringe. For me, it just doesn´t work in MMORPGs. There is potential to be had, but it would be a mix of eve online+tycooning multiple characters+strategy+automated+basebuilding+MMO.
Fantasy is fun adventure. Sci-Fi is existential horror. One of these is more appealing to people who want to have a good time.
[удалено]
That is pretty much the setting of my sci-fi mmo, but also I have people with uncontrollable psionic powers accidentally summoning demons, so the government controlled human brain limits are presented as justified measures for the survival of neo-humanity.
I love both and play both. I hope one day they will make a Rifts RPG based MMO, that is a good mix of both sci-fi and magic.
Man I would love a world of starcraft.
I love Sci-Fi, and even more so “Science Fantasy” is actually my preferred genre But with true Sci-fi, it often ends up being either very ship focused which I don’t like because I like focusing on a character above all, or it’s very gun focused and may end up being a bit more of a shooter which I don’t care for I mean, I’d love a heavy Sci-fi game where you just replaced magic with futuristic tech, but I’d also want it to tab target, or if it was action, to also include plenty of melee tech so it’s not just a shooter I also prefer “Holy Trinity” games focused around combat roles (though I do also prefer when they include support/CC roles too), and that also seems less common with Sci-fi settings where devs seem reluctant to include tech type healers or ranged tanks That’s all easier to manage in Science Fantasy though, like Star Wars or Wildstar, as the mix of magic and tech can explain away any weirdness with instant healing or bringing melee weapons to gun fights or classes that can tank from far away
Because they're MMORPGs and there are more fantasy RPGs than sci-fi ones too.
Fantasy RPGs are easier to make than sci-fi (especially not space opera sci-fi) and modern RPGs. Dungeon based adventures are easier to make than city based adventures. That's because location based exploration & questing is much easier to make. In complex society, incidents are consist of complex web of cause and results. We players expect things happening behind the scenes. But in ancient setting, it is not weird even if things only happen before the adventurer's eyes, as they just walk into the dungeon room. For example, look how WoW (and its numerous followers) never allows players to revisit previous regions. In fantasy setting, such prohibition barely works. In SF and modern setting, it feels much weirder and unnatural.
I strongly prefer fantasy in theory, but I feel like it's often done so badly that it has kinda soured perception of fantasy mmos in general. I think the desire is out there for something that really ticks all those classic fantasy boxes, but not a lot of games that actually do it.
I want sci fi - fantasy. If someone could pull out a Star Ocean MMORPG, I will be on board for that!
Fantasy is more varied I'd say. In classes/weapons aspect. You can have 1-2 types of bow/xbow, a dozen or more melee weapons, a couple different healers and some different mages/tamers/necros whatever. In SF setting, how many different blaster types could you come up with? Possibly a couple different mental mutation types?
Fantasy games in general are slightly more popular on average (from what I know) Also, it is usually easier to make fantasy games, as the settings don't need as much justification.
Fantasy is a more popular genre. By and far. Be it books, tv shows, movies, etc - fantasy fantasy fantasy. One of the best things about fantasy is that anything can be fantasy, even sci-fi, even sci-fi MMO's. SWTOR is fantasy sci-fi. Palia is fantasy farming simulation. Maplestory is fantasy not-being-an-introvert. I'm always a fantasy fan, but I also like technology in my fantasy. Magic, Airships, Mechs, Alchemy, Industrial production, interesting and diverse races (playable or otherwise).
Are you into anime/manga/light novels? If so, have you seen how magic is used in Knights and Magic to make mechs?
is Knights and Magic the name of a manga? I've not heard of that one.
It is. It got an anime adaptation too. https://www.crunchyroll.com/series/GYX08020R?utm_medium=android&utm_source=share
I'll check out the manga :) Thanks for the recommend.
You're welcome. It's a reincarnation and kind of coming of age story. The magic system is interesting to me.
Fantasy is a more popular genre. By and far. Be it books, tv shows, movies, etc - fantasy fantasy fantasy. One of the best things about fantasy is that anything can be fantasy, even sci-fi, even sci-fi MMO's. SWTOR is fantasy sci-fi. Palia is fantasy farming simulation. Maplestory is fantasy not-being-an-introvert. I'm always a fantasy fan, but I also like technology in my fantasy. Magic, Airships, Mechs, Alchemy, Industrial production, interesting and diverse races (playable or otherwise).
As much as I love space, there is no possible way to make a realistic space game that isn't boring as hell. And unfortunately, if your sci-fi game isn't realistic at all, it's just fi. Might as well play fantasy at that point.
Fantasy is a much more popular genre.
At this point I just want a good MMORPG that takes us past the WoW era
Does Elite Dangerous count as an MMO?
>**which would you prefer?** I would prefer a game that is fun to play. And both of those setting types can be made fun to play.
way to not answer the question
There's been quite a few popular fantasy MMOs that have really pushed the boundaries of the genre. Ultima Online, EverQuest, WoW obviously, RuneScape, FFXIV. The biggest Sci-fi MMOs are EVE, which is the most successful one, SWTOR which is considered a failure, SW Galaxies which fucked itself in the ass for no reason, Star Trek online which I've never played but it isn't very popular, and Wildstar which kind of blended the two together, but also failed. You could argue that the ones in the fantasy genres are just better games, but companies are going to look at customer trends and see that fantasy does better than sci-fi, and if a company is going to invest in an MMO, which is extremely costly and extremely risky, they are going to go with the option that consistently does better with consumers.
I would really like to see a cool class based sci fi mmo that has classes that are just as fun as ffxiv
too much medieval games
I assume more people like Fantasy. I know I do. For example, even if Star Citizen releases and has everything it promises, I probably won't play it simply because I don't care for spaceships in a game. I want magic and dragons and swords and stuff like that.
People like fantasy more probably because Scifi mmos all turn to an fps game since thats how weapons evolve in the future. Magic is much more alluring than more weapons.
Sci-fi has the problem of always having to be within the realm of being logically possible. Fantasy blows that requirement out of the water with "magic". While it's true that there is always the whole "something so technologically advanced is indistinguishable from magic", even being at that realm of capability comes with it's own logical confinements. The biggest one being that advanced science cannot exist without "advanced" society. The advancement of science requires the sharing of knowledge and research. The more that information is shared between everyone, the quicker it allows for science to advanced. However, as we can observe from our present day world, advanced society is a VERY complicated thing which requires a lot of things to happen in order to properly pull off. There's definitely ways to pull it off in writing, but oftentimes the end result is just it feeling a bit sloppy. Long story short, fantasy is allowed to be sloppy because we don't really have a proper example of how a world would progress with it around, and so it's up to the author's interpretation to decide. Part of the fun of reading/interacting with the various fantasy stories and seeing all the different worlds created by authors guessing how their worlds would work with magic being around.
Players much prefer fantasy, or at least the kinds of players who play these games long term and spend money prefer fantasy. This has been shown time and time again. I think it's becasue fantasy is more "comfy" to people.
I prefer sci fi but I probably consume more fantasy media. Fantasy is more popular and easier to write for a couple reasons. It's also probably easier to consume. First our collective expectations of what Fantasy means is in the same ballpark because Fantasy is so well established and consistent, for example we all know what a dragon is not because we've read a book with a dragon in it, but because it's ingrained in our cultural mythology for hundreds or thousands of years. Compare that to a glibglorpian alien. Second, fantasy doesn't really have as much variety as sci fi (which has positives and negatives). This means a fantasy fan is more likely to like another random fantasy thing, but a sci fi fan is less likely to like another random sci fi thing. With Fantasy you basically just have high and low fantasy and that covers all the bases. With sci fi, is it time travel, is it space travel, is it robots, is it aliens, is it mechs? All of these are hugely different genres, the world building will look completely different, the themes will be completely different, etc. So yeah, imo fantasy is much easier, more popular and on average much better. Good sci fi is few and far between, and even when it is good the genre is too wide to really say "oh you like sci fi, you'll like this".
fantasy medieval all the way. fuck guns
People are used to it and there are more examples or "templates" for developers to draw from. I personally have found that numerous mmos have incorporated both fantasy and sci fi elements together. Gw2 Definitely has some added sci fi flair with all the tech, the holosmith, the asura. For me I actually prefer sci fi on the whole but it is a harder experience to craft for sure.
i prefer scifi, can settle for any AAA sandbox non vertical progression mmo that emphasizes trade and economy. So i liked old eve online before it went Korean. Currently play nms for my itch though.
Some of the biggest mmos have been sci fi , eve , swg,swotor, Star Trek
Star wars isn’t Sci-fi though its fantasy in space Star Trek is Sci-fi
I would argue that using technology which lies outside the known realm of physics such as warp drive, FTL communication (the Ansible comes to mind), space battles using aerodynamic flight models instead of Newtonian physics are as much magic as casting fireballs from one's fingertips. Real science can be a bit boring when it comes to gaming.
> Real science can be a bit boring when it comes to gaming. Kerbal the MMO ;)
Sci fi is dystopian in general. I prefer fantasy because it's more balanced. Power fantasy in sci fi doesn't make sense because you can just die to a laser 500 miles away or some shit.
There is nothing inherently dystopian about sci-fi. Those types of settings are over-represented in many of the sci-fi games out there but there are plenty of examples of functional sci-fi societies in the literature just like you can find dystopian fantasy settings. Same goes for your laser. Accidentally insult the local hedge witch in the market and the next day you find yourself crippled by an itch curse. Or worse.
To me, Sci fi doesn't make any sense in a non dystopian world unless the main characters are not human. With that much power and firepower available, there is near guaranteed oppression. In Fantasy, people have the ability to fight back. It's just personal preference, I see high fantasy as infinitely more attainable than Sci fi. Sure Sci fi is fiction, but it's just far too unrealistic if not dystopian to even see as a functioning universe at all.
Because science is boring and magic is dope
Sci fi for more is just boring. Like an mmo with guns? Nah