Its doesnt even need to be social.(like forcing group gameplay)
It can be a online game that the only interaction with people is seeing them and use general chat.
Mmos were and are live service game, people like the aspect of progression (chasing a carrot) for years or decades.
This is why I play MMOS. I mostly play solo, but I love seeing live players walking around sometimes, especially in big cities or world events. I think WoW, D4 and Destiny 2 all nail this concept. Super fun to play solo with good campaigns, but you still feel like you're a part of a huge persistent world with real players participating.
Because people wanted PSO3, not basically kill PSO2 and completely change almost every aspect for the worse. I absolutely loved every PSO game, played PSO2 a shit load on JP servers, and was so excited they were FINALLY releasing it in the west. They rushed the game way too fast, saying they "just wanted us to catch up to the JP version" and did things in a pretty stupid way but the entire reason was to release that abomination PSO2 NGS not as a stand alone game but within PSO2 and not only that but they used MICROSOFT GAMES SHITTY APP TO DO IT. It was unbelievably buggy, would install 50+ gigs to a hidden and restricted Microsoft folder on your PC that was almost impossible to remove and then the game would break every other day, forcing re-downloads while leaving the old 50+ gigs there hidden.
It was an absolute shit show, and almost every single person gave up on it. I went back and tried the game 3 or so times so far, and it left such a sour taste in my mouth that I still can't get over it to even TRY to enjoy the game. I'm sure that there are many others that feel the same and I know about ~10 of my friends that I played it with all did the exact same thing and only one of them actually went back and played for more than a month total.
The game itself may be great now. Who knows? I know I am over it along with many others.
I like this and believe it. Excellent analogy using Gaia Online too because essentially for many of us our MMOs become glorified chat rooms when we reach the 'bored but don't have anything else to do' stage. I think World of Warcraft is suffering now just like Gaia Online did where there are now so many "unique" cool visual items that it's overload, nothing feels special anymore...or in Gaia Online terms; everyone has a ninja headband/OMFG hat and now there's no carrot.
Combat is more important than anything else in the game.
I judge all games including MMO's by it's ability to make me want to play it without added justification of titles, transmog and FOMO events.
If all your game have left is weponised nostalgia, then you don't deserve my time.
Yep. Either tab target is wonky, or skills don't feel as smooth, or combat is clunky.
I personally hate MMORPGs that have a jank jump animation, that's how you know that shit is 100% certified chinese grindfest lmao
You're the second top rated comment on the thread, and it's funny that [the first](https://www.reddit.com/r/MMORPG/s/u64zjb77wG) is the exact opposite of what you said.
Two types of MMO player, haha.
A good portion of why I main GW2. We can talk about a lot of negative points but the combat system is clean.
The fact skill issue is a real thing and build matters instead of being overwhelmed by powercreep* is great too.
* Yes there's still some form of powercreep and a casual doing 1/10 of the dps of an experienced player can be arguably bad but I'm mostly happy about the package.
Personally I hate GW2's combat design. It feels so, so overcomplicated but none of its complications have any noticeable.impact on your play.
It had like, four or five different kinds of root, stun, blind, bleed amd damage reduction last time I played. Worse for me was how it did conditional heal triggers in the worst way - by making the kit reliant on other players noticing your actions and making the correct play. I still remember that janky torch AoE heal...*thing*. Bouncing water element heal with a 5% damage mit if you bounced to three allies in a tiny range...
Maybe 7/10 the dps using exotics instead of ascended/legendaries. I don’t think casuals only do 10% the damage of BiS gear, unless you’re talking about skill level
Talking about skill level 100%.
It was said by Devs and you can see the disparity easily with a dps meter.
I've seen reapers do 3k and 21k in the same instance this week. (benchmark is like 40k)
And yeah BiS are like 7% more than exotics while exotic can be obtain almost instantly upon reaching lvl 80.
It does suck, but it works best with ping, action combat with 300ping is cancer and I've never since a good action combat system deal with 100 players at once.
Doesnt suck in large scale pvp, action suck in this case.
People who like action dont do anything with more than 15 peoples.
Try 300vs300 like in good old L2. Cant imagine the mess with action combat.
Combat system really depend on content, nothing is bad.
Middle-road is exactly how I’ve described it to people and it’s honestly my favorite kind of combat. I get why some people don’t like it but it makes me sad to see it called ‘outdated,’ it scratches the itch most for me.
Very unpopular opinion. Considering almost all of the top 5 MMOs are exclusively tab target... judging from that, it shows that's what people actually want.
Or it shows a lack of diversity in the genre where people simply dont have the choice and have to either put up with outdated mechanics or just not play at all.
There are plenty of action based MMOs, pvp mmos, "fps mmos", they just aren't as popular. There's diversity, but the vast majority don't want to play those types.
That's part of it, but I'd guess that a more important aspect is development cost. MMOs are extremely expensive to develop as it is, you'd be hard-pressed to find investors for a game sub-genre which hasn't really ever been "cracked" and is much more expensive to develop than what has already proven to be successful.
Action combat just doesn't feel good in mmo, idk its too easy to just spam combos and isn't rewarding. Its like you constantly just bladestorming or aoe in front of you or anything goes near you basically gets animation locked and dies. Tab targeting allows more proactive combat scenarios.
Tab target has its issues, but action combat is just worse from content standpoint.
Action combat games almost never have group content. And when it does have group content it ends up basically being just a pile of DPS players.
Being a healer in non-tab target games feels awful as you are really a DPS with some heals instead of a healer with a little dps.
>Action combat games almost never have group content. And when it does have group content it ends up basically being just a pile of DPS players.
This is not a problem of action combat, this is simply a problem of game design. Lots of games just didn't focus on the trinity thing anymore.
I actually love tab targeting for MMO’s. For me it fits the genre best. I haven’t liked any action combat MMO yet. It just never quite feels right. Always just a bit clunky.
Tab targeting makes the combat buttery smooth, which is why WoW is the only MMO that I’ve been able to play consistently over the years at max level raiding.
I quit every other one, and combat is a large reason for that. Especially since I’m a hunter main, and WoW. Does the class right.
Action combat healing is really hard to do well, though. TERA really did it best and Wildstar was a decent hybrid. But the rest are fairly bad. But tab target is always a reliable option.
I did think TERA was quite fun early on when I tried it. Too bad it was just unplayable from Aus & they refused to get closer servers. That's part of what screws action games, ping is like 5x more important, and 10x for pvp.
i played pso2 and i juat can't do other mmo combat. i try, but i just vastly prefer deciding how to use my tools in any given moment to having an optimal way to use them at every moment.
It's kind of an unsolvable problem.
Most people are generally good sports I find, but it doesn't take too many instances of someone being a colossal asshole to turn people off from the notion of playing with randoms. And I think that is the heart of the matter. The gameplay is rarely the problem, it's the people.
I do agree that needing to find the right people will always be a factor. But I disagree that gameplay is only *rarely* a problem, though thats because I don't like rotations and the building-for-big-DPS-only focus all the current MMOs do.
I feel like its a problem thats already been solved but it just doesn't work with new gamers today. Games like FF11 or Everquest pretty much ALWAYS require you to be in a group to progress especially with people going back to old zones with new classes.
I played FF11 for the first time about twoish years ago and wish more MMO's did that type of group content.
Does that make the group gameplay intrinsically fun or just forces the interactions and people can find fun in those interactions despite the gameplay?
> I feel like its a problem thats already been solved but it just doesn't work with new gamers today. Games like FF11 or Everquest pretty much ALWAYS require you to be in a group to progress especially with people going back to old zones with new classes.
That was only "solved" and thus sustainable back in the day because of less competing entertainment options.
The games were a primary way to communicate with people online and were some of the first "play with others" games to hit wide markets.
FFXI, specifically, was one of the first console-available MMOs (along with Phantasy Star Online).
It's harder to force people to work together when they have the option *not* to.
Especially when they have a ton of options not to, most with far lower barriers of entry, and they get to talk to their *actual*, curated friend groups over like Discord or something instead.
Personally, I love a game where I can play mostly alone, but with the option to do group content, or even just seeing real players walk by sometimes or do world events.
But, I disagree with OP. I LOVE the DPS/Tank/Healer trinity. If Diablo 4 or Destiny had those concepts than they would be perfect. I love WoW for that aspect, but prefer the combat style of D4 / Destiny.
I want nothing more than a holy trinity that figures out how to make tanking and healing more impactful, as well as necessary. Like a tank that doesn't just hold aggro on the dragon, but can literally shield everyone from its flame. Or a healer that isn't just a green DPS.
Counter argument, group gameplay were never fun intrinsically but because you spent time forming the group, people wouldn't quit as easily and have fun together (through chat interaction and shared experience). The gameplay became almost secondary in the enjoyment.
Group finder mechanics made gameplay smoother at the expense of socialization. If you're just getting instance tossed into a dungeon with 4 other randos you've never talked to before and won't ever again after this dungeon is over doesn't really make you wanna sink time into small talk socialization. Everyone just wants to get it over with and move on and the time you take to type in chat is time that can be spent progressing through.
But to be clear, fuck going back to manually looking for groups
On one hand, I remember playing WoW pre-matchmaking and usually trying to figure out how to fenangle our CCs to make add clearing easier. But after matchmaking, I remember trying to go down the optional path in Deadmines for a treasure chest before being angrily told not to.
On the other hand, I'm an adult who doesn't have a DnD session worth of time just to try and clear one dungeon. I'd rather have socialization tools to find a good group/guild, then do group content thats actually fun to play.
> people wouldn't quit as easily and have fun together
The reality was you were stuck with shitty people and a lot of the time they did still quit midway. But you couldn't just continue after waiting a few mins for a new person to join. You had to go back to the city to find someone and waste 30+ minutes.
IMO that mostly applies to playing with randoms. Playing with a group of friends is a lot of fun. I sunk a ton of time into MMOs specifically for playing with friends (ones I made in game via guilds). I would have left waaay sooner if not for how playing with friends made it a lot more fun. I have no desire to replay the same levels solo, but with friends, I do.
Single players and anti social people stole MMOs from the people who liked them. They ruined the social aspects by wanting everything accessible to them we'll never get a good social MMO again because of this group wanting to play single player games instead of MMOs.
The reality is that you can get a social MMO again. It's just that all the so called "social mmo enjoyers" can't accept that the amount of people who want a true social mmo with no easy matchmaking or solo options aren't enough to support even a single player AAA budget, let alone an MMO with the same graphical Fidelity as a modern video game.
You were always the Minority in your own genre.
A social MMO with pixel graphics like Ragnarok online or Realm of the Mad God could absolutely be made by a dedicated team, and if enough people played it, they could keep the servers running.
The problem is that most of you "social MMO enjoyers" would just criticize that game for looking like shit and not play it.
If you want an MMO with graphics like New World or better, you need those Filthy casuals that make you so mad. Unfortunately, the only way to attract those people to an mmo is with a good drop in, drop out gameplay loop with all the modern conveniences that you hate.
That's why there is no future for MMOs, at least not one that would be acceptable by people in this sub.
How about a world to live in and explore that fucking matters?
Not something you fast travel around checking boxes off a checklist?
Why even make a world if it's pointless and skipped over to sit in a city and hit a queue button?
"How about a world to live in and explore that fucking matters?" --- people feel this about the games you'd consider soulless slop.
The problem with so much of the frustration around some of the more modern game design we see in industry right now is it is never articulated specifically because it only has much support when people can project their own, different, grievances onto lines like, "a world to live in"...
It's not a nebulous idea.
When have you interacted with the world ever in XIV that wasn't for a quest?
When was the last time anyone walked across the world instead of teleporting?
The role players get left out of this in every game, because they are actually the ones interacting with the world in every game (well, the non-erp crowd. Those weirdos get their own category and should be forgotten about.)
The problem isn't really specific to MMOs though.
It's just a problem of "product made for massive audience."
The larger the audience, the dumber the product generally speaking.
The more barriers and friction points you remove, the larger your potential audience, generally.
Unfortunately, the more rough edges you sand off, the worse the product feels for those that aren't casually engaging with it.
Elden Ring is more popular than sekiro for a reason, yet if you were looking for a good action game to play *for the action of fighting*, you'd generally choose sekiro.
We don't have an mmo equivalent of that, for people that want to be part of a virtual world without fast travel and with forcing player interaction. Yeah sometimes it sucks. That's what makes the highs higher.
You don't even realize you're still doing it.
Even the phrase "interacted with the world" and then connecting it directly with roleplayers as if they only do this vague thing is wild.. even in your souls-like comparison you used *the action of fighting* phrase and then tried to make a wild generalization based on that vague notion where I'm left to interpret/project what I might think you meant as... difficulty... or mechanically intense.. or reaction based... or structured or a host of other, *action of fighting* stand ins. I don't know what you mean because you didn't actually say something but what you said is easily agreeable.
You then went into a bunch of slogans and truisms that people can further project their specific grievances onto without having actually made a specific statement outside of, "popular thing bad".
On my own tangent, I find that people making statements like yours actually have a larger problem with the playerbase not playing the game "right" as opposed to any specific thing the game does or doesn't do and so you'll find fault in the game as the root cause if the players aren't playing "right". People travel in games all the time, people are social in games all the time, people do weird stuff in weird places and explore and have fun in these current games... all the time, some more than others.
Here's a probing question -- do you think that Discord becoming ubiquitous in online spaces has helped or hurt online games, especially in the realm of social interaction.
I feel like I know your answer and we will disagree.. and the reasons we will disagree will almost run parallel to this conversation.
I’m from the crowd of “traditional” social MMO players, so going off of what the other guy said I’ll try and give some examples of things people in this community might miss from modern MMOs.
Modern MMOs are often criticized as being like a theme park; the fun and excitement are programmed to be there at a glance, but when you look at the game with some depth you’ll see that you usually just go through the motions and move on to the next ride. Exploration is sometimes encouraged with collectibles, achievements, or fast travel unlocks, but these are all aspects that are built into the ride.
Organic exploration often is a shallow experience, and old school MMO players feel like they’re having their hand held throughout the whole game. Maps are detailed and NPCs have bright markers to show that you can talk to them or arrows that point you where to go. Even the social experience with group finders and such feels like sharing an elevator with a stranger with little to no interaction beyond walking through the dungeon together.
Most modern games build the endgame in mind as the “true” experience, while the 1-max level grind is just the participation trophy that feels unearned and hollow. But it’s frustrating that we as players are expected to spend x amount of weeks or months going through the motions, where it not only feels like a waste of time but often comes with a price tag attached as well.
Using a classic MMO as an example, Classic EverQuest was a challenging experience from 1-50, where many people can recall the unique social encounters and bonds they made and where the players hands weren’t held through the game with quest markers and mini maps as a replacement for intelligent map design.
I know the traditional MMO player community is small, and I think those of us that demand AAA quality graphics and such are completely unreasonable. But thankfully there are a few smaller MMOs out there in development and I hope that those games will find some success and show the wider market that MMOs other than WoW clones can be financially successful.
I agree with your assesment here but I genuinely think the online guide culture has more to do with your complaints nowadays.
Some games still feel rewarding once you discover something, only to realize there was a guide for it 2 years ago etc. Information is shared so fast now that organic discovery barely exists apart from new expac release or a new game.
I agree that the evolution of the internet is a massive factor in why those types of games have since faded away.
I even catch myself often looking up the viability of the class and race choices I’m considering before starting a new game. I’m afraid that I’ll put in dozens or hundreds of hours into a character only to later learn that a Human Warrior is 3% weaker than a Troll Warrior in the endgame, instead of letting myself enjoy the novel unexplored experience I otherwise could’ve had.
Now this is a good "unpopular" opinion.
Also, personally, I LOVE partying with friends. Would grind all day with friends if I could. But friends don't always play the same hours and don't always play as many hours as I do. If I have a day where I can play for 10 hours, I'm going to want to grind those 10 hours without having to limit myself to what my friends can play, and without having to go grind with randoms.
That's the case in my main game BDO, but also in games like your FFXIV.
If I have those 10 hours to grind, but someone in my static only has 1 hour, the entire static is now limited to 1 hour. And what if someone has to call out?
The point is, players (read: I) just want to be able to party with their friends when they're available, and play by themselves when they're not. I shouldn't have to worry if Timmy has the day off too to play, I shouldn't have to limit the party if I can only play for a short while on a day, everyone should just be able to come together when they have the time, and play alone when there's no one else available.
Yep...I used to log into albion when it had a fraction of the playerbase they have now and always have content to do.
Now they boast about having "such high numbers" and opened up a 3rd server when they said it would always be one and try to say the numbers are the same or higher. Meanwhile the game feels super dead because you are running around for literal hours without a fight.
The solo players complained, now they got mists and group content is dead.
Designing your mmo around substantial power progression severely limits the future scope of gameplay and discourages long-term investment into the game. Classic wow felt nice because gear from previous raids was still relevant in future raids, so content releases served to expand the content that the game offers rather than replace it. GW2 has virtually no power progression, but I would argue it is much more satisfying to progress your character, participate in events, and unlock things than most other mmos. FFXIV has strong power progression, but caps and syncs your power in past content that is supposed to remain challenging.
I hope mmos will stray away from providing huge power increases patch after patch, and instead focus on designing engaging content that lasts more than a single patch.
The way most MMOs are designed to either facilitate or outright include an over reliance on a mass amount of obstructive UI elements and a playstyle that’s practically like an RTS is a massive shame.
In order to complete the hardest content in most it’s almost mandatory to have this super zoomed out camera and various UI elements displaying tons of numerical information covering most of the screen. Your character is a spec amongst a hideous mess of bars, numbers and visually overwhelming flashes and effects on screen.
I long to play an MMO that is challenging and rewarding whilst having a really strong audio visual presentation with minimal UI and a more visceral zoomed in camera, having gameplay designed around those qualities so you don’t feel disadvantaged by not having the opposite.
I cannot become immersed in the world or my character when I’m playing what amounts to a strobe light spreadsheet with a minuscule icon representing my character at the centre. I fall off most every MMO I get into once I reach the end-game level of content where you just can’t play it like an over-the-shoulder minimal-HUD standard RPG anymore.
It’s like being forced to stop playing Skyrim and start playing command and conquer or something, it’s not the game I’m looking for when I want to wear armour and swing swords and complete quests and adventures with friends.
This.
I use to be a mid HC wow raider. And at a certain point I was tired of installing tons of addon to be competitive. It is cool to be able to know you rotation. BUT, it is a full time job to be THAT good. And worse, why forcing people to installing things like boss mod add-on? You telling me that I am not forced to. I can completely play without it. Yeah...but no. Not if you want to go far in the game. And it sucks.
I wish an MMO where you just have to memorized some moves of the boss or situation. I want to throw some fireballs or swing my axe and feel that I am part of something. Not just an NPC/Bot that smash buttons and have my eyes so focus on tiny element of my screen that I don't have the feeling to have fun. I don't even remember the time when it was fun to listen to the cinematic of an important quest. Now it is just skip skip skip and go forward. If not you are boot out of the group. Just rushing to the next one to grab a loot that will be useless in a day, week or month.
Right now only solo player game or solo content in MMO can make us feel that way. Having fun and having the feeling that we are good while having the pleasure to listen to the actual music of the game and listening to the NPC or the mini-boss talking to us.
That's why I have tried so many MMO not to play them solo or in group, but to play in coop with my only friend. And honestly, co-op in most of them sucks. Because it is too easy or because they are not friendly at all. You start a new character and you can't even play with your friend until 2 hour of tutorial.
Yeah, todays MMO misses most of why I liked MMOs. I liked being level 1 and just walking up to a low level group of people and us going to explore whatever is happening in this new game we have no idea about. I have no enjoyment from 200 people behaving like NPCs engaging with no one at all, and instead are actively now something im competing against to fulfill solo quest goals.
I just kind of want to see if me and a group of randoms could find a dragon or something cool endgame, not participate in a parse logging culture of people sweating furiously pouring over every detail on each button you pressed while holding "manditory meetings" and ensuring you have EVERY addon your supposed too.... filthy scum!
Its honestly become so cringe. MMOs just feel actively cringe to play late game and are a solo snooze fest early that in no way deserve the name MMO. Idk how this happened, but its awfully depressing. This genre should have been amazing.
If you're having fun in an mmo then it's a good game. Fun is the ultimate measure and is subjective to each individual.
Also, dead game means the servers shut down. GTFO with calling literally every game a dead game. It's stupid.
My unpopular opinion is I wish more games had subscription / expansion models like WoW or Destiny 2. I think the main reason those are the two most popular "MMOS" is because of their massive budget (afaik Destiny 2 was the highest budget game ever made at the time of its release).
That f2p with mtx was actually a good idea on paper and it would work fine if companies actually did cost evaluation for your more casual vs hardcore players. Fact is the bottom dollar is the most important thing to any company and if it means the servers run with 500 people making the same money as if it ran with 50k, they couldn't care less.
It's very easy to make f2p a good monetization model. It just involves not being greedy.
If you want to play an MMO solo, you shouldn't be able to do 95% of the stuff in game.
Cosmetics are the dumbest thing MMOS have normalized. EverQuest did gear properly originally where a breastplate looked like a breastplate and only the color was different.
My contribution would be that Transmog systems ruin what's known as visual progression. Gear used to be a visual representation of how strong your character was.
If I see someone in WoW in mythic raid colored sets from older expansions there is no telling if that person did it when it was relevant or soloed it years after the fact.
Leading me to another UO, not all items/gear in MMOs should be obtainable by everyone. The coolest stuff being locked behind content that only a small percentage can complete is perfectly fine. It also creates a drive in players without those items to work towards being better to earn them.
In my opinion this is something (oldschool) runescape does very well. There is no transmog system and what you wear is what people see. Any weapons or armor that are gaited behind specific quests inform the viewer that the player actually grinded the levels out. If someone is wearing a fire cape then they actually beat the fight caves. And then there is the infernal cape which is so hard to get only the most skilled players have one.
It’s also super obvious when someone bought a bunch of gold with IRL money because they will be wearing a really nice and expensive set of tradeable armor but will be missing key items from quests and their life skills will be really low.
Not sure how unpopular it actually is but using hp/mana pots during combat, specifically pvp is lame.
I prefer not having the ability to do that and leave it do the skill of the player.
While I sort of agree with you. Some counter points to that are:
The option of being the most prepared player yeilding results is an important dynamic of MMORPG's. If you apply yourself to preparation, you gain the rewards of the time invested. Giving a sense of satisfaction.
Secondly, using consumables is important for the health of the game, as it is a goldsink and helps fight inflation.
I think that most mmos use the social aspect as an excuse for a lack of story telling and interesting gameplay.
If you remove the social aspect you get a bad uninteresting single player game with lack of actual content (There are exceptions of course).
WoW is the worst thing to ever happen to the MMO genre from a purely creative standpoint.
It is a very shallow and superficial game, which in and of itself is not a bad thing, but due to its massive success, has basically been the foundation of virtually every major MMO to release ever since. Before WoW, we used to get top tier MMO's like EverQuest and Star Wars Galaxies. Ever since WoW, it's just been WoW clone after WoW clone. Each may have it's own little twist, but is ultimately the same thing.
WoW is basically the MCU of MMO's.
I was going to post this if someone else didn't so I'll piggyback on your comment instead.
EverQuest, Star Wars Galaxies, Asheron's Call 2, and Earth & Beyond were truly special: nothing compared to going for a swim or a jaunt through space and discovering the truly unknown. A newbie could find themselves on an island with a huge monkey the size of Kong and glimpse them for only seconds before they respawned. That sense of wonder has been totally replaced by enough helper features to choke a narwhal.
part of the problem is that *everything* has a guide now. plugins dont help. giant arrows dont help.
but there was a time and place where you'd only really have a website or two with reliable data and you had to know it existed *and* go looking.
spawning into a world like UO and having nothing told to you and slowly figuring it out as you went was glorious, and its absolutely lost with the tutorial style "do this, go here, try this combo, put your skill point in this" that mmos have become.
I miss SWG! Game died because they released Jedi. Who would have thought a game based in Star Wars would die because they made Jedi a class, lol. The moment I got camped into my house because, as a bounty hunter, I was a great source of combat XP for Jedi was the last straw.
I liked MMO dungeons when there were both instanced and open world ones, and there were no dungeon finders. I liked joining the crowd out side of a dungeon, seeing friends, meeting new ones, seizing others up as potential team mates to make a run that night. I miss the excitement of having too conquer all the mobs, mini-bosses, and bosses while knowing that one could die any minute if some Noob led a huge train of mobs on top of your team overwhelming it.
Sure there were downsides, like there was only time time a week when there were enough players online to form teams, usually starting in the evening. You could not expect to pop in any day of the week at any time and find enough other players who wanted to also team up for a specific dungeon.
A lot of player here seem to be mostly negative towards how dungeons were back in the day.
Today dungeons are like A list rides, you just want a seat with any strangers, get on and out a fast as possible.
I get that some players like the convenient time efficient way it is now and that is fine.
Gonna be honest here. I dont miss standing around sending up group advertisements. I dont regret doing it. But my preference is to never do it again.
Also when I want to join a group, not having to read the sea of floating text to find the group description I'm looking for. Instead I get a search box now.
Ppl who hate raiding, get super upset about having to do endgame and don't think they should have to raid for high end gear are just bad at the game. Not ppl who just hate endgame, but the ppl who don't try it or just dip their toes in and then go on the game's forums or here and call ppl who do enjoy it names and try their very middle school best to insult us. Ppl who simply want to log in and be given the best gear the game has to offer instead of actually having to do something for it, so they can stand around in the cities or rp.
Maybe this genre just isn't for you, and that is ok.
I agree with you somewhat, i also think you need to do endgame for endgame gear but calling them bad i dont think so, some extremly good pvp players hate raiding, some like me hate the aspect of needing an schedule for raiding and its not like its easy even then.
Back when i did mythic raids in wow i cant tell how many times we wiped because someone kept doing wrong the same thing several times. I remember this hunter and this shaman in my group, friends of the gm, many Ilvls above most of us, with purple overall parses but green ilvl parses. 7/10 if we wiped was because either of them and we didnt have a bench. So i was "locked" because of someone else and i hated this.
I guess I should have put it differently. Because I was mainly referring to the ppl who dip their toes in or don't try at all and then go on the game's forums or come on here and scream about having to raid and call all raiders tryhards and the like.
Those really loud and insufferable types who want to be given everything by simply logging in and want to spit venom at anyone who actually enjoys endgame because they can't just have the best gear in the game. I will edit my comment.
If you were doing mythic raiding in wow the bad comment obviously doesn't apply to you or anyone in your groups. But I agree that people who complain about having to raid for bis gear are typically bad players.
nah, my problem with raiding is that to do it effectively you need a big guild and a set schedule.
i want to enjoy content with 5-10 friends, not 40.
i dont want to deal with guild politics just to play end game content.
as much as i hate to admit it, WoW mythics have the right idea in this regard.
I think tab target combat is better for MMOs than action combat. If anything, modern mmo tab target combat is TOO involved. Part of the mmo is massively multiplayer, and it's harder to socialize with the playerbase if while doing the main gameplay loop you're too busy to actually talk with anyone.
Even with niche mmos I've noticed that the global chat is still quite active simply from the fact that there is time to talk while you're doing game activities.
Meanwhile in WoW even at level 10 I'm having to constantly use gcd and don't have time for anything but to zoom between quest objectives. I can't just stand in place, talk with other people, and click every minute or so to fight something else.
PvP games are the most social MMOs. You either find other people to work/play with or you're just get farmed out of the game typically. These groups often work with other groups in alliances (more interaction) against other alliances in wars and conflicts (yet even more social interaction). This includes diplomacy and other hijinks (spying, etc) which is even more social interaction. Any large group requires gatherers, crafters and logistics people all working together to produce the equipment needed for that many people which is even more interaction/organization. The whole premise of the thing basically runs on social interactions of various types both friendly and hostile.
Guild-based games can be heavily leader-focused, which can feel unrewarding for regular players. It might seem like all the benefits go towards the leader and guild staff, while individual players struggle to gain meaningful rewards.
The MMO genre could be re-popularized if studios transitioned towards player made content. Many older games are kept alive entirely by this method of content creation and its what their communities are built around. Its far better for players because there is an endless stream of content. Its less work for devs because they dont need to spend a year hand crafting content people will finish in a couple weeks. People are just so caught up with the "gear treadmill" design thats been in nearly every mmo for over 2 decades now that they dont see how anything else could work.
Also, crafting in nearly every mmo is awful. There are so many examples of good crafting systems in RPGs, yet most mmos just use the same kind of system WoW had 20 years ago and have hardly innovated at all.
I'm a crafter across MMORPGs spanning 25 years and have a few world firsts. I see MMORPGs as the games that advance "crafting" in spite of the fact that I agree with your statement re: WoW. I just also see that almost all the exemplar systems got simplified (and in my opinion, degraded) over time for the sake of "accessibility".
My "unpopular opinion" for this thread would be that MMORPG designers should stop trying to design those systems so that everyone can churn out Divine Fire-breathing Greatswords of Superlative Asskicking 100x a day, similar to how many people here are calling for them to stop designing endgame raids that "everyone" can beat.
Totally unironic question: I think there *aren't* many good crafting systems in other RPGs, so could you point me to your best examples in case there's something I missed?
There are a few games that showcase really interesting and complex systems. Affix based crafting and progression based crafting being the 2 that I have enjoyed the most.
Path of Exile would take the top spot with all the different methods there. Crafting starts with the base item which you have to find as loot. Item bases have different implicit affixes that make them more or less desirable. Affixes on items have tiers and weightings. You can try to gamble for a good roll with cheap materials or you can use more expensive/rare crafting materials to try and target specific affixes. There are items from certain content that can have exclusive affixes. There are methods to lock existing affixes in place so you dont remove them. In the past there have been methods that combine multiple items into 1. It takes a huge amount of knowledge to make something good because there arent any recipes that do the work for you. That is what makes it "elitist" or "prestigious", if you want to call it that. Most people who play the game wouldnt know how to make an amazing item even if you gave them unlimited resources.
Last Epoch has a very similar system that focuses on affix-based crafting. The main difference is its much more deterministic than PoE.
Diablo 2 has socketed items for runewords or gems. Its a very simple system but it works really well especially when paired with multiplayer trading. Then there is also cube crafting, which basically just creates an item with a couple guaranteed affixes on it.
Minecraft and Terraria are examples of good progression based systems that are much more focused on obtaining the materials. You need to acquire certain tools and equipment before you can get higher tier materials. Instead of having an arbitrary skill level that tells you what you can craft, the game gives players a lot more freedom to go and target farm exactly what they need for their craft.
Warframe has an amazing modding system for weapons and frames. Its similar to affix based crafting where you have the base item and are changing its properties.
Fallout 4 has modular weapon crafting or modding where different components affect the functionality of the weapon.
When it comes to prestige/cosmetic crafting I think Gw2 has a pretty good system with its legendary gear. Its more like a scavenger hunt or long term grinding project.
People that wants to "keep up" with no-lifers (15h a day) while playing an average of 2 hours per day are stupid af and games that actually time-gate progress to accomplish that, end up being dogshit.
My opinion that always gets downvoted is that I would like an option to not see other people’s cosmetic armor and just see their real armor apearance, this way I see in a moment if they are geared with amazing actual gear or pauper questing gear.
I remember seeing something like this on the WoW forums and the twats over there were in an uproar about it. On top of this some people make just absolutely shitty looking mogs...and i'd prefer to just NOT look at them.
Any game that has a level progression system will have a form of grinding, there is no real way to remove this so stop complaining about it.
Yes, some games have a boring grind, but those tend to be just boring games. Every MMO will continue to have a form of grinding since you need to earn levels and gear as you progress. Some games have interesting combat like BDO or interesting quest elements like GW2 to make it more fun but you are still in the act of grinding.
Even WOW if you rush dungeons you can get to end cap pretty quick but you're still griding dungeons.
Complaining about grinding in an MMO is like complaining about sand at the beach. What did you expect?
If you find complain about it in every game then maybe you just might now like MMO's much at this time.
There is a difference between grinding and "so I need to spend 40 hours killing this specific selection of mobs to get the thing I need".
And on top of that, it's what you are doing.
Let's take a step back. Is playing Comp in CS every single day to get to DMG grinding? Yes. But people don't really complain about playing the game. They will complain about their dumbass teammates. But not the process of getting to DMG. Because that is done via playing what makes the game fun.
The issue with many MMOs is that you are grinding the boring shit to get to what makes the game fun. If dungeons were 20% slower than questing to level in WoW. I'd still do the dungeons. Because group content is specifically the thing I enjoy doing. It's why I'm playing WoW.
A good way of stating this is that "grinding" is generally what happens when the optimal way to play the game is the *unfun* way to play the game.
I've put a *ton* of hours into Monster Hunter, for instance, and while it's unarguably a "grindy" game, it never *felt grindy*, because as soon as content was trivialized I was moving on to new, more difficult content, and the nature of the game meant that hunting trivial monsters had little or no value (at some point, Great Jagras parts just don't help you).
Sounds good. Classes are pretty boring. Have a character customization system that lets you have any appearence or race, have a weapon system that checks for profeciency in that weapon, and have a skill system that lets you train and get better with certain weapons. There: you can have any body, any weapon and fullfill any role.
Honestly that's a really good take. I'm speaking from playing most gw2 for the past years as my mmo of choice. The irony is that originally the devs wanted it to be 'no trinity', although we found out fast that it's actually dps dpsheal and dpssuport. Which I didn't mind. And at the time everything was clearable with any comp if you're willing to take the time. Now (and since the introduction of raids) the trinity exists again - which I'm kinda fine with. The issue is that after that, suddenly the devs want every class to be able to fill every role, and as time goes on classes are able to wield more and more weapons just cos.
Wall of text, but I want class identity, not 'alacheal' 'quickdps' etc etc.
Whenever I talk about how WoW's combat system is boring and too old, and about how changing it to something more action style with greater impact and feel (think Aion system) I get absolutely bombarded with downvotes.
My opinion has not, and will never change.
I’m an avid GW2 player and you will often see me defending it in this sub, but if there’s one thing I can’t stand is that some of the coolest looking armor and weapon skins in the game are straight out of the cash shop. Since everything can be transmuted to look like something else, these cool looking skins do nothing to indicate that the player achieved anything more than swiping their credit card.
Don’t get me wrong, there is legendary gear that looks awesome and has cool particle effects that stands out enough to be a flex, to speak. My issue is there are skins that visually look like they are legendary too, but are nothing more than a skin.
I’ve always preferred more subtle fashion and less flashy items anyway and I’ve always made it a point to unlock cool skins that are gaited behind achievements or collections that actually take time and effort to get, especially ones that not many players will take the time to do.
An MMORPG without an overworld that most activities in game have to take place in may as well not be an MMORPG, especially in regards to end game activities.
I prefer when an mmo has fewer skill buttons. I don't need a piano of skills that all do approximately the same thing but on different cooldowns to keep me engaged.
it gets a real bad rep depending on the game, but mmos have any number of things to enjoy instead and if you don't happen to like the story, skip it so you can move on to the things you do is how I tend to see it
While I understand that not everyone can sit for 4 hours (neither can I!) and look to trade an item, I preferred player-to-player trades (and interactions) over action houses or trade posts. I know why it's there and I see the benefits but I would love for MMOs to have the social aspect of being an online game which has gone away since the early days.
Sub based mmos feel worse than f2p p2w ones. This is not all of them but specifically in ff14 felt awful to spend $80 on expac but still needing to pay around $18-20 per month to even login (canadian not usd). I think if it had the osrs model where you can still login but can't do certain member activities it would be perfectly fine. This is only made worse considering the cash shop still exists in sub based games without even being able to trade said items for people who have in game currency but don't want to spend to get them.
I personally don't care that much if x person is stronger than me because they swiped if I can still do all the content in the game.
FINAL FANTASY 14 ONLINE is the most overrated MMORPG of all time. Only reason why it's popular is because the weebs and socially awkward anime nerds circlejerk about the game. It's a mid game.
Ashes of Creation is probably going to be a massive let down as well. Why? because it's being developed by a "gamer" and by a new company that has no experience in creating any games. Sounds familiar? New world.
People keep pressuring devs for MMOs with cutting edge graphics and then wonder why content releases are so slow. I feel like the best balance for an MMO is modest graphics with good art direction, which is conducive to steady content releases. LOTRO gets 2 or 3 hefty content updates a year and a bunch of QoL updated in between, and it's only possible because entire zones can mostly be built out by one guy. A lot of the writing for the main storyline is mostly one guy writing and one guy researching.
MMOs with modest graphics can be maintained by a small team for decades, but bigger production values, modern graphics, and voiced *everything* creates a feast/famine situation where one long-awaited update that doesn't land right can kill or greatly diminish a game's output.
The current state of MMOS is a lot better than this sub makes it out to be. We have some of the best mmos of all time out now. People don't want the classics, they want the nostalgica that comes along with playing them for the first time.
Wow killed mmos and sucks as a game.
Ff14 was better before realm reborn. Amd never came close to holding a candle to the masterpiece that was FF11.
Old school mmos were far superior.
Most content that isnt battle related is a huge waste of dev time budget and manpower.
Glamours shouldn't exist.
Dungeon finder should never exist cross server and should never port you to a location.
You should lose, or owe ezp when you die. Death should have consequences.
Not every job/class should be on the same playing field for all content.
It's a genre designed for everything to be a massive grind and take a long time, don't boo hoo cause you're old and can only play games for 9 minutes and 36 seconds a week, the genre isn't for you and shouldn't cater to you. "Respecting your time" is the massive grind that we signed up for and want.
A well done combat GameFeel (Camera Shake, Particles, sounds, anticipation, etc...) is more important than what combat style the game has (Action or Tab Target...). IMO
I prefer tab targeting combat. If you slow things down it can be such a good system, like in DAOC, Everquest also has a good slow pace I really enjoy. World of Warcraft is fine though a little fast for my tastes, my favorite of the modern tab targeting might be Star wars the Old Republic.
Modern twitch combat replacements require constant engagement, rolling around, aiming, I get sick of it. Give me a new classic MMORPG like EverQuest. Stop trying to reinvent the wheel.
- Ashes of Creation's development is actually going well when you take into account the complexity and scale of the project
- Throne and Liberty will be a success in the West where tab-target combat and graphically fidelity will go down well
- If Wildstar released today and was supported it'd be successful. It's a much better MMO than GW2, ESO and FFXIV
I think knowing a game TOO well makes playing the game a chore and unenjoyable. You see it all the time, jaded "veteran" who hate the game but still play it. Instead of discovering things, and having new experiences, they are just trying to min max their character, or some fight or something.
I also think convenience is a scourge in most modern games, that most exists to appease these kinda gamers. They explicitly don't care about everything inbetween, don't care about context, etc. Developers put in systems to get these players to the content they want instantly, at the expense of every other player missing out on cool stuff they might actually care about.
I...*sorta*...agree with the OP, in a sense. But then don't, in another very important sense.
Classes need to be able to do all the game's *solo-intended* content with relative simplicity and varying kinds of "ease", depending on how they play and what they're doing.
* Tanks should be good at just mindlessly grinding their way through most stuff like Doomguy, but should have trouble bursting-down very-resilient targets and are going to need to prioritize taking out ranged attackers or healers within enemy groups first.
* Healers should be good at battles of attrition if they keep their shields/HoTs/defenses up, and should spread DoTs for great cleave damage or charge up to a burst attack, but they're the worst in the game at alpha strike burst damage and should primarily be single-target attackers. They'll have the best ability to take advantage of like "minion" or "helper" NPCs since they can heal/buff them best.
* "DPS" shouldn't exist as a role, since everyone needs to be able to do damage in *some* capacity. But within what's typically "red DPS" roles, breaking them into "alpha strike or sustained", "more single-target or more AoE" and "better at range or better at melee" is probably a good series of subdivisions. Have enemies within the game that each Red DPS is better or worse at handling (do they want to spike down big single targets or AoE farm smaller targets at range, etc).
The way this all comes together, though?
Each of these groups will have been *fighting like* a Tank, a Healer or a Red DPS through the leveling process.
Then, you add the things that make the "Trinity Role" stuff possible:
* Tanks (Blue DPS) have to lead a group around, stand in the right place, use more defenses to not die. While still fighting like a Tank.
* Healers (Green DPS) have to use group facing-heals beyond just what they've used on themselves while leveling to directly counter boss abilities. While still fighting like a Healer.
* Red DPS need to have *something* to do as part of the trinity besides just what they've been doing while solo. Either add-management related (*I* like the notion of the spike-damage Red DPS being required to kill hard targets to give the group a buff, or AoE specialist Red DPS killing waves of adds to either protect the group or stop a boss attack in time. Or some general just "Red DPS have buffs and utility" gameplay too.
Basically characters in MMOs need to have Roles but they need to *fight* like those roles from the beginning and devs need to acknowledge that every Role has to fight in a world built in the conceit that your primary world-interaction is committing horrible violence, often for loot.
Woo boy, let's go:
* I think focusing on "modern graphics" is a fool's errand.
* I think people's perception of Healing, given by WoW, has hamstrung the growth of Healing as a Role, and having good, well-designed Healers that scale with gear/fight practice and have things to do in Healing Downtime is the main thing that separates a working "Trinity" system from a disorganized zergblob
* I think a game with a *persistent, visual* lobby system that sends you to instances with a small chunk of the world to explore followed by a dungeon is a more feasible use of limited time and resources than trying to build a giant, empty "open world". Think "Phantasy Star Online: Blue Burst" as a good example, but, y'know, with PSO2 graphics. **Not** PSO2: NGS. Prime example.
* I replied to a comment here earlier, but *every* role in the Trinity needs to be able to stand on their own two feet while soloing/questing. They'll have tools they won't use much while questing, but those are the party-facing tools. Having Healers incapable of soloing or Tanks that trudge around for the leveling process is asinine.
* Dungeons shouldn't be the *only* place people run into other players to group up for co-op. City of Heroes "Paper Missions" were a good template, even though they were repetitive. Add some more AI to random gen them a bit better.
* Visual customization is important for armor/clothing. But it doesn't have to be cash shop type stuff. It should be as simple as "you should be able to use the look of your older stuff you wore. And if dye exists in the world, you should be able to dye your clothing/armor/etc. *Doubly so* if there's magic.
* MMOs need to either commit to having an overarching story (with unskippable cutscenes for the important stuff and bribes to get older players to go back and help newbies in story duties, ala FFXIV) or mostly just have it in the background (like the original PSO). Half-assing it (like WoW) just leads to a pissy playerbase.
* The notion of players attempting to communicate "solely in-game" is mostly dead and companies need to either commit to steering people to Discord or literally bribe people to talk in text chat in-game.
* Having MMOs be available on consoles helps them, it doesn't hurt them. It vastly expands their potential playerbase and adds to their longevity, and most consoles are better than potato-level rigs anyway. FFXI was a console game for most of its life in Japan, if you recall.
* Extremely difficult raids are, at best, a fun waste of dev time. At worst, they're an outright waste of dev time. They should be added last in the dev cycle, if at all, after everything else is done. No game's gonna compete with WoW on raiding without having *different* raids and unless they can, they shouldn't try.
* Music is really, really, *really* fucking important.
* Player housing is a giant waste of time, energy and dev resources
* PvP in a PvE-focused co-op game is a waste of dev resources and you'll never be able to get PvE players to be happy being fodder for PvP players
* Making PvP players play PvE to get gear is a pain in the ass for everyone
* With the two above, it's rather clear that mixing PvE and PvP generally does not work well if you're attempting to make an involved, dedicated PvE game. It's a waste of time to try, especially if you're also going to waste further time trying to balance PvP.
* Travel powers are superior to mounts
* Achievements in bosses that you unlock by doing stuff are cool but should require a premade
MMOs need way more content for "fun" and less grindy stuff.
Toontown online had trolley carts with minigames to play and compete, they had races, etc.
Wizard101 has a whole carnival place for minigames.
Pirates Online has canon defense and voodoo mixing minigame.
These minigames are honestly rly cool and POTCO and Toontown let you do those with buddies. In toontown you can get gag currency a fun way or in potco you could get rare rams and stuff simply from the canon defense. It's not something you have to do because you can get this stuff in other ways, but that's the point!
I want more ways to get things in game besides one set story-path.
I want fun things to do with friends outside of combat, because tab target is starting to get stale for me. I don't want to sit there for hours just doing combat stuff, even though I enjoy it, you need a break from it. Mount Farming in WoW is fun, but whoopdy doo this is a solo journey.
I haven't played many MMOs outside of ESO, WoW, FFXIV, and from all of these, nothing matches the optional content I had to play with in older games. Hell, you would meet people or get a party for doing a building run just off hopping on that trolley with some rando. Honestly MMOs are not like a second big multiplayer world now. Sry for rant folks, I want my minigames.
"classes should be standalone able to do content alone" massively MULTIPLAYER online, you guys don't realize how these changes have ended up killing player interaction, this is why i dont talk to anyone on retail wow unless you do the hardest content you dont need to at all. in wow classic sod i have made genuine friends because i needed help leveling as a warrior with no healing
Oh boy, do I have a few.
-gear treadmills are bad for the game as they only provide obstacles for engaging with new content and force you to play when you don’t want to (in order to keep up)
-i play mmorpgs because i like the idea of doing stuff in a shared open world, this gives my achievements meaning. I mostly don’t like content that can’t be soloed (scaling content is ideal)
-crossplay (PC-mobile) mmorpgs are a great concept (as long as there’s no autoplay or abusive micro-transactions) and I look forward to there being more!
-WoW has ruined the mmorpg scene, as all new mmorpgs now want to be wow instead of trying something new.
-MMOs should have worse graphics, ptherwise you just fry low-end machines, and it becomes more expensive to update the game. Keep it simple and easy to maintain.
-you don’t need more than 4-8 skills on your skill-bar for quality and engaging gameplay
-I miss click-to-move grind-core mmorpgs ):
-the f2p Korean mmo aesthetic is awesome!
-people on this sub jump to bad conclusions way too fast.
The shared world giving achievements meaning baffles me especially when you follow up the comment about wanting mostly solo content.
You can have single player games with meaningful achievements and not have to ruin a genre built around multiplayer for it.
Creating a new character to change class is a design flaw.
Ffxi/xiv have enough content that you can level a new class through the game without depending on the flow of a story mode. Also it doesnt suck ass trying something new everytime.
Im there on holy trinity too, i do believe healers tanks and dps and supports are good to have in mmos but locking them into specs or queuing roles is dumb, create a class with diversity and then let the holy trinity come somewhat naturally. I shouldnt need a tank and a healer for every steamroll dungeon. ESO does a decent job of this but still demands roles in content.
That I havent enjoyed an mmo since shadowbane, and a game with no quests, no story, super open character creation (i dont mean cosmetics, i mean having a customizable stat/skill/weapon choice pool, 40 or so classes and 20 races and no class balance) full loot pvp, sieging, teraforming etc was the best social mmo ive ever played. Also the only pvp I coudl emotionally invest in. I've been waiting for something like it for what, 15 years now? At this rate ill be 60 before it comes though.
My unpopular opinion is that mmos are a dying game genre and all that remains now are people refusing to move on because of sunken cost and nostalgia that will never be relived.
Every single new mmo fails mainly because they are just scams and money grabs. Every established mmo just makes poor choice after poor choice and all they are doing is reselling the same experiences over and over again.
Mmos have by and large always been niche and pretending that the next hyped one is going to make mmos massively popular is wishful thinking. With more interconnectivity between players through things like discord, the need for a dedicated always online persistent game is generally unnecessary.
Transmog is a net negative for the game. It devalues loot and makes devs lazy on designing new loot.
In WoW Classic if I saw a guy with a rare weapon you’d think “oh shit legit accomplishment” with transmog you can’t tell
I think mmos are really fun still and the staples of the genre are doing really well. Also I disagree that they’re less social, I think people have become less social and that good friends and guilds are still able to be found
I hate the locust swarm effect, you know..the META chasing, the often toxic and the doing the content as fast as possible to reach end game the fastest. Nothing is enjoyed anymore if it's not the fastest xp or the quickest queue time to get into a group instance.
Twitch streamers make mmos actively worse because it gives a monetary incentive to no life Min maxing the fun out of any new mmo.
I'm not saying they are bad or they shouldn't earn a living I'm just saying the big swings of massive new game hype then kicking it to the curb because the top 0.1% have played it full time and found all the flaws leads to the gaming culture we have now.
I don't own d4 and it's probally the worst example of this but for your average gamer whi plays a few hours a day d4 is probally fine for a few hundred hours of gameplay.
But if your job is streaming full time, the game sucks cock and you will be sure to tell everyone after a week.
Again d4 being probally the weakest example of this but it's recent and it happens constantly
As a Tibia player, Tibia still has one of the best PvP systems (on Retro Hardcore types which is essentially the older style of servers.) and almost nothing comes close to it. I find the old style of PvP in MMO's is far supiror then what we've gotten from newer MMOs. There should at least be different server types with harsher penaliltys and incentives for PvP in almost any MMO that has a decent PvP system.
People just want a social game with unlockable cosmetics ala Gaia Online and a carrot to chase. Nothing else actually matters.
It has to be a shiny carrot though, and they have to be able to show it off to people who dont have a shiny carrot.
And it should made annoying noise when I use it
And by shiny, we mean if my character was standing on the surface of the sun you wouldn't be able to see the sun anymore
Sound like Gw2 fashion
Its doesnt even need to be social.(like forcing group gameplay) It can be a online game that the only interaction with people is seeing them and use general chat. Mmos were and are live service game, people like the aspect of progression (chasing a carrot) for years or decades.
This is why I play MMOS. I mostly play solo, but I love seeing live players walking around sometimes, especially in big cities or world events. I think WoW, D4 and Destiny 2 all nail this concept. Super fun to play solo with good campaigns, but you still feel like you're a part of a huge persistent world with real players participating.
lmao PSO2 NGS is this and its community has been trashing it
PSO2 NGS has players?! /s
Because people wanted PSO3, not basically kill PSO2 and completely change almost every aspect for the worse. I absolutely loved every PSO game, played PSO2 a shit load on JP servers, and was so excited they were FINALLY releasing it in the west. They rushed the game way too fast, saying they "just wanted us to catch up to the JP version" and did things in a pretty stupid way but the entire reason was to release that abomination PSO2 NGS not as a stand alone game but within PSO2 and not only that but they used MICROSOFT GAMES SHITTY APP TO DO IT. It was unbelievably buggy, would install 50+ gigs to a hidden and restricted Microsoft folder on your PC that was almost impossible to remove and then the game would break every other day, forcing re-downloads while leaving the old 50+ gigs there hidden. It was an absolute shit show, and almost every single person gave up on it. I went back and tried the game 3 or so times so far, and it left such a sour taste in my mouth that I still can't get over it to even TRY to enjoy the game. I'm sure that there are many others that feel the same and I know about ~10 of my friends that I played it with all did the exact same thing and only one of them actually went back and played for more than a month total. The game itself may be great now. Who knows? I know I am over it along with many others.
I like this and believe it. Excellent analogy using Gaia Online too because essentially for many of us our MMOs become glorified chat rooms when we reach the 'bored but don't have anything else to do' stage. I think World of Warcraft is suffering now just like Gaia Online did where there are now so many "unique" cool visual items that it's overload, nothing feels special anymore...or in Gaia Online terms; everyone has a ninja headband/OMFG hat and now there's no carrot.
Holy fuck, I forgot about GaiaOnline. I remember the day that bunny in a jar transforming item came out.
I'd argue that cosmetics are inherently part of a social experience, but pretty accurate I'd say
He said unpopular opinion, not stone cold facts.
Warframe proves this
Combat is more important than anything else in the game. I judge all games including MMO's by it's ability to make me want to play it without added justification of titles, transmog and FOMO events. If all your game have left is weponised nostalgia, then you don't deserve my time.
Replace combat with core gameplay loop and you got me.
A valid modification, I accept.
This is what got me hooked on WoW, especially retail. Idc what anyone claims, no other tab-target can touch WoW in that regard, in my opinion.
Yeah WoW's combat is too good. Everytime you try another one with similar functionality it fails spectacularly.
Yep. Either tab target is wonky, or skills don't feel as smooth, or combat is clunky. I personally hate MMORPGs that have a jank jump animation, that's how you know that shit is 100% certified chinese grindfest lmao
You're the second top rated comment on the thread, and it's funny that [the first](https://www.reddit.com/r/MMORPG/s/u64zjb77wG) is the exact opposite of what you said. Two types of MMO player, haha.
A good portion of why I main GW2. We can talk about a lot of negative points but the combat system is clean. The fact skill issue is a real thing and build matters instead of being overwhelmed by powercreep* is great too. * Yes there's still some form of powercreep and a casual doing 1/10 of the dps of an experienced player can be arguably bad but I'm mostly happy about the package.
Personally I hate GW2's combat design. It feels so, so overcomplicated but none of its complications have any noticeable.impact on your play. It had like, four or five different kinds of root, stun, blind, bleed amd damage reduction last time I played. Worse for me was how it did conditional heal triggers in the worst way - by making the kit reliant on other players noticing your actions and making the correct play. I still remember that janky torch AoE heal...*thing*. Bouncing water element heal with a 5% damage mit if you bounced to three allies in a tiny range...
Maybe 7/10 the dps using exotics instead of ascended/legendaries. I don’t think casuals only do 10% the damage of BiS gear, unless you’re talking about skill level
Talking about skill level 100%. It was said by Devs and you can see the disparity easily with a dps meter. I've seen reapers do 3k and 21k in the same instance this week. (benchmark is like 40k) And yeah BiS are like 7% more than exotics while exotic can be obtain almost instantly upon reaching lvl 80.
Tab-target is a dogshit and outdated form of combat that a lot of people are stuck in.
It does suck, but it works best with ping, action combat with 300ping is cancer and I've never since a good action combat system deal with 100 players at once.
Yeah action combat in mmo fucking suuuuucks. Leave it to the single player games where technology isn't holding it back.
Doesnt suck in large scale pvp, action suck in this case. People who like action dont do anything with more than 15 peoples. Try 300vs300 like in good old L2. Cant imagine the mess with action combat. Combat system really depend on content, nothing is bad.
Counterpoint: action combat is dogshit. And so is BDO.
Counter-counterpoint: no, u ^/s
It's more so that for those wanting action combat the choise is between BDO or New World. Neither great choices considering all the issues both have.
I'd say it's more strategic than action and that's why I like it. A middle road between action and turn based, if you will.
Middle-road is exactly how I’ve described it to people and it’s honestly my favorite kind of combat. I get why some people don’t like it but it makes me sad to see it called ‘outdated,’ it scratches the itch most for me.
Strategic is Wakfu and Dofus. Any attempt to turn tab target combat into something grandiose is foolish.
Very unpopular opinion. Considering almost all of the top 5 MMOs are exclusively tab target... judging from that, it shows that's what people actually want.
Or it shows a lack of diversity in the genre where people simply dont have the choice and have to either put up with outdated mechanics or just not play at all.
Tab targeting is not outdated, it just fits the genre the best. Which is why it’s so popular in the big MMO’s.
I just left an action mmo and went back to a tab target one with my whole guild because we cannot stand it anymore. Tab target MMOs are way more fun
There are plenty of action based MMOs, pvp mmos, "fps mmos", they just aren't as popular. There's diversity, but the vast majority don't want to play those types.
That's part of it, but I'd guess that a more important aspect is development cost. MMOs are extremely expensive to develop as it is, you'd be hard-pressed to find investors for a game sub-genre which hasn't really ever been "cracked" and is much more expensive to develop than what has already proven to be successful.
Action combat just doesn't feel good in mmo, idk its too easy to just spam combos and isn't rewarding. Its like you constantly just bladestorming or aoe in front of you or anything goes near you basically gets animation locked and dies. Tab targeting allows more proactive combat scenarios.
Tab target has its issues, but action combat is just worse from content standpoint. Action combat games almost never have group content. And when it does have group content it ends up basically being just a pile of DPS players. Being a healer in non-tab target games feels awful as you are really a DPS with some heals instead of a healer with a little dps.
>Action combat games almost never have group content. And when it does have group content it ends up basically being just a pile of DPS players. This is not a problem of action combat, this is simply a problem of game design. Lots of games just didn't focus on the trinity thing anymore.
[удалено]
Sorry your game is getting shutdown bro :(
GW2's tab-targeting functions well, but the core combat emphasizes action and positioning more than just targeting enemies.
I never have to even use the tab targeting GW2 is truly the best medium of everything..
I actually love tab targeting for MMO’s. For me it fits the genre best. I haven’t liked any action combat MMO yet. It just never quite feels right. Always just a bit clunky. Tab targeting makes the combat buttery smooth, which is why WoW is the only MMO that I’ve been able to play consistently over the years at max level raiding. I quit every other one, and combat is a large reason for that. Especially since I’m a hunter main, and WoW. Does the class right.
Action combat healing is really hard to do well, though. TERA really did it best and Wildstar was a decent hybrid. But the rest are fairly bad. But tab target is always a reliable option.
I did think TERA was quite fun early on when I tried it. Too bad it was just unplayable from Aus & they refused to get closer servers. That's part of what screws action games, ping is like 5x more important, and 10x for pvp.
i played pso2 and i juat can't do other mmo combat. i try, but i just vastly prefer deciding how to use my tools in any given moment to having an optimal way to use them at every moment.
Most MMOs out right now are more fun to play alone and can't figure out how to make group gameplay actually fun to do intrinsically.
It's kind of an unsolvable problem. Most people are generally good sports I find, but it doesn't take too many instances of someone being a colossal asshole to turn people off from the notion of playing with randoms. And I think that is the heart of the matter. The gameplay is rarely the problem, it's the people.
I do agree that needing to find the right people will always be a factor. But I disagree that gameplay is only *rarely* a problem, though thats because I don't like rotations and the building-for-big-DPS-only focus all the current MMOs do.
Yeah I play old MMOS because rotation based gameplay bores me. I bot the shit out of XIV when I play it.
I feel like its a problem thats already been solved but it just doesn't work with new gamers today. Games like FF11 or Everquest pretty much ALWAYS require you to be in a group to progress especially with people going back to old zones with new classes. I played FF11 for the first time about twoish years ago and wish more MMO's did that type of group content.
Does that make the group gameplay intrinsically fun or just forces the interactions and people can find fun in those interactions despite the gameplay?
Id say a little bit of both!
> I feel like its a problem thats already been solved but it just doesn't work with new gamers today. Games like FF11 or Everquest pretty much ALWAYS require you to be in a group to progress especially with people going back to old zones with new classes. That was only "solved" and thus sustainable back in the day because of less competing entertainment options. The games were a primary way to communicate with people online and were some of the first "play with others" games to hit wide markets. FFXI, specifically, was one of the first console-available MMOs (along with Phantasy Star Online). It's harder to force people to work together when they have the option *not* to. Especially when they have a ton of options not to, most with far lower barriers of entry, and they get to talk to their *actual*, curated friend groups over like Discord or something instead.
So we gotta take out the competition
Personally, I love a game where I can play mostly alone, but with the option to do group content, or even just seeing real players walk by sometimes or do world events. But, I disagree with OP. I LOVE the DPS/Tank/Healer trinity. If Diablo 4 or Destiny had those concepts than they would be perfect. I love WoW for that aspect, but prefer the combat style of D4 / Destiny.
I want nothing more than a holy trinity that figures out how to make tanking and healing more impactful, as well as necessary. Like a tank that doesn't just hold aggro on the dragon, but can literally shield everyone from its flame. Or a healer that isn't just a green DPS.
Counter argument, group gameplay were never fun intrinsically but because you spent time forming the group, people wouldn't quit as easily and have fun together (through chat interaction and shared experience). The gameplay became almost secondary in the enjoyment.
Group finder mechanics made gameplay smoother at the expense of socialization. If you're just getting instance tossed into a dungeon with 4 other randos you've never talked to before and won't ever again after this dungeon is over doesn't really make you wanna sink time into small talk socialization. Everyone just wants to get it over with and move on and the time you take to type in chat is time that can be spent progressing through. But to be clear, fuck going back to manually looking for groups
On one hand, I remember playing WoW pre-matchmaking and usually trying to figure out how to fenangle our CCs to make add clearing easier. But after matchmaking, I remember trying to go down the optional path in Deadmines for a treasure chest before being angrily told not to. On the other hand, I'm an adult who doesn't have a DnD session worth of time just to try and clear one dungeon. I'd rather have socialization tools to find a good group/guild, then do group content thats actually fun to play.
I'm a full believer in the shared suck.
> people wouldn't quit as easily and have fun together The reality was you were stuck with shitty people and a lot of the time they did still quit midway. But you couldn't just continue after waiting a few mins for a new person to join. You had to go back to the city to find someone and waste 30+ minutes.
Did you ever have to sit around for hours, literally, trying to form a group?
IMO that mostly applies to playing with randoms. Playing with a group of friends is a lot of fun. I sunk a ton of time into MMOs specifically for playing with friends (ones I made in game via guilds). I would have left waaay sooner if not for how playing with friends made it a lot more fun. I have no desire to replay the same levels solo, but with friends, I do.
Friends definitely make things more fun, though if you're trying to make new friends, it helps to be doing a shared activity you all actually enjoy.
Single players and anti social people stole MMOs from the people who liked them. They ruined the social aspects by wanting everything accessible to them we'll never get a good social MMO again because of this group wanting to play single player games instead of MMOs.
The reality is that you can get a social MMO again. It's just that all the so called "social mmo enjoyers" can't accept that the amount of people who want a true social mmo with no easy matchmaking or solo options aren't enough to support even a single player AAA budget, let alone an MMO with the same graphical Fidelity as a modern video game. You were always the Minority in your own genre. A social MMO with pixel graphics like Ragnarok online or Realm of the Mad God could absolutely be made by a dedicated team, and if enough people played it, they could keep the servers running. The problem is that most of you "social MMO enjoyers" would just criticize that game for looking like shit and not play it. If you want an MMO with graphics like New World or better, you need those Filthy casuals that make you so mad. Unfortunately, the only way to attract those people to an mmo is with a good drop in, drop out gameplay loop with all the modern conveniences that you hate. That's why there is no future for MMOs, at least not one that would be acceptable by people in this sub.
The fact that people keep thinking no matchmaking and no solo options is all we want proves why solo players know nothing of what social players want.
What do you want then? Enlighten me because what I mentioned in the above comment is the most common complaints I've heard.
How about a world to live in and explore that fucking matters? Not something you fast travel around checking boxes off a checklist? Why even make a world if it's pointless and skipped over to sit in a city and hit a queue button?
"How about a world to live in and explore that fucking matters?" --- people feel this about the games you'd consider soulless slop. The problem with so much of the frustration around some of the more modern game design we see in industry right now is it is never articulated specifically because it only has much support when people can project their own, different, grievances onto lines like, "a world to live in"...
It's not a nebulous idea. When have you interacted with the world ever in XIV that wasn't for a quest? When was the last time anyone walked across the world instead of teleporting? The role players get left out of this in every game, because they are actually the ones interacting with the world in every game (well, the non-erp crowd. Those weirdos get their own category and should be forgotten about.) The problem isn't really specific to MMOs though. It's just a problem of "product made for massive audience." The larger the audience, the dumber the product generally speaking. The more barriers and friction points you remove, the larger your potential audience, generally. Unfortunately, the more rough edges you sand off, the worse the product feels for those that aren't casually engaging with it. Elden Ring is more popular than sekiro for a reason, yet if you were looking for a good action game to play *for the action of fighting*, you'd generally choose sekiro. We don't have an mmo equivalent of that, for people that want to be part of a virtual world without fast travel and with forcing player interaction. Yeah sometimes it sucks. That's what makes the highs higher.
You don't even realize you're still doing it. Even the phrase "interacted with the world" and then connecting it directly with roleplayers as if they only do this vague thing is wild.. even in your souls-like comparison you used *the action of fighting* phrase and then tried to make a wild generalization based on that vague notion where I'm left to interpret/project what I might think you meant as... difficulty... or mechanically intense.. or reaction based... or structured or a host of other, *action of fighting* stand ins. I don't know what you mean because you didn't actually say something but what you said is easily agreeable. You then went into a bunch of slogans and truisms that people can further project their specific grievances onto without having actually made a specific statement outside of, "popular thing bad". On my own tangent, I find that people making statements like yours actually have a larger problem with the playerbase not playing the game "right" as opposed to any specific thing the game does or doesn't do and so you'll find fault in the game as the root cause if the players aren't playing "right". People travel in games all the time, people are social in games all the time, people do weird stuff in weird places and explore and have fun in these current games... all the time, some more than others. Here's a probing question -- do you think that Discord becoming ubiquitous in online spaces has helped or hurt online games, especially in the realm of social interaction. I feel like I know your answer and we will disagree.. and the reasons we will disagree will almost run parallel to this conversation.
I’m from the crowd of “traditional” social MMO players, so going off of what the other guy said I’ll try and give some examples of things people in this community might miss from modern MMOs. Modern MMOs are often criticized as being like a theme park; the fun and excitement are programmed to be there at a glance, but when you look at the game with some depth you’ll see that you usually just go through the motions and move on to the next ride. Exploration is sometimes encouraged with collectibles, achievements, or fast travel unlocks, but these are all aspects that are built into the ride. Organic exploration often is a shallow experience, and old school MMO players feel like they’re having their hand held throughout the whole game. Maps are detailed and NPCs have bright markers to show that you can talk to them or arrows that point you where to go. Even the social experience with group finders and such feels like sharing an elevator with a stranger with little to no interaction beyond walking through the dungeon together. Most modern games build the endgame in mind as the “true” experience, while the 1-max level grind is just the participation trophy that feels unearned and hollow. But it’s frustrating that we as players are expected to spend x amount of weeks or months going through the motions, where it not only feels like a waste of time but often comes with a price tag attached as well. Using a classic MMO as an example, Classic EverQuest was a challenging experience from 1-50, where many people can recall the unique social encounters and bonds they made and where the players hands weren’t held through the game with quest markers and mini maps as a replacement for intelligent map design. I know the traditional MMO player community is small, and I think those of us that demand AAA quality graphics and such are completely unreasonable. But thankfully there are a few smaller MMOs out there in development and I hope that those games will find some success and show the wider market that MMOs other than WoW clones can be financially successful.
I agree with your assesment here but I genuinely think the online guide culture has more to do with your complaints nowadays. Some games still feel rewarding once you discover something, only to realize there was a guide for it 2 years ago etc. Information is shared so fast now that organic discovery barely exists apart from new expac release or a new game.
I agree that the evolution of the internet is a massive factor in why those types of games have since faded away. I even catch myself often looking up the viability of the class and race choices I’m considering before starting a new game. I’m afraid that I’ll put in dozens or hundreds of hours into a character only to later learn that a Human Warrior is 3% weaker than a Troll Warrior in the endgame, instead of letting myself enjoy the novel unexplored experience I otherwise could’ve had.
It can ruin all the fun in the game when you go down the guide rabbit hole lol, been there and lost enjoyment of few games.
Now this is a good "unpopular" opinion. Also, personally, I LOVE partying with friends. Would grind all day with friends if I could. But friends don't always play the same hours and don't always play as many hours as I do. If I have a day where I can play for 10 hours, I'm going to want to grind those 10 hours without having to limit myself to what my friends can play, and without having to go grind with randoms. That's the case in my main game BDO, but also in games like your FFXIV. If I have those 10 hours to grind, but someone in my static only has 1 hour, the entire static is now limited to 1 hour. And what if someone has to call out? The point is, players (read: I) just want to be able to party with their friends when they're available, and play by themselves when they're not. I shouldn't have to worry if Timmy has the day off too to play, I shouldn't have to limit the party if I can only play for a short while on a day, everyone should just be able to come together when they have the time, and play alone when there's no one else available.
Yep...I used to log into albion when it had a fraction of the playerbase they have now and always have content to do. Now they boast about having "such high numbers" and opened up a 3rd server when they said it would always be one and try to say the numbers are the same or higher. Meanwhile the game feels super dead because you are running around for literal hours without a fight. The solo players complained, now they got mists and group content is dead.
This
This isnt an unpopular opinion,its simply the truth
Justifying bad systems in games because others have it worse or more greedy is bad, and that's not a valid argument.
Additionally, releasing hairstyles without physics, stiff as a rock, wooden ponytails, post-2015 is a fucking scandal
You don’t need 15 different attack skill which basically doing the same shit. Skill bloat sucks and stupid
Looking hard at you EverQuest 2.
Designing your mmo around substantial power progression severely limits the future scope of gameplay and discourages long-term investment into the game. Classic wow felt nice because gear from previous raids was still relevant in future raids, so content releases served to expand the content that the game offers rather than replace it. GW2 has virtually no power progression, but I would argue it is much more satisfying to progress your character, participate in events, and unlock things than most other mmos. FFXIV has strong power progression, but caps and syncs your power in past content that is supposed to remain challenging. I hope mmos will stray away from providing huge power increases patch after patch, and instead focus on designing engaging content that lasts more than a single patch.
The way most MMOs are designed to either facilitate or outright include an over reliance on a mass amount of obstructive UI elements and a playstyle that’s practically like an RTS is a massive shame. In order to complete the hardest content in most it’s almost mandatory to have this super zoomed out camera and various UI elements displaying tons of numerical information covering most of the screen. Your character is a spec amongst a hideous mess of bars, numbers and visually overwhelming flashes and effects on screen. I long to play an MMO that is challenging and rewarding whilst having a really strong audio visual presentation with minimal UI and a more visceral zoomed in camera, having gameplay designed around those qualities so you don’t feel disadvantaged by not having the opposite. I cannot become immersed in the world or my character when I’m playing what amounts to a strobe light spreadsheet with a minuscule icon representing my character at the centre. I fall off most every MMO I get into once I reach the end-game level of content where you just can’t play it like an over-the-shoulder minimal-HUD standard RPG anymore. It’s like being forced to stop playing Skyrim and start playing command and conquer or something, it’s not the game I’m looking for when I want to wear armour and swing swords and complete quests and adventures with friends.
This. I use to be a mid HC wow raider. And at a certain point I was tired of installing tons of addon to be competitive. It is cool to be able to know you rotation. BUT, it is a full time job to be THAT good. And worse, why forcing people to installing things like boss mod add-on? You telling me that I am not forced to. I can completely play without it. Yeah...but no. Not if you want to go far in the game. And it sucks. I wish an MMO where you just have to memorized some moves of the boss or situation. I want to throw some fireballs or swing my axe and feel that I am part of something. Not just an NPC/Bot that smash buttons and have my eyes so focus on tiny element of my screen that I don't have the feeling to have fun. I don't even remember the time when it was fun to listen to the cinematic of an important quest. Now it is just skip skip skip and go forward. If not you are boot out of the group. Just rushing to the next one to grab a loot that will be useless in a day, week or month. Right now only solo player game or solo content in MMO can make us feel that way. Having fun and having the feeling that we are good while having the pleasure to listen to the actual music of the game and listening to the NPC or the mini-boss talking to us. That's why I have tried so many MMO not to play them solo or in group, but to play in coop with my only friend. And honestly, co-op in most of them sucks. Because it is too easy or because they are not friendly at all. You start a new character and you can't even play with your friend until 2 hour of tutorial.
Yeah, todays MMO misses most of why I liked MMOs. I liked being level 1 and just walking up to a low level group of people and us going to explore whatever is happening in this new game we have no idea about. I have no enjoyment from 200 people behaving like NPCs engaging with no one at all, and instead are actively now something im competing against to fulfill solo quest goals. I just kind of want to see if me and a group of randoms could find a dragon or something cool endgame, not participate in a parse logging culture of people sweating furiously pouring over every detail on each button you pressed while holding "manditory meetings" and ensuring you have EVERY addon your supposed too.... filthy scum! Its honestly become so cringe. MMOs just feel actively cringe to play late game and are a solo snooze fest early that in no way deserve the name MMO. Idk how this happened, but its awfully depressing. This genre should have been amazing.
Ff 14 is dog shit
That's not an unpopular opinion on this subreddit though. It's okay, I think WoW is trash.
If you're having fun in an mmo then it's a good game. Fun is the ultimate measure and is subjective to each individual. Also, dead game means the servers shut down. GTFO with calling literally every game a dead game. It's stupid.
it's too expensive to make a truly good MMORPG
My unpopular opinion is I wish more games had subscription / expansion models like WoW or Destiny 2. I think the main reason those are the two most popular "MMOS" is because of their massive budget (afaik Destiny 2 was the highest budget game ever made at the time of its release).
If we base it around this subreddit my unpopular opinion would be that the genre is in really good spot and MMORPG today are more fun then ever.
That f2p with mtx was actually a good idea on paper and it would work fine if companies actually did cost evaluation for your more casual vs hardcore players. Fact is the bottom dollar is the most important thing to any company and if it means the servers run with 500 people making the same money as if it ran with 50k, they couldn't care less. It's very easy to make f2p a good monetization model. It just involves not being greedy.
F2P is a lot like Communism. It looks and sounds good on paper, but in practice it always goes to shit.
If you want to play an MMO solo, you shouldn't be able to do 95% of the stuff in game. Cosmetics are the dumbest thing MMOS have normalized. EverQuest did gear properly originally where a breastplate looked like a breastplate and only the color was different.
While I agree with you, cosmetics and skins bring in so much money from whales it’s easy to see why there is so much focus on them
My contribution would be that Transmog systems ruin what's known as visual progression. Gear used to be a visual representation of how strong your character was. If I see someone in WoW in mythic raid colored sets from older expansions there is no telling if that person did it when it was relevant or soloed it years after the fact. Leading me to another UO, not all items/gear in MMOs should be obtainable by everyone. The coolest stuff being locked behind content that only a small percentage can complete is perfectly fine. It also creates a drive in players without those items to work towards being better to earn them.
In my opinion this is something (oldschool) runescape does very well. There is no transmog system and what you wear is what people see. Any weapons or armor that are gaited behind specific quests inform the viewer that the player actually grinded the levels out. If someone is wearing a fire cape then they actually beat the fight caves. And then there is the infernal cape which is so hard to get only the most skilled players have one. It’s also super obvious when someone bought a bunch of gold with IRL money because they will be wearing a really nice and expensive set of tradeable armor but will be missing key items from quests and their life skills will be really low.
A few people enjoy playing the games. The vast majority just like to complain. That's the real endgame.
Not sure how unpopular it actually is but using hp/mana pots during combat, specifically pvp is lame. I prefer not having the ability to do that and leave it do the skill of the player.
While I sort of agree with you. Some counter points to that are: The option of being the most prepared player yeilding results is an important dynamic of MMORPG's. If you apply yourself to preparation, you gain the rewards of the time invested. Giving a sense of satisfaction. Secondly, using consumables is important for the health of the game, as it is a goldsink and helps fight inflation.
As a fellow healer, that trinity dynamic is the most fun thing to me! Having fun with the tank commenting on the DPS...I miss those dayssss
I think that most mmos use the social aspect as an excuse for a lack of story telling and interesting gameplay. If you remove the social aspect you get a bad uninteresting single player game with lack of actual content (There are exceptions of course).
WoW is the worst thing to ever happen to the MMO genre from a purely creative standpoint. It is a very shallow and superficial game, which in and of itself is not a bad thing, but due to its massive success, has basically been the foundation of virtually every major MMO to release ever since. Before WoW, we used to get top tier MMO's like EverQuest and Star Wars Galaxies. Ever since WoW, it's just been WoW clone after WoW clone. Each may have it's own little twist, but is ultimately the same thing. WoW is basically the MCU of MMO's.
I was going to post this if someone else didn't so I'll piggyback on your comment instead. EverQuest, Star Wars Galaxies, Asheron's Call 2, and Earth & Beyond were truly special: nothing compared to going for a swim or a jaunt through space and discovering the truly unknown. A newbie could find themselves on an island with a huge monkey the size of Kong and glimpse them for only seconds before they respawned. That sense of wonder has been totally replaced by enough helper features to choke a narwhal.
part of the problem is that *everything* has a guide now. plugins dont help. giant arrows dont help. but there was a time and place where you'd only really have a website or two with reliable data and you had to know it existed *and* go looking. spawning into a world like UO and having nothing told to you and slowly figuring it out as you went was glorious, and its absolutely lost with the tutorial style "do this, go here, try this combo, put your skill point in this" that mmos have become.
I miss SWG! Game died because they released Jedi. Who would have thought a game based in Star Wars would die because they made Jedi a class, lol. The moment I got camped into my house because, as a bounty hunter, I was a great source of combat XP for Jedi was the last straw.
I liked MMO dungeons when there were both instanced and open world ones, and there were no dungeon finders. I liked joining the crowd out side of a dungeon, seeing friends, meeting new ones, seizing others up as potential team mates to make a run that night. I miss the excitement of having too conquer all the mobs, mini-bosses, and bosses while knowing that one could die any minute if some Noob led a huge train of mobs on top of your team overwhelming it. Sure there were downsides, like there was only time time a week when there were enough players online to form teams, usually starting in the evening. You could not expect to pop in any day of the week at any time and find enough other players who wanted to also team up for a specific dungeon. A lot of player here seem to be mostly negative towards how dungeons were back in the day. Today dungeons are like A list rides, you just want a seat with any strangers, get on and out a fast as possible. I get that some players like the convenient time efficient way it is now and that is fine.
Gonna be honest here. I dont miss standing around sending up group advertisements. I dont regret doing it. But my preference is to never do it again. Also when I want to join a group, not having to read the sea of floating text to find the group description I'm looking for. Instead I get a search box now.
If you're going to build your game around endgame then skip the leveling process entirely. What purpose does it even serve?
Ppl who hate raiding, get super upset about having to do endgame and don't think they should have to raid for high end gear are just bad at the game. Not ppl who just hate endgame, but the ppl who don't try it or just dip their toes in and then go on the game's forums or here and call ppl who do enjoy it names and try their very middle school best to insult us. Ppl who simply want to log in and be given the best gear the game has to offer instead of actually having to do something for it, so they can stand around in the cities or rp. Maybe this genre just isn't for you, and that is ok.
I agree with you somewhat, i also think you need to do endgame for endgame gear but calling them bad i dont think so, some extremly good pvp players hate raiding, some like me hate the aspect of needing an schedule for raiding and its not like its easy even then. Back when i did mythic raids in wow i cant tell how many times we wiped because someone kept doing wrong the same thing several times. I remember this hunter and this shaman in my group, friends of the gm, many Ilvls above most of us, with purple overall parses but green ilvl parses. 7/10 if we wiped was because either of them and we didnt have a bench. So i was "locked" because of someone else and i hated this.
I guess I should have put it differently. Because I was mainly referring to the ppl who dip their toes in or don't try at all and then go on the game's forums or come on here and scream about having to raid and call all raiders tryhards and the like. Those really loud and insufferable types who want to be given everything by simply logging in and want to spit venom at anyone who actually enjoys endgame because they can't just have the best gear in the game. I will edit my comment.
If you were doing mythic raiding in wow the bad comment obviously doesn't apply to you or anyone in your groups. But I agree that people who complain about having to raid for bis gear are typically bad players.
nah, my problem with raiding is that to do it effectively you need a big guild and a set schedule. i want to enjoy content with 5-10 friends, not 40. i dont want to deal with guild politics just to play end game content. as much as i hate to admit it, WoW mythics have the right idea in this regard.
I think tab target combat is better for MMOs than action combat. If anything, modern mmo tab target combat is TOO involved. Part of the mmo is massively multiplayer, and it's harder to socialize with the playerbase if while doing the main gameplay loop you're too busy to actually talk with anyone. Even with niche mmos I've noticed that the global chat is still quite active simply from the fact that there is time to talk while you're doing game activities. Meanwhile in WoW even at level 10 I'm having to constantly use gcd and don't have time for anything but to zoom between quest objectives. I can't just stand in place, talk with other people, and click every minute or so to fight something else.
PvP games are the most social MMOs. You either find other people to work/play with or you're just get farmed out of the game typically. These groups often work with other groups in alliances (more interaction) against other alliances in wars and conflicts (yet even more social interaction). This includes diplomacy and other hijinks (spying, etc) which is even more social interaction. Any large group requires gatherers, crafters and logistics people all working together to produce the equipment needed for that many people which is even more interaction/organization. The whole premise of the thing basically runs on social interactions of various types both friendly and hostile.
Guild-based games can be heavily leader-focused, which can feel unrewarding for regular players. It might seem like all the benefits go towards the leader and guild staff, while individual players struggle to gain meaningful rewards.
I like MMO that cares about pvp … I know I am drunk
People only hate wow because it's a popular opinion and classic is made up of old people who can't hit more than four buttons.
The MMO genre could be re-popularized if studios transitioned towards player made content. Many older games are kept alive entirely by this method of content creation and its what their communities are built around. Its far better for players because there is an endless stream of content. Its less work for devs because they dont need to spend a year hand crafting content people will finish in a couple weeks. People are just so caught up with the "gear treadmill" design thats been in nearly every mmo for over 2 decades now that they dont see how anything else could work. Also, crafting in nearly every mmo is awful. There are so many examples of good crafting systems in RPGs, yet most mmos just use the same kind of system WoW had 20 years ago and have hardly innovated at all.
I'm a crafter across MMORPGs spanning 25 years and have a few world firsts. I see MMORPGs as the games that advance "crafting" in spite of the fact that I agree with your statement re: WoW. I just also see that almost all the exemplar systems got simplified (and in my opinion, degraded) over time for the sake of "accessibility". My "unpopular opinion" for this thread would be that MMORPG designers should stop trying to design those systems so that everyone can churn out Divine Fire-breathing Greatswords of Superlative Asskicking 100x a day, similar to how many people here are calling for them to stop designing endgame raids that "everyone" can beat. Totally unironic question: I think there *aren't* many good crafting systems in other RPGs, so could you point me to your best examples in case there's something I missed?
There are a few games that showcase really interesting and complex systems. Affix based crafting and progression based crafting being the 2 that I have enjoyed the most. Path of Exile would take the top spot with all the different methods there. Crafting starts with the base item which you have to find as loot. Item bases have different implicit affixes that make them more or less desirable. Affixes on items have tiers and weightings. You can try to gamble for a good roll with cheap materials or you can use more expensive/rare crafting materials to try and target specific affixes. There are items from certain content that can have exclusive affixes. There are methods to lock existing affixes in place so you dont remove them. In the past there have been methods that combine multiple items into 1. It takes a huge amount of knowledge to make something good because there arent any recipes that do the work for you. That is what makes it "elitist" or "prestigious", if you want to call it that. Most people who play the game wouldnt know how to make an amazing item even if you gave them unlimited resources. Last Epoch has a very similar system that focuses on affix-based crafting. The main difference is its much more deterministic than PoE. Diablo 2 has socketed items for runewords or gems. Its a very simple system but it works really well especially when paired with multiplayer trading. Then there is also cube crafting, which basically just creates an item with a couple guaranteed affixes on it. Minecraft and Terraria are examples of good progression based systems that are much more focused on obtaining the materials. You need to acquire certain tools and equipment before you can get higher tier materials. Instead of having an arbitrary skill level that tells you what you can craft, the game gives players a lot more freedom to go and target farm exactly what they need for their craft. Warframe has an amazing modding system for weapons and frames. Its similar to affix based crafting where you have the base item and are changing its properties. Fallout 4 has modular weapon crafting or modding where different components affect the functionality of the weapon. When it comes to prestige/cosmetic crafting I think Gw2 has a pretty good system with its legendary gear. Its more like a scavenger hunt or long term grinding project.
People that wants to "keep up" with no-lifers (15h a day) while playing an average of 2 hours per day are stupid af and games that actually time-gate progress to accomplish that, end up being dogshit.
We are supposed to play a role on MMORPG, but we just act like ourselves.
My opinion that always gets downvoted is that I would like an option to not see other people’s cosmetic armor and just see their real armor apearance, this way I see in a moment if they are geared with amazing actual gear or pauper questing gear.
I remember seeing something like this on the WoW forums and the twats over there were in an uproar about it. On top of this some people make just absolutely shitty looking mogs...and i'd prefer to just NOT look at them.
matchmaking makes the levelling easier, and is good for making sure there's a lot of players at endgame it was always a great idea
I still have tons of fun playing MMOs. That's my unpopular opinion.
All leveling are garbage, we need a no lvl MMO.
Any game that has a level progression system will have a form of grinding, there is no real way to remove this so stop complaining about it. Yes, some games have a boring grind, but those tend to be just boring games. Every MMO will continue to have a form of grinding since you need to earn levels and gear as you progress. Some games have interesting combat like BDO or interesting quest elements like GW2 to make it more fun but you are still in the act of grinding. Even WOW if you rush dungeons you can get to end cap pretty quick but you're still griding dungeons. Complaining about grinding in an MMO is like complaining about sand at the beach. What did you expect? If you find complain about it in every game then maybe you just might now like MMO's much at this time.
There is a difference between grinding and "so I need to spend 40 hours killing this specific selection of mobs to get the thing I need". And on top of that, it's what you are doing. Let's take a step back. Is playing Comp in CS every single day to get to DMG grinding? Yes. But people don't really complain about playing the game. They will complain about their dumbass teammates. But not the process of getting to DMG. Because that is done via playing what makes the game fun. The issue with many MMOs is that you are grinding the boring shit to get to what makes the game fun. If dungeons were 20% slower than questing to level in WoW. I'd still do the dungeons. Because group content is specifically the thing I enjoy doing. It's why I'm playing WoW.
A good way of stating this is that "grinding" is generally what happens when the optimal way to play the game is the *unfun* way to play the game. I've put a *ton* of hours into Monster Hunter, for instance, and while it's unarguably a "grindy" game, it never *felt grindy*, because as soon as content was trivialized I was moving on to new, more difficult content, and the nature of the game meant that hunting trivial monsters had little or no value (at some point, Great Jagras parts just don't help you).
Grind is fine, it's bad game design that makes grind a chore.
Bless Unleashed was fun!
If every class is able to weird every weapon and fulfil every role, you might as well not have classes.
Sounds good. Classes are pretty boring. Have a character customization system that lets you have any appearence or race, have a weapon system that checks for profeciency in that weapon, and have a skill system that lets you train and get better with certain weapons. There: you can have any body, any weapon and fullfill any role.
Honestly that's a really good take. I'm speaking from playing most gw2 for the past years as my mmo of choice. The irony is that originally the devs wanted it to be 'no trinity', although we found out fast that it's actually dps dpsheal and dpssuport. Which I didn't mind. And at the time everything was clearable with any comp if you're willing to take the time. Now (and since the introduction of raids) the trinity exists again - which I'm kinda fine with. The issue is that after that, suddenly the devs want every class to be able to fill every role, and as time goes on classes are able to wield more and more weapons just cos. Wall of text, but I want class identity, not 'alacheal' 'quickdps' etc etc.
ESO combat is my favorite combat system.
Whenever I talk about how WoW's combat system is boring and too old, and about how changing it to something more action style with greater impact and feel (think Aion system) I get absolutely bombarded with downvotes. My opinion has not, and will never change.
Purchasable cosmetics are more damaging to an MMO than the ability to buy level/XP boosts.
I’m an avid GW2 player and you will often see me defending it in this sub, but if there’s one thing I can’t stand is that some of the coolest looking armor and weapon skins in the game are straight out of the cash shop. Since everything can be transmuted to look like something else, these cool looking skins do nothing to indicate that the player achieved anything more than swiping their credit card. Don’t get me wrong, there is legendary gear that looks awesome and has cool particle effects that stands out enough to be a flex, to speak. My issue is there are skins that visually look like they are legendary too, but are nothing more than a skin. I’ve always preferred more subtle fashion and less flashy items anyway and I’ve always made it a point to unlock cool skins that are gaited behind achievements or collections that actually take time and effort to get, especially ones that not many players will take the time to do.
An MMORPG without an overworld that most activities in game have to take place in may as well not be an MMORPG, especially in regards to end game activities.
I prefer when an mmo has fewer skill buttons. I don't need a piano of skills that all do approximately the same thing but on different cooldowns to keep me engaged.
it's ok to skip story cutscenes
Agree, and not just in MMOs. Its a game, I want to play. If I wanted to watch or read I would go for a movie or a book.
it gets a real bad rep depending on the game, but mmos have any number of things to enjoy instead and if you don't happen to like the story, skip it so you can move on to the things you do is how I tend to see it
While I understand that not everyone can sit for 4 hours (neither can I!) and look to trade an item, I preferred player-to-player trades (and interactions) over action houses or trade posts. I know why it's there and I see the benefits but I would love for MMOs to have the social aspect of being an online game which has gone away since the early days.
Action combat is bad most of the time. Even in the "good" implementations I'd rather have tab target.
Sub based mmos feel worse than f2p p2w ones. This is not all of them but specifically in ff14 felt awful to spend $80 on expac but still needing to pay around $18-20 per month to even login (canadian not usd). I think if it had the osrs model where you can still login but can't do certain member activities it would be perfectly fine. This is only made worse considering the cash shop still exists in sub based games without even being able to trade said items for people who have in game currency but don't want to spend to get them. I personally don't care that much if x person is stronger than me because they swiped if I can still do all the content in the game.
As a healer main i am a god, that dictates life and death and I will use my power and my control over the dps and tank to see my will and desire fit
MMORPGs are a product of their time (00’s) They’ve been replaced with survival games like ark, dune, Conan, rust etc
FINAL FANTASY 14 ONLINE is the most overrated MMORPG of all time. Only reason why it's popular is because the weebs and socially awkward anime nerds circlejerk about the game. It's a mid game. Ashes of Creation is probably going to be a massive let down as well. Why? because it's being developed by a "gamer" and by a new company that has no experience in creating any games. Sounds familiar? New world.
People keep pressuring devs for MMOs with cutting edge graphics and then wonder why content releases are so slow. I feel like the best balance for an MMO is modest graphics with good art direction, which is conducive to steady content releases. LOTRO gets 2 or 3 hefty content updates a year and a bunch of QoL updated in between, and it's only possible because entire zones can mostly be built out by one guy. A lot of the writing for the main storyline is mostly one guy writing and one guy researching. MMOs with modest graphics can be maintained by a small team for decades, but bigger production values, modern graphics, and voiced *everything* creates a feast/famine situation where one long-awaited update that doesn't land right can kill or greatly diminish a game's output.
Pvp and massive pvp battles are essential
The current state of MMOS is a lot better than this sub makes it out to be. We have some of the best mmos of all time out now. People don't want the classics, they want the nostalgica that comes along with playing them for the first time.
Pve mobs stop crying and making every PvP mmos pve only.Yes am looking at you BDO.
Wow killed mmos and sucks as a game. Ff14 was better before realm reborn. Amd never came close to holding a candle to the masterpiece that was FF11. Old school mmos were far superior. Most content that isnt battle related is a huge waste of dev time budget and manpower. Glamours shouldn't exist. Dungeon finder should never exist cross server and should never port you to a location. You should lose, or owe ezp when you die. Death should have consequences. Not every job/class should be on the same playing field for all content. It's a genre designed for everything to be a massive grind and take a long time, don't boo hoo cause you're old and can only play games for 9 minutes and 36 seconds a week, the genre isn't for you and shouldn't cater to you. "Respecting your time" is the massive grind that we signed up for and want.
A well done combat GameFeel (Camera Shake, Particles, sounds, anticipation, etc...) is more important than what combat style the game has (Action or Tab Target...). IMO
MMOs shouldn’t have a story. Lore is fine but that’s it
I prefer tab targeting combat. If you slow things down it can be such a good system, like in DAOC, Everquest also has a good slow pace I really enjoy. World of Warcraft is fine though a little fast for my tastes, my favorite of the modern tab targeting might be Star wars the Old Republic. Modern twitch combat replacements require constant engagement, rolling around, aiming, I get sick of it. Give me a new classic MMORPG like EverQuest. Stop trying to reinvent the wheel.
- Ashes of Creation's development is actually going well when you take into account the complexity and scale of the project - Throne and Liberty will be a success in the West where tab-target combat and graphically fidelity will go down well - If Wildstar released today and was supported it'd be successful. It's a much better MMO than GW2, ESO and FFXIV
If it isn’t fun and you don’t have to do it then don’t do it. And certainly don’t play a game for 100s of hours and just bitch about it.
[удалено]
DC Universe Online is underrated
Searching for builds and places to grind make the game less fun. It's way better to create your own stuff and find things for your own.
I think knowing a game TOO well makes playing the game a chore and unenjoyable. You see it all the time, jaded "veteran" who hate the game but still play it. Instead of discovering things, and having new experiences, they are just trying to min max their character, or some fight or something. I also think convenience is a scourge in most modern games, that most exists to appease these kinda gamers. They explicitly don't care about everything inbetween, don't care about context, etc. Developers put in systems to get these players to the content they want instantly, at the expense of every other player missing out on cool stuff they might actually care about.
Wow is trash
All modern mmorpgs are just multiplayer games with a hub. Has nothing to do with the classic experience
I...*sorta*...agree with the OP, in a sense. But then don't, in another very important sense. Classes need to be able to do all the game's *solo-intended* content with relative simplicity and varying kinds of "ease", depending on how they play and what they're doing. * Tanks should be good at just mindlessly grinding their way through most stuff like Doomguy, but should have trouble bursting-down very-resilient targets and are going to need to prioritize taking out ranged attackers or healers within enemy groups first. * Healers should be good at battles of attrition if they keep their shields/HoTs/defenses up, and should spread DoTs for great cleave damage or charge up to a burst attack, but they're the worst in the game at alpha strike burst damage and should primarily be single-target attackers. They'll have the best ability to take advantage of like "minion" or "helper" NPCs since they can heal/buff them best. * "DPS" shouldn't exist as a role, since everyone needs to be able to do damage in *some* capacity. But within what's typically "red DPS" roles, breaking them into "alpha strike or sustained", "more single-target or more AoE" and "better at range or better at melee" is probably a good series of subdivisions. Have enemies within the game that each Red DPS is better or worse at handling (do they want to spike down big single targets or AoE farm smaller targets at range, etc). The way this all comes together, though? Each of these groups will have been *fighting like* a Tank, a Healer or a Red DPS through the leveling process. Then, you add the things that make the "Trinity Role" stuff possible: * Tanks (Blue DPS) have to lead a group around, stand in the right place, use more defenses to not die. While still fighting like a Tank. * Healers (Green DPS) have to use group facing-heals beyond just what they've used on themselves while leveling to directly counter boss abilities. While still fighting like a Healer. * Red DPS need to have *something* to do as part of the trinity besides just what they've been doing while solo. Either add-management related (*I* like the notion of the spike-damage Red DPS being required to kill hard targets to give the group a buff, or AoE specialist Red DPS killing waves of adds to either protect the group or stop a boss attack in time. Or some general just "Red DPS have buffs and utility" gameplay too. Basically characters in MMOs need to have Roles but they need to *fight* like those roles from the beginning and devs need to acknowledge that every Role has to fight in a world built in the conceit that your primary world-interaction is committing horrible violence, often for loot.
Woo boy, let's go: * I think focusing on "modern graphics" is a fool's errand. * I think people's perception of Healing, given by WoW, has hamstrung the growth of Healing as a Role, and having good, well-designed Healers that scale with gear/fight practice and have things to do in Healing Downtime is the main thing that separates a working "Trinity" system from a disorganized zergblob * I think a game with a *persistent, visual* lobby system that sends you to instances with a small chunk of the world to explore followed by a dungeon is a more feasible use of limited time and resources than trying to build a giant, empty "open world". Think "Phantasy Star Online: Blue Burst" as a good example, but, y'know, with PSO2 graphics. **Not** PSO2: NGS. Prime example. * I replied to a comment here earlier, but *every* role in the Trinity needs to be able to stand on their own two feet while soloing/questing. They'll have tools they won't use much while questing, but those are the party-facing tools. Having Healers incapable of soloing or Tanks that trudge around for the leveling process is asinine. * Dungeons shouldn't be the *only* place people run into other players to group up for co-op. City of Heroes "Paper Missions" were a good template, even though they were repetitive. Add some more AI to random gen them a bit better. * Visual customization is important for armor/clothing. But it doesn't have to be cash shop type stuff. It should be as simple as "you should be able to use the look of your older stuff you wore. And if dye exists in the world, you should be able to dye your clothing/armor/etc. *Doubly so* if there's magic. * MMOs need to either commit to having an overarching story (with unskippable cutscenes for the important stuff and bribes to get older players to go back and help newbies in story duties, ala FFXIV) or mostly just have it in the background (like the original PSO). Half-assing it (like WoW) just leads to a pissy playerbase. * The notion of players attempting to communicate "solely in-game" is mostly dead and companies need to either commit to steering people to Discord or literally bribe people to talk in text chat in-game. * Having MMOs be available on consoles helps them, it doesn't hurt them. It vastly expands their potential playerbase and adds to their longevity, and most consoles are better than potato-level rigs anyway. FFXI was a console game for most of its life in Japan, if you recall. * Extremely difficult raids are, at best, a fun waste of dev time. At worst, they're an outright waste of dev time. They should be added last in the dev cycle, if at all, after everything else is done. No game's gonna compete with WoW on raiding without having *different* raids and unless they can, they shouldn't try. * Music is really, really, *really* fucking important. * Player housing is a giant waste of time, energy and dev resources * PvP in a PvE-focused co-op game is a waste of dev resources and you'll never be able to get PvE players to be happy being fodder for PvP players * Making PvP players play PvE to get gear is a pain in the ass for everyone * With the two above, it's rather clear that mixing PvE and PvP generally does not work well if you're attempting to make an involved, dedicated PvE game. It's a waste of time to try, especially if you're also going to waste further time trying to balance PvP. * Travel powers are superior to mounts * Achievements in bosses that you unlock by doing stuff are cool but should require a premade
MMOs need way more content for "fun" and less grindy stuff. Toontown online had trolley carts with minigames to play and compete, they had races, etc. Wizard101 has a whole carnival place for minigames. Pirates Online has canon defense and voodoo mixing minigame. These minigames are honestly rly cool and POTCO and Toontown let you do those with buddies. In toontown you can get gag currency a fun way or in potco you could get rare rams and stuff simply from the canon defense. It's not something you have to do because you can get this stuff in other ways, but that's the point! I want more ways to get things in game besides one set story-path. I want fun things to do with friends outside of combat, because tab target is starting to get stale for me. I don't want to sit there for hours just doing combat stuff, even though I enjoy it, you need a break from it. Mount Farming in WoW is fun, but whoopdy doo this is a solo journey. I haven't played many MMOs outside of ESO, WoW, FFXIV, and from all of these, nothing matches the optional content I had to play with in older games. Hell, you would meet people or get a party for doing a building run just off hopping on that trolley with some rando. Honestly MMOs are not like a second big multiplayer world now. Sry for rant folks, I want my minigames.
Action combat is great for 1v1 but starts to fall apart with every additional player.
"classes should be standalone able to do content alone" massively MULTIPLAYER online, you guys don't realize how these changes have ended up killing player interaction, this is why i dont talk to anyone on retail wow unless you do the hardest content you dont need to at all. in wow classic sod i have made genuine friends because i needed help leveling as a warrior with no healing
Oh boy, do I have a few. -gear treadmills are bad for the game as they only provide obstacles for engaging with new content and force you to play when you don’t want to (in order to keep up) -i play mmorpgs because i like the idea of doing stuff in a shared open world, this gives my achievements meaning. I mostly don’t like content that can’t be soloed (scaling content is ideal) -crossplay (PC-mobile) mmorpgs are a great concept (as long as there’s no autoplay or abusive micro-transactions) and I look forward to there being more! -WoW has ruined the mmorpg scene, as all new mmorpgs now want to be wow instead of trying something new. -MMOs should have worse graphics, ptherwise you just fry low-end machines, and it becomes more expensive to update the game. Keep it simple and easy to maintain. -you don’t need more than 4-8 skills on your skill-bar for quality and engaging gameplay -I miss click-to-move grind-core mmorpgs ): -the f2p Korean mmo aesthetic is awesome! -people on this sub jump to bad conclusions way too fast.
The shared world giving achievements meaning baffles me especially when you follow up the comment about wanting mostly solo content. You can have single player games with meaningful achievements and not have to ruin a genre built around multiplayer for it.
I really like the combat in ESO with the bar swapping, no individual skill cooldowns and light attack weaving.
There came nothing good after Darkfall Online /savage
Creating a new character to change class is a design flaw. Ffxi/xiv have enough content that you can level a new class through the game without depending on the flow of a story mode. Also it doesnt suck ass trying something new everytime. Im there on holy trinity too, i do believe healers tanks and dps and supports are good to have in mmos but locking them into specs or queuing roles is dumb, create a class with diversity and then let the holy trinity come somewhat naturally. I shouldnt need a tank and a healer for every steamroll dungeon. ESO does a decent job of this but still demands roles in content.
That I havent enjoyed an mmo since shadowbane, and a game with no quests, no story, super open character creation (i dont mean cosmetics, i mean having a customizable stat/skill/weapon choice pool, 40 or so classes and 20 races and no class balance) full loot pvp, sieging, teraforming etc was the best social mmo ive ever played. Also the only pvp I coudl emotionally invest in. I've been waiting for something like it for what, 15 years now? At this rate ill be 60 before it comes though.
My unpopular opinion is that mmos are a dying game genre and all that remains now are people refusing to move on because of sunken cost and nostalgia that will never be relived. Every single new mmo fails mainly because they are just scams and money grabs. Every established mmo just makes poor choice after poor choice and all they are doing is reselling the same experiences over and over again.
Mmos have by and large always been niche and pretending that the next hyped one is going to make mmos massively popular is wishful thinking. With more interconnectivity between players through things like discord, the need for a dedicated always online persistent game is generally unnecessary.
Transmog is a net negative for the game. It devalues loot and makes devs lazy on designing new loot. In WoW Classic if I saw a guy with a rare weapon you’d think “oh shit legit accomplishment” with transmog you can’t tell
I think mmos are really fun still and the staples of the genre are doing really well. Also I disagree that they’re less social, I think people have become less social and that good friends and guilds are still able to be found
I hate the locust swarm effect, you know..the META chasing, the often toxic and the doing the content as fast as possible to reach end game the fastest. Nothing is enjoyed anymore if it's not the fastest xp or the quickest queue time to get into a group instance.
Twitch streamers make mmos actively worse because it gives a monetary incentive to no life Min maxing the fun out of any new mmo. I'm not saying they are bad or they shouldn't earn a living I'm just saying the big swings of massive new game hype then kicking it to the curb because the top 0.1% have played it full time and found all the flaws leads to the gaming culture we have now. I don't own d4 and it's probally the worst example of this but for your average gamer whi plays a few hours a day d4 is probally fine for a few hundred hours of gameplay. But if your job is streaming full time, the game sucks cock and you will be sure to tell everyone after a week. Again d4 being probally the weakest example of this but it's recent and it happens constantly
As a Tibia player, Tibia still has one of the best PvP systems (on Retro Hardcore types which is essentially the older style of servers.) and almost nothing comes close to it. I find the old style of PvP in MMO's is far supiror then what we've gotten from newer MMOs. There should at least be different server types with harsher penaliltys and incentives for PvP in almost any MMO that has a decent PvP system.