TOG - The Older Gamers

Max Damage · 2nd December 2012, 11:52 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by solarbear88

This is my big problem with MMO's. They NEED to attract a big audience because they are expensive to make so they all cater to the lowest common denominator. Mind numbingly easy gameplay.

Lower the costs of development and you may see some pretty interesting games develop.

That's interesting. I'd be very interested to see Darkfall's financial model, because the game is limited to 10,000 concurrent players per server (2) which probably extrapolates out to around 100k subs. Hardly WoW numbers.

Interestingly, Darkfall Unholy Wars has just been greenlit on Steam (as far as Im aware the fastest greenlight by a country mile since Valve started that concept, it took two days for the game to be greenlit!!), so I can envisage a pretty major influx if the game is halfway decent.

I think players are tired of rails. Sandboxes offer the chance for the story to be created by the players themselves, rather than dictated by the developer. I think GW2 might be the last of the successful (?) themeparks because people have had enough now. The ongoing success of Second Life points to people wanting persistent virtual worlds to play in, where they can have an influence, play how they want, and the world and gameplay is dynamic.

In short, I dont think MMOs are dead, just Themeparks

Aldmw · 3rd December 2012, 02:26 AM

Like Max says, I think its themepark style MMOs that have had their day. WoW really was the pinnacle of themeparks, and since then the genre has slowly gone downhill. GW2 has changed things up for the good, but even then I was bored after 2 months of play. MMOs need a good shake up outside of the tab target quest based fantasy affairs with mage/rogue/warrior/priest set up we have become so used to. For now, ill stay with my fps stuff.

Koor · 3rd December 2012, 04:03 AM

I am not sure the extent of the differences between themepark and sandbox, but if it means having more static dungeons versus instances, I think that would be a good start.

Something I feel is missing in TSW, for example, are rare mobs that have rare drops. It was always fun to learn of rare mobs in dungeons or certain camps that had a chance to drop something specific to your characters needs. I like to run around and find named monsters and find a way to kill it for the reward.

Sure when you do an instance dungeon you can get a good drop, but there is not much "adventure" involved. This is perhaps where the theme park comes into play, so if making a world where you have to adventure to learn about the world, that works for me.

boomer0901 · 4th December 2012, 11:04 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Juganort

It would be very interesting to see this same conversation played out between a bunch of 16 - 25 year olds rather than us seasoned gamers. Maybe some of us are just flogged out on mmo's? How long can you play one genre of games before they all start to feel similar? I played wow for 3 years and now I can't touch anything that requires micro management. These days all I have patience for is FPS games where there is no management and the action is always instant and never ending.
When you were growing up did you play one type of game? I didn't, I played all types until I got older and got set in my ways. Food for thought

I still enjoy all types of games, although I will say there is a far cry between Final fanstasy 1 and the current one, I enjoyed the first 4 FF, but then they started to becoming animated games that you watched instead of playing, and I enjoyed the orginal 3 world of warcraft games despite the fact I hate micro managing games, I prefer turned based games like civ. Although you make a good point, when I was younger I didn't much care for FPS games and now that is what seems to be the only half way decent games I can find to play.

I was sadly disappointed in Transformers cybertron, I did enjoy batman AA, although if you're not a fan of batman you probably would have found that game really, really boring. I found dragon age to be about the worst hyped game I've ever had the priveledge to play, most would probably agree, but I hated it.

I don't know maybe with the better graphics and the faster computers and all the crap they can do with games these days, they only think about just that, what they can do, but not what they should be doing

solarbear88 · 4th December 2012, 07:44 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Max Damage

I think players are tired of rails. Sandboxes offer the chance for the story to be created by the players themselves, rather than dictated by the developer. I think GW2 might be the last of the successful (?) themeparks because people have had enough now. The ongoing success of Second Life points to people wanting persistent virtual worlds to play in, where they can have an influence, play how they want, and the world and gameplay is dynamic.

In short, I dont think MMOs are dead, just Themeparks

The problem with Sandboxes is they are often very slow and a gankfest.

I think the next great MMO will have lots of Sandbox elements, where you can actually build part of the world as well, without being too much open slaughter.

Flintwick · 5th December 2012, 11:44 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by solarbear88

The problem with Sandboxes is they are often very slow and a gankfest.

I think the next great MMO will have lots of Sandbox elements, where you can actually build part of the world as well, without being too much open slaughter.

This is often due to flawed design (or not actually being a true sandbox ala. Darkfall).

Eve is probably the best example of a diverse sandbox MMO on the market right now, and that manages the gankfest really well. The key is the systems that are created to support balanced diverse gameplay, rather than promote one playstyle over all others.

Tachyon · 6th December 2012, 02:17 AM

I don't think MMOs are dead, themepark or sandbox. Big budget MMOs may be dead, but the indies are bigger than ever. And much like in films, the small market ones are almost always better.