It seems everyone these days is building their MMORPG around the same model. Level grind + level cap, plus PVP plus safe non-pvp areas, Huge tech tree, ‘instanced dungeons’ and other such complexities.
All these MMORPGS have a flat-fee purchase + monthly subscription rate for unlimited access.
is there room for a different approach?
I want to see an MMORPG that charges me on a tiered rate. If I want to play an hour a week, charge me a few dollars a month, if I’m on an hour a day, maybe charge me $10 a month, 2 hours a day+ then maybe $15 or more a month.
I want to see an MMORPG without levels. Yup, you heard me, NO levels. NO level grind. no tedious tasks to build up points. Let me get better at combat by practice, and experience, not just putting in the hours. Goodbye to ‘gold farmers’. The games objective will be to have fun, not score points.
I want to see an MMORPG where there is some attempt at RP. I want to be immersed in a real online world, not just feel like im hanging out with the l33t H4xx0r clan who “WTB level 16 plate mail”.
I want to see an MMORPG all on a single server where I can hang out with anyone I know wherever in the world they are from.
frankly, I never understood (from the consummer viewpoint), and even less accepted, the fact that you have to pay per month to play a game…
there are so many good games (like Democracy, lol) for which you pay once, and that’s it. Otherwise, it gets just way to expensive.
I most likely will never pay for a game for which I have to pay more than just the game.
I’m an EQ addict (not as bad as I used to). The $10 (or less) I pay a month is worth the interaction I used to get from old friends who used to play with me.
Now, I’ve made new friends (other people who play EQ) and it’s a good way to play a game that is always different, and large enough that you can go months without being in the same place twice.
Paying monthly is one thing I dislike about MMORPG’s. Although I have shelled out for a few of them I find the results end up being the same anyway…
I don’t see why I should shell out ten pounds or so for a game I might only play say, once or twice a week for example. Obviously you get a rush point at the start of the game which is spiked with updates, but MMORPG’s are a touchy area, if the updates don’t suit me then I’ve just paid ten bucks to play a game that’s been updated in a way it’s pissed me off. I’m sure you get my point in the long run.
I play Guild Wars by the by, which is a nice little game that I know I can return to without the hassle of re-subscribing whenever I want.
In the past I was unfortunate enough to get onto MXO (Matrix Online) which did everything that makes you dislike an MMOG for example, Event-based missions. Perhaps it wasn’t smart of me to sign up literally a month before Sony decided to jump in and take it over? >.<
I agree here.
Effectively an Action-MMORPG? This may interest you but one reason I enjoy Guild Wars is the fact they get you doing missions and quests for exp (in fact combat gives little to no experience) which pretty much wipes out the “level grind” part.
Also by Action-MMORPG I meant something along the lines of say, Kingdom Hearts style combat system except perhaps with fixed stats unless you improve them by other means?
This will never be possible, you can’t filter out human beings of a game. You could have an RP server, MXO did this but failed miserably. It would have to be heavily moderated which would either mean an increase in price or the game company won’t bother. I’d take the latter from a business point of view.
Until everyone gets a super-NASA-computer no it won’t happen. International districts should however, be common place anyway are they not? I’ve never seen an MMORPG without an international district…
I have to admit I’ve never liked the genre (does Pokemon on gameboy count?). The monthy-payments just put me off, but the final clincher has to be the:
Run
Kill monster
Talk to man
Run
Find item to bring to man
Run
Get killed by monster
Respawn
Run for 30minutes to corpse to recover items.
I played Ultime Online for a while and it was great fun… until the servers was flooded with “powergamers” and stuff. The RP part almost disappeard and even though we tried in our guilds and some other guilds it was hard to keep the illusion up because every now and then someone was running around and ruining the whole thing.
After a while I ended up as GM at a unofficially shard where we were very hard on RP and where we could just sit down at the taverna in the small village and sit around telling tales and getting drunk but then real life caught me and I didn’t have the time anymore. I stopped being a GM and after a while stopped playing at all.
Then when NWN came out I buyed it because I was allready part of a community where we planned for a RP server (someof the guys from the UO time and some new guys) and we had a blast and I still regret that I stopped playing NWN.
The problem I guess with comercially (as in, people have to pay to pay) and RP and such is that people feel that “I pay, I can do whatever I want”.
It’s hard to ban people just because they didn’t RP enough and that is what is needed. To ban the people that don’t wanna RP if you wanna have a RP game going on.
But ofcourse it is possible, I have done it myself. Couild it be done so that you could earn money on it? Don’t know really, if you could motivate the banning of paying customers because they didn’t RP maybe. Or maybe if you keep it small enough, but then again, that is maybe a little bit boring because you wanna meet new people after a while even in a fantasy world I guess.
If it could be done and if someone does it I would be the first one to sign up
I dont see a problem with Rp and non-RP areas in a game. people could be forced to stay in character in RP areas as part of the terms of service. I think that would be good.
Oh for a star trek MMO without a level grind.
Yep, maybe it could work with RP and non-RP areas.
And then some pretty active GMs that can make sure that people follow the rules.
Most people respects people that wants to RP but it just take one or two to ruin the experience for alot of people and it seems like there will always be some people that wants to be jerks.
my pet hate is people who leave macro-ed avatars at popular areas spamming “WTB this will pay x” and other such nonsense. That really kills it for me. I have high hopes for pirates of the carribean, thats the only upcoming MMO I have strong interest in.
Yep, and even more annoying is the bots running around and yelling random stuff because they thing that by doing that GMs will not understand that they are just bots and that no player sits there. I have heard it is a little bit better these days though.
Pirates of the carribean you say, never heard of (not the mmo any way). Have to check it out.
I’d love to see a role-playing MMORPG. I don’t play any of the current MMORPGs basically because I don’t care for the stats-race.
Obviously any game has to reward a player for playing - weather it’s score, or progressoin of a character, whatever. 90% of the games I play are role-playing; I love story and character development in games. Generally in most single player RPGs I like the start of the game where you’re a lowly character trying to get by. As soon as it develops to the point where you’re carrying some +50 blessed sword of destruction and 60 health potions, defeating deamons and ghosts with your lighting spell I get bored of the game. Mostly, I guess, because my suspension of disbelief just can’t deal with it.
I enjoy being the guy who’s got a simple sword and still fears the caves just outside the city because you heard rumours it’s haunted.
I think the biggest problem of brining this type of game to a MMORPG is that the market are the 15-20 year olds who (mostly) want the hack and slash games and to be able to dominate other players for their own ego. Nothing wrong with that – I remember those days – but it’s not commercialy realistic to ignore that market for the work that goes into an MMORPG… even if the game would be better on a cultural (intelectual? artistic?) level. It’s trying to introduce a Woody Allen movie to an Adam Sandler market.
Of course you’re still got the problem of player-reward. How do you make people want to play the game if you don’t want to base the gratification on the players ability to say, “I can kick your ass”. In single player games I get that from exploring and story development. Finding out the guy I’ve been working for is involved in some big consipracy; Finding an abandoned cabin in the woods and, while exploring it that the owner got himself killed by trying to raise deamons. In a game with 1000s of people playing at once having a story unfold equally for all players isn’t feasable (at least, I can’t think of a way of doing it)
Bah… i’m rambling… you touched a sore point with me and current games…
I agree with how you feel about it. Esp the guy with the crap sword fearing the cave
I don’t think I need any real tangible reward beyond ‘fun’. As long as the online world is a believeable, engrossing fun experience i dont need to accumulate anything as I play.
What about money, gold, whatever.
How do you handle weapon & armor upgrades, if you don’t have something to collect & save.
What about the whole merchant trade that some people enjoy an rpg for?
I’m not sure you could rule out collecting something of value from an rpg.
Quoting from Enemy at the gates:
“We tried so hard to create a society that was equal, where there’d be nothing to envy your neighbour.
But there’s always something to envy. A smile, a friendship, something you don’t have and want to appropriate.”
Incidentally did anyone see ‘SecondLife’ ? It’s free to acutally have an account there and since most of the game is centered around making all your own content and scripting you can essentially convert it into whatever you want.
There are also a lot of very strong RP groups on there, I know, I’m in one of 'em. (I wander around as Marajin Mandelbrot if anyone logs on and feels like a poking me).
But Cliffski:
It’s unified, everyone from all over the world is on there.
It’s free to have a basic account (though you can end up paying real money for items… that said you can make items and sell them too if you have some skill with modelling, texturing and scripting… For example making a car can net you about 5-6 USD (About 2000-3000 of the in game monies) per sale of the item.)
It has strong RP groups that can easily have their own custom landscapes, clothing, combat systems, etc.
On the downside I don’t think the developers can code worth a damn and I find the client and server softwares inefficient and poorly thought out at times… Still it can be a lot of fun.
I tried secondlife a while back, but artistically it was a nighmare, with people building the most awful blocky houses, and where I was, it was advertising billboard mania.
I like the idea of secondlife, but it seems to have some problems, mainly due to the fact that so many people on the net are idiots
I was a big fan of TrekMUSH in about 1993, but then sadly had to attend to my studies and go out drinking and such. Modems were a problem.
They had a space system back then but no combat system. Being a MUSH there were no fees, it was all player created and there was no experience, levels, gold, skills, anything like that.
I’m sure you get my point in the long run.
