Comments on: What I Would Like to See in a Massively Multiplayer Online Game

By: Eclipse

Eclipse — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 02:35:28 +0000

I didn’t think to mention it in the outline, but PvP arenas would be one way to keep people coming back to a game like this. So long as you make character options available, and have a lot of variety with enough balance, you’ll get people coming back to PvP just as often as they go back to their favorite console fighting game.

Also, I don’t know about you, but I go back to a platformer more than five times if it’s a really good one. It might not catch your demographic for a lot of playthroughs, but it would hit mine pretty well.

I think you assume that everyone would play the game solo on their first playthrough. Some people certainly would, but others would team up just because they like playing in a team. So there would still be plenty of people playing through the game in teams from the get go.

Finally, I acknowledged this game may not have the staying power of a typical MMO. However, I think this game would provide a far better experience, and I’d rather have a short excellent experience than long mediocre experience.

By: Tarrant

Tarrant — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 17:57:58 +0000

My issue with the game you outlined is that it has no longevity, you will get people who play through it, maybe 5 times (outside) and the normal player with get through it once, never help another player, maybe never even interact with another player, beat the final boss and put the game down, forever. A game, must either have some real progression system (gear/levels/stats) or it will be a)easy enough to accomplish, and therefore uninteresting after you figure out how to do it, or b)impossibly hard, and therefore uninteresting and frustrating. The progression allows for it to start impossibly hard and move to easy enough to accomplish.

By: Tim

Tim — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 14:39:49 +0000

Eve-Online has managed a couple of the things you bring up here. The one I think they’ve done best is the chat system, controlling who you are talking to or listening to is extremely simple and straight forward.

The second item is less centralization. Eve doesn’t officially have any central hubs (Though players have managed to turn certain areas into trade hubs).

Eve also seems to have mastered a method of expanding content. A portion of each expansion to Eve has been available for new players.

Now I agree that subscriptions are generally just a cash cow for most MMOs but you might want to consider that the subscription money pays for more than just keeping the servers up. Most of the good MMOs have payed GMs and maintain staff in other customer service areas than billing. And in the case of some MMOs (Like Eve, though I’m sure there are others) the subscriptions pay for the costs of content development. It actually bothers me that Wow charges a subscription and charges $30+ for expansions.

I see two kinds of obstacle to the game concept you outline: Technological and Social. The tech side of things will practically solve itself soon enough, the number of players in FPS matches has been growing steadily for years. It will take longer for people (Publishers and other money people mostly I think) to accept the idea of a game like this without trying to make it into the same sort of cash cow as so many other games.