It's time for MMOs to make a comeback.
The success of Battlebit proves that people are once again willing to sacrifice quality as long as it means we get hundreds of people playing on the same server again.
Forget single player games with online servers like GTA:O, we need MMOs with thousands of people on the same server again. The market is ready.
MMOs cannot be revived unless Discord and its derivatives are destroyed and the majority of the playerbase must use in in game chat to communicate.
Sorry anon but EU/US regulations on online speech means the in-game chat is dead and buried.
If there is an MMO of the future it will be limited to emotes only.
I don't think it matters much at all. The sort of problems that you're presumably gesturing towards, I would argue, don't arise from Discord, but from the overall design of the game, such as 1) grouping up isn't necessary; 2) grouping up is an outright trap option. For example, various WoW private servers have implemented shared quest loot in party feature, and with this one change alone, who would have thought, people actually group up. Probably even with strangers because it's worth it to do so, although it could be much more worthwhile still.
For that matter, relating to OPs bit
>people are once again willing to sacrifice quality
No, actually they aren't. Quality has "always" (in the context of games striving to get WoW's 10M+ population count) been the problem. The thing is, WoW is/was actually really fricking good in a lot of high-priority areas, such as atmosphere, responsiveness of combat, UX, boss design, etc, and "good enough" in many others (for example, the writing is by no means great, but the fluff is very purposeful in providing the sort of archetypes people want to play as, cool locations, and ideas that you can get behind without being invested in the lore). "Gather 15 bear asses" or whatever OP might be thinking of isn't a sign of quantity over quality philosophy, it's a sign of "go and play the game and you can be efficient about it or goof off however you like" (anon put it well in another thread) game design, allowing the strong bits of the game shine: you don't mind gathering the bear asses if the basic act of the game is pleasant.
The problem with all would-be WoW-killers and neo-WoW itself is that they just aren't good, especially where it counts.
Not enough. Another problem is that microtransactions are too profitable, to the point that you’d be moronic to not base your MMO around them. As long as gacha and similar games remain popular there can never be another decent MMO.
Yes, great take because that's totally realistic.
No, what has equivalent impact is not forcing players to seek a third party chat program in the first place.
3rd part chat programs are simply too handy for people who play with a group to give up.
You can do things that would be a pain in the ass to have in a game such as file/image sharing on top of chat and voice chat functionality.
It wouldn't be impossible for games to have that functionality but they're expensive and risky, and would require more moderation and likely wouldn't overtake 3rd party software because those are not tied to a particular game.
I agree with sharing files and images but what people mostly did was use discord as a hang out place. Great in general, except for MMOs. Instead of hanging out ingame and forming parties, they hang out in discord instead and the game feels dead. Ingame Guild chats are quiet because convos sre taking place in discord. Part of the charm of MMOs is the social aspect and third party chat programs are basically leeching off of that. It's why when I see a group advertising 500 members and has a discord, I avoid it because I know it's all gonna be noise taking place outside the game I also enjoy playing besides the social aspect.
But I'm probably the odd one out as I knowingly treat games as escapism and never discuss real life ingame, personal or otherwise.
I was in a guild of like 5-6 years and it died the SECOND we got a discord. all the oldgays joined and WoW was reduced to 1 of 8 channels. All "newbies" (of 3-4 years) got immediately ignored in favor of oldgays who played xiv instead
why discord is even that popular
its just another chat app
>The market is ready.
The market has been ready for years, every single MMO is a massive success at launch. Even fricking Bless Online was hyped.
The issue is, they all suck. Somehow, developers forgot what MMOs should be all about. What we get instead are watered down, story-focused RPGs where grouping up is not only optional, but extremely unfun because an already easy game becomes even less of a challenge.
And once you reach max level, all there's left for you to do in the game is spamming the same instanced content over and over. That's it, that's the entire game.
>spam the same instanced content over and over
...which can be fun, don't get me wrong. But then why the frick did you make an MMO, make a co-op RPG à la Monster Hunter.
>grouping extremely unfun
We really need some kind of mechanics that reward teamwork by actually being fun instead of just getting you whatever shiny monkey bullshit is at the end of some instance. Something like combo attacks between players or some other sort of co-op mechanics.
That's what GW2 tried to do, but it degenerated into "create elemental fields on the ground, spam AoEs on said fields to gigabuff the entire party." GW2 has a ton of cool ideas... that didn't quite work out as intended. Some of them did though, the break bar is a great addition to the game imo (https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Defiance_bar) and I'm surprised it's not more common.
Fundamental mechanics that reward teamwork, like combo attacks, are not necessary imo. The key issue is difficulty: people would naturally party-up if they are getting their ass kicked by a bunch of random level 11 goblins. Difficulty promotes cooperation in a more "natural" way: the Goblin Shaman is casting a heal, someone has to interrupt it; the Goblin Archer dropped a trap, someone has to disarm it; the Goblin Berserker went turbo mode, someone has to soothe/dispel him.
Levelling content doesn't have to be so hard you need a perfect party composition in order to progress, of course. But you shouldn't be able to aggro three packs alone and AoE everything down either, but that's how modern MMOs are. People aren't going to play with other players if it's easier, faster and more fun to level-up alone.
As much as people dislike early 2000s Korean grinders, those games at least understood what MMOs should be about.
>Difficulty promotes cooperation in a more "natural" way
There's definitely something to that. I used to play a freemium co-op game called Spiral Knights that let you play from 1-4 players in the dungeon. While the standard coin drops were duplicated per player the item drops were distributed randomly, meaning it was ever so slightly optimal to play solo. But people still routinely went in parties because the combat was unforgiving and dying alone meant either abandoning the run or spending extra stamina to revive. Even though the difficulty came from a questionable place it definitely promoted genuine teamwork to get everyone through to the end without running out of hp.
It's not an MMORPG but the natural cooperation in Deep Rock Galactic is fantastic. The class roles are there to serve as the basics and form the fundamentals of cooperating, and the loadouts further diversify their needs. There's many enemy types, some with their own variants and they show up randomly so different team compositions and loadouts all have their chance to shine. Not forced cooperation through base mechanics like combo fields and finishers, yeah. I think this is why the tank/healer/dps trinity works so well, it should serve as the basis for party comps then bring different tools each class has access to for what they need based on the dungeon/mission/whatever. Trying to eliminate it just led to 4 DPS elementalists meta on release. Of course roles made a return because of that.
Also, just a third anon chiming in. You both make good points.
Lost Ark's success proves that the internet is ready for anything that puts multiple bodies on one screen.
People are willing to sacrifice graphics for gameplay
MMOs sacrifice graphics and gameplay for big numbers
faction combat
no switching/server transfers/alternate channels to escape to
world bosses should make the entire server fight like Archeage did in the good old days
now they are just loot pinatas
WoW is such a shit game
No. Let them die.
no thanks.
It was a shit part of my life and a waste of time.
Early Archeage was literally the perfect MMORPG. And yet it still got cannibalized for P2Wbux.
It really wasn't. Archeage is one of those games that only works in the early game, when everyone has more or less the same gear. And knowledge about the game.
Even without P2W, at some point one guild or faction would acquire significantly better gear than anyone else and make the game unplayable for the entire server. And when it becomes impossible to compete due to how impossibly ahead the enemies are, the losers just quit and the server dies.
It's a fundamental issue with these "sandpark" games in my opinion. In order to make the economy relevant, money has to be important for gearing up. But at some point the top 1% gets so strong, competition dies and everyone quits.
Another issue is new players: if a new player starts 6-12 months late, it's impossible for him to catch up. Because while he's still levelling up, the best guilds in the server are spamming the best content in the game, getting stronger at a faster pace than he is.
Crowfall had the right solution: seasons. People play the game for X months, then someone wins the season (like, "whoever conquers this castle first wins" or something like that) and the game world resets.
I mean, current Archeage kinda works the same way with constant fresh servers. But the reason why people like fresh servers is because that's when the game is the most fun. Once a guild prevails over the others, fun's over.
Frick MMO and everybody that plays them
Battlebit shines because it gives players more tools to socialize. Server browser, proximity open VOIP hear by both teams.
A modern AAA mmo will never have soul or good social features because they actively try to keep players from socializing and must censor everything.
Battlebit is an FPS, this doesn't translate over to MMORPGs. Shooters are normalgay bait.
without normalgays you don’t have a mmorpg, sorry arenahomosexual
The success of a shooter has nothing to do with MMORPGs, normalgays don't give a shit about the RPG part they just wanna shoot.
no one said that shooters have a link to mmorpgs, normalgays do care about rpgs
go touch grass sweaty
OP said it, dipshit.
I didn’t moron
What do you think WoW is?
>wow is X now, and that means it was X in the past, and it will be X in the future!!!
I don’t care moron
>people want multiplayer team A vs team B matches
>people want alterac valley/battlegrounds
>wow classic was skyrocketed during phase 2 to phase 4
>people got bored of alterac valley/battlegrounds in phase 5
>normies leave wow classic
yep battlegrounds were the soul of wow and the OG devs pushing “content islands” expacs and arena pvp killed wow
MMOs will make a comeback one of these days, but it wont be from blizzard since they lack the creative spark that made WoW blow up in the first place.
>we need MMOs with thousands of people on the same server again.
those exists
nobody plays them
FFXIV/Lost Ark/WoW Classic + Retail are doing relatively well, it's just that the gaming landscape itself changed too much. People prefer quick competitive matches they can hop in and out and also constant voice chat.
why do you think dogshit games like Valorant are huge? Because they're piss easy to hop into and appeal to the zoomer socialization while gaming aspect far more than a mmo would.
It's time for MMOs to make a wienerback.
no
the genre is good because normalgays havent invaded it
at best, they're contained to trash like 14
Normies invaded and killed the genre with WoW.
>they're contained to trash like 14
...which is a WoW clone
>fills in the MMO void
you're welcome, gweilo
WoW was popular during the aftermath of the financial crisis when unemployment was high.
Now unemployment is at record low levels.
We need a new generation of MMOs built for people with jobs and kids.
I don't know what that looks like.
Maybe like Dragon's Dogma you can take your friend's characters as AI npcs with you when they are not online.
>Maybe like Dragon's Dogma you can take your friend's characters as AI NPCs with you when they are not online.
Cool idea, I like it. Pawns in that system is kinda the same thing except they represent a secondary character to the player so usually it's a ideal waifu or something. Taking along their actual character would be fun.
However, it's a whole system layered ontop of many others so probably unlikely to ever happen. Plus most MMOs want you to stay logged on and engaged for as long as possible. Only exceptions I can think of is XIV and GW2.
Speaking of MMOs, is Blade and Soul decent for casual playing? It has nice coomerbait material and combat looks more fighting-game than in any mmos I've seen...
>The success of Battlebit proves that people are once again willing to sacrifice quality as long as it means we get hundreds of people playing on the same server again.
what the frick are you talking about
MMOs will never make a comeback because the playerbase won't allow it. Nowadays most players see exploration and discovery as a chore, and every game is filled with datamining theorycrafting minmaxing homosexuals who will suck the fun out of the game. The journey doesn't matter, only endgame progression and parsing does.
fresh when sirs?
>zoomer/streamer shits playing MMO
>bro leveling sucks man
>man I played for 10 minutes and I'm still not max level
>can we pay to skip all the leveling, exploring, gear farming etc. to get to the endgame?
>is my favourite Twitch streamer playing this?
>why can't I just teleport everywhere and have the game play itself?
MMO genre is dead man.
Palia is the WoW killer