Why do video game devs always forget this simple fact? Casuals are 99% of the games audience.
If you make everything hardcore like Retail WoW or Final Fantasy then the audience will get bored, because they cant use this content (see also all the other failed MMORPGs). Another example is Season of Discovery in WoW (and the difference between Phase 1 and P2):
Leveling 25-40 was a slog. People aren't playing SOD to do the same thing they've done in classic era over and over. Obviously their internal numbers are alarming for them to have done something so drastic so soon into the phase.
Gnomer is pug unfriendly and raid participation has cratered. Its laughably against the spirit of SOD that the most popular classes are being refused PUG invites due to poor design. I honestly have no idea why this hasn't been nerfed yet. Raid participation went DOWN on week 2 vs week 1 despite far more level 40s.Its like people already forgot why SoM's experiment of difficult raids in classic was a failure.
For the average player, the leveling is slow and same old, takes forever to get the new runes they want to try out, they get to max level, dungeons are irrelevant at 40 and they cant get into any raid pugs, no surprise participation is tanking.
Before the expected "You're just bad" posts, i have cleared gnomer on multiple characters, this is not about me. Try looking at the bigger picture for once. Or dont and watch MMORPGS slowly die again for the sweatys to be happy.
tldr.
The OP isn't casual enough for me to read it.
actually what they should do is
>cater to casuals
>make it always open world pvp
>make casuals into a prime PK target
Why is it then that full open PvP MMOs inevitably flop after a month? EVE is the only one that lasted and it has high-sec.
This is rhetorical, people don't like getting ganked and gankers piss and shit themselves if they ever have to face their own.
Tell us how wow was killed by pvp servers
There is a Classic thread somewhere where Horde Rogues ganked starting zones so hard the server shut down due to 0 Alliance population. lol
Partial points, but MMORPGs need an element of mystique, something impossible for the world of wiki-gamers.
WoW and FF have lived long enough to become formulaic and coast solely off of completionism and sunk cost fallacy.
There is nothing left to do other than be a casual, a tourist trying to find new things. The things that you would have discovered by being good are seen in their entirety within days. Back then, it was years with incredibly poor documentation and a lot of speculation.
Nobody is interested in this meaningless raidslop vomit you just spoke. They want to see new things, and there's nothing new in an old game unless it's buried deep enough. You don't have friends to figure these new things out with you, you arrive, you get told to google, and that's it.
This is why Elden Ring outclassed every mmo of the last decade.
Fromsoft should make an MMO and btfo everyone in the industry.
there's no secret to making a good mmo, people want a consistent stream of content that is easily accessible
morons like this
are under the impression elden ring is somehow not formulaic, but it is
it's formulaic, extremely easy to play and it's very easy to get the strong weapons yet it was successful proving mentally ill troglodytes like this
wrong
no one cares about "mystery" or "uniqueness" or "non formulaic" games
they just want an aesthetic game that plays well enough, has a serviceable world and story and consistent content updates. That's it
wow declined because it's old and bad looking and the new content is boring
that's it, they didn't lose some secret philosophy to success the devs just got lazy and even if they didn't the game is old you can lie to yourselves but the art style did NOT age well and people don't want to play ugly games. Hotkey combat also is dogshit, people prefer action combat
that's how warframe is still around despite being a literal low effort skinnerbox
tl:dr fun combat, good art style, consistent updates to avoid content drought and you win mmos, ez
> FF have lived long enough to become formulaic
FFXIV has been beyond formulaic from the very release of ARR and released less and less content as time went by.
ah yes, rare to see this chestnut outside of doomposting in ffxiv threads.
what nebulous definition of 'content' will you be using today?
I’m glad it’s formulaic, I been playing it for 10 years and don’t want it to change and just want more of the same.
>released less and less content as time went by.
You're either shitposting or only play roulette.
Reminder that to doomposters only thing that matters is savage and ultimates so they ignore 80% of the other stuff in the game.
>major patches split into two
>~10month long raid tiers since verse
>one ultimate got straight out cancelled
>poor design decisions and job reworks making older content less relevant
Black person please
patches split into two
This does not equate to less content.
>>~10month long raid tiers since verse
This does not equate to less content.
>>one ultimate got straight out cancelled
Finally a good point, but in EW we got two like usual meaning it really was wu flu instead of the devs getting lazy.
>>poor design decisions and job reworks making older content less relevant
Elaborate. You might have a point here, but I doubt it.
Probably some homosexuals who thinks old summoner is good
NTA, but old SMN is shit. New SMN is shit for different reasons. New SMN is also disgustingly overtuned for 70 content which includes ultimates. The DPS checks were already a lot easier but throw 1 mediocre SMN in your group and now they're nonexistent.
Added thing for the ultra autists on class redesigns fricking with old content, 6.X WAR makes solo PotD and HoH really easy.
On one hand old summoner sucked dick, but on the other it's fine if there are jobs that I hate if other people like them and they're viable.
Shows variety if there's something I can fall in love with like SAM, GNB, and MCH and there's shit I don't really enjoy like SUM, AST, and DRG.
This
Latest patch:
>Wow I got the legendary axe! I'm so lucky!
>You are guaranteed to get it after the 15th week of the patch
>It will be replaced day 1 of the next patch
There's no "WOW" moments in WoW anymore. Seeing someone with Thunderfury or Sulfuras was a "holy shit" moment - seeing someone with Fyr'alath is a "I guess they got mildly lucky or have raided 15 times" moment
They also need to make legendary weapons scale, at least for the expansion they're released in. Make them relevant for the whole time, otherwise they're not "Legendary"
Hell, they should make Legendary weapons level similarly to heirlooms in new expansions - sure you won't use them in end-game for gameplay reasons, but at least let them be worth using for levelling - these days they basically just become vendor trash when the next patch hits
>mmorpg
>content designed for smol a handful of players
>systems promote antisocial behavior
>ruined by being online
>rp as an afterthought
>game is all work and no play
Name one(1) property that heavily caters to normalgay sensibilities that's also good.
People seem to have forgotten that WoW IS the casual take on MMOs, it's the main reason why it got so popular 20 years ago. Players must have gotten a lot more casual since then.
>Players must have gotten a lot more casual since then.
you have no idea
the nu-wow audience would never be able to pull off a 40 man
>herewegoagain.jpg
I'm right and you know it
not because 40 mans were hard but because modern players are morons
literal mongoloid
classic has been around for half a decade. Your game is a joke
Okay now do it without datamining, only the most rudimentary addons and actual vanilla patches instead of the post-Naxxramas class kits Ass-ic launched with
you're pathetic, classic wow proved retail wow has gotten much much harder, not easier
Everything in retail up until endgame mythic is moron tier, classic was more challenging overall. Even killing quest mobs was a lot more engaging.
classic launched on the endgame ezmode patch 1.12
I don't think people necessarily have gotten more casual, it's just more, different people playing.
difference is today they are still casual AND moronic on top
The only way MMOs will ever be able to compete with normal video games is if they all come to the conclusion to release with a finite amount of content, and then NEVER UPDATE. Release a new fricking game for gods sake. I NEVER go back to an MMO when it gets updated. Why would I want to play a content update for a bunch of broken, poorly designed game decisions that can't be fixed without making a new game? MAKE A NEW GAME
I agree with this but the industry is under the impression that GaaS is the future for some reason, their main priority is making cash cows they can milk forever without doing anything, video games are just a biproduct.
Give up on the idea that there will ever be a good mmo again.
Never, I'll keep theorizing about the subject until the day I die. I'll be a wise old wizard smoking his pipe under a tree and if people come up to me I'll start rambling words of wisdom about how to make a good MMORPG.
I just want an MMO that focuses on professions as much as PvP or PvE.
I want to be able to craft top tier mage gear by grinding herbalism for a couple of months, I want to be able to sell that gear to someone who's been grinding gold while I'd been picking flowers or to someone who's made that gold selling their strongest potions.
I don't think that's too much to ask for, is it?
>I want to craft top tier mage gear out of herbs
That's insanity
The "everything needs to be made for our drooling moron playtesters" mindset poisoned the word "casual".
There's a massive area between-
>Practice and grind for a billion hours to win a fight by the skin of your teeth!
and
>Follow the glowing line to the quest marker! Don't worry, you're basically invincible and we've painted every important object with yellow paint so that you don't get confused!
Most normal guys who play on the weekends want a middle ground, where there's some depth and challenge but the game isn't life-consuming. Anyone with moderate skill at videogames can just pick up and play Elden Ring or Cuphead, for example.
this middle ground not actually existing anymore is why wow and xiv are bad in the current year
im pretty sure a large majority of mmo players are already casuals
FFXIV is casual as frick though
Savages and Ultimates are such a small percentage of its content
wow is not even hardcore. Its just filled to the brim with elitist poopsockers which blizzard caters to. Exactly the reason why m+ doesnt have queueing
>hardcore like Final Fantasy
There's nothing to do at 40 except run gnomeregan, just like there was nothing to do at 25 except run bfd because the loot from everywhere else sucks in comparison
But people who play mmo are mostly casual and whales
WoW is like the CoD of MMORPG's. That game is fricking easy. The quests are so fricking piss easy and boring. Or you can just buy a full leveled character. Shit takes no fricking skill.
the hardcore ones go screeching at the devs on their official forums and now shit talk the game on social media
>Why do video game devs always forget this simple fact? Casuals are 99% of the games audience.
I won't even read your fricking drivel, because MMORPGs have been pandering to clueless frickwits and noobs hard. Look at GW2, that game is basically dying over how hard they are trying to please low standard moron whales and casuals.
MMORPGs need to fricking die
>Leveling 25-40 was a slog
The SoD "community" makes me sick
it was a slog. the overworld was so crowded we were up to 11 layers and shit was still being camped on spawn. dungeon leveling was popular for a reason
nah BUGGER THAT
WE NEED A HARD MMO
I WANT CHALLENGE IN MY MMORPG
WHERE IS THE STRUGGLE? WHERE IS THE CHALLENGE?
make game challenging
make levelling very slow
remove instances
remove raids
remove "endgame"
make the game fun to play with others
there you go
>make the game fun to play with others
Literally impossible due to community itself being shit.
There's no reason to have levels to begin with.
More MMOs should be like Albion Online and focus on PvP over PvE.
Themepark MMORPGs are too expensive to maintain. They die because players beat them like singleplayer games and then have nothing to do until next update.
I would really like a third person Albion with better combat.
Yes anon pvp mmos is the way forward, don't mind that graveyard of the failed projects though, those just didn't do it right, but the next one will for sure.
This but unironically
Schizo
No-one will play your psychopath trash, have a nice day subhuman griefer
Only disgusting psychopath animals like you and subhuman masochists who want to be toys for you to abuse play cancerous trash with full-loot PvP
I hope you get tortured to death by a serial killer and everyone you care about gets cancer
skill issue
Keep wasting your time with themepark slop where nothing matters. No risk, no reward.
>real communism has never been tried
>PvP gankerhomosexual game with full loot PvP
>Has chat mods that bad you for naughtyspeak
What a pointless game.
>Mmorpg need to target casuals
Which is why WoW players who aren't hardcore raiders went to FFXIV. You know who I see in the Golden Saucer and who love it the most? It's WoW players, I asked them why and they told me they had never really thought about playing the game for fun, something purely for fun and not being linked to some gear progression grind for a raid.
I laughed but when I was told that it made sense why guys like that like the Golden Saucer and other stuff like that in FFXIV.
yoship is moron and entirely sleeps on updating gold soucer, while chasing that wow design paradigm
>Sleeps on Golden Saucer
They just had a Fall Guys large event in the Saucer and are updating it with new games in DT.
They are moving at glacial pace with it and we know frick all about updates in DT. Fall Guys is also a limited event instead of permanent addition for some moronic fricking reason, which sting the most as gold soucer direly needs some new games that are there to stay. Air force one is way too easy and has like 1.5map and mahjong is entirely kneecapped by not being able to bet mgp let alone gil, or have some interesting opponents and bossfights like in dedicated mahjong games.
Have you tried Triple Triad? I like that one best because you can go out into the World and find the npc's and challenge them to win their cards, it's not easy but it's a rabbithole in of itself.
no no anon. he has 10000 hours in the game and he's already done everything over 10 years. he needs MORE
I despise triple triad from mechanical perspective, it is just not fun to play for me, which is honestly strange as i generally do like card slop a lot, from ygo and mtg to sts clones.
There are still popular casual MMOs today, they are just older, pic related. One thing I always noticed in the MMO genre is the more casual it is the more the groups open up and talks with each other about everyday shit and the more you make friends in MMOs, classic wow is a perfect example. Meanwhile retail is anti-casual, the group doesn't have time to open up because they are busy dodging shit, hitting ten different abilties, and the only time someone talks is when billy dies in the fire and someone calls him a Black person.
>wow classic
>push one button
What? I have over 30 bindings on my druid and I use them all the time.
You may be number one on the parses anon but I will be right behind you pushing my one button and nobody will stop me.
Funny how PvE is for casuals spamming one button while PvP is the complete opposite making you utilize your entire toolset.
Yes, yes, anon, you are a very big boy for curbstomping casuals, we are very impressed.
Not everyone is as bad at games as you are, I often met premades full of sweats crushing our team.
He's not wrong, from what I remember in WoW classic, the lower the amount of buttons often used, the higher the playerbase of that class, hence why druid is often the least played.
>play retail
>doing mythic weekly this season
>be leader and form group
>reset dungeon upon exit and afk a few
>group starts dungeon while im afk
>come back and reset again cuz I forgot if I did or not
>this put me in a different dungeon then them
>explain this and nobody talks but the tank
>ask if they wanna re-start since they just started or I can just drop and re-form
>again nobody talks but the tank and hes going to re-start with me
>tell them again this is happening since the tanks on board and give a countdown for someone to speak up
>nobody else talked and we dropped
I get being anti-social but goddamn.
>griefers all want PVP-focused MMOs that magically have infinite casuals to grief and that they don't have to fight other PVPgays
>every single one of them dies
>Albion and EVE make PVPgays fight each other which isn't what they want
SoD was never interesting to me after I realized how safe they were playing it with most of the new abilities.
I unironically enjoyed hardcore WoW a lot more, even if hardcore in classic WoW is a total fricking meme, especially with trading/auction house enabled.
PKgays losing their seals to club is funny, they can't accept that their "MMO community" was a bunch of people forced to play with them that hated them.
but SoD has just enough QoL updates including new gear and runes that levelling is still considerably comfier and faster than in the og vanilla, I found 1-25 to be very fun and took me like three weekend days to hit the cap, surely 25-40 should also take like two-three days tops for the average player who quests efficiently and does dungeons, etc.
yeah but for what purpose?
gnomer sucks dick to run and there's nothing else to do besides PK people 20 levels lower than you
I'll admit I haven't played phase 2 yet simply because I didn't enjoy BFD as much as I had anticipated and my evenings are filled with too much other games to comfortably enjoy phase 2, but yes, SoD got "solved" too quick and it's way too safe, I'd say phase 2 barely changed up the gameplay and besides level cap and gnomeregan there's nothing "discoverous" about it. Their only saving grace is them restoring deleted content and making the 60 endgame a complete 180.
gnomer is worse than bfd
it might still be worth leveling to 40 but there's really just not enough to do that's interesting
They need to become what they were always meant to be, single player RPGs with MMO controls/design and endless incremental content and collectibles to grind.
Just play OSRS
No thanks, I prefer WoW
MMOs should go the way of the shopping mall.
MMOs will never be the same because the "OG audience" was made up of two very different groups, MMO players and RPG players, "living world"gays and "i want to play a game"gays. Back when MMOs were new they were forced to play together, but now that there are choices, players aren't stuck with the few there were anymore. PVP players have EVE/Albion, RPG players have WOW, XIV, TOR, ESO and more, and the ones that want the forced grouping social experience and optionally player killing have... a graveyard of games and failed kickstarters?
The problem is, MMOs need a playerbase, which means casuals will make up the bulk. If you make a pure hardcore game you end up like Mortal Online that's always in danger of dying or Wildstar that actually died.
>Why do video game devs always forget this simple fact?
The 99.9% of the people who play an MMO to frick around and hang out with friends in the chill open world don't say anything.
The 0.1% remaining are loud obnoxious "hardcore" losers who screech and yell and cry for "HARDCORE CONTENT" like raids and PvP and gay shit like that. Since that's the only feedback devs ever hear, they start catering to those homosexuals. The "casuals" get bored of all the homosexualry and leave. The "hardcore" then demand other gay shit like lots of dressup so they can ERP in between raids.
>The "hardcore" then demand other gay shit like lots of dressup so they can ERP in between raids
I feel that ERPers and cosmeticgays should be under casual or midcore.
>FF is hardcore
Savage and Ultimate clear rates beg to differ
FF content is substantially more difficult than anything in WoW, and it's obvious if you've played both games.
WoW is only harder if you don't use DBM, but everyone fricking uses DBM.
>nuh uh it's harder
They're both the same easy dogshit WoW design except XIV really streamlined it and made all content tunnels of generic trash mobs with truly basic bosses. If WoW was the casualization of MMOs I don't even know what to call XIV since that's the casualization of WoW itself.
raids don't have trash in XIV
if you're talking about dungeons, literally nobody cares
mythic content has always sucked and was never hard
>Dogshit
>Doesn't know Dungeons are bot endgame in FFXIV
Yep it's a World of Warcraft Stream babby.
>substantially more difficult
Yeah, but is that even a good thing? I don't feel like I gained or learned anything from this. In the end, shit like this just makes me hate the fight, half my group, and myself.
>shit like this just makes me hate the fight, half my group, and myself.
So you had a true MMO experience.
I just checked my fflog and some how have 70+ recorded fights in fricking alliance stuff, who the hell logs that
Good if blind prog, scary if not.
Note how long our P2 and P3 prog are and hating half my group. We spent way too long deciding to kick someone.
You should stop playing mmos if you think FF is hard at all.
FF Content isn't hard, dealing with other people is the hard part, finding 7 other people who are able to do as they're supposed to is the real fricking challenge.
>Final Fantasy
>Hardcore
Lmao did the Diapergays convince you the game is hard? The game holds your hand even during endgame.
>Diapergays
Diaper Gnome
>tfw MMO's have become nothing more than anti-social, instanced rushing, slog fests
Remember when we thought how awesome this genre was going to be in the late 90's/early 2000's? How the frick did it manage to get worse.
Only in wow, in ffxiv I’m always talking to my FC mates and friends on different data centers
Legit just talk to people in your groups.
Both in WoW and FF I've made friends out of random dungeons just by shooting the shit.
Sure some aspies will just stay quiet, but the people who want to socialize will.
They need to target people that dont play MMO's plain and simple. Targeting a market that already plays them is worthless because they will just return to what they originally played after a short while.
>they need to take risks
There is nothing more expensive than developing and maintaining a themepark MMO.
Yeah because we have seen being safe just doesnt cut it anymore.
What even mmos are even coming out soonish? Can only think of blue protocol and throne and liberty but BP is fricking doomed because Amazon is fricking moronic and pushed it back for TL and changes stuff, then TL is just p2w trash
Studios would rather copy WoW for the billionth time and make a game that will be hyped up by tired WoW players. Then it dies a few months after release but it doesn't matter because the whales already bought the premium deluxe founderpack for $199 to play two days earlier.
WoW players are in their mid 30s, early 40s by now. When do they stop being the target audience for MMORPGs in the west?
ffxiv targets casuals hard and it’s dying because there is nothing to do
Factually incorrect and we getting even more new players because of Xbox which I wasn’t expecting
>ff14
>hardcore
LMAO
Like around 30% of the playerbase raids, even less completes the tier and clear ultimate. Hardcore players don’t get catered to at all
>If you make everything hardcore like Retail WoW or Final Fantasy
"casuals" arent paying monthly for a game, and they arent putting big hours into it.
COD is popular because you can play for an hour and be done.
Just as I expected the shitposter just talking about raiding, raidgays are a cancer right after full loot pvp gays
Trolls are too cool for warcraft.
dont know why you think anyone on Ganker gives a shit or plays even WoW and those that do literally just come back to level to cap never raid and quit because they're dogshit and no friends to play with
Because MMOs are great in concept, but shit almost all the time in practice. Most "MMO players" don't even care about existing MMOs, they care about the idea of MMOs.
When is Project Epoch 1.0 dropping? I swear to god, if it sucks...