28 replies to this topic

[Anjian]

Shabahh Kerensky, on 30 May 2015 - 11:59 PM, said:

No they're not. There's nothing massive about those games. An mmo is capable of handling a crap ton of players on a large server all part of a big persistent world. Firefall is an mmo, not fricken TF2. You might as well call any multiplayer game that has more than 5 people on a server an mmo.

Seriously when did TF2 start being called an mmo?

Do you actually think MMORPGs consume more processing power than massive shooting games? They don't. Most MMORPGs, WoW and FF14 included, all use location polling. They check the location of the character, to the boss or NPC enemy, check what its doing, its status read the player's inputs, then garish them with all sorts of animations to give the illusion its hitting or being hit. The truth is, its actually glorified disco dancing, the algorithms are closer to Dance Dance Revolution. There are very few MMORPGs that actually use collision physics, Monster Hunter and Phantasy Star Online among them, and the reason most MMORPGs don't use collision physics is that collision physics are processor intensive. EVE Online for example, has a massive persistant world, but it has no collision physics, like the kind you might expect from Star Citizen.

Games like War Thunder and especially World of Warships, not only use collision physics, but ballistic, flight and movement physics, which makes them extensively processor intensive. I consider them massive, because there are still thousands of players in one massive server cluster, and you have a matchmaking algorithm that works to create matches for all of them. This is not an online game with many servers, choose the server and where dozens play in that server. In addition to the massive clustering of players, truly massive games have social networking properties that enable you to communicate to any player in that cluster and manage organizations. And also quite important is the persistant storage status of the player. The player's status isn't stored on the local machine, like game consoles, but online, with passwords and user account ownership and security. The player's status evolves and has his persistant state continually updated.

For me the definition of a massive game starts with:

Massive numbers of players in a server cluster.
Online ownership of player account
Online dynamic persistance of player status
Large scale matchmaking
Network social interaction among players of that server
Subscription or "Freemium" F2P ecosystems

MMORPGs are just one form of massive game. Others include MOBAs like League of Legends and DotA 2, and MMORTS like Clash of Clans.

What is mentioned in the opening post of this thread, applies as much as World of Tanks as it does to World of Warcraft, but further on, even to games like League of Legends and Clash of Clans.

Edited by Anjian, 31 May 2015 - 02:44 AM.

[BaDkaRmA158Th]

I agree with OP.

Too much grind, not enough reward, everything is too expensive,and the sell price of everything is so low its unsane to ever bother selling anything.


The more you work, the more stuck you become. And for what?

Right now i have 12 days left of my premium, damned if im gonna suffer through 60k a loss per match or 150k a win WITH PREMIUM, just to buy another 13k heavy (that i need 3 of the same type of). Do the math, even with premium the grind in this game is stupid. Mech packs are a must to stay with it. Even then all the good "deals" with mech packs, wont be released for another 6 months!!!! The MWO community has gotta be some kinda' suckers.


CTD.

[TWIAFU]

Interesting read and sadly familiar.

#6 should be modified, IMO, to include the Community loosing touch with the game. What that means is new players coming into a game they have no knowledge of, history, lore, etc., and wanting it to change to become some other game.

That is just as detrimental, again, IMO, as all the rest and something we should be watching for later this year and fight against.

[Raggedyman]

My assorted change on the subject....

1. Time Investment and over abundance of MMO games.

Yeah, time sinks exist in MWO. This is both in the form of how long it takes to get your head around the game and how much you have to grind to get your items. However there is relatively little none-game grind compared to other games as there is no crafting, no traveling between games or chewing through plotlines. You can, relatively speaking, click drop and go.


2. Over-hype and under deliver.

Mostly they promised walking tanks and they gave us walking tanks, so 90% of what they promised they have given. It's just the extras like meaningful role-warfare and any kind of enjoyable or customisable XP system that's missing.

3. Bugs, Exploits, and Hackers.

I don't think there have been that many bugs, exploits, and hacks in the traditional sense of the words. However you can put weak balancing in as halfway between a bug and an exploit (in that it's content that's nor working as intended and players take advantage of it) and say that this problem is rife in the game.

4. Free to play, and pay to win.

Curiously I don't think MWO is pay-to-win, I think it's pay-to-do. Other than the aforementioned balancing issues things just take an age to earn in-game, so you have the massive imputes to buy your mechs. Not sure what could be done to counter this though, as I doubt that many people would wish to go for the kind of flat membership fee that would be needed to keep this game operating with its playerbase size.

5. Oversaturation.

Not really that much competition to MWO out there.

6. Losing touch with the community.

I've seen better, I've seen worse.


7. Lack of Creativity.

Now this is a tricky one, as MWO is operating from a highly established IP so there really isn't that much room for outmaneuver and if you bring in new stuff from outside the lore people start screaming. However I do think things like the maps and the Community Warfare are lacking in creativity, and that some areas of the game have been dumbed down (Heat, for example) so I would have to say that this is something the game is suffering from atm.

8. Poor launch expereince.

We had a launch?? I remember being in beta and then not being in beta with not much having changed from the day before.

9. Lack of content; especially end game content.

Yup, this. You max out your mech and then you do your drops and then you rinse and repeat. There is collect-ability and some scoring fun to be had but that's about it.

10. World of Warcraft.

Not sure, I actually think CoD, TF2, and CS are bigger competitors to MWO

[Anjian]

This game is basically Pay In Advance, in contrast to Pay To Advance. Anyway, its nearly as bad a turnoff to Pay To Win.

MWO has no direct competitors. But there are two niches where it has substantial overlap, and thus it has strong indirect competition.

The first is the Science Fiction game. This includes games like EVE Online, Star Citizen, and Elite Dangerous.

The second is the Thinking Shooter. This covers games like War Thunder, World of Tanks and lately World of Warships.

To find out what MWO really competes with, all you do is ask what other games MWO players play, and don't be surprised to see the names mentioned come up often.

[NeoCodex]

The mechbay thing will be a disaster once it hits steam reviews. I don't have any problems with it, but every single friend I tried to get into the game stopped playing after getting 4 mechs, and realising how the mastery works.

Out of everything, this is the biggest turnoff for new players. The mechbay gating completely stops any possible way of F2P progression. Completely. 4 free mechbays is a joke. Mechbays should be free.

[Wild Hamster]

Solution to this is clear: Everyone should only play Second Life.

Edited by Wild Hamster, 31 May 2015 - 10:46 PM.

[Raggedyman]

S3dition, on 27 May 2015 - 08:30 PM, said:

This isn't an MMORPG

Thread end.

It is indeed not an MMORPG, it's an MMOBA. However a number of the points raised are still valid as they occupy a similar space.

Shabahh Kerensky, on 30 May 2015 - 11:59 PM, said:

Seriously when did TF2 start being called an mmo?

About 2010

[LordBraxton]

Change thread title to why F2P games fail and It'd shut a lot of people up. PGI over-hyped and delivered downgrade after downgrade.