28 replies to this topic

[El Bandito]

I was browsing YouTube and found this guy talking about the 10 reasons why MMORPGs die. Granted, MWO is not exactly an RPG, but certain reasons stated in the video hit pretty close to home. Perhaps PGI staff can take some notes from it. Watch the video first, please.



Here are his reasons why MMORPGs die and my experience related to MWO:

1. Time Investment and over abundance of MMO games.

Currently I play four different F2P MMO games in addition to MWO. Team Fortress 2, League of Legends, Hearthstone, and Heroes of the Storm. And I just bought Killing Floor 2. So my time is already divided between progression and dailies of those games. Not to mention I got a lot of buddies playing LoL. So unless there is an event going on that is non-CW, I simply do not play MWO for extended period of time.


2. Over-hype and under deliver.

I think all Closed Beta players; especially the Founders can relate to this. When MWO and the features it was to contain upon release was first announced we ****** our pants. We talked about it excitedly with our family members, with our friends--especially the guys we played previous MW games with, and there was huge buzz in general.
When we finally got into the game, the experience was great. We got the familiar stompy mech shooter we wanted. Sure there were bugs and balancing issues but the graphics were awesome back in the day, and the community had deeply cared about the game because we held hope that all the features yet to deliver was to come sooner than later.

Which was why it had hurt when PGI had announced that MWO release would be simply a line in the sand, instead of arriving with the CW we had feverishly wished for. Nearly 2 years of development time with very little progress to show for had alienated a lot of the old guard. One might say PGI was simply learning to walk before it can run, but the damage was done. And when CW had finally arrived, most players gotten tired of it pretty quickly, with only 15% still play it.
My wish is that PGI would do better in the Steam release and really WOW the influx of the new players. Cause almost all of them would not play it for the lore or care about it.


3. Bugs, Exploits, and Hackers.

I think MWO is pretty clean in such aspects. I'm sure there are people whole use cheats but those are never numerous enough to cause serious issues. Can't say the same once the game hits Steam though. Better get some anti-cheat software, heh.


4. Free to play, and pay to win.

MWO is a micro-transaction based F2P MMO game--except the transactions are not really "micro" at all. A single decent color costs $5. A single regular and Hero mechs cost anywhere from $15-45, and Packs--while offering value for the price--cost from $20-120. I buy whole games, for less.
That said, there is almost no P2W issue in MWO. Sure, the Hero mechs are locked for MC only but they are more of a "Pay to play different" than being flat out OP, except the old Ember and Dragon Slayer.
However, the gating in MWO by mechbay is real. Without mechbay, there is simply no incentive to grind for new mechs since selling the old one is a stupid idea. There are events that offer mechbays but those are far from enough. Again, when the game hits Steam, a lot of new players will be grinding for new mechs and they will be turned off by the four free mechbay limit.


5. Oversaturation.

MWO is safe in this regards, since there is no game quite like this. Sure there are mech games in the market such as Hawken, and the newcomer Heavy Gear, but they play very differently.


6. Losing touch with the community.

I could make a "You are on an Island" joke here, except it wouldn't be funny. Cause that **** wasn't funny in the first place. Pre-IGP split PGI was notorious for not listening to the community and doing something totally opposite of the community's desires. The communication had seemed to improve from the later half of 2014... ...but it certainly had affected a lot of players' decision to spend more money on the game. I know I am still holding my wallet shut due to some old unresolved grudges.


7. Lack of Creativity.

PGI is a mixed bag on this topic. On one hand, the mechs, weapons, and maps were designed with much creativity. On the other hand, overall balancing, skill trees, game modes, and lack of certain immersive aspects just scream "lazy".


8. Poor launch expereince.

As I said above, PGI had better WOW the Steam horde, cause their reviews are merciless. Stuff like limited mechbays, high content price, and the C-Bill grind will certainly be noticed. Steam players got buttloads of other games they can play for free or cheaply, so if they leave, they probabaly aint coming back. And server issues will be another demon waiting to be unleashed. We already have hit-reg issues with the current limited player base. IMO, certain weapons need to be redesigned to limit their vulnerability hit-reg issues. Especially missiles and PPCs.


9. Lack of content; especially end game content.

In terms of mechs, MWO has plenty to grind for. In terms of endgame content, PGI has what? Community Warfare? Modules? Skill trees unlocks? If so, those are pretty poorly implemented as of right now. Not enough to keep many poeple interested, IMO.


10. World of Warcraft.

I still play WoW in a free server, personally (WotLK expansion, cause the later ones are crap). So it certainly takes away the the time I could be spending on MWO. Still, many issues I listed above have more to do with the fact why MWO is no longer the magnet it used to be for me.


Anyway, jaw away.

[CDLord HHGD]

I like to reference back to Warhammer Online. Like MWO, WAR was a very lore driven game. I was committed to playing WAR till the end, but lost interest (which is HUGE for me).

1. The grind was horrendous (had XP progression, but also a secondary Renown one as well and Renown rewards were PvP only and only about 10% of XP rewards and end-game content was dependent on Renown level. I had a level 40 character, (highest level before the extension, but only ever achieved about half-way on the Renown scale).
2. The devs implemented half-assed fixes to issues which, like here in MWO, were analyzed and solved by forumites with solutions that benefitted all.
3. The devs moved away from Lore too much. It still looked like Warhammer, but lost it's feel.
4. EA drove the game (I will NEVER forgive EA and why I was so elated that PGI bought out IGP. Publishers are the worst.)
5. End game content was unachievable unless you treated it like another job. STO and WoW are guilty of this as well. This is something MWO does a good job with IMO. With my schedule I am still able to keep up with all the progressions we have.

[KodiakGW]

A number of good points. Two items I'd want to point out.

Regarding the Mech Bays. You can actually get another 10 or more with minimal effort. Each CW house gives you a mech bay after achieving level 2, which is pretty easy to do. I needed an extra mech bay, so I took a 7 day CGB contract. Within three drops (only 64 loyalty points shy after the 2nd drop), I had the extra bay. Even with trial mechs, you are talking about 3-5 drops for average players. People just need to know that they can do that before permanently pledging to one house. Plus, I believe that a number of the personal achievements give you Mech Bays at the early levels.

I'm in complete agreement with the CBill grind. I hate seeing someone post a screen shot of their earnings from one game when they are running premium time AND a hero mech (or Invasion mech), and say "earnings are fine." They are not fine for new players considering that they have to buy three of the same chassis in order to level the mech beyond Basic. It makes the CBill grind even more exhausting because of that requirement. Especially for those mechs that don't offer that much different play experiences between the variants. This has been something since the early days that those of us that are still here have just learned to live with. But, that has certainly helped drive off players.

[Anjian]

Those are RPGs. When it comes to PvP shooters, they follow the same pattern but with some modifications. Looking at massive online PvP games and shooters in general, I noticed things that can make a game a winner, and a loser. Not in any particular order, this is my check list.

1. Learning curve.
2. Leveling and Tiering. Game protects the newbs by letting them play with those of equal newness, then gradually move them up the tier with more practice and experience.
3. Matchmaking. Players must be matched against players with similar levels of equipment and skill.
4. Metas.
5. Short and long wait times.
6. Lag, server performance, disconnections.
7. Quality of Netcode.
8. Good or bad map and level design.
9. Cheaters, hackers.
10. Spawn camping.
11. Short duration of game and short persistance within the game (aka like getting killed so soon).
12. Stomps. No one likes them.
13. Lack of game depth and variation.
14. Pay To Win.
15. Having a proper endgame.
16. Seal Clubbing.
17. Constant flow of content and updates.
18. Receptivity to the Player Base.
19. Originality.
20. Immersion.

Edited by Anjian, 27 May 2015 - 10:50 AM.

[S3dition]

This isn't an MMORPG

Thread end.

[El Bandito]

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

This isn't an MMORPG

Thread end.

So you are one of those who only reads the thread title, writes something snarky, and thinks you are pretty smart.

[MarineTech]

No. He's the one with the valid point that kinda puts a major dent in your argument.

[El Bandito]

MarineTech, on 30 May 2015 - 05:42 PM, said:

No. He's the one with the valid point that kinda puts a major dent in your argument.

You mean the point that I already acknowledged in the second sentence of my OP? Shows that he didn't read the post itself. In case you are blind I was pointing out certain things the video had mentioned is related to some of the situations we have in MWO development.

Edited by El Bandito, 30 May 2015 - 05:57 PM.

[KrazedOmega]

Some valid points that could translate over to MWO. However, MWO and the other games you listed are not MMOs. Yes, I read where you said It's not exactly an RPG but then you said,

Quote

Currently I play four different F2P MMO games in addition to MWO. Team Fortress 2, League of Legends, Hearthstone, and Heroes of the Storm.

None of those are MMOs either.

[Anjian]

Technically they are all indeed MMOs (Massive Multiplayer Online). Just not MMORPGs.

All Massive games are similarly covered by the blog Massively, for example, whether its Team Fortress or Final Fantasy 14.

The points made in the opening post applies equally to MMO shooters, since the shooting vs. RPG format are independent of these traits.

[Sir Wulfrick]

Some of the points raised in that video certainly resonated with me. To make clear the direction from which I'm coming, I'm a long-term BT and Mechwarrior fan. Books, all the MW games, the Mech Commander games, animated series etc. etc. The Battletech universe is one of my very favourites and is something on which I'm prepared to, and have, spend both time and money. I'm generally but cautiously in favour of MWO as it is today.

That being said.

A) Over hype and under-deliver.
I feel that this problem is a plague that curses the entire gaming industry at present, probably largely driven by the sheer greed of marketing scum and management MBA's who know bugger all about the games of which they are in charge. While I would not be quite so vehement about PGI, particularly since the extremely welcome departure of IG Publishing, may they never return, MWO did and does suffer from this. If memory serves I was incredibly excited about finally having a Mechwarrior game that made me believe that it would do justice to all the Battletech stories and novels that I'd read, and continue to read.

3 years later and what we have is a shallow game that contains nothing more than variations on the theme of team deathmatch. What we have now would be awesome for a Solaris setting, but I didn't think that would be the centre-piece of the entire game. Where's the war? Where are the strategic campaigns involving logistics, theatre-level strategy, battlefield tactics, resupply, missions with varying objectives? Where is it all? I want to feel like a small but nevertheless significant part of a huge strategic war machine! A Battletech war simulator in other words, in which I pilot mechs. What we actually have after 3 years of development appears to me to be evidence of a staggering lack of ambition. I can imagine that the direction that PGI took was severely ham-strung by IGP until towards the end of last year, but if this was the case, where is the evidence of any new ideas forthcoming? Come on PGI, put the WAR back in to Mechwarrior! This also of course encompasses a lack of creativity as mentioned in the video.


Losing touch with the game community.
This in some ways moves on from point A, and also encompasses the "monetisation" model that MWO uses. In the terms of MMORPGS and similar games, I suppose that I'm supposed to be a whale. I'm very fortunate in that I have a reasonable level of disposable income every month that I can devote to entertaining myself with my favourite sort of entertainment, i.e. PC games. I suspect that given the age of the original product that many of the 'hard-core Battletech' fans might be in a similar position, being perhaps older than the typical MMORPG or PC gaming demographic and therefore possibly having a median disposable income higher than for example students might have. Yes, I'm getting to the point...

I can't help but feel that the pricing of items available for purchase in relation to MWO, in addition to a huge over-reliance on the good will of the old-school BT crowd, has been cynically arranged to extract the maximum possible amount of cash out of us whilst delivering an absolutely minimum viable product. The good will of the old-school BT crowd, of which I would venture that many if not most are founders, has been squandered. I feel that we've been used essentially as a credit card. Which is OK, as I said - I'm willing to contribute cash to my favourite gaming universe. However, to stretch the analogy somewhat, credit cards have limits. To stretch the analogy even further, if repayments on credit aren't made then the credit tends to be withdrawn. Just saying. I don't think I need to repeat here what the opinion of the MWO community was in relation to coolant flush, 3rd person view or a slew of other items that nobody wanted but were added to the game for... Reasons...

Again, PGI have improved in my opinion since the departure of the publishers, but I would like to see more, given everything that we were lead to expect and as a consequence of that, the level of investment in to MWO that many of us have made. To stretch the analogy perhaps to breaking point, the credit card is getting perilously close to the limit. There will be no re-issue.


To MWO's credit, I very much approve of the stance that PGI have taken on cheaters, and I don't particularly feel that MWO is overly vulnerable to a saturated market as it has very few competitors. The art direction of the game is truly great and PGI should certainly be rewarded for their efforts in bringing the Mechs to life.

I don't mean this post to sound as negative as perhaps it does. I am cautiously positive about the future of MWO, but I want to see more content for the hard-core crowd that wanted a Battletech war simulator instead of COD-with-robots-deathmatch; and I would like to see some better communication and feedback about players ideas and concerns. The fact that this web site is often the last place in which official announcements are made is not acceptable.

So while I do not fear or anticipate the imminent death of MWO as some seem to do, PGI can and must do better.

[Elizander]

The cheater ban is important. Even I'd stop playing if the hacks got out of hand. Had a favorite FPS game before that I spent lots of money on too but when they couldn't handle the rampant hacking I dropped it for months until they got their act together. Thankfully cheating in MWO is either limited or not too noticeable (like 10 headshots in a row while jumping 360).

[CocoaJin]

This game has the most pleasant grind compared to most games...though it has it's moments. Everything I put into a mech is for that mech...not some compulsory grind to level cap. I buy what I want and make use of it as I see fit because I want it, not because its in a rigid line of progression....basically why I don't put any significant time investment in WoT and every minute I spend on the WoWarships forums makes me want to avoid it too.

Edited by CocoaJin, 30 May 2015 - 07:34 PM.

[Elizander]

One other unmentioned reason why MMOs die is that the original developers (or the competent ones) leave or are pirated by another company (as is the case with most Korean MMOs). You have a bunch of clueless new guys playing catch-up with the code and design and it's always too little too late to turn things around.

I've seen it happen more than enough times for MMOs since I had direct contact with developers while working in publishing.

[Lightfoot]

I hate WoW. Seems like a waste of time. EVE is ok, but some specializations are not worth the time, unfortunately time is money in EVE.

WoW just has a large group of players who find it adequate, there are an equal number who would never play it.

[Alistair Winter]

I've stopped playing MMORPGs. I played WoW untill the first expansion and I played TOR for about a year, I think. MMORPGs, to a large extent, seem to be based on the human desire to gather wealth, status and power. Thinking back on the time I spent playing those games, there was so much time invested simply because I wanted to have an epic mount, or wanted to be a master blacksmith to make cool stuff for other people, or wanted a certain suit of armour, or wanted a certain title. And when you get it, after weeks of grinding and farming, you feel good for about a day and then you need more.

That's why I hate when people talk about "content", like the game is a big feeding bag. People ask what the point of MWO is, as if the mech vs mech action is the foreplay to the real game. No, shooting mechs is the real game. If you don't enjoy that part, any amount of community warfare and meta-game elements won't make a big difference, unless you add a meta-game element which is a fun activity in itself, such as a real economy with repairs and dropship fees and hiring aerospace pilots to do airstrikes.

But as a rule of thumb, the content should always be an end in itself, not a means to an end. If grinding to become a master blacksmith in WoW is boring, then it shouldn't be in the game. And yes, it is boring. You have to literally gather metal in the wild, like you're gathering wild berries, and then you have to vomit out a number of identical items to gather experience. That's not content, that's just a feature that exploits the basic human desire for wealth, status and power. And people do it even though they don't find the process fun at all.

We already have PVP team deathmatch. MWO just needs 4v4, PVE and Solaris, as far as I'm concerned. That's more than enough content. Beyond that, they should just focus on giving the game depth (e.g. skill trees, role warfare) and balance, and improving graphics as the game grows older.

As for lack of creativity... I sometimes wish PGI didn't try so hard to be creative. I would pay a hundred dollars to replace the current game with an identical version where Skirmish, Assault and Conquest was simply replaced with the game modes from Counter Strike (Hostage Rescue, Plant the Bomb), plus Capture the Flag. Those 3 ancient, unoriginal game modes would be infinitely better than what we have right now. PGI should have just copied those instead of reinventing the wheel.

[Anjian]

PGI didn't reinvent the wheel. The public games and their modes are mostly copies of WoT's format, while CW is basically copying the MOBA format.

And no I don't like 4x4, and PVE or coop unless you can really make competent AIs. Solaris is awful if you still remember the one in MW4, where its basically a stupid large coloseum, straight ground, little cover, one side full of mechs, the other side full of mechs, just gunning it out and often dying where they stand like its a mech version of the gunfight in OK Corral.

i was grinding for that event. I really don't know what is ever pleasant about the public pug life. Almost every game is a stomp, whether you are getting stomped or they are getting stomped. Last year, I was seeing more equivalent games (for me a game is not a stomp when the losing team still attains 6 kills and over.) This year I see games collapsing in record time, teams playing NASCAR across the maps, a strategy that can get your own team quickly killed as assaults are left behind, isolated, wiped out, and the rest of the team dominoes. And I do feel that this game has one of the most incompetent player bases, not because they are stupid, but because they are still adopting tactics that are successful from what other game they used to come from, but isn't going to work here.

After I got my 2 million cbills, I spent the rest of the night, trying to relax and wash off the scent by leveling my Raiden in War Thunder, then went from air to sea as I level my Aoba class cruiser in World of Warships. Banzai, Banzai!

Edited by Anjian, 30 May 2015 - 11:54 PM.

[Shabahh Kerensky]

Anjian, on 30 May 2015 - 06:33 PM, said:

Technically they are all indeed MMOs (Massive Multiplayer Online). Just not MMORPGs.

All Massive games are similarly covered by the blog Massively, for example, whether its Team Fortress or Final Fantasy 14.

The points made in the opening post applies equally to MMO shooters, since the shooting vs. RPG format are independent of these traits.

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?

Edited by Shabahh Kerensky, 31 May 2015 - 12:01 AM.

[Insects]

MWO isnt an MMORPG, but it is an online game and the majority is relevant.

IGP made many of those mistakes, and did pay the price for it.

I think PGI have stepped up efforts to address those issues, they are just a small company with limited resources so development is quite slow and the playerbase is sitting under critical mass so it is hard to get reestablished.

[Xetelian]

I thought this thread died.

Fine, I'll watch the video, read the first post. Come back and edit this.






Sorry, I just don't need to hear someone nerdboner over Eve and WoW. Yes they're top of their class in many ways but none of this is relevant. Its too late for the hype train, we already have the game. Its time investment has chased off plenty I'm sure but long winded. We took time to crap on a couple games that I don't care for either. We don't have a straight out P2W. This game lives or dies by mechbays.

Edited by Xetelian, 31 May 2015 - 02:18 AM.