7 Deadly Sins of MMO Design - 7: Pride - Aiming too high, and Ignoring Players
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 1 ต.ค. 2024
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Hey I really like this game.
AKSHUALLY, You THINK you do, but you DON'T
Because no one knows what players want more than the executives.
Pride, the 7th and Final sin, the thing that makes young companies over promise their small projects, and big companies blind to feedback from knowledgeable players.
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" *You think you do, but you don't.* " - And now he is still laughed at on Vanilla to this day.
Turns out we did and we do.
Definitely one of the most infamous dev. statements of all time.
Yet they are cashing in on that cow, how ironic
what an ignorant statement to make from a dev
@@Emersongaming99 I'd like a cheeseburger with pickles -- "You think you do, but you don't" That would crash and burn any normal business.
Female Blizzard Employees: I do want a safe working environment free of sexual predators
Blizzard Executive Staff: You think you do, but you don't *Quagmire Laugh*
Giggty
No negativity in the dojo, mate
It's always the ones that virtue signal the most that are the most perverse in the end, isn't it?
@@BigPuddin lol "virtue signal"
Quagmire is at least honest about his gigittys
World of Warcraft: "We have no plans to implement classic servers for our player's and you don't want this even though you think you do."
Also World of Warcraft: "Hey guys, check out this totally original idea we came up with Wow Classic! Now our loyal fanbase can play through classic content! Isn't think a great idea we came up with?"
I note that in a lot of arguments about pride, no one ever uses the word hubris. It really helps to distinguish between acceptable pride (being proud of your work), and unacceptable pride (refusing to accept criticism and assume whatever you make will automatically be popular with everyone).
That is very true
because pride and hubris are slightly different things but mean much the same thing. when most people say pride, in these modern days, they are actually substituting it for joy. But maybe they are not because often when people are using it wrongly to express their joy it is often covering up the "unacceptable" pride.
@@AndrewTheFrank The problem is that "pride" has two distinct meanings in English. It can be the opposite of humility. It can also be the opposite of shame.
let me present you the word: "arrogance"
@@sinnerthesinful552 exactly. People always mix up the two
The worst part about pride is that a prideful person cannot accept that they are prideful because thats admitting you have a flaw. Here's a quote that personifies pride "I am, actually humble. I think I’m much more humble than you would understand."
Humility is a strange virtue. Once you think you have it, you actually lack it.
"I am the most humble person you will ever meet."
I can hear your Mountain giant pfp
"I, too, am extraordinarily humble." -Drax
@@shanegrayson7068 So it's a matter of action rather than word
I just went through your entire Deadly Sins series, and there wasn't a category that didn't apply to World of Warcraft.
It's no wonder it's fallen from grace as badly as it has...
Yeah I noticed that too lol
FFXIV too actually. Though less so in some areas. Gender locking isn't a thing in WoW though, or maybe I missed it. It is in FFXIV though, but they are changing that slowly.
I think you'll be hard pressed to find a single MMO that doesn't contain at least a few, but when it heavily exemplifies all 7, that's a problem.
@@vixxcelacea2778 Gender locking really *isn't* a thing in FF14 though? Not in a significant way in at least.
There's *one* race that doesn't have a female equivalent (I kinda wish they'd just decided that particular race does not have any sort of sexual dimorphism so the men and women are indistinguishable from each other, *or* clarified in lore than the race is a single gender race (so there *aren't* men and women), and like some of the starting equipment and that's basically it.
Like yes it's *present* but in a way that almost no one would even notice it outside if trying to do really specific things that almost never come up.
It certainly *used* to be a significant factor, but that's been almost entirely fixed over the last two expansions.
If you wanna apply that "sin" to FF14 a much better application is the fact that glamour (transmogrified) equipment can't be worn by other classes than what it was meant for. You can't wear Paladin equipment as glamour on your White Mage, for instance, despite it being a purely aesthetic choice. It's functionally the same "sin".
But at no point does FF14 actually restrict players *mechanical* choices and abilities based on their *aesthetic* choices.
Back in the day I used to discuss games with friends over pizza & DnD on Friday nights. Being rpg nerds, MMOs were always a topic, and even back before first expansion came out I would say "People keep trying to build a 'WoW Killer', when all they need to do is build a good game & loyal player base.. WoW will kill it's self in due time." And here we are WoW is so milked out it's nearly squiting dust
And Warframe
I have to admit, you're right. When I first started to play Gw2 I was completely overwhelmed, too many features, too big of a game, esp as a casual player. But as someone coming from a very bad mmo (fiesta online) I was STUNNED about how good an mmo can be, so I started to concentrate on only one aspect of the game (pve and Map completion/ discovery) bc it was the easiest to understand and most enjoyable for me (the jumping puzzles conpletely sold the game for me, never had so much fun in an rpg environment) and as soon as I became comfortable I loved that I can experience all other aspects step by step in the same game, not having to play 3 Games for all features I enjoy. Gw2 does so much right for me, as an (to be fair) not very experienced gamer, but as someone who sticks completely loyal to very few Games all my live, gw2 seems to be simply the perfect match c:
Good video and fair points tho! :D
I played gw2,seems directionless to me.
@@roky7772 appart from the story lines (basegame, expansions and living worlds) you are completely free todo what you like so yes besides those stories you set your own directions to get item x or achievement y or do thing z as you think thats fun todo
@@frank124444 Not my type of game I guess, i do all the golden heart quests on the map then there is nothing on it, so idk what to do and quit
I don't get why he describes GW2 as "wide as an ocean but deep as a puddle". It's open world system is clearly one of its strengths. Exploring the different layers of Maguuma Jungle, Jumping puzzles, OW-Event system, mountsystem, ... excels all other MMO on the market.
I mean, yeah, FF14's storytelling and craftingsystem is far better, Lotro's RP is superior and RuneScape OS's-Questing and skillsystem is unreached but that doesn't mean GW2 is shallow. GW2 has it flaws but surpasses all other MMOs in many ways.
@@roky7772 From my experience the type of player who really enjoys GW2's approach is more the sandbox player than the typical themepark fan. While others think it's directionless and there's too little linearity (progression), that is exactly what me and some others I know enjoyed about the game. But when I'm looking for an MMO I'm not typically looking for certain features it does best but for a world I can get lost in which offers a great variety of options. Otherwise I burn out too fast.
I'm currently working on two ORPG's and this series has help me get both clients to understand the importance of not going the corrupt path. Thank you Josh!
I'm glad you've been enjoying the series :) keep me informed on how the games go :D
@@JoshStrifeHayes will do mate! :)
Keep stay in light way
@@user-gf5lq2pe3q Yes sir!
@@NordicForgeDev so hows the rpg?
If you are a new indie developer, I'd probably also advise against starting with an MMO as your first game. Start with something simpler, a story or mechanic that works well on a small scale, get used to both the practical and the business side of game development.
In other words, MMOs are the high level raids of game development. You need to start with killing 5 wolves in a generic forest first. Sure, it's not as fun, but you gotta do the grind to get the XP.
Honestly, accurate. It's an ambition though.
Real Life RPG.
Ironic the last thing he talks about is Blizzard and J Allen Brack, seems his pride was much bigger than anyone thought, and the fall much greater.
My god...watching this Blizzard footage still hurts...it almost hurts as much as thinking of Warcraft Reforged....
Warcraft reforged was an impressive failure as all they had to do was release warcraft 3 with better textures and everyone would have been happy but they fucked up by trying to go above and beyond
Pride: Even if you are better than everyone else you are not perfect, and thus could be wrong.
this comment is so underrated it should have more likes
Isn't pride the very thing that make you think you cannot be wrong?
To paraphrase Abathur from Starctaft 2.
Perfection is a goal to strive for, but is not achievable. Perfection would mean no more motion, which means stagnation. Perfection is thus an ever changing goal to improve.
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i think you actually described the charm of gw2 exactly lol. its demographic is people who don't want to become a demographic, mostly. i don't have the life that suits becoming a full time raider and i can't dunk 100 bucks a week into gems to make the spiciest crafting happen. i'm just a liddol boi, pls leave me here with my daily jumping puzzle..
Players: "We want that"
Devs: "No i don't think you do."
Players: "But we literally just said we want that..."
Devs: *Shrug*
I mean, considering the fact that Classic Era servers are dead as a doornail...that's pretty conclusive evidence.
Final Fantast 14 1.0 vs Realm Reborn : pride vs listening to your customers
I played duration of 1.0. I don't know who the hell they listened to, but it wasn't me or the other members on the forum giving feedback on the tweaks they made during that time frame.
@@kuuryotwo5153 Tha would be why they ended up completely changing the team and re-releasing it later as Realm Reborn which is one of the industry giants now.
+1
1.0 was far better for me than ARR. I've never played since. To each their own.
What I mean is: the way the reworked the game made me hate it more than the empty, laggy husk it was before.
Ironic that you bring that up, since SE hasn't listened to their players since 2016. The only redeeming feature of modern FFXIV is it's story.
"no one grabs the medicine claiming to be ok at everything"
People who believe in essential oils would like to work with you. (For the record I don't)
Damn oily huns
The people who think they cure everything haven't researched how you're supposed to use them. They're supposed to be used as well as medicine, not instead...
Those don't claim to be okay, they claim to cure or even reverse.
People wouldn't buy something that said "May cause positive, may cause nothing, may cause bad reaction"
@McFinnaPants Medicine is called medicine because it has been rigorously tested by various experiments and different people to try to eliminate biases or favored data. Said experiment has to be repeatable and end up with similar to the same results. It's often double blind to prevent placebo/nocebo bias and unconscious influence by administers. It also usually has a decent sample size, like a couple thousand people of various ages and different sexes, often trying to eliminate possible confounders like illness, specific allergies etc to evaluate the new medicines use.
Essential oils have not been rigorously tested like this. They don't show great efficacy. Same with lots of homeopathic, natural or alternative medicines. I think people don't value just how much testing and scientific rigor goes into literally anything being approved.
I could use fluffy stuffed animals in conjunction with medicine and it would have the same effect as drinking water, using essential oils or anything else. Placebo is a lot stronger than people think. If I think it will help, it often will. This is why experiments are designed to eliminate placebo affect as much as possible.
Also, essential oils can be dangerous. The concentrated amount can cause skin irritation and for many animals in the home, they are outright dangerous. Appeal to nature kills a lot of pets and hurts a lot of people and I am so sick of people assuming that orange oil or something similar is fine because it comes from nature. Uranium is natural, poison is natural, cancer is natural. Not everything in nature is there to help or even be useful to us. It's a deadly fallacy that so many companies take to the bank.
Oddly enough, there is a not insubstantial amount of people who fall for that sort of thing. Remember, if it's supposed to cure everything, it probably cures nothing.
That kid was asking about wow classic because he know warlords was going to be a dumpster fire of an expansion. If only that cocky dev realized that too.
I think GW2 falls short specifically on "hardcore" content but it is a casual's dream and even tho it wants to be a jack of all trades it is a very special MMO that I would love to see more companies doing something like it, I stopped playing WoW cause it felt like an endless grind, which it still is, and even tho I miss having more mounts, or better item level than everybody around me, in GW2 I'm just grateful that I can enjoy it whenever I want and the game does not pressure me in any way or form to be actively playing, I just do what I like, whenever I like and I don't feel left behind.
I dont get this, there's plenty of hardcore aspect to GW2, having played both GW2 and WoW extensively, their raiding feels honestly on par with each other, I had a hell of a time raiding in GW2 in a guild as I did WoW in a guild.
@@HeatherKayagi but didn't the rewards in WoW felt more rewarding? I raided in wow not only because of the experience but also for that piece of gear that might drop. I think the general player doesn't have an idea of what the raid rewards are in GW2, and if that's the case maybe it means the rewards should be better
@@HeatherKayagi Please don't say blatant lies like that.
Josh talking about guild wars 2 (the only MMO I play anymore) it activates the happy chemical in my brain. I actually like that it does multiple things at once like crafting, story, raids haha
Glad I'm not the only one, haha
I think gw2 does alot well enough. Better than most. The openworld system, combined with the metas, achievements and masteries are very straight forward easy to understand and even when you start out you can always take little goals and by providing more mastery point then neccessary it doesnt lock you out of completing it just because you may just dont want to do the xx conditional challenge locked in group content. It doesnt have the most complex combat, setting a low barrier of entry, but is also not too slow for me that you feel years passing between each action (FFXIV, was literally unplayable for me for that reason). Sure the combat System isnt nearly as exciting as tera's or BDO's, but one of those offers no content but the same dungeons over and over and the other one provides no challenging enemies to use that combat system for in pve, while the pvp is objectively garbage
It also does a lot of these deadly sins at times.
I think GW2 is a bad example you mentioned.
It is VERY DIFFICULT to produce a game with real horizontal progression without expanding its content to every areas.
Since the driving force is not to be stronger than anyone like in other mmo, GW2 has to use other means to keep players attention.
Thus all those different system for everyone to choose what they enjoy/ want to do.
Ofc GW2 has reach a stallment like most other small ~ medium MMO nowadays, but it still keep its casual fanbase for those who doesn't want to compete/ race against who being the strongest.
It's funny because I that over the years, GW2 has developed its own niche. It really does cater to players that love to run off and explore, and rewards them for it. One of my favorite things that keeps me coming back to it after all these years is that it's more about the journey than the destination- you log in planning to do one thing, accidentally run into a giant crowd waiting for that map's meta to start, and the next thing you know, you're all having a griffon car show or in the midst of a quaggan conga line to pass the time. The large map meta events really do bring this unique sense of community and spontaneity to the game and the community that I absolutely love.
GW2 is one of the few mmos where I have a unique and fun interaction with another player every time I log in other mmos definitely still have it of course but gw2 just fosters spontaneity
yup and at the same time it has alienated people who enjoy doing hard dungeons and raids and such, I loved GW2 for awile played 1000 hours or so but once I had beaten all dungeons especially Arah how it was back then and got all the fractals of the mists items, they proceeded to never release any new content for me ever. just endless stories and zones to explore but no meaty content for me to do. I dont fault them for it its a great game if you like world bosses and exploring and all that but I wish it had some fun raids and dungeons for hardcore players like me.
I thought I wanted it. You gave it to me. Turns out I did want it.
You thought you knew what I wanted, but you didn't.
See i love mmos like gw2 because i have a short attention span, in 1 day id do like 6 different things and gw2 was perfect for that, i think that is their "thing", having such a great variety of gameplay that is well done. If im playing another game and i get bored of raiding when thats all their is to do, i will get bored and want to do something else
To be fair, sometimes the developer has to know when _not_ to listen. A lot of things that you yourself cover in "X ruins MMORPGs" were player devised that devs listened to and implemented.
So much this. People constantly misdiagnose problems with their favorite games, or lack foresight to realise the consequences of certain decisions on th long-term health of the game.
They should listen for certain; if a huge portion of the playerbase is complaining, there is clearly a problem. You just might not want to do exactly what they say.
Players will let you know there is a problem. And they may even let you know where the problem is. However, they will RARELY tell you the correct solution. (Doesn't mean don't consider theirs, just you have other levers than what they see)
Players usually point to a symptom or a side effect of the issue. They rarely point to the issue directly.
"Fixing" the symptoms will do nothing for the main issue, sometime even do more harm.
No point in taking drugs for headache, if the headache is caused by bad eyesight.
This is true. If companies had listened to customers, we'd never have scented laundry soap, just bubblier ones.
Yandere dev mentality condensed in video form, colorized, circa 1942
Great video. I would like to add a bit about GW2 however. GW2 _is_ good at one single thing - it is good at being your go-to MMO. If you don't want to play seven different mmos just to experience story AND raids AND pvp, you play GW2, because all of these systems there are fine. They may not be the best, but they are still pretty good and not having to invest your time in multiple games entirely makes up for the short-commings.
I really love gw2 I think one of the things he spoke about though was how all the little amount of content scattered around can be hard to latch onto for beginners
Well, his pride got in the way, just not in the way you meant.
It got in the way of letting him defend employees from sexual abuse and he's now gone from Blizzard.
Phenomenal. Binged all 7 videos, thoroughly enjoyable. Here's hoping the MMO genre has a new flagship game to remind Warcraft to keep competitive
[Final Fantasy VII Remake has entered the chat]
What a fun and fascinating series it was ! Thanks for doing it!
Welcome dude, got a lot more coming over the next year :D
If only Blizzard, the fallen titan of the industry, would heed this lesson. At least they gave the world WoW Classic.
The problem is they want both. Be best at everything while not hearing at players. Other companies are struggling with one of these and are failing.
Not an MMO, but Overwatch has definitely gone downhill because of this sin. The devs are so focused on optimizing the meta for the top .1% of the competitive ladder, they constantly make changes that make the game less fun for the bottom 99.9% of their playerbase.
5 years and literal thousands of "this isn't fun anymore, I quit" threads on the game's official forums later, Overwatch's playerbase has shrunk _so much_ that match que times can take up to 30 minutes or even longer.
Kinda funny to watch this after J. Allen Brack had to leave Blizzard after refusing allegations of covering up sexual harrasment. In the end his pride was his downfall
MMOs don't necessarily need to only focus on a single element, an MMO should be able to focus on two or three. That isn't necessarily too difficult of a task.
Exactly! Having more features doesn't automatically mean less quality for those features. And the issue is a lot more complicated than the number of elements it has, to begin with.
@@Sporezlol Yeah but if you give more features the players will ask to make them better. WoW suffered from it at professions for example where the players wanted more depths, better rewards and as blizzard did it in legion the players cried that it was bad. The way blizzard tried to solve it maybe wasn't what the players wanted but professions are not anywhere a core part of wow to begin with.
The statement made was a simplification, there's usually a hand full of necessities or combine features most games need, but the focus of the games scope probably needs to be limited. It's an obvious folly for a weak developer to take on more than they can achieve, not so much numerous features that actively makes a game worse. I'm sure tons of players and developers wish their MMO had more highlights, but if they can't excel in any way than you have a lot of mediocre features.
Personally, I wish for a combination of mechanics which multiply to to become something greater than the separate parts in a game, so this one is particularly disappointing. But you can see tons of aspiring MMOs, even major productions, fail due to poor scope and lack of focus.
@@bahamutkaiser Agreed.
This is why i like bdo despite its flaws and p2w options, is because of it's lifeskilling system that allows you to choose something you either do casually om the side, or full time to make money, and it feeds back into the core gameplay loop because you can choose to just grind enemies and enhance until you grt what you want, or maybe you can do fishing and cooking, maybe gathering ect and save up money to buy gear outright
This video is also helpful in those who want to become TH-camrs. FOCUS on a 'niche' and you WILL grow. I've enjoyed @Josh Strife Hayes video for the past few days now. ( I'm a new sub) And he is my guy to go to learn about MMOs. Yes, other MMOrpg TH-camrs exist but I like the way Josh does his videos because he 'niched' down and just about perfected it.
To call one of the big 4 smthng that "simply does not work" is kind of a stretch. I think you underestimate the players that have a life, want everything but do not want everything to cost you years to play 5 different games.
they want a game that plays better than most others, where they can do different things everyday, a game that looks good and that keeps getting better without leaving anyone behinde who just wants to play.
They want GW2
I don't really agree with his take on Guild Wars 2. I think doing a bit of everything is actually GW2's strength. For players like me, who enjoy a variety of content, it's the perfect MMO. Sure, it's not the best at everything, but it does most things very well. I've been playing the game since beta and I've never gotten bored of the game because if I get bored of one aspect of the game, I can just switch to doing something else.
Some people do actually want a pizza with everything. Sometimes you have a mild headache and are a but sick, so maybe a multi-pill will fix your problem.
That said, “Jack of all trades,” is still arguably a niche, so if you want to make a good Jack of all Trades game you’ll have to be better than the others in that niche, and I’d argue that succeeding requires more experience and talent than games focusing on one thing, so it’s probably even worse for beginners.
gw2 is the "do whatever you want!" MMO that people always say they want, the one that usually blows chunks and fails at everything and has no direction. but it turns out, it's the best at filling that "do what you want!" niche. i love it a lot.
The funny thing about GW2 is that it has all those systems, but then also just accidentally has the best open world of any MMO. Like it's the only MMO you play where you even REMOTELY pay attention to your surroundings, and get rewarded for doing it.
@@dojelnotmyrealname4018 It's one of the few MMOs I've played where the world really feels alive. And there's pretty much always something to do around every corner.
Pride really can be a game killer. Wizard101 also had a severe problem with this, but recently they've made some extreme changes and opened their ears to the community, implementing many changes that we've been hoping for. It's done wonders for the community, which wasn't nearly as big as you saw in your Worst MMO video. That was the result of a game dev team actually making an effort to confront their sins. It can happen~
Twice the pride, Double the fall. Its idiotic that you dont listen the the people who play the game, rate the game and heavily fund the game. Most players want a fixed, balanced and polished game(though sometimes bugs are fun) not 10's of new classes and mechanics if the previous problems arnt solved. There is no point if the game is painful to play.
This aged like the finest of wines
Your line about developers pride creating a game they think is great made me think of Fallout 76, I know it's not technically an mmo but it has several systems which made it seem like that's where they were aiming if it wasn't for the technical flaws exhibited by their increasingly ageing engine.
"You think you do, but you don't"
Right, ofcourse I forgot you knew me better then I do... You... Complete stranger...
Thanks for this series! (Commenting for the algorithm.)
Ty Andrew:)
This is exactly what happend with RuneScape (RS3) when they released EOC. They pushed it even when the majority of players were against it, which led to the lowest playercount ever.
I also left when EoC happened
what's wrong with EOC in RS3?
@@JDC2890 now, nothing.
Back when it was released, it basically instantly changed a decade old long combat system with absolutely no demand for it.
Imagine if rs3 right now switched to a first person shooter.
@@JoshStrifeHayes well said, also on-release eoc was hard to learn and had a lot of issues with how it worked. Now days (years later) it is a fully fleshed out combat system with intricate abilities and a LOT of room for improvement as you learn and get better. Also, with the addition of Revolution you can have basic (or all) abilities fire off in priority order. Thus if you just want to afk or are a new learner you can pick it up easier. I definitely agree its a good system now days, but had issues on launch and wasen't what the players wanted at the time.
@@JoshStrifeHayes they thought, "WoW makes a lot of money, lets copy their combat" not realizing the combat system before was charming & although simple, very fun. They didn't realize they struck gold with that version until OSRS which was probably the least prideful move I've seen from an MMO publisher. I don't think Blizz could ignore the success of OSRS. Classic WoW also freed retail from the chains of "stop changing the game! We miss how it was before!", now those people can go play classic & leave retail devs alone.
I am pleased MMO publishers are starting to see that legacy servers are not only viable, but a really good money making strategy. In the end, its all about that bottom dollar anyway. Excited to watch your "greed" video, this is the first one I've watched, I can only imagine haha
12:40 "That guy is the one who announced Vanilla Warcraft."...."Oh, he's now in charge of Warcraft. Let's hope his pride doesn't get in the way. Again."
Posting 9 months in the future. Blizzard is under investigation by the state of California for gross sexual misconduct to it's female employees and many players have jumped ship from WoW to FF XIV.
I laughed so hard for a good 5 minutes when Josh said the line I quoted.
Listen only to the experienced players is not always good, because pride can get to those players too, so new players get left behind like in path of exile. Thank you for this series. Thats a patreon subscription worth for me. Pls continue!
Such an irony that "Pride" had it's very own patch in WoW during Mists of Pandaria... "Pride is good, until it is bad", or something like that said by Emperor Shaohao...
I'm almost sad that this series is over but on the other hand you have enough videos here I can file through :) Thanks a lot and keep it up.
Because people fail to distinguish between pride, and Hubris. The latter being the excess.
If only I could sum up my utter disappointment in just how much I loved Mists of Pandaria for its' lore, area, raids, and world impact. Then to see all of it thrown out of the window, into a giant pyre of green fire.... all because the cliff face from the Broken Isle pre-patch was made too high.
The focus on J. Allan Brak didn't age well. He fell victim of the Activision/Blizzard California Lawsuit.
well, who, exept emploies and Shreier, knew about the total hell of a workplace he created/
I'm interested in your opinion on what your ideal MMORPG would be, condensed down into a singular video. Watching a good portion of your videos, there's some clear opinions and consensus that communities have on what is enjoyable for an MMORPG, but with your experiences I'm curious to what your ideals would be if they were to all be met within a "perfect game". TheLazyPeon has done similar videos on this topic as an example. Keep up the great content, everything has been very insightful!
Can't wait. This is my favorite series and i can relate heavily to each video. And josh if you see my comment i would love to know what mmorpg games you play like on a daily basis.
Glad you're enjoying the series Adel :)
At the moment I'm enjoying OSRS on mobile and ESO on my PC. just picked up BDO from steam as its on sale right now so ill hopefully get a few hours out of that.
@@JoshStrifeHayes That's awesome man!! My advice as a veteran player of osrs is dont worry too much about efficiency or any of that nonsense, have fun and do what you enjoy! Explore, quest, skill, whatever!
In several mmorpgs, Ive noticed a lot of people being obsessed with efficiency and progression over enjoying the gameplay experience and having fun. Actually, that would be a really cool series if you haven't done it already! Back when I was a kid I remember just exploring osrs, doing random stuff just for fun never really worrying about progression. Same with WOW, I just explored all the zones, and took quests slowly, just having fun chilling. Just this sense of awe at how expansive the ingame worlds were! I had never seen something like that before, especially WOW.
@@kailashbtw9103 given enough time, players will optimise the fun out of anything.
I don't play efficiently any more, i focus on the journey and enjoying the process
Warhammer Age of reckoning.. a picture perfect example of pride, the Devs knew better then the players and ran the game straight into the ground with blatant balancing issues and ignoring the glaring quality issues the game had
It`s not just the "You think you do but you don`t" that`s off-putting.
The initial "noooo" just reeks of condescension.
"Let's hope his pride doesn't get in the way."
Yeah, about that . . .
I don't understand how having multiple modes at the same time can be defined as a problem in an mmorpg.
It should be obvious to all gamers that in today's society it is difficult (if not impossible) to have the time to play multiple mmorpg at the same time.
The mmorpg is a product that consumes a lot of game time and getting stuck into a product that only does one thing well while the rest is non-existent is becoming increasingly wrong.
Anyone who doesn't think so is probably living in a truly "fantasy world".
With such limited time to play, getting stuck into a product that does everything 'average' would be the worst use of time.
A few excellent systems would be a better gameplay experience than lots of mediocre things.
@@JoshStrifeHayes Although I obviously respect your opinion I personally don't find it correct at all.
Especially since many mmorpg still have progression systems based mainly on time spent in game.
If the quality is evaluated only on time instead of engaging of the gameplay it doesn't make much sense in my opinion.
This video by Extra Credits expresses exactly what I think about it:
th-cam.com/video/clvJFztk9wI/w-d-xo.html
Personally, I easily get bored of playing the same mode over and over again and prefer to change it all the time.
Having a system that allows me to do this is an advantage I look forward to.
Mmorpgs is world would be boring world if there were not more choices to do things in.
@@JoshStrifeHayes i mean, have you ever played BDO ? is not classic old MMORPG, but that game had almost all of the content except dungeon and story. but prettymuch doin fine. their lifeskill is not simple but not that complex either, it just fine. i know 1 guy who got to level 61 only from lifeskilling. i think that's proof that their life skill system is fine, you can play the game without having battle and still fun for ppl who like lifeskilling. their combat system is top notch, anyone who like action combat system will fall in love with it.
i personally love old classic MMORPG named RF online. so in my opinion eventho BDO combat system is fun, it still lack in some large combat concept. but i still enjoyed it
so, yeah i dont really agree with you. but well whatever. cheers
@@NikeGipple I'd like to interject here for a moment after having watched both this video and the one you've linked because I think this is more or less just a difference in mindset.
If you want to find exactly one game to play and you do not like to have 10, 20 or however many different games installed to bounce between, yet also get enjoyment from a wide variety of different activities than it is completely understandable that you would get more enjoyment from something that offers decent content in a wide variety of areas.
However in stark contrast to that with myself as an example love engaging fast fluid action combat that is NOT pvp yet is deep enough that a players personal skill is a defining factor of how good they are/can be at the game just as much if not more than there time invested. I also greatly enjoy in depth numerical systems and enjoy spilling over spreadsheets and figuring out new plans stratagems or setups on my own. with this in mind Monster Hunter is the single greatest franchise that gaming has ever seen in MY opinion and while waiting for the new one to launch not a single other game that I haven't played to death will scratch that itch and any game that offers less than an MH game in either of those two categories is strictly worse and not worth my personal time regardless of how good anything else in them is.
So really I think both sides are correct and it all comes down to a matter of perspective and values/wants.
The strength and focus of GW2 is convenience, cooperation, and a kick ass combat system. You can do anything at any time and at any pace. If you are trying to progress in one part of the game. Play a different part can still contribute to your original goal.
At the quick glance GW2 feels shallow like a puddle, but everyone who tries it calls it Home. You visit your parents once in a while and sleep in your old bedroom. It feels great and nice, but eventually get bored and leave. However you still happy that it's there in the background, knowing you can revisit, and knowing that you aren't totally screwed and can pick up right where you left off on equal level with the rest of the players. We're always happy when you come back and bittersweet when you go. It's not a "goodbye" but "happy trails, until we meet again."
I think he completely missed the mark on that one. GW2 is not a shallow game, not as a whole. You don't need insane depth in your systems for a game to be good. Terra has one of the best combat in the genre, but it got nothing else and that's why it lost the majority of its playerbase very very fast. There's nothing more to it than PvP and dungeons. And even that doesn't have much of a depth TBH. GW2 is amongst the top dogs in MMO genre, so its existence negates this narrative. ArcheAge would also be big if not for awful monetization and that game is fairly competent in many aspects but doesn't excel in any. Non-MMO games follow the same trend. Take Valheim for example since it's rather popular right now. It has combat, exploration, crafting, building, boss hunting and non of it is super deep or amazingly done but as a whole, it is a charming little game. Games are more than the sum of their parts.
Also, you have just described most of the MMOs, WoW included. I don't play WoW, but plenty of my friends do and they always take breaks between content drops.
That's exactly the feeling I get while playing GW2. I've had the game since just before the release of PoF but my gaming interests just weren't focused on MMOs at the time, and I didn't put in the time to play. But every time I picked it back up maybe for a week or even a day or two, I never felt like I was missing out on content, and now finally investing my time into it I don't feel left behind.
Suppose it depends on differing viewpoints in the end. Some players like doing one thing and pick games with that one thing, while others like doing multiple different things so the game ain't stale.
The thing is though, that's the community, not the game.
I think josh approached this in the wrong way, in the sense that he didnt mention how sins can overlap with eachother. It's kind of pride's thing, it can make other sins far worse if not create them outright. I think gw2 is a good example. This idea of an everygame can overlap with gluttony, that being feature creep. Theres so many systems, so many parts of the game, that it eventually leads to either some features being forgotten or very few features getting any real changes.
This leads to one of the games biggest problems that is frequently talked about; the lack of proper endgame content for returning players. If you want pve, you get 5 hours of content and time gated shenanigans every few months in the form of living world, and maybe more in the form of an expansion every two years. If you want raids or other forms of that, you'll hopefully get one or two every few months. Pvp or wvw player? Sucks to be you, cause they barely get updated at all, aside from the occasional skills and such.
Now take a look at world of warcraft, they have a main focus, being the more competitive side of adventuring. Every few months or so, (although I haven't played WoW I dont know the exact update schedule) they have a new thing for those players to do, whether it be a raid or items to get. And because they have few things to focus on, that let's them put more content into that part so that demographic can enjoy the game more. Theres alot to say about WoW, but lacking in content isnt one of those things, atleast from a raw sense. Don't say that Gw2 has a small team behind it or similar because the first guild wars provided a great amount of content as well. And I'd also consider that a more casual mmo.
Theres many other ways pride overlaps with other sins, but I dont have the time to go into anymore of that.
Keep in mind, I'm saying this as a player myself. Gw2 has fostered a great community away from the hardcore players of other mmo's, and that's awesome. I would almost go as far to say a game like this is nessasary In our current landscape, not being so small or big that it only attracts toxic people. But these problems do exist, theres not much any community can do to drive away those issues.
It's amazing when the fanboys are so stuck in their game that they say the guy WHO DOES THIS FOR A LIVING is wrong, despite the fact he actively reviews MMOs correctly.
This series is extremely helpful. And I'm likely going to be watching every episode again at some point.
This is exactly what I tried to avoid when I was making my own TTRPG setting. I know I am not a highly experienced fantasy writer, nor a well seasoned DM. I also could not be bothered to write up an entire novel's worth of history, lore, locations, etc.
All I wanted was a spaghetti western, but with high fantasy elements. A simple, yet whacky world where I could honestly throw anything at the players, and it would make sense. A world with a basic, novel concept of what happens to a high fantasy world when you start modernizing it.
Magic is now heavily corporatized, industrialized and intertwine with technology. Everyone and their mother has swapped out their crossbow for a much better firearm. (and bows are only used by hippies and hipsters.) Quests often come in the form of highly dangerous temp work for various nations and corporations. And most of the world has already been explored, documented, and claimed, leaving only the final frontier left... It is essentially the sunset of an age of adventuring and discovery.
How do you plan to make a TTRPG if you don't like to write?...There's nothing else there. I think you should make a card based or board game instead, that way you can play with interesthing theming and mechanics withouf focusing on the written word.
And so I have finally come to the end of the series.
It was a humble experience
The people looking for anime fights don’t go to Tera imo. I would say it’s phantasy star online 2. Those bosses are the definition of anime
"Let's hope his pride doesn't get in his way" and here we are with a ingame shop in WoW TBC
I watch most of your video essays and I find that I usually agree with your underlying points in each. However, I think you also show a tendency to use hyperbole. Push the points out of proportion. For example, your rhetoric about the creators of Guild Wars 2 being too proud so that they essentially miss the mark. I think GW2 has its own appeal and its own audience. I think calling their design choices “pride” is a framing mechanism. Also, your rhetoric around the game lead for WoW being proud, thinking he is better than everyone else, and then it paining him to announce Classic. That sounds a bit like demonizing someone. Presuming his mental state simply because of something he did in the past that was disagreeable.
Spoiler, His pride did get in the way
Josh, I just want to congratulate on making such a wholistic and amazing series. Thank you for this. The internet has been given a gift that it will cherish and go over for years to come.
Hey Josh, Thanks for the series. I feel like you really enjoyed identifying the analogies between sins and MMO design. Now, I'd love to suggest a couple of follow-ups to the series, if you'll indulge me:
a) maybe an epilogue of this "deadly sins" series reaping inspiration from Dante's 9 circles. Now, I say it'd be an epilogue considering only three new videos would emerge out of it, but would nonetheless be just as fascinating to listen to your thoughts on treacherous, fraudulent, and heretical (the last one is a challenge, no doubt, but I'm pretty sure you'd be one for the challenge considering this series) game design in MMOs.
b) If you haven't considered it yet, it would be such a joy if you could pick up a counterpart to all this series revolving around the 7 cardinal virtues also crystalized in MMO development. Intuitively, it would probably be another beast to tackle altogether, but you may enjoy it's production considering the amount of care put into this 7 video series.
Thanks again, mister :3. Having a blast with your content.
This is actually a friggin good series.
I will toss it into the Star Citizen Forum. Maybe something good will come out of it.
Fantastic video. Keep up the good work.
Now that he mentioned the 7 sins of players. Can I guess being an Elitist is pride?
That is likely going to be pride, yes.
@@JoshStrifeHayes I would also guess the rage quitter is wrath, or the 12 year old that makes your ears bleed on discord when things go wrong.
You know, I never really realized that trying to do 'everything' was actually a bad idea, or atleast a bad start for a first attempt. But this video really spoke to me.. I have big dreams and lots of ideas but now that I re-think about it, maybe each of those ideas should be a seperate cloud. Thank you, excellent work.
You can actually do it, but requieres more work and time, and time is money
"And just like throwing all toppings on a pizza, it doesn't work"
Me: I like Supreme....
Guildwars 2: I agree that it has a little of everything. But it does excel at a few things: Fashion, Mounts, and Story. I don't know of a better MMO for fashion. GW2 has armor that you can keep the stats of while completely changing the look (skin) of as well as being able to dye from over 400 colors (some color variants are shiny versions of a different color). The second thing that GW2 does really well is mounts. They have 7 different mount types that each do different things. The Springer (like a giant rabbit) can jump really high. The Beatle can roll really fast like a race car. And the Skyscale is essentially a mini dragon. But unlike the "dragon" mounts in other games, GW2 mounts can change their looks (skins) AND are dyeable. The story isn't quite as awesome as the first 2 on my list, but it is generally good and has some really great sections.
Oh boi, the developers of Naval Action.
I think it's a great game, but don't you even dare criticizing them or else you might risk a ban. And if you don't get banned, you'll still have to deal with some childish behaviour coming down to "No, you are stupid and we know better!" - even when all the PvE-players, which are the majority, complain about it.
It's generally accepted that if the developers would only come down from their high horses, then the game would be much more succesful.
This video hits WoW HARD in 2021! lol
In defense for the "proud" devs: as devs you are exposed to a lot of opinions. I bet at least 80% of feedback to devs is trash/irrelevant/toxic/entitled. If you are constantly bombarded with such input, you bevome desensitized. And thus you just ignore all feedback, even if it's valuable.
Yeah Pride, Blizzard is a super good example. They tell players they not really want a Vanilla server ... no. Look what happened. Also ... they keep turning Retail into some sort of a Phone Game ... with daily chores and highly curated/directed gameplay.
The rule is simple:
Leave the "What/Where" to Players,
Leave the "How/When" to Developers.
Wow and FF14 raid scene is very much on par for how good they are, and WoW has lately been trying to improve its focus on story a whole lot.
A better comparison would be play WoW for PVP and FF14 for PVE, since they both have a good and heavy focus on their respective end game and both games also have a lot of dev time and resources put into the story and lore.
But WoW focus on more PVP gameplay while FF14 does not and instead focus more on housing, crafting and other PVE systems.
Sorry just a minor nitpick to one of your examples I felt I needed to get off my chest.
There is also an aspect to why you should not listen to player feedback.
Example, this dates back to Vanilla World of Warcraft, where a level 42 Gnome Rogue, attacked a level 60 Tauren Shaman.
The Gnome player, went onto the forums and started screaming that Shamans were too powerful, and that the game sucked because of it.
Blizzard listened to the crying child, instead of the experienced playerbase who knew what they were speaking about.
A level 42 has no chance to defeat a level 60, way to big level gap.
It is good to listen to feedback, but it needs also to be controlled, need to be watched, so it ain't just people crying who wants to make things easy for them, and not for the whole.
Like in Everquest, where a player was demanding changes to his liking, even if the rest of the player base was saying no to those ideas. Since his ideas only involved him, and his experience, and would sour the experience of others.
"interesting mechanics aren't always fun"
-the guy who authorized venom counters in MTG
What people call Pride in the "good" sense is actually Joy. It's that subtle difference like Envy vs Jealousy.
I would say it's more apt to say pride vs arrogance
"Take pride in doing good work, but if you believe you are better than all others at it, that is arrogance."
@@vincentcircharo8259 But pride does mean over inflation of self esteem and haughtiness. Its been the definition for centuries. It is just that now days most everyone uses the term pride when they should be saying the words such as joy or accomplishment
@@Froggsroxx pride and arrogance are kind of synonyms but differ in one spot. arrogance is more so the view of being superior to the otherwise inferior. It is a comparison view where pride is a self view. It is seeing ones self as greater and more accomplished than what they really are.
Your sentence could be rewritten as such:
"Have hubris in doing good work..."
As to what the OP said, it would render as such
"Take joy in doing good work..."
and when people, now days, say pride, they are substituting it for joy because they mean joy.
To be fair to Blizzard: In this one instance they overcame their massive amounts of pride and actually tried what the player base wanted. They brought out Classic more or less the way it was back then.
And while it is certainly fun to pick on that Stage Interview, IMO it should be equally important to point that out.
The issue is nit aiming to high, the fact is no one tries to aim above. We rarely seen any innovation since 2009. Over promising is another thing all together. But I agree, developers rarely listen
For a perfect non-MMO example of this sin, just look at Dead by Daylight. The devs there are so clearly arrogant and think they know better than the community, but then you watch some of the devs play and realize they don't know how their own game works from a player perspective. I'm not saying the players have all the information, but they certainly have far more experience, and Behavior would do well to at least consider what's being suggested and then explain why they don't want to go in that direction.
This series is a pretty good guideline on what to do as a budding game dev.
The Runescape poll system is at this point one of the worst things they have done to the game, because now literally nothing gets added anymore because there are always enough players who vote no on things. Players are not game designers and should not have the final say on features.
They voted down a whole new skill being added for god's sake
It's not good to ignore players, yes. The problem is the minority who are dissatisfied with one aspect of the game which the majority either like or are ambivalent to tend to be the loudest on the internet. The people who are fine/happy or don't mind usually have no reason to actually go online and say they're happy with it. Polling like what osrs does *should* probably be something more companies do as it is often very difficult to tell if a complaint on the forums/reddit/etc is actually want the majority feels. Devs might end up actually pissing off the people who are completely fine with a particular feature and now find that its been modified to suit the people yelling the loudest - and in turn NOW they're the ones yelling.
9:33 - This is pretty much what I would sum up as the experience of Path of Exile, though I highly suspect that their motivations are purely sadistic in nature and not necessarily pride.
WoW works so well, players are quitting in troves. Seems 'eternal treatmill' has finally ran aground.
I don't think Blizzard watched this video. Hindsight is 20/20.
blizzard embodies pride the most. their current team is absolutely incapable of seeing that they're making bad decisions despite the majority of players telling them how bad they are. this leads into them pretty much embodying all the others, as well.
I'm both scared and excited for the 7 sins of MMORPG players. Excited to improve as a player but scared to know if I fit in any of the sins.
We all fit into the sins in some ways
The "ignoring the players" problem becomes such an easier pitfall when accounting for fanboys
Getting sucked into doing "everything" isnt something I thought of before but I have had this feeling about PvE vs PvP. When a game is very well defined and designed for PvE and then jams PvP systems on there just so it can also be a PvP game THEN screws with PvE aspects that were fine before just to attempt to balance PvP...... this is bad. =/ Not every game has to be PvE and PvP. Some can be 1 or the other. I suggest all MMOs pick one of those and do that. If you have the other apsect just let everyone know it is NOT your focus and all design is going to be PvE first.. or PVP first.
Actually PVP and PVE were always together since the beginning of online gaming.
The split of PVE-only and PVP-only games is quite recent. But yeah, if the devs are not doing their job to balance things correctly, things are messed up.
@@johnmaco being there and being any good are different. Ultima Online MMO was good pvp and terrible pve, EQ was the other way around. Like most things in life it is hard to be really good at many things and if you focus on 1 thing and do it really really well, it works. Try to spread thin and you get a sea of mediocre. My suggestion on games is to focus on 1 aspect and either don't do the other at all or just conceed that its there to be there to check a box off that says you have that feature. I do think that games moving toward more separate gameplay mode helps, it lets you balance them individually, open world PvP is hard in a good PvE game due to class balance.
Well that GUY is no longer at blizzard so dont have to worry about him anymore.....too soon?
Path of Exile never listens to anything the fanbase says. they again and again go against what the players enjoy, follow nothing but what they feel is right and then create an expansion that the player base likes anyway. not an MMO but still
You're first person in the world to say Warcraft not having housing was a credit to the game.
oh man the WoW vanilla shit was hilarious
i remember playing in a private vanilla server just to see. it was only a matter of time till blizzard actually gave it a thought that ppl would pay for it
Oh dear God those Blizzard conference things are still painful to listen to even after years later.
I just watched the entire series here and i realized Mabinogi has every sin EXCEPT wrath
Wrath is also coverd. Video 5
Someone didnt play back in the day when Elf vs Giant was a major thing and was turned on by default for allied humans, I remember PKers going as far as the Alchemist release era who would keep farming you right after you revived and went to the doctor
Then you weren't around during the first 2 years of Mobinogi......
0:30 My adventure is dead... EverQuest Online Adventures... well we have a server up finally after being shut down in 2012. It was a Playstation 2 MMORPG version of EverQuest and it was the best MMORPG i ever played. The server is still extremely early however and it's mostly just a nice museum to visit. But hopefully some day soon that will change. It's the only MMORPG i ever really loved.
The more you narrow, the more broad your audience becomes
Fast forward to today... Blizzard falls on it's own hubris.