Why I'm sad about MMOs...
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 19 ต.ค. 2024
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"why I'm sad about mmorpgs" to "how to avoid wiggling your rear in front of a class" life advice only this channel can provide.
Videos like these are truly our greatest treasure 🤣
Also developers should never wiggle their political and woke views in front of people trying to *ESCAPE* the real world, as well.
@@FreedomAndPeaceOnly Really? Good thing no one told that to devs or we would never had great RPGs like Baldur's Gate or rts like C&C...
@@mariomario-dy1kc With Baldur's Gate I can accept it since it started out Woke before Woke became a thing.
@@FreedomAndPeaceOnly Then I suggest you pick an actual fight, against actual shitty game design like lootboxes and always online in everything, like the less-is-more leading to modern games being more devoid of content with only graphics to show for it.
Then maybe you can go after Wizards of the coast for allowing so much race and class diversity in their content.
"you will learn far more from doing it and failing than reading everything to make sure success is guaranteed". Man I needed to hear this. I'm so obsessed with doing things right the first time and not looking like an idiot I seriously hold myself back in life
So true and relatable
yup, that's me
to the point that i sometimes wont even try something out if it even looks too daunting
I used to be that way too... still am sometimes. But I keep trying to remind myself that it hardly matters if it works or fails, because how much do I myself matter? If I did something and failed, who has the time to look at me and judge? Answer, almost nobody but my own family...and they'd probably understand. No, what's important is that I be ok with failing.
being a perfectionist is painful
Meanwhile, MMO endgame raiders to learners : "Go read/watch a guide or kick"
About the ''destroying server economy part'': you wouldn't really destroy anything, you would be replacing several smaller server economies with single larger global economy. That's how it is in RuneScape.
Yeah big true. The person defending the "don't merge servers! That will destroy the economy" argument maybe a servers monopoly guy for that one thing everyone needs.
It will be better for everyone if the market is more global because it will bring in competition. I have been that monopoly guy for servers on MMOs and know how much easy, free money you can print scamming your server making easy things that no one wants to make but that some players may need.
@@EricN73158 this is why (other than terrible combat) I don't play mmos
@@HentaiWarhol Yeah I can see it not being everyone's cup of tea. I like the social things, leading a guild, shot calling pvp, leading a raid, going out and getting shit done and sometimes I like framing for whatever.
How would it possibly not just normalize the separate economies.
@@EricN73158 Played D2 for a bit, they went full woke, I left. The problems with mmo are as follows, combat is shite, it's not combat it's a dumbed down game of spades, just learn the rotation of what to do, it's boring; the graphics are usually ass and if not the company gets too big and goes full woke; online socialization is no socialization at all, it's like dealing with a while room full of Asperger's, no thanks; there's always a cash economy, which leads to the one thing always worse than dealing with Asperger's, dealing with addicts; the discourse that follows the economy, also a problem, boring and simultaneously aggressive; there's never balance even if it's not pay to win, if there is you will have a huge success, the game and company grow, we've done this bit. Trulythe idea is cool, I love the fantasy of the mmo, I want it to be real,but we've never gotten to the fantasy you know? I've just given up on it. I think I found Josh through Asmongold, whom I watch for his meta-content and news on the landscape(never COMPLETELY give up hope) fortunately Josh is a gamer of diverse taste and discerning taste as well; plus charming (nomo). I'm glad to be here, I am but I'm not pleased with the landscape we see, and with NFT, worldwide wokist dogma permeating any culture the can wedge in the cracks of (like fungus), plus the previous issues and your initial point of course (didn't want to repeat it and you said it well) my hope is likely better labelled a distant pipe dream. C'est la vie.
the whole concern about server economy is just a old way of thinking. Just drop the severs and make the market world wide. Just like gw2 has. It has a working economy just fine
There is a fairly large portion of the RS Playerbase that just sits at the Grand Exchange and just play a completely different game than everyone else because of the economy being so large that they can just play stock market simulator instead of an rpg.
@@SirProtagonist Not instead, inside! Because they do affect the world too, and are part of it :)
They fail to understand that economies tend to even out. A global market won't destroy the economy of the server, it will just balance it out with the rest of servers.
It has a working economy that has made older players rich and punishes newer players. It has the intention of making sure the older players have access to cheaper goods while ensuring newer players never have a chance to make money as easily as the older players (supply and demand when the game was young). Start a completely new character with no hand-holding or funneling of money/items and see how advanced that character is after 1 year by playing the marketboard at a similar fashion as your original character. Megaservers help keep inflation down for new players but don't do anything to help new players actually earn money better than a new server.
@Mark Sheymus Not sure what brought you to this conclusion but the facts say otherwise. And by facts I mean player counts and plans for future development. Not even mentioning that the newest expansion dropped a mere month ago.
I actually just started streaming at some point as you said and because of that i figured out its fun but very taxing. Especially with barely any viewers and becomes significantly more fun and easier the more interaction you have. It was never about having stuff for your stream. Its the people you interact with and how you interact that makes your stream.
You will never succeed, you're trash. Forget it and find a real job.
Also !RemindMe 2 years .
@@SethJV You will never succeed, you're trash. Forget it and get a real job.
Also !RemindMe in 2 years.
@@SethJV Thank you for the projection. That's what you tell for yourself every night before crying yourself to sleep?
I tried streaming once. For maybe an hour. Afterwards I was mentally exhausted.
For starters OBS was about the worst piece of screen recording software I had ever used, but mostly I spent all of that time feverishly checking the viewer count. Not because I wanted viewers, but because I was scared I did get viewers. Worried people would watch me and judge me.
It also doesn't help that I'm still extremely shy and hate my own voice, so it was a silent stream too.
Afterwards I decided I could never be a streamer. My gameplay is not interesting to anyone and I lack the charisma and personality to make up for it.
I see your yt channel doesn't have any content. Are you streaming on twitch? Which software did you go with?
I like how Josh talks about topic regarding video games, game development, etc. and then it's slowly transition into a life lesson.
This illustrates one of the growing problems, these days: people will always jump to the defense of bad systems, often intensely, so game developers always have people declaring that they're doing things right, whether that is or isn't the case.
Maybe those bad systems aren't that bad. Depends on what you're talking about personally. I hate battle passes for example. But I love not having a dungeon finder and some downtime between fights.
@@MaakaSakuranbo Actually, I have a feeling we are cut from the same cloth. :)
The no downtime is an excellent example of what I'm talking about, since devs gave the players exactly what they asked for... but players couldn't foresee how it would kill group communication and make group content less relaxed and social, and therefore less memorable. What players didn't like was 1 and 2 minute mandatory rests between pulls, it got over corrected, and now if someone suggested downtime should go back in.. they'd probably get torn apart.
The perfectionist thing goes even deeper.
I've gotten around the thinking too much phase and I still iterate so long I release basically nothing.
It's a curse. Perfectionism is a genuine curse.
But at the same time, getting close enough (and you'll know what close enough is when you get there) is probably the most auxilerating feeling ever.
For me, as a perfectionist, having noting stuffs down as you go so you wouldn't have to worry about stuffs being poorly done later helps a lot. And prioritize your scope. For starters, like designing a website, you still need a proper draft to its layout but develop no functions for that. After that you moved on and develop the core functions, at first it could be buggy but over the time of you developing that web and debugging, you'll come to a conclusion to your functions deep down only in the end. Head starts and preparing is important, as you don't want to mess your stuffs up, but so is learning to do it as you go so that you'd have the experience to plan out your head start in the future even better.
Maybe the medal system might help. Know your gold medals, silvers, and bronzes. Get the gold medals and you have your MVP. The other medals are side quests.
On the topic of "Starting something is the best way to get ready for something" For some more real life examples, I was thrown into a high level work position at my company a couple years ago I was by no means even close to qualified for, but they needed someone to do it while the company grew and ect over the next couple years. In the year and a half I did that position before I asked them to higher someone more qualified I learned more about how to do the type of work I was in and how to fix a lot of my faults than I did in my entire life of everything else up to that point.
A lot of times it really is best to just get thrown into something, because a lot of times if you don't crack under the pressure and try your best to adapt and learn as you go through it you will grow immensely as a person and the experience you will gain from it will be so valuable you will be surprised at it when you look back
That actually makes me worried, but not about the part that people thrown into something they are not. People grow, that's a good part.
But at the highest position, is the person most starving for infinite growth before growing as a person.
If you were honestly doing that for a year and a half with at least average competency, I'm amazed they didn't just upgrade your role to fill the position since you'd already have the experience.
@@aussie870 i specifically asked, it was way too stressful and there wasnt much room for up
Yeah, no. It doesn't always work like that. It'd be like taking some guy flipping burgers at Wendy's and telling him he's now a firmware programmer and he needs to follow the SCRUM method and that he has 8 hours to learn C and Ruby. Sometimes, it doesn't work. Not everyone is cut for something and sometimes you need the prerequisites and understanding before taking on a position.
The company you work for screwed up. They screwed you by putting you into a position where there was a high chance of you failing and they screwed themselves by putting you into a position you weren't suited for and paying you more. It was a bad decision all around. It doesn't matter if it worked out or not. 9 times out of 10, it doesn't work out. You're an exception. Not a norm. If your story is true, that is. It rings of humble flexing to be honest.
@@marishiten5944 You're using an extreme example. Something tells me his work was at least related to the higher position and that'd he'd at least have a remote idea as to how it functioned. Your example obviously is not that. In those circumstances it can work more often than 10 percent of the time.
See the problem is that often companies look for prerequisites that don't matter or continually promote until that person brings to underpreform... And then doesn't demote them. That's more where the disfunction comes in to be honest.
Even FF14 is making it possible to traverse data centres and possibly regions in the future, and they are changing most of the game contents so that you can go through the story solo. They have perhaps the best future-proofing systems out there. Even contents that are way off to the side like Eureka and Bozja have been future proofed so that you can play through it without other people. They are doing what FFXI has done, so they can charge money for 14 even if one day the game dies or another FF MMO takes its place. That is just good business practice.
Would argue that Bozjan isn't solo friendly. You need players for DR, Castrum and Dal.
It has been quite some time since I last went to Eureka, but the content is doable solo today ? Like FATEs and events ?
@@Makinazion I think NM spawn rates and HP values adjust to the amount of people in the instance. It is "soloable" if you're a tank with decent self healing at level 70. Anemos and Pagos don't allow usage of Logos Actions so you can't beef yourself up as a dps/healer, echo isn't enough. And you won't have elemental bonus gear by then to make up for disadvantages. And by the end, the story only finishes after beating Baldesion Arsenal, which isn't soloable at all.
And as far as making relic weapons goes, just forget it. You need not just the crystals, but the zone ender NM boss drops, which are simply not possible to solo. Pyros's Penthiselea might be doable as a tank with decent heals, and Hydatos's Provenance Watcher is easily doable. But Pazuzu and Louhi summon adds that hit quite hard (in Pazuzu's case they're even different elements). And for some reason they buffed every area's crystal rewards... except Hydatos. So even if the grind would already be bad enough solo, it would get worse in the final zone.
I can imagine they'll eventually do something to this content when their analytics for engagement drop below a certain number, because right now it's hanging by a thread.
@@vaan_ Okay thanks a lot for the answer :) that's pretty much what I expected for Pazuzu and Louhi, but I saw a video saying you could grind for the Eureka relics so I was hoping for something else, but I guess he was expecting you to get a full team >.> (ain't nobody got time for that !)
Thanks again !
@@vaan_ If you want the relics there’s still active discords coordinating eureka, etc.
The problem with mmo's and even most games made today is they make a game that is good enough to get you hooked, but frustrating enough to make you want to buy 'lootboxes'.
Drug Dealer method, the first one's free.
not a problem. Most MMOs are just bad games.
As much as I praise classic WoW, I would still admit as a game it's flawed.
If you only played it offline, you'd get bored.
Sadly, a lot of MMOs can't even reach that level. Instead they copy an existing game format and rip out all of the components: make a shooter, remove all guns and nerf player damage and health by 70% - make an RPG; remove all builds.
Playing most MMOs feels like paying bills. You go to the bank, you stand in queue until your turn comes and you lose your money. Then a week later you come back and do the same thing again.
7:11 THANK you. like you absolutely hit the nail on the head with that one, you have NO idea how many people wear the " perfectionist" tag as a badge of honour and use it as an excuse to not move on to the next step in a project is _actually_ mind boggling.
People really think they want to work with a perfectionist... until they actually have to. It sounds good - who wouldn't want the perfect results, right? But perfectionists aren't any better at getting perfect results. They just really suck at actually doing a good job. Even when a "perfectionist's" work output is actually great, you'll usually find someone stepping in and saying "STOP NOW".
On that front I loved that you could do party missions with bots in Guild Wars 1. It prevented you from getting stuck, and you got to decide whether to solo/do zones in a group.
Those bots also allowed you to do any content you wanted WITHOUT being gatekept. Wanna do PvE as a Whammo because you like the idea of being a paladin? Go right ahead.
@@Maroxad Exactly why I loved the concept. A shame the idea didn't gain more traction.
Not only that GW1 also allowed you to play on any server you wanted like Runescape. The reason I no longer even consider playing any MMO is that 1. on launch you can't play anyway. 2. since you didn't spend the entire day trying to log on to a server you now no longer are able to join the same server as your friends. 3 once the problem of to many people on a server gets fixed is usually also the time when everyone who has already played for a month goes on to do other things.
GW1 was a true gem of NEW gameplay ideas that could facilitate both solo and group gameplay and allow each an every player, regardless of mode or experience level, experience 100% of the story mode of the game. PvP being inherently "group" play, even if you enter into the team as a solo player. Damn, I should pull that one out and play again.
@@laner.845 I miss it, sadly I never got too far in (I shared with my brother). So now to do all the grinding so I can get everything in GW2...
The moment I started to overcome some of my fear of screwing up, I started to move forward. Once I accepted that I was going to make mistakes and that that was okay as long as I learn from them, my life started skyrocketing ahead of where it was.
The final few minutes' story was hits hard. I recently became a DM for my dnd friend group. I learned so much about being a dm- by being one. No matter how much I wrote, or planned for before starting- I was not ready until after I started.
It's like that joke about a QA tester entering a bar and ordering a beer, two beers, negative one beers, a thousand beers and lorem ipsum dolor sit amet... beers, and everything works as it should, but the first real customer asks where the toilet is and the bar explodes. There are many things you can plan out and learn from theory, but the players will surprise you. You thought you'd have the players walk into the wilderness on a quest ten minutes into the session, and instead you have to improvise the consequences of the ill-considered seduction of the Mayor's wife.
Been dming for 20 years give or take I'm still learning new tips and tricks
I think most MMOs aren’t even MMOs anymore. I think the one thing that really defined an MMO in my opinion was a shared world. The current MMO space is more like everyone is given their own world and you can invite others to play in your world. The massive aspect is just dead.
Honestly survival games like Minecraft and Ark with large private servers are the “real modern MMOs” and the MMOs that we have are more akin to multiplayer action adventure games like Monster Hunter.
unless it's Massive, it's just multiplayer
That's why im actually enjoy more 7 days to die pvp servers. Its immersive, it has good pve, good pvp. Im actually more motivated to socialize there and make interactions with players. And it has perfect replayability.
Minecraft even has specific mmorpg servers like Wyncraft.
@JR 🍵 you couldn't be more wrong, fun isn't even necessary.
@JR 🍵 The thing is, I think it is fun. I think it’s a lot of fun, just not all the time. When you have a shared world among a lot of players you risk having negative interactions between those players and there are a good number of people who just go “I didn’t pay for this game to get upset!” And they just end up quitting. I think the direction that MMOs have taken is not necessarily to eliminate the “massive” aspect, but rather to eliminate negative experiences which in turn reduces the amount that players can interact with each other. However if you dumb down the game to eliminate the negative experiences, you also dampen the positive experiences.
So a bit of what plagues more recent MMOs is that they’re not as good single player games as real single player games because they have to account for the persistent multiplayer elements, and they aren’t as good multiplayer games as those that aren’t marketed as “massive” because they want to respect a person’s single player experience. It’s like if 2 cooks divided up a single kitchen saying “this is my half, that’s yours” instead of just sharing the kitchen and helping each other out. Each one is left with fewer tools to use and less space to work with, space and time is wasted, but the benefit is that they eliminate the possibility of potentially getting in the other’s way and having to deal with a confrontation.
Honestly this got way more long winded than I expected so I'm adding this up top cause I don't blame anyone for not getting there -This isn't a disagreement, just me muttering on about what I feel MMOs are missing for me personally.
My favorite part of an MMO was always the community which is what i feel is lacking from basically every successful MMO on the market today. To clarify, I kinda miss when you had to talk to other people, gather groups through search or shouts, and group up to accomplish difficult things... you had to get to know people, and to some extent since server transfers cost money, you often got to know a lot of people on your same server by just seeing them or partying with them over and over. It felt like a community, where you recognized and said hi to people in town while shopping and such, which really added to the immersion to it for me. A lot of modern MMOs lack that feeling by automating everything down to single button-press queues you can do from anywhere. Take XIV, while its super convenient and really helps queue times, when every piece of content you can tackle is done with cross-server randoms you'll almost assuredly never see again, there is no community, they may as well NPCs, and unless you're really bad at your job most people will just pretend you are. Its a job, get in, get it done, get out, GG's at the end if you're feeling generous. completely soulless, and if you do make a connection or meet a cool person, goodbye forever is all that awaits unless you wanna pay for a transfer.
There are exceptions to this, insofar that I personally enjoyed GW2, even though I didn't really meet a single person or make a single friend on the way to level cap or even through some events, dungeons, and world bosses, cause I could and easily did do it ALL solo. Even in big WvW battles it felt like an ocean of nobodies with 1 guy shouting orders and thats it. The experience was enjoyable, but like a single player game, I felt no attachment to it once I hit level cap and 'finished' what story there was to offer.
I mean you have guilds of course, but to be honest? I've not been in an MMO guild that didn't feel like a company/Business. You had the CEO(Leader), management staff(Sub Leaders), and the drones who are just there because they just want to get paid(good loot). When you have a top down power structure, it just doesn't feel the same as the things I mentioned above when everyones on equal terms. I feel like in almost every modern MMO unless you bring friends with you, you'll never really meet any along the way because your entire experience can be done, beginning to end, alone. Heck I've run into far to many MMOs where you can't even share quests or get party-credit making teaming up an active detriment.
New World was a colossal flop but it had, for me personally if you could avoid the bots, a pretty cool sense of community and a good lively chat. the fact I had to shout in a recruitment channel for people and there were groups sitting outside a dungeon entrance cause you had to physically be there to enter brought me back to what it was like to be a part of a community in an MMO, even if it was as simple and cheesy as that. There were no automated 1-button Instant-queue dungeon simulators and while most people really like the convenience those offer, it just made the game a little more enticing to me that I had to reach out to people on my own server to get things done, and I did start to recognize people and names, and I felt like i was apart of a community again because the game ENCOURAGED me to do so.
Shame the game built around that was pure crap and has no endgame outside of mindless grinding for generic and uninteresting loot.
So I do hard agree, I think an MMO should first and foremost just be a good game, because as I mentioned with New World, while I really miss the sense of community MMOs encouraged you to be a part of back in the day... if the game itself is crap Its not going to keep me invested regardless.
I agree with the second paragraph, I can not agree with the last one.
I believe, in the design of a good and enjoyable MMORPG, you have to design around multiplayer interaction. Otherwise you have a single player game with superficially tacked on multiplayer features.
I think a good MMORPG needs to be BORING when you play it alone.
Ultima Online is boring, when you are the only one on the server. But with many people on the server, the vision of the developer really comes to life, and makes it greatly enjoyable, even to this day, for many.
Star Wars Galaxies would have been an empty wasteland, if you would be the only person on the server. But with other players, in a crowded tavern, interacting, listening to music performed by musicians, healing your war fatigue, it really comes to life.
The problem with MMORPGs nowadays (which are based on everquest), is that they are not really multiplayer games.
They are bad and boring, single player games with multiplayer tacked on.
Trying to have the next level up, the next better equipment.
It's "cookie clicker", but with a chatbox.
People isolate themselves in the real world, to play MMORPGs, where they also feel isolated, because of their design.
It's really fucked up if you think about it.
@@fire-hawk One small addition: Mmos these days are single player games with multiplayer made essential. Much like Ubisoft inserting grind in their games just to sell items. It's not like you can't do the content alone, but rather the hame won't let you. Yet it won't have you socialize like in older mmos either.
@Jimbo Bimbo Your opinion is not wrong. But there is a large group of people like myself who DO want that type of game that you find annoying. Kind of like how I personally don't like league of legends at all but other people love it. People playing Classic WoW and New World really showed there is a market for this. They are both pretty bad games but the actual MMO aspect of it is why people love it. If a gaming studio made a good game and really leaned into this, it would be a massive success. But lets be real, we getting half finished lootbox games untill the MMO genre dies
@Jimbo Bimbo But you're talking about an MMO. It's massively multiplayer. If you don't like other players, then that isn't the game you should be playing. It's like saying "I like shooters" and then complaining that a sports game uses a ball instead of a gun. You want a shooter, go play a shooter. If you don't want to play with others, play a single player game.
Mind you, I do think MMOs need to support single player to a certain degree. It is nice to be able to get something done when you don't have the time for grouping, or just because today you don't feel like it. But an MMO should encourage grouping and community building.
You're not really getting it back because the entire world has been living with mass social communication for over a decade now. Shouting out for groups felt so novel in 2006. It doesn't anymore, most people just feel annoyed by it. MMOs lost their appeal because the major selling point of the game isn't a novelty anymore. When I played classic I had the same thought, but then I realized "Wait even though we shouted for these groups, no one is really talking anyway" and I think that's largely because people are so conditioned to people on the internet being giant dicks that they don't even want to bother. And at the end of the day, it's not coming back to the old style because 90% of players are people that work 8 hours a day, have a kid or two, a spouse etc. They don't want to spend 30 minutes of their hour of free time spamming channels.
imo the concept of a "home server" is out of date. Every MMO should just have a megaserver like GW2. It would also fix the queues as they can just add more storage/CPU's etc without having to create a new "home server" and separate people even more.
i play gw2 and you would be surprised how many people make the excuse the game is dead and buried but it doesn't feel dead because of the megaserver!!111 , which is just a dumb argument.
but then again almost anyone who says gw2 is dead than to me that means they have never touched the game.
This is why I don't feel like playing New World anymore. The idea of leveling a character and investing in a server with the chance that the server dies at some point just makes me not want to put time into it. I would have played though if it was more like other MMOs where we share a world with other servers
@@slavi8433 Isnt GW2 one of the most popular MMO's in the world still?
@@MsMiDC its not thaat popular as for example final fantasy and lost ark but its still very very popular you see players absolutely everywhere
@@slavi8433 Okay, fair point. Its as dead as Runescape at this point, it actually isnt but people like to complain.
6:00 everything you said here depends entirely on what you prioritize as important to fix. Because eventually you will reach a point where you cant do 2 things at the same time and thus will have to pick one.
All this sounds nice in theory but actual implementation you have to prioritize what is important and what is not and thus some things are lost. And in the end what you find important, some may not.
that last part was really important. so many teachers and mentors say "just ask if you dont understand something" but what people dont acknowledge/realize is that they dont know what they dont know
There's better ways to lay that question for sure. Like, "just ask if you feel confused". That's often the recognizable thing about not understanding something. But you still have to get over your fear of being ridiculed by your classmates, of course. It's hard to build up a class (or work!) environment where people are comfortable with asking "stupid" questions and showing that they don't understand everything. Even when everyone is confused, the first one to raise their hand often gets ridiculed :D
I feel like something to remember about Cyberpunk is it had massive feature creep from the hype that they were trying to build up for it. I think it would have needed less time and come out better if the features were trimmed down to the essentials
I mean they didn't even do the essentials. The police didn't even have chase AI...
so true about just starting things with what you have, like the motivational quotes say: dream big, start small. I know a couple people who haven't gone out to look for a job because they want to be a literal walking encyplopedia of that position, then when something small changes they have to start learning again...
Personally I did the opposite for learning 3D art, at first I did take a couple beginners courses online and helped me get used to the job, but what actually took it for me to get to the next level was to have a project of my own and struggle with it like I would never have if I was just following courses: I'm still far away from being considered good, but at least I can confidently make 3D game assets for most indie projects that would require some.
Technically, FFXIV allowing to play with friends since the introduction of cross server back in SB. Datacenter is basically cross region, which is more complicated because internet isn’t your friend at all.
Though it’s a good thing that you can do that with any MMOs but at the same time, the cost is what ppl more worrying about. If a game is too expensive, ppl aren’t gonna buy it. If it’s taking too much of their time, ppl will also don’t play it. If it’s required extra monetization in game. Ppl will also against that they incentivize P2W and competitive movements.
ffxi took a lot of time and making friends to get any progress done and it was extremely slow but the rewards felt like you earned them. FFXI also costed 150$ on the ps2 with a monthly fee and the game was successful.
Also ffxiv is trash. It doesnt retain long term players
I feel the whole "just do the thing you don't think you're ready for" part. I'm a novice DM for TTRPGs, and I was planning my first oneshot a while back. I had basically planned out the general route the players would take, but I was worried that I'd missed some important detail or something else. Instead of just delaying it until it was perfect, I got the minimum I'd need to run the session ready and we all got together. My players loved it, and it wound up becoming a whole campaign (which is another thing I wasn't ready for).
If I can give some advices as another novice DM, always end your sessions on a downtime. Either in a town or at a campfire. I've never seen another DM do that, but I found out that will prevent you from running into the trouble of someone not being there and having either to play their character for them or having their character following the party as a zombie. My second advice is to not stress about the plotline of your campaign too much. There is nothing worst for a player than being told they can't do something just because. You were planning an ambush on the road by some bandits but your players stay around the campfire? Bring the bandits to them. You want them to go somewhere but they don't go in that direction? Make their direction the right way to go for wherever you want them to go. Don't fight against the will of your players, flow with it.
All the big Publishers got the Design Process backwards. Instead of making a good game and then look what and how you can monetize it best, the Devs get told that x,y and z Monetization and a,b and c manipulative mechanics have to be there and now build a game around it.
no wonder games get worse and worse.
And i blame the People ( sadly me included too often in the past ) who pay for that as much as the Companys.
Wise words of wisdom here! I feel like I'm a perfectionist too, and more often than not I realize one of my weaknesses is focus. It's easy to feel paralyzed or stuck on one thing. The times I've just gone and done something after a while of prep, failed, and tried again... I usually learn a lot very fast. And being in the thick of it, you can actually do something about it rather than worry over hypotheticals until you lose all motivation.
You should probably be project manager on a game. Not even joking. I genuinely don't think you have the skills to make a game but some one needs to be at the helm and directing and you have given the major topics more thought than most.
"you will learn far more from doing it and failing than reading everything to make sure success is guaranteed" - This is so true, and I agree with it wholeheartedly (also from experience). The problem however is that there is a lot of societal scrutiny, mocking, expectation, however it is you wanna describe it, that makes the price of failure sometimes very high to pay.
Because if in your ''learn by doing'' attitude, you make a mistake that has some form of cost attached to it (not monetary perse), you will often face a lot of negativity. This has been the case since a young age for me (i'm 32 now btw). Even in schools, while people always say that making mistakes is fine, as long as you learn.. making a mistake on a test, will get punished by a low grade (and all the social problems that can come with that, like pressure from your parents etc).. making a mistake amongst your friends (let's say, trying to do something in PE that makes you fall stupidly/weirdly), will lead to punishment in the form of ridicule by your classmates.
The environment we live in in modern day society, often doesn't truly allow for ''failure'' or ''making mistakes'' in a way that is constructive.. in a LOT of situations, it carries a lot of negative weight.
Came in to learn about MMOs' failings. Ended with a lesson on wiggling butts.
Stay classy, Josh.
As a software engineer in a small "startup" company I fully agree.
I started about 1.5 years ago at some small company that was basically stuck. After some time the company decided to go an entirely different route, an entire rebranding. (hence "startup" since it's not really a startup but it's basically the same as starting new since the company completely starts over). This of course broke many things, because we shifted the entire focus of the company.
Since my time working there we came up with better and better systems for our (potential) new customers. This included changing the underlying communication system 3 times until settling for something that ensures security, scalability, features and a good user experience.
Currently I'm responsible for implementing said third system, that I myself strongly advocated for. Does it break stuff? Of course it does. The previous system was easier to use, easier and faster to implement and was ready for basic deployment. But it wasn't secure enough, it wasn't scalable enough and was really "bland".
"So it broke ease of use?" Yes, in some way it did (because the system works very different and requires more steps if done manually as before). Which is why I'm reworking the system to help the customer, make it easier, automate unnecessary things and so on.
If we would have said "well but changing the communication breaks XYZ", then we would've never even began changing anything and the company would be stuck as it was before.
At the same time, we can't "perfect" the system, that's not even doable. At some point you have to roll out your stuff, not only to not go bankrupt, but to get actual real data in. Especially when you're too close to the system, you need outside input, the more the better.
It's a feedback-loop, deploy-> feedback -> adjust -> deploy -> feedback-> ...
Just like growing in life.
Make server transfers free - kills economy
- but is easier to play with friends
- makes raiding harder
- make it easier to gather mats for pots or cheaper to craft
- helps fixing economy and raider issue.
I never understand the "but what would happen to the economy" line of thinking... The answer is they would all normalize, because they would suddenly share an economy. How is that difficult to comprehend?
Sometimes MMOs make it difficult to play with others. I remember playing Aion Online and I was playing for a bit, then I wanted to play with friends...they were all on the opposing race thingy. Either I have to play solo or break the character immersion that I have created over several hours.
An even worse thing was with another MMO I can't remember the name of. Basically endgame started at level 60. I started playing because of the person I thought about dating with. At about level 20 she asked "Do you want to play together with me?" and at the time I thought I had to be level 60 to join any real event with her. Then it hit me pretty hard: This game did not even have a friend list. One of the most basic features in a multiplayer game today. Parties were possible, but you'd have to write somewhere else where to meet up and miraculously be at the same level. Ridiculous. I quit at that point.
Like many of the things that WoW did to solve the problems with UO, world-wide-faction PvP made it harder to just play with your friends. It's not a wholly stupid idea, but as you say - it divides people for pretty much no good reason.
SWG was great for this. It had player interdependence baked into the game and professions. Despite the game being a buggy mess, that is why it gets talked about to this day.
Well being a perfectionist is a balancing art too.. I grew up a perfectionist with real OCD and it sucked it was a mess and stressful.. But as I grew to understand my issues and went through tons of failures and experiences I learned balance and understanding and have for the most part figured out how to live as a perfectionist in my own life and daily activities without any problems.. a mature perfectionist is very quick to realize what minor issues need to be immediately ignored, possibly forever and how to actually start projects in a way to guarantee you can complete them with minimal issues
Clicked for funny meme clip. Got a great life lesson. Thank you
So simple, yet so brilliant! I, a perfectionist, was constantly testing to see if my product was ready to be put on the market, but I should just release it. If my parachutes fail on the job, I'll know what to fix!
You only need first principles in this life my friend!!!!
Probably the most basic explanation for locking players in a groups (f.e. server, faction, starting location) is money. The chances of buying a service allowing you to pick freely race and starting position/faction is more likely when you play with friends and want to get immersed, same when you realize that your friend and you play the same game but in a different server, if you want to enjoy the experience together - just pay. Created problem and created solution.
Anecdotically, browsing twitch streams sorted from the lowest view count made me realize that some people take Josh's word to their heard way too much. The amount of times I got earrpd by white noise is once or twice - not much, but weird that it happened. Or people just being fine with streaming too high quality/bitrate, resulting in very low framerate and loadings on a streamer side. That being said, from the absolute junkyard of twitch's dark side, there has been a few people who are worth time watching, just lower your volume when searching, so you don't get hooped by noise blast.
Edit: Removed the short mention of eso due to clarification from response about new player experience.
ESO doesnt work that way tho. What you refer to when it comes to ESO is the ability to play any race you want in any faction you want. This however has nothing to do with playing with ur friends. You can play with anyone u want, anywhere u want, whenever you want with no server, starting location, level or faction limitations.
The only place faction prohibits you from playing with a friend is PVP Cyrodiil only. But thats just how that game mode is designed. Three factions playing against each other. And even then there are still campaigns that are not faction locked, meaning that you can play for any faction u want in the same campaign if you have alts and therefore still play with ur friends regardless of faction.
ESO actually does a brilliant job in terms of allowing people to play together. A lot of people are actually arguing that it gives too much freedom and that its immersion breaking and it promotes campaign trolling because it makes factions pointless when people can just hop on any faction they want whenever they want.
I agree with your jpoint on service transfers!
I think though that the market and expectations are changing. There are more games that can be played by that group of people, therefore those servers can create a kind of barrier that makes people go like "why bother?" and move on to the next experience. Cutting in their own flesh.
If it is an amazing game that everyone wants to play and there is nothing like it on the market, its a different thing.
But i had that experience with Lost Ark and New world. Wanting to play with friends, finding out we are on different realms, finding out it takes extra effort to be able to fully play together (guild etc.) and stopping bothering. I think if that entrance hurdle wouldnt have existed, we would have played a lot more as social fun/connections can make a game much more long-term viable.
I guess with WoW i think it started with a technical limitation (slower databases, server capacities, long times to process characters to other servers) but then became exactly what you describe, having an extra way to get money from players.
@@michalispieris5369 So at the moment, after purchasing a base game only - is it possible for me to pick high elf, for my imaginary friend to pick a nord and in 30 minutes of starting the actual game we can easily spawn in the same spot and start leveling and questing together?
@@nametba2295 More like 30 seconds. It doesnt matter where you spawn. ESO essentially has no starting location. The starting location depends on ur faction and whether you have access to the expansions however it doesnt really mean anything. You dont have to start questing there. You can just teleport to any zone you want with ur friend regardless of faction and start levelling there. The game gives so much freedom that its actually overwhelming for the new player cause they can go everywhere from level 1 and they feel like they dont know where they are supposed to go.
@@michalispieris5369 Hmm... Then it really might be more interesting to at least try it, well thanks to your involvement it might just be a good chance to gather some friends and try the game again, without worrying that much whenever some people on the way get bored or not. Thanks for making it clear as possible.
Great advice at the end there John. I started streaming on a whim. I had an old 11 year old PC, a $35 combo headset with earphones and mic, and no idea of what I was doing. I started streaming with Twitch and I had all sorts of issues with screen resolution, audio, etc. Along the way I learned that in order to stream with my old PC, I needed OBS. I figured out how to use that, how to get my screen input, resolution, etc. Then streamlabs came out, and I learned how to get all that working. I learned how to tweak my audio settings so that it no longer sounded like I was talking through a tin can.
Then my buddy gave me his old rig, which was a less powerful 11 year old PC, but it has a 2TB hard drive compared to my puny 500GB hard drive. I then learned how to network them together so I could stream and/or record from my more powerful one, then edit and process with my buddy's old PC.
The results still weren't perfect. I could only stream in the lowest frame rate and HD resolution. Some games I couldn't stream at all. But, I did it. I wanted to prove I could and see what fun I could have. It was a lot of fun, but health and life took away the free time I had to do it. Maybe one day with a better budget and more time, I will return to it. But, I learned an awful lot I wouldn't normally have done.
FFXIV has a pretty good world hopping system, you can visit other servers in your data center (soon you can visit other data centers too) and play with anyone there, you can even buy from the auction house of the server you are visiting, but you can not post to it. Raiding improved as a result, the community is even better now from it, and the economies of the servers are pretty much unchanged.
I have played a few other games that let you hope servers willy nilly for free, econmies are fine. Game econmy will always fix itself or players will adapt to it.
The game economies definitely fixed themselves. The "unchanged" isn't true though. Prices have fallen by upwards of 25-30% for some items. I would consider that to be a pretty big change.
@@Turamwdd the value of the gil remains on average the same ergo the economy did not change as the gil still has the same purchasing power it always had.
i saw the enderal shoutout in the chat and my eyebrows jumped right off my head, it's one of my favourite games of all time but i never see it mentioned so it's cool to see others asking about it
What's interesting about FFXIV economy is that it's completely player driven, and when they first added cross world (not cross data center, hasn't been added yet) they were worried that the economy would get screwed up. Instead it went wonky the first few weeks and then it mellowed out. So sometimes the players themselves can handle economy
It's called a free market and it's been a concept since the invention of trade. XIV restricts gil intake by keeping the valuation of it relatively high. So it keeps prices from fluxuating. It also helps that no one really uses the Market Board because anything of real value, you can't sell. Most of the things on the market board are for leveling, which goes so fast it doesn't matter, or for vanity like mounts or hairstyles. Real, actual endgame gear you can't buy, sell, or trade. So there's no real demand for the Market Board in XIV.
Don't act like the XIV playerbase is some shining example of what to be. They're as shitty as the next community, especially with the WoW morons infecting the game and forcing the devs to simplify an already simple game because they're too stupid to understand how AST cards work.
@@marishiten5944 Um what!? Lmao do you even play the game? As far as I'm aware of XIV doesn't restrict gil intake at all outside of an auto calculation of tax. And you're actually wrong to some degree, ever heard of penta-melding? There are some end game gear that can only be crafted, and those that can be crafted can be pentameld. So there is something you probably already didn't know. Two, they plan for content MONTHS to even YEARS ahead of time. So the chances of WoW players complaining about certain mechanics of a job and it being modified easily is not really something that happens. And to be honest, not a lot of people have testing capabilities for the game. So you're also probably wrong there as well. And Finally, they're the best community currently existing in gaming. As FFXIV has won the "best community" award. So you're also wrong there. Yes every community has bad apples, but over the whole population of that community? You'd be hard pressed to find one. And here's a bonus tip: GM's actually will talk to players to handle issues if it's severe enough. Most other games I see don't even do that. So do you want to try to prove something wrong with someone who has over 1k hours of the game played? And know people who have spent easily 5k hours of the game explain mechanics to me when I asked? Cause tbh, it doesn't sound like you've played it for very long
I just posted this in response to someone else but I absolutely don't understand the "but what about the economy?" line of thinking. The answer is, it will normalize. The prices will fluctuate for a time, then stabilize. Then the economy will normalize among all servers as their economies are now a shared economy. The "What will happen to the economy?" question is so silly... because you could apply it to anything. When an expansion comes out and new items are introduced and old ones are made obsolete, or when a new server opens up, or even when a competitor game launches. All these things will cause fluctuation and chaos in an economy, but the answer is always "It will normalize eventually."
@@ThndrMge Because iirc there are some games where that never happened. Everything was so massively expensive that it took way too long to get anything. Can't remember the game's name tho
It holds as long as there is no competition for resources built into the game - if you allow for cross-server market while leaving resources competition limited to a single server, you allow players to literally run away from that competition and take away any opportunity to have gameplay impact the market. It's not a problem in a game like FFXIV, but for a game like EVE (if game wasn't single-shard) it would effectively kill any reason to start wars for economic reasons or use economy to leverage war advantage.
There is a tradeoff, there's a nostalgia aspect to me when I saw the same folks I did shadowing a couple weeks later asking about ZF. It created an organic small village community. You had a reputation on your server.
I like that, but it is not effective in the modern market.
Sadly with how code works, you can't make a single player game and slap on multiplayer, but his point still stands - make it a fun experience (even when playing alone), and THEN add the rest that the MMO needs - the endless repetetive "kill 5 of these" quests and cash shops are just a waste of time and talent.
Pretty sure that wasn't the point, more like make a singleplayer experience in your mmorpg first and foremost, after that you go and look to add gameplay and systems for coop/pvp.
This is arguably the biggest reason WoW got this successfull, it had a great (for the time) solo leveling experience, that spiced it up here and there with optional grouping to take out elite's/do dungeons.
@@k9tirion927 Back in the time I got hooked into classic WoW for simple fact it was hardcore mmorpg that kept me grinding for stuff, making the game into second life. It gave tons of motivation. Nowadays mmo's are all about instant gratification and is the sole reason why all of them fail.
@@UniDeathRaven Than you've been in the 1%.
Most people work and don't go ""Hardcore""
Im pretty sure it wasnt always a terrible game flaw to let people with skill, time and dedication to be able to stand on top for a little bit before everyone inevitably enter the endgame especially in a new game/fresh server. Its imo becuse of this complaining of the majority that every game is designed to be easily solo'ed, instanced wherever there might be any gatekeeping or clan politics forcing interaction's and probably half of the busy 99% with enough income stil run to the RMT goblins because "they dont have all day" and i guess its fair, untill you see the same person then immedietely complain that the lvling was streamlined and boring and the endgame is empty.
You know how true that last anecdote is?
I'm almost in my 40s and to this day I remember there was some event at school one time and a teacher from some other class came to ours to speak about... Something or other.
I have forgotten what the event was. I have forgotten what he was talking about. I have forgotten what he was writing on the board. But you know what I haven't forgotten?
He was erasing on the board and he did it side-to-side, and it made his bottom wiggle.
I was genuinely trying to listen to him, but I remember noticing the wiggle and being able to focus on nothing else.
Again, I'm almost 40 and I remember this - and that's the only thing I remember about his talk.
I'm baffled as to why all MMOs don't have really well thought out systems for experienced and new players to play together. If it's awkward or difficult for me to bring in a newbie friend, or be brought in as a newbie myself, to share the game experience with friends, that cripples the game's potential for me.
Final Fantasy 14 has a great method for that
And now consider that the almost-first MMO out there, Ultima Online... had. No levels, no XP, very few gear restrictions. Taking another guy with you was always a positive, no matter how small. And you built up communities and relationships that way. It also helped that there were loads of opportunities for people to meet, and somewhat weirdly, _downtime_ (Star Wars: Galaxies also made huge use of that). Today, it's seen as a universally bad thing - why is the game making you... not play? But in reality, it gave people the time and opportunity to interact within the game, outside of the core game loops. It's probably one of the many essential parts to make MMO worlds worthwhile, and actually feel like worlds - and it's been cut out of almost every MMO out there.
Granted, people have many more opportunities for online social interaction today than back then. But honestly, which social network regularly lets (nay, almost forces) you to interact with people who just happened to be in the same place at the same time? Do you really always want to be stuck with "friends of friends" or "interest groups"? And yes, looking up wikis and guides on the internet has never been easier. You have calculators to "help" you build your characters. But it feels like you're really sabotaging your fun instead. Because, as controversial as it sounds in some circles, learning is fun. Especially learning by doing, and learning by interacting with other people.
You made one of the best descriptions of how SCRUM works in this explanation xD. Love your videos you make a lot of nice points. Still haven't been able to catch on the streams unfortunately.
Tbh I never understood the concept of warcraft charging you to change realm, race or gender. Especially since (as josh said) runescape already had 2 of them as a free option whenever you want!
In a fantasy world, the idea of using alchemy to make potions that change your race or gender should be something that exists; because it's the freedom of choice. You don't want to always be locked to something.
If they have to sell it to you, fair enough. But it should be a lazy way, NOT the ONLY way. Because it just sucks the fun out of the world to limit your choices to payment only.
I dunno about that last part. That sounds like a recipe for creating RMT economies in your MMO, which is an entirely new can of worms to deal with even if you did want it.
@@benedict6962 Yeah, I'd rather them not even sell stuff like that in stores or if they have to, just cosmetics.
But that's only if it's a f2p game. If it had a B2P model (like guild wars 2) or a subscription option (like ff14) it should be enough to help fund the game and servers.
But on the other side you have people who don't have a lot of time to play, but want to catch up and it would be good method for them to do so; while funding the game.
It's... difficult. Especially if you try to please everyone since you end up pleasing nobody. Personally I'd be okay with a store if it's only cosmetics to look cool. Nothing involving progression skip (but that's just me).
(Sorry for the long reply, so used to looking at both sides before giving my thoughts, I should really stop tbh.)
In the past it was because of technical reasons and no automated system, servers were isolated with no software architecture to connect them, it had to be done manually by a customer support human. Today with massive server arrays, phased interconnected battlegroups, near limitless data storage and automatic server transfers, you are literally paying for an automated process that costs $0.
Keep in mind war craft came out in 2004. It wasnt quite as easy as press a button and things change.
One of the best 'play with your friends' games I've ever played was City of Heroes/City of Villains. The ability to ignore level via Sidekick/Paragon system, for a new player to play later game content with their friend, or older players to do new game content with their friend while getting meaningful rewards for it... I miss it in every game since.
Kudos to you Josh for not marketing the predatory Lost Ark as all other tubers and streamers do!
how is it predatory
@@poggers4285 hmmm i cant wonder....dont choose ignorance dude, inform yourself and you will know why, not that it removes peoples fun, but it IS predatory, just go check it out
@@yankokassinof6710 of you had the answer say it and don't be pedantic about it, if not then why are you even answering
@@poggers4285 i think it had to do with how the item progression is really scuffed against free to play players needing to have a bunch of alts to farm the materials to progress... It pay some money to buy the materials needed to progress eliminating the grinding part
the 1370 deadzone issue does not make the game predatory, there will be a rebalance that fixes it
The bit at the end about how it's OK to be imperfect brought to mind this quote from Theodore Roosevelt:
"Far better is it to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure... than to rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy nor suffer much, because they live in a gray twilight that knows not victory nor defeat."
you need a game that actually encourages community. not just player interaction, pvp etc but the building of a true community. thats what makes any mmo special, is the people who are there with you.
9:55 So freaking true. Last year I started selling renders of 3D models, it wa a totally leap of faith and I learned so so much since them. If I had waited until I had the knowledge I have today to start doing it I would probably not have started yet.
Not to mention that the more you know, the harder the task seems. You get even _more_ discouraged as you keep learning without doing :D
The genre is too expensive. Experimentation is dead outside of the very slight margin of a new marketable feature to champion the exact same end game job.
In some rosy future where it can be very cheap to make a so-so mmo with loads of asset variety we'll see experimentation that can find what works and be aped by bigger projects. Until then the genre is player milking focused to get the returns before interest in the same shit dries up.
Modern MMOs are too homogenised. Why do they have to be all things for all people? Today they need to have so much, balanced PvE, PvP, big open world, loads of classes, huge single player story, side quests, crafting, casual group content, hardcore raiding, endgame grinds, cash shop regardless of subscription, daily quests to force people to login. It's too bloody much. There shouldn't be anything wrong with a game that just focuses on doing 1 thing and making that as best as possible, like any other game genre. Heck MMO are barely MMOs anymore compared to what they made 15+ years ago.
The thing is, MMOs _don't_ have to be that expensive. They _don't_ have to be built around the biggest player counts ever. Heck, Ultima Online is still around and kicking, and there's plenty of innovation on the custom shards. It's just that publishers now understand the "MMO cycle", where you drop another theme park MMO, try to pull in as many people at once as possible (while having them interact as little as possible, since that could "affect your experience"), and then the player count keeps dropping until it's no longer worth maintaining and dies.
Just like with any other thing in the world, you can always go big for high risk, high reward in a short time... or you can grow up at a manageable pace. Retain your players and treat them well. Slowly attract more, giving you more resources. As with the gameplay itself, the journey matters. AAA doesn't know anything but "get to the destination ASAP". But where's the fun in that, really? And why have an MMO with little to no player interaction? At that point, where's the difference between WoW and Diablo 3, really? Where does the argument "it's hard to make a massive multiplayer game" go when you barely ever interact with the other players, other than through some primitive action house (that's always getting more and more limited to boot)?
Funnily enough, when the guys were pitching Ultima Online, none of the pencil pushers believed it would ever pay off. Until the beta, they were on a shoestring budget, "borrowing" people from other teams (who were very excited about the game and wanted to contribute). And then beta came and blew all of the pencil pusher projections for total revenues away _in a single day_ , more or less. People _bought beta CDs_ (of course there was no way to download the client back then, and producing CDs and shipping them is expensive) to take part in the beta.
People were excited to pay a monthly fee to be part of a _world_ . Ultimately, that's IMO also why subscription-based games fell out of favour with the suits. A shared world makes it worthwhile paying a subscription fee. MMOs stopped being shared worlds. They were just a cheap way to get people to pay for mediocre games, without having to worry about piracy, and quite often still getting more than you'd get for a boxed game. And the dishonest cash grab continues with so-called "free to play" - designing games not around building communities and worlds, but predatory game mechanics that are only there to make you play (even when you're not having fun) and pay up to access the trifle of actually entertaining content available. And that's not even getting into the ludicrousness of basing the revenues of the game on whales.
Raph Koster FTW ;)
such a wise man. i wish every game dev team had one of you to be their compass
Oh boy. The WoW-Fanbois crying "Raidfinder killed teh guilds" did not get the point. At all. Fascinating.
WoW fanboys don’t get points, its why they still play wow.
I'm a web Dev and i agree with the statement : perfect is the enemy of done. Im Not in gaming industry, but it Still applies to pretty Much any pièce of software being développed and even in life in général. Start doing stuff, instead of Working out how things can be perfect.
Somewhat similar to my experience with a gamejam I recently joined with a friend. We had a week to make a simple propf-of-concept. But on the day of submission, we realized some of the explosions were not triggering visually. So we decided we had like 4 hours and tried to get it perfected. Turns out it broke the entire project and we had to scramble to dismantle and remantle it, and then managed to submit it in the last panic-stricken 15 minutes of the deadline. We could very well have missed it altogether.
I'm 30 seconds in and already of the complete opposite opinion, older, successful MMOs weren't necessarily amazingly designed gaming experiences, especially at launch, but they were massively multiplayer games. The problem with modern MMOs is that they are usually minimally "Multiplayer" and almost never "Massively" so. If your MMO is functionally identical to a regular multiplayer game with a lobby system then you've failed at your task. Same goes to the idea of freely hopping worlds, not that I don't see why this would be desirable in certain ways, but there is more to an MMO than playing a game with your friends. An MMO is about playing a game with a huge group of people, that's what sets it apart from all the regular multiplayer games. The ideal and actual solution is having a single megaserver, EVE managed this early on thanks to the nature of their game, but more traditional MMOs should be able to accomplish this with modern technology.
No offense but you're old and it shows.
This is not what the current generation of gamers cares about, the novelty of those things have worn a decade ago.
I'm not saying there is no value in what you're describing but it's just way down the priority list for most players nowadays, accessibility and gameplay is king as has shown time and time again.
@@k9tirion927 Accessibility is extremely important to gain players, yes. But what kind of retention do these MMOs have? How long do they last? How many friends do you make along the way?
Communities aren't a novelty. They're the cornerstone of any society. And humans don't really work well without society.
But regardless of that... _Why_ have an MMO without significant player interaction? How is it different from something like Diablo 3 (except even more padded out)?
It's not even about raw player numbers or such. Just about how much players interact in the world, and how much of a world the world really is. You can have an MMO with 300 players that's much more of an MMO than the latest and greatest 500k player release.
One of the many, many acronyms in the military world is OJT - On the Job Training. Just jump in and do the best you can and you'll pick up what you need as you go along. Doesn't always work out smoothly, but it is a great way to learn what you really need to know vs. sitting in a class for a year or two, wondering if any of this boring shit you're getting tested on is applicable or not.....
10:03 "stuff that are so complex, you didn't even know that you didn't even know it."
I know it's off topic but this part right here is the perfect example of what actual professional pilots constantly say whenever some amateur flightsim gamer thinks they know what they're talking about.
Bad analogy. Most pilots train on sims just like that before sitting in the cockpit. It's good for fundamental instruction and grasping the basics. It's a sim and cannot account for real world situations, but it gives you a good foundation to build knowledge off of.
You said it brilliantly josh. Just because there are new ideas that might break other systems, well try and fix those systems and game mechanics to make them compatible. Games used to push their systems and tech to create insanely unique games. Now every game is a cookie cutter of their competition( in terms of AAA trend following companies).
That is why I value FFXIV so much. I can solo grind it (they adding trust system to improve it), play with mates and it respects my time- there are days sometimes weeks I do not log in ( in case of content drought even months) and I do not feel I have fallen behind due to arbitrary retention systems such as external player power.
this so much. i log in once a week at the moment for reclears and thats because i want to raid with friends. it really does respect your time. then new content next month
Around 6:00 onwards reminded me of a workplace situation, where someone proposed a solution to ~80% of our problems and the reaction was like "it doesn't fix 100%, so let's just don't do anything at all until someone comes up with a 100% solution".
im sad that I will be too old when the first true virtual mmo will come out :(
If it directly connects to you by some neuro link, you could be 100 and still play the game just fine as you yourself have the mind of a gamer. You dont lose those gaming skills mentally.
@@sasquatchman22 that is assuming you can be hooked up to the neuro linj, the older you get the riskier is to get surgeries done you could also get a hearth attack by getting over excited
@@sasquatchman22 ...TRUEEE YO BOIS LET'S GAME 100 YEARS FROM NOW
Jokes on you, we're already living in a very virtual world, run by idiots on twitter, welcome to hell.
I don't know if we're counting this as an MMO, but some of what you described definitely covers what I felt about RDR Online. It was my second job. I had to make sure I made time every single day to get at least some dailies done to keep my streak running. If I got home at night and was too tired/etc to play for a bit, then I had to make sure I got up early enough before work to get on for a bit. The core activities was incredibly frustrating too if my friend wasn't playing. While everything is playable solo, it's nearly impossible to do things like supply runs if other players decided to run interference on you, ESPECIALLY if they're committed to messing with you. There were plenty of activities that, while doable, I felt like I had to completely avoid while alone. And then you always had the never-ending crapshoot of whether or not you'd land on a server where you could set up camp or if your sever even had any bloody animals on it.
Nothing was more freeing than when my daily streak finally broke. It gave me permission to take days off, and pretty quickly evolved into me just quitting all together.
3:25 see, that strangely where i had an horrible time trying FF14 with friends. You want to experience the story with you friend, but the game keeps putting you in those solo story bits (forcing you to ungroup) and this has been a big roadblock.
i don't get how that's a big roadblock... just hop onto discord and you can play the solo bits "together", then simply regroup later during dungeons or raids.
Unless you guys just hated doing solo instance.
@@RisqueBisquetz The thing is, we don't play MMO to play alone. Especially on the few interesting bits of gameplay you have while leveling.
Although i like the game a lot, my other friends didn't take another month because they just couldn't care to suffer to do solo levelling, especially since we were still in A Realm Reborn.
I would agree that is one issue with FFXIV; you really need to do the MSQ and job quests solo a lot to actually progress.
The xp scaling right now I blew straight through the duty dungeons and only did stuff once unless it has happened to come up in roulette, so I do think your totally right FFXIV could work on making the MSQ more mp friendly.
@@Bobrystoteles I kind of hope you're right, i'm trying to convince them to give the game another month, to get to "the good bit" after ARR. It's kind of hard, since for them, the game has mostly been "go fetch that other NPC at the other side of the map, then sometime do a solo battle" so far.
@@vincentdu15200 bruh your friends need to be patient, here's another suggestion, let all of your friend group do a voice chat reaction together when the 'banquet cutscene' starts, it would be the true ARR experience :)
Uhh... as someone who has taught mostly online... I hadn't realized the whiteboard thing... thank you Josh, you've helped. :)
Josh spitting straight facts
Yeah, I got into BDO and Albion for a bit. Only reason why I gave them a chance was because I could play with my friends regardless of which sever they were on.
forced interaction is always the worst part in a game, imo. Back in RuneScape days, that one Heroes quest that forced a co op part was an absolute bane
do you remember the shield quest ? in varrock
@@arcanethink Shield of Arrav , if I remember correctly XD
@@stevenmilot3633 yeah it stayed in my quest log for the longest time until a friend's friend helped me finish it
I think a lot of people put off starting things because of how curated our experience is. How many people do you watch on TH-cam or Twitch where you've seen their first video/stream? How many artists do you follow or like whose first online work you have seen? A lot of this stuff gets hidden by content creators. They purge their catalogue of content and try to hide their early work because it "doesn't meet their standards". I think very few of them realise just how toxic that is for the mindset of people who are thinking of making their own content when they look back and the people they like seemingly started with all of the things figured out.
Regarding the "force players to play together" i also think the concept of "you need other players to progress" is a bit outdated, and forcing people into a group that dont care about teamplay or their only incentive is to complete the content, it will be going to be a bad experience.
But if you set up the teamplay in a way, that you mainly profit from playing with other players indirectly (more exp, class-bound buffs that you can put on anyone), this will make people want to engage with other players. Not out of necessity but out of enjoyment of the game maybe and having positive experiences with other players could boost that even more. That way player's that are social, might get a better experience, finding more people that are on their same wavelength, enjoying the game.
Also it might help that are players are feeling more powerful if they are in a group. If everything just 100% scales and you suddenly feel weaker with a group of randoms (Thorgast in wow for example) makes for a bad experience, discouraging teamplay. But i guess this is a fine balance of many different systems, decisions, design etc.
In contrast to the destructive social aspect of "you have to play together to be able to beat this", although that could just be a number's thing. "this dungeon is tuned for a 5 man party" but it doesnt have to. I think WoW for example just kept to the formula out of tradition.
I personally really enjoyed their soloable content in the past expansions (Thorgast (SL), Nightmares (BFA), Chromie (Legion))
Core keeper do that no matter if you make a new game or join a friend server you get the option to take your character with you into that server or that new game you made if you want and I really like that.
Sorry but Josh is almost talking about committee design here, trying to make it so that ALL systems work equally well. Instead I'd suggest you need to pick where YOUR game focuses and make that good. Do you want good team work? Dope, make a good team game and so on.
Trying something new is scary, and getting started is the hardest part.
But fantasizing about how it will be perfect once this one little thing is done will lead to disappointment (since nothing is ever perfect) and waiting until you've got every single detail worked out will lead to you procrastinating and never getting started at all.
6:16 Buddy in chat gets it.
so. long time mmo lover/player here. lol. while leveling yet again through classic, i had this idea: for successful mmo, first build a world you LOVE
You. Make. Sence. 😮 please spread your seed!!!
I have to disagree with Josh on this one. Being a old school FFXI player I enjoyed when the games difficulty forced you to group up with other players and made player's form linkshells and instill camradery in your home server. If people can switch servers all wildly nilly they can't really build a reputation in a server and will likely treat other players like disposable npcs.
No game with any respectable population level really lends itself to "making a name for yourself" anymore. Even the top top guilds clearing world first - hardly anyone knows thier character names even if they know the guild name. Gaming and MMO's are way less niche than they used to be. If you aren't a popular streamer, basically nobody knows who you are regardless of skill level - and I don't see that changing any time soon
I always say that the biggest benefit and issue of MMOs is the community, which is why forcing people to play together is so hazardous. Allow people to play together and people will love you for bring them to their friends, while being able to avoid the schmucks they hate. Force them to play together and theyll like being able to play with friends while resenting you for making them play with the shmucks.
For all that I liked about the WoW Classic experience, the experience was soured by spending literally 10 hours trying to get into a group for a dungeon thanks to people using the LFG channel as a chat box like any other, burying my messages unless I spammed it. Both sides of the community blade in one go.
Please stop, these hot takes is why the genre is in the state that its in in the first place
What you're advocating for is a revival of CO-OP RPG, and I agree with that, but MMOs are an entirely different beast, they're about being shared, player driven worlds, not single player with optional co-op.
The Old Republic, Elder Scrolls Online, Guild Wars 2, ect, are prime examples, People would love to play KOTOR 3 with their friends, but not if it involves MMO tier grind and subscription fees, people would love to play Skyrim with their friends, without all the cash shop non-nonsense and having their gameplay throttled to promote premium membership, people would love more CO-OP RPGs like Neverwinter Nights, like Divinity Original Sin 2, like Baldur's Gate 3.
However true MMOs are stuck in the indie space, we haven't had a good high budgeted sandbox MMO with decent gameplay in over a decade because every single developer thinks they can make WOW 2 by taking their IP, copy pasting WOW and its linear story grind and thinking that works, WOW was good when it was fresh, people stuck around because they already invested in the leveling, the experience, and mastery of their characters, WOW streamlined and became boring and thats why its been in a decline for 12 years, because they stripped out all the non-linear sandbox elements like professions and trade and focused entirely on gacha tier loot grinds.
You have to stop thinking about what you want out of an MMORPG, and instead think why MMORPGs are failing, what strengths to MMORPGs have over the rest of the gaming industry? I can tell you that instanced PVP has been made obsolete by fairer MOBAs, raiding and speedrunning dungeons is decades behind games like Monster Hunter and Soulslikes, and being social RPGs, well just look at the absolute resurgence of tabletop roleplay now that MMOs are so awful to play, and personal progression? I mean if you want to equate MMOs to gachas, be my guest. The one thing MMOs have over all of the previously mentions things is persistant, player driven worlds, this could be economics, this could be warfare, this could be people building up their own little towns and villages and protecting them from monsters, its community driven gameplay, trying to co-ordinate a massive player count RP session IRL is really, really difficult, trust me, I used to run a WOD LARP community, and adventure's league, its a lot of stuff to keep track of that MMOs just do better because they have automated computers keeping track of actions and consequences, thats the true strength of the genre. If you just want a single player game with optional multiplayer, thats not the role of the MMO, thats the role of co-op.
Your last paragraph is really interesting, it's true though, every genre should be playing to its strength. Older MMO's used to be really free in what you could do, like attacking random players, trading, fighting ennemies (well I guess it depends because even Runescape won't let you gang up on an ennemy). Now everything is so restricted to prevent bots and trolling.
I've been putting off getting my drivers license for a little over 5 years now. . . this is exactly the kind of motivation I've been needing. thank you random internet man.
stop making the "player" the central role in your story. We all can't be "the chosen one".
Omg this. It's like it's a single player story... That everyone around you is that single player.
I'm somewhat of a developer myself... we usually go with the 80/20 approach. 80% of the thing done uses 20% effort, getting the rest done (the last 20%), takes 80% effort. It's important to find a sweet point.
Timing is more important than "being ready"...
Arrakis teaches the way of the knife - cutting off that which is unfinished and saying "Now it is finished because it ended here"
one of best pro social MMORPGs i've played was some Connan MMO, where you would be able to just join party and EXP penalties did not seem to have existed.
swapping worlds sounds like excellent idea too
well that turned into life lessons from prof Josh
I worked as a teacher some years ago, and have several teachers in my family, but I have never ever heard this about board cleaning vs butt wiggling :D
Reminds me of my first ever dev project i joined as second semester bachelor student and my line manager thought i was a second semester master student.
When he discovered that i was a bachelor student he was like "oh shit i better check on him" and then praised me for independently reading up on everything on net while staying on time with the fixes for the customer..
I think i never obtained as much knowledge as in the first 4-6 weeks i worked there.. and it stuck so much better than anything i learned later in uni... i am a huge fan of practical lessons ever since and actually think that most people learn better in a practical environment by doing stuff especially by failing and tinkering...
That last example was hilariously bizarre and brilliantly relevant at the same time. Hat off to you, master Hayes.
Also, like many others here I feel really called out with the whole "you better start now instead of waiting for the conditions to be perfect", and empathize with those same people in their descriptions of their struggle.
I've always wondered if you could effectively create a sort of pokemon-esque progress style for an MMO. iE: You have a hub, you want to go to another hub, and between Hub A and Hub B is one or two areas with challenges that need to be passed along the way - like a mountain cave or a forest.
What MMOs seem to have devolved into is Hub A connects to Hub B, and interaction with the connecting areas is completely optional. You can move between Hub A and Hub B at will because there's nothing between you and it. The roads are completely safe, all the content is off to the side. Engagement is more or less optional. And this seems to be a style across the board. And so nobody needs to form groups, nobody is ever really in danger, there's no dynamic or emergent gameplay situations. You just go to Hub B from Hub A and then you click some exclamation marks and if you want to put yourself in an environment that might be very slightly challenging, you have to search for it. Where's the game?
FF11? Like I played that game and just to get to the very first town of the game you have to go through roads infested with monsters that will fuck you up, I was playing as a duo at the time and we died like idk 10 times at least before making it to the very first town, it was quite a journey I tell you.
Most MMORPGs forget what the core is about. Games like OSRS and EVE are still the same game even if you come back years later and you can carry on seamlessly with your progress. Modern WoW and other DLC hamster wheel MMOs have your progress feel like nothing when just after a few months break u need to start from scratch no matter how much you did earlier.
conversation on mmo design turning into a great life lesson, thank you
I must say having the Skyrim theme playing in the background made your life advice sound much more epic.
My dad has a saying "Le mieux est l'ennemi du bien" which translates to "Better is the enemy of good" which is pretty close to the point you make about perfect mindset.
"perfect is the opposite of done" i needed to hear that
I remember the day I felt that logging in WoW was preceded by a list of "dailies" chores that I needed to do before I could actually start playing the game.
And it was even worse when that same list of chores was something you had to do for multiple characters. And, the worst of all, when the reward for those boring chores was better than the stuff you actually enjoyed (like the 10 man raids). It's why I quit playing when the crusader dailies and stuff were added during Lich King.
@@Axterix13 I endured a little longer, but I've skipped a couple of xpacs like MOP, Legion and Draenor.
I did a specific proof in university mathematics for one and a half years and only after teaching it three times I realized that I never understood it properly until then.
As a text based MORPG dev, this has been one of the challenges I specifically have been trying to fix about the extremely niche genre. The issue is there are two primary ideas of how it should go, MUD ( multiuser dungeon) style which is basically "solo" kill and loot grinds propped up on systems and items, and MUSH (Multiuser Shared Hallucination) which is all about RP, sometimes with no systems at all.
The challenge is that the genre does thrive on the community and RP aspects, but forcing it and making it the core gameplay is more and more of a problem for a variety of reasons. I am a heavy mechanics style of dev, but even to that degree, my last big project rewarded almost exclusively RPing over the actions taken. This was because that is how it has always been without going too far in to the MUD space, but what I ultimately want is more of a middle ground where no matter what activities you engage in, including RP, it does help you progress.
the reason most MMO suck nowadays is they have lost their mystery. it is easy to get a resource map or a guide on how to level, clear raids and bosses and the best builds and how to play your character. gone are the days where people would figure out how to play that class and build it how they want to play or test things to get better and if you found a good farm sport or a rare you might let your guild know but not the competition to earn a few extra coins. sadly it is too easy to do a google search and find out the info. back in UO, original WOW , EQ, EQ2 and games like SWG it was hard to find info like you have today. the mmo genre will not be the same like it was in the late 90's and early 2000's. If companies could create mmos like it was back in the day with the mystery behind them they will be fun again but that will never happen which is a shame
Quite recently machine learning became both more popular, more accessible and easier to use in various projects. I wouldn't be surprised (and would love it) if a MMO game would take a step back from 100% hand designed content and incorporated some automated adaptation - making in-game content adapt to counter players meta in some predefined range of options. Introduce some random variance available to content, collect data, compare players performance with what is being modified, have content adjust to answer players.
Give me game that can learn how I play and how to counter me and I will absolutely love it - competetive games have similar pattern happening (due to other player being your opponent) and they are doing perfectly well.
For gameplay experience and making an MMO - it works as long as intended experience (and accompanying systems) aren't built from ground up around player interaction. In case of MMOs this applies to any competition-centric games (pvp-focused, but not only), outside MMOs a perfect example of multiplayer-first approach are MOBA and Battle Royale games (cooperation-competition focused) - games that you can play with/against either other players, or sometimes with/against player substitutes in form of bots.
Having just implemented a new feature in an app I'm working on, that broke other stuff that I then had to fix, that then broke other stuff, and so on... till everything worked again. I understand why people just go "let's not do A cause it breaks B"...