"classic mmos" are failing because people fundamentally misunderstand what they enjoyed about them. they don't understand what they want. the fun of an rpg is in active, expansive and varied maps that always had things to do in them, wide leveling ranges that give you tons of options for content at every level, classes that interact with the world and have identities beyond dps or healing, living economies, etc.. people who don't give the subject much thought think what makes a "classic mmo" unique is the brutal difficulty, which is absolutely not the case. the struggle was definitely conducive to enjoying the well-built, varied and interesting world much more, but what going on is boomers making 1:1 clones of everquest and masochistically soypogging about the idea of dying and taking 18 months to level a character to full. lazy fetishism of the past is not good game design.
I would really like a medieval fantasy RPG built like 7 Days to Die where you can play solo or host a private server with friends. The fees associated with hosting a game for thousands of players and then needing continuous revenue generated by thousands of players to be profitable creates a very narrow path to success.
You're a real one Bob, whether you realize or not you represent a lot of our views in the classic MMO community. Please keep putting out these videos because they are important. It only takes one Dev to see what we are saying and shape their game into what we want for the future.
People liked Everquest, WoW, or any other classic MMO at the time not just because they were hard, but because MMOs were still a novelty at the time. This whole online socializing and exploring humongous worlds with friends was what made it unique and something to behold, during that era. Developers nowadays are confusing "classic" gameplay and "challenge" with the nostalgic sense of novelty and wonders of the dangers of a new world to discover. Trying to pass flaws such as grindy, unfairly punishing gameplay for instance, as "good" gameplay, isn't enough to label a game as being "classic"-like. There is so much more than just that.
MnM is certainly a great game. I think they're intentionally heightening the exp curve for testing purposes though, so that people don't get too far already. If not, it's probably something they're likely going to balance a bit more when they get closer to release. That said, I wish they'd rather just leave us with a bit longer tests, but with level-caps and not as slow exp instead :)
I think the early MMOs got it right because they were built around tabletop style RPG games and early computerized, solo player role-playing games. Many of these games had open concept styles, allowing for unique character creation, complementary skill sets, diverse worlds and monsters/NPCs. The MMO's today aren't being built from those ideas. They are simply copying the old MMOs, rather than fleshing out the original concepts those games were built on. They are trying to reinvent the wheel instead of innovating on the idea of what a wheel could be. Add to that the development teams for these indie MMOs tend to be made up of second-rate designers, programmers, with various inferiority complexes, and you get people who like to play god and F%$@ everything up.
Agreed. I wish modern MMOs nowadays made an earnest effort at replicating that freedom of gameplay and experimentation, rather than relying on a hazy image of what is deemed as "Nostalgic".
@@Ribyum Exactly. At the end of the day, EQ just absolutely nailed it about as perfect as you can. I don't think the indie developers of today can even conceive the complexity of gameplay work/planning and execution behind the scenes, that ultimately created the atmosphere and feel of EQ. They struggle just trying to replicate the mechanics, with no thought of strategizing how those mechanics interrelate, or how to create new ones from an original idea.
I got into p99 watching your videos. My first MMO was final fantasy XI. The only job you could reasonably solo on FFXI was Beastmaster. If you didn't play that, then you didn't level because it was all group/party and mob camp based. It took me half a year to get my Beastmaster in FFXI to level cap which was 75 at the time. I found p99 to be much much easier even with corpse runs, and the slower movement it was still more forgiving because you could make pretty decent progress on numerous jobs on your own. I got my enchanter to 30 as a complete noob. I found p99 to be quite easy to get into despite no direction on what to do. I quit FFXI because I didn't like making parties and if you played a DPS class at that time you would rarely get invited to exp parties. So naturally, I voted on your poll that a player should be able to make reasonable progress solo as long as the group dynamic gave more exp and thus rewarded social cohesion. I think that's a perfect compromise.
I think that there are successs and we should look at why. Clear example is Path of Exile, playable single player but it got so popular that it enabled mmo experiences, particularly arounnd the economy of the game
I think a part most people dont mention is on the actual mentality of most game devs in the modern era. Gaming isn't a "new" thing anymore, it isnt the 90s anymore. Some devs/dev teams have become so self-assured that they 100%, without-a-doubt, KNOW what theyre doing; Its ironically their downfall. They think because they've been in the industry for 'x' years or that they're degree/experience taught them that games MUST be made *this particular* way because thats the 'rules.' They think they need 'retention systems' or that UX design is sooooo incredibly important (why?). What they end up making is not a game, but just a chore simulator. They want the game to be as "fun as possible" and in doing so, they make it incredibly vapid and dispassionately 'industry standard' to the point that nobody can earnestly enjoy such cookie cutter slop, of which was only made to appease the soulless, grifter-investors whom probably don't even know the name of that new title that just made them thousands of $$$... Its a big shame what's happening to the industry, but it isnt a surprise to most people... Greed is the death of art. Its happened to music & movies already.
I feel what a lot of older mmo’s did really well was giving your character quest/activity milsestones while leveling. To use FFXI as an example: at 20 you would travel to Jeuno and get your chocobo, at 25 you worked on your Kazham keys, 30 new jobs and some Promathia missions, etc. P99 does the same thing and it’s something I thoroughly enjoy breaking up the grind with.
rather that having players fight for nodes for crafting you can make the crafting node instanced to the player; meaning every player has a set amount of distance between any node and a place where nodes can and cannot spawn meaning there is no need for player competition. use gaussian noise to generate a seed over your zone map and then restrict it by distance and disallow zones. you can combine two players instanced node seeds if they group together. it's a way of handling the problem that is easy to code. give_node_seed(), share_node_seed()
When you have a long time to progress you need just one more month to progress and pay for one more month. Project Quarm did away with alot of bottlenecks EQ had and what we experience is people getting BiS faster and roll alts or just take a break until next expansion.
the longer you make leveling the more refined you must make each second of the interaction of gaining exp. the sound, graphics, animations, button engagement, etc. if you do not scale each together linearly you reach a disparity of intent/reward and players get fed up really quickly. too fast, not good; too slow, not good. levels can take shorter amounts of time if the player has access to many zones with many monsters and quests to variate that way. it's a design philosophy that has to be scaled on either end appropriately. in terms of correcting bad exp formulae it's a simply problem to fix: record the averaged amount of time a player needs per level, ask the player base how much shorter or longer they feel it should take (10% more, 10% less, etc, give 20 answers) and then scale it if you the designer cannot comprehend what feels good. which..if you cant comprehend that, you probably dont understand what youre trying to mimic.
I remember thinking EverQuest was really grindy, and then I tried out some Korean MMOs and my mind was blown. And it partially depends on player knowledge. Like with Final Fantasy 11, it seemed pretty slow, but then the player base realized that they had been fighting the wrong types of enemies for years. With the wrong tactics. And then suddenly, whereas 5,000 experience an hour used to be considered pretty good, if you aren't making 15,000 or 18,000 or more an hour, that was a bad group. Outside of Korean mmos, a lot of the grind had a lot to do with players just not understanding how to maximize experience in groups. I remember back in EverQuest when players first started figuring out that the puller should already have another mob in camp ready to go as the first died. When they realized how powerful things like enchanter charm pets were. And a pretty rapidly the grind became a whole lot less of a hassle. It feels like a lot of these newer ones are trying to account for players overall being way more intelligent and informed about how to build groups and what to fight, and they end up having the worst of both worlds. Where even if you have the best group possible, your experience gain is just absolutely miserable. It's fine to have the journey be the most important thing about the game, but when the journey is you slogging through hip deep quicksand, that's not a journey. That's just wasting players' time.
Eh, I played EQ from launch to a little after Velious came out, and was in a very small guild that entire time (like less than 10 people, zero max level), and I had like 330 days of /play time (like 8000 hours) on my main character, and it still wasn't max level. Only made it to 58 (monk). Because I would die frequently. The only people that had easy paths were in large guilds or had classes that got groups easy, or a combination of both. A mass majority of people were in the same position as me, and never got a max level char, no matter how much they played.
EverQuest 1 grindy is different All those encounters in a public dungeons/ organically grown community/ and meticulously hand crafted crazy dungeons VS those trash Korea MMO soulless generic copies of instances
A certain amount of open-world PvP makes the game more exciting. I love classic WoW for the open-world PvP, it's so much fun ganking people your level.
@@lizkimber the point of having PvP and PvE servers. The main thing is having the choice, listening to bobs video; I feel the message is that players should be able to solo, group, PvE or PvP. It's a game, people should have fun with their own play style. I appreciate the response.
@@Byndle6969 yes. My problem is i keep hearing people demanding all mmo should be pvp. And while i respect their "fun" in that. I wish many (like you) also accept its not fun for all of us. Ive played on pvp servers but ive never found them as enjoyable. In part from unnecessary amounts of ganking but that moment where touve battled some mob and are looking very second hand is also the time some idiot decides now is also a great time to backstab you and kill you in one shot. Problem is i can see that pvp done well has honour but as always idiots spoil it all.
@@lizkimber In some of these games, it's also very much a "whoever spends the most amount of time in the game more or less automatically wins", to a large extend at least, and that will always somewhat ruin the "competition" that is PvP.
They try to make things very hard and super grindy at the same time. You either need to have an easy or simple task that takes a while to grind (think Runescape) or a shorter experience that's challenging (like raiding in wow) both have the same sense of achievement whether its reaching 99 skill after months or taking down a heroic raid after a couple hours. The only reason old MMOs are popular most of the time is nostalgia pure and simple that's why with few exceptions the only popular MMOs left have been here for over a decade at least. People don't have the same patience for games like Runescape nowadays especially with so many great games that aren't MMOs but people make time and enjoy it due to nostalgia, whether you have the nostalgia for that specific game or a game like it. MMOs cost a fortune to make and make it well at that rate and now with the track record of new MMOs dying after a year max its so hard to get funding for groundbreaking MMO experiences without hardcore mtx which makes it bad to most people. I hate to say it and I hope I'm wrong but I think the MMO era is just too far gone we can only hold on to the OGs until they eventually fade too.
IMHO it's a cycle of failure becaues people keep trying to reinvent the wheel (make an EQ clone, or a WoW clone) or put too many gimmicks (e.g. survival stuff) into games.
I've been trying to get back into EverQuest and even it's exp is making me not want to play again cause I already know how much time it's going to take.
MMOs need money behind them and a big launch right out of thee gate. Having backed a few of these indie ones all of which promise the world I've stopped wasting my money on them. With a single player game you can have a good game that spends years in early access and slowly builds up a following but that model doesn't work with an MMO. If it's not awesome and well marketed on release people will not play it
I think the doubling down on an excruciatingly slow leveling experience kinda shows how out of touch that sphere of influence is. For me if you're making an mmo even slower than everquest... you lost the script. It's about what you mentioned in the video and more.
@@matthewfornear4076 if you dont buy a boost how long do you have to play (/level) untill you can get a lvl were you can group with ppl who are way higher aa and gear lvl?
@@Warmac1999 I'm not the one who brought up graphics in the first place. The combat system looks terrible and the game overall looks terrible. Shall we go over the list of games in 99 that would destroy this?
@@torchlight3173 LOL you clearly don't no much about games. Ever hear of Asheron's Call? I'm not trolling. It looks terrible for 99. I was gaming in 99 and played most of the OG online MMORPGs. I was one of the first people in my town to have an ethernet connection. You sound upset dude...relax . Go get laid.
"classic mmos" are failing because people fundamentally misunderstand what they enjoyed about them. they don't understand what they want. the fun of an rpg is in active, expansive and varied maps that always had things to do in them, wide leveling ranges that give you tons of options for content at every level, classes that interact with the world and have identities beyond dps or healing, living economies, etc.. people who don't give the subject much thought think what makes a "classic mmo" unique is the brutal difficulty, which is absolutely not the case. the struggle was definitely conducive to enjoying the well-built, varied and interesting world much more, but what going on is boomers making 1:1 clones of everquest and masochistically soypogging about the idea of dying and taking 18 months to level a character to full. lazy fetishism of the past is not good game design.
I would really like a medieval fantasy RPG built like 7 Days to Die where you can play solo or host a private server with friends. The fees associated with hosting a game for thousands of players and then needing continuous revenue generated by thousands of players to be profitable creates a very narrow path to success.
You're a real one Bob, whether you realize or not you represent a lot of our views in the classic MMO community. Please keep putting out these videos because they are important. It only takes one Dev to see what we are saying and shape their game into what we want for the future.
People liked Everquest, WoW, or any other classic MMO at the time not just because they were hard, but because MMOs were still a novelty at the time. This whole online socializing and exploring humongous worlds with friends was what made it unique and something to behold, during that era.
Developers nowadays are confusing "classic" gameplay and "challenge" with the nostalgic sense of novelty and wonders of the dangers of a new world to discover.
Trying to pass flaws such as grindy, unfairly punishing gameplay for instance, as "good" gameplay, isn't enough to label a game as being "classic"-like. There is so much more than just that.
MnM is certainly a great game. I think they're intentionally heightening the exp curve for testing purposes though, so that people don't get too far already. If not, it's probably something they're likely going to balance a bit more when they get closer to release. That said, I wish they'd rather just leave us with a bit longer tests, but with level-caps and not as slow exp instead :)
I think the early MMOs got it right because they were built around tabletop style RPG games and early computerized, solo player role-playing games. Many of these games had open concept styles, allowing for unique character creation, complementary skill sets, diverse worlds and monsters/NPCs. The MMO's today aren't being built from those ideas. They are simply copying the old MMOs, rather than fleshing out the original concepts those games were built on. They are trying to reinvent the wheel instead of innovating on the idea of what a wheel could be. Add to that the development teams for these indie MMOs tend to be made up of second-rate designers, programmers, with various inferiority complexes, and you get people who like to play god and F%$@ everything up.
Agreed. I wish modern MMOs nowadays made an earnest effort at replicating that freedom of gameplay and experimentation, rather than relying on a hazy image of what is deemed as "Nostalgic".
@@Ribyum Exactly. At the end of the day, EQ just absolutely nailed it about as perfect as you can. I don't think the indie developers of today can even conceive the complexity of gameplay work/planning and execution behind the scenes, that ultimately created the atmosphere and feel of EQ. They struggle just trying to replicate the mechanics, with no thought of strategizing how those mechanics interrelate, or how to create new ones from an original idea.
I got into p99 watching your videos. My first MMO was final fantasy XI. The only job you could reasonably solo on FFXI was Beastmaster. If you didn't play that, then you didn't level because it was all group/party and mob camp based. It took me half a year to get my Beastmaster in FFXI to level cap which was 75 at the time. I found p99 to be much much easier even with corpse runs, and the slower movement it was still more forgiving because you could make pretty decent progress on numerous jobs on your own. I got my enchanter to 30 as a complete noob. I found p99 to be quite easy to get into despite no direction on what to do. I quit FFXI because I didn't like making parties and if you played a DPS class at that time you would rarely get invited to exp parties. So naturally, I voted on your poll that a player should be able to make reasonable progress solo as long as the group dynamic gave more exp and thus rewarded social cohesion. I think that's a perfect compromise.
I think that there are successs and we should look at why. Clear example is Path of Exile, playable single player but it got so popular that it enabled mmo experiences, particularly arounnd the economy of the game
I think a part most people dont mention is on the actual mentality of most game devs in the modern era. Gaming isn't a "new" thing anymore, it isnt the 90s anymore.
Some devs/dev teams have become so self-assured that they 100%, without-a-doubt, KNOW what theyre doing; Its ironically their downfall. They think because they've been in the industry for 'x' years or that they're degree/experience taught them that games MUST be made *this particular* way because thats the 'rules.' They think they need 'retention systems' or that UX design is sooooo incredibly important (why?). What they end up making is not a game, but just a chore simulator. They want the game to be as "fun as possible" and in doing so, they make it incredibly vapid and dispassionately 'industry standard' to the point that nobody can earnestly enjoy such cookie cutter slop, of which was only made to appease the soulless, grifter-investors whom probably don't even know the name of that new title that just made them thousands of $$$... Its a big shame what's happening to the industry, but it isnt a surprise to most people... Greed is the death of art. Its happened to music & movies already.
I feel what a lot of older mmo’s did really well was giving your character quest/activity milsestones while leveling. To use FFXI as an example: at 20 you would travel to Jeuno and get your chocobo, at 25 you worked on your Kazham keys, 30 new jobs and some Promathia missions, etc. P99 does the same thing and it’s something I thoroughly enjoy breaking up the grind with.
rather that having players fight for nodes for crafting you can make the crafting node instanced to the player; meaning every player has a set amount of distance between any node and a place where nodes can and cannot spawn meaning there is no need for player competition. use gaussian noise to generate a seed over your zone map and then restrict it by distance and disallow zones. you can combine two players instanced node seeds if they group together. it's a way of handling the problem that is easy to code. give_node_seed(), share_node_seed()
When you have a long time to progress you need just one more month to progress and pay for one more month.
Project Quarm did away with alot of bottlenecks EQ had and what we experience is people getting BiS faster and roll alts or just take a break until next expansion.
the longer you make leveling the more refined you must make each second of the interaction of gaining exp. the sound, graphics, animations, button engagement, etc. if you do not scale each together linearly you reach a disparity of intent/reward and players get fed up really quickly. too fast, not good; too slow, not good. levels can take shorter amounts of time if the player has access to many zones with many monsters and quests to variate that way. it's a design philosophy that has to be scaled on either end appropriately. in terms of correcting bad exp formulae it's a simply problem to fix: record the averaged amount of time a player needs per level, ask the player base how much shorter or longer they feel it should take (10% more, 10% less, etc, give 20 answers) and then scale it if you the designer cannot comprehend what feels good. which..if you cant comprehend that, you probably dont understand what youre trying to mimic.
I remember thinking EverQuest was really grindy, and then I tried out some Korean MMOs and my mind was blown.
And it partially depends on player knowledge. Like with Final Fantasy 11, it seemed pretty slow, but then the player base realized that they had been fighting the wrong types of enemies for years. With the wrong tactics.
And then suddenly, whereas 5,000 experience an hour used to be considered pretty good, if you aren't making 15,000 or 18,000 or more an hour, that was a bad group.
Outside of Korean mmos, a lot of the grind had a lot to do with players just not understanding how to maximize experience in groups. I remember back in EverQuest when players first started figuring out that the puller should already have another mob in camp ready to go as the first died. When they realized how powerful things like enchanter charm pets were.
And a pretty rapidly the grind became a whole lot less of a hassle.
It feels like a lot of these newer ones are trying to account for players overall being way more intelligent and informed about how to build groups and what to fight, and they end up having the worst of both worlds. Where even if you have the best group possible, your experience gain is just absolutely miserable.
It's fine to have the journey be the most important thing about the game, but when the journey is you slogging through hip deep quicksand, that's not a journey. That's just wasting players' time.
Eh, I played EQ from launch to a little after Velious came out, and was in a very small guild that entire time (like less than 10 people, zero max level), and I had like 330 days of /play time (like 8000 hours) on my main character, and it still wasn't max level. Only made it to 58 (monk). Because I would die frequently.
The only people that had easy paths were in large guilds or had classes that got groups easy, or a combination of both. A mass majority of people were in the same position as me, and never got a max level char, no matter how much they played.
EverQuest 1 grindy is different
All those encounters in a public dungeons/ organically grown community/ and meticulously hand crafted crazy dungeons VS those trash Korea MMO soulless generic copies of instances
One thing i find hard is people seem to think an mmo must be pvp or it wont work.
A certain amount of open-world PvP makes the game more exciting. I love classic WoW for the open-world PvP, it's so much fun ganking people your level.
@@Byndle6969 only to people who wish to be ganked or do ganking. The rest of us want to happily live our lives thanks!
@@lizkimber the point of having PvP and PvE servers. The main thing is having the choice, listening to bobs video; I feel the message is that players should be able to solo, group, PvE or PvP. It's a game, people should have fun with their own play style. I appreciate the response.
@@Byndle6969 yes. My problem is i keep hearing people demanding all mmo should be pvp. And while i respect their "fun" in that. I wish many (like you) also accept its not fun for all of us. Ive played on pvp servers but ive never found them as enjoyable. In part from unnecessary amounts of ganking but that moment where touve battled some mob and are looking very second hand is also the time some idiot decides now is also a great time to backstab you and kill you in one shot.
Problem is i can see that pvp done well has honour but as always idiots spoil it all.
@@lizkimber In some of these games, it's also very much a "whoever spends the most amount of time in the game more or less automatically wins", to a large extend at least, and that will always somewhat ruin the "competition" that is PvP.
PREACH brother!
They try to make things very hard and super grindy at the same time. You either need to have an easy or simple task that takes a while to grind (think Runescape) or a shorter experience that's challenging (like raiding in wow) both have the same sense of achievement whether its reaching 99 skill after months or taking down a heroic raid after a couple hours. The only reason old MMOs are popular most of the time is nostalgia pure and simple that's why with few exceptions the only popular MMOs left have been here for over a decade at least. People don't have the same patience for games like Runescape nowadays especially with so many great games that aren't MMOs but people make time and enjoy it due to nostalgia, whether you have the nostalgia for that specific game or a game like it. MMOs cost a fortune to make and make it well at that rate and now with the track record of new MMOs dying after a year max its so hard to get funding for groundbreaking MMO experiences without hardcore mtx which makes it bad to most people. I hate to say it and I hope I'm wrong but I think the MMO era is just too far gone we can only hold on to the OGs until they eventually fade too.
you dont want ppl to get to max lvl and raidlog or get bored
IMHO it's a cycle of failure becaues people keep trying to reinvent the wheel (make an EQ clone, or a WoW clone) or put too many gimmicks (e.g. survival stuff) into games.
I've been trying to get back into EverQuest and even it's exp is making me not want to play again cause I already know how much time it's going to take.
Hey,a game a tried an old style RPG it's called Islands of the caliph,maybe something for you
P99 seems dead now and the devs don't seem like they want to do a server merge.
MMOs need money behind them and a big launch right out of thee gate. Having backed a few of these indie ones all of which promise the world I've stopped wasting my money on them. With a single player game you can have a good game that spends years in early access and slowly builds up a following but that model doesn't work with an MMO. If it's not awesome and well marketed on release people will not play it
I got 2 kids , I have no interest in playing anything more grindy than EQ.
I think the doubling down on an excruciatingly slow leveling experience kinda shows how out of touch that sphere of influence is. For me if you're making an mmo even slower than everquest... you lost the script. It's about what you mentioned in the video and more.
Or you just want your content to last like forever :P
everquest is a solo game
p99 is a solo game. everquest is not
@@matthewfornear4076 if you dont buy a boost how long do you have to play (/level) untill you can get a lvl were you can group with ppl who are way higher aa and gear lvl?
this game looks terrible
@@torchlight3173 In 1999 I'd say the same thing. The graphics here were bad for 99' And the combat is weak. Is this is only game you played in 99? lol
@@torchlight3173 We can go over the list if you want to...
@@highdesertbiker it isn't all about graphics. Also, what is an example of a game with "good graphics" from 1999 in your opinion?
@@Warmac1999 I'm not the one who brought up graphics in the first place. The combat system looks terrible and the game overall looks terrible. Shall we go over the list of games in 99 that would destroy this?
@@torchlight3173 LOL you clearly don't no much about games. Ever hear of Asheron's Call? I'm not trolling. It looks terrible for 99. I was gaming in 99 and played most of the OG online MMORPGs. I was one of the first people in my town to have an ethernet connection. You sound upset dude...relax . Go get laid.