Unfortunately I had to cut the intro because of the length of this video and the finishing touches would require about 3 or 4 more hours work. Sadly, I am beat today and I'm gonna grab some sleep so apologies for not including it. You can be assured the intro for the next video (livestream prediction) will have at least an extra 10+ hours put into it for your viewing pleasure. I love you all and really appreciate you continuing to watch my videos despite AoC being dead af... So why not come and join our humble discord so I can thank you personally, and then berate you for your MMO preferences: discord.gg/muwNp8NhbB
Hello from Russia! I do not perceive English "by ear" well (I'm also too lazy to read subtitles) so I watch your videos through a special online program with a neural network that translates videos in real time... Because of this, this view can be counted as one of those who watched "without a subscription" 😀 Just for information, probably over 80% of your viewers follow you 🤯
dont worry about the intro, I think your metrics should show you a lot of people (myself included) skip past it anyways. I watch for the news and opinion pieces relayed in an entertaining way. Just saying feel free to cut the intros for more takes on the MMO genre and even MMO adjacent.
Too many game mechanics in MMOs today like completing dailies or you miss out on rewards that prevent people from enjoying the game. I'd rather they have random rewards than dailies. For example you are exploring and you discover a randomly generated shrine with unique rewards and monster fight. Or perhaps you come across a unique mineral that can be used in crafting for a random unique bonus effect that is unusual for the item crafted. This could encourage exploration far away from cities.
You know why they put dailies and stuff like that for you to do? To grab you for one more day. and an other. Like that they can say the game is alive. If you just did the content, you will finish that game and have nothing to do. So by making you do dailies, you have something to do every day. in a sandbox MMO you don't need this kind of gameplay because the user make is owm content, but in a them-park, you need to make the content for the player
I don’t even think that’s needed. Look at Oldschool RuneScape. You don’t need to do any dailies and there’s no flashy pop up rewards for doing pretty much nothing.
The last time I experienced that wondrous open world feeling was in elden ring. You take a path that catches your eye, end up in a god forsaken rotten cave, you explore it and get some reward and move on. Whole adventure does not take too much time as to make you feel like you are looping in an endless maze.
9:57 had me dying of laughter xDD „Go kill some boars! Go collect some asses! Go suck some dog's d*ck!“ what a perfect explanation for mmo quest design xD
I think that’s a hot take on GW2 horizontal progression. The gear might hit a ceiling, but your skills can still improve. See you got better by playing, not a higher item level.
I really like that GW2 doesn't have vertical progression. I can take half-year breaks and continue with my goals whenever. Still so much things to be done after hundreds of hours.
Yea im pretty sure it will be a fun game, but i also see a serious Cyberpunk 2077 situation brewing, in so much as people are building up an impossible hype train for it.
the difference between Ashes and other MMOs though mate, is that we have the chance to make a positive difference. that's why I preach what I believe is right within the gaming industry, so the community we build here, can give the correct feedback, with the correct consumer friendly ideals instead of the modern, corporate, soulless garbage.
Early mmos felt like a mix of every genre back in the day. The perfect mmo needs elements from strategy, platforming, rpg, pvp to be good. Even FPS and arcade mini games. Final fantasy blew me away with their mini games
There should not be any trash mobs, the first enemies in the game should be able to kill you even if you are max level, like in Elden Ring. Difficulty of mobs should be reflected on how fast the enemies move and attack, not just beefed up base stats. Punishing but rewarding gameplay is the way to go.
If they want to evolve, they must be soloable mmo's, who has 1,000 hrs and 8 players ready to go at all times quick match finding groups for dungeons let's tone it down we dont need insane unbeatable content we have lives. Pvp and pve with a social balance but ability to get end game content solo.
"Epics are no longer epic" I miss the joy of finding a rare even if its not good for me or the happyness of a new uncommon item thats an upgrade and/or looks different.
Rewatch your video of dungeons and dragons online. Made me understand your points more clearly. I went and played it and my goodness, the sense of adventure came back hard. Sad that it’s not the desired stuff anymore.
I think MMOs have the least amount of proper evolution because they don't take lessons from other genres. Look at Monster Hunter for example. They take a lot of ques from MMOs only difference is the lack of open world map but even then why do we even need giant maps in multiplayer games? Shouldn't they focus on just the bosses? Then I realized "Holy shit MMOs are all about fluff". Why is this dungeon that has this really fun boss throwing 25 minutes of trash mobs at me? Oh that's right because this is a paid subscription game and they need to milk my time whenever they can. Monster Hunter wants you to enjoy the content with the bosses and if you want to grind it it's your choice. MMOs have to somehow milk more time off you by severally limiting how and when you progress. Once I learned about Weekly and Daily Tasks give you rewards but also severally limits them by how much you can obtain I stopped playing those scam games.
When horizontal gameplay is the answer to the endless gear treadmill, how will AoC solve the problem of the gear treadmill when that is considered a plus and not a negative? I enjoy my MMOs for the gameplay and exploration, and while you can say that the gear treadmill will not affect that, well it most certainly does. Especially when it is an open world PvP game. Now, don't get me wrong, I am looking forward to AoC and what it has to offer, but to expect it to solve problems that the vast majority of MMO player, imho, do not see as problems, is only setting the game up for a fail for you, extreme disappointment. You see, the only thing I believe that is wrong with MMOs is that their has been a lack of a new MMO willing to do something different because while players may say they want something different, in the end they only say they do and instead will go back to the familiar.
yes GW2 provides a dynamic world. but what i liked most was the freedom and sense of exploration and "getting lost". in WoW and most MMOs you must find where to go, make sure not to kill anything for no reason, because there's probably a quest for it, which you haven't picked up yet. find who to talk to. do the chore. go back and deliver the news. and it probably ends up being a long stifling chain of quests giving you restless leg syndrome. lol While in GW2, i see a cool place, i set your destination. After a looking around to find that hidden entrance, which leads to a jumping puzzle... i'm half way there. maybe i'll kill something along the way... oh wha'd'ya know! i'm apparently helping with a quest here! maybe i'll stick around and finish it, or maybe i won't... its not like it takes up space in a limited journal or anything. Along the way i SEE bad things happening. Some bandits are burning that farmhouse! Who do i talk to in order to help!?? Wait, what am i saying! i'm a big boy! So i act based on what a hero would do, and omg! i'm doing a "quest". Maybe i killed some bandits... or maybe i used the well and put out the fires because my damage is low, or maybe i healed the burn victims. So the farmhouse is now visibly safe, i have raised my renown with the locals, and maybe, if i need to, i'll get a reward of my choice from their quartermaster. It is continuous and feels ORGANIC. No... stop, check level range, talk to npc, do bidding, report to npc, get useless item. and i'd like to critisize how MMOs have ended up presenting you the gear. retail WoW, New World, and all asian ones are like **beep boop i am progressing in a computer game, bbzztt! my "item level" is 50 and my gear gives 5 "damage", 10 "defense", and 130 "critical rating". i will now proceed to upgrade it to "+4" whatever that means. beep boop ** I only want to see ATTRIBUTES, and not "gaming terms" on my rpg gear. as for the reason why GW2 is not as popular as WoW and a couple other MMOs? well, it respects their audience more and doesn't try to trick/manipulate/dictate them. it does not use any of the various psychological "player engagement" gameplay mechanics. so people play it when/because they actually want to, not because they have to. the only slightly scummy thing GW2 does is the randomly rotating skins at the shop. and a daily quest list. But the first is not even gameplay related, and the second does not give anything that is required to progress. but GW2 has 2 problems in my opinion. 1. homogenization, no real roles. PvE ends up being every man for himself, for the most part. 2. no player collision in WvW. which is the only thing that ruins it. blob vs blob, each team of 40 hiding behind a single pillar clipping into each-other. then run through each other, spamming AoE. wow, such tactics, such skill. (give me back WAR) Also, horizontal progression is a big plus, not a minus. You can increase the dificulty of your game, and the feeling of reward, by introducing new and diferent content and new horizontal mechanics, without the need to increase the numbers, which in comparison is the lazy way of doing it. PS: damn, i look at the animations and sounds of AoC... and i remember watching the latest Pantheon gameplay showcase.... even Camelot Unchained "has" better animations.
NGL i prefer playing Project 1999 over any new MMO.... The new MMOs have modernized with the times, drop in drop out arcade style is what is hot right now. With Tiktok and reels being very short term entertainment and it is very profitable showing that is true. CoD the most popular game series out there is very quick action packed. MMORPGs are supposed to be a slow burn, getting to max level was a journey and the destination was just as grand as the adventure there, now we have MMOs no longer an RPG and they are trying to mimic the CoD addiction, with a generous sprinkle of FIFA monetization.
Agree Narc! my favorites ones were Asheron's Call 1 on Darktide server, Everquest 1 , Daoc etc, well since 2008 mmorpg turned in the wrong way, i still played every mmorpg since the first ones but i have a great hope about AoC ^^ i'll see you on A2!
I've been playing GW2 since the betas. You might think that the lack of gear treadmill is the reason they don't have long term players, but this is exactly why I keep playing. My character is always relevant, and has never been made artificially weaker throughout the years because a new zone was introduced. This is why I stopped games like Destiny 2, because the gear treadmill is tedious, and boring. With the mastery system, I wasn't getting a bigger number, without changing gameplay at all, I always got something new to play with. My character ACTUALLY progressed. Might be a minority, but just bigger numbers never interested me.
Endgame is very tricky to get right. It sounded like you criticized GW2's horizontal progression, but with vertical progression you'd need regular content updates from which better gear can be acquired, thus making the work for your current gear near wasted, and previous zones/raids aren't relevant anymore. How can you keep old zones and dungeons/raids relevant in the future, in a vertical MMO?
This is true but, I know a lot of friends and people that quit the game cause it had very littl gear progression at all outside of ascended stuff much later on.
@@vandakaii2893 Yes, it's more of a preference I guess. A lot of people like to see numbers go up. I also like vertical progression, but at the same time I hope some devs can be creative in how they can make low level zones and previous raids still relevant somehow; just to keep the whole game world alive.
What really ended up harming the Trinity-based gameplay of traditional MMOs, and giving rise to the casual, single-player experience, was the simple fact that gamers who made these big in the past were a product of the times. Now they have families and careers and don't have time to wait for a tank or healer, let alone literally schedule hundreds of hours of organized, guild-based gameplay and grind out potential rewards for their effort. Couple that with younger generations wanting an easier time than even the aging gamers, and investors demanding infinite upward growth potential somehow, games were forced to become more lean. Simply appealing to too many audiences is a destructive force. Hopefully, Ashes focuses on the 'old gamers that do have lives but are willing to do a couple hours a night anyway' crowd, but I'm concerned that success in the game will focus on the 'unemployed gamers' demographics instead.
As a GW2 vet I can tell you we've had many MANY discussions about the issue of horizontal progression and lack of advertisement. To be honest the cap isn't necessarily bad, but there is too big of content gaps, mediocre rewards being mostly cosmetic and the best ones attained via your wallet to balance out long term goals. Engaging community content with exclusive rewards locked behind challenging encounters is the general consensus amongst hardcore players, however the studio listens to the money and that's 90% of its community being a more casual player whom they pamper to.
I will say it every time. To this day, Runescape is the only MMOR that truly feels like it has quests. You need items, go places, do certain things. You do not just go gather or kill. RS funny enough, still has the most innovative campaign/quests compared to every other MMO. Even RS's lore is insanely good now.
That sounds very shortsighted.. Runescape II is a pay to play, puts everything behind paywall experience - with the most outdated mmo mechanics, stale gameplay and bad lore.. It would be great if we could play that on gameboy 22 years ago.. These days we run at least 1080ti with 144hz monitors to allow for some real eye candy games/mmo.. o.0..
@@SkywalkFPV Lol, this has to be one of the most ignorant and biased zoomer comments I ever seen. First of all, I never said play the game, I said RS is the only MMORPG that makes quests truly feel like quests. Second of all, Rs3 is P2w/locks stuff behind pw/mtx. OSRS does not. Everything in OSRS is earned through gameplay, paying gets you nothing. If you mean membership? Yes, and you can only play on members worlds. F2p worlds you can not use members items in it, thus, not p2w. And the game is over 20 years old and still over 100k active players. It does not have outdated mechanics on it's main Title RS3, and OSRS is made to have the old mmo feel and vibe and mechanics. But again, my entire comment So not sure what the hell you are even on about honestly.
@@kintsugittv2537 Zoomer? XD Just for the fact I am from pre 1990 so you are being delusional again and also sound a bit offended that I roasted your boomer game crush, besides still being shortsighted.. 'the only mmo that truly feels like it has quests' I mean how many copium have you been sucking and glue have you been sniffing during high school? That it has the most 'innovating campaign' lmao.. It might be a fun little mmo for mobile and mostly kids with no allowance below the age of 12 or braindeads to create all those 100k players.. Tap and chop tree, tap and kill mob yeah that are no innovating mechanics my dude and no great lore either. for the revamped title - and if you still play that rusted OSRS yeah man, I also still play Pacman sometimes ffs.. If u want good mmo that is old and innovating and still has some true relevance, with performance, mechanics, artstyle, depth, campaign and lore, go play some GW2 or ESO - and if u want some top notch next gen high roller mmo stuff, that offers some real grinds ect - go do some BDO or Warframe!
Nothing has captured me like EverQuest did in the 90’s. I was always pushing to explore and get that cool looking loot. But now you get inundated with phat loot from the word go and you can do it all solo. It almost cheapens it. Don’t get me wrong EQ was way too annoying to level up and navigate. But the lore was absolutely fantastic. I played wow for like 15 years and I still don’t know the story because it wasn’t very interesting except the arthas storyline. But the combat was pretty good. Class importance in EQ was cool but the problem is you needed a tank a priest and an enchanter which means all other classes that were way cooler could go F themselves. That became an issue. When the game is too easy you don’t need to create friends and relationships you just play the whole thing solo. Auto que for a random and don’t talk to anyone.
Narc my man. You sure have a twisted idea about GW2. The horizontal progression is not a minus, but a massive + for the game. I stopped the game at least 4 time and each time I came back, there were new builds, masteries, skins or activities I could look forward to. I haven't touch any othere MMO that I stopped playing for a while, because you fall back too hard and by the time you catch up, you are already burned out by the dozens, if not hundreds of hours of grinding for "end-game". What GW2 does right is by providing a completly other way of vertical progression that doesn't shut you down from endgame participation, which is: masteries. Masteries are a massive grind and getting it to max is months upon months of work. They are not only rewarding you with a visual number, but with actual world interaction. You show "off" not "just with gear or how it looks", but with the dragon you obtained. With the griffion, with how you can use your mounts, while "noobs" can't. You show off with your new build that can do new things. That being said: GW2 also has class identity, but in a different way. Certain builds excell in certain jobs. There are dedicated supports, healers, tanks and damage dealers depending on the elite spec you pick. And if you don't like the meta: It is completly fine to play your elite spec in a completly different way. It will be viable for end-game content (maybe not for raiding and high level fractals). What more would I want? An updated graphical version of GW2 would actually be complete bonkers today. My hope is that the riot MMO is going to take a similar way with the current state of GW2. Meaning: Horizontal progresion in gear or minimal vertical progression for gear and heavy vertical progression in world interaction. Give it good graphics, some decent housing and a somewhat decent story and you have a gem of an MMO. There is a reason why the playerbase is so loyal in GW2 or why the latest expansion brought so many people in.
Horizontal progression is subjective for those like you its a + but, for those that grew up with a sense of building up to be the best through gear progression it is a - .. Subjectivity is where this one sits and it will change based on a personal wants and needs or personal issues dependent on their life and will ALWAYS sit at 50/50 but, everyone I have talked to that do not like GW2 gives me that exact reason they could not continue to play it cause there was no gear progression at all so it is def not always going to be a + but, then again if you have a lack of time then it will become a + ..
@@vandakaii2893 if gear Progression is an absolute must, sure, but the game itself does have a shit Ton of progression, more than in other traditional MMOs like ff14. You can pretty much get to endgame gear within weeks, in gw2 the masteries will take you months at minimum. For the skyscale alone i required like 1 to 1 1/2 weeks of grinding, which will not decrease in time regardless of how far the game progresses. Also certain runes are quite expensive, while certain Infusions are hard to come by. Like there is a lot to farm. Really up to you, how much you want to do of it. I for once absolutely hate it, when i am gated out of content, because i have to Grind x weeks in order to obtain the minimum gear.
Excellent video and analysis. Would like to one day learn more about how you like to play and level up in MMOs so I can -judge you personally- understand what you value and focus on. For me FFXIV leveling was quite fun and the bosses had mechanics you had to actually learn even from quite early on. Always value your input and take on them as these kind of things cannot be evaluated objectively, so to understand your style and desires would allow us to better understand what kind of experience we could be looking for.
@@truelyyyyyy It wasn't grindy, there were lot of things to do (professions, fates, dungeons) and although the leveling is tied to the questline I could go around adventuring, finding side quests. Also the fact that I was constantly running into people and having conversations with whatever topics made it feel like an actual mmo, unlike many where everybody was just staring at their own noses. Made some friends along the way and we did quests together. The storyline wasn't super interesting until several hours in. I'm not saying the leveling was greatest ever, but I consider it above average. Just would be great to know what would be the ideal leveling process from our beloved content creator so to give proper reflection.
Building tanks or healers that did some damage was part of the fun for some mmos, so I hope AoC will be interesting in different ways as this seems counter to their design.
I remember the first time some (Shadow) Priest out DPS-ed a Warlock on my WoW server, and everyone went nuts! That drama was more entertaining than playing the game!
I'm confused, you are in favor of vertical progression, but against gear score? Vertical progression IS gear score. Vertical progression is just an illusion. As you gain power, the zones and encounters scale with your level, but your relative power stays the same. Your damage/healing numbers go up, but so does mob health. You will have an easier time on lower level zones, but since that content gives no meaningful rewards, you are effectively locked to content of your level, restricting freedom. It's a psychological trick of 'yay number go up' that devs use to pad out your game time and to steer you on a linear path to make sure you get through the content in it's fullest, making your character's journey the same as everyone else. It's also detrimental to the fairness of PvP. If anything, vertical progression IS what makes MMOs get stuck in the past with it's loop of introducing new content in the form of expansions with the only reason to play them is because numbers go 10x, and if you don't, you lose your competitiveness, even if just a day ago you were decked out in full epic gear, but get destroyed tomorrow by a rando in greens who whacked 2 trashmobs in the first expansion zone. Look at a typical self playing trash mobile game. It's about going from doing 10 damage to literal billions in a matter of a few minutes or hours, and it works because it takes that 'yay number go up' psychological effect to the extreme. Devs tune those numbers to the average play time which in the case of mobile games is around the time you spend on the toilet. Proper games extend the time it takes to reach higher levels, but the principle is the same. Is this *really* what we want? To trade player skill and experience, character specialization choices and ability to play in a group to determine our power, in favor "time spent grinding"? To use time spent as a crutch? In my eyes, if a game relies on vertical progression as the only reason for you to keep playing, it failed in the design department. If your character's journey and interactions with the world and other players is not enough in and of itself, that game has failed.
I'm super duper interested to see some AoC livestreams centered around questing or events in game. Also.. as much as people shit on games like Raid: Shadow Legends, there is a lot of interesting skill mechanics that I would like to see from there in an mmo.
You're talking smack about guild Wars 2 renowned heart system but quite literally they tried not having them and players hated it. Sadly they were forcibly implemented.
Yeah. People needed points on the map that said "Look over here! There are things to click on over here!" to feel like they had an objective at all times. The renown heart are not even the quests, They never were. They are dynamic event hubs, so their primary function is for you to hang around them for a bit and pick some apples or dance with some cows until events happens. The events are themed around the hearts objectives so you will complete the heart by doing the dynamic event.
It's so true man. It's sad to see such a lack of innovation in mmos. They've been around forever and they have been largely the same forever. Sometimes it's true "when it ain't broke don't fix it" but in this case I think developers rlly need to start taking risks and moving forward. What an MMO is and what it should be in today's age is very different
Innovation is a big problem, for sure. When MMOs first came out, when pulled me in was these huge, multiplayer worlds where I could explore and anything could happen! They even felt like that, at first, until I played them enough to be able to see what was actually going on behind the curtain. The thing is, that's what people STILL want! They want truly dynamic events, with a built in system that provides constant new content... because content is the problem. Until a developer makes an AI - or something - that can create adventures dynamically, at least to some extent, I think the MMO genre is in for a rough time. Its why I was so excited for EQ Next back in the day - its one of the things they were trying to do. It didn't really matter if they failed, they were TRYING!
Before WoW every MMO that came out was very different from every other one. They were all trying to be virtual worlds but approaching that goal in different ways. WoW kind of stumbled upon the fact that only a relatively small player base really wants a virtual world and the vast majority of people want an amusement park. Ever since then most MMOs have moved toward the paradigm of being virtual amusement park. I love Guild Wars 2 and I think it is the most unique MMO by far but it’s still at its core an amusement park.
@@xxJing Maybe... or maybe they were in the right place at the right time with a high-quality product? I won't argue whether or not WoW is good or successful, that's silly. Its success speaks for itself. Because ever since WoW's success, no one has really tried anything different - at least none of the big budget games have tried anything different. I think that's a shame.
@@SouthernGuy5423 We are honestly both right. WoW was a high quality product and it came out at the right time, but if it was more hardcore oriented like previous MMOs it probably would have dropped off a lot quicker. Also if you look at ff14, it’s very popular right now, and while it also is a high quality product it’s pretty much 100% a virtual amusement park. The open world aspect of ff14 is pretty much irrelevant. The majority of the game is solo instanced content. The reasoning for all this is also quite simple : confrontation between players tends to scare away more casual players. As easy as the game is , there are people who want FF14 to be entirely soloable just so they won’t have to interact with others.
@@xxJing I never understood that attitude, honestly. Yes, there's evidence for it, but all of the most popular PC and console games in the world are PvP-centric! Fortnite, LoL, CoD, the list goes on and on! I've always felt that MMOs were missing something, somewhere, somehow with PvP. Obviously, open PvP has never worked out well in most MMOs... except Vanilla WoW. Casual video game players don't hate PvP = the 10s of millions of Fortnite and LoL players alone prove that! Perhaps casual MMO players hate it, but Vanilla WoW, and doubly so with Classic Vanilla, contradicts that to some extent. Really, I just want an MMO that tries new stuff. I want my Sword Art Online, IRL, dammit!
After 13 years of wow addiction I try some other mmos for pvp such as eso gw2 ffxv new world none of them pleased me and I gave up unfortunately from the mmo games unfortunately 😢
Congrats man, one of your best videos IMO. Anyways, I really hate daillies.. especially the felling I get that I´m getting left behind by not doing them. This is a terrible reason do logg in daily in a game. So I quit as soon as I feel this pressure mounting up.
Cutscenes and "doors" to open i think are the bane of the mmorpg world right now. That and the missed opportunity with player housing and letting players develop the world and towns.
I personally have no problem with the average kill 10 bears, collet 3 rabbit asses, escort or bring message quests. Bit with ashes, escort missions could be more interesting. (hello caravans)
Hold up! Not in control of your character from moment to moment in Everquest? That's not how I remember it. Maybe it was playing a wizard, but I guarantee that character didn't do jack without being specifically commanded. Just my 0.02. Going to finish watching now. Really enjoying these videos.
do i agree with most of this, the idea of having a super long leveling experience and classes that are only good at their specific thing is not fun in the long run. sure the first time you level it might be fun, but then you hit max level and realize that your class is not good at the thing you want to do and so you have to level a new one. and that just sucks the fun out of it.
I just want a game that do not give any artificial rewards for logging in every day, or not playing for a month. No restrictions on how often you can do stuff - do it once a day, once a week, or farm it 56 times in a row. The problem for me is all the game mechanics that comes from developers trying to keep people playing without any new content, artificially limiting progress by linking it to time passing in the real world, etc. And unless that changes, I would still feel like a hamster in a wheel, and not playing in somebodys attempt at creating a fantasy game world.
The main problem with talent trees isn't that people can make the wrong choice, so they've been simplified. It's that there is typically only one correct choice, and most deviations from that simply make the character worse. When your only meaningful choice is to choose to make yourself worse for the sake of being different, or because you prefer the feel of a weaker ability, then your choices hardly have value. The ability to determine a better build and thus have an advantage is a relic of the past, and internet communities and guides have rendered this skill obsolete. Talents in an MMO are a system that needs to evolve, or be removed in favor of a more interesting system of customization that isn't as dependent on a meta. It would actually have to have substantial choices that can't be distilled down to raw numbers.
I feel like the progression, the lack of talent trees, the lack class identity, and one not mentioned lack spells, skills, interface buttons are the root. Yes, it is easier and lazy to keep up with the limited spells/skills one can have from a dev point of view. Many defend it with their lives. Me? It isn't my job to balance, but 5 skills, 1 heal, 3 utility, one elite skill... can be lack luster. Many games have a lot of slots but only a few skills are viable. I feel like instead of doing it the lazy way... it should be made with dignity on the line. Delving all the way into what makes a cleric or summoner. The meaning of it. Taking out the buffs that you have to re apply every 30min sucks, being able to blink backward with a staff skill, but have long range damage over time class skill. Kind of like being a enhancement shaman but use spirit walk (cast while moving) lava burst, when not in melee range. I miss stuff like that. By design it has been turned into what we have today. I believe that is the my major fuss.
You confound vertical vs horizontal progression, with meaningful progression that guarantees class seperation and unique role/identity. The eternal 'vertical' progression is a terrible idea in a community game if it means there is such a disparity in commuity outlevelling that its impossible for them to play the content together. Thats single player game design, where you are positively encouraged to be a god, because it doesnt matter, as you arent playing with 1000s of others. Thats not the same as an eternal diminishing return system, where chasing further vertical progression becomes ever harder. Where linear progression can becomes a sequence of binary chops. An eternal carrot to chase, that you can never reach.
Just cause you never got fully geared does not mean that everyone else did not themselves.. I never found it hard to reach that said "Carrot" you speak of.. Besides, that eternal carrot to chase is the very reason A LOT of people even continue to play or log in at all... You remove that and you have people hitting max level and then doing PvP for a week and then quitting.. Having something to always have in front of you is always better then having no reason at all.. Course this is subjective and I am proving that your opinion has a whole opposite side to it.. I still love GW2 cause of the combat and PvP but the gearing in it is just about pointless for the most part outside of chasing down the Ascended's you need..
The eternal carrot is part of the addiction to keep playing the game otherwise without you just either quit from having else to do or get burnt out then quit, and of course content drought which is always going to happen in any mmo once done with the new content and waiting on the next one
@@vandakaii2893 Hardcore players in the basement can keep up, if the devs ignore the incessant demand for new content that opens up the power gap via vertical progression. Alas, most MMO players are not that hardcore. Regardless, I never said players dotn need constant progression to keep them occupied. The argument is vertical vs horizontal. You can also specialise ever more and become powerful in certain areas if you sacrifice power in others. But the power levellers dont want parity or balance...they want an advantage.
There’s this problem in a game genre, and this game I’ve built my entire personality around promises they will fix it after selling cosmetics for 8-15 years. Pantheon is also promising realistic physics with mounts/climbing. Crowfall could’ve been the huge success ashes has been their only mistake was releasing the game during the life spans of anyone who gave them money.
I remember my warrior in Everquest without any skill buttons to press and then ... World of Warcraft and omg that was such a revolution ! Nothing will ever match the memory i have (game wise) of my first experience with wow
If we got that kind of mmo, the game would quickly become sentient due to the sheer number of PCs connecting to the servers and i would gladly join our MMO Overlord!
the next big mmo will be A.I. theme park sandbox, where the theme/content will be created by A.I. within a set of rules that will balance difficulty/time/reward and the players will have the freedom to find creative ways to defeat the challenges but the data will be fed back to the A.I. to help it evolve and improve. so, as the players progress in the game and get stronger the A.I. gets smarter and harder to defeat a race begins who will destroy the other first. A.I. vs humanity apocalypse simulation.
Triple A devs don’t take risk anymore and indie devs don’t release finished products. (Tackling too much they can handle) The main thing though is latency limitations. Games like elden ring or shooter with precise aiming would be nearly impossible. Not to mention server sizes also haven’t improved much since the early 2000s. If you asked people 20 years ago where mmos would be at now people would be saying full action combat and 100+ player servers. But neither of those are possible without concessions
Could you implement in your vids "Neverwinter online", i played that game on and off for years and found progression in it, something to be desired in all other mmos. It was stable, linear progression free of rngesusing where you could plan your effort in way that you would know it would be attainable at some logical point. Not make it a damn grind fest (i got my first legion legendary 4 months after xpac release and i played everything daily) that leads to nowhere for so much people. I would rather play solo game now for 200 hours and get and achieve everything in it, then spend same amount in mmo with 0 results and having people randomly saying: Oh i got it all in 30 mins...
they have evolved but not into the directions that we expected. They dont capitalize on complexity and interconnectiveness of the systems that could be achieved. THey are obsessed with eveery single player having access to every single feature from the getgo which is detrimental to long term progress or meaningful progress. remember specializations? theres more things that could be done like that making one players choices more unique throught permanence thus making more than one character of thesame type more viable because it will have something different about it. or instead the lack of acceess to a gameplay style or gameplay system could be solved via FRIENDSHIP WITH SOMEONE WHO CHOSE THE OTHER OPTION...
@@Narc Evolution isn't inherently good. Chess hasn't evolved much. How do you propose the gameplay of MMOs "evolve"? And in regards to evolution I was referring to microtransactions, lack of need to socialize, less freedom, etc. The overall trajectory modern MMOs have "evolved" towards since EQ and classic
Personally I don't think Ashes quests will be that good, I'd probably put them at likely just being average - par for the course in the genre. I think GW2 probably has the "best" quests (if you can call them that?) in terms of gameplay and interactivity with stuff in the environment. That said, I think the game with the most interesting quests and one that I hope Ashes learns from if it has to learn from any and that would be The Secret World - the quests in that game were so interesting to play and kept you engaged with the text that's written on screen and no MMO has come close to this level ever since.
I hope Cleric/summoner or summoner/cleric is going to be great. I've always loved beable to summon npc s and solo a lot of things. Not everything of course. Having damage over time, healing over time, and npcs would be awesome.
One of the few mmos that different from ur normal experience is called dofus..the onlt rhing about its just popular in France and some other european countries .worth giving a try..i must mention its tactical turn based
I generally like how systems of modern games are done. FF14's story driven focus, WOW's talent twigs actually force somewhat-meaningful decisions compared to previous trees, GW2's horizontal progression. But I agree that modern games now are afraid to experiment. Regardless, it sounds like whatever game you called "good", I'd avoid totally.
WoW tripped on it's own shoes the minute they decided pallies can be horde and shamies can be allies, it's been falling down a flight of stairs ever since.
I feel like GW2 was an attempt and today one of the more original mmorpg project. LOTRO as much of a failure as it was still introduced a lot of new concepts for MMORPG genre. I dont see casualisation of the gameplay as a bad thing. There s been an issue of over trivilising the game except the high end raids or pvp for WoW. And i find that to be a problem, because those two are the only options one has for a challenging experience. I would like to add that FF14 being overly story focused levelling experience or GW2 being a horizontal progression have been a design choice that stuck with their respective audiances. And having no vertical progression or not feeling forced to rush through the levelling experience was refreshing and imo adds colour to the genre overall. That s why i say, there wont be an MMO that can appeal to every type of MMORPG player and there shouldnt be.
MMO's are trying to be that game that captured people like WoW did in the early 2000's so they can milk it for cash. One of the issues are, back then if you needed help with something the best way to get that help was to ask someone else in game and have them help you. Sometimes you made friends to dungeon or raid with. Now, we just TH-cam it and move on. Another issue is those who were captured are now in there 30s and 40s and have lives, and even kids and simply do not have time to sit and play for 10 hours straight. So they make the game "more accessible" which in turn waters down the part a lot of people enjoyed in the older games. MMO's now are tedious to get to 'raid ready' you normally burn out before you get there. I just want to be there without needing to grind through 200 hours worth of shit I don't care about.
Good video. I agree with most of your points. But, there are some topics you overlooked. In many MMO endgame, including WoW vanilla, the repair bills to gear became so high it broke guilds and caused inflation at the auction houses. Another is that while leveling is important, most game designers force leveling be done solely as DPS builders. While leveling teaches players have the patience for raids, forcing solely DPS builds weeds out tanks and healers from endgame. Some MMO companies came up with a solution to this. Most notably is SWTOR. In SWTOR a player can be easily level as a healer or tank, with the player using their chosen companion to be another role to round out the leveling, allowing the player to have the play style the player wants while leveling.
In vanilla and tbc you needed to lvl as healer or tank cause you woudnt be able to sustane aggro(tank) or mana(healer) in dungeons, which ment at the end no gear resulting in even more harder leveling especially if you not started as an dps spec.
I can't really agree with ff14 levelling experience being dogshit because that was one of the best stories in an rpg that I've ever seen with 100s of hours gameplay. Depends on what you want from levelling really. All in all great video !
Some people do have the wrong mindset for gaming. Some of these certain people began in a belief of degeneracy for a game to have a crisis on other people.
Funny thing about GW2 hearts is that the reason why they are "dog sht" is because they were an after though. Their initial goal was to guide users to those dynamic events. Basically, do some bs grind to stick around long enough for an event to trigger which is enough to complete the heart.
they have evolved but into the wrong direction.. you forget why mmos are mmos.. Lineage 2 is what mmo should be and thats whta needs to be mo0dernised.
Narc ignorant stance on Lineage 2 + putting out FLAT OUT WRONG INFO about it in his previous videos + L2 being the prime source from where AoC is directly taking systems (and he praises them lol) and acting like several of systems were NOT DONE EVER BEFORE EVEN IN THIS FKING VIDEO - points at him being a poor content creator, one of the numerous interconnected reasons why his channel has less and less views overall.
The reason for the loss of talent trees and homogenization of classes is because nobody wants to be excluded for choosing their favourite class and to eliminate useless talents in trees. Your paladin is specced half holy, half ret. Sorry, you can't come with us because that's suboptimal. It is a stupid reason for it, but I remember when raiding in WoW. If you didn't spec for specific abilities, you weren't taken on raids. I spent 8 hours a day when not playing researching optimal gear, rotations, and specs so that I could do progression content. I did that for 4 years and finally got so burned out that I quit. This paradigm makes it more accessible for more people. Unfortunately, it did dumb it down quite a bit. In regard to it becoming stale, that is just the way of it. They found something that works and companies don't want to take risks with innovation. Same with the music industry today. They found crap that sells well to the masses and now all songs sound almost exactly the same. It stifles innovation, but it sells well enough; so they don't have any incentive to push the envolope.
You nailed it about Guild Wars 2, among the other games. While it's a nice intention to not fragment the player base with highly stratified gear levels, it's a necessity in PvE focused games. A true PvX game like Ashes can get by with a longer gear progression as long as there is an in game monetary risk to using powerful gear, since it requires more valuable materials (and perhaps skilled crafters) to keep in working order. This is something that reminds me of Eve and Albion, but not as extreme (your ship is gone upon death) but incremental losses are still painful, but easier to stomach for most.
I don't see how ashes would bring back the social element. Guild wars 2 has tried to push social interactions though difficulty - the players rioted. It is not that there are no games that provide the ingredients for the MMO that you describe - it is the players that don't have the time for creating in-game relationships and they reject such games. For me the future is in random players socializing + prime-time events + seasons. For random people socializing - check out Hell Let Loose - an MMO in broader terms - it is 100% more social than your typical MMO. For seasons - check Path of Exile. For prime-time events - check most asian MMOs (e.g. Lost Ark).
Talking about meaningful choices - I gave yu EQ melees sucked, have you tried playing EQ caster? Do you even know that in EQ a spell caster could only have 8 spells memorized while needing to chose from over 15+ relevant to his level? And in case of Enchanters it was like 30+ spells So yeah - 30 really good spells but only 8 can be used at any given time - here are your PLAYER MADE CHOICES
Nah, this guy is trying to like a genre he just doesn’t like. Millions love mmos, especially wow for its complex gameplay. It’s not about the content as much as it is getting better at your class and having fun with your friends. New content is just another chance to win out over the competition, top leaderboards, etc.
I think it is still bring the class not the player, but we have meta gaming to thank for that. It is a complete farce in regards to class individuality thought I certainly won't try to deny it.
Ngl, I don't see the "talent trees were good" thing, is 1/3% crit really that interesting? Not like most people will actually think over their build instead of copy pasting what's the best anyway. Remember that Item Level was a player invention to easily gauge if you are a good player or not. What the players didn't consider was the fact that gearscore can be artifically increased by wearing pieces that don't actually help you like healing increase trinket on a dps. The "your class can't do everything" (as in for example not having interrupt) is all fun and games in practice until you're not taken into content because it requires interrupts. Sure do love the social aspect of not doing stuff with friends because I'd be dragging them down.
The whole "Everyone's a winner" has ruined gaming as a whole. Ofc companies do this to maximize engagement overall, thus profit from mtx/passes/dlcs etc. Sad business.
I don't think that "player skill" was a takeaway from wow classic for hardly anyone, if anything wow classic showed how little skill it really took to be good at vanilla
Im going to comment without having watched the video, however i will watch it, but my initial reaction to the title was "actually they've evolved to be too "modern" and threw the baby out with the bathwater."
Modern mmo has too my things in it that's the problem it's like you have to graduate first in ti to enjoy, much of it is due to wow being the most popular and one of the longest which inlfuenced many later mmo's. Less is more, simple and direct, pick and play. No need for 10 different currencies, no ui that takes up half the screen, no need for useless items made just to fill up inventory, no talent tress, no 100 different abilities, no fetch quest, no telling you where to go, play as you like no meta, more use of common sense and iq, more challenging in terms of skill not in terms of knowledge. More explorationg and fun interaction with the world and others playing it. Overall more different things to do not doing the same thing over and over again and very easy to understand, not something that require you to study like in school. If there is mmo like elden ring or ghost recon breakpoint it will be very successful, i don't know why game makers don't think about this.
I disagree with a few things and agree with others. Agree: the leveling experience in many MMOs sucks ass. This is why I paid to skip FFXIV's story. Minor disagree: New World has a good leveling experience with the exception of not having a better group finder. The enemies in New World expect you to continually improve your gear and to learn how to use your abilities as well as consumables. It prepared me for endgame. Disagree: I do not think forcing players to have only one class and then diversifying the classes so not everyone has a stun or heal or etc is a good thing. I prefer characters to have access to various classes and each class to have enough similarities to make each one viable on its own. The differences would only allow each class to excel in given areas. Essentially, I believe each class should be average at everything with 3 or maybe 4 things they are excellent at. This is because not having heals on a given class makes certain tasks extremely annoying.
Red Flag: "modern audience", this usually means we're going to turn this IP into shit And I haven't heard your answer. What are you suggesting? Except, of course, "do it the way it did the game that doesn't even exist yet".
So judging by that approach that pve, grind and fetch quests suck (which they partly do) and AoC will do it right? They may as well remove all the pve from day 1, go straight to max level and jump right into pvp town taking and raiding. (No low levels to gank along the way, that will upset 90% of the knuckledraggers). Rift's idea was fresh but, it soon became very very stale, the maps and events were always the same. You will need 1000s of random event/map generators to make it unique then. It's back to "players are content" and that worked so very well for SW Galaxies, it's made millions and is so popular.... oh wait, it crashed and burned, nvm. ;)
Unfortunately I had to cut the intro because of the length of this video and the finishing touches would require about 3 or 4 more hours work. Sadly, I am beat today and I'm gonna grab some sleep so apologies for not including it. You can be assured the intro for the next video (livestream prediction) will have at least an extra 10+ hours put into it for your viewing pleasure.
I love you all and really appreciate you continuing to watch my videos despite AoC being dead af... So why not come and join our humble discord so I can thank you personally, and then berate you for your MMO preferences: discord.gg/muwNp8NhbB
Radiating big "who asked"? energy
Hello from Russia! I do not perceive English "by ear" well (I'm also too lazy to read subtitles) so I watch your videos through a special online program with a neural network that translates videos in real time... Because of this, this view can be counted as one of those who watched "without a subscription" 😀
Just for information, probably over 80% of your viewers follow you 🤯
dont worry about the intro, I think your metrics should show you a lot of people (myself included) skip past it anyways. I watch for the news and opinion pieces relayed in an entertaining way. Just saying feel free to cut the intros for more takes on the MMO genre and even MMO adjacent.
Vids still great mate don't burn yourself out
@@Odelatog I think you'll find you're a very small minority and the analytics say the opposite.
Too many game mechanics in MMOs today like completing dailies or you miss out on rewards that prevent people from enjoying the game. I'd rather they have random rewards than dailies. For example you are exploring and you discover a randomly generated shrine with unique rewards and monster fight. Or perhaps you come across a unique mineral that can be used in crafting for a random unique bonus effect that is unusual for the item crafted. This could encourage exploration far away from cities.
You know why they put dailies and stuff like that for you to do? To grab you for one more day. and an other. Like that they can say the game is alive. If you just did the content, you will finish that game and have nothing to do. So by making you do dailies, you have something to do every day. in a sandbox MMO you don't need this kind of gameplay because the user make is owm content, but in a them-park, you need to make the content for the player
Wow has drastically reduced/removed dailies and it’s a revelation.
It definitely needs to be random time/place. This is needed to overcome the problem with all the online "help/documentation" that is available.
I don't mind dailies as long as it isn't mindless quests that aren't fun.
I don’t even think that’s needed. Look at Oldschool RuneScape. You don’t need to do any dailies and there’s no flashy pop up rewards for doing pretty much nothing.
The last time I experienced that wondrous open world feeling was in elden ring. You take a path that catches your eye, end up in a god forsaken rotten cave, you explore it and get some reward and move on. Whole adventure does not take too much time as to make you feel like you are looping in an endless maze.
9:57 had me dying of laughter xDD
„Go kill some boars! Go collect some asses! Go suck some dog's d*ck!“
what a perfect explanation for mmo quest design xD
I think that’s a hot take on GW2 horizontal progression. The gear might hit a ceiling, but your skills can still improve. See you got better by playing, not a higher item level.
True. If you can just increase your number, you wont play better because you can basically ignore what the game throw at you cuz stats
I really like that GW2 doesn't have vertical progression. I can take half-year breaks and continue with my goals whenever. Still so much things to be done after hundreds of hours.
Looking forward to the livestream prediction video!
I feel like narc wants Ashes to be so good it'll blow him and then he'll get mad when it doesn't reach his impossible expectations.
Yea im pretty sure it will be a fun game, but i also see a serious Cyberpunk 2077 situation brewing, in so much as people are building up an impossible hype train for it.
the difference between Ashes and other MMOs though mate, is that we have the chance to make a positive difference.
that's why I preach what I believe is right within the gaming industry, so the community we build here, can give the correct feedback, with the correct consumer friendly ideals instead of the modern, corporate, soulless garbage.
@@Narc Only time will tell if you’re right or just high on copium. ;)
@@strayparticles i am 100% high on copium, facts and time can never change this
Early mmos felt like a mix of every genre back in the day. The perfect mmo needs elements from strategy, platforming, rpg, pvp to be good. Even FPS and arcade mini games. Final fantasy blew me away with their mini games
There should not be any trash mobs, the first enemies in the game should be able to kill you even if you are max level, like in Elden Ring.
Difficulty of mobs should be reflected on how fast the enemies move and attack, not just beefed up base stats. Punishing but rewarding gameplay is the way to go.
If they want to evolve, they must be soloable mmo's, who has 1,000 hrs and 8 players ready to go at all times quick match finding groups for dungeons let's tone it down we dont need insane unbeatable content we have lives. Pvp and pve with a social balance but ability to get end game content solo.
"Epics are no longer epic" I miss the joy of finding a rare even if its not good for me or the happyness of a new uncommon item thats an upgrade and/or looks different.
Rewatch your video of dungeons and dragons online. Made me understand your points more clearly. I went and played it and my goodness, the sense of adventure came back hard. Sad that it’s not the desired stuff anymore.
yes brother. DDO is incredible and nobody can convince me otherwise
The only thing what seems to evolve is the money greed. In so many mmos you can buy everything now, why even play if there is nothing to grind for lol
I think MMOs have the least amount of proper evolution because they don't take lessons from other genres. Look at Monster Hunter for example. They take a lot of ques from MMOs only difference is the lack of open world map but even then why do we even need giant maps in multiplayer games? Shouldn't they focus on just the bosses? Then I realized "Holy shit MMOs are all about fluff". Why is this dungeon that has this really fun boss throwing 25 minutes of trash mobs at me? Oh that's right because this is a paid subscription game and they need to milk my time whenever they can. Monster Hunter wants you to enjoy the content with the bosses and if you want to grind it it's your choice. MMOs have to somehow milk more time off you by severally limiting how and when you progress. Once I learned about Weekly and Daily Tasks give you rewards but also severally limits them by how much you can obtain I stopped playing those scam games.
When horizontal gameplay is the answer to the endless gear treadmill, how will AoC solve the problem of the gear treadmill when that is considered a plus and not a negative? I enjoy my MMOs for the gameplay and exploration, and while you can say that the gear treadmill will not affect that, well it most certainly does. Especially when it is an open world PvP game.
Now, don't get me wrong, I am looking forward to AoC and what it has to offer, but to expect it to solve problems that the vast majority of MMO player, imho, do not see as problems, is only setting the game up for a fail for you, extreme disappointment.
You see, the only thing I believe that is wrong with MMOs is that their has been a lack of a new MMO willing to do something different because while players may say they want something different, in the end they only say they do and instead will go back to the familiar.
yes GW2 provides a dynamic world.
but what i liked most was the freedom and sense of exploration and "getting lost".
in WoW and most MMOs you must find where to go,
make sure not to kill anything for no reason, because there's probably a quest for it, which you haven't picked up yet.
find who to talk to.
do the chore.
go back and deliver the news.
and it probably ends up being a long stifling chain of quests giving you restless leg syndrome. lol
While in GW2, i see a cool place, i set your destination. After a looking around to find that hidden entrance, which leads to a jumping puzzle... i'm half way there.
maybe i'll kill something along the way... oh wha'd'ya know! i'm apparently helping with a quest here!
maybe i'll stick around and finish it, or maybe i won't... its not like it takes up space in a limited journal or anything.
Along the way i SEE bad things happening. Some bandits are burning that farmhouse! Who do i talk to in order to help!??
Wait, what am i saying! i'm a big boy! So i act based on what a hero would do, and omg! i'm doing a "quest".
Maybe i killed some bandits... or maybe i used the well and put out the fires because my damage is low, or maybe i healed the burn victims.
So the farmhouse is now visibly safe, i have raised my renown with the locals, and maybe, if i need to, i'll get a reward of my choice from their quartermaster.
It is continuous and feels ORGANIC.
No... stop, check level range, talk to npc, do bidding, report to npc, get useless item.
and i'd like to critisize how MMOs have ended up presenting you the gear.
retail WoW, New World, and all asian ones are like **beep boop i am progressing in a computer game, bbzztt! my "item level" is 50 and my gear gives 5 "damage", 10 "defense", and 130 "critical rating". i will now proceed to upgrade it to "+4" whatever that means. beep boop **
I only want to see ATTRIBUTES, and not "gaming terms" on my rpg gear.
as for the reason why GW2 is not as popular as WoW and a couple other MMOs?
well, it respects their audience more and doesn't try to trick/manipulate/dictate them.
it does not use any of the various psychological "player engagement" gameplay mechanics. so people play it when/because they actually want to, not because they have to.
the only slightly scummy thing GW2 does is the randomly rotating skins at the shop. and a daily quest list. But the first is not even gameplay related, and the second does not give anything that is required to progress.
but GW2 has 2 problems in my opinion.
1. homogenization, no real roles. PvE ends up being every man for himself, for the most part.
2. no player collision in WvW. which is the only thing that ruins it. blob vs blob, each team of 40 hiding behind a single pillar clipping into each-other. then run through each other, spamming AoE. wow, such tactics, such skill. (give me back WAR)
Also, horizontal progression is a big plus, not a minus.
You can increase the dificulty of your game, and the feeling of reward, by introducing new and diferent content and new horizontal mechanics,
without the need to increase the numbers, which in comparison is the lazy way of doing it.
PS: damn, i look at the animations and sounds of AoC... and i remember watching the latest Pantheon gameplay showcase.... even Camelot Unchained "has" better animations.
NGL i prefer playing Project 1999 over any new MMO.... The new MMOs have modernized with the times, drop in drop out arcade style is what is hot right now. With Tiktok and reels being very short term entertainment and it is very profitable showing that is true. CoD the most popular game series out there is very quick action packed. MMORPGs are supposed to be a slow burn, getting to max level was a journey and the destination was just as grand as the adventure there, now we have MMOs no longer an RPG and they are trying to mimic the CoD addiction, with a generous sprinkle of FIFA monetization.
Agree Narc! my favorites ones were Asheron's Call 1 on Darktide server, Everquest 1 , Daoc etc, well since 2008 mmorpg turned in the wrong way, i still played every mmorpg since the first ones but i have a great hope about AoC ^^ i'll see you on A2!
I've been playing GW2 since the betas. You might think that the lack of gear treadmill is the reason they don't have long term players, but this is exactly why I keep playing. My character is always relevant, and has never been made artificially weaker throughout the years because a new zone was introduced. This is why I stopped games like Destiny 2, because the gear treadmill is tedious, and boring. With the mastery system, I wasn't getting a bigger number, without changing gameplay at all, I always got something new to play with. My character ACTUALLY progressed.
Might be a minority, but just bigger numbers never interested me.
Endgame is very tricky to get right. It sounded like you criticized GW2's horizontal progression, but with vertical progression you'd need regular content updates from which better gear can be acquired, thus making the work for your current gear near wasted, and previous zones/raids aren't relevant anymore. How can you keep old zones and dungeons/raids relevant in the future, in a vertical MMO?
This is true but, I know a lot of friends and people that quit the game cause it had very littl gear progression at all outside of ascended stuff much later on.
@@vandakaii2893 Yes, it's more of a preference I guess. A lot of people like to see numbers go up. I also like vertical progression, but at the same time I hope some devs can be creative in how they can make low level zones and previous raids still relevant somehow; just to keep the whole game world alive.
What really ended up harming the Trinity-based gameplay of traditional MMOs, and giving rise to the casual, single-player experience, was the simple fact that gamers who made these big in the past were a product of the times. Now they have families and careers and don't have time to wait for a tank or healer, let alone literally schedule hundreds of hours of organized, guild-based gameplay and grind out potential rewards for their effort. Couple that with younger generations wanting an easier time than even the aging gamers, and investors demanding infinite upward growth potential somehow, games were forced to become more lean. Simply appealing to too many audiences is a destructive force.
Hopefully, Ashes focuses on the 'old gamers that do have lives but are willing to do a couple hours a night anyway' crowd, but I'm concerned that success in the game will focus on the 'unemployed gamers' demographics instead.
Unemployed gamers like BDO catered to 🤣
As a GW2 vet I can tell you we've had many MANY discussions about the issue of horizontal progression and lack of advertisement. To be honest the cap isn't necessarily bad, but there is too big of content gaps, mediocre rewards being mostly cosmetic and the best ones attained via your wallet to balance out long term goals. Engaging community content with exclusive rewards locked behind challenging encounters is the general consensus amongst hardcore players, however the studio listens to the money and that's 90% of its community being a more casual player whom they pamper to.
I will say it every time. To this day, Runescape is the only MMOR that truly feels like it has quests. You need items, go places, do certain things. You do not just go gather or kill. RS funny enough, still has the most innovative campaign/quests compared to every other MMO. Even RS's lore is insanely good now.
That sounds very shortsighted.. Runescape II is a pay to play, puts everything behind paywall experience - with the most outdated mmo mechanics, stale gameplay and bad lore.. It would be great if we could play that on gameboy 22 years ago.. These days we run at least 1080ti with 144hz monitors to allow for some real eye candy games/mmo.. o.0..
@@SkywalkFPV Lol, this has to be one of the most ignorant and biased zoomer comments I ever seen. First of all, I never said play the game, I said RS is the only MMORPG that makes quests truly feel like quests. Second of all, Rs3 is P2w/locks stuff behind pw/mtx. OSRS does not. Everything in OSRS is earned through gameplay, paying gets you nothing. If you mean membership? Yes, and you can only play on members worlds. F2p worlds you can not use members items in it, thus, not p2w. And the game is over 20 years old and still over 100k active players. It does not have outdated mechanics on it's main Title RS3, and OSRS is made to have the old mmo feel and vibe and mechanics. But again, my entire comment So not sure what the hell you are even on about honestly.
@@kintsugittv2537 Zoomer? XD Just for the fact I am from pre 1990 so you are being delusional again and also sound a bit offended that I roasted your boomer game crush, besides still being shortsighted.. 'the only mmo that truly feels like it has quests' I mean how many copium have you been sucking and glue have you been sniffing during high school? That it has the most 'innovating campaign' lmao.. It might be a fun little mmo for mobile and mostly kids with no allowance below the age of 12 or braindeads to create all those 100k players.. Tap and chop tree, tap and kill mob yeah that are no innovating mechanics my dude and no great lore either. for the revamped title - and if you still play that rusted OSRS yeah man, I also still play Pacman sometimes ffs.. If u want good mmo that is old and innovating and still has some true relevance, with performance, mechanics, artstyle, depth, campaign and lore, go play some GW2 or ESO - and if u want some top notch next gen high roller mmo stuff, that offers some real grinds ect - go do some BDO or Warframe!
Nothing has captured me like EverQuest did in the 90’s. I was always pushing to explore and get that cool looking loot. But now you get inundated with phat loot from the word go and you can do it all solo. It almost cheapens it. Don’t get me wrong EQ was way too annoying to level up and navigate. But the lore was absolutely fantastic. I played wow for like 15 years and I still don’t know the story because it wasn’t very interesting except the arthas storyline. But the combat was pretty good. Class importance in EQ was cool but the problem is you needed a tank a priest and an enchanter which means all other classes that were way cooler could go F themselves. That became an issue. When the game is too easy you don’t need to create friends and relationships you just play the whole thing solo. Auto que for a random and don’t talk to anyone.
older mmos didnt have time gates and labor points. we could run the dungeon non-stop and harvest whatever we wanted when we wanted to. i miss that.
Narc my man. You sure have a twisted idea about GW2. The horizontal progression is not a minus, but a massive + for the game. I stopped the game at least 4 time and each time I came back, there were new builds, masteries, skins or activities I could look forward to. I haven't touch any othere MMO that I stopped playing for a while, because you fall back too hard and by the time you catch up, you are already burned out by the dozens, if not hundreds of hours of grinding for "end-game".
What GW2 does right is by providing a completly other way of vertical progression that doesn't shut you down from endgame participation, which is: masteries. Masteries are a massive grind and getting it to max is months upon months of work. They are not only rewarding you with a visual number, but with actual world interaction. You show "off" not "just with gear or how it looks", but with the dragon you obtained. With the griffion, with how you can use your mounts, while "noobs" can't. You show off with your new build that can do new things.
That being said: GW2 also has class identity, but in a different way. Certain builds excell in certain jobs. There are dedicated supports, healers, tanks and damage dealers depending on the elite spec you pick. And if you don't like the meta: It is completly fine to play your elite spec in a completly different way. It will be viable for end-game content (maybe not for raiding and high level fractals). What more would I want?
An updated graphical version of GW2 would actually be complete bonkers today. My hope is that the riot MMO is going to take a similar way with the current state of GW2. Meaning: Horizontal progresion in gear or minimal vertical progression for gear and heavy vertical progression in world interaction. Give it good graphics, some decent housing and a somewhat decent story and you have a gem of an MMO.
There is a reason why the playerbase is so loyal in GW2 or why the latest expansion brought so many people in.
Horizontal progression is subjective for those like you its a + but, for those that grew up with a sense of building up to be the best through gear progression it is a - .. Subjectivity is where this one sits and it will change based on a personal wants and needs or personal issues dependent on their life and will ALWAYS sit at 50/50 but, everyone I have talked to that do not like GW2 gives me that exact reason they could not continue to play it cause there was no gear progression at all so it is def not always going to be a + but, then again if you have a lack of time then it will become a + ..
@@vandakaii2893 if gear Progression is an absolute must, sure, but the game itself does have a shit Ton of progression, more than in other traditional MMOs like ff14. You can pretty much get to endgame gear within weeks, in gw2 the masteries will take you months at minimum. For the skyscale alone i required like 1 to 1 1/2 weeks of grinding, which will not decrease in time regardless of how far the game progresses.
Also certain runes are quite expensive, while certain Infusions are hard to come by. Like there is a lot to farm. Really up to you, how much you want to do of it. I for once absolutely hate it, when i am gated out of content, because i have to Grind x weeks in order to obtain the minimum gear.
Excellent video and analysis. Would like to one day learn more about how you like to play and level up in MMOs so I can -judge you personally- understand what you value and focus on.
For me FFXIV leveling was quite fun and the bosses had mechanics you had to actually learn even from quite early on. Always value your input and take on them as these kind of things cannot be evaluated objectively, so to understand your style and desires would allow us to better understand what kind of experience we could be looking for.
@@truelyyyyyy It wasn't grindy, there were lot of things to do (professions, fates, dungeons) and although the leveling is tied to the questline I could go around adventuring, finding side quests.
Also the fact that I was constantly running into people and having conversations with whatever topics made it feel like an actual mmo, unlike many where everybody was just staring at their own noses. Made some friends along the way and we did quests together.
The storyline wasn't super interesting until several hours in. I'm not saying the leveling was greatest ever, but I consider it above average. Just would be great to know what would be the ideal leveling process from our beloved content creator so to give proper reflection.
Building tanks or healers that did some damage was part of the fun for some mmos, so I hope AoC will be interesting in different ways as this seems counter to their design.
I remember the first time some (Shadow) Priest out DPS-ed a Warlock on my WoW server, and everyone went nuts! That drama was more entertaining than playing the game!
I'm confused, you are in favor of vertical progression, but against gear score? Vertical progression IS gear score. Vertical progression is just an illusion. As you gain power, the zones and encounters scale with your level, but your relative power stays the same. Your damage/healing numbers go up, but so does mob health. You will have an easier time on lower level zones, but since that content gives no meaningful rewards, you are effectively locked to content of your level, restricting freedom. It's a psychological trick of 'yay number go up' that devs use to pad out your game time and to steer you on a linear path to make sure you get through the content in it's fullest, making your character's journey the same as everyone else. It's also detrimental to the fairness of PvP. If anything, vertical progression IS what makes MMOs get stuck in the past with it's loop of introducing new content in the form of expansions with the only reason to play them is because numbers go 10x, and if you don't, you lose your competitiveness, even if just a day ago you were decked out in full epic gear, but get destroyed tomorrow by a rando in greens who whacked 2 trashmobs in the first expansion zone.
Look at a typical self playing trash mobile game. It's about going from doing 10 damage to literal billions in a matter of a few minutes or hours, and it works because it takes that 'yay number go up' psychological effect to the extreme. Devs tune those numbers to the average play time which in the case of mobile games is around the time you spend on the toilet. Proper games extend the time it takes to reach higher levels, but the principle is the same.
Is this *really* what we want? To trade player skill and experience, character specialization choices and ability to play in a group to determine our power, in favor "time spent grinding"? To use time spent as a crutch?
In my eyes, if a game relies on vertical progression as the only reason for you to keep playing, it failed in the design department. If your character's journey and interactions with the world and other players is not enough in and of itself, that game has failed.
I'm super duper interested to see some AoC livestreams centered around questing or events in game. Also.. as much as people shit on games like Raid: Shadow Legends, there is a lot of interesting skill mechanics that I would like to see from there in an mmo.
You're talking smack about guild Wars 2 renowned heart system but quite literally they tried not having them and players hated it. Sadly they were forcibly implemented.
Yeah. People needed points on the map that said "Look over here! There are things to click on over here!" to feel like they had an objective at all times. The renown heart are not even the quests, They never were. They are dynamic event hubs, so their primary function is for you to hang around them for a bit and pick some apples or dance with some cows until events happens. The events are themed around the hearts objectives so you will complete the heart by doing the dynamic event.
Choice was removed cause people wanted balance + challenge. Can't really have choice, balance and challenge at the same time it seems.
It's so true man. It's sad to see such a lack of innovation in mmos. They've been around forever and they have been largely the same forever. Sometimes it's true "when it ain't broke don't fix it" but in this case I think developers rlly need to start taking risks and moving forward.
What an MMO is and what it should be in today's age is very different
Innovation is a big problem, for sure. When MMOs first came out, when pulled me in was these huge, multiplayer worlds where I could explore and anything could happen! They even felt like that, at first, until I played them enough to be able to see what was actually going on behind the curtain.
The thing is, that's what people STILL want! They want truly dynamic events, with a built in system that provides constant new content... because content is the problem. Until a developer makes an AI - or something - that can create adventures dynamically, at least to some extent, I think the MMO genre is in for a rough time.
Its why I was so excited for EQ Next back in the day - its one of the things they were trying to do. It didn't really matter if they failed, they were TRYING!
Before WoW every MMO that came out was very different from every other one. They were all trying to be virtual worlds but approaching that goal in different ways. WoW kind of stumbled upon the fact that only a relatively small player base really wants a virtual world and the vast majority of people want an amusement park. Ever since then most MMOs have moved toward the paradigm of being virtual amusement park. I love Guild Wars 2 and I think it is the most unique MMO by far but it’s still at its core an amusement park.
@@xxJing Maybe... or maybe they were in the right place at the right time with a high-quality product?
I won't argue whether or not WoW is good or successful, that's silly. Its success speaks for itself.
Because ever since WoW's success, no one has really tried anything different - at least none of the big budget games have tried anything different.
I think that's a shame.
@@SouthernGuy5423 We are honestly both right. WoW was a high quality product and it came out at the right time, but if it was more hardcore oriented like previous MMOs it probably would have dropped off a lot quicker. Also if you look at ff14, it’s very popular right now, and while it also is a high quality product it’s pretty much 100% a virtual amusement park. The open world aspect of ff14 is pretty much irrelevant. The majority of the game is solo instanced content.
The reasoning for all this is also quite simple : confrontation between players tends to scare away more casual players. As easy as the game is , there are people who want FF14 to be entirely soloable just so they won’t have to interact with others.
@@xxJing I never understood that attitude, honestly. Yes, there's evidence for it, but all of the most popular PC and console games in the world are PvP-centric! Fortnite, LoL, CoD, the list goes on and on!
I've always felt that MMOs were missing something, somewhere, somehow with PvP. Obviously, open PvP has never worked out well in most MMOs... except Vanilla WoW.
Casual video game players don't hate PvP = the 10s of millions of Fortnite and LoL players alone prove that! Perhaps casual MMO players hate it, but Vanilla WoW, and doubly so with Classic Vanilla, contradicts that to some extent.
Really, I just want an MMO that tries new stuff. I want my Sword Art Online, IRL, dammit!
After 13 years of wow addiction I try some other mmos for pvp such as eso gw2 ffxv new world none of them pleased me and I gave up unfortunately from the mmo games unfortunately 😢
Congrats man, one of your best videos IMO. Anyways, I really hate daillies.. especially the felling I get that I´m getting left behind by not doing them. This is a terrible reason do logg in daily in a game. So I quit as soon as I feel this pressure mounting up.
Cutscenes and "doors" to open i think are the bane of the mmorpg world right now. That and the missed opportunity with player housing and letting players develop the world and towns.
I personally have no problem with the average kill 10 bears, collet 3 rabbit asses, escort or bring message quests.
Bit with ashes, escort missions could be more interesting. (hello caravans)
I think what Narc described at the end there was a TTRPG.
Hold up! Not in control of your character from moment to moment in Everquest? That's not how I remember it. Maybe it was playing a wizard, but I guarantee that character didn't do jack without being specifically commanded. Just my 0.02. Going to finish watching now. Really enjoying these videos.
do i agree with most of this, the idea of having a super long leveling experience and classes that are only good at their specific thing is not fun in the long run.
sure the first time you level it might be fun, but then you hit max level and realize that your class is not good at the thing you want to do and so you have to level a new one.
and that just sucks the fun out of it.
Saludos desde Chile pelado Narc, nice video.
I just want a game that do not give any artificial rewards for logging in every day, or not playing for a month. No restrictions on how often you can do stuff - do it once a day, once a week, or farm it 56 times in a row. The problem for me is all the game mechanics that comes from developers trying to keep people playing without any new content, artificially limiting progress by linking it to time passing in the real world, etc. And unless that changes, I would still feel like a hamster in a wheel, and not playing in somebodys attempt at creating a fantasy game world.
The main problem with talent trees isn't that people can make the wrong choice, so they've been simplified. It's that there is typically only one correct choice, and most deviations from that simply make the character worse.
When your only meaningful choice is to choose to make yourself worse for the sake of being different, or because you prefer the feel of a weaker ability, then your choices hardly have value. The ability to determine a better build and thus have an advantage is a relic of the past, and internet communities and guides have rendered this skill obsolete.
Talents in an MMO are a system that needs to evolve, or be removed in favor of a more interesting system of customization that isn't as dependent on a meta. It would actually have to have substantial choices that can't be distilled down to raw numbers.
I feel like the progression, the lack of talent trees, the lack class identity, and one not mentioned lack spells, skills, interface buttons are the root.
Yes, it is easier and lazy to keep up with the limited spells/skills one can have from a dev point of view. Many defend it with their lives.
Me? It isn't my job to balance, but 5 skills, 1 heal, 3 utility, one elite skill... can be lack luster. Many games have a lot of slots but only a few skills are viable.
I feel like instead of doing it the lazy way... it should be made with dignity on the line. Delving all the way into what makes a cleric or summoner. The meaning of it. Taking out the buffs that you have to re apply every 30min sucks, being able to blink backward with a staff skill, but have long range damage over time class skill.
Kind of like being a enhancement shaman but use spirit walk (cast while moving) lava burst, when not in melee range. I miss stuff like that.
By design it has been turned into what we have today.
I believe that is the my major fuss.
You confound vertical vs horizontal progression, with meaningful progression that guarantees class seperation and unique role/identity.
The eternal 'vertical' progression is a terrible idea in a community game if it means there is such a disparity in commuity outlevelling that its impossible for them to play the content together.
Thats single player game design, where you are positively encouraged to be a god, because it doesnt matter, as you arent playing with 1000s of others.
Thats not the same as an eternal diminishing return system, where chasing further vertical progression becomes ever harder.
Where linear progression can becomes a sequence of binary chops.
An eternal carrot to chase, that you can never reach.
Just cause you never got fully geared does not mean that everyone else did not themselves.. I never found it hard to reach that said "Carrot" you speak of.. Besides, that eternal carrot to chase is the very reason A LOT of people even continue to play or log in at all... You remove that and you have people hitting max level and then doing PvP for a week and then quitting.. Having something to always have in front of you is always better then having no reason at all.. Course this is subjective and I am proving that your opinion has a whole opposite side to it.. I still love GW2 cause of the combat and PvP but the gearing in it is just about pointless for the most part outside of chasing down the Ascended's you need..
The eternal carrot is part of the addiction to keep playing the game otherwise without you just either quit from having else to do or get burnt out then quit, and of course content drought which is always going to happen in any mmo once done with the new content and waiting on the next one
@@vandakaii2893 Hardcore players in the basement can keep up, if the devs ignore the incessant demand for new content that opens up the power gap via vertical progression. Alas, most MMO players are not that hardcore.
Regardless, I never said players dotn need constant progression to keep them occupied. The argument is vertical vs horizontal. You can also specialise ever more and become powerful in certain areas if you sacrifice power in others. But the power levellers dont want parity or balance...they want an advantage.
There’s this problem in a game genre, and this game I’ve built my entire personality around promises they will fix it after selling cosmetics for 8-15 years. Pantheon is also promising realistic physics with mounts/climbing. Crowfall could’ve been the huge success ashes has been their only mistake was releasing the game during the life spans of anyone who gave them money.
I remember my warrior in Everquest without any skill buttons to press and then ... World of Warcraft and omg that was such a revolution ! Nothing will ever match the memory i have (game wise) of my first experience with wow
You had kick, taunt, and bash, you liar.
@@michaelmorrison5280 and even a bit more after luclin xD but still you get the point lol
If we got that kind of mmo, the game would quickly become sentient due to the sheer number of PCs connecting to the servers and i would gladly join our MMO Overlord!
the next big mmo will be A.I. theme park sandbox, where the theme/content will be created by A.I. within a set of rules that will balance difficulty/time/reward and the players will have the freedom to find creative ways to defeat the challenges but the data will be fed back to the A.I. to help it evolve and improve. so, as the players progress in the game and get stronger the A.I. gets smarter and harder to defeat a race begins who will destroy the other first. A.I. vs humanity apocalypse simulation.
Triple A devs don’t take risk anymore and indie devs don’t release finished products. (Tackling too much they can handle)
The main thing though is latency limitations. Games like elden ring or shooter with precise aiming would be nearly impossible. Not to mention server sizes also haven’t improved much since the early 2000s. If you asked people 20 years ago where mmos would be at now people would be saying full action combat and 100+ player servers. But neither of those are possible without concessions
Everything described in the end -minus the events- dofus does
Could you implement in your vids "Neverwinter online", i played that game on and off for years and found progression in it, something to be desired in all other mmos. It was stable, linear progression free of rngesusing where you could plan your effort in way that you would know it would be attainable at some logical point. Not make it a damn grind fest (i got my first legion legendary 4 months after xpac release and i played everything daily) that leads to nowhere for so much people. I would rather play solo game now for 200 hours and get and achieve everything in it, then spend same amount in mmo with 0 results and having people randomly saying: Oh i got it all in 30 mins...
they have evolved but not into the directions that we expected. They dont capitalize on complexity and interconnectiveness of the systems that could be achieved. THey are obsessed with eveery single player having access to every single feature from the getgo which is detrimental to long term progress or meaningful progress.
remember specializations? theres more things that could be done like that making one players choices more unique throught permanence thus making more than one character of thesame type more viable because it will have something different about it. or instead the lack of acceess to a gameplay style or gameplay system could be solved via FRIENDSHIP WITH SOMEONE WHO CHOSE THE OTHER OPTION...
Haven’t evolved with time? That’s exactly what WoW did, and look at it.
world quest to go kill 8 boars in dragonflight sure is rivetting evolusion brother
@@Narc Evolution isn't inherently good. Chess hasn't evolved much. How do you propose the gameplay of MMOs "evolve"?
And in regards to evolution I was referring to microtransactions, lack of need to socialize, less freedom, etc. The overall trajectory modern MMOs have "evolved" towards since EQ and classic
Personally I don't think Ashes quests will be that good, I'd probably put them at likely just being average - par for the course in the genre. I think GW2 probably has the "best" quests (if you can call them that?) in terms of gameplay and interactivity with stuff in the environment. That said, I think the game with the most interesting quests and one that I hope Ashes learns from if it has to learn from any and that would be The Secret World - the quests in that game were so interesting to play and kept you engaged with the text that's written on screen and no MMO has come close to this level ever since.
I hope Cleric/summoner or summoner/cleric is going to be great.
I've always loved beable to summon npc s and solo a lot of things. Not everything of course. Having damage over time, healing over time, and npcs would be awesome.
Let’s begin shall weeee!
I think the loss of progression and an interesting world have been the biggest changes over the years.
One of the few mmos that different from ur normal experience is called dofus..the onlt rhing about its just popular in France and some other european countries .worth giving a try..i must mention its tactical turn based
I generally like how systems of modern games are done. FF14's story driven focus, WOW's talent twigs actually force somewhat-meaningful decisions compared to previous trees, GW2's horizontal progression. But I agree that modern games now are afraid to experiment. Regardless, it sounds like whatever game you called "good", I'd avoid totally.
WoW tripped on it's own shoes the minute they decided pallies can be horde and shamies can be allies, it's been falling down a flight of stairs ever since.
Do you have an opinion about turn base MMO like DOFUS or WAKFU?
I feel like GW2 was an attempt and today one of the more original mmorpg project. LOTRO as much of a failure as it was still introduced a lot of new concepts for MMORPG genre. I dont see casualisation of the gameplay as a bad thing. There s been an issue of over trivilising the game except the high end raids or pvp for WoW. And i find that to be a problem, because those two are the only options one has for a challenging experience.
I would like to add that FF14 being overly story focused levelling experience or GW2 being a horizontal progression have been a design choice that stuck with their respective audiances. And having no vertical progression or not feeling forced to rush through the levelling experience was refreshing and imo adds colour to the genre overall. That s why i say, there wont be an MMO that can appeal to every type of MMORPG player and there shouldnt be.
MMO's are trying to be that game that captured people like WoW did in the early 2000's so they can milk it for cash.
One of the issues are, back then if you needed help with something the best way to get that help was to ask someone else in game and have them help you. Sometimes you made friends to dungeon or raid with. Now, we just TH-cam it and move on.
Another issue is those who were captured are now in there 30s and 40s and have lives, and even kids and simply do not have time to sit and play for 10 hours straight. So they make the game "more accessible" which in turn waters down the part a lot of people enjoyed in the older games.
MMO's now are tedious to get to 'raid ready' you normally burn out before you get there. I just want to be there without needing to grind through 200 hours worth of shit I don't care about.
Good video. I agree with most of your points. But, there are some topics you overlooked.
In many MMO endgame, including WoW vanilla, the repair bills to gear became so high it broke guilds and caused inflation at the auction houses.
Another is that while leveling is important, most game designers force leveling be done solely as DPS builders. While leveling teaches players have the patience for raids, forcing solely DPS builds weeds out tanks and healers from endgame.
Some MMO companies came up with a solution to this. Most notably is SWTOR. In SWTOR a player can be easily level as a healer or tank, with the player using their chosen companion to be another role to round out the leveling, allowing the player to have the play style the player wants while leveling.
In vanilla and tbc you needed to lvl as healer or tank cause you woudnt be able to sustane aggro(tank) or mana(healer) in dungeons, which ment at the end no gear resulting in even more harder leveling especially if you not started as an dps spec.
I can't really agree with ff14 levelling experience being dogshit because that was one of the best stories in an rpg that I've ever seen with 100s of hours gameplay. Depends on what you want from levelling really. All in all great video !
I thought after Tera combat system we gonna get better stuff. But we back to target locking boys 😍😭
Some people do have the wrong mindset for gaming. Some of these certain people began in a belief of degeneracy for a game to have a crisis on other people.
1000% was shocked to find out that games like new world were common…. It’s so basic too
Funny thing about GW2 hearts is that the reason why they are "dog sht" is because they were an after though. Their initial goal was to guide users to those dynamic events. Basically, do some bs grind to stick around long enough for an event to trigger which is enough to complete the heart.
I have feeling that Throne and liberty will make huge step in mmorpg
they have evolved but into the wrong direction.. you forget why mmos are mmos.. Lineage 2 is what mmo should be and thats whta needs to be mo0dernised.
Narc ignorant stance on Lineage 2 + putting out FLAT OUT WRONG INFO about it in his previous videos + L2 being the prime source from where AoC is directly taking systems (and he praises them lol) and acting like several of systems were NOT DONE EVER BEFORE EVEN IN THIS FKING VIDEO - points at him being a poor content creator, one of the numerous interconnected reasons why his channel has less and less views overall.
I can look past dumb quests and dailies but the thing that ruins MMOs for me above everything else is the emergence of P2W and predatory monetization.
The reason for the loss of talent trees and homogenization of classes is because nobody wants to be excluded for choosing their favourite class and to eliminate useless talents in trees. Your paladin is specced half holy, half ret. Sorry, you can't come with us because that's suboptimal. It is a stupid reason for it, but I remember when raiding in WoW. If you didn't spec for specific abilities, you weren't taken on raids. I spent 8 hours a day when not playing researching optimal gear, rotations, and specs so that I could do progression content. I did that for 4 years and finally got so burned out that I quit.
This paradigm makes it more accessible for more people. Unfortunately, it did dumb it down quite a bit. In regard to it becoming stale, that is just the way of it. They found something that works and companies don't want to take risks with innovation. Same with the music industry today. They found crap that sells well to the masses and now all songs sound almost exactly the same. It stifles innovation, but it sells well enough; so they don't have any incentive to push the envolope.
You nailed it about Guild Wars 2, among the other games. While it's a nice intention to not fragment the player base with highly stratified gear levels, it's a necessity in PvE focused games. A true PvX game like Ashes can get by with a longer gear progression as long as there is an in game monetary risk to using powerful gear, since it requires more valuable materials (and perhaps skilled crafters) to keep in working order. This is something that reminds me of Eve and Albion, but not as extreme (your ship is gone upon death) but incremental losses are still painful, but easier to stomach for most.
The big (unwanted) evolution is "pay to play"
Listen TLDR
People have a fucking RIGHT To be PISSED. I pledged 10 FUCKING years ago!
I don't see how ashes would bring back the social element. Guild wars 2 has tried to push social interactions though difficulty - the players rioted. It is not that there are no games that provide the ingredients for the MMO that you describe - it is the players that don't have the time for creating in-game relationships and they reject such games. For me the future is in random players socializing + prime-time events + seasons. For random people socializing - check out Hell Let Loose - an MMO in broader terms - it is 100% more social than your typical MMO. For seasons - check Path of Exile. For prime-time events - check most asian MMOs (e.g. Lost Ark).
It's more like, once you have created an expectation, it's really hard to go against the community that likes that expectation.
Talking about meaningful choices - I gave yu EQ melees sucked, have you tried playing EQ caster? Do you even know that in EQ a spell caster could only have 8 spells memorized while needing to chose from over 15+ relevant to his level? And in case of Enchanters it was like 30+ spells So yeah - 30 really good spells but only 8 can be used at any given time - here are your PLAYER MADE CHOICES
warhammer online had a lot of great ideas, sadly the game ran like dogshit. but you can see where other games took dynamic events from.
Nah, this guy is trying to like a genre he just doesn’t like. Millions love mmos, especially wow for its complex gameplay. It’s not about the content as much as it is getting better at your class and having fun with your friends. New content is just another chance to win out over the competition, top leaderboards, etc.
I think it is still bring the class not the player, but we have meta gaming to thank for that. It is a complete farce in regards to class individuality thought I certainly won't try to deny it.
To answer your last question, Pantheon Rise of the Fallen Stronge Clap
They have definitely evolved towards helping "Al Gore". F "Al Gore" and those marketing teams.
Ngl, I don't see the "talent trees were good" thing, is 1/3% crit really that interesting? Not like most people will actually think over their build instead of copy pasting what's the best anyway.
Remember that Item Level was a player invention to easily gauge if you are a good player or not. What the players didn't consider was the fact that gearscore can be artifically increased by wearing pieces that don't actually help you like healing increase trinket on a dps.
The "your class can't do everything" (as in for example not having interrupt) is all fun and games in practice until you're not taken into content because it requires interrupts. Sure do love the social aspect of not doing stuff with friends because I'd be dragging them down.
I think Ragnarok Origins and all subsequent titles of it fall in this category as well
The whole "Everyone's a winner" has ruined gaming as a whole. Ofc companies do this to maximize engagement overall, thus profit from mtx/passes/dlcs etc. Sad business.
14:50 don't underestimate us players, we will find new problems to complain about
bro, this is everything ive been saying for years now. I couldnt have put it better!
The irony is that ashes of creation looks like an MMO made in 2008.
Have you checked 'Devas of Creation' (it's roblox game)
I don't think that "player skill" was a takeaway from wow classic for hardly anyone, if anything wow classic showed how little skill it really took to be good at vanilla
Im going to comment without having watched the video, however i will watch it, but my initial reaction to the title was "actually they've evolved to be too "modern" and threw the baby out with the bathwater."
Modern mmo has too my things in it that's the problem it's like you have to graduate first in ti to enjoy, much of it is due to wow being the most popular and one of the longest which inlfuenced many later mmo's. Less is more, simple and direct, pick and play. No need for 10 different currencies, no ui that takes up half the screen, no need for useless items made just to fill up inventory, no talent tress, no 100 different abilities, no fetch quest, no telling you where to go, play as you like no meta, more use of common sense and iq, more challenging in terms of skill not in terms of knowledge. More explorationg and fun interaction with the world and others playing it. Overall more different things to do not doing the same thing over and over again and very easy to understand, not something that require you to study like in school. If there is mmo like elden ring or ghost recon breakpoint it will be very successful, i don't know why game makers don't think about this.
I disagree with a few things and agree with others.
Agree: the leveling experience in many MMOs sucks ass. This is why I paid to skip FFXIV's story.
Minor disagree: New World has a good leveling experience with the exception of not having a better group finder. The enemies in New World expect you to continually improve your gear and to learn how to use your abilities as well as consumables. It prepared me for endgame.
Disagree: I do not think forcing players to have only one class and then diversifying the classes so not everyone has a stun or heal or etc is a good thing. I prefer characters to have access to various classes and each class to have enough similarities to make each one viable on its own. The differences would only allow each class to excel in given areas. Essentially, I believe each class should be average at everything with 3 or maybe 4 things they are excellent at. This is because not having heals on a given class makes certain tasks extremely annoying.
there is one MMO that was perfect with all the classes and tradeskills
and it was... hard
asherons call...
Red Flag: "modern audience", this usually means we're going to turn this IP into shit
And I haven't heard your answer. What are you suggesting? Except, of course, "do it the way it did the game that doesn't even exist yet".
So judging by that approach that pve, grind and fetch quests suck (which they partly do) and AoC will do it right? They may as well remove all the pve from day 1, go straight to max level and jump right into pvp town taking and raiding. (No low levels to gank along the way, that will upset 90% of the knuckledraggers).
Rift's idea was fresh but, it soon became very very stale, the maps and events were always the same. You will need 1000s of random event/map generators to make it unique then.
It's back to "players are content" and that worked so very well for SW Galaxies, it's made millions and is so popular.... oh wait, it crashed and burned, nvm. ;)
its simple, we simply outgrown them.