How to fix MMOs

The big problem is to stop making MMOs top heavy when it comes to designs, and stop designing them around gimmicks.

Lets say an MMO has roughly 50 levels to grind through.

The first 10 levels should be easily soloable, with a few mini-boss monsters to be a check on if you actually figured out the control schemes and your class design, at level 10 you should run across your first mini-boss where its unfeasible for a solo character to beat it. Players should also be introduced to professions of some kind by this point

The 10-20 should be still fairly easy to solo, but start requiring resources to maintain uptime, as well as introduce more mini-boss quests that require groups, and center these in resource rich areas where people will want to be regardless, by level 15 you should run into your first dungeon which is designed for a full group of 3-5 players, and make the dungeon itself drop some of the best gear you can get in certain slots for 10 levels so people will keep running it, as well as the best source of random gear drops, professions at this point should be able to create low level materials or consumables that have a niche at the higher levels, such as bulk iron bars are required to make even the highest tier of metal armor.

20-30 is when soloing should become semi-difficult, by this point players should have learned how to manage their aggro so they don't pull entire areas of mobs and die, thus they learn how to pull, watch for patrols, use their CC abilities and so on.

30-50 should be essentially the same, by this point players should be competent enough to deal with difficult soloing, but also wise enough to understand that 2 people killing the same mob is significantly faster then each player solo killing mobs 1 at a time due to less down time, as well dungeons should be the primary way players get gear upgrades, and professions start to plateau in terms of what kind of materials and consumables they can make.

cont

The problem is everyone is trying to do it the same. Nobody is really trying to do it differently. The biggest risk they take is just some spin on the same old same old. All the conventional game mechanics need to be rethought. Players are too used to and expect things to be a certain way. They are too comfortable. This expectation leads to boredom and that leads to them playing. Players need their feathers ruffled more. They need to feel like what they expect isn't there, it should be challenged. But it shouldn't keep players from feeling like they can play. Instead the game needs to reinforce playing. You HAVE to play. You WILL BE a part of the tribe. Or you will be deleted. This is how you progress. Not playing by yourself then automatically joining a group for forced raid mechanics then playing with yourself some more. The whole game revolves around being in a tribe and grouping.

They need to make more games like runescape or Mabinogi with a huge focus on horizontal progression. WoW themeparks are trash.

>starts thread about MMOs
>posts a pic of a single-player/LAN w/ friends game

Mabinogi is a cool game. I would have played it more but the grind is insane.

>The problem with MMORPG's is that they don't force the player into being in some big guild.
The best ones do. FFXI in it's golden age and Eve Online were both really good at this. Even WoW and Ragnarok Online back in the day to an extent.
if you wanted to get anywhere other than doing a few missions/quests/dailies once in a while for shit money/items those games basically forced you to join some sort of group/corp/linkshell/guild in order to get anywhere.

>Games that are shit have this feature, so its the feature thats shit
Why would I want to play a game where I am forced to be a part of a guild that I can completely disagree with and hate, which can also cause me trouble by starting or doing shit that I want no part of? Thats stupid.

>join said game
>guild you’re in sucks, no one ever logs in and those who do aren’t good
>roles being assigned based on priority causes most to not like theirs
>reroll with new account until you have good combo of players who aren’t always afk
>every decent guild has done this too
>most players locked into garbage guilds
You don’t understand that people want to be with like minded people doing what they enjoy apart from real life stresses and balances. I’m sure your hardcore mmo would appeal to some, not nearly enough for the financial investment needed.
I dislike most mmos on the market similar to how you express, but I’m looking forward to wow classic because I had fun on a private server prior to this where I started entirely by myself and ended up in a top 10 raiding guild. Mmo experiences are what you make from the content’s limits

End game should be focused around having massive dungeons and lots of different content to exploit for gear, materials, ect. End game dungeons shouldn't be shitty linear hallways, they should be something dedicated players take hours to clear, as well end game world content should be more focused around group play, if you're max level and haven't made any friends or joined a friendly guild, then you kind of fucked up, open world should have lots of elites with rare materials and rarer gear drops for players to exploit for progression and trade, you should also introduce raid bosses at this point too, but instead of making them massive fucking loot pinatas, they should be world altering encounters that pop up from time to time, and players who kill these things get a buttload of resources just for participating in the kill, as well as saving part of their server from being shutdown by the boss.

This is of course assuming that the game isn't some chink grinder, problem with korean shit is they're all about front loaded damage and giant fucking beating bags with barely functional AI that you're supposed to kill effortlessly with 'action combat' which is primarily spamming your highest damaging, zone wide AOE abilities with no thought input at all, thats something MMOs really need to get away from, is the non-interactive gameplay model where they just design around end game raid encounters, which always end up being massive HP damage sponges with groundfire AOE that is projected by massive red circles, and have pretty much no interaction with your abilities other then it dies when you do enough damage before its magical 'im bored' enrage timer.

Right but instead of designing the game so players _feel_ like they have to do things a certain way, the game is designed so they can't do it any other way. Why make it so that you can join a group or a guild when you ultimately have to? Enforce it. You have to be in a guild. The game starts you this way.
>guild you’re in sucks
Every MMO is filled with shitty guilds because players get to all join the good guild
>no one ever logs
I already covered this, You have to play regularly or you get deleted, inactive are removed and new players are moved to tribes
>You don’t understand that people want to be with like minded people doing what they enjoy
No they don't they rarely even get to be with anyone because MMO's give players a choice and most players don't have a guild or friends to play with so they just quit

STOP, MAKING, THEM, FAST.

If there is one thing that ruined MMOs is the "GO GO GO GO GO" mentality of turbogrinding to go nowhere fast.

We can thank WOW and chink grinders for this, I wish people would stop using WOTLK WOW as the standard of what MMOs should be, becuase thats when Ion Hozzikostas convinced the industry that all people care about is raid speedrunning.

>Why make it so that you can join a group or a guild when you ultimately have to?

Why make every game the same way? Why does every MMO have to follow the same failed conventions? Why can't we have a game that does things differently? Because some fag like you will always whine that every game doesn't follow the same formula. Fuck you pussy. You're what's wrong with games.

You're retarded.

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Every mmo is filled with shitty guilds because the better players segregate themselves yes, but your solution is to prevent who you associate with in a social game. This environment sounds like it would hurt social interactions if viewed in practice and not simply and ideally viewed in theory.
Most guilds in WoW are a combination of many different considerations including faction, time zone, server type, guild purpose, times of activity, dedication ( hardcore, semi hardcore, casual), loot rules, etc. some of these things could be determined while still making the process randomized, but most of them are too specific. If you’re talking about full randomization, I doubt anyone would be able to play let alone want to play the mmo. For example, I have odd hours of free time and don’t want to play with a high ping, so randomization through my time zone alone is definitely not feasible. Most people wouldn’t line up together randomly.

Players did that, not MMO designers.
If anything the designers would be much happier if people didn't binge their games 24/7 and consume content like a whale eats krill.

Problem with MMOs is they are trying to combine multiple audiences by half assedly appealing to all of them at once and hoping you enjoy enough of the activities in one location to feel invested.
Want to quest? Single player RPGs are better
PvP? Literally hundreds of games that are better
RP? Not really my thing but still better niche titles for that
The only thing MMOs still do "well" is Raiding and Dungeons because nobody has really taken that apart and repackaged it well. Monster Hunter would probably be one of the bigger games to do it but it's not without flaws.
20 years ago there weren't as many niche options to appeal to people, MMOs need to adapt and do better at appealing to audiences or just perfect a specific activity and be a niche game for that.

>PvP? Literally hundreds of games that are better
correct, but for every player who wants an equal challenge of skill vs skill there are hundrerds who want to curb stomp noobs with their superior gear

>For example, I have odd hours of free time and don’t want to play with a high ping, so randomization through my time zone alone is definitely not feasible. Most people wouldn’t line up together randomly
That's because the game you play is designed around the fact that players will organize themselves. In this game if you don't stay active you get deleted. The reason why you have a hard time being in a guild with people in your time zone is because people are inactive, not because they're not in your time zone. And servers can be organized by time zone if the game were big enough to have servers in different locations. Even if not, by forcing active population you can be sure there's enough intersecting time zones even if the game weren't very popular and the server were small.

I don't think MMO's are actually trying to appeal to these audiences on the outset. They're trying to appeal to players who want an MMO and the appeal of these elements you mention is not how they stand up on their own but how they weave in with the rest of the game's design. For example consider pvp in Diablo 2. Many consider it some of the best pvp they've participated in but from an onlooker it appears little more than a rudimentary one hit kill one button spam fest. It's not the complexity of the gameplay in pvp that draws people in but rather it's how pvp weaves in with the rest of the game's design. Like the itemization system, builds and the nature of the hostile system. The pvp gameplay itself is sparse but the elements that support it are very strong. That's what theoretically can make these other elements in MMO's good but many times they're not because the game itself is very poor. MMO's try too often to focus on adding all this stuff in but not focusing on just making a good game. If the game is good then the other stuff that grows from it will be good too.

>Stop copying WoW and other online games.

WoW made more money than the Vatican for over a decade.

The unfortunate truth is that people love shitty, bland, predictable games. CoD, WoW, Skyrim: they all make fuckloads of money, so that's what publishers will demand of their developers.

I know you don't want it to be like this - and neither do I - but this is how it is.

Fortnite also made a lot of money but that doesn't mean I want every shooter to be like that

>levels
you are still thinking inside the box and going nowhere

The real problem with MMORPGs is that people nowadays are just min-maxing faggots. They look up every guide to reach the max level the fastest possible way then keep doing whatever the guide tells them.
For me and for everyone around the early 2000s the fun part was the adventure, the zones you explored, the quests you did, and the people you met while leveling up. I've played BDO on release and it was just a sad experience. There were no people to play with early and you got no benefits from doing so.
You shouldn't be forced into a guild or clan but it should be encouraged. That means no auto-queue for dungeons/raids, no auction house, reward partying, and so on but at the same time make it so that you don't punish players who wish to go the solo way.

>end game
same problem here, thinking inside the box
you are not gonna make it

Another reason to force guilds is it acts as a cheater/bot filter. Players become a precious resource in guilds and if a player is not participating in your guild and is off botting or making money for chinese gold farm site you are more likely to report them. Botters/gold farmers often abuse partying systems due to their free and open nature. They form groups and bot together to speed up their gold farming. By making it so you don't get to choose who you're with and by making the people in your guild important, players won't tolerate gold farmers. Also you can kill the gold farmers and take their loot.

MMORPGs are inherently fucked.

>No amount of suspension of disbelief could help you immerse yourself in an exciting adventure, because when all was said and done you were still some sad fuck hauling lumber or iron nuggets back and forth across the map, or waiting outside a cave for the resident monsters to respawn so you could get back in there and kill them for the hundredth time.

>You are role-playing a peon, and no amount of credulity on your part or tinkering with the formula on the part of the developers can change that. It is indeed true that in some of these games you can rise to become something more than a peon -- at least if you are prepared to make this your (real) life's goal for a few months. But the process of levelling up (or amassing a fortune or whatever) has little to do with role-playing, and in all the countless hours you'll spend accomplishing this you'll likely not even experience the thrill of a single session of, say, Fading Suns or Dead Inside -- you won't even live through a single story worth retelling. And is this what you are looking for in role-playing games anyway?

>force anything
with proper design people will want to do things by themselves, so what you are suggesting is just pointless

>in this game if you don't stay active you get deleted
You know you're spouting a bunch of '''''innovative''''' ideas but seem to ignore that said game has to actually be both profitable AND have a healthy, non-declining playerbase in order to stay profitable.

Neither the idea in your OP or the dumb shit i quoted seems like it would make worthwhile money.

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I fuck around in p99 and vanilla wow. I really want to play Vanguard but it is mega dead. Pantheon better not be a pile of shit.

i have no interest in the 'role playing' part of mmorpgs and while i can't speak for other people I'm pretty sure the majority of mmorpg players don't either.

the RPG part of MMORPG just means RPG elements like character customization, levels, stats, gear, etc. I'm here to play a game not pretend to be Gareth the humble blacksmith.

MMOs could always try forcing socialization like Star Wars Galaxies.

Every single one of these 'how to fix MMO' threads are retarded. Every single idea presented is fucking stupid.

Most of a game's design is forced. You're just used to this part of it being not forced and you can't handle the idea of anything being different from the same bland formula.
In Diablo 2 your character gets deleted if you don't login for 90 days. There are people who have had years worth of work get their character deleted. Yet Diablo 2 was one of the best selling PC games of all time. This is just taking that idea of character deletion and expanding on it.
They try but they don't succeed because they take half measures. They're afraid to really commit to forcing it maybe they don't really even know how. Forcing guilds from the outset is a good solution. You know I was always miffed that a game named "Guild Wars" for most people has not guild wars. I want to play a real guild wars game.

Obligatory guild membership is stupid. It recreates the Internet forum situation where oldfags start sniffing their own farts and everyone else has to suck their cocks to join or be allowed to do anything fun. Having guilds is fine but any MMO has to allow the player to experience 90% of the content on their own

>was the adventure
don't pretend 'the adventure' was anything but a product of it's time. Games in general were 'newer' then, especially mmo's.

Yes there are far more min/maxers these days but even the 'normal' players have seen all these game mechanics before and know how it works. When games keep reusing the same/similar system it's inevitable that people will just either just tolerate it or try to power through it. You can't blame this entirely on the players.

Getting into an MMO WoW/Ultima/etc were just getting big felt like entering into a new, interesting world with lots of unknowns. Now everyone knows how the systems work, leveling content is easy, hard content is at end game. Unless they're main or important quests then all quests are just little tasks you do for a bunch of exp and maybe and maybe an item you'll quickly replace with something better. Exploring the world is generally a waste of time because if there's something important there you'll get sent there by a quest, etc, etc.

These aren't player problems it's a content stagnation issue.

The difference is that unlike other games where the guilds are often put together by "higher ups" the guilds here are randomly created and not optional. So you don't get to choose how they're structured. Old farts don't get seniority. Because you don't get to choose where you go you have to work with the people you have. An old timer can't just decide they don't want you in the guild anymore. The guild structure can organically have leaders but those leaders have no real power over you or the guild unless those members won't the leader to because again, it's not "their" guild.

The reason they don't do this is because you would need at least 3 factions (2 factions quickly leads to broken gameplay) which in turn requires a huge amount of effort to maintain.

>different from the same bland formula
that couldn't be more wrong
you are worrying too much about defying existing solutions without even fully understanding the significance of the problems they solve and which other problems you introduce

the whole guild thing isn't a major issue at all and it doesn't need major overhauls because people naturally join guilds simply for the benefit of organization

the real issues of mmorpgs lie with character / content progression, difficulty, player choices, stat creep, world size / quality, story quality

>The problem with MMO are the players
That's part of the truth.

The other part is developers making MMOs like they're single player games. They're making sure people can solo quest through the entire game and they fill the game with quality of life features that minimize the need to deal with other people. It quickly starts feeling like other people playing the MMO are just NPCs. They need to start making MMOs again like they used to, as multiplayer focused games.

MMOs and games with online are more expensive to make. Not only are you producing a game but you have to produce the entire network architecture, on servers you either have to rent or buy, and produce a decent schema so the ping isn't shit.

MMOs tend to be copycats because its safe. No one wants to risk millions of dollars on a hunch. Shit, any time EA does it you can see how it blows up in their face and a studio gets closed because of it.

WoW's biggest crime is treating each expansion as a sequel game that completely replaces the previous instead of just expanding on the world that was already there. To this day it still bothers me that these legendary mats and ingredients you gather in one game have no significance or use in the next. Same with the zones. With the gear. With the NPCs. With the entire world.

Expansions should expand content, not replace it, yo.

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>Got too big.
This. They got so big that people who had no business playing MMOs started playing them because everyone else was playing them. So developers started catering to these people who don't actually want to play MMOs because they were suddenly a majority in their playerbase.

you seem to be missing the fundamental problem of people don't want to play with people they don't like. You say 'they'll have to make it work' when in reality they just won't play the game.

Why would people play your MULTIPLAYER game when they can't play with their friends (or at least without significant hurdles) and might even be forced to play with people they actively dislike?

You really seem to be missing that people don't play mmo's to meet new anymore (if they did at all). Social media like facebook, tinder, discord, the vast amount of online communities (Yea Forums/reddit/resetera/gamefaqs/etc) have effectively demolished mmo's novelty of potentially making friends online and you can see this reflected in modern mmo design where forced interaction is trying to be minimized.

I'm not saying this is a good thing, I just don't see how your idea will even remotely be successful.

>the real issues of mmorpgs lie with character / content progression, difficulty, player choices, stat creep, world size / quality, story quality
I think a lot of these things feel very samey from MMO to MMO hence why I want something more radically different. Maybe you think you can just keep autistically changing these design elements and eventually the right combination will bring what you want but I think there needs to be more radical thinking in design. From a game design perspective if the devs were to assume everyone in a guild and grouping then all of the elements you listed would also be rethought leading to a very different style of gameplay.

We should implement matchmaking technology so that players are automatically sorted into a guild without them needing to focus on any of that tedious recruitment!

It's the opposite, there is an under saturation of MMO's. A few people dictate the entire the industry.

You are not wrong. MMO's progress at a snail's pace.

>They look up every guide to reach the max level the fastest possible way then keep doing whatever the guide tells them.
The post-WoW MMOs were mostly designed in a way that you don't even need a guide to go fast. They built in all the features to make the game brainless to play. Leveling up became a linear slog through hundreds of quests instead of the discovery and exploration it used to be. It took years for something like Ragnarok Online to form the popular places to level and they still varied greatly depending on your class, build and if you had a group or not. And even then it didn't mean you couldn't level in other places and people did because the game allowed you to.

The only reason WoW was initially successful is the care that the original Warcraft community took of it, because they had no Facebook or Myspace to go to. My first guild lost it's GM and Co-GMs when Facebook started because it was literally a cheerleading squad that was outcast in Cheerleading competitions that was somehow became aware of WoW.

I was promoted GM because the GM was going through some shit with her boyfriend and I ERPed with her a few times. I was like 14, and quickly spotted the players that clearly knew more than I did. I made this chadbro GM because he was a cool dude who really liked the game, but had no real friends except me, and CO-GM went to a WoWmom who initially took care of me when I joined the guild, setting me up with her husband and brother to run Deadmines and such. We grew into a family, and lost 3 years of our lives to the game. If MMO's are going to be great again, you need to create families, not just guilds.

>you seem to be missing the fundamental problem of people don't want to play with people they don't like
In this game it doesn't matter who you like. They don't like playing with people they don't like because it's a choice and that choice matters. It's not a choice in this game and who you like, you can shove it up your ass.
>Why would people play your MULTIPLAYER game when they can't play with their friends
Why can't we play with strangers? Why does every multiplayer game need to be with people you know? Why can't we have something different?
>You really seem to be missing that people don't play mmo's to meet new anymore
The goal isn't to meet people the guilding is a function of gameplay not of trying to make new friends
>I'm not saying this is a good thing, I just don't see how your idea will even remotely be successful
It will be successful because it makes MMO's feel more like an MMO and that's why people play them
>If MMO's are going to be great again, you need to create families, not just guilds.
It's possible that can happen but it's backwards thinking. The game will be great and because of that maybe people will think of the guild they're in as a family or maybe they'll forget to login and their family will get deleted.

BDO used to have the family feeling.
Exploring the world you could be killed at any time by another player and lose exp which became super valuable taking hours for 1%. If you didn't have a guild to call in for backup and friends to move around the world with you'd never progress. Of course that game went to shit cause they removed the exp loss, guilds became super robotic with checkins, mandatory guild quests, and the game moved into the pay to win area by a large margin. But for a time, roughly 3-4 months after launch, the game definitely held that classic MMO feeling.

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>if you remove the choice of not being able to play with people you don't like then the problem is solved
People will just not play the game
>Why can't we play with strangers?
Because the vast majority of mmo players are either solo oriented players (ironically), people who begin playing in a small group (2-5 friends) or pre existing communities (i.e. a discord channel or guild from a different game trying out a new mmo)

What are you putting forth is very similar to making it so when you create a League of Legends or Dota 2 account, you're put into a random pool of 500 (or whatever) players and those are the only people you're ever allowed to have on your team. That's a fucking retarded idea.

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>if you remove the choice of not being able to play with people you don't like then the problem is solved
No the problem is created by designing a game around pandering to this choice. By giving players the feeling that they should be able to decide. Why should you have that choice in the first place? Because other games give you it? Why does every game have to have the same choice? It's boring.
>Because the vast majority of mmo players are either solo oriented players
They aren't. The vast majority play solo because the game design fucking sucks
>That's a fucking retarded idea
>What are you putting forth is very similar to making it so when you create a League of Legends or Dota 2 account, you're put into a random pool of 500 (or whatever) players and those are the only people you're ever allowed to have on your team. That's a fucking retarded idea.
No because in instances where smaller groups are needed there will be less skill required and there will be fewer but more important instances where large groups are required and that will be less about individual skill and more about having everyone just there and participating. When you can assume every player has a giant guild you can design the gameplay far differently.

You're clearly convinced that your idea is fantastic so it seems to me you just want other people to agree with you. There's not any discussion to be had here when every single one of your rebuttals effectively boils down to
>No you see it'll actually work out because the game will be great

I don't have anything more to say to you beyond reiterating that I think most of your ideas aren't appealing to me and I don't think they'd be appealing to most.

Your "rebuttals" amount to "I like thing other game has, new game has to have same thing other game has" and your rebuttals don't hold up because games copy games and copies fail far more than they succeed. You don't like what you claim you like, you like the game that you played that had that feature. A game doesn't have to have the features you think it needs to be good because you don't actually know what you like. If you did then you could literally just copy things and every game would be amazing and a copycat of every other game.

I'm sick of MMO's all having the same bland formula. The whole guilding, grouping, solo mechanic ties too much into gameplay to be such a choice. An MMO could be designed much better if it could be assumed that everyone was part of a big guild.

Not that guy but you've been sniffing your own ass this entire thread. You come across like someone who doesn't have friends when you say that it won't matter that you can't play this magical, god game with your friends.

You come across as some pathetic wimp who can't succeed in a game without your friends carrying you. Good riddance.

Ragnarok was the perfect MMO
Not a quest tunnel
Open to do whatever you want, go where you want
Can do stupid/weird builds that work
Items arent all soulbound/level restricted

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>tfw every sudo sandbox game that gets relerased nowadays is way too much a themepark
>every build isn't useful
>items have obvious bis
>there's nothing to explore
>nothing to grind for
i fucking hate wow

Guild wars

nice botting mule

MMOs feel like a waste of time now because of the insane amount of repetitive grinding. it's not fun and that's what i don't like. i'll still play other games for hours a day because they're actually fun but i don't want it to feel like work like it does with most MMOs.

I'm somewhat alarmed that you can identify that fact.

MMOs have changed to become games of measuring progress, everything is geared around making progress in whatever grind (reputation, gear, crafting, ranking etc) and has caused design to warp around serving these interests, playing the game turns into repetitive busywork where people just log in to finish their daily checklist of things that progress this character forward in some clear quantifiable way.

In my opinion this is completely counter to what made the genre unique, in that the player base and persistent environment allowed for fluid and dynamic events to take place that cant happen in regular multiplayer or single player games. The thing is players think they want the convenience and developers are happy to oblige for their money, but by doing so they just slowly hollow out the game from what originally made it great.

>The problem with MMORPG's is that they don't force the player into being in some big guild
Stopped reading. Albion and EvE do this, both suck shit for it.

Incoming actual truthpill.

Combat has stagnated. Mechanics are the same from 10 years ago. The content hasn't progressed and no amount of social interaction will force people to play the same game from 10 years ago that they've played before. They would rather just go play that. See wow classic.

Never played eve but Albion is the polar opposite and a proof of the problem. Players join with the most powerful guilds and rape everything. If you couldn't do that then Albion would be a lot more fun to play. If you didn't decide your guild but instead were immediately part of a guild and working towards that goal from the beginning, maybe it would be a better game.

Got too big and then got too small.
>new MMO comes out
>billions of servers created to deal with the massive influx of casuals tourists
>all the casual tourists leave after the first week, turning game into a barren wasteland
>devs scramble to create dumb convenience mechanics and retarded server structure to deal with the dwindling population
>population shrinks even more because somehow they feel even more like a bunch of faceless nobodies that barely interact with each other with the new changes
At that point, the game either dies or becomes a zombie game propped up by a handful of whales that can't let go of all the money they invested into it.

I've said forever that making extra servers does nothing
Use the one world for all players system and just open more "channels" which basically are more servers
you don't splinter your playerbase, you can add/remove channels as needed, it doesn't force players to quit cause they server is dead
sure you lose money on transfers but it's better for the overall life of your game

Guilds have barely anything to do with the actual issues with modern MMOs. In fact guild drama is what kept these types of games alive. There's always going to be another group that wants to shit over the zerg guild.

The closest thing you're going to get to a good MMO in current year is a loot shooter like Warframe. Wait 8 years until Blozzard or Ebin releases a AAA VR MMO.

>making extra servers does nothing
Used to play an old F2P MMO that would add a new server every year or so, and it would make a lot of people abandon their current server and start spending more money to level up faster again. They would abandon the old server because it was full of hacked items or overpowered items sold by corrupt admins. Not sure why they never demanded for the game balance to be fixed or the cheaters to be dealt with instead. I stopped playing soon after everyone wanted to switch to the new server because they didn't see the problem with what they were doing.

Guilds are the underpinning of what MMO's are all about and they need to be a part of the experience for everyone who plays and what's more is they need to not be dominated by all the nolifers joining the same guild. That's exactly why what I'm suggesting works.

10000% agree. How on earth can I as a (hypothetical) designer cater to everyone - when if I put only casual content in a game, it's going to get consumed like a vacuum cleaner, and if it's only hardcore content you lose a lot of people who just want to chill for a couple of hours a day. Finding the middle ground is disgustingly hard.

I think WoW is in an alright spot right now (not great, decent) - but not everyone wants to play WoW. At least a few more MMOs need to exist that are actually half way decent.

No you're suggesting to force everyone into a random group and hope it works out. No common interest or goal and no guarantee you'll even like the people you're with which creates no incentive to want to continue playing. I wouldn't be surprised if the remaining players found a workaround to create their own cliques and ignore your stupid idea entirely.

I'd like a MMO that mimics how societies started.
Say it starts with tons of people dropped to a fuckhuge land seemingly nothing.
Everyone starts with very basic skills/recipes/crafting etc. that barely lets you scrape by but with one more "major" one - one can light a fire, one can farm, one knows how to handle weapons better etc.
Then once players realise they'd form little groups and then on out little societies with everyone having one more important role.
Everyone is then living in little huts and basic necessities are covered and everyone has leveled up but now the little society forms to a village or a town which can be named.
Here's what I'd call a big part, now instead of individual exp all the exp is gathered to the society itself and once enough is gathered, instead of everyone being minor jack-of-all-trades everyone gets a permanent role which others cant do:
One becomes the most industrious farmer of all who can cover everyones food supply but he cant fight, build or trade worth shit.
One becomes Bob the Builder who knows how to build up walls, fortifications, more complex buildings for others needs but that's all he can do.
One becomes living Excavator who digs out everything from most basic stuff to rarest of minerals but he can't do it without ladders and stairs from Bob the Builder and pickaxes, rails and minecarts from Smith the Blacksmith.
One becomes Smith the Blacksmith who with his bare hands puts out weapons for knights, tools for farmer(s), utilities for Excavator etc.
One becomes a trader/diplomat who cant be killed by other societies but can cross borders (which are claimed and set by societies) only to trade and speak with other societies - negotiate alliances, carry casus belli for wars etc.
etc.
(cont.)

Once the whole village does more stuff and gathers more exp more complicated roles become open - say dedicated knights, spies/assassins, king, alchemist, wizard etc. but to fill these you'd need more population you could recruit from other societies or capture as slaves or something.
It should also be a thing that every role is very meaningful, say losing a top notch farmer would be a huge loss.

I kind of want a game that forces you into a random character that you can't get out of or reroll easily. Like no choice in terms of race sex or appearance, like irl.

But at the same time, I know I have shit luck and would roll a nigger and I d onot want to play as a nigger.

>No common interest or goal
Yes there is. The entire game is designed around guild play. Guild vs guild, guilds farming with each other, big huge boosts to progression for playing with guilds. The game is designed to only be played with guilds so it's no hope it works it's thee way it works and no other way.
>No common interest or goal and no guarantee you'll even like the people you're with
These things are important to you because the MMO's you played made them important. In this game these things aren't important because the focus is on overcoming the difficulties of group cohesiveness. You have less feeling of permanence. The game is constantly being evolved around cultivating an active playerbase.
>I wouldn't be surprised if the remaining players found a workaround to create their own cliques and ignore your stupid idea entirely
They can't. You get almost no rewards for going alone. You can't group up with people outside your guild. Your guild or tribe is against the others. Every guild for themselves.

Or they'll just quit and play another game because their group either went inactive in the first week or is full of faggots.

>one of these posts again
these ideas maybe work with very advanced virtual reality but a 'standard' game made like this won't work because generally a game has to be fun to play and in this hypothetical 500 trillion budget game being a super good farmer needs to be genuinely fun in both controls and mechanics as does the Knight, Assassin, king, alchemist, etc etc.

The vast, vast majority of people also don't care about roleplaying, just how fun the 'role' that they're playing as is. Like I play classes/roles in games based on how fun they are. If the class/role isn't fun I won't play it. In this hypothetical game every role has to be well made and somewhat fun otherwise no one will want to play said role. Like let's say the blacksmithing minigame(s) are way more fun than the leather working minigame(s). Why the fuck would i play a leather worker beyond
>no one else is playing leather worker so i guess i have to do it

Gameplay first, everything else takes a backseat i don't care how immersive or community based your ideas are if the game's not fun to play i don't care.

what if kenshi was an mmo

The main issue with MMOs are greedy developers.
What do you need to do? Reward players that play alot. Limit the power of whales. Don't introduce new ways to jew off players, fix problematic issues instead. Fix economy, fix gear progression, but not by introducing sinks and power creep, but with long-term, healthy solutions.
EVE Online just about had it, but then CCP got greedy:
- introduced Aurum and microtransactions
- manipulated PLEX price
- further limited non-paying players
- further strengthened whales
- sold soul to the Chinese, who, most likely, infected game client with data grabbers and malware
They couldn't just leave the playerbase be, and they have paid a price for it.

I agree with forcing players to interact with each other but your way is kinda dumb. You really members will be on at the same time consistently enough? Hell what happens if they all quit except a few guys

>their group either went inactive in the first week
Literally impossible. Inactives are deleted and guilds are culled to maintain an active playerbase.
>full of faggots
With big huge guilds, deleting of inactives and the odds of the entire or even majority of the guild being a bunch of faggots is very low. I think some finite amount of rerolls would be acceptable.

Propose something better then, faggot. Remember, there needs to be a sense of progression. Otherwise most long-term persistent gameplay becomes pointless.

>press 1 for basic attack
>press 2 for heavy attack
>press 3 for spell 1
>press 4 for spell 2
>press 5 for spell 3

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>These things are important to you because the MMO's you played made them important
No it's because that's how we work as fucking human beings you colossal fucking idiot. We form groups of like minded peers and when possible we generally try to avoid people we don't like and surround ourselves with people we do.

Case in point, school. Initially you are thrown into a random group of classmates (similar to your initial 'guild' distribution). However you are then free to distance/disassociate yourself from those in your group as much as you like, you can make friends from classes and hang out with them instead of your classmates and as you progress to the next grade and your class changes, you are completely free to remain friends with people from your previous class/other classes and largely ignore your current class, if desired.

What you propose is effectively saying
>alright here's your class, no being friends with anyone from any other classes, if you don't like anyone in your class too bad lmao

I genuinely think you are autistic and I don't mean that as an insult.

This this this this this.
I'm a runescape player, and shit seriously became cancer when everyone started googling everything and minmaxing. The grind autists need to go back to war frame. Also fuck social media, mmos probably can't come back unless the concept of not putting your name on the internet comes back.

>playing Diablo 2 online
fuckin plebs on Yea Forums these days jesus fuck

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>No it's because that's how we work as fucking human beings you colossal fucking idiot
And why is that desirable? You're calling me an idiot but here you've just assumed that a person playing a game wants to play a series of copies of what they do in life. I play games to get away from life, not be burdened in every instance with a thought process that copies the way things work in life expressed in video game form. You are the idiot if you think doing everything this same way is good or desirable.
>Case in point
Uh, no. All you've suggested is copying human interaction. There's no reason why this is desirable or preferable. A game can be designed ANY FUCKING WAY YOU WANT and you just want it to follow the same formula we as humans use? zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz no wonder most games are trash. Brilliant minds like yours.
>I genuinely think you are autistic and I don't mean that as an insult
I genuinely think you believe you're superior to other people when you have discussions and everyone is laughing at how fucking retarded you are behind your back.

Playing trough Diablo 2 for the first time now, this is so much better than I could have imagined.

why did you even bother to make this thread if your plan was to just be deliberately annoying? do you actually find enjoyment from misleading people into thinking they could have an actual discussion?

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Strange. Older MMOs are known for their brutal and mind-numbing grind. Yet they are revered and praised, and modern MMOs, where "grind wall" appears only at the very endgame, are treated as casual and unfun. Why?

wouldnt work with todays audience.

after a few years of farming I turned to botting too
good luck getting all the life skillers and 3/20/20s for PvP with legit MF

I did really well with legit MF actually and I think it's easier to do well with it because there's a lot less botting. You look on jsp forums and people gear up way slower than before that means your average pvper also doesn't have 3/20/20's immediately so the barrier for entry into pvp would be a lot lower these days.

makes sense
also I think they upped high rune drop chance by like 50%