My Problem With MMO's

This is a long rant. If you’re looking for a summary of the following 2,274 words, consider this a favour:

· No real innovation in gameplay.

·  Mostly WoW clones.

·  Technology is stuck back in 2006-era.

·  F2P sucks.

Warning: the following text may contain copious amount of nerd-rage and small traces of ignorance. Viewer discretion is therefore not advised due to a complete lack of viewership to warn.

Moving on. The MMO genre is dying.  

Now before yo-

“HUURR DURR GAMES INDUSTRY IS DYING HURR DURRR GO BACK TO IGN HURR DURR”

Crap. Ok. That isn’t what I meant. By “dying” I don’t necessarily mean losing money or popularity. I use the term from a comparative perspective in relation to progression. It refers to the lack of  creativity within an area, while perhaps achieving commercial success based on rigid and common formulas. Also, I’m referring specifically to a genre here, not the industry as a whole. One could feasibly argue that the FPS genre is already “dead,” though that would require text many times the length of this. I’m not putting myself in line with the many other “games industry death” articles that have found popularity recently, I’m simply a frightened nerd shouting warnings from a lone, secluded, female-less area of the internet.

So, how is the MMO genre “dying” you ask? Let’s get to it, shall we?

Like this.

Why max level bro?

If you’ve experienced any number of MMO’s, there is a common trend you’re bound to have noticed amongst most of them.

Back when I was new to WoW, I literally had no idea what was going on - and it was wonderful. It drove my interest for the game, wanting to understand this vast world with places and tales I never really understood. A friend of mine said something however that has stuck with me after all these years:

“The real game starts when you’re at max level.”

This thought has since gestated in my mind while playing every MMO I’ve come across. As I casually level throughout these MMO’s, I constantly see my friends and other players racing ahead to reach max level. An example of this can be found in the recently released Star Wars: The Old Republic (SWTOR), the latest (and probably last) subscription-based behemoth. In SWTOR, a player can only start participating in Operations (the SWOTR equivalent of raids) once the max level cap has been reached. Amongst other things, many activities are limited to players who have reached max level, leaving lower level players focusing on only one goal: levelling up.

I’m seeing this same gameplay formula which has been found in WoW for many years persistently woven into almost all newer MMO’s like SWTOR. The logic behind this formula is blatant, and there is no denying its reasoning. In a nutshell, it can summarized as the game enticing a player with more stuff to do by making you do stuff to progress to a state where you finally do more stuff. Quite the logic. And it works.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m a fan of MMO’s. The over-arching concept is what drives people like me to play them; exploring vast worlds and defeating the bad guys with friends. That sounds awesome. But the current state of MMO’s can be summarized as reaching max level, gear up to do raids, gearing up again for the next set of raids, do more raids, rinse and repeat.

The players can be introduced to difficulty modes, increasing difficulty and giving players greater challenges (sometimes to ridiculous lengths) while extending gameplay lengths. Althoug having to farm from the same or strikingly similar raids and quest hubs for 8 months to gain character progression while I wait for the next set of raids and quest hubs is a tedious and old system. Most players I’ve known plateau at this point and look to find other MMOs or make new characters. In fact, it was tedious and old many years ago, yet it’s still being pursued as the focal gameplay model. Sure it works, but is increasing difficulty really the only answer to adding gameplay content?

I don’t hate WoW or claim to abstain from any MMO, but is there any MMO out there that drives a different setup compared to this max-level-gear-grind that is pretty much the standard of the genre now?

Maybe. Guild Wars 2 has strived to change this model, and has already generated much buzz and probably a lot of money when it releases. The game focuses on dynamic story creation, different to every player based on the many, many decisions they can make - the level of detail this occurs at seems mind-blowing. And while there is a levelling system present, it clearly isn’t what drives most of the game. However apart from this exception, there really is little in the way of progress for MMO gameplay.

This leads me onto my next point.

F2P = Forced to Pay?

I have some pretty hefty beef with F2P, and it’s a dynamic I’ve only recently noticed in MMO’s. You may remember Notch recently tweeting “F2P is a scam.” While I, like many others, looked at this comment with sceptical faces, the truth is his words do contain some realities.

I was excited when the F2P trend started (It's "free*", right?), but the more of these games I tried the more clearly I saw the pattern. You can't do "freemium" without "motivating" players to pay. What is that "motivation"? Restrictive annoyances. Allow me to explain.

Here's what I would initially accept: The option to pay fractions of normal price points and players unlock segments of a game. Basically, that's the concept of F2P, right? Instead of getting the full game, you get an extended demo and can invest as much as you want to get advanced content. The problem is, it’s never like that. It's not a linear scale towards the traditional cost of a game. Not even considering on-going developer support. It's downright strange how consistently that's the case.

One could argue you generally get 80% of a game for free and the last 20% is priced at somewhere beyond £150 split up in lots of tiny micro transactions. Or literally infinite costs for making things faster, avoiding grinding, etc. You have two extremes: Endless grinding/waiting for free play time, or overpriced microtransactions to skip it.

Freemium is a full-commitment game design decision. You can't slap it onto any genre turning it into a "freemium version" without affecting its pacing, feel and design philosophy. In short, it adds grinding and waiting in order to sell you the ability to skip the grinding and waiting for often inappropriate fees. It doesn't "replace" traditional purchases because in its "micro"-transactions there is more cost hidden than any full-price cost of non-F2P (i.e subscription) games. And they're mostly designed to never feel "complete".

Look at the face. JUST LOOK IT.

You don't even have to go full Tapfish, although Zynga's model is just a shameless implementation of the system. If other companies do it, they mostly just hide the same principle in slightly more elegant ways. I'm worried about the future of multiplayer games and, eventually, singleplayer games. It's such a powerful trend on the PC it makes "consolization" and DLC-milking look tame in comparison.

One could argue a player is not forced into buying these options, that it’s a players choice. This is true, but I can’t help but see these choices as psychological wiles. Note that most F2P’s introduce some kind of restriction before ever giving you this "choice." They sell you the idea of getting rid of this restriction they themselves introduced to make you buy an option to remove, or more commonly, temporarily alleviate this restriction.

Game design wise, the item unlocking mechanic was only ever introduced as an additional layer to keep players motivated. But it was intended to eventually give you access to a whole inventory after a sane amount of playtime. But those requirements are becoming insane. You either have to play unholy amounts of time (like really absurd amounts), play a boring trade/crafting meta-game you never asked for... or pay up. That sense of completeness, of simply having all if not most options available, is gone. It's an ridiculous task to even attempt in most F2P games.

So why doesn't £50 (or heck, even an additional extra yearly cost for new content and support), give me flat-rate access to every game-changing item? Because for companies it's an important enticement factor to get some people to pay hundreds of whatever currency. There are only two choices if you don't want to constantly feel like missing out: Make the game your life or pay overprice.

An example: Lord of the Rings Online (LOTRO). People that played the game before it went free who purchased any expansion like Mines of Moria suffered dearly. When most these people heard it was free, sthey fired up their accounts again to try this freshly revised model. What LOTRO didn't say is the first 30-35 levels are free but after that, you don't get quests in other zones. Yes. You are expected to mindlessly grind mobs or purchase quest packs for those zones. It made anyone feel stupid for giving them their money for expansions they paid for previously. They couldn't touch their own expansion unless they grinded out about 15 levels without any help from quests.

I’d prefer something like this: give me the option to pay a monthly fee for everything necessary to play the game to its fullest extent. Have item shops, but dear lord please don’t put godly weapons/armor or stat enhancing tokens in there. Most F2P games use “pay2win” strategies to further drive their money-engine. Tribes suffers badly from this. If I see a "Sword of I Can't Lose" in an item shop I quit or tell myself "Ok, no PvP for me in this game since victories are solely dependent on how thick your wallet is." Cosmetic items are GREAT however. I've spent money in a few cash shops just to get some cool looking gear. I enjoy being low level and running around like I'm from some royal family with sumptuous ornate clothing. But keep in mind I mean cosmetic. No drastic stats changers just looks.

This is partly true. But still, the game is quite easy.

Am I cheap? Would that matter? I'm not. But if I walk up to a jar of candy that says “FREE!” and I grab a piece, then someone says "You need to pay 50 cents for the rights to unwrap it" then fuck that. It's only 50 cents but I feel deceived and the last thing I'd want to do is hand them the money.

The overall vibe of the model seems to be that F2P is “great” when at least it's "done right". Games like TF2 don’t inherently suffer from this problem, as the sheer amount items you get just by playing can make a player feel  satisfied, and if you’re really bothered by items that other players have and you don’t, just play on Vanilla servers. Problem solved.

I can count on one hand F2P games that manage to do freemium “right” though. Companies wanting to jump on the F2P bandwagon are constantly more and more aggressive with their buying options and pricing strategies. Literally raping the definition out of anything “free” in their game. What makes it worse, many of them look ugly.

Why so fugly bro?

The Hero Engine. The most commonly used game engine for MMO’s, and Jesus Christ am I sick of it. It’s overused, ugly, and it seems incapable to display anything other than a cartoony-looking art style. While I have no inherent problem with cartoony art styles, when any visual style squeezes into most MMO’s that’s when I utterly despise it.

Elder Scrolls Online (EOS), looks EXACTLY if not pretty fucking similar to SWTOR, Rift, the list goes on. And notice how I’m only comparing the big titles here, lesser known MMO’s are even worse. Why though? Because they use this dammed Hero Engine. Many MMO’s aren’t in the same graphics race as you find amongst many regular console or PC games. MMO’s seem to have halted at a certain graphical limit and its bizarre how they use almost identical art styles.

Understandably this is due to MMO development lengths being far greater than regular games. EOS first started development in 2007. But that doesn’t excuse them entirely. First: don’t use the Hero Engine. Second, strive to make art style of your games at least SOMEWHAT different, fuck.

Lastly, games (mostly PC) are often made to be based on hardware 2-3 years ahead of the start of development. Why? Think about it, the hardware available for PC’s 2-3 years ago was VERY different to today. Developers take this into consideration. While it becomes significantly difficult to predict hardware development paces over 5-10 years, why do they still come out looking like they came from 2005? I am aware of their difficulties in doing this because of the network-dependant nature of MMOs, but this has always been the case since the beginning. At least use something like the Unreal Engine (Tribes?).

Are you finished you entitled fool?

Yes, that just about wraps up my rant. It was a long one, and while those reading probably have a bunch of disagreements with what I’ve wrote, I emphasize this rant has come from purely my experiences with MMO’s. So ha.

In the meantime, I shall keep throwing my money at Tribes because even though it pretty much makes you win for buying shit, that game is just too annoyingly fun.