What is an MMO?

shaw487b16_ESO

To me a successful MMO is a game that appeals to the complete range of it's customer base.

The ability for everyone to be able to reach maximum level with an interesting storyline is paramount (no matter the skill level).

At this point the base splits, between the hardcore gamers who want increasing difficulty, and the casual gamer who just wants to have fun.

ESO delivers to the hardcore gamer in spades, after V1 everything becomes a huge grind - tough mobs, little xp gain, and dungeons that require a lot of tactics and group play to succeed.

Unfortunately, for the casual gamer, everything stops at V1, the ratio of enjoyment and progression compared to difficulty starts to grow exponentially in the wrong direction, to the point that someone who has only a few hours a night to spare to play starts to wonder why they are bothering.

This is not a bad thing, as long as you have the time to commit, which only a few do.

For the rest of us we have to either accept that it will take us months to get up the Veteran levels or to just throw in the towel and give up.

Don't get me wrong, I love this game, I just don't have the time to play that gives me any headway and as such I don't see the point in playing anymore. When a game becomes more chore than fun it fails to interest me as a casual gamer.

I imagine that any hardcore gamer reading this post will happily say good riddance to me, but try to remember this one fact.

Without a large customer base Zenimax cannot afford to develop the game and it becomes free to play rather than subscription. This is then followed by the likely dumbing down of the game to attract more players and ESO becomes another Rift.

My suggestion is that that you make levelling easier and then make the endgame (dungeons, adventure zones, etc...) much harder so that we feel we have accomplished something and actually care about staying.

That way you give the hardcore gamers their tough area and still keep the appeal to the casual gamer.

It's up to you, if you think I am wrong then we just have to wait six months to find out.

ers101284b14_ESO

Wrong. According to the dictionary.

MMO-Place
A magical place where people go to hate everything.

Devoid of intelligence or soul

Tis a silly place

Example- This MMO is **** garbage and anyone who **** likes it is a fanboy **** **** **** piece of **** ***** ***** stupid **** ****

Maou

Is it wrong that right after I read the title I immediately wanted to say "A miserable little pile of secrets"?

ers101284b14_ESO

Maou wrote: »

Is it wrong that right after I read the title I immediately wanted to say "A miserable little pile of secrets"?

Everything you know is wrong. Up is down black is white and right is wrong.

Jeremy

shaw487b16_ESO wrote: »

To me a successful MMO is a game that appeals to the complete range of it's customer base.

The ability for everyone to be able to reach maximum level with an interesting storyline is paramount (no matter the skill level).

At this point the base splits, between the hardcore gamers who want increasing difficulty, and the casual gamer who just wants to have fun.

ESO delivers to the hardcore gamer in spades, after V1 everything becomes a huge grind - tough mobs, little xp gain, and dungeons that require a lot of tactics and group play to succeed.

Unfortunately, for the casual gamer, everything stops at V1, the ratio of enjoyment and progression compared to difficulty starts to grow exponentially in the wrong direction, to the point that someone who has only a few hours a night to spare to play starts to wonder why they are bothering.

This is not a bad thing, as long as you have the time to commit, which only a few do.

For the rest of us we have to either accept that it will take us months to get up the Veteran levels or to just throw in the towel and give up.

Don't get me wrong, I love this game, I just don't have the time to play that gives me any headway and as such I don't see the point in playing anymore. When a game becomes more chore than fun it fails to interest me as a casual gamer.

I imagine that any hardcore gamer reading this post will happily say good riddance to me, but try to remember this one fact.

Without a large customer base Zenimax cannot afford to develop the game and it becomes free to play rather than subscription. This is then followed by the likely dumbing down of the game to attract more players and ESO becomes another Rift.

My suggestion is that that you make levelling easier and then make the endgame (dungeons, adventure zones, etc...) much harder so that we feel we have accomplished something and actually care about staying.

That way you give the hardcore gamers their tough area and still keep the appeal to the casual gamer.

It's up to you, if you think I am wrong then we just have to wait six months to find out.

If you love the game and it's fun to play then you why does it matter if it takes a long time?

shaw487b16_ESO

The problem is with the outlandish power up of mobs after V1. You can have a character level through to V2 and then he/she hits a wall.

At this point you either group and run dungeons or resign yourself to dying again and again every time you meet more than two mobs in a group.

Even when you kill them the xp gain is so small it seems almost pointless, and this extends to the gain from completing quests as well.

to give an example. I spent 3 hours in a V2 map running mobs and quests and only got a tiny bit of xp gain, but then I ran Spindle a couple of time with guildies and got much more.

Basically, the game stops any solo play after V2 and becomes a group game. This is great for those with many player friends, but if you just log on for a few hours at night to play and get nowhere on your own the game becomes pointless.

Dayv

I don't really mid how long it takes to get levels in VR, but the difficulty gradient of VR compared to 1-50 is insane for a mass market game. I'm sure ZOS knows this already but they're reluctant to admit it. Likewise, making all mobs in Cyrodiill VR5 was a stupid move to. It was a place where people of different levels could group together and do quests, but now anything other than zerging is off-limits to lower-level characters. And let's be honest, anyone already in VR has put enough hours in since release to hardly be considered a casual player.

shaw487b16_ESO

I don't know about that, I am a casual player, but I started in pre-game launch and have only recently reached V2.

It's at this point that I have noticed the difficulty gradient increase so much that it is vastly unbalanced compared to the previous gameplay.

The increase in difficulty makes it difficult for a 'casual gamer' like me to progress any further.

Jeremy

shaw487b16_ESO wrote: »

The problem is with the outlandish power up of mobs after V1. You can have a character level through to V2 and then he/she hits a wall.

At this point you either group and run dungeons or resign yourself to dying again and again every time you meet more than two mobs in a group.

Even when you kill them the xp gain is so small it seems almost pointless, and this extends to the gain from completing quests as well.

to give an example. I spent 3 hours in a V2 map running mobs and quests and only got a tiny bit of xp gain, but then I ran Spindle a couple of time with guildies and got much more.

Basically, the game stops any solo play after V2 and becomes a group game. This is great for those with many player friends, but if you just log on for a few hours at night to play and get nowhere on your own the game becomes pointless.

So your real beef is that it becomes to difficult to solo not that it requires a lot of time it seems.

I personally have liked this type of design in other games. One of my favorite things about old-school Final Fantasy 11 for example was that it was so difficult to solo in that it incentivized actual multi-play. But I haven't reached veteran ranks yet so I can't really comment with any credibility.

david271749

Dayv wrote: »

Likewise, making all mobs in Cyrodiill VR5 was a stupid move to. It was a place where people of different levels could group together and do quests, but now anything other than zerging is off-limits to lower-level characters.

I don't know what they were thinking on this one. I guess just catering to the croud who rushed to VR?

shaw487b16_ESO

[/quote]So your real beef is that it becomes to difficult to solo not that it requires a lot of time it seems.

I personally have liked this type of design in other games. One of my favorite things about old-school Final Fantasy 11 for example was that it was so difficult to solo in that it incentivized actual multi-play. But I haven't reached veteran ranks yet so I can't really comment with any credibility.[/quote]

Yes, I guess you could say that. In the end what is the point of a game that offers a level progression that cannot be achieved by a player unless they group?

It takes a lot away from the game when suddenly you must group to be able to level when you were able to do so by yourself a few moments earlier?

alphawolph

At the point I can't solo anymore they stop getting my dollars. I'm still low level and enjoying it immensely, but I solo when I play, 99% of the time.

shaw487b16_ESO

It's not impossible, you just have to avoid any mob group larger than two whilst soloing.

Also, the ability of healer mobs in V2 and above is nuts, I fought one solo and they healed faster than I could do damage to them, and they kept healing even after any natural magicka limitation should have stopped them.

Try killing a tank and dps whilst their healer regens constantly and you run out of stamina and magicka? In the end I figured out how to win but 10 minutes killing three trach mobs for almost no xp kinda seemed pointless to me.

Jeremy

I believe soloing should be possible. I just like it when it's made difficult enough that there is an incentive to join with other players.

I think this is important for MMORPGs, else they end up just being single player games.

Ragekniv

ESO is a kindercare MMO. Nothing about ESO is hardcore!

EQ:

Played EQ on Rallos Zek (PvP) as a level 65 gnome necromancer.

No newbie safety zone, a level 65 toon could smoke any level one. You lost experience when you died, had to travel naked by foot to the zone to find your body before it decayed with all your gear and coin and players could perma camp your corpse until you had piles of corpses and lost levels of experience or logged off.

You could loot an item from the player you defeated as long as it wasn't bound and take their coin as well.

Eve online:

Train for ages, spend all your hard earned money to build a ship and lose it while warping into a pirate laden trap. Oh, and have them ransom the rest of your money from the bank or have your pod destroyed and lose all your implants! Even worse, players would sometimes take the ransom money and still destroy your pod!

Just two examples of hardcore MMOs!

peter.harkessnrb18_ESO

Crucially, MMO's or any game for that matter, need to be fun. Sadly ESO isn't, or at least it becomes less and less fun the more you play it. I've lost interest on my 3rd class into VR territory. Its unrewarding, tedious and disgracefully unbalanced.

The game is a total failure. Sorry but this conclusion is really the only one a customer can draw after the time I have invested in it.

Eris

peter.harkessnrb18_ESO wrote: »

Crucially, MMO's or any game for that matter, need to be fun. Sadly ESO isn't, or at least it becomes less and less fun the more you play it. I've lost interest on my 3rd class into VR territory. Its unrewarding, tedious and disgracefully unbalanced.

The game is a total failure. Sorry but this conclusion is really the only one a customer can draw after the time I have invested in it.

The conclusion that YOU can draw. I've been playing since pre-launch and been having a great time.

gurugeorgey

MMOs used to be first of all virtual worlds. That meant, somewhere where you kind of "lived" with other players, interacted a lot with other players. It also meant a place where combat and progression weren't the only games in town. It also meant that a lot of the "story" of your life in that virtual world was comprised of your interaction with other players, not just collecting things-to-do from quest dispensers.

MMOs have become something else entirely, and in becoming that, have almost entirely lost their "magic". They are now focussed mainly on soloing, on dev-created story, on character progression and collecting shinies. The sense of "living" in a virtual world, another place, has almost disappeared.

And this isn't a problem solely related to casual players. People often had no more time in the old days than they have now.

Ideally, it would be great to have the best of both worlds, have great dev-created story content (and ESO does have some good stuff) as well as content that players co-create based on dev-created tools; but as experience shows, dev resources and time are limited, and usually they can only focus on a few things, and because everyone's been chasing the potentially huge market that they think WoW showed exists, most developers have gone down what is, to all intents and purposes, a blind alley.

MMOs are finished. The only good MMOs from now on are going to be niche - not niche as second-best, in lieu of being the "WoW beaters" they hoped to be, but niche by design, appealing to players who actually enjoy playing with other people, and playing in a virtual world together.

stevenpotter321b14_ESO

I miss the old days of MMOs, while I don't want to go back to the days of staring at a spellbook for 5-10 minutes waiting on mana, or loading up spell gems to pass the time, I do miss the dangerous feel that overland zones had, mobs back then actually did require teamwork. Mobs were also extremely social, and quickly brought friends with them. They roamed. . . . one second you were fine and not paying attention, the next the mob switched course and ran into you. Back then there was more than simply tank/aoe/heal. Different mobs had their own loot tables so you were always wondering what such and such might have this time.

Games don't have to go back to taking forever to level, but they need to encourage people to play together for rewards. MMOs have become too clinical now, mobs stand here, always. Players run in, throw down as many aoes and dps as quickly as possible, rinse/repeat. Break the cycle.

LIQUID741

Don't forget this game has one of the worst grouping tools ever go make it live in a MMO..2014MMO, with a POS grouping tool system. I wouldn't mind the lvling, if ESO had a grouping tool that was functional, and people wanted to use it.

But atm, it's pretty much a POS.

wafcatb14_ESO

yep EQ while it was grindy and death penalty was harsh, etc was still my fav MMO , nothing was easy even a simple run across a zone was dangerous Kithcor anyone haha .

or rare lvl 37 mobs in a lvl 13 zone and whole zone freaking out trying to avoid them . SPECS TO DOCK !

sadly games today even when people whine about how hard they are , they are still ezmode .

I actually miss mobs that would run and get help or nuke you with it`s best spell , dispel all of your groups buffs, charm your tank or healer and have them start to attack your group members , heal or buff the mobs you are fighting .

atleast these mobs dodge etc out of attacks to make it a bit more exciting games as a whole over the years get dumbed down with each new release ,

people whine it`s too hard , so anything resembling challenge is removed because games are supposed to be fun , not challenging .

however their Endgame is very lacking , i love the RvR when its not so lagged you can do stuff even on a empty map, since last patch,

but grinding the other factions zones as endgame content is just silly .basicly its like they were gona make a single player game then decided to change it to a mmo but didn`t know what to do after the story was over lol .

Ragekniv

wafcatb14_ESO wrote: »

yep EQ while it was grindy and death penalty was harsh, etc was still my fav MMO , nothing was easy even a simple run across a zone was dangerous Kithcor anyone haha .

or rare lvl 37 mobs in a lvl 13 zone and whole zone freaking out trying to avoid them . SPECS TO DOCK !

sadly games today even when people whine about how hard they are , they are still ezmode .

I actually miss mobs that would run and get help or nuke you with it`s best spell , dispel all of your groups buffs, charm your tank or healer and have them start to attack your group members , heal or buff the mobs you are fighting .

atleast these mobs dodge etc out of attacks to make it a bit more exciting games as a whole over the years get dumbed down with each new release ,

people whine it`s too hard , so anything resembling challenge is removed because games are supposed to be fun , not challenging .

however their Endgame is very lacking , i love the RvR when its not so lagged you can do stuff even on a empty map, since last patch,

but grinding the other factions zones as endgame content is just silly .basicly its like they were gona make a single player game then decided to change it to a mmo but didn`t know what to do after the story was over lol .

LOL! Specs to dock! Or train to zone!

I loved EQ. It hurt so damn bad at times but you learned to love it. A ton of sado masochistic souls were birthed by that game! Hardcore MMO players.

SFBryan18

The best part about video games is that there aren't really any rules the devs are obligated to follow. All MMO means is Massive Multiplayer Online, meaning you will play the game alone side a lot of other people. That's it. Add anything more to that definition and you are asking for every game to be a copy of games before it. I expect this game to be more like TES than any MMO you have played. There was a game called MAG on PS3. It was an MMOFPS, and had nothing to do with questing or whatever. It was all about killing.

wafcatb14_ESO

yep sadly the majority of mmos being released in the last 5 years all worry about personal story, and spoon feed you content while holding your hand dragging you from quest hub to quest hub to make sure you see all the content they want you to lvl with /yawn

Rather than have a personal story where i am, the chosen one and everyone else on my server has the same lame story and we are all the chosen one . I would rather they made it like old MMO`s where you are just a averge joe smo farmers son/daughter etc and dropped you into the game world and you were just another person living in the world creating your own adventure .

Sadly no this is not the case , MMO`s are mostly solo instanced hand holding games that happen to have other people running around next to you so they can say that it is a MMO . but the things that made old MMO`s feel like a virtual world are removed mostly in newer games these days .

Jeremy

stevenpotter321b14_ESO wrote: »

I do miss the dangerous feel that overland zones had, mobs back then actually did require teamwork. Mobs were also extremely social, and quickly brought friends with them. They roamed. . . . one second you were fine and not paying attention, the next the mob switched course and ran into you. Back then there was more than simply tank/aoe/heal. Different mobs had their own loot tables so you were always wondering what such and such might have this time.

I miss it too. And to be honest, I'm actually encouraged by some of the threads I read in these forums complaining about veteran zones because it sounds like they may bring some of this back.

In my opinion grouping needs to be fundamental to an MMORPG. Not just something on the side players can easily skip if they want to. And while the single-player experience on Elder Scrolls has been a lot more interesting and challenging than most other MMORPGs I have played - I would still prefer more group activity and team work out in the open world.

So I actually applaud Zenimax for having the courage to design the end portions of their game around groups. Because I believe this continuous pandering to the solo-player has harmed the MMO genre in some very negative ways.

novusprimeb14_ESO

Shadow Bane hard core mmo

renaud.moyneb16_ESO

Anarchy Online is over 12 years old now but still feels more "alive" and "real" than those crappy excuses for virtual worlds we get now, imho.

It was also at least 3 times the size of ESO (and I'm just talking of release state, it got even bigger later) with myriads of secrets, well hidden exp spot, dungeons, secret mobs with special loots, secret crafting recipes... it had like 12 class or so at release and every single class was NOT forced into a particular build. You could be creative...

Yes it never had a perfect class balance... but Funcom wasn't trying... At this time poeples knew you don't ask the same results from a soldier and from a burocrat... It was OBVIOUS to poeples that if you choose to play a doctor you will not equal an enforcer's DPS or a Fixer's run-speed...

Yes I miss those kind of old school MMORPG... I'm dreaming of those updated with "real" targeting and all those new dynamic mechanics like dodging and blocking...
EQ, SWG, AO, Ryzom... those were great universe before being great games... and I do believe that's why they were so great.

Now look a ESO...
It looks great, it plays great (lag aside of course...) but it is totally tasteless.

shaw487b16_ESO

Thank you all for posting, you have all made very good points, but no one has addressed the elephant in the room.

For every one hardcore MMO player who applauds forced grouping, tiny xp gain, high difficulty for solo players that V2 onwards is, there are one hundred casual gamers who shrug, turn off and go play something else.

The simple fact is that there is no money in pandering to those players who want the game as hard as possible as there are not enough of you.

So, either ESO reduces the difficulty of the Veteran levels to keep it's casual gamers or it will fail.

I'm sorry for all of you that are nostalgic for the days of EQ, but the modern business model just doesn't support it anymore.

renaud.moyneb16_ESO

Most of those old school MMO we quoted had stuff for everyone... from ultra-casuals to psycopath nolifers.
They were so big and filled with different "things" that even the hardcorest could not "finish" them in less than dozens of weeks and the casuals and the pure RPers had enought stuff to do for a life time.

This is the biggest failure of ESO : nobody , from hardcore to bad gamers, are happy. Only a fiew fans keeps theire head burried in the sand and ignore or simply don't even realise about the game's flaws.

ESO doesn't even know who it should please... it's lost.

GreySix

Ragekniv wrote: »

ESO is a kindercare MMO. Nothing about ESO is hardcore!

EQ:

Played EQ on Rallos Zek (PvP) as a level 65 gnome necromancer.

No newbie safety zone, a level 65 toon could smoke any level one. You lost experience when you died, had to travel naked by foot to the zone to find your body before it decayed with all your gear and coin and players could perma camp your corpse until you had piles of corpses and lost levels of experience or logged off.

You could loot an item from the player you defeated as long as it wasn't bound and take their coin as well.

Eve online:

Train for ages, spend all your hard earned money to build a ship and lose it while warping into a pirate laden trap. Oh, and have them ransom the rest of your money from the bank or have your pod destroyed and lose all your implants! Even worse, players would sometimes take the ransom money and still destroy your pod!

Just two examples of hardcore MMOs!

Actual war:

Your vehicle gets struck by a suicide vehicle-borne improvised explosive device, most of your crew is instantly killed or grievously maimed, and your legs are blown off.

See? It can get even worse.

steveb16_ESO46

I long for the Good Old Days of LOTRO before it went FTP. Solo challenge that might require getting some help or might not, periodic group challenges to progress the plot and rewarding instanced dungeons for those who liked that sort of thing.

And no public dungeons. Everything important was instanced with almost no limitations on grouping.

I'd have been much happier if ESO made a lot more use of instancing. Doing an heroic solo quest as part of a tidal wave of players sweeping through the place is in no way an improvement.

So much of what ESO tries that is new just doesn't work. The faction story line would work much better if quests were all instanced for up to small groups without any phase issues getting in the way.

Where ESO succeeds, such as in the quality of the faction story-line, it is despite not because of the supposed 'innovations'.