What do you want in an MMO?

Over the past few days/weeks, I've seen a lot of posts/threads from various sources where people have been listing their wants/needs/questions about the different mechanics in FF14 and what they expect. Some I don't agree with and some I do. I'm not going to list anything specific.

My question is what makes an MMO something that you would desire to play? Is it the storyline? Lore? Is it the endgame? The RP community?

I'm posting this here since there are quite a number of new arrivals to Eorzea that cannot post in other forums yet due to the rediculous restrictions.

I'll go first since I started it.

For me, it really is not any one specific thing. In terms of FF14, I enjoy the gatherin and crafting classes (which I've only recently started) and the story is fun. I've never had any false expectations that instance farming would not be required in order to participate in end-game. That's the same for any MMO I've ever played.

My first post.

I will keep this specific to FFXIV as it is right now.

I want less hand-holding. It's cool if SE wants to show me exactly what to do, where to go, etc. During the main quest to help keep the progression to end on a nice, smooth pass. But can I please have some challenging, optional side quests along the way to entertain me. Perhaps some puzzles and/or riddles to solve. Easter egg type material.

I am new to this game, so perhaps I am missing something. However, I have not came across topics that discuss anything to the contrary of what i have just referred to in any forum.

Here's where to go when faced with Lodestone posting restrictions. You can even tell them I sent you! Naw. Just be careful of Gara. He's dangerous business.

As far as what I want in an mmo. I want to be rich and make an mmorpg to my own specifications in a legalless society where I'm Queen. Other than that everything seems to be just fine but I would like to see a sandbox world expansion plan for FFXIV. Yeah I'm not living in reality much.

BTW to avoid double posting on Lodestone just edit your first post - then it lets you add more words. Have a nice day!

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Originally Posted by CharlesHustle

My first post.

I will keep this specific to FFXIV as it is right now.

I want less hand-holding. It's cool if SE wants to show me exactly what to do, where to go, etc. During the main quest to help keep the progression to end on a nice, smooth pass. But can I please have some challenging, optional side quests along the way to entertain me. Perhaps some puzzles and/or riddles to solve. Easter egg type material.

I am new to this game, so perhaps I am missing something. However, I have not came across topics that discuss anything to the contrary of what i have just referred to in any forum.

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One of the best games that I have encountered for a situation that you're referring to is The Secret World. The game play didn't interest me much but it has some of the best and most interesting quests that I've ever been involved with.

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Originally Posted by JemC

Here's where to go when faced with Lodestone posting restrictions. You can even tell them I sent you! Naw. Just be careful of Gara. He's dangerous business.

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Thanks, but I already know about the posting restrictions. I was just posting my expectations in a separate post for a reason =)

Personally I enjoy a bit of everything, mostly PvE stuff, enjoying the story, loving playing a good MMO with a controller! I think the biggest thing for me is having a friendly and supportive bunch of people to help out though. I stopped playing WoW years ago because there were too many eedjits. So far everyone in Eorzea seems pretty awesome though!

I'd love to see an mmo incorporate some real life bits in it. Like a monetary system where there's only a set amount, and natural resources that actually once are mined up is the end of a certain ore, so u must smelt items down. It'd make working class a lot more important.

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Originally Posted by Diablo-Cyrus

I'd love to see an mmo incorporate some real life bits in it. Like a monetary system where there's only a set amount, and natural resources that actually once are mined up is the end of a certain ore, so u must smelt items down. It'd make working class a lot more important.

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You may like Eve Online. The economy and industrial systems in that game are quite seriously designed.

It's a horrible community though, in lots of ways.

What I want from an MMO is basically what I got from City of Heroes. The genre isn’t vital, so I don’t need a superhero setting, but I’ll mention that game to forestall the cries of ‘You’ll never get that in an MMO!’ that’ll possibly come in response to my list, since that game did deliver. And here’s the list:

I want choice, as much as possible. I want to be able to customise how my character looks without having to worry about the statistics of whatever I’m wearing, for example. I also want to be able to choose how I level. If I want to get from 1 to the level cap purely by hunting trash mobs in the overworld, let me. If I want to solo everything and limit my socializing to chat channels, let me. If I want to PvP, let me. If I DON’T want to PvP, I should never have to.

I want lots and lots of narrative delivery mechanisms. For me, story is King. I want briefings, I want speech bubbles for NPCs and mobs if they have vocal cords (and I want to see speech-capable mobs talking during combat as I batter them into defeat – movie sword fights always come with banter, right? Lok at The Princess Bride), I want to pick up books and be able to read them, I want to have clues drop, and I want them all to be in the form of TEXT. Cutscenes generally blow chunks IMO (and the CoH ones were no exception), partly because they can go on too long and mainly due to the impossibility of having my own character say anything. Watching the cutscenes in FF14 are painful. The NPCs wax lyical, voice acting like hams, and meanwhile my avatar nods and gurns away mutely. Since he’s a huge marauder, he comes across like Lennie from Of Mice And Men, only more simple.

I want everything to be soloable. EVERYTHING. Quests, dungeons, endgame raids, everything. MMOs are badly in need of a staple of video gaming – a difficulty slider. I don’t need uber-loot, so if that’ll piss off the hardcore, scale the rewards along with the difficulty. Leet McJenkins can have his +9000 axe of Arathapathathath for defeating the Ultimate Warrior God in a 24-man uber-group, I’ll be happy with a small statless badge that says ‘I beat the Ultimate Warrior God in Pussy-Mode’ and nothing else. I do like a modicum of challenge, so I don’t need literal God Mode for raids, lol, but tbh, if someone else does, then fine, let them have it for no reward at all. There are folks in the world who are physically disabled in ways that make operating keyboards and mice, or controllers difficult. Maybe their dollars are wanted too, eh? Scale challenge AND reward, and you can actually cater for everyone (apart from those who want something for nothing, which is a criticism often thrown at suggestions like this, ironically). In CoH, I killed a god, on my own, with a god-killing sword. After fighting my way solo through a massive army of demons and then jumping down his throat. I want an MMO to give me a sense of epicness, a sense that I'm INDIANA KIRKWALKER and I'm SAVING THE WORLD, rather than I'm one of the Magnificent Twenty-Four. In FF, I do appreciate the low dungeon number reqs in the dungeons Ive done so far. Being the ONLY tank gave me some of that sense of being solely responsible for something important.

I want a great community. I want the playerbase to be mature, enthusiastic, and welcoming and tolerant of newcomers, new suggestions and noobs in general. I want the playerbase to be active in chat. I want to feel like I’m in a world full of PEOPLE not bots. It was a week before I saw my first human say anything in the chat window apart from Gold Sellers. I want everyone in the game to be able to say ‘Wow, this game gives me exactly what I want’, and therefore I’m surrounded by players who all love it as much as I do.

I want to get around QUICKLY. After CoH died, I tried WoW, and dubbed it World of Running because the travel was so hideously slow. Alas, I now know that WoWs travel speeds are standard for MMOs, and IMO it’s horrendous. Why do I have to traipse around for ages to get to where the fun is? If they have to eke out more sub time from me by turning my Sprint off for 5 seconds out of every 20, then that’s frankly a pathetic admission that their game doesn’t deliver. Make normal movement as fast or even a bit faster than Sprint, ditch Sprint altogether, and give me a bloody fast mount at lvl 20. I like to explore, when I want to explore. When I want to get from NPC Briefmaster to Quest Target Von Villain, who is 2 maps away, and I’ve already been there, I don’t want to explore. I don’t want to explore my way to the cinema on a Saturday night, I want to get a taxi there and then enjoy the movie. Likewise, if I’m doing a quest, let me get to the damn quest at a faster pace than ‘quite poorly snail’.

I want to feel like a BADASS hero as soon as possible. Being sent to literally pick up shit, count planks, and kill ladybirds is demeaning. Doubly so when I get killed by a mushroom at lvl 3 lol. If you’re going to make me fight squirrels, make me fight an ARMY of squirrels, so I feel at least like I’m fighting against overwhelming odds. ‘Kill 3 squirrels’ is not going to show up in any epic adventurer’s tale, is it? I could probably kill 3 squirrels in reality as long as I had my shoes on, and I’m not a hulking brute with an axe. The mob-to-PC ratio of a good MMO should IMO be 3-1. I should be confident that I can take 3 mobs at the same time if they’re the same level as me. Drop a level or two, I should be able to take 6 of them, or 9. I’m a tank, read that again, I’m a TANK. I can keep going with a horde of damn squirrels swarming all over my iron body. I like that in FF14 the mobs ignore me when I’m running about, apart from the clearly marked ones I call ‘grumpy old mobs’ because they always do attack you when you get too close, incidentally.

I want to collect stuff. Achievements, badges, call them whatever you like. I want to have lists I can tick off to say ‘aha, only X more squirrels and I get my ‘Kill XXX squirrel badge!’ I really like that FF has exploration points on the map, and I get achievements for triggering them, but it’d be nice if there was also a piece of text somewhere telling me some lore about the place in question. Gimme more lore! I also want each mob to have a description field which contains text about whatever it is. I want my oen character to have a biography field where I can write his backstory if he has one. I want to click on a player, and read his bio, and think ‘cool, we got a lovely creative playerbase here’

I want to not feel like I’m THE ONE, but also, him over there, he’s THE ONE too, and oh yeah, so’s HE etc. Aion Online, I played for a month, and there was this one quest where you meet a wounded elf or whatever in the forest, crouched in a hollow tree, and he begs you to go get some medicine by squeezing the glands of woodland sloths or something, and he says he’ll crawl to a safe place to meet you, oh, he’s dying, hurry please, you’re his only hope yada yada. SO off you go and slay 5 moles or whatever, and when you go to where he is, there’s a queue of PCs all queuing up to give him the medicine. Literally, a queue. I thought ‘hm, this guy’s obviously a drug dealer who’s found a great way to con players into collecting his product’. It was crap. I'm not a huge fan of overworld stuff, basically, apart from trash mob hunts, because it breaks my immersion that it’s MY story when I can clearly see other players doing the same stuff as me. Instances, I love em.

I want a good quest-sharing and mentoring/sidekick system. If I’m a lvl 40, and my friend is a lvl 5, I want to be able to group with him, share our quests, and when we do his, I’m not one-shotting everything with a sneeze, and when we do mine, he’s able to get some licks in. FF can obviously cope with artificial level alteration as my lvl 20 Marauder turned into a lvl 1 when he equipped a Gladiator’s sword, so it can be done.

I want player-generated content to be possible through a well –made simple yet deep PGC system. I want to write quests, I want to customize NPCs, I want to write the text for their briefings and the debriefings and the in-quest clues and set the goals and the mechanics of the quests. It doesn’t have to be complicated or unbalanced in terms of putting things in the overworld, they can all be instanced through a magical gemstone or some guff. I want to write my own quests and have other players play them and give me feedback, and I want to play quests designed by other players too.

Gimme all of this and I’ll give you, for as long as your servers run, what I gave NCSoft for 8 years without ever dropping my sub. My money, my passion, my friends, and my loyalty.

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Originally Posted by Flynny

Personally I enjoy a bit of everything, mostly PvE stuff, enjoying the story, loving playing a good MMO with a controller! I think the biggest thing for me is having a friendly and supportive bunch of people to help out though. I stopped playing WoW years ago because there were too many eedjits. So far everyone in Eorzea seems pretty awesome though!

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This. I cancelled my WoW subscription because started to feel like a job with all those missions and the community is not friendly at all. So far I love this game. What I like is long dungeons with cool boss fight that you need to move a lot or do some kind of mechanic. That's why I love Titan so much, some people hate it but I think it's an awesome boss fight.

I actually really like the storyline, which is why I like the final fantasy mmo's. I also like a game with a decent variety of endgame events, so that I'm not just doing the same one or two things over and over with no variations. There also has to be a decent playerbase where there's enough people to get things done, and plenty of nice, helpful players. I like group play, I don't want to have to level all or most of the way to max by myself because that's tiring and boring, and lonely, and most of the time if I find myself having to do that I'll quit before I reach 20. If I wanted to solo a character that bad I wouldn't be playing an mmo. Then again, my first mmo was FFXI so I tend to base a lot of my expectations around the things I liked about it, the job system, the complexity of some of the mission quest lines and fights etc.

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Originally Posted by Ecosmith

You may like Eve Online. The economy and industrial systems in that game are quite seriously designed.

It's a horrible community though, in lots of ways.

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Never heard of it, I only game on ps4 anymore. I got tired of having to upgrade my computer ever 6 months in order to play the best games. I'll look into it though and see what ur talking about. Didn't know they made a game like that. To me I think the idea of it is better than actually doing it... It'd be hard to pull off and still have the game enjoyable.

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Originally Posted by Failia

One of the best games that I have encountered for a situation that you're referring to is The Secret World. The game play didn't interest me much but it has some of the best and most interesting quests that I've ever been involved with.

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I will second this. The Secret World has 'Investigation Missions', where you have to basically investigate mysteries. You might find an esoteric manuscript, for example, which has some sort of cryptic reference. To decipher it, you often have to use real-world knowledge or gooel something. One of them had numbers in a message which turned out to be a code for a certain psalm in the bible, and when you read that it suggested a location in game to go to, and when you got there, there are paintings on the wall, just scenery, but actually one of them depicts something odd that leads you somewhere else, etc.

They are very cool indeed. The rest of the game is also ok-ish, but it has elements I didn't like. Travel is again stupidly slow, and compounding this, mobs attack you no matter what level you are (so you get 'ankle-biter' syndrome when you're lvl 50 and you run through a lvl 1-10 zone and hordes of zombies swarm around you not doing any damage, but if you get attacked Sprint detoggles, so its annoying as hell.

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Originally Posted by Diablo-Cyrus

Never heard of it, I only game on ps4 anymore. I got tired of having to upgrade my computer ever 6 months in order to play the best games. I'll look into it though and see what ur talking about. Didn't know they made a game like that. To me I think the idea of it is better than actually doing it... It'd be hard to pull off and still have the game enjoyable.

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Wow, you've never heard of EVE Online? If you want to hear about some real drama, look up what happens with some of the players. If you think you've seen drama, wait till you read some of the espionage some people have done.

Little girls...? :>

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Originally Posted by Ecosmith

What I want.....

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So THAT's why you're like they way you are lol.

CoH spoiled you after so many years and now you have high expectations on what other MMOs should be like. I gave CoH the old college try but I just couldn't get into it. I still see copies of it on shelves in stores from time to time.

A list of MMOs I've tried:

Acheron's Call
Everquest
Anarchy Online (I was in that for almost, hrm, 6 years?)
Customary Wow appearance for a year
Second Life
Champions Online
Perfect World (you haven't met a grind until you've seen this)
TERA
DC Universe Online
The Secret World
And of course, no, Final Fantasy 14

Lol yeah, hey say nothing lives up to your first love.

Although CoH wasn't strictly my first, I guess. I've played:
Ultima Online
Everquest 1 and 2
Eve Online for a year before CoH and then again for 6 months last year
Rift
Conan
LotRO
D&DO
Wow (3 attempts, 3 months longest stint)
Aion Online
The Secret World
Fallen Earth
Star Trek Online
Champions
DCUO (yeuch)
Second Life
Toontown Online (my gf played it actually lol)
Path of Exile (for ten minutes)