What is one aspect of MMO design past or present that wish was added or taken away.

[VelKallor]

"Oh no muh Porta Praetoria" - Use your anima. "Oh I'm in Gridania and I need to go to Limsa" - Use the freaking airship that's 20 seconds away from where you are.

Theres an airship that goes from Limsa to Porta Pretoria?

Where?

[ReynTime]

Theres an airship that goes from Limsa to Porta Pretoria?

Where?

Where did I say you were going from Limsa to PP? It took you more than half a day to read my post and you still did it wrong. My point was that there are more than enough means that do not require aetheryte teleporting to go anywhere in Eorzea and that don't require necessarily walking by foot.

And for the record it takes less than 20 minutes to get to PP by foot. Close to 10 minutes or less if you ride a mount on ground. And close to 16 if you sprint on cooldown.

[Shurrikhan]

Theres an airship that goes from Limsa to Porta Pretoria?

Where?

<See Vel's post below> (I have moved this post's original post to the hide-block below, as it's no longer needed.)

Vel, read. Or, assuming you understood what you've read, don't flagrantly replace it with what was never stated.

Again:

"Oh no muh Porta Praetoria" - Use your anima. "Oh I'm in Gridania and I need to go to Limsa" - Use the freaking airship that's 20 seconds away from where you are.

I'll even put it into simpler code for you:

To Porta Praetoria -> Anima.
To Limsa (from a capital) -> Airship.

_____________________________________

Put simply: Vel, your strawmanning is getting out of hand.

[The_Schwartz]

MMO's that didnt have a dungeon finder crash and burn. Tell a player he or she has to waste three hours trying to get a group for one instance and they will tell you "Thats way too long , I dont have that kind of time to waste doing nothing...and I sure as hell aint PAYING for it."

Ill also add that in a PAY TO PLAY MMO they have even less patience, as there is the financial factor to consider. People are PAYING, and that HAS to be respected. Taking a customer and their money for granted is a huge mistake.

I agree with the majority of this post as an older working adult with family. Games were able to survive prior to the dungeon finder systems by using LFG tags. I just find dungeon finder modules improved the User Experience (UX). Too many companies depended on their customers to design add-on's to improve the UX. Companies often disregard, ignore, or place great ideas of improvement on the backburner too often. The issue I find in most MMOs that have failed over the years is "Cookie Cutter" or "META" classes, jobs, and specs. These player's become stuck because they lack the tools of a class, job, or spec. They are often found yelling in a chat system waiting an hour+ to do a task or gain experience. Add in the rush to the top domino effect and you have created a very toxic enviroment.

I still believe games that encourage grouping / raiding over other methods to gain prestige, gear, etc. will no longer be popular as they once were. Games need to become more sandbox style of play to grab a larger audience. MMORPGs should always have a business/crafting road to victory and I still find it amazing at launch up to the launch of NGE in SWG how "Entertainers" were so popular. I have been waiting for another great sandbox experience and "New World" is not it. You should be able to improve your character in some method of playing for two to three hours a night. If the average players can play 20 hours a week thats a pretty good part time job just right there. If there is no road to improve your character within this time period without the need of raiding or partying up why even play in MMO? You could gain much more in other styles of gaming in every other style of play.

[VelKallor]

Put simply: Vel, your strawmanning is getting out of hand.

Yeah I misread that one. My bad.

Sorry.

[Shurrikhan]

Yeah I misread that one. My bad.

Sorry.

And my apologies then, for thinking the worst.

Demographics drive game design.

The average gamer is in their 30's, married, kids, job. So that changes how games are designed, how they are paced, who they are aimed at. The average gamer isnt some pimply faced teenie in school..they are adults, with busy lives and little patience for stupidity.

NO ONE wants to waste hours screaming for a group, running there, having people quit or having to leave then start that cycle all over again.

<snip>

MMO's that didnt have a dungeon finder crash and burn. Tell a player he or she has to waste three hours trying to get a group for one instance and they will tell you "Thats way too long , I dont have that kind of time to waste doing nothing...and I sure as hell aint PAYING for it."

Ill also add that in a PAY TO PLAY MMO they have even less patience, as there is the financial factor to consider. People are PAYING, and that HAS to be respected. Taking a customer and their money for granted is a huge mistake.

This is 2021. Not 2004. Game design of that type is out of date by a light year.

I agree with about 95% of this. However, I think this discourse often obfuscates something:

Though developers change to meet demographics, that adaptation isn't nearly so clean or aligned as we might imagine. Nor is all that sees change, even in a larger shift towards a particular demographic or set/intersection thereof, necessarily part of that. A great deal gets changed indirectly or even unintentionally, as if by a domino effect.

To be clear, I don't think a lack of matchmaking is some unfortunate casualty of convenience. I think it's almost purely a boon. Nor, even, is incidental socialization likely to be one such casualty.

But there's a lot to be said, on the other hand, for the sense of location, identity, character, role-play, etc., that can have its footing undercut by changes elsewhere, especially when developers lack foresight. And if there's one commonality among every MMO dev team, it's a shortage of foresight.

Similarly, we can't say that just because those elements (sense of location, world-ness, identity, etc.) can be ill-affected by convenience that they are necessarily opposed to convenience, let alone that casual players aren't interested in them.

For my part, when I was stressed out from 50+ hours of work and a painfully bipolar superior, leaving me short on both time and mood for gaming, WoW Classic was the one game I could play. That was mostly because I enjoyed the moment-to-moment experience, at least for that time, for itself and therefore felt no fear of missing out nor obligation to do anything I didn't want to. (Note here than I am a compulsively optimization-minded person in many things. When that optimization need only entail what I want to do anyways, such as engaging with combat mechanics, it's great, but when it doesn't, I quickly burn out. The only reason I don't still do each roulette each day in XIV is that I know if I let myself go back to that, I'd quickly burn out of MMOs altogether, or at least any with similar reward thresholds.)

Now, did the lack of a dungeon finder necessarily contribute positively to that? No. Though it wasn't a large deficit, either, as I could usually general chat a party together quickly enough. Travel? Maybe. I enjoyed my flights well enough, and more importantly, I enjoyed that I could really kind of pick a place to level without optimizing my time requiring, due to the low opportunity costs of drastically changing location, that I ping-ponged about the globe.

While some here are 100% waxing nostalgia on an older era, since this thread has to some degree evolved towards hot takes anyways, and others are 100% just satirizing their position (not particularly well, but /shrug), I think that's what the more serious posts here are getting at: there's a lot of charm that happened to be in older designs that can still be achieved today if it wasn't cast down by mere association. Yes, it would take more cleverness, and perhaps new forms of contextualization, to draw that charm of out of a sense of a living world, of connection to a particular place, etc., but it almost certainly can happen, and a lack thereof in recent developments cannot prove that the benefits of those aspects are, themselves, incompatible (only certain past ways of providing the contexts for them). That's especially the case when looking at a genre with few great successes and a common ground in low-development-hours-spent-per-player-hour-played.

To be fair, though, recent developments don't even necessarily lead away from aspects like joy of movement or immersion through sense of place and scale. Look at GW2 since its Path of Fire expansion. Look at BDO, its lack of instant travel, and its zone networks. Look at New World and its zone bonuses. Within the genre, XIV already stands at an at absolute extreme in its enabling one to instantly move to one of multiple sections of any particular zone. It can hardly be called representative of the larger trends in the genre.

[Gabadabs]

MMO developement superceded that outdated and archaic system years ago. No one has that kind of time to waste.

As much as I do really prefer duty finder - there's a reason that things like WoW classic have been a success. A very different focus on how the game functions makes it less appealing to the masses, but for those dedicated to it's content, it's a much more... well... social experience.
I play MMO's as a single-player affair (and have horrible social anxiety) so I hate it as a feature, but I wouldn't say it's archaic or outdated. It just fulfills a different need for a different demographic IMO.

[Shougun]

While some here are 100% waxing nostalgia on an older era, since this thread has to some degree evolved towards hot takes anyways, and others are 100% just satirizing their position (not particularly well, but /shrug), I think that's what the more serious posts here are getting at: there's a lot of charm that happened to be in older designs that can still be achieved today if it wasn't cast down by mere association. Yes, it would take more cleverness, and perhaps new forms of contextualization, to draw that charm of out of a sense of a living world, of connection to a particular place, etc., but it almost certainly can happen, and a lack thereof in recent developments cannot prove that the benefits of those aspects are, themselves, incompatible (only certain past ways of providing the contexts for them). That's especially the case when looking at a genre with few great successes and a common ground in low-development-hours-spent-per-player-hour-played.

There are so many, imo as well, really memorable charms of old design but also and I think maybe this is the key part that might be easy to miss if quickly summing up each person's post is not everyone is trying to recreate Ever Quest 1 or Mortal Online 3. From some of us is that we're not trying to recreate miss a boat takes 2 hours to get to location get nothing done that whole day because you finally get there and one person forgot invisible potions and another has their mom screaming at them in the background of their mic.

I do have strong memories of missing the boat, I do remember the first like 20+ minute journey in some of those mmos, I remember traveling with a group for 30 minutes to get to location and then having a great time (but also remember some times where it was like "you wasted me entire day" lol). There are some extreme memories I still have and laugh about. I believe, like you, that many of these can have some of their essence recaptured without having to go full hardcore full body loot 14 hour travel waste your day oh did you de-level and lose a week of exp progress???? gameplay.

I agree that DF has probably had some negative impacts on the social elements of the game, but I personally I also greatly appreciate the freedom and ease of access. So I agree there was a cost, and I can see how some people think that was too much, but for me I think 'something' that is very easy to access is nice (and actively advertising or competing for postings is not particularly what I'd like, even though that's going to clearly be the more social option). Each person here does have a variation of the goals while we remember old systems, a few posts have been a bit 'too hardcore for me!' lol, but I still know why they were wanting or reminiscing on what they said. As you point out there are definitely some people who are satirizing and some waxing on the good old days before the youngin's ruined everything, but the thread does welcome reminiscing since it basically asks one too. So that's not that weird to see, if anything I think it's surprising so many are like "oh yeah I liked this element, but I don't want it as strong as it was before, just give it a bit more of a twist into the mix". VelKallor obviously being the main replier to us, but I think he should realize that we're not all trying to raise a copy of an ancient zombie, but rather take our best joys condense them into concepts that can then still function in a modern market (though there are some that are probably envisioning a mortal online like game lol, yet it's important to realize that not every person is making exactly the same point, though I do think we're closer to the same page). I think this is largely where he and I and you and I have had a lot of miscommunication, as responses to me clearly were more on the "DONT BRING THE ZOMBIE BACK" and I'm trying to say "I don't want the zombie back, but I do think this one attack strategy it used is valuable enough we should improve it, keep our neat systems too, and marry them together- here look at these games that have done this, this is possible man, don't worry this isn't an attempt to make The Walking Dead MMO".

Like when we (maybe slightly different angles but I felt symbiosis/symmetry in ideas) mentioned traveling, it wasn't simple "yeah so like.. increase travel time by 10 fold but keep the exact same game design on everything else- it'll be great guys". It's a wish thread so we get to have profound impacts on the game when wishing lol. Like if we imagine having the GW2 mount system where mounts have what amounts to basically mini-games and opportunities for more extreme bursts of movement (some mounts jump crazy high, others really fast, tokyo drift, flying when well timed, etc).. it's entirely possible that you might remove some teleports and a walk that could have taken 5 minutes (which isn't.. extremely egregious but obviously if you do that walk 40 times a day and nothing is there but holding down W and aiming your camera it's not that fun after a while) then you give it a complimenting movement system and terrain design such that you're mentally pathing out your travel, making engaging movements, and overall turning that 5 minute walk into 2 minutes of engagement. I would much rather have still relatively simple situation of engagement (2 minutes) over 45 seconds of holding w and holding / releasing spacebar (which is our current travel algorithm to get pretty much anywhere in the game). Yet that's not the end of opportunity, with an elongated presence on the map you can spend more time adding interactivity (which GW2 tries to do as well, some of them, like the better local / world events, are quite ingenious). Now you've an engaging movement that due to it's design marrying terrain will likely change from each location, allowing you to soak the environment visually and gameplay wise, and the extra moments adds further value to ensuring each space feels more interactive in gameplay (more time in some, more value in producing higher quality worlds pace where more activities can take place).

As you mention in your last bit the fact we can reference current modern, not crazy hardcore, games, with systems that are relatively well liked by the people using them, is helpful to show no "this isn't Ever Quest 1 designs copied and pasted directly into FF", we can achieve these desires without stealing hours of your time- not only does it sound (mentally plausible, which isn't always perfect for sure) it's just plainly something we've straight up seen work. This is achievable without causing you to twiddle your thumbs for hours while you wait for the dude who forgot to bring the right potions and then instead of hoping onto the boat on time took that precious second to scream at their mom for an Oreo smoothie.

Like when I bring up roleplay elements that are pervasive throughout the game, making sure crafts, jobs, abilities, gear, places, general sense of things that have things because it 'just makes sense / it's just fun identity building'. This idea was more common in the past surely, but to say it doesn't exist now-- well clearly not, just go look at WoW which is quite full of them. Long ago before FFXV I was like "man we should have some camp sort of mechanic at these fire pits you keep putting into the game, I think it would be a really cool world building and nod to previous older FF mechanics"- then FFXV came around and I was like YEAH!! Even if it was technically more plot driven journey vibe, it doesn't have to beat the player up.

Anyway long post to say I particularly agree lol. Some of this old charm people are scared of because they remember wasting their entire day (I have done that, I don't want that again), but at least seeing a number of people it was clear that wasn't the intent but to collect some of that distilled charm and use that (not the whole bottle lol, and we /know/ that at least on some elements this is entirely possible to achieve). Those known ones of course show that at least on those elements even the developers find value in their systems. Like when I referenced Red Dead 2 it was just because they had an obsessive level of care to making sure everything felt grounded in activities, which some MMOs do better or worse at certain elements, like GW2 has great movement, imo, and WoW has pretty great interactive roleplay (which might be kind of what the essence of our old desires are coming from, trying to ground as much as possible, yet also we're trying not to lose all the modern convivences within a reasonable cost gain relationship- like for me 2 more minutes but far more engaging two more minutes is way worth losing 30 seconds of travel, but if you said "how about 2 hours" I'd be like "how about no" lol).

[VelKallor]

Ill just touch on this specifically:

there's a reason that things like WoW classic have been a success

For a very limited time. Whilst it did have a lot of success at the start, attrition has set in, the nostalgia has worn off and more than a few of the servers are ghost towns. Blizzard DID say at the start that they would keep the servers even if people left..but I think they knew that the novelty would wear off.

Heres a list.

https://www.gamepur.com/guides/world...er-populations

Nostalgia is great, its a good place to visit, a good place to wander around and remember, to smell the roses. But only a select few want to live in yesterday.

WOW Classic survived because of brand name, history , visibility, an established, long term committed, eager fanbase. WOW itself is, and was, a giant in the industry and was, in all truth, what put MMOs on the front foot.

But.

In today, in this market as it stands, a game based on Classic principles with Classic gameplay and mechanics that was also a pay to play MMO, no fanbase, no brand, no history..would have a shelf life of maybe 4 weeks..........if anyone wanted to stump up the cash to develop it in the first place. I mention pay to play as a defining factor because it is.

Not just sunk cost , but the continued financial expense of the game would have to provide a reward AND appeal to a larger audience.

MMOs cost millions to develop, design and then market. Investors want a return on their investment, shareholders the same. 2004 game design, whilst attractive from a nostalgic POV, is not viable in the modern marketplace.......... and definitely not commercially viable.

[TaleraRistain]

I think people also forget even those old school MMOs grew and changed and progressed to what we consider these QoL improvements over time. EQ added instanced dungeons with Lost Dungeons of Norrath to help ease leveling so people weren't dependent on being lucky enough to get into a group in one of a zone's limited camp spots. EQ added a hub location like the Plane of Knowledge with teleporters to the Planes because people had given feedback that no they didn't like having to take an entire night to travel to a location, camp, and finally get to fight at it the next day (which is what is what happened if you were from Qeynos and wanted to go see Unrest, for instance). EQ also eventually had to add mercenaries not just because of age or the game being dated but because it does still have insistence on older MMO ideas that modern MMOs have moved past, putting it into a niche game situation and making players leave for other more accessible games. EQ still gets expansions, but it's not really a thriving MMO and someone trying to break into the MMO market now on similar concepts (remember WildStar?) is more than likely going to fail and have to shut things down if they do not keep these QoL improvements in mind.