What are the impediments to designing the ultimate game?

[Eraden]

I think everyone has experienced playing a new MMO and finding themselves disappointed because certain features were lacking or outright omitted. I also suspect that there are a lot of MMOs out there that have done at least one or two things amazingly well and have been acknowledged by their players to be exemplary in those aspects. My question to all of you is this: Is it not possible to combine the best features of various games into a single brand new game that fulfills the desires of the player community?

Think about a game that would have the glam and storage system of GWII, the detailed storylines and world building of FFXIV, housing from whatever game is considered tops in that aspect, and the combat system from a game that excels in that aspect. I think if you polled the playing community, you could easily drum up a shopping list of features and the games which do them best. On the surface it seems so easy a task with the best features all staring us in our faces. So what is the issue preventing the ultimate game from being created?

Is it development cost? Is it matters of IP? Is it that all these features might rely on coding tricks that would render them incompatible with each other? Is it lack of interest on the part of companies? After the disaster that was New World, I am seriously wondering if it is even possible these days for companies to take on such a task without messing it up. So, folks, what do you think? What is preventing the ultimate MMO from being created?

[Espon]

The problem is difference of opinions. People want different things from a game, so you cannot satisfy everyone without extremely bloating the game. And not just players, but the developers as well.

A company also has a limited number resources; be it money, people, or simply time. You can only throw so much money and people at a game before it all starts to bottleneck. You want the game to be a quality product and not riddled with bugs and other issues. The more that gets added at once, the more testing is required.

[Mikey_R]

The main impediment is that there is no such thing. By creating the 'ultimate' game you imply your game will please everyone, or at least the majority of people and this is just in the MMO crowd. You bring up some points, however, you never looked at the main component, the combat. What game would you base it on? Everyone has different opinions on what they want the combat to be, how it should play etc. With such a broad range of expectations, you cannot please everyone and so you cannot make the ultimate game just by its very definition.

[Vidu]

The problem is difference of opinions. People want different things from a game, so you cannot satisfy everyone without extremely bloating the game. And not just players, but the developers as well.

Just to ass an example here:

the detailed storylines and world building of FFXIV

This is already a "controversial" feature of FFXIV since there are a lot of people who dont care about the story and want to jump straight to endgame - at the same time there are a lot of people who enjoy the story or play mainly because of the story (and care less about endgame). Trying to really sastify both cmaps seems like not such a great idea to me - I mean: Why would you if you could just make to different games that excel in their respectives aspects (story/endgame) while sprinkling in a little bit of the other.

[Eraden]

The main impediment is that there is no such thing. By creating the 'ultimate' game you imply your game will please everyone, or at least the majority of people and this is just in the MMO crowd. You bring up some points, however, you never looked at the main component, the combat. What game would you base it on? Everyone has different opinions on what they want the combat to be, how it should play etc. With such a broad range of expectations, you cannot please everyone and so you cannot make the ultimate game just by its very definition.

Surely you could poll the player community and find out if there is some kind of consensus on these various features. Even if there were no clear choices in terms of popularity, the raw data from such a survey should probably provide some insight into what most of the players would want. I guess in this context, for me, the ultimate game would be the one that could satisfy the largest amount of players.

[Dzian]

I'd say the first and biggest one is Knowing who you want to build the ultimate game for. (know your audience).
Building the ultimate game for "everyone" is basically Impossible.
Building the ultimate game for lets say "Final Fantasy Fans" is easier.

Been a lot of articles around lately about how Elden Ring is teaching the industry this lesson... It doesn't try to cater to EVERYONE It just tries to be the best game it can for its target audience and it's success has not only smashed that but also spilled over into players who are new to that style of game.. It's not the only gsameto do this either. God of War did the same thing not so long ago and there's another big one I forget the name of as well.

SE's biggest problem is it tries to csater to everyone and thats disasterous in every aspect of life and business.

You would never open a restaurant that caters to everyone and has Chinese food, Indian food, Italian food, traditional English food, Steaks, Turkish food, Polish food etc etc
Having a menu of over 1,000 dishes but all pretty average. You'd go out of business very very quickly..

Open a restaurant that caters to a specific style of food though where you may have only 15-20 items on the menu but all of a super high quality and business will be booming...

SE is much the same with FFXIV in trying to cater to everyone it ends up boring and unimpressive. Which is why player retention is such a big issue.

The industry will learn eventually though, especially when basically every so called "mainstream" AAA franchise released recently flops and fails to hit sales targets but more "niche" titles like Elden Ring and God of War. blow away all expectations and are hugely popular..

[Serious-Cat]

The impediment is the consumers xD Its impossible to have the ultimate game because for every like there's a dislike and the attempt to please everybody in general isn't good business sense because its extremely resource intensive to produce and maintain.

Also due to maximizing profit reasons, there will hardly be any real innovative products in the near future. Profit margins are tight and companies wouldn't risk venturing into new territories . This is why so many mmo players fall to those scam kickstarter mmo's that promises the best of everything because they want to believe. All we will be getting from big corporations will be the safe, familiar and tested products

[GeminiReed]

Surely you could poll the player community and find out if there is some kind of consensus on these various features. Even if there were no clear choices in terms of popularity, the raw data from such a survey should probably provide some insight into what most of the players would want. I guess in this context, for me, the ultimate game would be the one that could satisfy the largest amount of players.

Blizzard actually researched this. Their conclusion was that there was no dominant niche. What they did find was that most players played a variety of content types. Ironic considering they let Hazzikostas gut everything casual. Even before the revelations about their toxic work environment their player population was trending downwards because of this.

[Irenia]

It depends.
It's possible to make a game that most people like. Your approach can get something like this.
It's impossible to make a game that most people love. I imagine any ultimate game needs to reach this goal, but because of differing tastes, it is out of reach. To use XIV, lots of people love this game, but more people only like it. Using myself as an example, I love it, but the abuse of veteran healers threatens that, which came about due to attempts to cast a wider net.

It is much more possible to have a many "ultimate games" each serving a small community, but MMO logistics make that impossible; scale is the name of the game.

[Eraden]

I'd say the first and biggest one is Knowing who you wantto build the ultimate game for. (know your audience).
Building the ultimate game for "everyone" is basically Impossible.
building the ultimate game for lets say "Final Fantasy Fans" is easier.

Been a lot of articles around lately about how Elden ring is teaching the industry this lesson... it doesnt try to cater to EVERYONE it just tries to be the best game it can to its target audience and it's success has not only smashed that but also spilled over into players who are new to that style of game..

SE's biggest problem is it tries to csater to everyone and thats disasterous in every aspect of life and business.

you would never open a restaurant that caters to everyone and has chinese food indian food italian food traditional english food, steaks, turkish food polish food...
having a menu of 1,000 dishes but all pretty average. you'd go out of business very very quickly..

open a restaurant that caters to a specific style of food though where you may have 15-20 items on the menu but all of a super high quality and business will be booming...

SE is much the same with FFXIV in trying to cater to everyone it ends up boring and unimpressive. which is why player retention is such a big issue.

So you are saying that there is just too much diversity amongst players to allow for a game that could fulfill the needs of most of them? That's an interesting perspective and one which I had not fully embraced before but now you have me really thinking about it. Thanks for putting things in that perspective! I suppose, based on what you have said, that to formulate such a game would indeed require code of prodigious proportions, sort of like the restaurant analogy you had provided. It might not be possible after all to make such a game. Still, it would really be nice to survey the player community and try to glean some information out of the data to find out just what the player community is really like. It would be the first step in learning about who you could be making the game for and just how big of a community you could fit under your tent. I would assume that the need for collecting this kind of data should be a no-brainer for companies planning to make games but then again, when you see games like New World fail miserably, you really have to wonder about what kind of planning some companies are really doing.