What are the impediments to designing the ultimate game?

[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..

[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.

[Eraden]

Wow, thanks for some very illuminating responses, folks. I appreciate this input because it is making me think about aspects of MMO games that I hadn't really considered before.

[Illmaeran]

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...

Watched Kitchen Nightmares much?

You're not wrong.



I guess I'm just lucky; this is my Ultimate MMO. If they made housing available to everyone and opened up being able to glamour all items regardless of the job, it would be my perfect MMO. I've played a number of different MMOs that I enjoyed substantially in their time, but none of them grabbed me quite the same way as XIV has. Vanilla WoW was my first MMO, and you never forget your first love, but everything that XIV is and everything that it isn't, keeps me in love with it and always coming back when I've had to take breaks.