New MMORPG?

[Jeeqbit]

Although they could make a new MMORPG, Yoshi-P probably wouldn't be able to commit their whole time to it like they can't FF16. SE has also tried to make other ones I think? Like most of their other games they probably failed.

Graphics being good isn't enough. The game would have to actually be good. Games like New World proved that those sort of graphics need something good behind it or it won't work.

I also just think it wouldn't be realistic to work on two competing MMORPGs at once. People would infer that Yoshi-P cares about one or the other more and go to that one. It would either have to be made by someone else (different SE unit) or in a world where Yoshi-P has stopped working on FFXIV.

[Elissar]

Games like New World proved that those sort of graphics need something good behind it or it won't work.

I would like to add Lost Ark..i hyped that game for so much time....lovely physics details, character movements, skills impact...and questionable progression ruined it all.
---
back to the topic

The first gen of MMORPGs was famous because online interaction was a novelty. They didnt have to do much stuff. A world free of critical bugs and open exploration was good enough to create a community able to have fun. Back in the day, manuals were popular in videogames, including not-so-complex single player ones. We can use Ultima as example.

The second gen tried to add more challenges, quests and some narrative. We can use WoW as example.

The third gen tried to add more complex mechanics in terms of combat. Later on, "3.1" gen tried to add naval stuff. We can mention Arche Age, Black Desert, Tera, C9, Vindictus.

FFXIV tries to be something between the second and the third gen with a classical japanese formula of instance everywhere and tight control over many of our actions (to be fair, Guild Wars 2 use instances too). Talent tree in FFXIV is just a dream, for example. Your character is not yours, to be honest, your character is its job. A black mage is a black mage, isn't person X black mage with a differentiated talents from other black mage because person X like this way.

I imagine the next gen of MMORPGs as something between FFXIV, Guild wars 2 and Lord of the Rings Online: open dungeons, strong optional narrative, epic music, open exploration, open world progression, minimal loading screens, respect for the trinity (tank, healer, DPS), classes/jobs identities are preserved, choices that affect outcomes in side quests...all while keeping instance contents relevant like we have now. FFXIV could learn a thing or two from Lost Ark. Right now, MMORPGs are just fine convincing people that they don't have to waste their lives to progress (creating casual friendly content), however, now they need to make it fun again.

Each famous MMO has a weird problem:

FFXIV - Open world doens't matter that much except for hunt, fates and initial stages of relic grinding. Loading screens everywhere. Yoshi P did an amazing job but FFXIV will be like this forever. We won't lose our invisible and weird walls or loading screens. Inconsistences in actions with weird excuses, for example: we can't sleep in our apartments, we can decorate our houses but we can't do much stuff except for gardening.

Guild Wars 2 - Strong open world progression, acceptable story, dungeons doens't really matter until fractals. Better combat than ESO. Inconsistent in terms of character design.

Elder Scrolls Online - Most immersive with choices that matters, interesting builds to create, epic lore. Limited combat and questionable monetization model.

WoW - Copy/paste of anything that works somewhere else.

[Jeeqbit]

I imagine the next gen of MMORPGs as something between FFXIV, Guild wars 2 and Lord of the Rings Online: open dungeons, strong optional narrative, epic music, open exploration, open world progression, minimal loading screens, respect for the trinity (tank, healer, DPS), classes/jobs identities are preserved, choices that affect outcomes in side quests...all while keeping instance contents relevant like we have now. FFXIV could learn a thing or two from Lost Ark. Right now, MMORPGs are just fine convincing people that they don't have to waste their lives to progress (creating casual friendly content), however, now they need to make it fun again.

Problem with open dungeons is not being able to control how difficult the content is. Take hunts in FFXIV, designed for a party or alliance to fight and people just bring 100 to melt them. They aren't scaled for that many at all. Then they could sync your power level or their power level accordingly, but then you have the argument that gear progression no longer matters.

The benefit of required narrative is making you care about the world. Frankly, when I look at games like New World or Ashes of Creation, I simply don't care. I have no attachment to their world. Story helps to create that.

[Elissar]

Problem with open dungeons is not being able to control how difficult the content is

I agree 100%. However, over designed dungeons like we have here kills some of our creativity. Wall to wall pulls are extremely restricted in many of our dungeons. Open dungeons could work attached to a synced system like FATEs and predeterminated routes in a map. Take POTD as an example, during the opening cinematic they present POTD as a cavern where the entrance is hidden underground...would be great if we could simply walk there, do some challenges and exit somewhere else.

I loved ShB Raktika arc because the feeling of exploration.

[PEANUT]

Problem with open dungeons is not being able to control how difficult the content is. Take hunts in FFXIV, designed for a party or alliance to fight and people just bring 100 to melt them. They aren't scaled for that many at all. Then they could sync your power level or their power level accordingly, but then you have the argument that gear progression no longer matters.

The benefit of required narrative is making you care about the world. Frankly, when I look at games like New World or Ashes of Creation, I simply don't care. I have no attachment to their world. Story helps to create that.

That's something that to me would be INCREDIBLY fun and enjoyable, big monsters or NM's for example, that could come out of nowhere(or maybe there is lore involved in them and why they come out), to attack a city-state, actually damaging the city state, and players have to fight to protect it, and if they lose part of the city stays ruined for actual real-life days while the town works to rebuild it. There could be challenging combat, quests, etc. for people who are hardcore, want to form alliances and take on challenges, and then tons of medium content for casual players who want to play with a friend of 2 or alone, crafting, fighting smaller monsters, accumulating small comfort wealth. I think if they could create an open world with tons of hard level and casual level content that could be expanded over years and years, they would have something special. Interactive worlds and changing/dynamic environments, just imagine it, it would be incredible. If they started planning something like this in the next few years, it would be a while before a game like this would come out, and it would probably release into the PS6's lifecycle(and equivalent Xbox and PC's) to make sure it can happen on a hardware level too

[PEANUT]

Although they could make a new MMORPG, Yoshi-P probably wouldn't be able to commit their whole time to it like they can't FF16. SE has also tried to make other ones I think? Like most of their other games they probably failed.

Graphics being good isn't enough. The game would have to actually be good. Games like New World proved that those sort of graphics need something good behind it or it won't work.

I also just think it wouldn't be realistic to work on two competing MMORPGs at once. People would infer that Yoshi-P cares about one or the other more and go to that one. It would either have to be made by someone else (different SE unit) or in a world where Yoshi-P has stopped working on FFXIV.

Thanks for the reply! I wanna clarify that UE5 is not a focus because of good graphics, nanite and lumen make it so the developers literally just drag and drop one detailed asset into the world and it authors the LOD's for them, this would save so much time, energy, and resources making a big open world. The world partition system breaks big massive maps into a grid based system so you can edit individual areas(squares) as needed, think of how much easier this would be to find and address bugs, glitches, etc. not to mention loading areas in and out as needed which saves a sh*t ton on processing if you utilize the SSD's in PS5/XSX or equivalent (which by the time they game out with a new MMORPG we would already be towards the end of the 10-year plan Yoshi announced last year and at the PS6 level). Also the one file per actor system in UE5 allows any developer, program designer, artist, whoever, to edit the game at the same time(this was not possible in UE4) which means it's a lot easier for teams to collaborate when designing and creating the game at once. It's waaaay more than just "good graphics", it literally makes developing major content like an MMO much easier and smoother, allowing the team to be more creative and devote time and energy to innovation in gameplay and new ideas, unlike being limited to the same formula in FF14...

[R041]

It's waaaay more than just "good graphics", it literally makes developing major content like an MMO much easier and smoother, allowing the team to be more creative and devote time and energy to innovation in gameplay and new ideas, unlike being limited to the same formula in FF14...

I work in UE5 and the things you mention studios already had solutions for, or other engines did natively. Nanite and Lumen have a very long road before they're usable with 60FPS and smooth camera panning in live games.

Nanite: Extremely large file sizes, you don't want my zbrush file directly in UE. Restricted to static meshes. We've almost always been able to auto-LoD. Shader restrictions. My team is not using this.

Lumen: Beautiful, amazing in theory. Really frustrating, laggy, and slow to update in practice. It relies on hybrid screenspace that creates way too many ghosting effects on the screen when you pan from a bright to a dark area or vice versa. Maybe we'll be ready for this in 5 years.

World Partition: Most engines have this, UE had plugins for this, and Unity has this. (I've worked on 400 chunk worlds before. Not fun)

1 file per actor: Nice in theory, but we usually just prefab different instances out and assign scenes anyway. 2 people working on 1 map is very complicated which is one reason to have partitions. 1 person accidentally touches the splatmap, or something that can't split when they weren't supposed to and it explodes. I'm less worried about the actor placement, when I typically don't want 2 people in the same scene anyway. Also assigning scenes is easier than assigning zones to someone. "Okay, just.. Don't place actors past this river and we'll be fine" this also explodes version control.

Oh, and if it's an MMO - It's going to have a lot of server side instanced data. So that means dev in client will be placing stuff, not in engine. We used a tool that could transfer the coord/properties of prefabs from scene over to the live server, but that's different.

We're already at a place where MMO dev should hypothetically be easy, but 'MMO' is complicated because server zones, data storage/fetch/security is complicated at large scale. Not because it's difficult to sculpt and LoD a rock.

But you are mostly right, that the dev pipeline is getting WAY better. Just don't really expect this team to give us more for less. When they know they can give us more for more, like how the real world works. :/

Yoshi prob looks at new pipelines and goes "Okay, so we can pump out 2x more creatures? Awesome. Split that time between this and this project." not "Okay so let's add 2x more creatures to 1 game for the same price as before"

That's why when people talk about in the graphics overhaul, how we can hypothetically have more objects and density per scene.. Most of us look at it and understand that it really doesn't matter, because that usually just means they can squeeze more out for less in dev. Not give us more overall.

[PEANUT]

Oh, and if it's an MMO - It's going to have a lot of server side instanced data. So that means dev in client will be placing stuff, not in engine. We used a tool that could transfer the coord/properties of prefabs from scene over to the live server, but that's different.[/INDENT]

We're already at a place where MMO dev should hypothetically be easy, but 'MMO' is complicated because server zones, data storage/fetch/security is complicated at large scale. Not because it's difficult to sculpt and LoD a rock.

But you are mostly right, that the dev pipeline is getting WAY better. Just don't really expect this team to give us more for less. When they know they can give us more for more, like how the real world works. :/

Yoshi prob looks at new pipelines and goes "Okay, so we can pump out 2x more creatures? Awesome. Split that time between this and this project." not "Okay so let's add 2x more creatures to 1 game for the same price as before"

That's why when people talk about in the graphics overhaul, how we can hypothetically have more objects and density per scene.. Most of us look at it and understand that it really doesn't matter, because that usually just means they can squeeze more out for less in dev. Not give us more overall.

Thanks for all the input, sorry I had to cut out some of your post or it wouldn't let me reply. UE5 is at 5.2 and they keep improving upon it which is very nice knowing it's going to get better and more optimized. I'm curious what you think can be improved when it comes to servers and such? I know for MMO's server data utilization is very important, does that also have anything to do with playing online games in any capacity on mere 15 mbps? I feel like 1 gig internet is mainstream now and was wondering if they bumped up the minimum internet specs if that would drastically change the way we play online gaming at all? That's something I'm still reading up on and learning...

[R041]

...

5.2 is great, and UE is my favorite engine by far.

It's complicated with MMOs, because the packet ramp isn't linear per additional character, it's multiplied when the server is authority. For every new player, that player needs to now send their own data, but receive data for all other players.

They have to do a lot of tricks to trim costs when you're not directly interacting with that object or character. With high engagement areas, you'd remove almost all non-essential packets to the player. Then they also reduce how active the actual world is too, the only active entities sending and receiving data are ones that have an observer of some kind. A player camera would be an observer as an example. Less density means less CPU and less packets. So we'd typically have to design things around 2-3 creatures per observable area. Also because each instance can at times only be 1-2 CPU threads.. I wouldn't be surprised if XIV is run off of a single thread per instance.

I think WoW might be using smaller seamless instances so they can get away with faster cpu ticks in open world, and more high density events in the same large map. But that's just speculation, I don't have actual info.

Unreal Engine is phenomenal with network data, but it's not really MMO without heavy engine changes. It's designed with the idea that data is exchanged all within the same session and doesn't require constant interaction with a larger database. But it does have Server/Host Authority. Most studios will implement that data layer separately if they need to. Some don't at all and just keep to a max 32-64 players per instance and do data checks on session refresh/begin/end intervals or something.

The biggest upgrade for MMOs would be multi-core instances, cost of CPU, and data transfer cost.

I don't really think it's much of an issue for household internet anymore, games like League of Legends are only about 25mb per hour with a lot going on and extremely high tick rate compared to MMOs. And it's mostly download, not much upload. Especially when you consider that you don't need ALL data from the 100 players next to you in an MMO. That's already not a huge deal because the data we receive is pretty basic anyway.

Our bottlenecks are definitely the hardware and instance systems being used today. They're archaic, and we're in dire need of an advance in multicore technology.

When we're working on the server infra, I never really have to think about how much data the individual player is receiving. It's always how much data the server needs to send, and how many things can potentially happen within a single tick. But we deal with single thread instances, so it's also way more painful. Also have to think about how jarring it is for players to see other players pop in/out when creating zones on the same single map, so we kinda fake it sometimes with bridges or walls.

Also, the large world systems you're looking at from UE don't directly benefit 'MMO', just larger maps as a whole, because it helps seamless client side loading of a lot of assets. Otherwise you have to ask the client to load EVERYTHING - Which, even if you're not actively rendering it, it's still in memory. So systems like those say "Hey, I'm coming up on zone limits, let's start loading data from disk into memory and dump the old stuff that we haven't seen a mile ago."

Idk if I actually answered your question, 'cause I think I babbled a little. lol

[Mr_Gyactus]

Hi everyone! This post is JUST for fun and speculation. I know Yoshi-P has said in an interview not long ago that he would love to make another MMORPG before he retires (which I think he's like 49 or 50? so like within the next 15 years it seems?), and wasn't like joking when he said it, so I'm curious what everyone thinks about this?

I know Square Enix has been developing a lot of games using UE5 (half the video games industry is tbh cause it's an incredible advancement in technology) such as KH4, DQXII and I guarantee FF7:R(just hasn't been officially announced yet). I know FF16 is right around the corner now, so it got me thinking if he were to get the a-okay to do something like this and started planning and creating next year in 2024, that's only like 4 years away or so from the PS6(which I'm sure will be very powerful especially if you mix it with the tech in UE5 as it advances over the next 4-5 years) and on average it takes like 5-6 years to make these kinds of games, so I'm curious if anyone else thinks this could ever happen if they were to use UE5 for a new MMORPG? We know it supports a lot of players in big maps(like fortnite) and UE5's one world partition system breaks those massive maps into a grid based system only loading in what's needed(and then ofc nanite renders foliage now in addition to geometry with lumen lighting everything you can see for GI), and I think it's plausible they could make something incredible for the next-gen as the time arrives.

Yes I know he wants to support FF14 for the next 10 years and they are still putting a lot of work into it, but like 11 it will probably not need so much support as the next few years go on and eventually they will want to start creating something new, and I would love it to be a new MMORPG type game! Look at the recent "Chrono Oddysy"(spelling?) MMORPG game coming out on UE5, it looks wonderful. If they can do it, why not Yoshi-P's team?

What do you guys think? Again, this post is just for fun and speculation, I don't need anyone yelling at me please...

I saw 2 mmorpg in UE5, they are both trash. there are 2 more coming soon and... we'll see.
Reason? There is more than "graphic" in a mmo. Expansions, for example.

UE5 is good for single player videogames, or when your company doesn't want to invest too much money for its own engine because they don't trust their own game and they give a lifespan of a few year.

Tomb raider is ok, Kingdom heart 4 is ok, dragon quest xii is ok, "final fantasy online" isn't.