PC Based MMOs

[Foambreaker]

I have this nagging feeling it is not just SWTOR but all PC based MMOs that are sinking.

 

I work as a SW Engineer, so naturally I'm still buying PCs and playing games on them, but I don't think that is the trend.

 

Are people sending their kids to college with a PC/laptop or a tablet or maybe just a smartphone?

[MuriaBR]

Personaly, I think people are just tired of the classic MMO style.

 

This boom we had for over a decade since WoW launched is simply by the fact that...well, WoW launched, just take a look at the MMOs we had ever since Blizzard's money maker behomoth got released, most of them are hardly ever whispered around most gamming circles, with a few exceptions like GW2, SWTOR and FF14.

 

The reality I belive is that MMOS are inflated whisfull thinking monsters that in concept look amazing, but how many people actualy have time to live 2 lives ? I for one can barely live my own much less a second on. When I was a toddler living in my parent's basement I would wreck 18 hours playing non-stop during school vacations...but then life happend and as delicate as it is... kicked me in the balls as hard as it could and brought me back to this insane reality we all live in again.

 

I think it's safe to say, people grew up, trends changed and those Behemoths of old are either dead or slowly but surely becoming less relevant specialy considering the fact games like Warframe, Destiny, the upcoming Anthem and many more to come seem to be bringing the masses into a new generation of ''MMOs'' with way less cost, way more enjoyable and cheaper to make content and a loot boxing ****** scandal the world is yet to witness at it's full potential.

Edited November 6, 2017 by MuriaBR
Better clarification of opinion.

[Savej]

Before Wow there were fewer people playing MMOs than now (in NA at least) and, probably, fewer gamers with PCs, too. I think the industry is ripe for another MMO to light things on fire again but my guess is most gamers are not waiting for another half-baked, half-cheeked Wow clone. As an rpg'er from before there were muds or MMOs, I am still very aware of all of the things we aren't doing in computer rpgs (no climbing, no grappling combat, limited flying, stupid/static/noninteractive npcs, static environments, trinity silliness, "stealth" silliness, etc). With more powerful servers and developing AI technologies I think we're nearly ready for the next steps to a Westworld (which will be a PC game before it will be a robot game). But we need game dev pioneers that think outside boxes first. Edited November 6, 2017 by Savej

[DanNV]

WoW, Final Fantasy XIV and ESO all seem to be growing and doing well. (Well, WoW isn't at the numbers it used to be, but ti seems to be steady and healthy.) If BW had listened to their customers instead of running off in other directions and determinedly remaking the same mistakes over again SWTOR would be in a better place. If they had come through on teh guild summit promises in 6 months instead of 5 years later and still most of them not being kept, SWTOR would probably be in a good, healthy place. Unfortunately, we know what BW did and we know this game is not in a healthy place. But, MMOs that provide good amounts of content regularly, listen to what their customers want to play and then actually deliver seem to be doing well.

[orangenee]

SWTOR would have been deceased a long time ago if not for the SW part.

 

Star Trek Online suffers from a similar thing to this game, except it does roll out out content and allows players to add their own. Problem with it is, it's set up to be either a giant time sink or a real money sink. In fact the only way to get proper end game ships is getting your wallet out.

 

A lot MMOs choose to go in that sort of direction. Especially proper F2P games which SWTOR isn't. They start to look like mobile games eventually with all the microtransactions.

 

Prohibitively expensive to make and it's always a gamble as the return isn't guaranteed. MMORPG style games are going to die off if the current trend continues. A few of the old guard will stick around for a while but new additions will be relying on the addiction to retain players.

 

Which is another thing, playerbases are notoriously fickle. Look at this forum alone to see how quickly players threaten sub cancellation over SOMETIMES trivial matters.

[kodrac]

Which is another thing, playerbases are notoriously fickle. Look at this forum alone to see how quickly players threaten sub cancellation over SOMETIMES trivial matters.

 

But... Theron's hair!! OMG I quit!

[Verain]

We're in an odd position right now. PC based MMOs are still profitable, there's a two big caveats: the market is not endlessly hungry for new titles, AND other genres appear to be a license to print money.

 

Each extant MMO has had huge amounts of resources pumped into it, making the creation of a new one a really big deal. Many of these expensive-to-develop MMOs have all but fallen apart, others produce reliable revenue. Most of them started by copying WoW as much as time and money would allow (so, usually poorly), and several are still competing in that niche. If you are an MMO player, you ultimately can't play all the MMOs you are interested in to the fullest amount, and each MMO appears hardcore dedicated to trying to get players to grind solely in their virtual world. A person who really likes racing games can buy three racing games one year, and play each one a third as much or so as if only one had come out and been purchased: an MMO player doesn't really have this option. Even players who maintain multiple MMO accounts still have some saturation point that is far fewer games than in another genre.

 

Additionally, some games are wildly successful for very little investment, especially in mobile. If something goes viral and is marketed correctly, it can make fat stacks of cash instantly, and in many cases the game can be profitable for a little bit before being disposed of. These are lottery tickets where you usually get your dollar back right now, and game companies have much looser purses when it comes to funding these new things, in comparison to the MMO genre, where you definitely have high initial costs, and your returns MIGHT be amazing, but could easily be trash.

 

I think companies are finally figuring out that there's limits to cloning WoW and hoping that there's a bunch of WoW players who want to drop WoW for their game. They are WoW players for a reason, and it's not something that is trivially cloned. SWTOR players are mostly here because this game offers things that WoW doesn't, and the same is true of other MMOs I have played that are still pretty successful.

 

There is something to the "wait, do kids even use PCs"? argument. Because yes, of course they do- but it is no longer a hugely growing industry as it was in the days before there were alternative computing devices in a variety of form factors and capabilities. Successful games generally can "run on anything" when they launch, and "anything" now includes hugely differing form factors. You can play Hearthstone on your phone, your tablet, your laptop, or your desktop. If you stick to a fully 3D world with good graphics, you are eliminating the phone and the tablet, and putting the laptop on notice. You can mitigate this by supporting consoles, but that requires even more hoops to jump through.

 

Anyway, I think we'll continue to see MMOs, but at a slower rate. MMOs last for YEARS, which also reduces the calling for new ones.

[fushnchips]

Most of the AAA MMOs are doing well apart from SWTOR and that comes down to them not wanting to spend time and money on the project and laying people off apart from the CM team the problem is the damage is already done and it's very hard to come back even with all the smoke and mirror tactics they are using to make it look like things are being done at a good pace.

 

If you can't tune out 5 bosses within the year what's that tell you they have serious problems but we as players are being punished and it sucks they really have let go no matter who becomes who within the Bioware ranks because t hey are only puppets on a string being held by big brother EA.

[Qouivandes]

deleted everything else because i blame Farmville and FB to phone games. Even then, they took games that were fun and decided that the longer you play the longer things took, but you could buy speed ups or extra turns so you didnt have to wait for 48hours to play again. then came candy crush and it all went to pot.

 

Companies make more money by selling us a full product in small doses. they do this because people are fleeting and get bored easily. they will play a game for a small amount of time and then run off to the next one so they have no choice but to fleece them for what they can as quickly as they can before they move on to the next game.

 

with this game they attempted to make DLCs a bit more interesting by releasing chapters over a period of months. that just meant that you had to be here OR you could just wait till the end and get them all at once. they figured, even with the incentives, that enough people wanted them all at once. so, they did that. (stil doesnt stop folks from wanting the incentives, amrite)

 

i dont think we will see the pasture with PC MMOs, but i can almost guarantee that they will most likely be optimized based off of console play than with PC. ESO has a very limiting number of action keys one can use even if you have a billion skills you can only put six or eight (i forgot in the last 8 or so months) on your action bar to use at one time. STO can be played on PC or console, now. Anthem (i forget the name of what its called) is moving away from open world to instance world with MP Hubs. And the the amount of skills you can use will most likely be optimized for controllers rather than KBs.

 

I dont think we will ever see the death of PC MMOs, but i can certainly stand behind the notion that they will not be actual PC MMOs at all, but ports from consoles and work in that fashion.

 

<<and to think this was the highly edited version>>

 

edit: i also wanted to add that one game i was playing a while back, i think it was ESO, has a console version and a PC version. i say this because my wife and I were going to get it and play it until we found out that the PC world is separate from the console world so we opted to just not do that. I simply cannot afford the upkeep on two separate gaming rigs. especially since the one i am using right now was built for this game in 2011.

Edited November 6, 2017 by Qouivandes

[Skullblazer]

I have this nagging feeling it is not just SWTOR but all PC based MMOs that are sinking.

 

I work as a SW Engineer, so naturally I'm still buying PCs and playing games on them, but I don't think that is the trend.

 

Are people sending their kids to college with a PC/laptop or a tablet or maybe just a smartphone?

 

Mmo's first prerogative is to have a story, a good damn story who is strong enough to hook a person in for a long time, for me other games are like movies and mmos are like a soap opera.

 

Wow hasn't be born from nothing blizzard carefully crafted it's own fantasy universe and build a solid fanbase with all the rts and then wow come, the same fanbase who was so in love to forgive many many error blizzard did back in vanilla (wow wasn't perfect) and in many other occasion.

 

Other relatively successful mmo had more or less the same path, FFXIV and ESO both with a solid fanbase, no one mention the fact that FF first mmo was a complete failure a disaster and Square Enix scrapped it and remade A REALM REBORN still players forgive them and started playing again.

 

Why is that? Because they have good graphic? Good raid? or because the story is so good that players are willing to forgive dev mistakes and keep playing the product?

 

Even Swtor still surviving thanks to the story if EA and Bioware had man up and did the same thing Square Enix did, sc****** out the wrong thing and rebuilding it from scratch maybe nowadays we would have a game who was solid second behind wow.

 

Unfortunately at the horizon i don't see any new mmo developed starting with a decent universe behind, all are just cash machine mean to ripe instant profit , plagued with pay to win, microtransaction etc.

[supertimtaf]

 

Unfortunately at the horizon i don't see any new mmo developed starting with a decent universe behind, all are just cash machine mean to ripe instant profit , plagued with pay to win, microtransaction etc.

 

Well that's the point.

Tbh I'm currently searching for a new MMO to spend some time there... I'm one of those guys who do not like WoW at all, and I'm not too fond of the combat system in GW2 (too much like Diablo imo )

The issue is that we don't have much choice right now in terms of «good» MMO, those are becoming rare now (and I think it's why swtor is surviving like that... there is no other sci-fi MMO like this one ) and it's becoming more difficult to find something that will keep our interest long enough :/

[GalacticKegger]

Mmo's first prerogative is to have a story, a good damn story who is strong enough to hook a person in for a long time, for me other games are like movies and mmos are like a soap opera.

 

Wow hasn't be born from nothing blizzard carefully crafted it's own fantasy universe and build a solid fanbase with all the rts and then wow come, the same fanbase who was so in love to forgive many many error blizzard did back in vanilla (wow wasn't perfect) and in many other occasion.

 

Other relatively successful mmo had more or less the same path, FFXIV and ESO both with a solid fanbase, no one mention the fact that FF first mmo was a complete failure a disaster and Square Enix scrapped it and remade A REALM REBORN still players forgive them and started playing again.

 

Why is that? Because they have good graphic? Good raid? or because the story is so good that players are willing to forgive dev mistakes and keep playing the product?

 

Even Swtor still surviving thanks to the story if EA and Bioware had man up and did the same thing Square Enix did, sc****** out the wrong thing and rebuilding it from scratch maybe nowadays we would have a game who was solid second behind wow.

 

Unfortunately at the horizon i don't see any new mmo developed starting with a decent universe behind, all are just cash machine mean to ripe instant profit , plagued with pay to win, microtransaction etc.

Actually a MMO's first prerogative is to be massively multiplayer. A RPG's first prerogative is to have a good story strong enough to hook a person in for a long time. But ya, Square Enix treated their player base right with the reboot and Blizzard cherishes their veteran player base ... things we'll never experience with the clowns running this show.

 

Imagine the backlash had Blizzard decided to do with WoW's last two expansions what Bioware did with SWTOR's:

 

 

• releasing no new open world zones to explore, and instead forcing level sync for every zone on every continent that came before it so the devs could recycle it all ... passing it off as new expansion content
  
• removing all group play dungeons, heroics and raids from the leveling game, forcing bolster on them and permanently moving them all to level cap because ...
  
• the expansions came with zero new dungeons, zero new heroics and zero new raids
  
• removing the game's pre-expansion zone leveling and content difficulty progression system, then replacing it with story-only advancement
  
• replacing each new expansion's group leveling game with solo-only story advancement
  
• replacing the end game content difficulty and tier progression system with, well ... they weren't stupid enough to entertain a Galactic Command system and wisely chose to leave well enough alone
  
• removing loot drops from the game and replacing it with quest reward blues and converted Overwatch boxes
  
• removing tier sets from the game and selling them as transmog sets out of the Battle.net store
  

 

The crater this would have left in the MMO landscape would have been devastating.

Edited November 7, 2017 by GalacticKegger

[TrixxieTriss]

It’s not just the genre of MMOs, it’s the quality of the product. You can’t blame players if they are put off because of all the bad MMOs and quality, not to mention how companies continue to add pay walls and micro transactions.

This trend will ultimately kill off MMOs and quality PC gaming as a whole.

[TrixxieTriss]

Actually a MMO's first prerogative is to be massively multiplayer. A RPG's first prerogative is to have a good story strong enough to hook a person in for a long time. But ya, Square Enix treated their player base right with the reboot and Blizzard cherishes their veteran player base ... things we'll never experience with the clowns running this show.

 

Imagine the backlash had Blizzard decided to do with WoW's last two expansions what Bioware did with SWTOR's:

 

 

• releasing no new open world zones to explore, and instead forcing level sync for every zone on every continent that came before it so the devs could recycle it all ... passing it off as new expansion content
  
• removing all group play dungeons, heroics and raids from the leveling game, forcing bolster on them and permanently moving them all to level cap because ...
  
• the expansions came with zero new dungeons, zero new heroics and zero new raids
  
• removing the game's pre-expansion zone leveling and content difficulty progression system, then replacing it with story-only advancement
  
• replacing each new expansion's group leveling game with solo-only story advancement
  
• replacing the end game content difficulty and tier progression system with, well ... they weren't stupid enough to entertain a Galactic Command system and wisely chose to leave well enough alone
  
• removing loot drops from the game and replacing it with quest reward blues and converted Overwatch boxes
  
• removing tier sets from the game and selling them as transmog sets out of the Battle.net store
  

 

The crater this would have left in the MMO landscape would have been devastating.

 

You couldn’t be more right

[Skullblazer]

Well that's the point.

Tbh I'm currently searching for a new MMO to spend some time there... I'm one of those guys who do not like WoW at all, and I'm not too fond of the combat system in GW2 (too much like Diablo imo )

The issue is that we don't have much choice right now in terms of «good» MMO, those are becoming rare now (and I think it's why swtor is surviving like that... there is no other sci-fi MMO like this one ) and it's becoming more difficult to find something that will keep our interest long enough :/

 

For now there is nothing, you go with eastern imported mmo who reach the west when they are abundantly obsolete or stick to the current five mmos, Wow, FFXIV, ESO, SWTOR, GW2 that is.

 

The problem is that even the new projects who are all in pre alpha didn't have a decent story, what i look for is some well established single player series to have an mmo offspring for example Dark Soul, Fallout, The witcher, diablo, sc2 etc.

 

Or some old ip to regenerate themselves like Star Wars going the same way of FF, releasing some transition single player game to rekindle the massive star wars fan base, keeping a legacy system from swtor for all those guys who dedicated year and love to this game and build a new one maybe actualized to current story.

 

Star Trek god what a shame that ip has been left to rust that if done well could become, for example, a real contender for eve.

 

Or Lotr for the fantasy genre, even trough LOTRO is not really bad the graphic is really too old.

 

Unfortunately after the moba flood trying to capitalize on LoL success we are plagued with action mmo, Overwatch, Destiny, Division, etc. etc.

[Skullblazer]

Actually a MMO's first prerogative is to be massively multiplayer. A RPG's first prerogative is to have a good story strong enough to hook a person in for a long time.

 

Yea my bad when i wrote mmo i was intending true mmorpg not the open world crate farming we have now on the market, but one thing is sure, SWTOR still can be salvaged: even through the game has been hit hard the fanbase still solid and still willing to do them chances upon chances.

[BobbyWilkerson]

For me MMO's are time sinks between good single player rpgs. MMO's just can't compete with those when it comes to story, character development, living world, seeing the results of your actions, combat and overall immersion. There are exceptions to these but the complete package is always lacking.

Luckily most don't require sub these days so you don't have to invest same way as in this game. For example I can easily jump back to ESO when I feel like it.

Edited November 7, 2017 by BobbyWilkerson

[DeVanagloris]

I'd say the problem with MMOS is that they require both a huge investment of time and an acceptable investment of money.

 

For instance, im currently playing SWTOR (PC), Hearthstone (PC), Dragon Mania Legends (mobile, similar to Pokemon in that you collect and/or breed dragons), and i'll be playing Pokemon Ultramoon (3DS) as soon as it comes out. Of all those, the most accesible one is Dragon Mania, a mobile game (which i happen to play on PC just because i got it there from the store, but i digress).

 

It is the most accesible one because i can come in 3-4 times a day, just 10 mins each time, and do my stuff. Hearthstone allows you to play 1-2 matches in 15-20 mins if you want, and Pokemon well, you play it whenever you want. In the end, SWTOR is the game which requires more involvement, more time and more focus than any of the others. And while i want to play, many days i just end up not logging in at all, because we all have a life, and because the other games are just easier to log in and play for a bit.

 

Dragon Mania has even a bigger grind than SWTOR i'd say, but they cleverly disguise it and they give it in little doses so as to keep you hooked by the game, you always wanna come back and check it out, see if you managed something more. SWTOR just cant do that.

[kodrac]

no one mention the fact that FF first mmo was a complete failure a disaster and Square Enix scrapped it and remade A REALM REBORN still players forgive them and started playing again.

 

You kidding? That always gets mentioned. Every time FF14 comes up it's literally because it got a redo and they want BioWare to do the same with this game.

[GalacticKegger]

For me MMO's are time sinks between good single player rpgs. MMO's just can't compete with those when it comes to story, character development, living world, seeing the results of your actions, combat and overall immersion. There are exceptions to these but the complete package is always lacking.

Luckily most don't require sub these days so you don't have to invest same way as in this game. For example I can easily jump back to ESO when I feel like it.

A RPG can get away with that level of detail because there is only one player at a time causing and effecting everything. All of the game's karma and dogma belongs to their character and no one else's. There is no way for a MMO to have that level of real time consequential persistence because it's shared space on a much grander scale. Eventually everyone's karma will run over someone else's dogma. Which is why playing a Massively Multiplayer Online game primarily to be left alone is counter intuitive.

You kidding? That always gets mentioned. Every time FF14 comes up it's literally because it got a redo and they want BioWare to do the same with this game.

Yep ... nothing wrong with that. Edited November 7, 2017 by GalacticKegger

[AlrikFassbauer]

Unfortunately at the horizon i don't see any new mmo developed starting with a decent universe behind, all are just cash machine mean to ripe instant profit , plagued with pay to win, microtransaction etc.

 

Multiplayer = The Perfect DRM

And MMOs are nothing but Multiplayer Games.

 

all are just cash machine mean to ripe instant profit

 

Years ago I was developing the philosophy that the way you consider a game can be seen like a watermark through the game by how you treat the game.

 

I'm going even a bit deeper into philosophy : If a game is considered as a "cash cow", then it ceases to be a game, and it is indeed transformed intoi a "cash cow". Some people call that "the game has lost its soul".

 

I'm even going further in believing that high management decisions influence not only the company, but , the bigger the company is, they even influence (via the company) the whole society !

Edited November 7, 2017 by AlrikFassbauer

[SteveTheCynic]

I work as a SW Engineer, so naturally I'm still buying PCs and playing games on them

SteveTheCynic is [colon]confused[colon].

 

Why does "I'm still buying PCs and playing games from them" spring naturally from "I work as a SW Engineer"?

 

(For reference, I am a software engineer myself.)

[TrixxieTriss]

SteveTheCynic is [colon]confused[colon].

 

Steve, does that mean you’ve just got a confused colon?