/games/ - Games

>reason number one there’s too many players to account for

In nearly all games level design is the largest task to fulfill because it consistutes most of the content in a game along with having the largest flowchart of steps required for a level to be fully fleshed out in comparison to asset creation. Levels in MMOs need to be designed to account for all of the mechanics present in them along with needing enough levels so that every player within a server can have a level of enjoyment present in them while accounting for the reality that several players can be in the same place at the same time

This is terrible on the developer end both because it means the amount of time spent constantly designing things like structures, hubs, dungeons, monuments, special locations, secret areas, while taking into account things like
<the cohesion of colours and objects present in each set to make sure levels feel unique but like they’re all working together to suggest an idea about a certain game location and not just randomly stitched together zones with goofy transitions seen in WOW or even games like dark souls 2. Or even worse games with little variety in their world and level design leading to boring gameplay experiences seen in BDO, and well most MMOs today for that matter
<all of this PER PLAYER PER SERVER. Something like this in your standard open world game or even linear title would already be a disaster to work with but when taking into account how many players are expected to be in a server for games like these the amount of effort needed to provide the things in the last point just becomes unrealistic to any studio with at least hundreds of millions and several years to just casually blow for anything even resembling finished to come out

>>26502
Because of the above points most modern MMOs have defaulted into reducing server sizes to ease the developer end of level creation and because of this we’ve gotten games like warframe, destiny, and fo76 that have a visibly increased level of quality both in gameplay mechanics and world design when compared to the main figures of this genre of gaming and just goes on to highlight how difficult overcoming this actually is not to mention


>reason number two. Group based activities
Designing an experience multiple players can take part in and enjoy without the experience feeling sterile, or too easy for anyone to look back at their companions and feel proud of. It’s not easy to pull off just look at the old raid design of WOW, most raids take several dozen members several hours for minuscule rewards at the end in dungeons that feel like labyrinths to explore through due to how much effort these levels were given from their developers. Obviously it’s very hard to go through these in any party for any member but when these raids works at their best, they feel fun and like every member is equally useful to the group they were in it’s also why veterans going on mythic raids have some of the most dedicated to an almost cult like extent members because everyone knows what they should be doing. This is one of the best aspects of WOW, one of the only intact considering how much more barren and isolated attempts outside of pvp content can be to bring people together in WOW, and one of the hardest things to replicate in most other MMOs of its type.
Imagine having to design these kinds of mechanics for everything else in these games that amounts to more than just single player content with co op elements.

Really consider it

I don't think so. It's not so much that MMOs are too big to work so much as that they make themselves too big to work by trying to appeal to everyone. You take what is already recognized as the most difficult genre of video game to make, and you add on a few more Herculean tasks, like trying to create "action combat" for MMOs, and you stretch your resources thin, and then you put in features that directly undermines your content, such as LFG teleports and flying mounts, to essentially appeal to people who don't even like MMORPGs, and you've turned the creation of a satisfying MMO into a Sisyphean task.

>>26514
Feature creep tends to be a bigger problem among older mmos than it does newer ones
Take wow compared to new world. Wow has flying, pets, god knows how many races and classes at this point, an entire branch of gamemodes aimed at pvp. The base game ignoring expansions feels like a theme park meanwhile new world is pretty basic and only has community events at its core. Doesn’t even have mounts

>>26516
New World is also the most boring shit I've ever seen from an artistic standpoint. Looks like every generic western ARPG ever. Where the fuck are the cool monsters and fantasy environments??? Magic??? Yeah I know its theme is to be more realistic but god how boring.

>>26961
That sounds like an issue generally more related with the art and writing team being terrible at creating interesting environments that feel coherent to the map players explore through. That can’t be fixed with any new mechanics the game could introduce

>>26962
Yeah I know, not related to what you were saying or the point at hand, I just wanted to take the opportunity to complain about all that amazon cash being wasted on such a pile of crap. It could have been good if it hadn't been doomed to be so soulless.