MMO Titles and Life Spans
Discussion in "General Gaming" started by bloodbath , April 2012
Views: 49
Discussion in "General Gaming" started by bloodbath , April 2012
Comments: 4
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Is it me, or are companies not putting much thought into games and their play value and overall longevity? What I mean by this is, why are they not considering simple features that extend the expected life span of an MMO. There are extremely easy ways to accomplish this, however release after release I don't see this happening. A quick example is Rift or Star Wars The Old Republic. I played both of these in Beta, and played them at launch. Anymore, I generally will play an MMO casually, as I tend to try and make the existing content stretch out. Within a week or less there were tons of people already max level, and casually playing it took me less than one month in both games to reach max level - not to mention level some other alts up a bit. My point is, that older games, levels meant something (or at least a lot of them). It meant something to be higher level and above the rest. It seems for whatever reason, companies have watered down the design and simply try and focus on end game content - because they know with their leveling system, people will be there in a jiffy. Everyone is 50, so what makes that level so epic? Nothing really, except that it's the end of the road.
One major and obvious implement, would be to increase the level cap and just spread out skills. Not sure why, however many games think they must give you a new skill or something to use when you level. Why not just force people to gain 5 levels before giving them a new skill to use. Give them some skill points to spend in the mean time. Instead of level 50, increase the cap to 100 or even 150. It sure would make games played longer in my opinion. I'd prefer to play and develop one character for a long period of time, verse reaching max level on a bunch of toons.
One company that comes to mind who had invested a lot of thought into the longevity and play value of their game, is CCP and EVE Online. It's just one example. Just look at Runescape as well. There are ways to keep players entertained for years and years. You just have to sit down and think on it. Instead, they just go with the most basic concept and to me it feels like a quick cash cow anymore. Then it dies and they release a new title. I chose leveling cap as an example of life spans, however there are other areas that could improve this as well of course.
What are your thoughts on the matter? Anyone feel the same? -
I might get a lot of hate for this, but I feel like WoW is great at this whole longevity thing you're talking about (seriously not trolling). I played WoW on and off for about 5 years (more off than on), and would always take breaks but come back when there was a new expansion or content. Sure, Blizz was mainly doing it to make money (hey, they're a corporation, that's what they do), but they legitimately provided more content that made me want to renew my subscription.
I got bored with SWTOR in about a month (and I didn't even get close to level cap); I think EA/Bioware were just trying to capitalize on the "ooh, look it's new and shiny and NOT WoW!" aspect of the game too much rather than adding enough content. -
I followed SWTOR since the announcement back in 08 and they even said that they were on a deadline and a lot of the stuff they are adding now in 1.2 patch was hard to fit in that deadline. I don't even play the game it looks like something I've been waiting for since Diablo 2. I find the game a lot more compelling than taking a quest, collecting some random stuff, killing creatures, taking the quest back and not having any choice in the matter like what WoW does. It just really sucks that people dislike it for the obvious reasons rather than looking past those and getting to the core -
I agree with Jess to some extent. WoW has to be the best game fro longevity, despite the fact that I refuse to play it. The addiction to WoW is different from a lot of other MMO's and I think that's why everyone stays with it so long. I have only ever played SWTOR for about 15 minutes so I cannot say that lasted long for me. its not that I quit, its that it wasn't on my account. I think every MMO has more to offer then meets the eye and you really gotta give it go to be able to judge it in any way.
