Community makes the MMO

[khessmd]

Many MMO's these days fail to make a profit and don't do very well having to change their price model or close down all together (like City of Heroes.) I am an older gamer, 45 years old soon and I have seen how the game industry has really changed over the years.

There is one king of the hill in the MMO world for the last many years and that is unfortunately, World of Warcraft. As much as I dislike that game, one can't help but see how successful it is. There are tons of thoughts on why this is but one thing's for sure, a successful MMO needs to have a great community to survive or at least a reason to keep coming back and working together. Making friends, have goals and it taking more than a week to get to the end of the game.

I think Everquest had it right back in the day. It was nearly impossible to do things solo in that game and you relied on making friends, joining a guild, forming a party and getting help to do just about anything. It forced interaction with others and one of the things that I hate about World of Wankers is how dumb it has made gaming. Everyone wants thing easy mode. It took forever to level up in EQ and you lost exp if you died. There was a reason to fear death and you could even lose all of your gear if your corpse was left under the belly of a dragon. Things seem way too simple now and that seems to be how the younger generation likes it. Partly I blame Wankers for this. It's what people have come to expect now. Other then raiding, there is not one reason to need anyone else in that game and most others these days.

Defiance has built in voice chat .. yet I have yet to hear anyone use it. It seems to only exist to have people keep it on and their mic open so I can hear all their background noise while going through a dungeon / instance yet no one ever says anything or uses it in a constructive manner. No one uses the chat to talk and no one uses the voice to talk. This doesn't seem like a good thing to have a long term successful MMO. People will get to end game and never come back because there just isn't any reason to.

I'm already over EGO rank 900 and the game just came out. I've seen lots of people higher than that. People just blaze through the dungeons as fast as they can. Another concept that has come about over the years. Racing through is cool sometimes .. but so was back in the day taking your time and being careful because you never knew when you were going to die. There was a sense of adventure and thinking about strategy and actually feeling like you were afraid at times because you had so much to lose and also gain if you won.

I really love this game and I'd like to see it be around for a while .. but give us a reason to Trion? Sadly, I think many people will disagree with me. Younger players who have "grown up" with this playstyle being considered the "norm."

Yup .. I'm having fun with Defiance, love it! But, I can also see me soloing and listening to people's open mics as what is going to be done with it when I reach the end of the story. Not having any conversations, talking, chatting or people even interacting with each other at all other than at the Arkfall's is what will hurt this game in the long run.

[fregrin]

without normal chat functions such as in Rift/SWTOR and many others on PC, am simply put off from playing this game...

voice chat is silent,say ello to people see near me and no one seems to respond..was hoping chat have some kind fix today from the new patch but seems broken still ??

is this correct ? was fast look i admit ?

[Tiala]

Racing through games and gaining easy rewards was also spawned by WoW - the gamers from there have just spread out now and keep asking for the same in other games.

It's the same trolls on all the on-line games I have played since - I just ignore it now.

[Arkansas Slim]

Agree totally. Feel free to add me to ur friends list. I am old school also.

[Lambchops]

City of Heroes actually had a pretty solid community, and 7 (8 years?) is a pretty long lifespan for a game. It was never able to reach past it's niche market and NCSoft is a garbage publisher. The community wasn't the issue there.

However in general I agree, yes, a good community is probably the most important piece to making a long-lasting MMO, and it requires design choices that incentivize fostering that community in the first place.

[cleric1471]

i can see your point bud, i used to play final fatnasy 11, its the same concept slow exp endless grinds best done in a group of 6 and endgame was up to 64+, if you died you lost exp. i did try wow when i was on there and it realy felt too easy and got bored in a few hours.

this game needs some areas that give better quality drops but requre a lot of teamwork to go through. make the challenge rewarding maybe slap a few hard boss enemies in the fray and give them a say 5% chance of dropping a orange piece of equipment. i already see some form of hate system so could even make it as you require certain types of players to complete it also as say 2 hits and your down means you would require a player who is quick and a capable tank.

just take one look at borderlands 2 it has enamies that take a real beating with just 4 people for challenges and they drop amazing gear, why not impliment something similar. i see a lot of people moaning about nim being hard well with my idea he would look like a walk in the park. i am used to seeing people die in mmo's but i rarely see it in this one and people only seem to help when it suits them. the idea its all or nothing would be good.

[zsadistdeath]

I completely agree with ya. Im very old school and am about the same age as you are and have played MMO's since Everquest(Evercrack) first came out. For an MMO which is supposed to mean Massive Multiplayer....it doesn't seem massive at all. It's like hey! look theres a real person, cool! Thats kinda sad! Its supposed to be, Holy hell, there are people everywhere!! Granted I'm sick to death about reading in general chat about how Wow is the first MMO, bad Chuck Norris jokes, or whose mom is sleeping with whom, but we really need a solid General Chat!!! ASAP!!!

Z

[khessmd]

I like this idea cleric1471 .. that would be a good idea

[Domec]

i can see your point bud, i used to play final fatnasy 11, its the same concept slow exp endless grinds best done in a group of 6 and endgame was up to 64+, if you died you lost exp. i did try wow when i was on there and it realy felt too easy and got bored in a few hours.

this game needs some areas that give better quality drops but requre a lot of teamwork to go through. make the challenge rewarding maybe slap a few hard boss enemies in the fray and give them a say 5% chance of dropping a orange piece of equipment. i already see some form of hate system so could even make it as you require certain types of players to complete it also as say 2 hits and your down means you would require a player who is quick and a capable tank.

just take one look at borderlands 2 it has enamies that take a real beating with just 4 people for challenges and they drop amazing gear, why not impliment something similar. i see a lot of people moaning about nim being hard well with my idea he would look like a walk in the park. i am used to seeing people die in mmo's but i rarely see it in this one and people only seem to help when it suits them. the idea its all or nothing would be good.

There is plenty of times where I die in Defiance, BUT it doesn't seem like there is a lot of consequences behind it. Usually when I die, I extract and get right back to where I was going to be anyways, with not much loss on my part. I don't see why they couldn't leave that stuff in lower starting areas, but yes I would like to see more difficult areas for sure and possibly some sort of team building bonus to helping players out (I.e. give each other ammo, arkfall scrap or scrip when reviving other players.)

[Lambchops]

There is plenty of times where I die in Defiance, BUT it doesn't seem like there is a lot of consequences behind it. Usually when I die, I extract and get right back to where I was going to be anyways, with not much loss on my part. I don't see why they couldn't leave that stuff in lower starting areas, but yes I would like to see more difficult areas for sure and possibly some sort of team building bonus to helping players out (I.e. give each other ammo, arkfall scrap or scrip when reviving other players.)

The whole "death without consequences thing" seems to be a common trend these days... Who cares about difficulty when you can just spawn rush everything?