Why Aren't There Any Good MMORPGs? A Critique of Pure Power

[@sorcerousfang]

Reflecting on your first WOW experience reminded me of one of my first MMORPG experiences with Perfect World. My low-level self just wanted to explore because the world looked pretty, went too far into a high-level territory, got killed and respawned in a town I had no business being in yet. The whole area was surrounded by mobs that one-shot me no matter how hard I tried to sneak past them, and I was stuck. Enter awesome player significantly higher level than me recognizing I was stuck, who chatted with me about the circumstances that led to me being there, and then invited me to join his party so he could *literally carry my low-level butt through the sky and to safety* (being carried was a feature that was probably part of the romantic elements I never explored beyond "Oh, look, you can marry someone in game and literally carry them over the threshold. Neat."). After that point, he helped me gain experience and showed me a lot of the pretty places to look at because at the end of the day that was all really wanted to do with the game. If I wanted to explore more, I needed to be strong enough to get there, and that was my only motivation to gain levels. No pressure to have the best build, no want for a story other than my own, and a very kind person I made a lot of fond memories with. It remains the best MMO experience I ever had.

[@sorcerousfang]

And now I'm sitting here realizing my experience could be the first chapter of an isekai fantasy novel with a ridiculously long title, and I may need to write it now.

[@moon-channel]

If you do end up writing that novel, please share it with me!

[@mattwo7]

@@sorcerousfang I know a good title: "I got Log Horizon'd into the MMO I just started and was literally carried." If there's one other common thing with all those LN names, not just the isekai ones, they're all self-descriptive. If you haven't seen Log Horizon, I recommend watching it, especially if you ever need inspiration for your story. It's not a power fantasy and instead focuses more on the politics of the players and guilds stuck in the other world. It'd probably between the the center and bottom right corner of the MMO spectrum in this video if you made the spectrum about isekai stories. There's still plenty of action but it's not the main focus in the slightest. Re:Zero would probably be closer to the center as it's more of a character-driven story where the main character's cheat power is that he doesn't stay dead but time rewinds for him every time he does die and he has no real means of fighting back against most of his opponents on his own 90% of the time so he has to figure out strategies to solve mysteries and defeat his opponents with the allies and resources he has available to him.

[@degreeskelvin3025]

This brought tears to my eyes. My first MMO experience was in a free-to-play game called Fiesta online. I was 10yrs old and had no idea what I was doing, but thought the cleric with his mace(I didn't even know what a mace was) and shield was pretty cool. Got into the game, completely lost, got stuck in some dungeon/pvp zone not knowing where I was supposed to go to complete my beginner kill 5 lvl 1 mobs quest. Just when I was about to give up on the second day of trying, 2 random players saw me in the pvp zone and helped me out. I could barely type too 😅. It must have been rough for them, but they were patient. Will never forget those two. That's why I still firmly believe MMOs are not just full of the incel neck beards out there.

[@yveltalsea]

WE HAD THE SAME EXPERIENCE OF GETTING LOST IN PERFECT WORLD AND BEING FLOWN AWAY BY A HOT BARBARIAN. (What class was your romantic hot date?)

[@Angzt]

I feel like there's another aspect as to why MMORPGs aren't what they used to be which you didn't touch on: The inevitable demystification of MMORPGs - and games in general. In the first months, maybe the first year of WoW, the whole game was still a big mystery. Let's say you saw a guy with a cool looking sword in town. The only way to figure out where they got it from was to ask them. That gave the guy a way to brag about his accomplishments and it gave you something cool to strive for. Something you discovered serendipitously, something that not everyone would have on their radar because not everyone saw cool sword guy or if they did, not everyone asked. Additionally, if you started a quest with only vague directions, your options were 1) run around all over the place until you maybe stumble across the objective and 2) ask in chat once you lost patience. Again, that gave people a sense of their knowledge, their experience with the game having value. And it gave you an appreciation for those that would help you, even if that help was just in chat and not bound by any game mechanics. And then came the online databases which logged every quest, every item drop, and had the whole game world all mapped out. They made all that previously arcane knowledge public. And with that, the answer you would get when asking people in-game would usually just be "look it up yourself". Likely because that's what the person answering had done themselves. Anyone could learn anything without even engaging with the game itself. That also meant players didn't value that knowledge anywhere near as much as it was no longer sourced from personal merit or experience. Soon enough, you were not only expected to stop asking "dumb" questions, you were also expected to know every boss in a dungeon before you stepped foot in it for the first time. Which brings us nicely to the "Why it's rude to suck at WoW" video that others have already mentioned. Unlike the issue discussed in this video, I don't see any way out of the demystification I described. The sites that enable that knowledge to be available for anyone at any time without touching the game won't go away. For any major new game, there are a dozen already set up during beta tests. The internet has changed since WoW released. There is no going back. One might argue that the easy way to keep some of the mystery alive would be randomized content with some very rare elements. But then your hard-earned knowledge of these things is worthless - to you and to others. Because it can't be employed in any useful way as the parts of the game it pertains to are just random. A little anecdote to illustrate my point: Roughly a year ago, in July 2022, there was a major community interest in Nier:Automata for a couple of days. A single-player game that was already 5 years old at that point. Someone had supposedly found a previously undiscovered area of the game. Over a few days, they posted screenshots and short videos of that area, along with some light description and questions, indicating they were rather young and not comfortable with all the attention. That mystery had people enraptured for the short while it lasted, even ones that never played the game. But try as they might, nobody could reproduce it, nobody could get there on their system. How was this possible? How was this missed all this time? Was this even in the game the whole time? Was it just patched in recently? Or was it a marketing ploy? Or a mod beyond anything previous seen? Or completely faked footage? Nobody knew. The story ends with the whole thing being a "hoax" (if you will) by a few modders who had figured out how to manipulate the game's files in previously unknown ways. But that's not the point. The point is that mysteries like this don't just capture attention of the whole community, but even of people outside of it. That is how rare things like this have become. And that's how much people still long for them.

[@StoryTeller796]

Why not just leave about 50% of quests out in the open on maps and such, make about 10% of various secrets part of the main campaign's path, and then make the remaining 40% of be actual secrets that are either locked behind the post-game or players have to do specific things to unlock them. Then, after players find everything within the game, give them a "new game +" and put in 5 more secrets that tantalizingly tease and excite players for future projects. This could be something interesting to try out if someone has the money, resources, and time to burn.

[@QuantumShenna]

@@StoryTeller796 that still doesn't solve the problem of online guides making these "secrets" more of just, a thing to learn.

[@XxDruidmancerxX]

Reminds me of when I played WoW for the first time and didn't even know about all the quest addons and such, I had to do the druid quest to unlock the marine form, and had no idea how to get to the zone where the quest took place in. I started stopping players I met on the road to ask for directions, and it felt like real life lol "Follow this road until you see a fork on the road, turn right, make your way to Ironforge, take the train to Stormwind, then..." something like that, I don't remember EXACTLY the directions, but the experience itself I do, to this day. And even arriving at Stormwind, which was totally different than the Night Elves areas, was something that I remember fondly.

[@johnny2trayz]

I thought about how every game you can just look up how to beat day 1 nowadays, and the next big adventure that "Feels like playing an old game" was going to have to be one that actively sent bad information to reviewers, developers, and its own API somehow, and that the only way to truly find anything in the game would have to be IN the game somehow. A game that renders having your phone open or another tab open in the background useless, slow, boring, and wrong. Maybe players literally have to gather at a help desk. Maybe map/item locations can be bartered. Even the most antisocial are more inclined to give out knowledge if it's encouraged. Maybe it gives you special social points you can spend in that super fun summer beach swimsuit shop. Literally anything that removed the overbearing oppression of the fact its just numbers to waste time.

[@lunactiathemoth]

​@@StoryTeller796 people are bound to make online guides of the secrets anyways, making them public knowledge

[@KyuubiNoKami]

MMOs tend to devolve into solo-action combat or social chatrooms. What they fail to realize, they can have BOTH aspects fulfilled without endangering the other. Imagine one part of the playerbase playing stardew valley crafting &growing food for the hardcore players. And them in return gathering rare ingredients so the casual playerbase can upgrade their farms & tools to provide better service for the hardcore players. Time spent playing should be beneficial to all, regardless on how you want to play.

[@Lilith_Harbinger]

I think i've seen some games try to emulate this. Maybe they did it wrong because they basically forced it, by having players only able to progress by joining a guild. Then guild members divide work between them. The problem is, to me this felt like going to work instead of playing a game. You spend more time mining ore than doing the fun stuff, because that's your role in the guild.

[@EphemeralPseudonym]

Angels Online feels like it could have been the best MMO ever made if the developer and publisher were good

[@Anxiou5Panda]

I remember ArchAge or whatever it's called, is your statement true for that game as well?

[@Zanador]

Puzzle Pirates kinda does this. All the items needed by the high-end combat players are sold in shops run by other real players. Those shops exist in towns that are run by real players and are staffed by workers who are real players, and their crafts use materials that had to be gathered by real players. Most of the combat revolves around ship combat where everyone has a role that's necessary to keeping the ship running - one person sets the course and steers, a handful man the sails, some load the cannons, some repair holes, some bilge water, and these all affect each other in various ways. It's a great system that I think about all the time, but unfortunately it's not actually a particularly fun game to *play*, and a lot of those non-combat systems (especially the town ownership and landlording) suffer from some of the same problems as real-live equivalents e.g. consolidation of power into fewer and fewer power player's hands.

[@autisonm]

I feel like thats what Ashes of Creation is attempting to encourage, although I have a feeling it'll fail on the "casual" side. It would need a much more proper farming experience that would make people actually want to farm over leveling/fighting. I also think farming can extend beyond just resources and into things like mounts and cosmetics. It's something FFXIV actually does pretty well minus the social aspect (besides sea fishing which is probably the only good example in an MMO). All of the crafting classes have a mini game that you have to do when crafting high quality gear or crafting something for the first time. Mining and Botany are probably the most "meh" of the crafting and gathering jobs in FFXIV. Fishing on the other hand is the best. You have a significantly deeper but not necessarily more complicated/tedious mini game that requires a degree of knowledge that you'll pick up over time by Googling stuff or asking other Fishers. Then it also has the sea fishing which basically just groups up a bunch of people into a single instance and essentially acts as a private room to just chill and talk about stuff. Plenty of newbies and veterans still run it so you'll often see the veterans giving tips whenever the newbies ask about stuff. It's essentially the online equivalent of going on a fishing trip with some work acquaintances.

[@Afterlord2]

Hey Moony, big fan! I'm an endgame maplestory player and I just want to point out that Maplestory hasn't been a social game for the better part of a decade. Originally it was very social, but it's been almost an entirely solo experience for a rather long time. Player power is extremely vertical and it takes well over a year of dedicated play to participate in endgame bosses. I think it's not unreasonable to say it's a hard minimum 1000 hour grind just to participate in the latest content. Very rarely does a player do it that quickly though. The players who just chill in henesys are basically the equivalent of people who play rp servers and hang out in goldshire minus the erp. They're sort of the exception. The vast majority of players are people who are actively trying to get as far in the game as possible, 99.9% of them never actually make it to end game though.

[@moon-channel]

Hi Chaos! Thank you for the input: it's been a little while since I (or frankly, anyone I know) has touched upon Maple Story. It was, however, once my youngest sister's favorite game, and I have fond memories of watching her socialize with her friends while hitting tree stumps with daggers. If anything, the fact that even Maple Story has gravitated towards pursuit of pure power shows, I think, how mmorpg developers may have lost sight of what makes these games great. That said, I did cut a section out of the video discussing my thoughts on how some social rpgs purposefully have an almost impossible, extraordinarily grind heavy end game for the sole purpose of preventing players from reaching the "end" and thus encouraging socialization "forever" -- this being a flaw of the Social RPG. I'd have to develop my thoughts on that topic a bit more though: maybe we can discuss it in a follow-up video someday!

[@Zabzim]

@@moon-channeli think fallout 76 deserves the spot where maple story should be for while it has almost no social features whatsoever, the game is yet incredibly social despite the inability to be social through joint hardship.

[@g1gabytez]

And I'm one of the 99.9% of endgame players who felt like my entire experience is incomplete. My main is/was a Blaster, who i got to lv 245 i think, and due to the overwhelmingly grindy nature of maple (in addition to nexon's new shady practices like NFTs), i just called it quits ^_^

[@juhadexcelsior]

@@g1gabytez We need a successor badly

[@DeputyDerp]

While I'm not 100% endgame yet (still only half-done my liberation quest, not doing Kalos boss runs or anything), I can confirm this. There's an argument to be had that most of the social aspect of the game has moved to discord, since it's easier to join voice chat or organize guild activities that way, but it still stands to reason that in-game communication is largely gone. People do find social groups, but the sad part is that it's often locked behind finding people at a certain skill level, which takes time to progress to.

[@pulledporc5334]

I can't believe you reminded me that cosmetic items used to be a thing you just unlock by playing the game instead of through in game shops. That is such a more fun way to do cosmetics not only because it makes them feel more rewarding (as a sign of your accomplishment) but can add to the social aspect of the game in a way more impactful game than "My character looks like this because I paid $20. You must also pay $20 to look like this".

[@aerieleah533]

See I'm never impressed when I see people with rewards like that. Like gee you either have disposable income or irresponsibly bought something. Even when it looks cool, I just kinda shrug. I only am impressed now days when I know it took something crazy to get loot in game. I honestly don't care if the person I'm playing with has tons of money or barely a dime. I'm not playing to admire someone else's wealth.

[@laytonjr6601]

You can have both obviously

[@Glitterkittyxyz]

The callout of "Comparison is the thief of joy" was important for me to hear. I've had issues playing video games recently because I'm so focused on trying to 100% them because of how I see other people playing games. Meanwhile, only a few years back, I was ecstatic to beat Cynthia in Pokemon Diamond even though I used countless revives, ethers, potions, and ultimately had to use Struggle to defeat her. I was happy, but now, I kinda feel like getting to use all that stuff is cheating, even though it's encouraged in-game. Anyways, great video essay, your stuff is always good, and this one helped me personally deal with my own gaming issues (even though I've never touched an MMO/RPG in my life)

[@Densoro]

Your Elden Ring example illustrates something that's gradually dawned on me: when I say I want multiplayer games, I mean I want games _structured like single player games, with a focus on immersion_ -- which can be played with my friends. The co-op campaigns in Halo or Kingdom Hearts Days, a variety of multiplayer mods for Mario 64 or Jet Set Radio Future -- those are my gold standard, because pure power takes _such_ a back seat that enemies seem to have a 'canonical power level' instead of floating, disjointed numbers creeping ever upward. Areas in the game are _core memories from the plot's progression,_ rather than pastures where busywork mobs can spawn. I think this desire for immersion is represented in story fiction _about_ MMORPGs as well. Many such manga present more of a CRPG/immersive sim vision for the genre, where physics and environment can eke out chaotic, almost unreproducible results -- truly subjective experiences. Maybe a level 20 boss monster slips on an oil slick, cracks its head open on a brick wall, and falls off a cliff, awarding a 'win' to the hapless level 1 adventurer who ran around like a headless chicken trying not to get stomped to death.

[@ScionOfTheSeventhDawn]

If you have never played Super Mario 3D World, then you absolutely, 100% should. It's exactly how you described, a single player game for up to 4 people to play together. The modern Mario side scrollers are like that too, if you fancy that.

[@zekulir6419]

MMOs should give you systems that encourage communication, interaction and so on and not just "progression". At a certain point in progression, many things wed rather solo i am sure. Though, it is important to keep in mind that you as a player need to try to engage other players. If someone isnt looking to chit-chat, whipping them via ingame systems rarely helps.

[@MaintDocs]

I feel like Destiny (1) deserved to be on this list. I ticks all the boxes he said. And as you've said, it ticks that single player immersive experience, but brings co-op and the epic save the party moments in as well.

[@Drivinefire]

Absolutely agree. One of the reasons why I could never get too invested in MMORPGs is because the fighting and exploration lacked immersion. Exploration is usually a linear skill/quest requirement, and combat is almost exclusively a stat check. There are no physics, no options for improvisation, no immersive near-death experiences, it's all about having the right gear and pressing the right spells at the right time, and that's just not fun for me. I wanted to hop on with friends and have unique experiences depending on our playstyle or crazy ideas, even if they occasionally break the game, but I never got that with MMORPGs...

[@vexhia6792]

Try Warhammer 40K: Darktide. Great to play with friends, difficulty increases are elective, and the game is so chaotic at higher levels that even if you don’t optimize, you’ll do great if you can just adapt and ride the waves of chance. it emphasizes cooperation with teammates, and just being in the right place at the right time. But if you want to optimize and grind, you can do that too and it feels pretty rewarding to finally get the perfect weapon drop.

[@astralecliptic]

I've been playing FFXIV since Stormblood, and it's pretty much the only MMO I play (not counting the small amount of FFXI I've dabbled in). My first data center was extremely cliquey and rude, but my second was incredibly friendly and patient with me. Many thanks to the person in Tam Tara who, after calling me out, immediately became polite when I admitted I was new, and enthusiastically took the time to answer a brand new Arcanist's questions about DoTs and my carbuncles! Most of my guild is older adults with jobs, so most of my social interaction (outside of being brought to rp venues) has been in learning parties for high end content, many of which have been lots of fun! (Yes, I am one of those that enjoy high end content.) I do have some issue with your solutions - FFXIV used to allow a lot of rewards to be sold, but they're soulbound now because the devs are trying to cut down on real money trading (RMT) and botting. I've seen it in Eureka, one of the special zones: When I first played Eureka in Shadowbringers, despite it being old content, it was a highly social experience because if a player dies, they lose exp unless raised by another player. One of my favorite experiences was watching a rescue party fall off a cliff, then need another rescue party in turn - in the end, it took five rescue parties before they were raised. Last time I went in, after the influx of new players and the increase in RMT traders, I saw bot players camping special encounters so that human players couldn't do them - in turn, this crashed the in-game economy for the rare items and mounts from the encounters. In general, Eureka is now far more empty and less social with only the bots, the players only interested in the untradable rewards, and the occasional new players trying to figure it out left. I've unfortunately also seen something similar happen with high level players in low level areas - I once had to leave and come back to kill a mob I needed to kill for a story quest, because it also happened to be one that dropped a popular crafting item, and a level-capped player kept sniping them. I do think it's a shame, especially after the influx of new players, that people often seem to have the misconception that high-end content is the only valuable content and the only way to get decent gear. There's plenty of other things to do if that's not your thing, and if people bother you for it, they're the ones who are in the wrong.

[@dovedozen]

The whole botting thing is an interesting problem; much like w/ social media I feel like the only real solutions involve having Real People Really Moderating these spaces, manually, which obv has a cost in both time & money and probably doesn't scale well AT ALL. I'm not much of an MMO-head, but maybe running smaller servers or even dedicating (developer + player!) time to smaller games is something? Not that funding stuff like that is easy, though.

[@autisonm]

@@dovedozen The most efficient way of dealing with bots is by having players report them. However players will only report bots if they think it actually does something. While I understand that banning bots in batches tends to be better for technical reasons, if its not done frequently enough some players will get the impression that the devs dont care. I think the best solution is just making smaller, more frequent, ban waves.

[@autisonm]

I always hate hearing about bots ruining games and I always report every bot I find. I think a lot of people underestimate the negative effects of seeing blatant bots in a game has on the players of that game. Seeing the rampant botting in Lost Ark made me decide not to try to get back into it.

[@Egeslean]

@@09f9 Coming from someone who tried to get into Eureka and the other 1 or 2 special zones (I can't remember atm, you'll understand why), but bounced off was because it was 1) boring as hell 2) way too grindy (sorry I'm not from some Asian country where grinding is the most fun thing ever/being forced to do it) 3) too convoluted 4) disconnected to everything else (like you said) 5) the rewards/end goal just doesn't match up with the effort having to be put in 6) (this is a problem for A LOT of things in FF14 unfortunately) there's not enough information/guides IN GAME so it pulls me out of the experience (there's no reason why a lot of the info, even on their own site, shouldn't be available in game somehow) 7) the people there are unfriendly/unhelpful or seem to not want to waste their time in there helping others who are learning (this is not an issue I've had during normal gameplay as plenty of people have stopped and helped me out or answered questions and seemed to be happy to do so, and I've turned around and done the same thing when I could). Some of these apply to other aspects of the game, like the end of each expansion only allowing us to get 500 of the newest item currency per week, and then replacing it and the gear you could get every few months.

[@seannotshawnorshaun_]

@@autisonm I think I have a potential solution or at least idea that could help with the bot problem: give players that report a bot some in-game reward when the bot is banned, like a mount/pet/title or something. This would give players an additional motive for reporting bots as well as notify them when their report actually had an effect, reassuring people that reporting actually is helpful.

[@massiveidiot77]

I think this problem extends outside the mmorpg genre and into any multiplayer game really. Too many games focus on players who want to optimize everything instead of fun

[@strayiggytv]

This. It's also why e sports will never take off as a well funded public pass time. Because watching people sweat over optimization and percentage points isn't fun in the slightest.

[@unslept_em]

i've noticed in fighting games that this happens as well. i feel like characters over time can get buffed so they lose the unique characteristics that make playing them enjoyable, and developers are quick to eliminate new metas even when they contribute to a character's basic gameplan. i've always wondered why developers don't lean into those characteristics! if you have to buff them, focus on the character's _essential_ gameplan. that's the reason most players choose them as a main.

[@trymv1578]

KZbin is already flooding with 'best X for Y' videos for Baldurs Gate 3 and its been out officially for a day. A story RPG getting meta optimization videos is the worst thing ever.

[@TheBoboSamurai]

​@@strayiggytvdespite your individual opinion which you are entitled to, it is a fact that eSports is already a multi-million dollar global phenomena. There are thousands of people watching a StarCraft 2 tournament on Twitch right now as I type. Many countries openly embrace eSports as part of their new cultural fabric, like Saudi Arabia and South Korea for example. Colleges and high schools around the USA have thriving eSports clubs/teams.

[@ElSolRacNauj]

"Given the oportunity, players will optimize the fun out of a game" I don't remember where I heard that but it's true.

[@firun2635]

I think a core problem that is not due to game design is that people have went from "Cool! I can play with other people!" to "Oh god, I have to play with other people!". I think this is just a logical evolution of people getting accustomed to playing online games. The wonder of the new passes and gives way to datamining and pure optimization, the world of a game merely becoming a system of interconnected elements to break as efficiently as possible, with other players being roadblocks. Therefore, I think something like when WoW was new can never happen again. It was a combination of good game design and a sufficient pool of people who still looked at online gaming with wonder. That, and we entered a time of overabundance. Choice paralysis is a thing, and the countless options of things to play devalue the idea of investing in a single game. This is not only true for games, but for pretty much everything else, too. Compare going to a video store, discussing what to take home for 30 minutes, and then really enjoying whatever you took home to aimless Netflix zapping. There's so much you COULD watch that you can't settle on anything.

[@comyuse9103]

for an mmo to really be good you have to break people that refuse to see it as something more than empty systems or make it clear they aren't really welcome.

[@juhadexcelsior]

The only solution is creating two totally different games in one. Countless options for social activities for casuals and a massive in game store existing parallel to an aggressively competitive action based gameplay with levels and skills acquisition. I hear Maplestory 2 nailed this pretty well actually (before it was canned in all regions besides Korea) This might end up being expensive or time consuming but I honestly can see it lasting quite a long while. One half of the team would be solely dedicated to the social "party fiesta" style content while the other half focuses on game balance, combat, monsters etc. Keep both styles totally separate but also totally accessible if some work is put in. For example, say a warrior wants to clear mobs faster but a certain staff he needs requires a certain level of "reputation" in order to unlock it for combat. Now he has to socialize, play mini games, make friends, buy a house, etc in order to boost his reputation points and unlock it for battle. Perfect way to ease players into alternative ways of engaging with the game. You could even at the beginning of the game have players pick a villager, defender or a volunteer role. Villagers would be the chefs, farmers and miners. Defenders would be the swordsmen, the wizards and archers and volunteers would be a special class that can only be achieved at at a certain level that hybridizes the defender and villager roles. Overall, it only takes some very thoughtful and intuitive game design to play into what people expect and demand rather than trying to recreate a nostalgia 'spark'.

[@Pasakoye]

I had a character in Ultima Online, that was not a crafter or focused on combat. He was herding/stealth/lockpicking. I would herd dragons into one corner and have free pickings from all the chests. Since the dragons were not killed they would not respawn on me, and since they were grouped up in one place, it was hard to engage them without dragon one away at a time.

[@MaintDocs]

That gets into a topic of what makes a good style of competitive game and what makes a good style of co-operative game. I personally love co-op. But some co-op games expect both players to be skilled to the extreme. Bringing in a 2nd player who has anything less than high skill is a death sentence. That ruins the whole play with and help your friend experience. An example where co-op works well is Destiny. Some help, any help is usually better than none. Even accidentally running into places where I was severely under-leveled for a boss, I still helped by reviving players and keeping their backs clear. Initially, it felt a little bad. But after I revived the higher level player twice, I came away feeling like, yes I need to be higher level, but I did help the win.

[@cloudynguyen6527]

@@MaintDocs Co-op games are fine when the group fight against NPC. If L4D has taught me anything, that is to never design co-op game pitting 2 groups against each other.

[@christianmorris5292]

I think there's a similar issue in Genshin Impact where there's basically no end game content and so hoyoverse makes a lot of enemies and bosses which are still easy to the sweats who constantly grind their characters and teams but can be quite annoying for casual players who just want to go through the story.

[@NoGoodHandlesLeft]

Yes! I really liked the story of Genshin (apart from the sometimes plodding-along pacing) but *damn* did combat get annoying with some of the new enemy types.

[@Whatever100500]

@@NoGoodHandlesLeft Genshin's combat core just isn't well designed. It's invulnerability spam on both player and enemy side. The only ways to make something difficult are time limits, one-shot attacks (anything else you can heal/shield through) or disabling most of player's kit. None of which are good options.

[@prfctstrm]

The fact that you can produce such large, high-quality work so frequently ON TOP OF practicing law is nothing short of astounding. Keep up the good work, man

[@mcbill7352]

Bro is saul goodman if youtube was his hobby instead of scamming people

[@jeffreyedwards9968]

Makes me think of an old blog article from the era of the Wii titles something like The Bird Man Fallacy which discussed Sony and Microsoft throwing their own money into motion control because they had assumed that motion control was the only thing the Wii had they didn't, in the same way that people throughout history assumed it was feathers that enabled birds to fly and covering themselves with feathers would give them flight: like the key to flight is an air pressure differential, motion control was not what made the Wii fly. I was heavy into game dev blogs at the time of WoWTBC and the Big Talk around what made these games so satisfying was the dopamine tease of power progression: constantly be drip feeding new challenges to the player, giving them new tools to learn, and rewarding them for overcoming the new challenge. It's still a major play in every design book, in indie games and every Mario title. It's the lean toward ARPG: they assumed the power pursuit cycle was what people loved about the game because it was the measurable dimension of their design and the assumed "secret sauce" that made WoW or EverQuest the successes they were, and that the fun social stuff was a side effect of making the power pursuit cycle more attractive. I hadn't thought about how "cart before the horse" that was to ignore how the game subtly encouraged socialization, just that there must've been design errors in the pursuit like most long-time game players must.

[@TheBreadPirate]

Dang, I feel like a lot of these point apply to other hobbies as well. As a KZbinr, I have seen how competition can sap the joy out of video making. The social aspect is important.

[@_kalia]

Love the Adam Millard reference, I was so happy to hear your name at the end of that video!

[@moon-channel]

I was quite shocked! I had a "look Ma I'm on TV!" moment, when it came up. I still think of Moon Channel as a very personal project: just a small, fun KZbin experiment. I'm quite humbled by all the positive reception it has been getting!

[@roxaskinghearts]

mmo is dead because unlike mobile games nothing sticks around more then a few months and everyone only makes mmorpgs for pc anymore not consoles the real games market for the masses 600$ for a gtx 1060 at walmart shrink flation anyone yes pc may be free most gamers game on console because of the trash way pc are sold in the usa like solar your not getting the best products your getting trash someone needs to deal with america your not number 1 and charities are just stock exchange

[@millyawns]

I'm not kidding, this video is helping me figure out the work life balance in my life. Forgetting to focus on community and family leads to burn out. The balance is necessary. Much love Moonie.

[@toysoldier6093]

Moony's adoration for his younger sisters is indescribably precious.

[@scootaloo3501]

Power player here. You're absolutely right. I have a PHD in PoE, and I often end up attempting to create emergent gameplay by powerleveling friends and curating their builds for them because they can't be bothered to study every meta. Although I enjoy the extreme grinds my friends do not which turns a game which could have amazing fun social gameplay into an experience that's mostly single player.

[@moon-channel]

Thank you for your comment, Doctor. It's always nice to receive an expert's opinion on a video!

[@aque9608]

Was Ragnarok Online hours of repetitive grind loop in the same areas? yes. Was it also the best time I've ever had in a MMO? also yes. God I miss it so much.

[@moon-channel]

I still remember running around kiting and jupiter-thundering mobs in the clock tower. Those were simpler times, but it was so much fun.

[@ArgoIo]

And there was always the option to just go to Prontera and chat with people.

[@xDJxChowwy]

God, jupiter thundering anything was peak childhood memory for me. Such a satisfying sound and numbers popping up rapidly.

[@arsia.]

Ragnarok online was some of the best years of my life. Ragnarok online was peak mmorpg... ...until renewal ruined it.

[@asenwolf3441]

I've been playing on a classic RO private server called Payon Stories :) it's lots of fun, and even has some custom content to keep it fresh.

[@pitdarkangel2961]

An interesting idea that this video made me think about, is how the season pass model that so many games do now seem to be similar to the power-sociability scale. Another example is Monster Hunter, that's been going on for almost 20 years now, but really blew up with World a couple years ago, that has a lot of sociability and community focus in its content, though it's often very limited due to the nature of the gameplay loop. I wonder if the popularity of these games can be attributed to players searching for the niche of the MMO in other types of games.

[@KTSamurai1]

your wow anecdote brought me back to my first wow experience as a wee night elf. i stumbled into a faction war somewhere between the barrens and night elf territory and, not knowing how inconsequential my damage was, i tried to take part by throwing spells into the mix. i didnt understand that i wasnt even scratching the max level players duking it out but i felt so included and the fight was so unexpected and epic that i truly believed i was doing my part i later learned of course that all i may have done was soak up a shaman's lightning bolt that could have hit a max level ally but in the moment when i didnt know any better i thought i was playing the coolest game imaginable. id love for a game to actually deliver on that fantasy, that even though i was just a low level nobody i could have been making real contributions to that fight somehow

[@raleo7466]

I like how FFXIV introduced the Blue Mage class as it requires a party of other blue mages to do stuff and get spells, it's the most social I've been in the MMO, I also love how they give an option to avoid socialization as it is a final fantasy game and some people are in only for the plot and references, not wanting to play with other players who basically have memorized and optimized the layouts of the maps

[@d0k0night]

The introduction of each class was fine, but I really did feel the tutorial for each was severely lacking. Like ok they'd show you a small snippet of what the basic gameplay was, but it would never really go past the barebone basics. The dancer tutorial was a real travesty. For each of these classes, I had to look up online on what exactly the game was trying to teach me to do.

[@dragonflower17]

I have a good memory of helping my friend grind the Shiva boss with a couple other friends in order to get his blue mage spell from her and we'd play the "screenshot game" where we'd try to do dumb emotes/poses and get stepped on by the boss and snag a screenshot of the lucky player. It was stupid and it was fun!

[@BestgirlJordanfish]

Though it really felt like opening the floodgates to modern microtransaction free to play / pay to win gameplay, I really missed Maplestory. I miss that feeling of a cute social hub mixed with the game, but that’s also kinda lost so much value today between discord and the way we socialize in online competitive games.

[@checker297]

I think there are lots of factors, but I think the main problem isnt MTX per se, its just that MTX was added in substitution for game content, instead of in addition (as it would be to the detriment to the MTX sales). I think this isnt unique to MMOs, but rather the gaming industry at whole. Ultimately MMO's subscription fee for new content became significantly eroded and people outside of the hardcore audience just went an spent the money on the latest new game as it was better value for money. It also doesnt help that as MMO's age, additional content becomes harder to make outside of single player focused content.

[@BestgirlJordanfish]

@@checker297 mhm. And like, it lost a lot of identity. As much as I liked seeing new worlds, having tighter places where you’re forced to run into people like in henesys, the harbor, or ships. Teleportation for quick quests became a norm and the fantasy of exploration and interaction faded a lot. The solo grinding that was a focal point became *the* focal point, at least in my experience. I think the closest experience to the socializing since was meeting people and playing monster hunter. Hunts were long enough so during prep we got to have just conversations. Pokemon Go for local meetups as well, but that’s verging into a physical space activity more than mmo.

[@PROdotes]

The last time I had fun in WoW was WotLK... as many others... but the reason was that my social died and my action became more important... also I got a job so I had less time for hanging around with the guild all day... but... When WotLK started, we were a small guild of friends and wanted to give raiding a shot... we slowly made our way through nax... learning all the bosses together, discussing tactics on teamspeak, helping each other to get better... and the first time we killed Kel'Thuzad with only me as the tank barely surviving and everyone sacrificing themselves so we get the kill... that was a moment that will stick with me, and prolly the others, forever... not cause it was a "power" moment, but because it was a bonding moment... But... more and more raids started coming, and it was turning more into "ok, do your homework before the raid so everyone knows what to do" and not "ok, let's learn this together"... and that's where stuff started falling apart... It shifted from a fun thing to do 1-2 times a week... to a thing that was about power... And I think that's where everything started dying... Sorry for the long rant... I wanted to share :)

[@Radar_of_the_Stars]

This feels like a sequel to Dan Olson's "Why it's Rude to Suck at World of Warcraft"

[@moon-channel]

I saw the thumbnail for it while doing research, but didn't have time to watch it. Now, I think I might have to!

[@strayiggytv]

Between this video and that one it feels like the problem with MMOs are the makers of such games ever listening to power players at all.

[@SaberToothPortilla]

​@@strayiggytvI don't kmow if I'd go *that* far. After all, power players are, by and large, the people who play your game most, so it makes at least some sense to listen to them some of the time. But there's definitely a salient point in that, whether intentional or not, the things that power players tend to want usually make the game demonstrably worse for non-power players. The reverse on the other hand isn't true as often. The things that non-power players want (when they want anything specific at all) tend to make the game better for non-power players and simply do nothing for power players. I can see how it might be frustrating for those power players, but the experience not continually improving isn't the same as it being made worse, and a lot of people *really* don't appreciate that. Which, to be fair, maybe it is reasonable to expect that it get continually better for you, especially if you're paying a sub for it, but it's just the indifference to the experience of lower level/investment players that's bothersome.

[@Puerco-Potter]

​@@SaberToothPortillayou need to ask the people that abandoned the game what they think, not the guy playing every day and complaining. The last guy obviously is having a better time than he is letting out... Usually power players want more systems, new more complex stuff. Adding to the complexity of a game is never good to hook new players.

[@ArgoIo]

@@Puerco-Potter It's not only off-putting to new players. These systems often imply one "correct" way to play the game and thus hinder any kind of free play. It reminds me of how World of Warcraft has a huge spike in player count whenever a new expansion releases. A lot of people just explore the new zones and have a good time with friends, and leave as soon as there is nothing else to do other than daily quests, M+ and Raiding.

[@ferretleaf]

completely off topic but i love how you always find away to include maya fey in your videos as a sort of ‘persona’..i adore her and it makes me smile whenever i see any AA characters pop up during the law sections :’)

[@paritoshd]

I would play the kind of game you have described, but I do foresee a problem, specifically regarding the trading. You said people selling items for real money would be fine, but this can get out of hand very quickly. My experience is with Escape From Tarkov, which describes itself as an MMORPG, and for the sake of this, we will take their word for it. In EFT, you risk losing all the gear you bring into a raid, which is a PvPvE instance. Every time you go into a raid, there's money at stake. If you lose your good gear, you might have to grind other maps to buy it again. You get used to it, as it is part of the game, but it's rough sometimes. Now, there is no way to buy in game currency using real money, but that hasn't stopped people from doing so off platform. Initially, the buyer and seller could load into a game as a team, and the seller could drop a backpack filled with cash onto the floor to pick up, and the buyer could move the money into their secure container, so they wouldn't lose it on death. Things have gotten more complicated now, and the systems in place to stop this directly affect regular players' experiences. The point here is that Real Money Trading (RMT) as the devs call it, is the leading cause for people to want to cheat in the game. The reason why at so many points in the game's history, every raid would have blatant aimbots, flyers, etc, and why even now every raid has at least one cheater with ESP, is so they can loot all the best items to sell for real money. At one point, maybe even now, the sellers would kill everyone in the lobby, and have the buyer pick up all the expensive things to sell, directly, so these inventory restrictions wouldn't affect them. All these cheaters make enough real money that they are able to continue to buy new accounts, many of them stolen, either from legit players, or bought using stolen credit cards, etc. Dealing with these people is a game of whack-a-mole on two fronts, banning accounts that cheat, as well as countering the cheat software. I'd say both require resources that could be spent elsewhere, so unless you have a Valorant like kernel level anti cheat, or you at least have endless money and talent, like Microsoft or Amazon, I don't think it could work very well. Ubisoft still experiences a wave of cheaters at the end of each season of Rainbow Six Siege, where people try to push their ranks to get the unique season cosmetic charm that reflects their highest rank, but they did cheap out and outsource their anticheat. Even cosmetics are a motivator here, as you can see. You might picture someone making a quick buck selling an in game item to another player, but let me assure you, people get obsessive. If there's money to be made, organized groups will get in and grind the hell out of the drops, and tank the "street value" of items. There are some games, like PUBG and CSGO, that at points I played exclusively because I could get drops that I could sell on the steam market place to use to buy other games. And this has not gone in vain, as I made back all the money I spent to initially buy them, and then some, by selling loot boxes. I have a friend who has 10 CSGO accounts that he grinds weekly. And honestly, if I had the patience, or any interest in playing the game, I might as well. This is to speak nothing of scammers, whom you might be liable for if you condone trading. Someone might take you to court, and the judge might not directly dismiss it. What I'm saying here is that the trading of items opens a whole can of worms that smaller developers understandably might not want to. I'm sure there's a clever solution that doesn't affect regular players' enjoyment, but there's a thin line between chaos and order in this space. Something to think about.

[@sarahfay5280]

I would argue that Ragnarok Online is simultaneously an ARPG and a Social RPG, and because of a poor optimization of the hybridization, both the Social and Action aspects can be really exclusive, because you need incredibly social skills *and* incredible action gaming skills. It was, genuinely, one of the video games of all time.

[@sarahfay5280]

Ah, an update to this: I'm realizing you're talking about the original designs of these games, and I apologize that I thought that you meant RO in its current state.

[@flamelaevateinn]

Great video, Moonie! Definitely agree on most points. Mid-way through the biggest point I could personally think of is not exactly the point you brought up "recommending devs to not listen to power focused players" but moreso that the power-focused players nowadays are trending towards behaviours that end up being a huge detriment to the community, e.g: expecting everyone to having researched any group content in advance, even content with low stakes or a low bar of failure (funnily enough, you could probably make an entire commentary on the topic of how people expect to interact with games of any genre and external information nowadays) or getting mad at people who don't want to take the most optimal progression path in a "single-player-like" game. And I say this as a huge spredsheet enjoyer myself, there's definitely a great deal of fun to be had in ARPG system optimization, but I just feel like people seem to have issues accepting how others play the game, which has deepened the divide between ARPG and SRPG players in an MMO.

[@RWxAshley]

There is one aspect of FFXIV that the playerbase has been craving since Endwalker skipped over the inclusion of exploration zones from stormblood and Shadowbringers. And I believe this video sums up why. In these zones you were forced to work with your fellow players to learn about the zone, use community resources, and work together to farm, and take down boss monsters while learning how to spawn the bosses, and to sneak past enemies too high level. And in Bozja southern front, they had the boss go for a round two, but it was in a duel against the best player from the huge group fate. If you stuck around to cheer them on and they won you got a buff simply for spectating the best player beat a boss solo. Ffxiv has potential to grow into an amazing mmo, but it feels like they might be getting pulled in lots of directions with how best to accommodate every style of player. Especially with the power players pushing for more ultimates even tho its content that only a small part of the community will ever touch. I hope dawntrail opens up the experience to more players and they nail the mmo part of the game on top of the great story.

[@coolyeh1017]

FFXIV I believe is a case of the devs trying to accommodate too many people at once. Though it is admirable that they are trying to include people who typically are intimidated by MMORPGS and putting in game design choices to get non-MMO players to play FFXIV it is causing a rift. You have the raiders, the HARDCORE raiders, the RPers (and I guess ERPers), the people who exclusively play for the story (which is unheard of in an MMO), the casuals, the single-players, not to mention that you can cross-play with someone in Brazil, Japan, the US, and Germany in a group, all with different opinions. As such the devs have to focus on some things but neglect something else. They spent a lot of resources on the graphical update and duty support (both of which was surely needed) which in turn cost the exploratory zone (which was split into Deep Dungeon, Criterion, and Island Sanctuary so essentially exchanged for more variety of content but not as long, grindy or deep as exploratory zones)

[@42Caio]

I'm here basically by accident as I'm not a big MMO player. And yeah, one of the biggest draws of FFXIV to me (though I still haven't started playing due to just how massive and daunting it is) is not having to deal with the usual hassle of dealing with people to get anything done. I want to play it because everyone talks about how it has a cool world, fun bosses and a decent story (something Final Fantasy hasn't had in a while). I know there's a sizable part of the playerbase that is like this (more putting up with the MMO elements than playing because of it, would prefer if it was single player, etc) and it must sound crazy to anyone big into MMOs. If I find the combat loop fun I do have an interest in endgame content that has to be done with other real players, and some social stuff like those thematic events players make (like organizing for everyone of a given class or race do something together), but the interaction is not really why I want to play.

[@jinnyplays]

@@42Caio ​ Honestly ffxiv is not as daunting as it seems. The game will drip feed you content as you lvl. As new systems become available to you, the game will take it's time helping you understand so there is never a point where there is more then one or two new things for you to do. There is also a dedicated chat network where people who signed up to be mentors will chat with and group with noobies for the sole purpose of letting you take your time and teaching you. The only downside to the system is the game decides for you when you are no longer a sprout, and cuts your access to these systems. In my opinion you will lose your sprout long before you are truly ready to face the high end content on your own, but there are lots of FCs that will gladly take you in and teach you. Also the game is worth playing for the story alone, that is 100% the only reason I play and once I'm done the MSQ expansions and patch content I un sub and wait for more.

[@mattwo7]

Sonic is a prime example of how trying to appeal to everyone will ultimately wind up just pissing a lot of people off if you don't do it right and considering how SegaSammy was treating sonic, Sonic Team was not at all in a position to do it right. Even now they keep shoving Classic Sonic sections into Modern Sonic games like the 2point5D Sonic Frontiers cyberspace levels even though Classic Sonic is getting his own games now like Mania, Origins and Superstars.

[@autisonm]

@@42Caio I usually play most MMOs somewhat solo (especially if its an ARPG MMO like Lost Ark or Path of Exile) since I'm not a very outgoing person but I really enjoyed being forced to occasionally interact for like 15~ minutes with 3 other people. They were typically pretty nice (which is common in FFXIV) and most were competent enough to get through the content. It served to sorta "break the ice" with the community for me and it's one of the few games where I actually joined a guild. Outside of group content you're really not pressured much into speedrunning to the end game. FFXIV is designed to be something you can enjoy at your own pace despite the MMO elements.

[@EmeralBookwise]

Part of the difficulty in achieving this balance is the players themselves, not just in what they say, but how they play the game. I remember when I tried playing an MMO and there were raids with seemingly interestingly designed mechanics that should have required players to actually cooperate in different roles, but the problem was no one actually played the raids in that intended fashion. Instead, the community had long since figured out to exploit those raid mechanics to clear the raid with maximum efficiency. The final boss itself still needed a full party of 12 to defeat as quickly as possible, but the actual task of reaching the boss was something that only 2 or 3 experienced veterans engaged with while everyone else stood around waiting. As the old saying goes, if given the opportunity, players will optimize the fun out of a game.

[@chimichangaDP]

Hitting us with that Prontera theme early on, nostalgia ripping the ol' heartstrings. Excited to catch this one early, this is a favorite topic of mine!

[@alexsantee]

One interesting aspect from tradable equipment is that they can negatively affect real-world economies. There were cases in countries with weaker currency in which the population could make more money by playing MMOs, selling equipment and exchanging the currency than by doing meaningful work. Over time many people stop working to play MMOs and the economy breaks

[@wliu2632]

Social MMOs seem to genuinely be a product of their time, as a unique experience of talking with strangers and making friends online before smartphones and social media. The next evolution was effectively Facebook/Zynga browser "games" era, and companies ultimately figured out you don't really NEED any games to keep most people engaged on a social platform. Discord (and social media as a whole) effectively became the Social RPG's final form and thus killed the genre for everything else. Even Maplestory hasn't been much of a "social" game for the past decade, with most of the game becoming a mostly solo daily chore/grindfest to gain power just like any other KR MMO. Chatting around in town still exists, but its more of a tiny niche compared to it's golden age in the late 2000s/early 2010s, with most players who want that experience sticking to VRChat, Second Life, or Discord/Reddit. At it's most extreme, social media followers/upvotes/likes basically ARE the new version of social RPG cosmetics, and our reality has effectively become the Monkey's Paw version of "I wish everyone played my social MMO" where society as a whole now chases clout on Twitter/TikTok/Instagram etc.

[@TheCrazyhairdude67]

Old School Runescape just added an update where you cut trees faster if you do it with other people :)

[@Cthulhunoms]

That Ragnarok Online music during the Chart explanation took me back to my childhood. 😭

[@trentonbuchert7342]

One of my dream projects is an MMO in which “Massively Multiplayer” is an integral, irrevocable part of the game’s story and design. Emphasis would be placed on the player as a member of a group. The concept is based in my fascination for sociology and anthropology. I know it’s highly unlikely to ever exist, but I can dream, can’t I?

[@NBmad]

The second a player finds alone and unable to do anything meaningful they would leave the game

[@jasonblalock4429]

The original plans for Uru (part of the Myst series) were very similar to that. The idea was a large multiplayer adventure game with people collectively exploring the ruins of an ancient civilization, as political conflicts start to break out over what to do with what they find. Sadly, Uru never really came close to fulfilling its dream for a variety of reasons. For the record, it is still alive in a 100% free form, although with a small enough player base that none of its more grandiose ambitions will ever be achieved. Still, there's nothing else quite like it that I know of.

[@TheBoboSamurai]

Haven't you ever heard of EVE?

[@pennyforyourthots]

I think the reason those games simply don't happen I think the reason those game simply don't happen is because they probably have a really short life cycle. If the game never really gets popular, then it doesn't really function properly, and if it gets popular but goes into decline, it also stops functioning properly. The only real way I could see this working properly is if you get a shit ton of semi-realistic NPCs to populate the world when players are missing, but that's an entirely different problem in its own right.

[@NBmad]

@@pennyforyourthots no different of a game fill with bots

[@CanofArizona]

Maplestory USED to be social a little over a decade ago. So what you are describing for the game is accurate for the past iteration. However now a days it has skewed far into the solo player experience with a big emphasis on personal damage. When they initially made this decision back then, it was the start of the games decline, while yes, damage was important the social aspect is what kept a lot of players engaged. It's the main reason I stayed so long on global until the game itself was so different I had to quit. Whenever I do want that again I hop on a P-server that emulates that old school environment and the social aspect is pretty much same as it was back in the old iteration.

[@speedydoggo]

It's really interesting seeing this video shortly after FFXIV announced their new expansion and development roadmap, which consisted of a lot updates to their cosmetic and housing systems rather than anything to do with combat content.

[@cfehunter]

27:55 Yes... I don't understand level scaling with mobs. It's not fun in warcraft, and it has actually made me not want to play Diablo IV. Why would I want to continue playing if my gear and stats get weaker relative to everything in the world whenever I level up? It completely dismantles any feeling of progress. From a social point of view maybe make a mentor system instead? Don't scale the world to the player, scale the player to their friends.

[@belldrop7365]

To these games, the progress is not comparing yourself to the mobs, it's comparing yourself to other players. That's why it's a "multiplayer" game even though you technically barely interact with other players.

[@cfehunter]

@@belldrop7365 in diablo especially. Other players are just kind of there? There's zero reason to party, so it's strange to make the PvE experience so dull.

[@AFlameofVengance]

I've played a lot of MMO style games across the spectrum. The ones that stood out to me the most would have been RuneScape and the Firefall beta. Originally what made RuneScape great was that during the first year or so I played it there werent people who had max level everything. If you needed armor or weapons you got them from a player who was barely high enough level to protect themselves from the mobs in the mining areas. Thats all they did, mine and make weapons. You got your wood from the lvl 3 guy who spent twelve hours a day just chopping trees. Players were highly specialized and because of that it required a lot of social interaction. Now it just feels like a leveling simulator. The only point is number go up. And I think thays where WoW excelled. If you needed specific player made items you had to get them from other people. You couldn't just immediately make everything yourself in a day because your numbers are high enough. It forced social interaction on a much more consistent basis. If RuneScape had limited players jobs then it would have maintained a strong social aspect while still being an easy game to play. I play MMO games for the people that I'm playing with. I'm never not actively logging into an MMO at least once a week. Community is such a core concept that so many games seem to ignore now. "Multiplayer" is more than just someone you happen to party up with. It is an idea that you play with and/or against other people. It is the bonds you make playing games together, whether thats cooperatively taking on a challenge or just chatting in front of the auction house looking for a cool skin to pop up. Content needs to be accessble to all players in the game. Endgame content shouldnt be locked behind a super high skill/gear wall.

[@ivanw1148]

At 34:40, you mention "what gamers actually want, not what they say they want". This is so surprisingly true. Not too long ago, BDO released an expansion called The Magnus, which was a different type of content than what we were used to with a juicy new skill unlock at the end. However, there was just way too much content. I spent the entire day and night miserably grinding through what would be an otherwise enjoyable new experience for the skill. Afterwards, my friends and I all agreed that the content would have been more enjoyable if they released each segment of it a week at a time. However, I know for a fact that the past version of myself would have been quite vocally unhappy about "time-gated content" had they actually done so.

[@izuthree]

I think as far as FF14 goes, there's a funny saying that the 'true endgame' is housing and outfit glamours. Doesn't take a genius to figure out where on the scale that lands. If anything other than the slide to the bottom left of the chart, I'd argue it's more of a slide downwards as well - back when I started ARR, to see all the story content involved doing Coil; a very hard progression series of events with actual story content tied to it. Nowadays, that same content is 'normal' and 'savage', specifically unhooking a bunch of core elements from the action side, but leaving a carrot on the stick for the more hardcore to go and get unique rewards. In that sense too though, there's an argument that the endgame is still about the glamour, and not the actual numbers - they're a gatekeeper, but not the 'point'. Though having recently returned to FF14 and it feeling like a very different game to the one I remember, there's a lot of interesting changes made over the years which I have a mixed opinion of far beyond 'youtube comments' but they too arguably exist to make the game more approachable and more 'individual' by trading out ability and job complexity for mechanical encounter complexity, downplaying the numbers and power grind more for execution of the gameplay itself - something which feels more compatible with a more 'singleplayer' feeling experience but also arguably removes a barrier to the more social elements by making progression through content theoretically easier with less grind for numbers.

[@capnbarky2682]

I don't know if you'd agree but near the end of shadowbringers and the start of endwalker, the stat and even levelling system almost felt...unnecessary? It was nice hitting level cap but it was almost so easy as to not really mean anything, it was more a vehicle for showing where folks were in the story than a genuine measure of a player's power relative to the world. Despite the admittedly interesting raid encounters of the game, it always felt like the best aspects of FFXIV were it's social aspects, and I always hoped they would lean MORE into those aspects, things like expanding the gold saucer and the mechanics of the hub areas.

[@Scerttle]

@@capnbarky2682 The levelling system, I feel, is mostly there to help people grow accustomed to their tool kit. You can hit levelcap doing nothing but the main story no problem. It's def not a gatekeep

[@SpacedogD]

29:00 the zone designs examples, you can take xenoblade chronicles too. The zones are masterfully designed. Great hidden paths to find, pockets of different levelled monsters wayyy above your level, as well as superbosses which motivates you to come back to that zone even later in the game. I wish more games, mmo or not, created with this sort of great level design.

[@EphemeralPseudonym]

I think a good way to balance social vs action in hard/endgame content is that having more raid members makes the content easier, but it can still be cleared solo with absolute optimization, like old maplestory and zakum. It was reasonable for even the most average guild to defeat zakum with the full raid party within a year of release, but a solo clear was an achievement for well over a year. A top player can still aim for greater heights while normal players can play the content and band together with others.

[@superuber27]

I am convinced that Runescape is such a successful game because it does everything you talked about in the Elden Ring section of the video. All of the content designed up through at least like 2006 prioritized building a world first and following game design templates second. There is no recommended level tied to areas, shops and NPCs and the environment exist to actually function rather than just be set dressing, Quests are genuine stories or experiences and not just filler content, you can genuinely explore the world and find unique secrets, item spawns, and gameplay features, almost all items are tradable, etc. There are zoos and jails and vegetable farms and open air markets and NPC houses and all of this shit actually does stuff and matters. It's an MMO that cares about immersion the same way single player RPGs care about immersion. It's often quaint in the implementation but it's there and elevates the game immensely in my opinion. I don't understand how the entire MMO genre forgot that immersion through functional and organic world interaction was a thing you could do in RPG design, and Runescape shows that it can be done perfectly fine in an MMO setting.

[@TigeriPlaysGames]

i remember one time, early on in my time playing ffxiv. i was doing some crafting in one of the starting cities and hadn't really upgraded my crafting gear in a while (i was probably only around level 30 at the time anyway). some random person i'd never met before came up to me and started crafting as well, then they opened a trade menu with me and offered me a full new set of HQ gear at my level they'd just made right in front of me! i was confused at first and thought they were offering to sell it to me and explained i didn't really have a lot of gil, but they said it was a gift. i never saw that player again but i think about them all the time. i made sure to pay it forward when I got my crafters to a higher level, too - i found another random player crafting at a low level and did the very same thing for them

[@proy3]

I've actually done this before. I remember doing this exact thing when I was first leveling my crafters way back when in I think Heavensward or ARR. I want to say it was Aleport.

[@acat5338]

It’s actually kinda funny how Maplestory gets put into the Social category because of its history. But in reality they’ve gone way down the endgame rabbit-hole like most other MMOs and they’ve trimmed much of the social aspects of the game out.

[@ashleyanne2056]

As a current Guild Wars 2 player. I get the feeling Moonie hasn't played GW2 in years. As they do a lot of his suggestions. World bosses in low level zones to bring high level players back? Account bound items far outnumber soul bound? Leveling is fairly quick and once you hit "max level" there are a ridiculous amount of horizontal power progressions to tweak your power without flat out leveling your power. Silly little events sprinkled throughout the year.

[@Lishtenbird]

Yeah, felt like GW2 was left out of the talk almost entirely. GW2 solved a lot of these problems in a couple years after launch, other ones with first expansions. Unfortunately it was internally mismanaged several times and never capitalized on all its advantages - it split and angried its action community with dungeons and raids, and alienated its social community with aggressive cash shop and lackluster social tools. And it could've been _the_ go-to MMO today.

[@synn-3060]

I know someone who spoke of Ragnarok Online and their experience with the game fondly, each time the topic of social games come up. Consistent with that experience, I have also played my own share of variably social games, because the concept of teams and guilds are so readily shoehorned into modern games that are designed to reward players for playing alone, and they leave me wondering why should play those games when I can enjoy myself similarly playing a more asocial game like Persona 5. The commentary and critique you posed here helped me to understand both my friend's and my experience much better on a fundamental level, and while it is a change of pace from your previous pieces, it uses the same manner of organization and rational progression that I believe helps to enhance the final product so I'm one among the crowd that hopes to see more like this.

[@lorebiter]

This is really insightful and I appreciate your thoughts on this a lot. I hope we see some MMOs really go for this again sometime. FFXIV and GW2 are probably the best balanced ones right now but they’re definitely not quite there.

[@MrSpikebomb5]

Another important untouched aspect is noncombat viability of contribution and progression. It massively helps with the sociability aspect. Only examples I can think of are Star Wars Galaxies and Mabinogi.

[@-emir5484]

The ideal mmorpg concept reminds me of Attorney Online, the online ace attorney game in which you can roleplay in the courtroom and if you're in a vanilla/vanilla-esque server, roleplay cases. I remember going in and seeing all these experienced people arguing in the courtroom. The community was small and there were some very well known people. Just seeing their conpetence in the game and working with them to be included in a social circle was an amazing experience. After I became experienced myself, it turned into a different kind of fun where I could teach newcomers the game or treat the experienced ones like my friends

[@tylerseidel809]

idk, I think you might have underdone the research on RuneScape just a little bit. I can't speak for OSRS, but I can safely say that RS3 has a pretty good release balance of new and rewarding content applicable to at least the mid and high level players. There's also seasonal events with rng-based tradeable cosmetics and skilling opportunities available in a way that players of any level can contribute. Sure, the ARPG desire to see power-creep is there in full, but it doesn't mean that mid-tier content isn't rewarding; just that the endgame content is that much more rewarding for those who want to learn the mechanics of it. Last of all, it may not be as social a game as it was circa '07 or so, but players who want interaction can do so from clans, plenty of which are without level requirements.

[@kilrain_dev]

I hated soul bound items from the moment they were introduced. So much of my time in EQ was spent making money so I could by the items I wanted, not doing the specific things required to obtain them that I didn't necessarily like doing.

[@laeviga-sunstrider]

@14:57 For me, a major component that even allowed me to play the game into higher levels at that time was the All Chat/server chat/world chat (I forget what it was called) which was a channel that was always enabled by default and players could just talk to everybody in the game at the same time and coordinate raids, world pvp events, talk about movies/anime, etc. At a certain point, Blizzard shifted towards a queue system and removed all chat, and... it was just never the same any more. It hamstrung the social aspects of the game. I couldn't level up in certain areas because the community fragmented more into their own char servers and guilds, neither of which I had - there was no virtually no way for me to talk to people without already belonging to a group.

[@Darkaos_5]

As I imagined, you covered the topic really well Moony, I don't want to imagine how much research you had to go through and how many rewrites the script might have taken, but you you explained very well the divide for MMOs when it comes to player interaction and the approach towards content,and just as I imagined while I agree with you in concept, I mostly disagree with the approach for the solution, so let me explain my 2 points; Point number one is that: While a good MMO should try and strike as good a balance between social features and action game features, to imagine that the game will "stay that way" feels like a pipe dream, as to retain audience the core design of the game will shine brighter as resources are allotted to what the dev team was aiming for, there's nothing wrong with having a more hybrid early to mid game but the more into what can be called late game is approached the more one or the other sides will break the balance; Point number two is: emergent gameplay in an MMO doesn't have to appear from pure player interaction, but from opportunities presented from systems in game that allow for such, whether it's classes/features that allow for payers to help each other in parallel measures (like specific crafting systems or minigames), through allowing player expression with the game's mechanics, such as non-linear builds or in game challenges that position to the players that different methods are viable if unorthodox, and especially more interesting maps where there's more to see and do than just random mobs for farming XP and loot, be that through secrets or just interesting level design; For that last detail I'll give 2 examples I had gone through: Way back when I played Ragnarok online I wasn't particularly good with the combat but it didn't stop me in the slightest from going around and exploring a lot of the map, managing to find spots where very few players even cared to check, such as the top of a map near prontera (Mt. payon if I'm not mistaken) where there were beautiful giant flowers, it was slightly pointless to be there but it was just visually attractive and out of the way enough to feel special. A different situation was when I played Tera, a fellow player I had managed to befriend for a short period was talking with me about the game itself and he brought up that there was a "forbidden zone" in the game very near to an early game dungeon where we had to do some janky wall jumps to essentially go out of the area's limits, and it wasn't even that difficult, we reached the area and it was incredibly bizarre and creepy because the music slowly faded out, everything turned gray-scale, almost like entering a dead zone (or flooded hyrule in zelda wind waker) that area according to my friend had been there for a long time with the devs not bothering to really do anything with it, and finding it felt incredible. The big point I'm trying to make is that, by aiming towards players interacting less with numbers or just visuals but instead with the systems in novel ways it can help an MMOs longevity much more than any funny loot trade or sponge-y late game boss.

[@SeiaiAnkoku]

Thanks for covering several different MMOs in your post! Always nice to hear a more diverse opinion. As for Ragnarok Online, Mt. Mjolnir is the mountain near Prontera. Lovely flowers. I love exploring more out-of-the-way areas in games that obviously received special attention from developers. There were/are actually some areas in Ragnarok Online 2 that sound similar to your TERA Online "forbidden zone" experience, where players could jump over out-of-bounds terrain and reach areas not normally accessible. Some had great views from very high up! Similar out-of-bounds stuff in FFXIV, too. Interesting social interactions to be had learning and teaching such things with other players.

[@Darkaos_5]

Thank you for reminding me of the name in Ragnarok@@SeiaiAnkoku it's been so long since last I played it, makes me miss the wonder of that world a little bit with how the dungeons and maps in general were designed to have slightly obscure details here and there (at least if you weren't using the teleport system all the time)

[@tehlulzpare]

Since the video predates it, I’ll toss a non-mmorpg but still interesting example into the mix. Helldivers 2, despite only having 4 max players on screen at any given time, is a social sensation. It’s barely got any of what would make a social rpg work; there is barely any gear to grind toward, and what gear there is available to everyone with no degree of exclusivity. And the gear is mostly cosmetic for armour, you get a limited list of perks, all balanced against each other, and armour is merely variety. Weapons are balanced horizontally, with few weapons objectively better and devs going out of their way to nerf the outliers. Why then, is this social shooter such a wild success? Well, it’s got a global war. Not between players, but fought by them against two threats against humanity. Leaving aside the obvious and pervasive satire present, the war requires real player cooperation on a meta scale to effect progress. Players, in 4 man teams, drop on planets in hostile warzones(that shift in the galaxy based on success and failure) and the amount of players doing so on a given planet, their efforts being successful or not, etc, decide the course of the war. And….this isn’t entirely organic. The devs have a “games master” running a plot, like a tabletop rpg, and the emergent storytelling is because we are playing a pve game….against a GM who doesn’t pull punches often, punishes failure, and often makes the war harder arbitrarily. We aren’t just fighting bugs and bots…we are fighting Joel, the GM. The sheer social media storm of propaganda, interservice rivalries between bug and bot players, Malevolan Creek veterans memeing the Vietnam War into modern social discourse. It’s both hilarious, feeds the tone of the game(very camp and silly, while extremely violent) and is a lot of fun. The DEVs barely expected this game to go off as well socially as it has. Players roleplay often, but it isn’t expected. It’s doing a better job of sucking me in then any mmo ever did, because I feel like a disposable cog in a war machine yet the cogs working together can and will change the outcome of the war. How a shooter has perfected social media and social interaction and engagement even outside the game is beautiful, and like WOW, I imagine this is as much down to timing and gameplay decisions then any other success. But the war is both genuine fun and also very immersive, we want to fight for managed democracy. The game HAS no power fantasy, mobs are scaled in how many you fight and what, not strength in health. You die as easily to mistakes on easy as you do on Helldive. But veteran players come to low lobbies to get “samples”, a resource that is shared upon mission completion, and that common samples are still quite useful. Like hanging out in a starting difficulty, they show rookie troopers the ropes, share powerful equipment they won’t get for a while, and the emergent gameplay of hardened vets on milk runs teaching the greenhorns the ropes is not overly enforced, it just more or less happens. It’s doing the right things. In a different genre.

[@ratiquette]

Hey Moony! Thanks for another thought provoking piece! I strongly agree with the sentiment that the problem of "pursuit of pure power" can and should be addressed through game design choices. I want a video game culture that embraces more varied play priorities, where players with differing priorities can still share compelling gaming experiences without being pitted against one-another by the design of the game. Something I have been trying to emphasize in my own fantasy gaming (mostly TTRPG) is that everyone has the potential to make an impact, and that the scale of the impact is a matter of perspective. "Scale" is a word that, for me, is closely tied to the idea of MMORPGs. Things are BIG in these games. There's a whole world out there for the player to strike out into and explore, experience, and conquer. I wonder if games that focus on the pursuit of pure power often neglect the small scale? Organic, emergent, social experiences are not usually focused on pure power, but I think (and it sounds like you think) those experiences are what make a game's world come to life, and what inspire wonder in players. I like "Sable," which is a game where there are no enemies to fight, no builds to spec, and where the only progression system is one that increases your stamina bar (as you find collectibles scattered through the world). Sable is totally open-ended, and in the absolute bottom left corner of the RPG chart. Interestingly, I feel that certain design choices brought the game's scope to this beautiful place; I could spend 40 minutes climbing to the top of an abandoned ruin, catching a few beetles, and watching the sun rise, and that's super grounding and compelling to me. Obviously, that alone is a little lacking in the "action" department, but I think the ideal MMORPG would encourage players to get out exploring; I think that's a great context for emergent social moments in a game. Some of the things that make exploration work in Sable - but could also be put in an MMORPG - are a good photo mode, beautifully stylized lighting and landscapes, and lots of topographical high points that are interesting and rewarding to climb up to. Cosmetic customization such as dye ingredients could serve as a reward for exploration, but also enhance the experience for the sightseers and virtual photographers among us. Having rare/randomized tough enemies to fight out in the field could encourage players to team up organically (especially if the problems of level scaling were addressed/removed).

[@BrokDoidao]

Damn, the Ragnarok Online Soundtracks brought the nostalgia

[@laeviga-sunstrider]

@33:42 I always, always, always want more social options in just about every game. That said, there can be creative ways to address power imbalance between character levels. Let's say you've been playing a game for a couple of weeks now, so you're level 40 and you meet someone who needs help with a level 10 encounter (like a raid or dungeon). Back when you had done this encounter, there were plenty of other lv10 folks around to complete it with but less so for this guy and their party. So, you join, and are especially powerful in this encounter - except now there are unique enemies that spawn at your level that make a beeline to the weaker players. Now, you have an additional duty to protect the party from stronger enemies that only you can take on. Could make for some great stories.

[@tbotalpha8133]

A problem with not soulbinding gear is that it will combine with the player-driven economy to create a complete collapse of the game's difficulty and progression systems. As players kill mobs, they harvest loot. These are new items, entering the player economy. At first players will use the gear they gain this way, but as soon as something with better stats drops, a player will switch to the new gear and discard the old stuff. They might sell the old gear to an NPC vendor. And if the NPC has no function to re-sell the gear to other players, then the gear is effectively erased from existence, and the economy. The player might get some money in exchange, but that's it. However, the player could instead sell the gear to another player. Right away, this creates a problem for the developers. Presumably they want players to go out and kill mobs to get loot and level up. But if a new player can just buy high-strength gear from another player, and immediately start going toe-to-toe with enemies vastly beyond their level range, then there's little incentive for that new player to experience the low-level content. (unless the content is intrinsically interesting in its own right) And the ability for a player to buy stronger and stronger gear will only get easier as time goes on. Because as more people climb the loot-ladder, more and more of their high-strength leftovers will be floating around in the economy for other players to buy up. Supply will only increase, pushing prices down. This may be mediated by the game growing in population, creating more demand for the gear. But growth will eventually taper off, while supply will just keep increasing. This is already visible in most MMO currencies. They usually end up constantly inflating in value, because more and more currency keeps entering circulation due to players looting dead mobs and selling items to NPCs. Developers usually try to throttle this with "money-sinks" - activities that cost in-game currency to engage with, with the money being paid to NPCs (or otherwise destroyed). This helps remove some money from circulation, but it never holds for long. Humans are efficiency-engines, and love finding ways to do more with less. Sooner or later players will find ways to work around the money-sinks, and inflation will continue. Money-sinks also effectively gatekeep content, by blocking players who don't have the money to engage with the expensive activities, or who can't generate funds fast enough to meet the game's demands. So developers are stuck - either their money-sinks are too restrictive, stopping poorer players from engaging with the game's content. Or they're too forgiving, allowing skilled players to achieve escape velocity. (Of course the actual solution would be to tax players directly, sapping away a bit of their saved up money every day. That's how actual governments control inflation - they tax people's income and savings, and destroy part of the revenue to reduce the amount of money in circulation. But lol good luck getting players to submit to taxation.) Meanwhile, very few MMOs have "gear-sinks". That is, activities that destroy character equipment, thereby removing it from circulation and keeping prices high. Such activities might destroy gear outright, or they might sap away gear's "durability", requiring resources to repair said equipment before it breaks completely. World of Warcraft and others have durability costs for weapons and armour, but that's just another money-sink. You can't actually lose your gear permanently if it breaks. Meanwhile, Eve Online actually does have gear-sinks, because ships can be permanently damaged or destroyed, costing in-game resources to repair or replace. Anything other than the freebie ships handed out to players when they die must be replaced by expending in-game resources. This creates constant demand for replacement ships, and constant demand for the materials with which to repair and replace ships. This drains away the amount of ships and resources floating around in the game's economy, and prevents the runaway inflation effect I described earlier. However, this creates socio-economic problems within the game. Because if engaging with the game's content costs in-game resources, then at some point a player has to create said resources through their own time and labour. "Fun" activities have to be supported by "upkeep" activities, with the ratio of fun : upkeep affecting how "boring" most players find the game to be. And when players can sell their goods and services to each other, that fun : upkeep ratio expands into players having fun being supported by players performing upkeep. With upkeep-players only being able to support a certain number of fun-players. Which means an entire subset of the game's population will not be engaged in traditionally "fun" activities, most of the time. They'll be performing upkeep activities, to keep the rest of the economy running and enable other players to actually engage with the "fun" parts of the game. If upkeep-players leave the game, some of the fun-players will have to switch to upkeep activities, or else just deal with higher prices for everything due to decreased supply. And if new players join the game, they won't be able to engage with the funnest content right away, because they won't be able to afford the gear and upkeep costs. And the more new players who want to engage with the funnest content, the more that demand for the gear to do so will increase. Driving prices up and making the fun activities even more inaccessible. So new players are very likely to end up performing upkeep, to save up the cash to get started. Which is very likely to bore them. And very likely to lead to them getting stuck in an upkeep role, unable to progress to the fun parts of the game due to the high cost of entry. Or unable to stay in the fun content, because they're not familiar enough with the systems to know how to earn enough to pay for their own upkeep. Meanwhile the older players will amass personal power, wealth and connections, allowing them to engage exclusively with the fun activities. Any new player who is able to befriend older players will have a huge headstart over their fellow newbies, thanks to the economic leg-up that their older friends will provide. Or if a new player is already friends with an older player in real life, they could leverage that relationship for an easy start. I could go on and on, but my point is: maintaining an MMORPG in that sweet-spot of action & socializing is not an simple task. And "just remove soulbinding" is not the easy fix you think it is. Such a change would have far-reaching consequences for the game's economy and player experience. Removing soulbinding from an MMORPG would push it towards behaving more like a real-world economy. And most MMO development studios do not want to have to appoint a Secretary of the Treasury to manage their videogame world.

[@Elrog3]

"But lol good luck getting players to submit to taxation." - Runescape has tax and nobody has a problem with it.

[@capnbarky2682]

I really loved playing FF14. Honestly the combat felt kind of superfluous at times...but it felt like a REALLY good Final Fantasy virtual theme park/chat room with a nice story attached. Optimizing FF14 feels like optimizing Habbo Hotel. It also felt like how it felt playing on Ragnarok Online servers back in the day. I think what's really missing from modern mmorpgs is the fact that a lot of us thought we loved the concept of going on some grand adventure, when really the best parts a lot of the time was just sitting somewhere pretty in cool gear, and the new contenders don't really try on this aspect. Ragnarok Online, Runescape, WoW, etc, I mean, most of my time when I really liked those games was just using it as a chatroom.

[@jeveritt8398]

I know the community kind of rags on how busy limsa lominsa usually is but I like how busy limsa, uldah, and gridania are

[@capnbarky2682]

​@@jeveritt8398Seriously, I could spend hours just looking at people standing around and dancing, looking at each other, and goofing around.

[@Darnin]

Your suggestion for a "protect the president" style raid reminds me of back when I used to play Destiny back in Taken King. I was probably the weakest player in my group, but the final boss encounter had a jumping puzzle that one person had to do while everyone else was holding off waves of enemies. It just so happened that I was the best at the jumping puzzle, and doing it quickly made things easier on everyone else, meaning I had a way to help everyone else in a real way without particularly strong gear. Probably my best experience raiding in any game I've played.

[@teroril]

Seeing Diablo IV on the "top mmorpgs" list makes my heart ache for the genre.

[@robertoaguiar6230]

33:00 in maple story there were party quests that required players of all classes to be completed. Every part of the quest had a challange that were solved like a puzzle by one certain class skill.

[@cmsgiahatch]

Great video! I think the argument on the power social sweet spot is a good one. From my perspective, the decline of WoW's social element started around the time they introduced instanced battlegrounds. There was an interesting sweet spot just after honor points were first pushed but before battlegrounds came out that showed a huge amount of player interaction that would just *cripple* their servers (anyone remember the Tarren Mill circle jerks?). But once BGs came out in full swing, combined with the pursuit of power (honor points) meant you had a lot less players engaging outside of their little power hungry bubbles. Sure, it might have kept a few PVP-averse players from quitting as their direct interactions became less, but it did so at a trade off of overall long term retention of players. Then they just hit the gas on that design philosophy and made nearly everything instanced. On top of that, the merged multi-server queues meant it was nearly impossible to organically make local consistent friends. Another interesting point you made was regarding the problem with soul-bound items. I agree with that notion. In fact, I'd argue games like Ultima Online and Star Wars Galaxies (RIP) had gone in the right direction with this with gear/consumables that were all player crafted. In addition to that, buying those goods required either direct interaction with player merchants or their storefronts. I argue that this helped player to player engagement that wasn't dependent on skill or power. This died with the advent of global auction houses (which nearly every MMO has since used, because we gotta copy ALL THE FEATURES these days). Interestingly, SWG died largely due to that power gain obsession once the path to becoming a jedi was leaked. All the system designs that forced player to player interaction (I thought needing to watch performers to recover your life/stamina/mind bar maximums was a brilliant design in respect to social engagement) were thrown out the window once players focused on power gain. Then they leaned even harder into the power chase with their combat redesign and just outright died as a result. I have more thoughts, but that's all I can do right now.

[@justsomejojo]

I don't really play MMORPGs anymore, but I tried a whole bunch of them back in my early teens. My fascination with the genre was the social emergent gameplay mentioned in this video. The MMO focused anime I watched back then (and even the ones released way after) always have characters with very distinct styles of play and visual identity and while I know this was mostly character design, this meeting other players in your unique role you play and having fun (not necessarily hardcore roleplaying) - that idea appealed to me. It didn't usually pan out that way, usually all you *could* do was leveling ad nauseum (though there were plenty fun instances of grouping up). When eventually I encountered more and more gatekeeping across games because I never played quite optimally, I gradually stopped. Waaaaaaay later, shortly after the European release of the Warcraft movie, I tried WoW again. And... I had fun. But how? I heavily indulged in the pet fighting system in the game. You could capture small enemies and train them and even fight in gyms. In the two weeks or so I played (I think there was a trial period?) I barely leveled my character, but I traveled the world in search of more pet gyms regardless. I think I ended on level 30 pets, with my pride and joy being a Maggot named Made in China (because Made is the german word for maggot). I had genuine fun with that, but I was genuinely surprised it was even there. The most I see about MMOs from the outside is raids, high-level dungeons and endgame, that frankly scares me away from even beginning to try to get stronger in the traditional power levels. A friend once showed me one of the hardest raids in FFXIV as he was playing and it only solidified my stance because that looked absolutely overwhelming. With the pet minigame being absolutely there and fun, I started asking myself, just how much else of this kind of stuff exists. Because what gets pushed, is always just endgame.

[@hello-gx6oi]

Dude basically played Pokemon in WOW Cool

[@ksiejka]

Great video as always! It reminded me how much I miss the social aspects of games in general, let alone MMOs. In fact my, favourite MMO ever would have to be Tibia, a grindy, unbalanced mess of an early-2000s free-to-play game, that was brutal for non-paying customers. And yet I loved not playing it, or optimizing my gear, but sitting in towns and interacting with other players. The way NPCs and "depo" (i.e. item deposit box) were realized, basically forced you to queue-up and interact with other players. Together with other small things, (like the fact the you could drop gold/loot on the ground for anyone to interact with) made for an amazing experience and led to countless fun interactions. However, I feel like this is a double-sided coin. Whilst I miss those days, I also feel like nowadays, even if all of those archaic systems were brought back, I still wouldn't be able to enjoy it. Part of the issue, is the fact that nowadays we have so many games and other easily available media to enjoy, that games (especially those that are multiplayer) became something you want to "optimize". You aim to squeeze as much enjoyment out of it as possible, because you don't want to feel like you're wasting time. After all, the second you feel like you're wasting time you immediately think of other things you could be doing right now, lest you miss out on some great new game/movie/tv series etc. Raising your power by grinding and doing specific tasks set by the developers is something that can easily be designed and fine-tuned while human interactions are random and you never know who you're going to meet and what will your interaction entail. I would love, love, love to go back to these simpler times where I was fully willing to spend hours, among hours, just sitting around and looking for other people to interact with, rather than focus on game I have to optimize. Unfortunately, it feels like this is not something that the general public could enjoy, or feel fulfilled with, and while you can find experiences like these in some independent products, "true" MMOs require too big of a financial undertaking to justify a risky design that would incorporate these more social-focused ideas.

[@InsoIence]

I pretty much spent first few years on Securan Rookgaard, just helping new players reach Mainland, standing at the square/Tom's roof with at least 2 other guilds, chatting. I had Mainland character of my own, with which I attended weddings and other events. Took me 5 years to be even remotely interested in leveling up my Mainland one, probably because Rookgaard became emptier with time. :,) I miss the times, I am not sure if such community could be replicated these days. We were lucky enough to have older and wiser players constantly trying to make the place welcoming and supportive, which made us younglings follow suit. Dealing with griefers of all sorts and helping each other was our driving force. It feels like CIP has made the game easier and more action driven, which in turn drove away the community. One of my friends still plays and seems to be so deep in the grind that there is no time to chat. That's okay of course, I don't expect him to be at my whim, it's his free time, it just makes everything feel empty and sad nowadays.

[@uuneya]

Some things I learned from City of Heroes, my first MMO: 1) Let players sync their levels in a group, and provide appropriate rewards based on each character's level. 2) Character customization fosters roleplay and socialization. Your job is to give them fun toys to play with, not gatekeep who can wear the prettiest helmet. 3) Let builds create unique experiences. Different people want different playstyles, so design for variety instead of parity. 4) Not everyone hits the level cap, so focus on the journey (leveling) and not the destination (endgame).

[@naturalweebcultivator]

You cannot make exciting memories out of growing numbers and seconds to kill the boss in solo game. You can make exciting memories from carrying your friends through a hard area, approaching the boss, one friend does something stupid and triggers the entire area, another one freaks out and start yelling in the mic, after a hard struggle you overcome and friends praising you for being a good player and the only girl in party gets a cool hat.

[@Spectacular66]

Man when you mentioned Habbo Hotel that unlocked some old memories when I was 14/15 and craving socialization because I wasn't allowed to go out much by my mother. Good times.

[@jamesvonderhaar2553]

I can’t disagree more re: the soulbound thing. You might as well make achievements tradable. These cosmetics are interesting because you had to do something to get them , and having them is proof that you did the thing (this doesn’t have to be hardcore raiding stuff, it could be something like “oh a mini game they released two years ago had a cool hat”). Agreed that everyone should be able to look cool doing their bit of the game, whether that’s raiding or PvP or tracking down lore entries or doing side quests, or even just focusing on fashion. (“I found this cool hat from a random vendor off the beaten path in the first expansion” is also a story about skill leading to acquisition!)

[@fateriddle14]

It makes you think, that maybe social media is to be blamed for the downfall of so many things? Almost all content creaters of MMOs are hardcore players who's likely on the frontier of power fantasy, they happen to be the loudest voice, it's almost impossible to ignore their requests.

[@default9314]

Its a good day when moon posts

[@seyproductions]

For a moment I thought I was gonna listen to some Kantian philosophy. I do love the Ragnarok music and references though.

[@moon-channel]

I do have a video on Kantian philosophy in Undertale, if that sounds interesting to you!

[@StinkyRae]

A reoccurring theme in these videos that I love, and want to point out to others who do not see it. The root of this issue always comes down to wealthy old billionaire men and their corporations choking the life out of any creativity and fun, all to keep a few extra million $$$ in their pockets..

[@spiderfreak1011]

I never thought about that until you pointed that out, but you're right, and it's such a shame, All these rich people ruling everything is killing the joy and beauty of art in modern media as we know it.

[@spiderfreak1011]

@@Skyblue_2049 You're not wrong at all, this is why I really don't like mainstream appeal most of the time, outside of rare instances like with Super Mario, but more often than not I think it stifles a franchise and often makes it drop in quality hard.

[@SarcasticTentacle]

This video manages to articulate the feelings I've had for years on this genre. It's more than just that most games are pushing too hard into either social or power it's also that they keep trying to enforce some weird apartheid where everything that isn't an endgame raid is so low stakes and easy you're at risk of falling asleep while the raids themselves are a game of simon says where 1 person screwing up wipes the whole group. I am one of those people who is a little too old and casual to hang out with the sweat lords but still wants some game to actually be invested in because I'm also not very social. Yet there's just so little game outside of the new hardest thing because levelling, questing, dungeons, old zones, events all that jazz has so little challenge or gameplay that nowadays most people just pay to skip it. That used to be my portion of the game! Yeah it was never very hard, not even in vanilla wow, or everquest, or XI. But it still required some effort and attentiveness and not a railroaded MSQ where you never see any challenge or another human soul because they're all idling at max.

[@islaamNogood]

Peace be upon you Moon and happy August! :] I’ll be honest: i have little experience with MMORPGS since I usually stick to games like Pikmin or Mario Party (any suggestions on where I should start Moon IF i should even give it a try?) BUT! I have a solution to the whole power fantasy thing! Why not make that power become a reality by going to the gym with friends or having a family sports night or do some charity work cuz helping those less fortunate is a good way to make yourself stop comparing and start appreciating. Heck you can do it cosplaying too if you really wanna. :D but one thing is for certain…micro transactions gotta go. :/

[@moon-channel]

Hello, my friend! I wish I could give a suggestion for a good MMORPG to play, but the video betrays my feelings on that topic a little bit. FFXIV, I think, is maybe the closest game to what I envision as being the "sweet spot" for an MMORPG!

[@jedimasterpickle3]

...without dipping too much into the copypasta, Final Fantasy XIV does have a generous free trial which, while restricting your options, gives you infinite time to experience the game's content and will soon include the first two expansions. FF is a very story-focused game, though; all content is locked behind the extensive main scenario, and the story starts out rather slow. I still highly recommend it, though.

[@Igneusflama]

FFXIV is the only MMORPG I have enjoyed since my long gone days of RuneScape and MapleStory. I never played WoW during it's golden age, so I can't compare to that, but it does have a lot of the things that the video suggested to fix MMOs, such as meaningful rewards for higher level players to play lower level content (roulettes), high level raid bosses in low level areas (hunts and hunt trains). While I hadn't considered and now totally agree that it is sliding towards being a single player game with trusts,NPCs that you can play with instead of players, it is slow enough and boring enough that it becomes a nuclear option. Playing with trusts is not optimal over playing with other people unless literally no one is doing the content you are doing.

[@rynnyryn93]

I had been playing MMOs since I was a young teen, which was only around the launch of WoW sure, and my favorite moments of early WoW was exploring the world and the aspects of gameplay that were social by nature like the experience you described. If you didn't have a guild willing to clear dungeons for you, you had to go through the zone list and ask each person through whisper if they wanted to tank or heal for a dungeon run, there was no party finder, you HAD to be social to gain power. My dungeon runs would easily take an hour whereas a modern MMO dungeon will never take more than fifteen minutes, but that was okay because you weren't really able to just swap out your weakest link. If players were amenable, and you really had to be, then it was easier to support each other through impromptu mentoring or trade than to find a better player because finding 4 other people of all the necessary roles was the hard part. Sometimes you went in with 2 healers, sometimes you went in with 2 tanks, sometimes the DPS would put on a healing stick and be the group's only healer. People were the most valuable resource, and as long as your druid had mark of the wild bound, they were good enough. Early MMO raids used to be very easy compared to how they are now, because the hard part was finding 40 people willing to work together to gear up and show up at the same time. It's a very tough line to walk, keeping individuals valuable on the merit of controlling a character versus not being able to find enough people to do content and giving up. I was simply not good at the game, I ran a pvp build I found online that was mostly useless in pve content, and had to heal most of my dungeons as a feral druid. I was blissfully unaware of how bad I was, because I had nothing to really compare to, and folks didnt bother to inform me because as long as I did damage or kept the tank alive most of the time, I was good enough. Sure there were times when people DID give up, but only after many, MANY failed attempts and usually would choose to quit in a gentle manner, and you kind of had to because you really did see the same names all the time, from level 1 to 60. While separated servers were a necessity based on the tech at the time, they did end up creating player communities, and your behavior mattered. If you had a reputation for being rude, people generally would not put up with you unless you also produced results, but ultimately making friends meant more chances to obtain power. Nowadays if you play an MMO and queue into group content, it's highly unlikely you'll ever see these faces again. But this is just what's going to happen in an age where it's very easy to communicate with the world on optimal strategy, builds, gameplay especially when it's so profitable to be the first person to post that information and collect ad revenue. Folks may not remember that GW2 launched without a party finder for dungeons, and the developers were incredibly resistant to add one despite player demand. The original intent was for players to quest in an area, meet allies doing the same content and team up, and eventually quest their way into a dungeon where they would reach out to those people they added to their friends list earlier and take the content on together. Of course what really happened was people stood in front of the dungeon door and spammed the zone chat and eventually, players made third party apps to be used as dungeon finder, and it became the only way to find other people willing to do this content and eventually anet had to concede and add a party finder to the game. It goes to show that if players can find a way to streamline a game designed to not be streamlined, they will do it to the detriment of the experience and I don't think MMOs will ever be able to do away with that so long as their are character stats to increase and glowy weapons to obtain. Nowadays the closest experience I have to my classic MMO experiences is to play multiplayer online games like Minecraft, Valheim, or most recently, Palworld. These games can be single player or online, with public and private multiplayer servers being the most interesting way to play them. Sure there is an optimal way to play minecraft, but how often are people actually doing this? The meat of these games is the midgame, and people may spend their entire time cyclically in the midgame. They set their own goals, and even their own difficulty curves. Some servers might have double experience, some might have halved experience, or permadeath. The server rules can have a huge hand in the type of players it attracts and the way they interact with each other. While playing Valheim, me and one of my friends spent most of our time accruing resources while our third stayed back and built and managed the base and refined our resources. Meanwhile, our server quadrupled resources and turned off enemy scaling to player count, making it much less hardcore. The devs have no reason to timegate progression because they don't sell cosmetics, they don't sell respawn tokens or experience boosts, meaning the focus is just on making a fun game that's worth recommending to friends. In Palworld, the goal is to defeat the five tower bosses and the fastest way to do that is catch every pal you see, but instead I am typing this as I focus on building an aesthetically pleasing base that can only be operated by small, early game pals and is therefore sub-optimal, waiting for eggs to hatch as I breed a sub-optimal pal to be the best it can be because it's one of my favorites and I want to show it off to other people on my server. It's much like how I played WoW, where instead of focusing on leveling, I did the things I wanted to do like pvp and seeing what kind of ganking I could get away with at booty bay before getting killed by the guards, or sneaking around low level horde zones so I could dance at low level horde. I'm setting my own goals, progressing those goals, and taking something away either through a cool item or a story to tell. In modern MMOs, most people's experiences are the same, even the job you choose to play as hardly matteres beyond aesthetic. Hell, the way I used to play Runescape as a kid was incredibly stupid. I'd spend all week mining coal and sitting in town selling a full inventory for 500g each so I could save up and buy full rune plate armor, just to go into the wilderness alone just to explore it, and lose it all to a duo working together to hunt fools like me, or maybe meet another like-minded person, or save someone on the brink of death. It was all social, but it was all facilitated through gameplay for gameplay. Well hell this turned into stream of consciousness writing but I guess I had a lot to ramble about, it's nice to see other people not subscribing to the belief that MMOs can't be the way they used to be when the classic MMO experience still exists just in smaller scale games, and maybe that's okay as it is. But if an MMO were to really grip me again, it'd have to have a big interesting mysterious world, with a focus on small community, thus socialization is novel and facilitated through gameplay, self expression through gameplay style and setting your own goals, where friendship and power gain go hand in hand, and devs focus on making a good game first and retain players thusly. Those kinds of games are being made! They're just not MMOs.

[@jasonhurst1]

Wow, this encapsulates and cohesively displays what I still ramble about to this day. I saw this coming as soon as I learned the details of The Burning Crusade, and since then I watched one of the oldest hybrid (casual with raiding) guilds (mine) on our server slowly fall apart and then eventually die.

[@quandolli]

I saw your community post about this video, but the video itself wasn't recommended to me at all. Commenting to boost it in the algorithm!

[@SuperRitz44]

ANOTHER banger so quickly? Youre incredible! Just at the time Im about to have my lunch

[@moon-channel]

I hope that the video will live up to your expectations, Ritz! It's a bit of an experiment for the channel, and thus a bit unlike the previous videos!

[@SuperRitz44]

​@@moon-channelJust finished it. Interestingly, I never knew Maplestory was more on the social side, and I played it a ton as a kid. One of my fallen favorite MMOs was Wildstar. To me, it had a perfect blend of ARPG and SRPG, with its interesting and unusual worldbuilding and artstyle for the genre, and great rumor. It waa my WoW. However, to most it was lacking on the Action side, so it tanked at launch. Eventually it went F2P and gained more players, and as a response, pushed heavy to the endgame grindfest. This led to the result of all the Social players leaving (which is unfortunate, since it had a stupendous housing system), the population dropped and the game being shit down. I was there at the end. Great video! But, how do think this videos difers to your others in format? I think it belongs nicely with them (nice use of the "belonging" at the end). Also, where do you put ESO in your scale? It's my favorite MMO at the moment, but that's because I'm a TES fan, and it currently going the solo player route as well.

[@Dereego]

Stellar video as always! My only real experience with MMOs so far has been with FFXIV, but this video perfectly put to words the nebulous, half-formed issues I've had with the game after all this time. Why is it that the multiplayer game would go out of its way to stop you from imagining the story experience being alongside your friends? Why is it that there can only be one player-controlled protagonist alone with no wiggle-room, when we could instead be actively discussing how our characters would interact with one another throughout the story? FFXIV's social elements may not be as fleshed-out as they could be, but it's the game modes or situations that encourage those social moments that've been the most memorable for me - especially as someone who has never enjoyed high-end content. Even a piece of content that I consider remarkably obtuse and unfun on its own, Eureka, is something that I've had very memorable experiences with thanks to some of the things you've described in this video; a friend with more experience carrying me through the content and trading me improved gear thanks to the fact that it wasn't bound to them. It proved to make a very enjoyable experience where we got to take in all the sights and quirks of the vast map, while also having fun just chatting, thinking about lore and story, and even quietly commenting on other players amongst ourselves.

[@Dahras1]

Hey Moon, I've been really enjoying watching your videos and I think you have a really interesting perspective on things! I definitely agree that the MMO genre as a whole has been sliding dangerously away from being a satisfying blend of the social and the action RPG styles, and that that has become a drag against the success of the genre as a whole. Nevertheless, I don't necessarily agree on your reading of the genre's current state, nor some of your suggestions for where the genre is going. I think the biggest illustration of the problems and potentials of modern MMOs is FFXIV. Later in the video, you say that FFXIV is sliding closer towards being a single player RPG, but I think that is very inaccurate. If anything, FFXIV is actually becoming more and more of a Social RPG at the expense of its more aRPG elements. You are right that in order to access the aRPG elements of the game, the player has to play an extended, single-player story. But the same is not true for social elements of the game, such as housing, glamour items, musical instruments, crafting, seasonal events, etc. Most of these are available at extremely low levels and in low-level zones, just as you suggested. And this is for good reason: the social elements of FFXIV *are* it's hook and it's selling point. The single-player-ification of the story is actual *in service* of social players, because it lowers the likelihood that they will get in conflicts with power players who might get annoyed at their less-than-optimal play. And that brings me to my second point regarding your suggestions for what to do with the genre: I think a lot of your suggestions come from a place of trying to leave space for an MMO to create the same experience that WoW gave us all back in the day. But the problem with that is that the context has changed, and with it the kind of design that works. We know this is the case because WoW: Classic was played in a drastically different and frankly degenerate way as compared to the way it was played on release, despite the two being substantially identical. Take the suggestion to reduce soulbinding: the first layer of response to a lack of soulbinding, grinding gear for a friend, is emergent gameplay. It would be fine if such things could happen. But the steps beyond start to get more grey. What about someone buys gold for real money? What about someone who uses bots to farm gold to buy the item? You can say, "well, just moderate the game better", but even WoW never got the bot situation under control. And if you don't get these things under control, they become a black hole in the heart of your game. Bots and farmers ruin immersion, and they aren't a real part of the community, despite using community resources. Even ignoring issues of fairness, these kinds of player behaviors are net drains on a play environment. Of course, there is room for a middle ground: FFXIV cosmetic-only gear is bind-on-equip only and has no equip requirements, allowing friends to grind materials or gold to buy outfits for each other. But the same is not true for items which give actual power, which leads to my ultimate point: this is a fucking hard problem, and issues we game designers have faced in solving it aren't necessarily ones of ideology but ones of actual praxis. The issue with designing MMOs is that aRPG gamers and Social RPG games repel each other like oil and water. The dream of the MMORPG is the maximal optimization of both, but what is the actual *experience* of that? In the turbulence of WoW's inital launch, the oil and water mixed, but as the environment settled, they became heterogeneous. If you privilege the aRPG half too much, social gamers silently quit your game as they perceive things becoming too rigid and non-creative. If you loosen things up to favor Social RPG player, the aRPG player either quit silently themselves, or become essentially unintentional terrorists, optimizing and exploiting a game fundamentally not designed for power-play. Each game has fixed this problem in its own way. WoW became Diablo. EVE became hardcore/immersive by heavily favoring player-driven emergent gameplay at the cost of having little guidance for new players, becoming perfect and impenetrable in equal measure. FFXIV decided to segregate the two groups, letting each play in their own little sandboxes, rarely to ever meet. You say, "We should make an MMO that is the ideal maximization of Social and Action features," but that's very near to saying, "We should make a MoBA that is both accessible and has a lot of high-level strategic depth," or saying, "we should make an RTS that combines deep economic management and interesting micro." We would like that to be the result of our effort, but in order to make it so, we need a clear idea of what that combination actually looks like. TL;DR: I think the core identification of the problem with MMOs is correct, but the issue designers have faced figuring out the problem but figuring out how to solve it.

[@Riplee86]

34:58 God, I felt that so hard during Legion. Thankfully, there were a few mods that made it a little more tolerable, but when those mods stopped working in BFA, I was done with retail.

[@execlinca]

I really wanted to hear your opinion on FFXIV seeing all the footage of it you used! I kind of feel like it's sliding into more of the social side while pretending the action side can be untouched, and creating much more of a divide between the hardcore and casual players that hurts the health of the community as a whole. You kind of hinted that it started perfect and isn't anymore so I would've LOVED to hear your thoughts.

[@samuelturner6076]

I feel like he wasn’t making that argument but was instead making the argument that it’s becoming a single player game, which I for one see as an absolute win.

[@SventFulgur]

​@@samuelturner6076 I can relate lol I appreciate that a lot of the game can be played single player as I and many other people enjoy existing in the same world as others but don't want to actively socialize. On the other note if you get stuck I've loved how welcoming people are to teach and maybe help you along for a while and even add you to help later if you choose to ask around. This is why I love the exploration zones because even if the meme is people asking if the big thing for the zone popped yet or of there's a tracker I've had the most interaction in these zone from asking for help on what to do or just get a rez and maybe I'd join them in the grind for a bit add them to play again later etc. I like the variety and I enjoy experiencing every aspect in the game I just look forward to more updates to make things less daunting to approach or acquire as we move into the future :D

[@samuelturner6076]

@@SventFulgur This, all of this.

[@jondoe5937]

MMORPGs suffer universally from a key problem: They're afraid to let go of players. There's a stigma that if I ever stop playing an MMO, no matter how long I played it, it failed. I "got bored/had nothing to do." Maybe it's linked to ARPG-inspired focus, because power creep fetishization is the easiest way to keep players preoccupied rather than making socially-inclined designs, which are esoteric and hard to steer by comparison.

[@sdjhgfkshfswdfhskljh3360]

I think it happens because of aggressive monetization. Player who stopped playing won't bring money to game owners.

[@jondoe5937]

Players who stop playing are indeed an inevitability. There's nothing that can stop that. But when I get burnt out on the power grind, and if that's all there is, I'm probably never going to play again when I put it down. But games with good social environments and accessible content, I'm much more likely to come back. For instance, I still play GW2 now and then even though it has no real power treadmill. It's comfortable being able to take long hiatuses from it, and I feel like I can always jump back into it if I want. Its sort of a versus between "Maintain retention at all costs, including driving our conclusive relationship with the player into the ground" and "Always keep the door open for the player so they can play on their own terms, if they choose to return at all."

[@eon6274]

The point made about soulbound gear was something I never considered but it puts some things in perspective - as well as brings back old memories of sharing gear/pets/mounts/cosmetics with friends. It's not the weekly boss kills I remember, it was those special moments with the friends that made it fun. I don't remember the hundreds of dailies I did, yet I remember the jokes making fun of our shaman who would die every boss pull. Or when we were dying repeatedly in dungeons too hard for our group but laughing each time. Or just meeting people that made a difference in my life. Basically all of my memories of mmo's have to do with being in a social setting with the content and not the content itself. Nowadays I have a job and more responsibilities, with all but a handful of those friends still around. Now the idea of playing a mmo alone seems.. perhaps a waste of time? Without the friends, I'm simply going through the motions without the core memories that make it memorable. The only exception to this is when I played ffxiv and was captivated by the story that I clearly remember without the friends. In a way maybe the npc's are friends and make it memorable? I'm not sure, but outside of such heavy story oriented gameplay, I hardly remember the actions made in mmo's when not with other people.

[@onerice3392]

Even though it's not a traditional ARPG, I think the Monster Hunter series does so many things well with what you have talked about. While the monsters scale up with you, the same ones are always there even if they are the "weak" monsters you fight early on including the strong ones you fight later, there's always a reason to fight less powerful monsters. Being a new player and seeing some guy with a sick looking armor set albeit slightly nerfed, hop into your hunt and help you take down a wall in you progression is a gratifying feeling and gives you that sense of community and working together. I think this is further accentuated with a lot of love coming from Capcom as developers and them knowing what players want in terms of cosmetics/events, monster releases, and even weapon mechanics/balance as well as an, in my opinion, incredibly fun gameloop. You can always go for gear that's "comfy" but doesn't sacrifice dps or you can go all out to go with a long endgame in some cases. The only thing that would probably turn me off would be that the endgame gear sometimes (rarely) ends up being optimal for everything anyways. Besides all that, it's what made me love the MH series so much.

[@Mim-id5um]

Great video! However, I'm curious on your thoughts on Final Fantasy 11. I hear people talk about how that MMO tends to be more different than other MMOs. Its gameplay is designed to require social intreaction to fight its enemies (at least on its classic servers). I suggest checking out the history behind that game.

[@arahman56]

Basically old school pre-wow design. But even then, from what I heard, XI has been redesigned to be more soloable too.

[@rokmare]

I played before but it needs a more quality of life upgrades IMO there really isn't a tutorial so new players get confused and eventually quit the game without some kinda guide most won't get far

[@blazearmoru]

A problem with MMOs is that there are only combat roles. They could have explorer roles, scouting roles, crafting roles, builder roles, trader roles, etc etc. All equipment have the OPTION of soulbinding which allows for some buff -> possibly for further personal customization. There, easy soulbind solution.

[@sdjhgfkshfswdfhskljh3360]

It was fun for me to play as buffers/healers or crafters. But it looks like these days are gone forever 🙁

[@blazearmoru]

yea, they could also make different dungeons/raids have variance & rng that allow for all roles to shine so all classes can have irreplaceable niche usages >-> @@sdjhgfkshfswdfhskljh3360

[@12remcootje]

*Those who does not honour small things, is not worthy of great things.* 21:03 leaving out the -Newbies & Social- aspect in their own mmo game. _For it is why the Outcome_ *= Empty servers and player decline.* 29:40 Good suggestion...Also mmo Onigiri has that. Great video..And Ty for this Critique.

[@AraliciaMoran]

This video reminded me of a mechanic in the fairly old now mmo The Secret World : Lairs. Those were areas scattered across all the open world maps, in which the mobs were highly overpowered for the map, aimed at higher players. If, as a new player, you wandered in those areas, it was pretty much a death sentence. The notable thing, tho, is that those areas where not separated from the rest of the map, and it was not immediately apparent that you were about to enter one if you didn't open the map to see the burnt-looking edges of the lair. I found it a very good way to encourage players to come back later; and a very fun way to suddenly get jumped on by a monster and destroyed because you didn't pay attention.

[@Gordypow]

Guess my productivity for the day can wait... thanks moony ;)

[@BabyCharmander]

Gosh, the discussion of an MMO designed with higher level challenges lurking around different areas made me think of Star Wars Galaxies. That game is gone now, but I still have a screenshot of my character cheering and proudly announcing “Pwned!” next to a giant dead bug that I’d managed to kill. It was merely a larger version of the bug enemies that were already there, but it easily wrecked me. I don’t remember how many times I died, but I remember how excited I was that I’d managed to kill such a tough enemy. I know SWG was not perfect (hi, Jedi system), but my gosh it had so many things it did RIGHT. It had player-run cities that didn’t suck, it had awesome crafting systems (YES they were grindy, YES I sat around for hours grinding random crap and was so dang hyped when I finally created my first droid), it had fantastic social interaction… up until they wrecked it of course. I never even got off Tatooine (aside from when one player graciously flew me to another planet so I could have a chance at seeing General Grievous’s clone-I didn’t, of course, I died immediately), but I have so many great memories playing that game. I miss it so much.

[@LordEpos]

The characterization of Maplestory here is very outdated. I've played that game for something like 13 years, and while the spot it's placed on the graph might have been accurate in 2010, you rarely ever interact with other players now, and massive amounts of content are locked behind so much grind that less than 0.1% of players ever see it. Every incentive to do anything with other players besides take on the toughest endgame bosses has been systematically nerfed into the ground or removed.

[@moon-channel]

That makes me very sad to read, Lord. Indeed, my experience with Maple Story is quite dated, and comes largely from my youngest sister about a decade ago. I've read similar things from commenters now about FLYFF. I think though, in its own way, these issues speak to the problem noted in the video: the MMORPG, as a genre, has drifted too far in the direction of the pursuit of pure power, and the further it moves in that direction, the further the player base reinforces the movement, to the detriment of all MMOs and players.

[@TheMavenDojo]

13:30 I remember something similar on a MMO called "Age of wushu" or something like that, where we had what could only be described as a gang standoff. If I'm not mistaken dying in that game penalizes you a lot, and another guild was killing our members, so high ranking members of my guild came out to talk, so about 20 people on each side just ready to attack at any minute but the fight never broke out because if we all died multiple times we would be penalized multiple times, so it wasn't worth it. Sickest shit I've ever seen in a "social" game.

[@Bobothefish13]

Hmmm I agree with the diagnosis but I definitely fear the proposed solutions being vulnerable to the kinds of player who are always going to be power focused and create a culture of “the right way to play”. Player naïveté I think was one of the strongest factors in how classic felt so good because people didn’t know how to cracked open a games mechanics like an egg. At the same time modern classic is still pretty damn fun because most of the power players discovered they rather play a power driven game. It’s a conundrum indeed. I highly highly recommend watching the Folding Ideas videos about WoW as they are extremely thoughtful and touch on the player culture side of the issue quite a bit.

[@benjaminprice1876]

Great video! I also have seen a change in MMOs where all player abilites are now only for combat. Older MMOs had less fast travel, but had classes who could make portals to help other classes travel the world or something like invisibility to help newbs run through dangerous areas to get to their friend's zone in one piece. Class and world design both informed and encouraged socializing so that people with different builds/classes could help eachother outside of just combat. When I hear socializing in MMOs, these are the kinds of things i miss the most. That kind of emergent gameplay you discuss in the video is hard to find now