Exact Reasons why MO Died and What Not to do Moving Forward

[Eldrath]

I'd wager what really hurt the game and stunted it's potential growth was the over all performance both latency and game play in general. All those reasons you listed might of whittled away at the player base, but the choices the developers made in writing off NA cost the game any chance of actually increasing it's player base.

From 2011 to 2015 MO1 always had a healthy NA population. Dunno how it played out after that.

Have you played the first game extensively/have any data/input from veteran or is this just part of your little agenda? If so what are you trying to archive?

 

[Pierre]

This is false, just look at MO1. At some point, the only pvp you could get was via dropping a mang somewhere. That is not healthy for the game. We need a way to bypass walls like ladders for small time raids without the need to siege. That can stay hard and require planning but if its the only source of pvp the game dies, simple as that.


The game is a Sandbox MMORPG, supposed to be about player interaction. Not just grind alot and substitute a whole group of players with NPCs. A high cost should never justify having completely unbalanced mechanics like Death Knights, or you might as well play a korean grinder if thats your thing.

To your first point, that was only because player population plundered where the only way to find fights was to lure them out at the risk of losing expensive assets. Removing walls would worsen conditions as there would be even less of an incentive for players to log on and fight.

To your second point, death knights would become dead content if their cost were not backed by an appreciable amount of effectiveness. Otherwise, you could make the same arguments about oghmium gear and well bred mounts.

 

[ThaBadMan]

It all started how MO2 combat alpha started from my view.

Game was initially too slow, it got sped up, because the server couldnt handle the amount of players populating it they blamed bad prediction and turned down the speed.
Through closed and open beta promises where not held, progress was slow, bugs and game breaking shit stayed instead of being prioritized. Dont even have to mention corrupt staff running rampant.

Release came and the game was far from what people hoped and was lead to believe, content lacked for everyone except PvPers, lack of end game content, progress was slow and bugs, exploits, dupes and cheating was regular and took too long to get response. Things got better at Dawn times and population was low compared to release and beta but then changed back when mount speed was sped up immensely, blocking and swinging got wider arcs dumbing down the game.

At this point competitive PvPers have mostly quit due to combat and skill being less important than what we where led to believe before buying the game, alliances consisting of several huge guilds quit due to no tools/customization, PvEers have quit due to bad AI and lack of good entertaining dungeons, the game also throughout became more and more like a chore or a job because of timers and boring systems to gain resources, most crafters also quit due to no reason to play except supplying wars which where non existent for months during low pop times between patches.

Work as seen with Steam release showed us was prioritized on new toys with hopes of keeping us content instead of fixing up Myrland and the game. Population returned in numbers closer to release than ever since people gave up months into the games life. But since the focus was on new toys and not the quality of the existing game with regards to the population most where gone after a few play sessions.

By this point it was too late for early backers, veterans and most who once had hopes of what MO would become based on a trailer, a powerpoint presentation and discussions on the forums. Sadly it was also too late for enough new players to stay due to the terrible population compared to land size.

I can guarrantee if you had players who quit in closed beta back in 09/10 they would find a plethora of the same bugs/exploits still present in MO1 today, thats a huge part of why MO1 died.

 

[Handsome Young Man]

MO1 had a lot of counter intuitive systems.

For example...

You try to go and attack a player, you instead have a pet put on you that you quite literally can not fight. The player you tried to attack has to do absolutely nothing but run / avoid you while his pet attacks you. Pets have no stamina, stupid amounts of HP, some have crazy AoE attacks, ranged attacks that ignore blocks / parries, etc.

You go to siege and enemy guild, but you instead are met with people spamming fire arrows, using elementalism, and spamming 'guards' so that their AI take care of everything. Sieges are stupidly unfun and one sided, and are usually met with very boring, uncounterable tactics. So what do people do instead? They ninja siege, they siege quite literally to avoid any kind of resistance from the other side. How the fuck is that good gameplay? "Lets stay up to 4 AM guys and siege X guild because they wont be online, we'll just be playing by ourselves and claim victory with no combat!!!"

You're new to the game and you want to be self sufficient, but the problem is you were limited to four character slots; and even when you wanted a character to 'do something' you were so specialized that you had to either gimp yourself to do what you like or bite the bullet and only do a little bit of each thing. You need armor. So you need an armor crafter. You're going to need a character who can do some form of damage, if a mage you can go into pets; if your a mounted or foot character; you're going to need weapons. So you'll now need a weapon crafter as well, but you wont even be able to make every weapon or use every material. Oh, you also need food. If you want to ride around, you need a mount. So you need a tamer to get around efficiently. Oh, you need the materials to make all this shit previously mentioned? You need an extractor / refiner. Like I understand MO1 was about making players work together, but I never understood the finite amount of points we were given as well as being unable to at least craft shit and use combat skills on the same character.

You want to go farm gold and make money, but in-order to do it efficiently you basically have to have a mounted character who rode circles around something and just pelted it with arrows or use a pet to do everything for you.

The game was just tedious all the way around. Hardcore, sure. Tedious, definitely fucking sure.

I'm not saying things should be super easy or grant you instant gratification, but... lets go back to these previous points.

Maybe don't allow players to have a pet play the game for them? Make it more active or involve some actual skill instead of "Pets attack all!"

Maybe don't design a siege system that is nothing but boring, monotonous gameplay with the outcome being avoiding any kind of conflict or dealing with a barrage of fire arrows, elementalism magic spam through walls, and guards just zapping your shit. Maybe make it more like Darkfall. With certain times, and notifications, or something that makes people actively engage one another instead one side just bunkering down and doing fuck all or one side just doing the siege when no one is online.

Maybe don't restrict our points so much, or give us crafting points as well so we can do more shit on the game and not be so strained to buy more accounts / character slots to do what we need.

Maybe don't make farming and PvE so boring and mind numbing that the people who are known to do it constantly are usually labeled lifeless and losers.

You had inbalances, bugs, exploits, terrible patch direction, no transparency at times, data breaches, etc.

MO2 has the potential to be good on a fresh slate, new optimized engine with tons of support, and taking in feedback. So HOPEFULLY SV will actually continue to listen and not try and veer in some 'over the top grand vision' of things being a specific way regardless of how people feel.

 

[Vagrant]

How to proceed:
DESIGN systems properly and don´t listen to the players. Feedback in alpha for the most part has been shit tier quality showing the same close mindedness as in MO1. MO2 needs a firm game designer at the head that can stick out tough decisions and listen to feedback without getting the urge to change core values of the game. SV should hire someone like that.

If MO2 is even remotely sucessful this problem will increase a hundred fold. Or as I said many times to my guildmates: If you made a poll on the forum if Mortal Online should be full loot it would come out 50/50.

Does that meant he devs should take out half the full loot?

I agree this is absolutely key to remaining unique rather than generic, 'it' ( the unique aspects of the game from the original vision ) was the only reason myself and many others came to the game originally despite all the issues.

Walls were the final nail yes.

I don't have much to add except that from a passive playstyle point of view, breeding completely sucked, not only did it suck gold out of those that had any,
it completely sucked all dedicated tamer playstyles out of the game, and yes there were many that JUST did taming and PVE and not just using up a spare slot to support their PVP toons.

Many didn't have time to dedicate to continous hours of guild play or pvp but they were players that loved the risk/reward of sneaking through the landscape ( without walls or afk guards ) to access the best mounts and pve under the threat of being caught in someone elses territory just to bring to market for a bit of gold and for the 'social aspect' of taming mounts for customers.

Beast Mastery might have been better used to benefit tamers as an advantage over the breeding system, but once breeding made taming a waste of time the focus shifted to encouraging passive playstyles and tamers to move to Domination in order to support PVP.
A large number of dedicated tamer/pve players left the game, many tamed, fished, cooked and hunted in support of others.

Also the ping in Australia was always pretty shit for much else

 

[Teknique]

I agree this is absolutely key to remaining unique rather than generic, it was the only reason myself and many others came to the game originally despite all the issues.

Walls were the final nail yes.

I don't have much to add except that from a passive playstyle point of view, breeding completely sucked, not only did it suck gold out of those that had any,
it completely sucked all dedicated tamer playstyles out of the game, and yes there were many that JUST did taming and PVE and not just using up a spare slot to support their PVP toons.

Many didn't have time to dedicate to continous hours of guild play or pvp but they were players that loved the risk/reward of sneaking through the landscape ( without walls or afk guards ) to access the best mounts and pve under the threat of being caught in someone elses territory just to bring to market for a bit of gold and for the 'social aspect' of taming mounts for customers.

Beast Mastery might have been better used to benefit tamers as an advantage over the breeding system, but once breeding made taming a waste of time the focus shifted to encouraging passive playstyles and tamers to move to Domination in order to support PVP.
A large number of dedicated tamer/pve players left the game, many tamed, fished, cooked and hunted in support of others.

Also the ping in Australia was always pretty shit for much else

Nice to hear real PVE players that want risk.

Why do people play this game if they don't want risk?

You're not supposed to go around fire if you don't want to sweat.

 

[Vagrant]

Nice to hear real PVE players that want risk.

Why do people play this game if they don't want risk?

You're not supposed to go around fire if you don't want to sweat.

myself and others tamed a ridiculous number of mounts and other creatures, multiple hundreds if not thousands, and other useful stuff in the service of guilds, individuals and often reds that roamed spawns who sometimes let us live if we tamed a mount or two,
other times we were just murdered or chased off, the stealth and escape was a rush for sure and I miss it.

Some of us stayed around a little while to see how breeding progressed but much like real life, it's a game for the well-to-do with gold aplenty and not us mere vagabonds will little more than stealth and the ability to tame to our names

Some more thoughts;

I would hate to see anything but first person only, and full loot.

I personally think voice/voip completely spoiled the immersion, moreso than the myriad of inappropriate character names - but maybe that's just me.

I did appreciate safe zones within larger towns if only to stop the griefing tactics since there was always thieves to watch out for.

 

[ElPerro]

To your first point, that was only because player population plundered where the only way to find fights was to lure them out at the risk of losing expensive assets. Removing walls would worsen conditions as there would be even less of an incentive for players to log on and fight.

To your second point, death knights would become dead content if their cost were not backed by an appreciable amount of effectiveness. Otherwise, you could make the same arguments about oghmium gear and well bred mounts.

Not sure if you played before TC but as soon as ppl figured out how to make their safezones, pvp dropped substantially. After they got used to the safety, most wouldnt even go out a stam bar away from their gates unless they had a huge zerg.

On paper it might seem like letting ppl group up and come out to fight on their terms would be a good incentive for them to actually log in and fight. But most would just wait until they have 99% chance of winning before trying anything. Theres a much higher chance you will get a fight if they are forced to face you from the start and have to call reinforcements. But if you dont you can just move on instead of waiting 1 hour hoping they grow some balls.

As for death knights, you could always just lower the cost to make them more affordable. Well bred mounts are the same thing. They are completely unbalanced super tanks and the whole argument for their existence is they cost alot. Oghmium on the other hand, you will need way more skill than those 2 to use effectively and it doesnt even give that big advantage.

 

[Teknique]

As for death knights, you could always just lower the cost to make them to be more affordable. Well bred mounts are the same thing. They are completely unbalanced super tanks and the whole argument for their existence is they cost alot. Oghmium on the other hand, you will need way more skill than those 2 to use effectively and it doesnt even give that big advantage.

Yeah 2-10 g for breeding attempts and 10g to train was rough.

Shame my gaming experience was ruined by poleswords and oghmium was op as I could only hit it for like 60 with my sledgehammer mount, on my 20 gold horse and 3 pieces of armor.

This kid was making me laugh with the why would people use deathknights if they couldn't solo sators, because pets for 200 points rather than 600 would be totally useless, clowns lmao. How do people even type some of this?

 

[Kobalt]

From 2011 to 2015 MO1 always had a healthy NA population. Dunno how it played out after that.

Have you played the first game extensively/have any data/input from veteran or is this just part of your little agenda? If so what are you trying to archive?

I played MO off and on for years. The game was a bug filled janky mess. That's the real reason it stagnated. First impressions are everything, so my feedback is simple. Learn from your mistakes and don't repeat them with MO2. Reduce the tedium and optimize performance every where needed and however needed.

 

[Blood Thorn]

I can't speak for MO1 because I didn't play it much, but a healthy game encourages all types of players, with varying levels of danger. LiF failed for multiple reasons, but the biggest is because the devs listened to a vocal sub-segment of the population. Hopefully MO2 development efforts will include active engagement with a cross-section of players.

From a design point of view, I would think walls would be important for anyone building their own structures. They have put the time and effort into the creation of content for everyone, friend and foe. As such, everyone should have multiple ways of engaging in each aspect of that content, including (beatable) NPC guards, ladders, (robbable) vendors, and various options for siege mechanics.

 

[Charizard]

Butchery was a pretty big issue for new players for awhile. They couldnt' just go out in the world and PvE animals. Nobody really liked using tames to kill bandits or wisents.