Found a great discussion about MMOs in general and why the new generation won't find games like MO2 appealing

Doom and Gloom

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So this especially is true for people who have never played any MMOs, and why those people might pick up Albion etc. but will never play this game for more than 5 minutes
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Mad Jugger

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Aug 8, 2022
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I do not think people want to play MO because it is a substandard product. I started playing when that trailer that had features in it, not in game came out. I pop on for every patch for a few days, see it is still buggy, not optimized, with little to no QOL changes and log off till the next patch because the game is free. After it is not free anymore I most likely will not be paying $15 to see if any of that has happened.

I do not like WoW, and my all time favorite MMO is UO, I played in its "golden era". I like hardcore games. Just not games that are subjectively not good.
 
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Emdash

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I do not think people want to play MO because it is a substandard product. I started playing when that trailer that had features in it, not in game came out. I pop on for every patch for a few days, see it is still buggy, not optimized, with little to no QOL changes and log off till the next patch because the game is free. After it is not free anymore I most likely will not be paying $15 to see if any of that has happened.

I do not like WoW, and my all time favorite MMO is UO, I played in its "golden era". I like hardcore games. Just not games that are subjectively not good.

Agree. I know it sounds boomer but screw the new generation. You should see what happened to the other game genres. Everything is becoming mobile-esque. The good thing is that things band back, and I think sub is becoming something people want to do again, but MO needs to get its shit straight before that.

Need to focus on the FUNDAMENTALS.
 

Jackdstripper

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Albion is FREE, has cartoony graphics, is easy to run, easy to understand, easy to play, easy to level, easy to avoid pvp, the game runs smoothly and there is a TON of solo content.

The only similarity to MO is that in pvp you drop gear on death. Thats about it. Everything else about Albion is geared towards easy, solo, accessible.

The problem with MO2 is that its a very hard, unforgiving and buggy game. On top of that it caters to a greefing and ganking gameplay. Thats why almost nobody sticks around.
 

Phen

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Lets be fair to every game out there. Games that capture your attention for long times are games that are easily played mindlessly or with lack of risk. While introducing a reward system that is massively accessible to anyone playing. Games like MO2 or older MMO Sandbox games that force you to make your own rewards are completely based on the player and not the game itself.

I enjoy many types of games, though the reward systems in most games are super boring and way too easy to achieve.
While on the other hand its nice to play games mindlessly at times. This is what younger audiences like due to the way they can "win" or gain rewards in an easier way.
This is a taught feature in people, lots of people who work hard and see daily progression in their life's find longer term games to be more entertaining due to knowing how the long term reward feeling compared to the quick and easy reward feeling. Also known as; Amount of dopamine's drop per achievement.

Similar to WoW, MO2 will find a niche set of players that will always play because of the long term design. While other games focus on the short attention spans of children to gain value for their game. Not all games do this. As for Battle Royals going strong, because they aren't risk games, you die and gain rewards for winning and losing. Which becomes a competition over enjoyment. Also increasing the amount of small dopamine hits given, giving younger people the feeling of achieving something even though its very minor and gives nearly nothing.

So there will be no one game for everyone, its about understanding your audience and building with them to make word to mouth sales inspire a better community with overall company performance growth. Or just learning how to use mental manipulation to create reward systems that trigger the mind to "believing" they earned something. Though in most cases people spend real money on fake passes to earn fake rewards. No matter what game you play, its all just a game. To each is their own.
 
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Doom and Gloom

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I especially liked the points about how struggling to get a game to work or similar is part of the game's experience. Kinda like I used to learn how to download GBA emulators and work out how to do multiplayer over WLAN with some friends. Sure, I really liked the games, but part of the experience in my mind has to do with the difficulty of making them run in the first place.

Similarly, struggling with cables for PS and memory slots not working etc. makes the experience better when it finally does work, because of the anticipation. Also, I've played many Touhou games, and many are still not available anywhere legally outside of Japan, so the adventure of downloading those from player-hosted sites and immersing into them definitely makes them more striking on my memory.

Even not so long ago, downloading or updating many games took ages, even days, with bad internet or other reasons, all adding into the anticipation.

MO2 surely has given me its fair share of anticipation with having to wait for server crashes, every patch re-downloads the game, travel time to potentially find something cool, character not found etc., but sadly there just isn't enough cool stuff for all world's anticipation, and the bugs really break the immersion real quick.

So, just thinking of today's starter gamers, the bar of frustration is SUPER LOW compared to what for example I have (mine is actually super high because I am a programmer), so literally a game not working first try is very enough to never try it again for MANY people. Even though nowadays the info is often out there, most people don't bother to even Google search what could be done to resolve their issues.

But yeah, can you blame them, when they have an infinite library of games on their phones and every possible device imaginable, which in most cases is ready to run in 5 minutes if that.
 

Gnidex

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Feb 2, 2022
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I do not think people want to play MO because it is a substandard product. I started playing when that trailer that had features in it, not in game came out. I pop on for every patch for a few days, see it is still buggy, not optimized, with little to no QOL changes and log off till the next patch because the game is free. After it is not free anymore I most likely will not be paying $15 to see if any of that has happened.

I do not like WoW, and my all time favorite MMO is UO, I played in its "golden era". I like hardcore games. Just not games that are subjectively not good.
Pretty much spot on, i feel the same way. It's not getting ganked that made me stop playing (we all know gear is easy af to replace in MO2), it's just that the game being objectively bad made it feel more like a chore than something enjoyable.
From the barebones pve with less different mob types than fingers on your hand to utterly unimaginativly designed and boring activities like TC that were supposed to reinvigrate the game, but did nothng but expose catastrophic game design. Nobody thought about the supply tower shitshow before it went live?

MO2 is doomed to not hit even 2k concurrent users, which less than your generic private MMO server. And this isn't due to the playerbase changing or some nebulous factor, the game is just objectively bad.
That is why they milk the buy2play model in addition to the sub, because they know the game is shit, so they want your money up front.

But hey, there's always Exodus...
 
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Doom and Gloom

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Pretty much spot on, i feel the same way. It's not getting ganked that made me stop playing (we all know gear is easy af to replace in MO2), it's just that the game being objectively bad made it feel more like a chore than something enjoyable.
From the barebones pve with less different mob types than fingers on your hand to utterly unimaginativly designed and boring activities like TC that were supposed to reinvigrate the game, but did nothng but expose catastrophic game design. Nobody thought about the supply tower shitshow before it went live?

MO2 is doomed to not hit even 2k concurrent users, which less than your generic private MMO server. And this isn't due to the playerbase changing or some nebulous factor, the game is just objectively bad.
That is why they milk the buy2play model in addition to the sub, because they know the game is shit, so they want your money up front.

But hey, there's always Exodus...

Definitely, not trying to defend the game at all, just wanted to also point out that captivating new audience with the game even if things were better would be rather difficult, given the core ideas. So it just adds to the injury. I see so many new players complaining on Albion forums about ridiculous stuff and threatening to stop playing all the time btw, it is starting to look a bit bleak for these games' future.
 

Emdash

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complaining on forums about ridiculous stuff and threatening to stop playing all the time btw, it is starting to look a bit bleak
Nah that's every game. That's just the melt of the 2023 gamer. Unfort, it waters down issues that really need to be addressed like MO has.
 

Gnidex

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Nah that's every game. That's just the melt of the 2023 gamer. Unfort, it waters down issues that really need to be addressed like MO has.
It doesn't really help that all negative feedback is taken as being a "shitter" and told to go play wow lol.
You can't improve the game if you don't play it or take feedback, even when it's negative. Therefore, no hope left, at this point it's just watching the ship go down with subs and all.
 

Emdash

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Sep 22, 2021
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It doesn't really help that all negative feedback is taken as being a "shitter" and told to go play wow lol.
You can't improve the game if you don't play it or take feedback, even when it's negative. Therefore, no hope left, at this point it's just watching the ship go down with subs and all.
I wouldn't say no hope left because I'd be masochistic if I had no hope and was back here ( tho to be fair, it's a diff type of masochism to have hope haha,) but yeah that is also an issue in other games where they have toxic communities. The weird thing about SV is they built multiple communities and seem to ignore the negative ones. I will never understand how they possibly abandoned their own forums. Such an awful look. Hopefully they can get that in order before UE5 drops, at least put up the latest patch notes sheittt.

THEIR OFFICIAL FORUMS. If anything screams hopeless, it's message in a bottle content on MOFO. Sending out an sos.... sending out an sos...

This community is different than other games, though, and it has to be handled differently. I've been a part of a decent amount of game communities cuz I always get on forums, or communities in general, and this community is just different.

The fact that they made click swings do dmg is pretty epic. There are little hopes here and there. I think we're batting about .050 or something with our suggestions haha. But when you read Reddit, it's a big fancave. They say this place is toxic, but it's not. It's just real. It's just the same as it was in MO. I dunno why devs got soft and had to jump off. DEVS.

All I ask is that people think about what I am saying and at least try to understand the spirit of it. I feel like I'm good at identifying problems at least, systemic flaws. There were more people who made good suggestions but they all leave (for good reason.)

I really disagree with the 'player count' metric of success, though. I want MO to be good. I would pay decent money if this game was somewhat functional, and that's even without having US servers. I can find a way, play within limitations. There are many people... some are just beaten into submission, but most of them are sitting on the sideline.

I still say 100% that if people actually start saying "The Game is Finally Decent" MANY people will come back. Everyone is just waiting for that, but they keep doing weird stuff. It's like they don't want those players back when those players have basically dedicated their life to MO haha (as in no other game could satisfy them.)