Comment by meowface
4 years ago
>There's only two ways to keep players playing: new content and/or grinding mechanics.
You neglected what's by far the funnest and most important and user-retaining aspect of open world MMOs: player-to-player interaction - be it friendly, neutral, or hostile.
The absolute most enjoyable open world MMOs I've played had essentially no content. Players forged their own content in the form of geopolitics, war, economics, and copious communication (propaganda and shittalking, largely). They felt like a completely unplanned, natural simulation of militaristic human societies from hundreds or thousands of years ago. Probably not ideal in real life, but very fun for a game.
I'm convinced the best MMOs to come out over the next 20 years will have very little content and very sparse grinding mechanics. The magic is the emergent game and meta-game that springs forth from the bonding and strife between gargantuan numbers of human agents.
> I'm convinced the best MMOs to come out over the next 20 years will have very little content and very sparse grinding mechanics.
Current open world survival games use grind as a main mechanism for driving emergent game-play and creating player differentiation/conflict, so I don't see it ending completely. Game designers have gotten much better at making grind that isn't actively unfun though.
> The absolute most enjoyable open world MMOs I've played had essentially no content. Players forged their own content in the form of geopolitics, war, economics, and copious communication (propaganda and shittalking, largely). They felt like a completely unplanned, natural simulation of militaristic human societies from hundreds or thousands of years ago. Probably not ideal in real life, but very fun for a game.
What MMO was that? This sounds like a MUSH (a kind of text only roleplay server which is a couterpart of the more combat-focused MUDs)
It sounds a bit like EVE Online, which is also an MMO where the base game is really just a foundation for everything else that happens.
Eve had a huge grind situation at least when I played it 10 odd years ago. You need to skill up, make isks, buy fancy ships and blow em up. I guess you could putter around in a tiny beginner ship - but considering there wasn’t much dog fighting skills involved, it was lame. You could build a corp - again need isks.