Everyone can think of many different game modes that could be implemented in TOS, from simple mini-games to complex game modes like a “MOBA-like” one. But I think it is important to rationalize why sometimes chasing these ideas is not the best in practice.
TOS is primarily an MMORPG, reason why we have all these good looking classes, character progression/customization, dungeons, quests/grinding, guilds, etc.
For a game to be successful, we want to implement game modes that interact with as many as those aspects as possible. Which is why PvP and GvG have been successful game modes implemented on pretty much every other game of this genre, as history has shown us.
Think this from the perspective of a company:
- Your target market is people who are interested in the MMORPG aspects of a game. This means all those aspects I previously listed.
- Your target market is not people looking for a MOBA-like game mode. People who want that kind of game will be looking for MOBA-like games, not for an MMORPG.
This means that you are losing out on potential customers, simply because most people who play MOBAs are not interested in the aspects of an MMORPG. On the other hand, people who play MMORPGs are not primarily interested in MOBA-like game-play, as it is other aspects of the game that interest them.
One could think that maybe it is innovation and one could market it as a new type of game that mixes MMORPGs and MOBAs to try to reach as many potential customers as possible, but what would this mean?
- The company would have to invest a lot of resources (money, people) to develop that new game mode.
- These resources could have been used to develop other aspects of the game (more dungeons, more classes, etc).
- Once the game mode is complete, they are still going to have to invested resources into it to keep it fresh and balanced.
I want to emphasize how all of this is using money (resources). How are they going to make that money back? Will the influx of potential new customers help you get that money back? It could, but in the first place this game is not going to attract that many users from other games (such as League of Legends, Dota2, Heroes of the Storm).
Even if they do come take a look, they are not going to stay because MOBA players want specific aspects of that game-play in their game (this means a fresh start on every game, quick action, highly-balanced characters to use and a wide arrange of those to choose from, different experience every game, etc).
But most importantly, a huge aspect of this is that a MOBA game has only that game-mode available for it’s users to play. This is a high priority because all the users are queuing to the same game mode which results in fast queue time.
They are not gonna find that in TOS, because people are not here exclusively for that game mode, they will also be using their time to chat with their friends, level their characters, go to dungeons, craft items, etc. Not to even mention all the other aspects that wouldn’t be in there.
In the end you alienate your user base, and the resources invested into that game-mode would not return a profit, which means a massive loss to the company and the real user’s they were targeting initially (since those resources were not used instead to improve the game they came for in the first place).
And even trying to find out if it could actually work would still involve using resources, as the company would have to do a market research, planning, marketing strategy, requirements analysis, etc.
No matter how you look at it, is a losing situation.
With that said, I think all we really need is a better class-balance, as others have said, to have better PvP.
But more than anything, we need a meaningful GvG system, as it revolves around the community (guilds), which makes the server become alive and gives the users a reason to keep on working in their characters and keep on playing this game. This means castles, or strongholds, etc.
It is something that has been done on pretty much every other game, but there is a reason for that and it is because people simply love that game mode and it is something they expect when playing an MMORPG. There can be innovation within it, but first we need a solid base to start off from.
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