Tree of Savior Forum

Why do MMOs die? (How can we build a great TOS community?)

General Discussion
#1

Having played many MMOs, most of them failed. Most of these failures were not shocking and to be expected, and thus I noticed a pattern of factors that kill MMORPGs:

1. Gold Sellers/Chat Spam
2. In-game Economics
3. P2W Cash Shop
4. Social Game

~How can IMCGames/TOS avoid hammering these nails into its own coffin?~

[1. Gold Sellers/Chat Spam]
Gold sellers get to determine the [value of currency] in MMORPGs if you let them swarm the server.

Contrary to popular belief, “Gold sellers” are not just a fact of life of MMORPGS. I have played MMORPGs before where the GMs kept gold sellers at bay and spamming chat is not a problem.

[2. In-game Economics and Lack-of-player-trade]

-One of the things that made games like MapleStory and Trickster great were the economies. Extremely rare items that granted very modest stat boosts were sought after by everyone, and crafting industries provided the means for unlucky players to acquire rare armor/items - by purchasing it.

Not everyone has the time to raid for an hour a day for a small chance at receiving a rare equip, in-game economics enhance the character and decrease the difficulty of the game, so there is incentive to participate in all aspects of the game - not just combat.

(Surprisingly, one of the best examples of a successful MMORPG economy is Runescape.)

When the players are not regularly interacting with each other and determining prices based on competition, supply and demand, the [Value of Gold] (Or any currency equivalent) becomes unstable.

[3. P2W Cash Shop]

A pay-to-win Cash Shop is any Cash Shop that starts providing significant [additional Stats] and is no longer cosmetic.
When players can purchase high stats for real money and infallible armor, it discourages players from grinding and working towards weapon/armor goals.

It invalidates the gameplay mechanics of the game - why create things like skill combos and the ability to dodge attacks if we can just: 1. Buy Cash Shop Gear with +STATS 2. stand still 3. win

The day we are able to purchase: [CUTE OUTFIT, INT+10] in the Cash Shop is the day TOS starts dying. Often times, this death is not quick and painless, but slow and brutal.

[4. Social Game]

The most successful MMORPGs were also the ones that had thriving, active communities.

Obviously, TOS is extremely popular and will have mainstream success as a MMORPG, much like MapleStory, Ragnarok Online and Trickster all had. Many TOS players have stated that this is their “RO 2.0” and a successor to Ragnarok Online.

This game definitely has the fanbase and numbers to sustain itself (# of players/population) and should utilize that to create a community which survives even AFTER/IF IMCGames makes decisions which negatively impact the gameplay experience of Tree of Savior.

Do you agree/disagree with my list? What factors do YOU think contribute to the failure of a MMORPG? How can IMCGames encourage the longevity of this MMO?

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#2

Why do MMO dies ?

Simple… Nothing Is Permanent In This World

#3

Buddhist belief: impermanence.

But I don’t think anyone is looking for a permanent game per se, just a game that we can devote excessive amounts of freetime to. Some people played RO or MS or other MMOs for more than 5 years, way after the game declined, because of a good community.

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#4

nicely done post…

well the mmo only die if 2 things happen…

they lose the Ms go missing or O get’s kill :slight_smile:

as long as there is a server and people… there is always hope

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#5

Hmm Fair enough…my bad :grin:

20/deadbodies

#6

You forgot lack of content can dwindle down the population significantly

1 Like
#7

Out of those points a game really dies out due to lack of content.

If a game can’t put out content at the pace players usually reach that content ( aka endgame) normally players leave the game sooner.

Also if the game doesn’t have a very defined goal, players won’t feel the need to play the game, rushing to max level to rush to max level?

#8

A good first lesson is to make discussion thread first posts less of a text wall. I:

I don’t know if I can agree or disagree with anything you’ve said.
Not for any basis, you just make blanket statements that seem to only consider a certain type of MMO setting.

Since I don’t want to spend time talking over your opinion on things, I’ll skip to mine.
(it is after all, your opinion. some of your statements seem more like statements of fact, but I don’t think they’re wrong, just limited.)

What do I think contributes to the failure of an MMORPG?
Lots of things, but mostly… an inadequate game.
The economy, community and staff will eventually find a comfortable spot and even if they don’t, the game will carry itself decently enough.

How might IMCGames encoruage longevity for ToS?
Make it a decent game.
I’m not saying things like staff participation, community support or other things of the like aren’t necessary or important, but the first and foremost goal of making a game last, is for the game to be worth our while.
You can do all you want to encourage people to play all you want, in the end it comes down to how good of a game this is.

Having a community/economy that carries your title is great, but having a title that carries the community is equally good, if not outright better.

1 Like
#9

Current Tree of Savior is questing and dungeon running based game with no focus on long-term survivability apart from periodically released content to further extend the treadmill like any other themepark MMO.
Unfortunately with its new focus on questing and dungeon running rather than grind and social aspect there does not appear to be much hope for a long-lasting Tree of Savior, especially when using kTOS as an existing model.

2 Likes
#10

Huge caveat: releasing content just so there’s more content is also not always good in the sense that it doesn’t give “endgame players” enough time to farm endgame equips in preparation for next tier of raid/dungeons/pve.

#11

Profitability drives an MMO yes.

And of course you need players to do that, and like others have said, games with fun core mechanics and concepts are the ones that live, or are the “first” to do something, i.e. MS, WoW.

This isn’t really an absolute rule though. For instance, games with very fun mechanics and even great communities like Fantasy Earth Zero died due to lack of profitability. It does very well in the east, but it had such a short lifespan here. Maybe it was because a PvP game that relied on ping and thus worked better in smaller countries, or maybe it was because it had a sharp learning curve, but games like LoL prove that you can overcome this. So to be honest, I think a number of little factors are what brings a game down most steadily. Of course, gamebreaking bugs and dev abandonment does that pretty fast as well but shrugs. so long as a game is profitable this should not happen in the first place. And of course, all MMORPGs get dated and thus have a sort of lifespan.

ANYWAYS MORE COHERENT THOUGHTS:

  1. Beginners quit the most easily. They are not attached to the game, and even a bit of boredom or a difficulty wall they don’t want to invest time in is enough to have them quit with no regrets. I notice a lot of games completely ignore their beginner playerbase after an endgame playerbase develops. Which makes sense since endgamers will definitely complain about wanting content pushed out fast and are generally the big spenders, but quite literally everyone quits a game at one point. If there is no new community coming in and taking over the old school people, there probably isn’t a good future for the mmo. Also, with endgamers, one person leaving sort of creates a domino effect, since community is a huge part of why people stick around and wait for updates.

  2. Endgamers quit when the game gets tedious and they realize they aren’t having fun at all anymore. If it’s only dungeon running and painful gearing at the end, all non-PvPers will probably think “well, I’m done here” at one point. People are willing to give a lot of leeway to MMOs, but there’s a limit for everyone. It also doesn’t help if the game is difficult to take breaks from. It sounds weird but keeping people playing every single day will tire them out and make them bored faster. For instance, in LT, you have to revive your pets and your warps only to be greeted with the same old dungeon running and rng rolls for better gear since power in that game outpaces itself so fast. There is no reason to do that if you left in the first place. Things like events and interesting new content fixes this. Games need to step out of their comfort zone.

So it boils down to a lack of love for a game. Which grows through a person experiencing a game in its entirety for themselves. Aaand that is probably why games with a very specific method in which to do things suffer from decline so fast. I notice people who stick around long stick around because they had such good times with certain elements of the mmo that they feel like it’s a waste to not play it while its there. They like the lore, the art, the easter eggs, the atmosphere, the memories, the people, etc. Games that force players to rush to endgame, skipping a lot of the things that make people stick around at endgame in the first place, tend to fail. That’s why I actually liked how ToS is more or less making world exploration something interesting. I don’t like how linear the gameplay apparently feels (dunno though, never played it myself). However, I do believe that ToS is a lovingly made game, so I also believe that people can really appreciate it.

& I keep saying this HAHA but community is so damn important. People need people to look up to, to feel connected to, to be silly or cool with, to know about, to argue with, etc. I will even say that a hierarchy, no matter how pretentious, can be exciting. MMOs are not console games, and need to make up for what they lack by using their biggest “gimmick”, aka people. Variation is exciting. I don’t think ToS will have a big issue with this, but overly-linear gameplay does contribute to it so shrugs.

HOWEVER EVEN with a great community, if a game does not hit its “quota” even once, the people in charge of the game get lazy, and players notice. and quit. whoops. I’m guessing this is what happened with FEZ.

disclaimer, all this is just observation and could totally just be me being delusional.

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#12

Unfortunately this is what TOS currently is in Korea due to being pushed out early at Nexon’s discretion. Grinding gives very little exp compared to questing and dungeon running so players quest until they can get to dungeons or run out of quests and sit in queues for hours on end until they can get in their 5 daily dungeon runs before logging off. There is no community or exploration aspects to the game because the paths are linear and finding a group to play with is solely done through a menu with no true interaction between each other involved.
We can only hope this may be changed a bit in the western release but given the history of MMO releases from other countries that underwent this same routine (BDO being a huge and very recent example), it is unlikely.

#13

Oh man, I see. I figured that deleting quest markers was something made to brush at player curiosity and give them more incentive to explore. I suppose it isn’t enough at all with all the people feeling like the game is too linear.

And yuck, dailies and overreliance on quest matching. I can already feel the weird silent dungeon running HAHA

#14

You forgot to say fun gameplay.

The game has to have good reward systems, satisfying control, and challenges that fit what the community wants. Whether it’s overcoming a big challenge, stomping other players with grace, or moments of quiet zen you got to be having a good time. If you’re not getting the warm and fuzzies why play? In the past MMOs got away with weak gameplay because the idea of one big server with everyone on it was a novel idea. Not anymore.

#15

What ended up throwing me off a lot of games were:

  1. being outpaced
  • I like playing slowly. like. exploring and talking to people and doing lazy stuff and not really leveling unless it happens naturally. all my friends were hardcore lets mechanically play the ■■■■ outta this game and get to the highest level as fast as possible. are there folks out there that are gonna have a casual guild? would like to join that >~<
  1. non-english speaking players
  • this just comes from someone that played a lot of pvp stuff like get amped 2 and other ■■■■. but at someone, bantering with players became next to impossible when everyone surrounding you had a language barrier. games with in game translators REALLY helped. ff14 did this amazingly
  1. creepy dudes
  • …well they’re everywhere so you can’t help that. but after getting cyberstalked a handful of times you kinda just wanna bolt, and run across the mountains and never play the game again. blargh. can’t help it.
1 Like
#16

Aside from that some MMO have very slow content updates that max level players have almost nothing to do anymore till the next update. MMO should have always something new to see or have something rewarding as you play it like in RO1 which on the beginning of it, they continue to release new maps and a lot of events like wedding and WOE.

Here are some mmo games that I reach the current max or highest level during that time and reason why I quit it. I’m not gonna include ragnarok as it’s common here.

Rose Online - slow update that takes me whole hour just to have 0.01% percent of exp, i’m current the highest lvl during that time. And after a month I quit because i feel that this game not gonna survive, it just got shut down on our regional server.

RF - I quit because there’s a big flaw in the open world pvp which is automatic between other races. RF online is a game where there’s a limited leveling spot and some groups with 2 or more races are friendly or know each other personally that’s why when a group of other people with specific race wants to enter that leveling spot they just ask their friends with other race to kill them and hugged the spot just for them.

FF IV - Beautiful graphics, leveling is fast but too much party oriented game-play that you can’t mostly be a solo player here. Also its update is slow that you’ve got nothing to do anymore and so I quit it. This game is still alive but many will quit it if they don’t update it fast enough.

#17

You have a point, especially with items 1 and 3.

#18

MMO titles died because we grew up

people change, times change.

but here a segment from gametheory

www.youtube.com/watch?v=bgkoz5EZTok

its not dying its just adjusting due to changes of their player base.

the mmos didnt die

#the gamers are different now.

most of them younger generation are on MOBILE online gaming.

#19

MMOs die when they are no longer profitable. They are no longer profitable when people leave. So it basically boils down to why do you leave a mmo?

For me, I usually leave when the p2w is too strong, game is broken (as in too many bugs that devs have maid clear that they aren’t going to fix), when only the cashshop gets updated for months at a time (and not say bugs being fixed), and when too much cheating goes unpunished.

#20

This post was flagged by the community and is temporarily hidden.

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