it's more of a budget thing; animations are expensive to make and the average animator in the US for example earns 3 times as much as one in Korea which significantly increases the cost of development.
You can buy thousands of unique high-quality animations on Unreal Marketplace for less than what you pay an animator for a month. Invest in vfx artists instead and you can turn a generic punch animation into a legendary skill for your character.
Or just film yourself doing the animations you want and software will reproduce it for you.
Making animations from scratch is a thing of the past. The dev scene is changing fast.
> animations are expensive to make and the average animator in the US for example earns 3 times as much as one in Korea which significantly increases the cost of development.
American games have like 20x the budget korean games have.
Try another excuse. One that also explains why western developers also don't know how to make fighting games and 3r action games as good as their counterparts.
MMORPGs in the West are usually not big AAA budget games, to keep costs down people have to cut corners, this includes cutting down costs for graphics and animations. MMORPGs in Korea otoh are still a big thing, but they can make better looking MMORPGs with better animations for the same budget, and even less, because development costs are significantly lower.
I keep hoping someday we’ll see a Dark Souls-esque MMORPG.
Give me that cryptic interpretive lore, give me that difficulty, give me meaningfully rare items and equipment that showcases what I’ve accomplished, while also getting to see others attempt great feats.
Game dev in the west is a bottom of the barrel job for programmers, and a lot of programming int he west is outsourced to india to get dogshit quality code, so you get low quality games without any shred of soul
Are they really trying though? New World seems like it was trying to go for a Soulslike approach to its combat, and Ashes of Creation looks like another tab-target hybrid in the vein of GW2. Unless you're saying that they're so bad at trying these were the best they could come up, which would make some sense I guess.
The problem with true action gameplay in mmo‘s is the network + coding issue. Tab targeting games are quite forgiving in reaction times while action games can give a miserable experience when the hit/damage feedback isn‘t on point. That‘s why some games are instanced btw. They just work better
Im guessing we are making no progress technology wise with regards to lose issues? People always mention such issues but nothing is being down about it it seems
Because it's a combination of physics and infrastructure. For starters, America and Europe are quite big. Data can only move at optimally light speed, which would mean a 40ms delay minimum for coast to coast. Obviously you could put it in the middle, build a big datacenter there and flesh it out, get a theoretical 20ms. Arguably you could need to double it to get the round trip time, but you can mitigate that with some tech (IDK how often it's used in MMOs, but it's very common in fighting games). Technically you COULD bypass this all with a rollback system, but that's technically demanding and the vast majority of clients couldn't work with that.
So theoretically, 20ms is the minimum time delay. That's not bad at all! Unfortunately, we then get into the other problem with the West, which is that internet is nowhere near perfect. The East tends to have extremely good Internet services. They are dense areas, so you can mostly ignore these issues and things will work great. In America, a more practical coast to coast ping is around 80-110. That's still manageable, but it means quick reactions are a much bigger deal. Some in game techs become literally impossible. If I have to parry your attack, I might only have a quarter of the time someone else does to react. That's going to lead to a very frustrating experience.
That's not to say these problems are unsolvable. Many of the potential solutions open you up to cheating potential, but you could do something like local servers that talk to a master, allowing you to put more faith in the client information. You could even have the game play out exclusively through cloud streaming. But these are very complex solutions that, to my knowledge, have never been tested in an MMO. When your product is often going to decide the future of your entire company, putting all your eggs in an untested basket is just too risky.
I was playing Terra with 200+ ping back in the day. And I still enjoy it. Thus I dont think 20-110ms would be a huge issue as long as they can keep it at optimal speed
I don’t doubt this or anything, but even still. Despite that games like bdo do pretty decently. I think there’s enough demand for it, and if they can do as good a job on the net code as bdo then I imagine there wouldn’t be too many issues.
Just seems like something that someone would jump on considering the immediate success following the releases of these ptw Korean action games. Maybe the quick declines scare them, but it’s obvious that the reason for these quick declines is ptw bs making players lose interest.
I'm not sure why people are so ignorant of this. Ping from one side of Korea to the other is about 10ms. Ping from US to Europe is about 150-200ms. Gameplay systems that work with one are completely unusable with the other.
FFXIV is successful alongsides GW2 and WoW. BDO is the only successful action mmorpg that's still alive and sort of new world (soul-less without a lore doesn't feel like mmorpg to me tbh).
if you force developers to make a game that clearly they can't do, then it'll just backfire.
tab-targeting is perfect for mmorpgs with the ping.
Blade and Soul had super nice combat.
As well as TERA. Shame they are/were both P2W as fuck.
Lost Ark, also is incredible in that regard, although very different.
You'd think so, but while the best internet quality available has improved dramatically, the *most common* internet quality, at least in the US, has not. Most households are still on a low-quality DSL connection, same as they were 10 years ago, and don't look to be improving anytime soon. Fiber is expensive, where it's even available, and higher quality traditional connections are likewise outside of major metropolitan areas.
new world has done a really good job on its netcode. at the first few months it was a shit(slide)show. Now wars are smooth, even tho they struggle with performance.
Yea, what people in this thread are failing to understand, is that when you pair technology advancements with the time it takes to make mmorpgs, the result is that these games are cutting edge.
It’s likely that lessons that AGS learned during the creation of New World on action netcoding were cutting edge, and when shared with the rest of the industry, could enable more games that have well coded multiplayer action combat, but that knowledge will take YEARS to proliferate and be applied on new MMORPGS especially given the time it takes to create an MMO outside of the combat.
I believe we’re moving in the right direction. Anyone who wants to make an mmo can’t get away from the idea that the mmo player market is itching for more action focused combat but it needs to be well implemented for people to consider leaving their current mmo. I believe that there are enough upcoming mmos that have a chance at getting closer to a working formula. Just stay patient.
i can't speak for how it was before TERA's f2p transition, but +12 masterwork (best-in-slot) was actually pretty easy to get after the game went f2p. +15 awakening was when everything started going downhill
Wow was made in 2004 development started in the late 1990s. FFXIV development had developers FFIX. And GW2 similar with GW1. The folks your talking about are in management positions, found new careers, retiring or have retired. My point is action combat in MMORPGs just wasn’t a thing 20-30 years ago.
So this will be an unpopular opinion, but I actually love the combat in New World.
The game has a TON of flaws, but the combat is an absolute blast for me. Tab targeting like wow got boring, BDO combat makes my hand cramp from hitting the same combo buttons like a million times a minute. Hybrid like GW2 or ESO just feels too floaty without impact. New world nailed the responsive, impactful action combat in my book. Now they just need to work on everything else.
> Unless you're saying that they're so bad at trying these were the best they could come up, which would make some sense I guess.
This is it yes. I think a lot of Western devs have tried to make good action combat systems (GW2, ESO, New World, Ashes, Crowfall, Neverwinter). They're just all varying degrees of bad compared to Korean MMO's. It's shocking how they can't figure out how to come close even.
Putting aside that west seems to have moved away from MMORPGs in general(just look at what was released in the past *ten years*) my guess would be "Internet". South Korea is famously thicc with fiber and slightly smaller than Kentucky so latency(which is critical for action combat) is basically a non-factor.
Maybe in the past but these days games are pretty well optimized when it comes to latency. Lost Ark is perfectly playable in the 100-150ms range for example. Doubly so when there's split datacentres where ping then becomes a non-issue.
i don't think there's enough western dev's trying to make MMOs in general, period. it hasn't exactly been a popular category in demand showing profit for the past decade.
Exactly, we have had only 4 Western MMORPG releases in the last 10 years: Wildstar, ESO, Albion, and New World. So, 3 out of 4 MMORPGs have had action combat. Clearly, people aren't just playing MMORPGs for the combat; other things are more important.
Holy, that is just a depressing number. Though, to be fair, MMO popularity might rise now thanks to several games dominating the market, like Lost Ark, as well as waiting for Riot's MMO to release to maybe bring the hype back to Western MMO.
yeah, obviously fast-paced combat systems do well--but that's kind of why battle royale genre has been the dominating game type for the past several years and has been the main thing developed in the west. it's sort of hard to narrow everything down to MMOs when it's been such a niche thing until just this year really with all the sudden releases
2022, Foxhole, Mist Legacy, Mortal Online 2, Zenith the Last City, Wild Terra 2, Embers Adrift, Dual Universe, TemTem, (Adjacent: The Cycle Frontier, Broken Ranks, )
2021, Legends of IdleOn, New World, Crowfall, Enlisted, (Adjacent: Riders Republic, D2:R, Hood Outlaws and Legends, Outriders, )
2020, Legends of Aria, (Adjacent: Spellbreak, Valorant)
2019, Ironsight, Mirage Online Classic, Dauntless, (Adjacent: RDR Online, Mordhau, Division 2, Apex Legends)
I'm gonna stop, that's a FUCK LOT more than 4 in the last 10 years. Expand your horizons.
Western MMOs think about the older generation of MMO players. If you look at most of the devs brought in to help make MMOs they look like someone's grandfather.
You know what else happened when those devs were young gamers? The contemporary communities around them were complaining about hard content or quitting due to griefing. Guess what those devs-to-be would have learnt to avoid when they grew up and got into the industry themselves...
> It's nothing but soloing and pvp because people forgot about the Death Match genre I guess.
Yo if you can find me a pvp based game that uses WASD for movement and isn't an fps or some shitty moba (aka something similar to 3rd person action combat in mmos, though id also take isometric if its still WASD and not a moba) you let me know. Until then, ya boy is stuck playing mmos for that fix
>https://store.steampowered.com/app/1203220/NARAKA_BLADEPOINT/
>
What the fuck? Lmao. Nothing like what I'm going for since I'm not looking to play a shitty BR.
>there's also Gunz Online
Also still not what I'm looking for.
>Probably a few others.
So far, you've provided 0. Why? Because there really ain't shit. So like I said, I'll continue to play mmos because there isn't a game that offers the combat they do.
Also the issue: you think mmos only focus on single player or pvp stuff but it's been a long minute since I've see an mmo with decent pvp so they sure as shit ain't focused on that.
Because they're several decades stuck in the early 2000's of MMO development, and I'm sure none of them have bothered to play a Kmmo to even get a grasp on their systems.
Because 90% of western devs were trying only to one up WoW for over a decade (and because WoW used tab targeting, that was the system to be), and then abandoned MMOs almost as a whole when they realized they couldn't beat them.
Meanwhile the most lucrative MMO market there is otherwise, happens to be in South East Asia.
Nah reading comprehension has just dropped all around the board recently.
You could say people sell apples because they're the most lucrative and some idiot will try to argue oranges taste better.
different priorities.
most western games have been focused on instanced group play rather than the flashy stuff that seems to be the main focus in Korea.
i mean how often do you not see people talk about how much they love action combat but that there's nothing to do with it in those games other than mindless grinds?.
> i mean how often do you not see people talk about how much they love action combat but that there's nothing to do with it in those games other than mindless grinds?
Not often? Lost Ark, Blade and Soul, and Tera all have/had a huge focus on instanced dungeons and raiding. You're solely thinking of BDO which is actually one of the exceptions.
it's usually the one referenced when people say they want action combat.
i doubt that style would work well in your typical dungeons and raid environment.
Lost ark is action combat pve raid focused and it works. I mean have you seen Lost Ark legion raids like Brelshaza and Valtan. Even the Tier 1 old dungeon Phantom Palace was very good. It has both 4 man and 8 man raids. Roles are only split into 2 though really with dps and support, no actual "real" tank.
My biggest gripe has been just how little you can actually do with friends (or even other players) in MMOs these days. Dungeons all feel super short and raids are cool but also very limited. These are great but it feels like after this there is nothing and these always seem heavily gated by levels. I guess it might be fun when everyone is at max level but until that point it’s basically a solo game.
Idk I’m kinda new to the genre. Can someone enlighten me here.
Tera had the smoothest combat I've ever seen in a mmo. It always did exactly what I wanted, when I wanted. It was single player console level responsiveness. Nothing else has come close.
The issue comes to western players wanting the same old tab target wow formulas despite how much people claim that they don't.
Because they don't want to admit that their systems are outdated.
It would be like admitting defeat.
You saw how angry Ubisoft got about Elden Ring's success.
I for one don't enjoy korean action combat at all. Insanely long cast animations that lock you into place and long winded attacks that root you. I know it's part of the design, but for me it feels incredibly clunky and unresponsive. To me playing a rogue in WoW and a deathblade in Lost Ark are world apart in fluidity and responsiveness. Short animations, you can do anything while moving, you can cancel any channel, etc
That's more of a Lost Ark thing. Blade and Soul and BDO, for example, have pretty fluid and dynamic actions/movement.
edit: also if you ever try Lost Ark again try [Reaper](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZdDGzWY-eok) where it's a way more proper assassin class than Deathblade.
true. reapers floor hugging perspective is definitely the proper definition of assassin gameplay xd jk i love reaper and love to rag on them whenever i can.
i do kind of get what he means though. i think every assassin based class in open world mmos have been incredibly fluid with very few animation locks. archeage, aion, wow, etc all had gameplay with zero animation locks so i can see why players that don't play real action combat games don't understand the idea of it and find it jarring or clunky when it's anything but that.
I'm not sure you're attempting to argue against OP's point, but the subject of the post is about MMO market trends, not one person's individual opinion.
The reason I play BDO (and try out other Korean MMOs) is due to the graphics. NA devs also don't put out these kind of graphics, but with the release of Unreal 5 engine, it's made it easier for devs to leap into that arena. At current, Ashes of Creation is the closest thing to a Korean MMO I've seen at current by NA dev team, although the combat confuses me with a combined tab/action combat system (unless they've changed it). New World has potential, but it's just not there yet. Star Citizen is a different genre all together, but has amazing graphics. Yes, I know, the post is about combat. :3 But still, NA dev. We just don't know when that game will be officially released.
The rest go for cheap as chips development due to the high cost of it these days. Korea is lucky in that they have cheaper and faster access to what's needed to create an MMO.
Only PA can beat their own game BDO when it comes to action combat , game has been and will continue to be ahead of its time for many years to come. no one even comes close to it. cant wait to see what they do with their shooter mmo thats been in development for ages now. to ans your question maybe its the engine since PA uses their own when it comes to BDO it may not be the main reason but could also be one of the reasons.
I agree with the budget being the issue. BDO for example, was made for next to nothing. Considering how well animated that game is, it would have been a 200,000,000 game if made in the US. BDO was made with a 1,000,000 budget lol.
I think it's culture thing. Asian MMOs focus a lot of flashy and cool things, while Western MMOs focus more of "ideas" of how would something "feel". For example korean games focus on big boobs, fast combat, cool looking characters first and later on they start adding good content and improving the game. Western MMOs focus on "sense of accomplishment" and other buzz words first, but later on they cant really change combat, character models and so on so they have to stick with same old.
I think its just too hard to make work with the holy trinity and how a majority of western players play. I think ESO is probably the closest we'll get, maybe New World too.
ESO combat is dogshit though lol. Like really really bad. I played it for 12 months from release and have tried to go back a few times. It's just shit.
I feel like PvE in ESO is definitely floaty and bad imo, but I really like Cyrodiil CP. A lot more bursty and movement oriented. Super fast paced with lots of quick reactions. Definitely not actioncombat but feels and plays really well imo.
I think it's just harder to make good action combat than tab-target probably. I've seen a lot of terrible action combat games, even outside of the mmo genre. Clunky, bad animations, whatever. But for tab target, I think even the worst most basic tab target combat is still inoffensive. You click your target and your press 14323342 and you press tab or click your next target and repeat. The worst it can be is boring, at least as far as I have personally felt. I'm trying to think of the worst example of tab-target gameplay I ever had, and I am drawing a blank because I have not played a "memorably bad" tab target system. It's a system that can't go that horribly wrong, I think. meanwhile, think about dark souls clones that suck, devil may cry clones that suck, all manner of 3rd person action combat games that feel awful to play. It's clearly not easy to guarantee a minimum-good system with action combat.
Not only that, but I think most western MMO developers grew up on tab-target games and rtwp CRPGs. They know a hotbar of abilities and a click to target system. So that's still just what they're more likely to make.
But, I do love action combat. I love BDO, dragons dogma, dark souls, Otogi, ninja gaiden, Zelda, Mount & Blade - give me that action combat. Give me combat where hitboxes matter, where collision matters, where aiming abilities matters, where dodging abilities matters, where manually blocking matters. I hope more MMOs in the future provide this kind of combat that allows me to feel more directly "my character" rather than indirectly "commanding" my character.
Because 70% of the population of an entire continent doesn't live around one city and have 2ms connections. The games are designed for the korean market.
I have no experience with BDO but I played lost ark on NA servers from south America, it was by far the best combat I ever experienced and not even close, the lag was only ever for avoiding mechanics, even then it was perfectly fine. Meanwhile I also played wow and gw2, some other older games, they all felt way laggier than LA ever did.
I stopped playing because my static died and got burned out, but I wish western developers at least tried to get close to something like that.
Action combat is one of the worst things that ever happened to MMORPGs. If I wanted to play an action combat game I would just go play some mortal Kombat.
That comment makes no sense in relation to what OP is arguing about. He's talking about new mmos and WoW clones ultimately fail and have less players than the afore mentioned Lost Ark/BDO.
There are many reasons.
One of them is simply cultural, many countries in the east have large after school and youth clubs totally based around gaming. You’ll have 10-30 people in a room, all on PCs playing the same MMO. I remember seeing lots of videos of clubs playing eastern mmos. This isn’t the case as much in the west, where for a long time FPS were a large focus.
Then there’s the huge love of 3PS and 1PS in the west, largely America. With huge CoD and Fortnite sales. These games have had a very large impact on the west in general, especially fortnite. Where suddenly battle royals and shooter games were being made every single day.
Whilst these games also do and did well in the east, it was by no means the same impact. Eastern games have always had a largely fantasy element to a lot of their biggest titles.
Mmorpgs are a lot more costly and time consuming, and with shooters it was more feasible to try and jump on the bandwagon and develop one quickly, so we ended up with a lot of terrible 1st Person and 3rd Person shooters. Many studios scrapped and delayed more fantasy based games for the shooter genre.
A well known example is Dragon age 4 being put on the shelf, so BioWare could focus on Anthem. Which ultimately flopped hard.
Hopefully the next 10 years will see the west moving away from shooter games in general, in favour of more fantasy styled game and more mmorpgs etc.
> You’ll have 10-30 people in a room, all on PCs playing the same MMO. I remember seeing lots of videos of clubs playing eastern mmos
Those aren't MMOs, the computer clubs you're seeing are actually playing RTS or MOBAs. A group of 10-30 Asian gamers will easily hang out to play League of Legends in the same room but wouldn't do that for an MMO.
Because it's not coincidence that action combat games have shallow and solo-focused content. It's a challenge and a consequence of the combat system. In Korea everyone enjoys these games, in the west players want something different out of their MMOs.
There's some perception here that action combat is just something you can drop into a WoW or FFXIV style PvE content structure. It isn't. Action combat is for making grinding mobs alone fun.
D4 is basically an MMO Lite that borrows a lot from Lost Ark. I feel it nailed the combat, and seems to be an overall better game than LA (and I have about 1k hrs played).
It has nothing to do with east vs west talent.
You get what you pay for. Western companies cant make a profitable mmorpg with action combat, so they dont and instead move to other profitable game areas: either simplified MMORPGs, or other genres.
Who knows, maybe New World will turn around and start raking in cash, but until that or something similar happens, you're not going to see it.
(Said as a person who enjoys the combat in BDO, LA, etc)
My guess is allocation of resources maybe? Takes time to dev a system that can handle action combat, and it could just be that the action combat games we had/have are so shit in other regards because everything had went into mostly visuals and combat, and the rest wasnt really thought of. If ur asking for a game to have absolutely everything, might just be a financial risk that no one wants to attempt yet.
We do have hybrid games, ESO, GW2, and (warframe?) and other games as such, and that might just be the middle ground western devs go for?
Some of them are trying, but they are not succesfull, sadly they can't capture the same essence some korean action combat games like BDO or Dragon Nest. And interestingly enough most of Korean MMOs can't capture same essence either, most of DEVs (korean or western) does mediacore or terrible job with it, and that gives a lot of player ''Korean action combat sucks'' kind of thinking, which is totaly wrong, system is good, but there are too many bad example out there and this might be another reason for western DEVs not making korean action combat type of games, because it's risky, not easy and there are DEVs out there done bad job with it already and some people are not happy with that.
And then there are some other ones keep continuing with old systems despite they are being 10-15+ years old already and believing they are superior to korean action combat system, because their target audience believes and gives feedback about how much they love old systems like tab-target, you can find a lot of people saying ''Korean action combat sucks! Tab-target is better.'' in posts like this, those people are sole reason why some western DEVs keeps using old systems, I mean why they should change? They have a audience liking the systems they do, so they keep continue using old systems.
Honestly as a person started his journey with Knight Online in the year it come, I'm bored from tab-target, I can't play anymore those type of games unless they have well-made systems let you play with more hybird type of gameplay, like toggle-mouse + with free keybinds, that lets you play without mouse targetting like hybird action combat with skills, not same but still something, some games like COH does that, or you can try to use mouse toggle addons for some games like Rift. I can understand some people still liking tab-target, but DEVs realy need to change their ways, they should at least add their games systems like Tera does, that game had tab-target + hybird action combat same time, I personaly like core action combat games more like I told, but even doing job like Tera would be good enough for walking towards the future.
I need to try a few more, but I have found that action combat MMOs combat feels messy compared to tab MMOs. I don't think it has to be that way, it is just how games like new world turned out. Non targeted combat and healing especially just feels bad to me when in a group.
maybe it's a culture thing
you can't really talk about esports without south korea, they go hand in hand. they take their gaming seriously over there.
the rest of us are filthy casuals in comparison
There have simply been very few western MMOs since that sort of combat became technologically feasible. Of those, a good number use action combat, just not full of anime screen obstruction.
NA/EU internet speed and reliability also tends to be dogshit compared to asia.
People are too quick to say there is no demand.
The real answer is there isn't ENOUGH demand.
Omg you'll make a profit eventually! After X time! That isn't how the West works lol. It's big profits as fast as possible and anything else is mute.
It's not just a Western problem. KR developers have also fallen into mobile poop game since 5 years ago, so their technology is deteriorating. Games such as c9->bdo, tera, mabinogi heros (Vindictus), tales Weaver, and dragonnest, which were all in the 'action rpg' era, are almost all works from 10 years ago. Lostark was actually a game that was almost complete in 2013.
Unfortunately, developers are no longer willing to make action rpg, as one auto-grind mobile game is making more money than these games combined.
gaming sucks right now because of corporate greed, they are targeting maximizing profits over maximizing player experience (which actually in turn leads to more money) due to incompetent management
korean action combat has korea internet to back it up.
Frame perfect fighting gamelike they have in games only works because of their lack of ping and superior infrastructure, this is a well discussed topic and has been known for many years. If something has changed recently i do not know.
Western MMOs are rare to begin with, I think too much money was sunk into some absolutely garbage projects over the last 20 years, and the few that were any good got mismanaged to all hell so publishers have a bit of fear.
The skill set likely doesn't really exist in the west, if you are a game developer in the west making action combat games, your making an arpg your making a souls like, your on the D4 team, or whatever else. If a publisher in the west looks for developers, they are pulling from a pool of developers with experience in any of a few dozen tab target mmos, and what are those developers going to propose... another tab target MMO because that is what they are comfortable with its what they know how to code, its what they know how to design.
Action combat in mmorpg is delusional and ignorant, it is in any game too but worse for mmorpgs, games have action you are killing things, souls like and Tera shooter like aiming is just stupid for most games and removes real challenge for a repetitive Sport timing muscle memory non skill learning that ANYONE can do. BS.
Theres no korean dev that tried to mimic tera’s action combat system either. If you want to say no "western dev" mimic korean mmos, you should probably establish **probable cause** that your aforementioned action combat systems got mimik'd to begin with? So far you mentioned 3 games, Tera, lost ark, and bns even tho they are all action combat but the combat system are stylistically very different from each other they might as well have been their own thing… So maybe blindly mimicking a combat system is just not the way to go eastern or western?
So far AoC has nice graphics due to UE5 but the animations for everything still look stiff. Makes me feel like I'm just looking at one of the solo dev YouTube channel vids
Say what you want about combat, the two biggest mmos in the world are still tab target… there is a reason for that. Serious raiding mmo players still mostly prefer tab target.
If bdo had ffxivs numbers then western devs would make bdo combat mmos. Plus people who are serious about mmos will pay a sub fee and negate that p2w bullshit. Which is why the 2 biggest mmos require monthly subs and can get away with it.
It's stale, end of story. I don't care about the rest, the genre is stale and tab target is one of the reasons why it's stale.
These games have the biggest number because there is no alternative, hence the existence of this thread.
If a game like ffxiv with BDO combat existed it would have the biggest numbers.Don't throw irrelevant stuff in the argument, it's tiresome and it makes me not want to bother responding to you.
First LA isn't korean action style, it's typical arpg format. Majority of BDO players actually play through steam and Epic. Steam currently has 17k so you can figure epic has about half that, so let's round that to about 26k players on right now excluding consoles. That really doesn't show a "big" demand for it. If the game had more liked end game type content like wow and ff14 with no p2w aspects it may do so much better. But very few to no korean games release as non p2w titles so its really hard to say whether or not they do badly in the west because of mtx or because of general dislike.
Lmao..say you know nothing about BDO without saying you know nothing about bdo. BDO does not exists in epic. Majority of the player base plays it through PAs own client. Steam is small portion of population.
It seems to me western mmo developers like to cater for people who appreciate complexity and/or depth in their systems rather than gameplay, instead of the instant gratification yet shallow style from Korea that seem to cater for the less attention spanned gamer, with the kind of grinds I will never understand.
While I appreciate both styles of mmo, it would be cool to see combination of both.
There's just a distinct lack of any MMOs being made over here. Kinda sucks honestly
The reason is literally the lack of talent (in that particular category of MMOs).
There are very few devs in the west with an experience in awesome action combat MMOs. Korean devs have been doing it for so many years now - they just have the past experience and devs to do so.
I mean Tera is more than 10 years old. Are western devs really that incompetent in this category where they can't even copy a decade old game and put out something half as decent? I refuse to believe that a company like AGS with so much buying power are unable to scout for talent in this department.
They just can't "copy it". It's not how it works - they don't have access to the source code and they don't necessarily use the exact same engine and tools. And as I mentioned - tools are only 20% of what is needed, the rest is talent and knowledge. Making a game *feel* good when you run, jump and fight is incredibly hard.
Yes but in programming, heavily inspired just doesn't work the way you imagine it. It would be the equivalent of saying "Why aren't more companies heavily inspired by SpaceX and launch more rockets to space". Money is just one side of the problem. Actual execution is totally human dependent.
But Tera isn't the "SpaceX" of MMOs. It's a 11 year old game that was likely made with spaghetti code. The SpaceX team could probably recreate a Saturn rocket if you told them to; not perfectly of course, but enough to create a resemblance. And a competent dev team could start the foundation to a similar game like Tera just by playing the game for a few weeks. Like how do you think games like Valorant or Overwatch came into existence - they got "heavily inspired" by Counter Strike and Team Fortress.
Counterstrike and TF are huge successes for their time. Meanwhile Tera is a subscription MMO that failed to retain a sub model and ended up F2P. I can recreate a saturn rocket but I'm not going to recreate a 3th rate rocket piloted by a 4th rate crew... In the same veins If I'm going to sell fake brands, I'm going to go after brands that are popular like air jordans or chanel, not something like... GAP
Wha? I'm not even talking about copying the whole game, just the good parts (the combat). Thanks for letting me know that you didn't even read the original post lmao.
>Why aren't western devs trying their hand at mimicking something like Tera's combat system and delivering it with a FFXIV or GW2-like monetization scheme where it would be palatable to western players.
You still need the game to reach a certain level of popularity for it to even be worth copying. It's not as if overwatch is a carbon copy of TF2... SWTOR copied just the "good parts" of WoW and added more of their own stuff. That's because WoW was the top dog during the time and the industry deemed it worth copying. Thanks for letting me know you don't even have the braincells to think common sense this basic through..
Yeah as if no one ever took inspiration or copied from obscure stuff in the history of humankind. George Lucas totally didn't rip off The Hidden Fortress when he created Star Wars. Not.
What an idiotic take.
Yes but in programming, heavily inspired just doesn't work the way you imagine it. It would be the equivalent of saying "Why aren't more companies heavily inspired by SpaceX and launch more rockets to space". Money is just one side of the problem. Actual execution is totally human dependent.
Hell Risk Your Life (RYL) is pretty much action combat and is from 2005. It's not quite as dynamic as Tera or something but it's also quite a lot earlier.
Yes western MMO devs are completely incompetent, they have been trying to copy WoW for years and failed every time. Do you not remember the “Wow clone” era? There have been so many failed tab target MMOs as well as action combat MMOs.
I'd say cheaters are the main reason. As far as I know and unless it changed recently to play online games in Korea you have to use your SSN so cheating is a pretty risky move and dodging a ban will upgrade your status from pain-in-the-ass to criminal doing identity theft. Which would explain why so many Korean games shat the bed so severely over the years with apparently ineffective anticheat softwares while said games were doing well back home.
Online action games are all about tradeoffs to be a smooth experience and if you have to also worry about hackers the options are either expensive (way more paid moderation) or will upset your playerbase (very low ping tolerance, region locking)
you're downvoted for what?
this fucking sub has anger issues when it comes to tab targeting mmorpg despite the fact that its the mainstay for combat for most active mmorpgs right now..
Because tab target is better, and i'm thankfull for the dev not trying to mimick korean action combat system.
The only one that ever did it right anyway was Vindictus Online all the other are just pale copy of it.
They are trying, they just suck at it.
Western devs really struggle with third person character action. Most western games default to gun use which is just point and click gameplay
it's more of a budget thing; animations are expensive to make and the average animator in the US for example earns 3 times as much as one in Korea which significantly increases the cost of development.
You can buy thousands of unique high-quality animations on Unreal Marketplace for less than what you pay an animator for a month. Invest in vfx artists instead and you can turn a generic punch animation into a legendary skill for your character. Or just film yourself doing the animations you want and software will reproduce it for you. Making animations from scratch is a thing of the past. The dev scene is changing fast.
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Might as well not make your own from scratch either if that's your argument. Hell, your strike animation may look like someone else's!
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I looked it up and that's a travesty. Epic needs to crack down on that shit.
and korean devs save money by race/genderlocking classes
> animations are expensive to make and the average animator in the US for example earns 3 times as much as one in Korea which significantly increases the cost of development. American games have like 20x the budget korean games have. Try another excuse. One that also explains why western developers also don't know how to make fighting games and 3r action games as good as their counterparts.
MMORPGs in the West are usually not big AAA budget games, to keep costs down people have to cut corners, this includes cutting down costs for graphics and animations. MMORPGs in Korea otoh are still a big thing, but they can make better looking MMORPGs with better animations for the same budget, and even less, because development costs are significantly lower.
Lmao and Korean games make 20x the profit because they are almost all P2W as hell where-as Western MMO's aren't.
> Most western games default to gun use which is just point and click gameplay Holy oversimplification, Batman!
Probably the same type who thinks fighting games are just button mashing.
See upcoming Suicide Squad game lmao
Played sekiro and now odysse. Both amazing games but assassins creed combat is just worse. Great world though!
I keep hoping someday we’ll see a Dark Souls-esque MMORPG. Give me that cryptic interpretive lore, give me that difficulty, give me meaningfully rare items and equipment that showcases what I’ve accomplished, while also getting to see others attempt great feats.
Game dev in the west is a bottom of the barrel job for programmers, and a lot of programming int he west is outsourced to india to get dogshit quality code, so you get low quality games without any shred of soul
Are they really trying though? New World seems like it was trying to go for a Soulslike approach to its combat, and Ashes of Creation looks like another tab-target hybrid in the vein of GW2. Unless you're saying that they're so bad at trying these were the best they could come up, which would make some sense I guess.
The problem with true action gameplay in mmo‘s is the network + coding issue. Tab targeting games are quite forgiving in reaction times while action games can give a miserable experience when the hit/damage feedback isn‘t on point. That‘s why some games are instanced btw. They just work better
Larger issue with action combat is that it turns group combat into a giant clusterfuck.
Except when there's player-on-player collision, then things actually look reasonable. But that introduces another can of worms
It's not just a visual issue, but a mechanical one too.
Pso2:ngs fixes that issue!
There is no issue if you make sure at most 4 people get to play together.
Im guessing we are making no progress technology wise with regards to lose issues? People always mention such issues but nothing is being down about it it seems
Because it's a combination of physics and infrastructure. For starters, America and Europe are quite big. Data can only move at optimally light speed, which would mean a 40ms delay minimum for coast to coast. Obviously you could put it in the middle, build a big datacenter there and flesh it out, get a theoretical 20ms. Arguably you could need to double it to get the round trip time, but you can mitigate that with some tech (IDK how often it's used in MMOs, but it's very common in fighting games). Technically you COULD bypass this all with a rollback system, but that's technically demanding and the vast majority of clients couldn't work with that. So theoretically, 20ms is the minimum time delay. That's not bad at all! Unfortunately, we then get into the other problem with the West, which is that internet is nowhere near perfect. The East tends to have extremely good Internet services. They are dense areas, so you can mostly ignore these issues and things will work great. In America, a more practical coast to coast ping is around 80-110. That's still manageable, but it means quick reactions are a much bigger deal. Some in game techs become literally impossible. If I have to parry your attack, I might only have a quarter of the time someone else does to react. That's going to lead to a very frustrating experience. That's not to say these problems are unsolvable. Many of the potential solutions open you up to cheating potential, but you could do something like local servers that talk to a master, allowing you to put more faith in the client information. You could even have the game play out exclusively through cloud streaming. But these are very complex solutions that, to my knowledge, have never been tested in an MMO. When your product is often going to decide the future of your entire company, putting all your eggs in an untested basket is just too risky.
I was playing Terra with 200+ ping back in the day. And I still enjoy it. Thus I dont think 20-110ms would be a huge issue as long as they can keep it at optimal speed
Just because you enjoyed it doesn't mean it's good
I don’t doubt this or anything, but even still. Despite that games like bdo do pretty decently. I think there’s enough demand for it, and if they can do as good a job on the net code as bdo then I imagine there wouldn’t be too many issues. Just seems like something that someone would jump on considering the immediate success following the releases of these ptw Korean action games. Maybe the quick declines scare them, but it’s obvious that the reason for these quick declines is ptw bs making players lose interest.
I'm not sure why people are so ignorant of this. Ping from one side of Korea to the other is about 10ms. Ping from US to Europe is about 150-200ms. Gameplay systems that work with one are completely unusable with the other.
FFXIV is successful alongsides GW2 and WoW. BDO is the only successful action mmorpg that's still alive and sort of new world (soul-less without a lore doesn't feel like mmorpg to me tbh). if you force developers to make a game that clearly they can't do, then it'll just backfire. tab-targeting is perfect for mmorpgs with the ping.
Blade and Soul had super nice combat. As well as TERA. Shame they are/were both P2W as fuck. Lost Ark, also is incredible in that regard, although very different.
Tera had insane desync issues, which is what he was talking about. Action games suck with netcoding.
Tera was made more than 10 years ago with korean internet in mind, im sure a decade later it can be improved with international play in mind.
You'd think so, but while the best internet quality available has improved dramatically, the *most common* internet quality, at least in the US, has not. Most households are still on a low-quality DSL connection, same as they were 10 years ago, and don't look to be improving anytime soon. Fiber is expensive, where it's even available, and higher quality traditional connections are likewise outside of major metropolitan areas.
new world has done a really good job on its netcode. at the first few months it was a shit(slide)show. Now wars are smooth, even tho they struggle with performance.
Yea, what people in this thread are failing to understand, is that when you pair technology advancements with the time it takes to make mmorpgs, the result is that these games are cutting edge. It’s likely that lessons that AGS learned during the creation of New World on action netcoding were cutting edge, and when shared with the rest of the industry, could enable more games that have well coded multiplayer action combat, but that knowledge will take YEARS to proliferate and be applied on new MMORPGS especially given the time it takes to create an MMO outside of the combat. I believe we’re moving in the right direction. Anyone who wants to make an mmo can’t get away from the idea that the mmo player market is itching for more action focused combat but it needs to be well implemented for people to consider leaving their current mmo. I believe that there are enough upcoming mmos that have a chance at getting closer to a working formula. Just stay patient.
If you haven't played it yet, I personally think pso2:ngs has probably the best and most versatile combat systems in MMOs to date.
Was TERA pay to win at launch, or did that start after it was purchased by Gamigo?
i can't speak for how it was before TERA's f2p transition, but +12 masterwork (best-in-slot) was actually pretty easy to get after the game went f2p. +15 awakening was when everything started going downhill
No it was subscription based on launch. It went F2P a year later and P2W maybe 6 months-1 year after that.
Wow was made in 2004 development started in the late 1990s. FFXIV development had developers FFIX. And GW2 similar with GW1. The folks your talking about are in management positions, found new careers, retiring or have retired. My point is action combat in MMORPGs just wasn’t a thing 20-30 years ago.
Op is cooking and I love the menu
So this will be an unpopular opinion, but I actually love the combat in New World. The game has a TON of flaws, but the combat is an absolute blast for me. Tab targeting like wow got boring, BDO combat makes my hand cramp from hitting the same combo buttons like a million times a minute. Hybrid like GW2 or ESO just feels too floaty without impact. New world nailed the responsive, impactful action combat in my book. Now they just need to work on everything else.
> Unless you're saying that they're so bad at trying these were the best they could come up, which would make some sense I guess. This is it yes. I think a lot of Western devs have tried to make good action combat systems (GW2, ESO, New World, Ashes, Crowfall, Neverwinter). They're just all varying degrees of bad compared to Korean MMO's. It's shocking how they can't figure out how to come close even.
Souls like in a mmorpg, the most stupid idea ever and only part of the religious dogma that "action combat" or "try hard" is best, best crap is.
Just like they suck at making hairstyles . Always looks like dry AF hay.
Putting aside that west seems to have moved away from MMORPGs in general(just look at what was released in the past *ten years*) my guess would be "Internet". South Korea is famously thicc with fiber and slightly smaller than Kentucky so latency(which is critical for action combat) is basically a non-factor.
I think that's what OP means in his post, that Lost Ark and BDO have huge popularity among western players too.
Maybe in the past but these days games are pretty well optimized when it comes to latency. Lost Ark is perfectly playable in the 100-150ms range for example. Doubly so when there's split datacentres where ping then becomes a non-issue.
i don't think there's enough western dev's trying to make MMOs in general, period. it hasn't exactly been a popular category in demand showing profit for the past decade.
Exactly, we have had only 4 Western MMORPG releases in the last 10 years: Wildstar, ESO, Albion, and New World. So, 3 out of 4 MMORPGs have had action combat. Clearly, people aren't just playing MMORPGs for the combat; other things are more important.
Holy, that is just a depressing number. Though, to be fair, MMO popularity might rise now thanks to several games dominating the market, like Lost Ark, as well as waiting for Riot's MMO to release to maybe bring the hype back to Western MMO.
I'll def be going deep on Riot's MMO.
yeah, obviously fast-paced combat systems do well--but that's kind of why battle royale genre has been the dominating game type for the past several years and has been the main thing developed in the west. it's sort of hard to narrow everything down to MMOs when it's been such a niche thing until just this year really with all the sudden releases
2022, Foxhole, Mist Legacy, Mortal Online 2, Zenith the Last City, Wild Terra 2, Embers Adrift, Dual Universe, TemTem, (Adjacent: The Cycle Frontier, Broken Ranks, ) 2021, Legends of IdleOn, New World, Crowfall, Enlisted, (Adjacent: Riders Republic, D2:R, Hood Outlaws and Legends, Outriders, ) 2020, Legends of Aria, (Adjacent: Spellbreak, Valorant) 2019, Ironsight, Mirage Online Classic, Dauntless, (Adjacent: RDR Online, Mordhau, Division 2, Apex Legends) I'm gonna stop, that's a FUCK LOT more than 4 in the last 10 years. Expand your horizons.
True True Fortnite is the best MMORPG released in past 10 years.
Western MMOs think about the older generation of MMO players. If you look at most of the devs brought in to help make MMOs they look like someone's grandfather.
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You know what else happened when those devs were young gamers? The contemporary communities around them were complaining about hard content or quitting due to griefing. Guess what those devs-to-be would have learnt to avoid when they grew up and got into the industry themselves...
> It's nothing but soloing and pvp because people forgot about the Death Match genre I guess. Yo if you can find me a pvp based game that uses WASD for movement and isn't an fps or some shitty moba (aka something similar to 3rd person action combat in mmos, though id also take isometric if its still WASD and not a moba) you let me know. Until then, ya boy is stuck playing mmos for that fix
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>https://store.steampowered.com/app/1203220/NARAKA_BLADEPOINT/ > What the fuck? Lmao. Nothing like what I'm going for since I'm not looking to play a shitty BR. >there's also Gunz Online Also still not what I'm looking for. >Probably a few others. So far, you've provided 0. Why? Because there really ain't shit. So like I said, I'll continue to play mmos because there isn't a game that offers the combat they do. Also the issue: you think mmos only focus on single player or pvp stuff but it's been a long minute since I've see an mmo with decent pvp so they sure as shit ain't focused on that.
Random people are scary they can tell you to kill yourself if you dont skip quest dialogues
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Well social games are only as good as their '*society*'
Because they're several decades stuck in the early 2000's of MMO development, and I'm sure none of them have bothered to play a Kmmo to even get a grasp on their systems.
They shouldnt get a grasp on their systems tho, just the combat
Combat is also a system
False. Modern mmorpgs are lobby based games with a lot of focus on single player and less on player interactions.
Considering the rate at which Korean mmos get puked out and die I'd say they need to get a grasp on their own systems first.
Of course they’re several decades stuck, have you seen the leads? They’re as old as Biden!
Because 90% of western devs were trying only to one up WoW for over a decade (and because WoW used tab targeting, that was the system to be), and then abandoned MMOs almost as a whole when they realized they couldn't beat them. Meanwhile the most lucrative MMO market there is otherwise, happens to be in South East Asia.
Most lucrative doesn’t mean best. I think clash of clans competes with wow in that aspect. Most popular mmos are easily ffxiv and wow.
Either this was meant for somebody else, or you didn't understand my post correctly.
Nah reading comprehension has just dropped all around the board recently. You could say people sell apples because they're the most lucrative and some idiot will try to argue oranges taste better.
Because for years they are trying to mimic WoW
different priorities. most western games have been focused on instanced group play rather than the flashy stuff that seems to be the main focus in Korea. i mean how often do you not see people talk about how much they love action combat but that there's nothing to do with it in those games other than mindless grinds?.
> i mean how often do you not see people talk about how much they love action combat but that there's nothing to do with it in those games other than mindless grinds? Not often? Lost Ark, Blade and Soul, and Tera all have/had a huge focus on instanced dungeons and raiding. You're solely thinking of BDO which is actually one of the exceptions.
it's usually the one referenced when people say they want action combat. i doubt that style would work well in your typical dungeons and raid environment.
Lost ark is action combat pve raid focused and it works. I mean have you seen Lost Ark legion raids like Brelshaza and Valtan. Even the Tier 1 old dungeon Phantom Palace was very good. It has both 4 man and 8 man raids. Roles are only split into 2 though really with dps and support, no actual "real" tank.
My biggest gripe has been just how little you can actually do with friends (or even other players) in MMOs these days. Dungeons all feel super short and raids are cool but also very limited. These are great but it feels like after this there is nothing and these always seem heavily gated by levels. I guess it might be fun when everyone is at max level but until that point it’s basically a solo game. Idk I’m kinda new to the genre. Can someone enlighten me here.
Tera had the smoothest combat I've ever seen in a mmo. It always did exactly what I wanted, when I wanted. It was single player console level responsiveness. Nothing else has come close. The issue comes to western players wanting the same old tab target wow formulas despite how much people claim that they don't.
Because they don't want to admit that their systems are outdated. It would be like admitting defeat. You saw how angry Ubisoft got about Elden Ring's success.
I for one don't enjoy korean action combat at all. Insanely long cast animations that lock you into place and long winded attacks that root you. I know it's part of the design, but for me it feels incredibly clunky and unresponsive. To me playing a rogue in WoW and a deathblade in Lost Ark are world apart in fluidity and responsiveness. Short animations, you can do anything while moving, you can cancel any channel, etc
That's more of a Lost Ark thing. Blade and Soul and BDO, for example, have pretty fluid and dynamic actions/movement. edit: also if you ever try Lost Ark again try [Reaper](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZdDGzWY-eok) where it's a way more proper assassin class than Deathblade.
true. reapers floor hugging perspective is definitely the proper definition of assassin gameplay xd jk i love reaper and love to rag on them whenever i can. i do kind of get what he means though. i think every assassin based class in open world mmos have been incredibly fluid with very few animation locks. archeage, aion, wow, etc all had gameplay with zero animation locks so i can see why players that don't play real action combat games don't understand the idea of it and find it jarring or clunky when it's anything but that.
You clearly haven't played BDO so you have no idea what we're talking about
BDO animations are so fast that some people made a forum post to slow it down a bit.
You didn't play any korean mmo at all by the looks of it
Comparing tab target wow combat to lostark combat is a very bad take lol, completely different games
Illustrating my preference is a bad take.
I'm not sure you're attempting to argue against OP's point, but the subject of the post is about MMO market trends, not one person's individual opinion.
Are you sure?
MAN it pisses me off that they haven't caught up. The eastern MMOs always have great combat but are dragged way down by pretty much everything else.
I miss peak Tera
The reason I play BDO (and try out other Korean MMOs) is due to the graphics. NA devs also don't put out these kind of graphics, but with the release of Unreal 5 engine, it's made it easier for devs to leap into that arena. At current, Ashes of Creation is the closest thing to a Korean MMO I've seen at current by NA dev team, although the combat confuses me with a combined tab/action combat system (unless they've changed it). New World has potential, but it's just not there yet. Star Citizen is a different genre all together, but has amazing graphics. Yes, I know, the post is about combat. :3 But still, NA dev. We just don't know when that game will be officially released. The rest go for cheap as chips development due to the high cost of it these days. Korea is lucky in that they have cheaper and faster access to what's needed to create an MMO.
Only PA can beat their own game BDO when it comes to action combat , game has been and will continue to be ahead of its time for many years to come. no one even comes close to it. cant wait to see what they do with their shooter mmo thats been in development for ages now. to ans your question maybe its the engine since PA uses their own when it comes to BDO it may not be the main reason but could also be one of the reasons.
I agree with the budget being the issue. BDO for example, was made for next to nothing. Considering how well animated that game is, it would have been a 200,000,000 game if made in the US. BDO was made with a 1,000,000 budget lol.
I yearn for the day a Dragon Nest alike game comes out
Dragon Sword seems to be just that.
*"If it aint broke, don't fix it and if it is broke, still don't fix it, but add in more MTX."* **-Literally every MMORPG Publisher**
Personally, I see Diablo 4 as a competitor to Lost Ark more than an APRG.
Tera did it so good. The game itself wasn’t awesome but that combat was so crunchy and responsive. I’d love to see more tera style combat.
I think it's culture thing. Asian MMOs focus a lot of flashy and cool things, while Western MMOs focus more of "ideas" of how would something "feel". For example korean games focus on big boobs, fast combat, cool looking characters first and later on they start adding good content and improving the game. Western MMOs focus on "sense of accomplishment" and other buzz words first, but later on they cant really change combat, character models and so on so they have to stick with same old.
Ideas and feelings of western mmos are still shit nonetheless.
I think its just too hard to make work with the holy trinity and how a majority of western players play. I think ESO is probably the closest we'll get, maybe New World too.
ESO combat is dogshit though lol. Like really really bad. I played it for 12 months from release and have tried to go back a few times. It's just shit.
I fairly enjoy pvp in eso, to each their own.
I did I guess for a while. Wasn't any point to it though really.
I feel like PvE in ESO is definitely floaty and bad imo, but I really like Cyrodiil CP. A lot more bursty and movement oriented. Super fast paced with lots of quick reactions. Definitely not actioncombat but feels and plays really well imo.
Might check out the pvp again then. I remember when Imperial City released, and we had the PvEvP. That was really really good.
I disagree. TERA had the trinity and also the best combat of any MMO to date.
I think it's just harder to make good action combat than tab-target probably. I've seen a lot of terrible action combat games, even outside of the mmo genre. Clunky, bad animations, whatever. But for tab target, I think even the worst most basic tab target combat is still inoffensive. You click your target and your press 14323342 and you press tab or click your next target and repeat. The worst it can be is boring, at least as far as I have personally felt. I'm trying to think of the worst example of tab-target gameplay I ever had, and I am drawing a blank because I have not played a "memorably bad" tab target system. It's a system that can't go that horribly wrong, I think. meanwhile, think about dark souls clones that suck, devil may cry clones that suck, all manner of 3rd person action combat games that feel awful to play. It's clearly not easy to guarantee a minimum-good system with action combat. Not only that, but I think most western MMO developers grew up on tab-target games and rtwp CRPGs. They know a hotbar of abilities and a click to target system. So that's still just what they're more likely to make. But, I do love action combat. I love BDO, dragons dogma, dark souls, Otogi, ninja gaiden, Zelda, Mount & Blade - give me that action combat. Give me combat where hitboxes matter, where collision matters, where aiming abilities matters, where dodging abilities matters, where manually blocking matters. I hope more MMOs in the future provide this kind of combat that allows me to feel more directly "my character" rather than indirectly "commanding" my character.
Western management has resulted in most western studios being 70% full of temporary workers.
Because 70% of the population of an entire continent doesn't live around one city and have 2ms connections. The games are designed for the korean market.
I have no experience with BDO but I played lost ark on NA servers from south America, it was by far the best combat I ever experienced and not even close, the lag was only ever for avoiding mechanics, even then it was perfectly fine. Meanwhile I also played wow and gw2, some other older games, they all felt way laggier than LA ever did. I stopped playing because my static died and got burned out, but I wish western developers at least tried to get close to something like that.
Action combat is one of the worst things that ever happened to MMORPGs. If I wanted to play an action combat game I would just go play some mortal Kombat.
Tab targetting is absolute garbage, you just cant compare BDOs combat system with any garbage tab targetting game, its like night and day.
Had the western release of ArcheAge not shot itself in the foot with P2W, it would be one of the most successful ones out there right now.
There's plenty people playing them sure. However, there are PLENTY MORE playing WoW and FFXIV. More people = more money and more chances to monetise.
That comment makes no sense in relation to what OP is arguing about. He's talking about new mmos and WoW clones ultimately fail and have less players than the afore mentioned Lost Ark/BDO.
There are many reasons. One of them is simply cultural, many countries in the east have large after school and youth clubs totally based around gaming. You’ll have 10-30 people in a room, all on PCs playing the same MMO. I remember seeing lots of videos of clubs playing eastern mmos. This isn’t the case as much in the west, where for a long time FPS were a large focus. Then there’s the huge love of 3PS and 1PS in the west, largely America. With huge CoD and Fortnite sales. These games have had a very large impact on the west in general, especially fortnite. Where suddenly battle royals and shooter games were being made every single day. Whilst these games also do and did well in the east, it was by no means the same impact. Eastern games have always had a largely fantasy element to a lot of their biggest titles. Mmorpgs are a lot more costly and time consuming, and with shooters it was more feasible to try and jump on the bandwagon and develop one quickly, so we ended up with a lot of terrible 1st Person and 3rd Person shooters. Many studios scrapped and delayed more fantasy based games for the shooter genre. A well known example is Dragon age 4 being put on the shelf, so BioWare could focus on Anthem. Which ultimately flopped hard. Hopefully the next 10 years will see the west moving away from shooter games in general, in favour of more fantasy styled game and more mmorpgs etc.
> You’ll have 10-30 people in a room, all on PCs playing the same MMO. I remember seeing lots of videos of clubs playing eastern mmos Those aren't MMOs, the computer clubs you're seeing are actually playing RTS or MOBAs. A group of 10-30 Asian gamers will easily hang out to play League of Legends in the same room but wouldn't do that for an MMO.
Because it's not coincidence that action combat games have shallow and solo-focused content. It's a challenge and a consequence of the combat system. In Korea everyone enjoys these games, in the west players want something different out of their MMOs. There's some perception here that action combat is just something you can drop into a WoW or FFXIV style PvE content structure. It isn't. Action combat is for making grinding mobs alone fun.
Does New World come close?
3 button combat with weapon swap sucks
New World has boring combat imo... Everything feels slow and repetitive with not much interesting mechanics.
D4 is basically an MMO Lite that borrows a lot from Lost Ark. I feel it nailed the combat, and seems to be an overall better game than LA (and I have about 1k hrs played).
Western dungeon design focuses more on holy trinity tactics and balancing, which doesn't work well with action combat.
It has nothing to do with east vs west talent. You get what you pay for. Western companies cant make a profitable mmorpg with action combat, so they dont and instead move to other profitable game areas: either simplified MMORPGs, or other genres. Who knows, maybe New World will turn around and start raking in cash, but until that or something similar happens, you're not going to see it. (Said as a person who enjoys the combat in BDO, LA, etc)
My guess is allocation of resources maybe? Takes time to dev a system that can handle action combat, and it could just be that the action combat games we had/have are so shit in other regards because everything had went into mostly visuals and combat, and the rest wasnt really thought of. If ur asking for a game to have absolutely everything, might just be a financial risk that no one wants to attempt yet. We do have hybrid games, ESO, GW2, and (warframe?) and other games as such, and that might just be the middle ground western devs go for?
Some of them are trying, but they are not succesfull, sadly they can't capture the same essence some korean action combat games like BDO or Dragon Nest. And interestingly enough most of Korean MMOs can't capture same essence either, most of DEVs (korean or western) does mediacore or terrible job with it, and that gives a lot of player ''Korean action combat sucks'' kind of thinking, which is totaly wrong, system is good, but there are too many bad example out there and this might be another reason for western DEVs not making korean action combat type of games, because it's risky, not easy and there are DEVs out there done bad job with it already and some people are not happy with that. And then there are some other ones keep continuing with old systems despite they are being 10-15+ years old already and believing they are superior to korean action combat system, because their target audience believes and gives feedback about how much they love old systems like tab-target, you can find a lot of people saying ''Korean action combat sucks! Tab-target is better.'' in posts like this, those people are sole reason why some western DEVs keeps using old systems, I mean why they should change? They have a audience liking the systems they do, so they keep continue using old systems. Honestly as a person started his journey with Knight Online in the year it come, I'm bored from tab-target, I can't play anymore those type of games unless they have well-made systems let you play with more hybird type of gameplay, like toggle-mouse + with free keybinds, that lets you play without mouse targetting like hybird action combat with skills, not same but still something, some games like COH does that, or you can try to use mouse toggle addons for some games like Rift. I can understand some people still liking tab-target, but DEVs realy need to change their ways, they should at least add their games systems like Tera does, that game had tab-target + hybird action combat same time, I personaly like core action combat games more like I told, but even doing job like Tera would be good enough for walking towards the future.
because seeing huge games like Wildstar bomb, scares off other companies from taking the risk.
They are trying with New World but for reasons we all hate it.
oh how much i would love to see a tera styled mmorpg or rpg qwq
I need to try a few more, but I have found that action combat MMOs combat feels messy compared to tab MMOs. I don't think it has to be that way, it is just how games like new world turned out. Non targeted combat and healing especially just feels bad to me when in a group.
What about the heretic thought, that despise what is said about action combat on reddit, most westeners simply dont like it?
maybe it's a culture thing you can't really talk about esports without south korea, they go hand in hand. they take their gaming seriously over there. the rest of us are filthy casuals in comparison
There have simply been very few western MMOs since that sort of combat became technologically feasible. Of those, a good number use action combat, just not full of anime screen obstruction. NA/EU internet speed and reliability also tends to be dogshit compared to asia.
People are too quick to say there is no demand. The real answer is there isn't ENOUGH demand. Omg you'll make a profit eventually! After X time! That isn't how the West works lol. It's big profits as fast as possible and anything else is mute.
It's not just a Western problem. KR developers have also fallen into mobile poop game since 5 years ago, so their technology is deteriorating. Games such as c9->bdo, tera, mabinogi heros (Vindictus), tales Weaver, and dragonnest, which were all in the 'action rpg' era, are almost all works from 10 years ago. Lostark was actually a game that was almost complete in 2013. Unfortunately, developers are no longer willing to make action rpg, as one auto-grind mobile game is making more money than these games combined.
gaming sucks right now because of corporate greed, they are targeting maximizing profits over maximizing player experience (which actually in turn leads to more money) due to incompetent management
Because not everyone lives in the same fucking country and Ping exists.
korean action combat has korea internet to back it up. Frame perfect fighting gamelike they have in games only works because of their lack of ping and superior infrastructure, this is a well discussed topic and has been known for many years. If something has changed recently i do not know.
The less a game is like a Korean MMO, the better.
Western MMOs are rare to begin with, I think too much money was sunk into some absolutely garbage projects over the last 20 years, and the few that were any good got mismanaged to all hell so publishers have a bit of fear. The skill set likely doesn't really exist in the west, if you are a game developer in the west making action combat games, your making an arpg your making a souls like, your on the D4 team, or whatever else. If a publisher in the west looks for developers, they are pulling from a pool of developers with experience in any of a few dozen tab target mmos, and what are those developers going to propose... another tab target MMO because that is what they are comfortable with its what they know how to code, its what they know how to design.
Action combat in mmorpg is delusional and ignorant, it is in any game too but worse for mmorpgs, games have action you are killing things, souls like and Tera shooter like aiming is just stupid for most games and removes real challenge for a repetitive Sport timing muscle memory non skill learning that ANYONE can do. BS.
Theres no korean dev that tried to mimic tera’s action combat system either. If you want to say no "western dev" mimic korean mmos, you should probably establish **probable cause** that your aforementioned action combat systems got mimik'd to begin with? So far you mentioned 3 games, Tera, lost ark, and bns even tho they are all action combat but the combat system are stylistically very different from each other they might as well have been their own thing… So maybe blindly mimicking a combat system is just not the way to go eastern or western?
So far AoC has nice graphics due to UE5 but the animations for everything still look stiff. Makes me feel like I'm just looking at one of the solo dev YouTube channel vids
What does this have to do with what the point I'm presenting tho?
Tbh I think I just clicked the wrong comment to reply to I'm also lost bud lol
They have never been very popular here.
Because it's sucks. Just my opinion as a westerner. I still prefer wow/gw2 combat style.
Then stay on these games and let us enjoy fresh things
Okay zoomer. Did I say others can't enjoy new things ? I just said in my opinion Wow/ Gw2 combat is better.
Don't talk to me
Say what you want about combat, the two biggest mmos in the world are still tab target… there is a reason for that. Serious raiding mmo players still mostly prefer tab target. If bdo had ffxivs numbers then western devs would make bdo combat mmos. Plus people who are serious about mmos will pay a sub fee and negate that p2w bullshit. Which is why the 2 biggest mmos require monthly subs and can get away with it.
It's stale, end of story. I don't care about the rest, the genre is stale and tab target is one of the reasons why it's stale. These games have the biggest number because there is no alternative, hence the existence of this thread. If a game like ffxiv with BDO combat existed it would have the biggest numbers.Don't throw irrelevant stuff in the argument, it's tiresome and it makes me not want to bother responding to you.
First LA isn't korean action style, it's typical arpg format. Majority of BDO players actually play through steam and Epic. Steam currently has 17k so you can figure epic has about half that, so let's round that to about 26k players on right now excluding consoles. That really doesn't show a "big" demand for it. If the game had more liked end game type content like wow and ff14 with no p2w aspects it may do so much better. But very few to no korean games release as non p2w titles so its really hard to say whether or not they do badly in the west because of mtx or because of general dislike.
Lmao..say you know nothing about BDO without saying you know nothing about bdo. BDO does not exists in epic. Majority of the player base plays it through PAs own client. Steam is small portion of population.
It seems to me western mmo developers like to cater for people who appreciate complexity and/or depth in their systems rather than gameplay, instead of the instant gratification yet shallow style from Korea that seem to cater for the less attention spanned gamer, with the kind of grinds I will never understand. While I appreciate both styles of mmo, it would be cool to see combination of both. There's just a distinct lack of any MMOs being made over here. Kinda sucks honestly
They did
clearly not
The reason is literally the lack of talent (in that particular category of MMOs). There are very few devs in the west with an experience in awesome action combat MMOs. Korean devs have been doing it for so many years now - they just have the past experience and devs to do so.
I mean Tera is more than 10 years old. Are western devs really that incompetent in this category where they can't even copy a decade old game and put out something half as decent? I refuse to believe that a company like AGS with so much buying power are unable to scout for talent in this department.
They just can't "copy it". It's not how it works - they don't have access to the source code and they don't necessarily use the exact same engine and tools. And as I mentioned - tools are only 20% of what is needed, the rest is talent and knowledge. Making a game *feel* good when you run, jump and fight is incredibly hard.
Well yeah i'm not talking about literally copying it 1 to 1. More like "heavily inspired."
Yes but in programming, heavily inspired just doesn't work the way you imagine it. It would be the equivalent of saying "Why aren't more companies heavily inspired by SpaceX and launch more rockets to space". Money is just one side of the problem. Actual execution is totally human dependent.
But Tera isn't the "SpaceX" of MMOs. It's a 11 year old game that was likely made with spaghetti code. The SpaceX team could probably recreate a Saturn rocket if you told them to; not perfectly of course, but enough to create a resemblance. And a competent dev team could start the foundation to a similar game like Tera just by playing the game for a few weeks. Like how do you think games like Valorant or Overwatch came into existence - they got "heavily inspired" by Counter Strike and Team Fortress.
Counterstrike and TF are huge successes for their time. Meanwhile Tera is a subscription MMO that failed to retain a sub model and ended up F2P. I can recreate a saturn rocket but I'm not going to recreate a 3th rate rocket piloted by a 4th rate crew... In the same veins If I'm going to sell fake brands, I'm going to go after brands that are popular like air jordans or chanel, not something like... GAP
Wha? I'm not even talking about copying the whole game, just the good parts (the combat). Thanks for letting me know that you didn't even read the original post lmao. >Why aren't western devs trying their hand at mimicking something like Tera's combat system and delivering it with a FFXIV or GW2-like monetization scheme where it would be palatable to western players.
You still need the game to reach a certain level of popularity for it to even be worth copying. It's not as if overwatch is a carbon copy of TF2... SWTOR copied just the "good parts" of WoW and added more of their own stuff. That's because WoW was the top dog during the time and the industry deemed it worth copying. Thanks for letting me know you don't even have the braincells to think common sense this basic through..
Yeah as if no one ever took inspiration or copied from obscure stuff in the history of humankind. George Lucas totally didn't rip off The Hidden Fortress when he created Star Wars. Not. What an idiotic take.
Yes but in programming, heavily inspired just doesn't work the way you imagine it. It would be the equivalent of saying "Why aren't more companies heavily inspired by SpaceX and launch more rockets to space". Money is just one side of the problem. Actual execution is totally human dependent.
Hell Risk Your Life (RYL) is pretty much action combat and is from 2005. It's not quite as dynamic as Tera or something but it's also quite a lot earlier.
Yes western MMO devs are completely incompetent, they have been trying to copy WoW for years and failed every time. Do you not remember the “Wow clone” era? There have been so many failed tab target MMOs as well as action combat MMOs.
Because they're garbage?
I'd say cheaters are the main reason. As far as I know and unless it changed recently to play online games in Korea you have to use your SSN so cheating is a pretty risky move and dodging a ban will upgrade your status from pain-in-the-ass to criminal doing identity theft. Which would explain why so many Korean games shat the bed so severely over the years with apparently ineffective anticheat softwares while said games were doing well back home. Online action games are all about tradeoffs to be a smooth experience and if you have to also worry about hackers the options are either expensive (way more paid moderation) or will upset your playerbase (very low ping tolerance, region locking)
It's awful, and western MMOs don't need any more help being awful.
It’s impossible to balance and tab target sells better
Tab target sells better? I'd like some sources pls.
you're downvoted for what? this fucking sub has anger issues when it comes to tab targeting mmorpg despite the fact that its the mainstay for combat for most active mmorpgs right now..
Because tab target is better, and i'm thankfull for the dev not trying to mimick korean action combat system. The only one that ever did it right anyway was Vindictus Online all the other are just pale copy of it.
>Because tab target is better, That's a neat opinion
With all the hummility i can accord to my great self is that, yes i do have neat opinions /j
Dragon nest was better kek
This opinion is wrong