I guess decent is subjective. There are sever limitations to console MMOs at the moment, community engagement being probably the worst.
I think Black Desert is coming later in the year but I'm still extremely surprised Arena Net never followed through on their plans to port Guild Wars 2. As an action based MMO with a limited skill set it would suit the controller perfectly.
My ideal game would be an mmo post apocalyptic fps with a party with WoW esque attributes. Mob pulling, healing, tank and crowd control. I hoped Borderlands would be that when it first arrived.
Yeah I'd be on board for that. Unfortunately the prolonged development cycle of MMOs coupled with the financial risk have seen the genre lag behind in recent years. There is a re-launch of Defiance coming this year but that's more of a lobby based quasi mmo like Destiny.
With consoles, the one thing I have seen is the huge impact social hurdles have had on in-game communities. Even with Tera, having closed in on several days of playtime since launch I don't I've once seen anyone talk in chat or any kind of social interaction in the game. For all intents and purposes you could be playing alone if it were not for Dungeons.
They need to come up with a solution for chat-based communication in console MMOs to enable communities to flourish and grow. Otherwise people will just leave games or go back to PC.
I logged into WoW for a look last night and the difference in PC MMOs is just astounding. The feeling of community and being in a world is far superior. I really hope that one day consoles can match this level of interaction and sophistication.
Moonlighter sounds like just my cuppa tea and has reviewed well with Eurogamer today. As is becoming the norm, those of us who want to play it on the Switch have to wait until later in the year.
No matter, though, as Strange Journey Redux is kicking my arse and keeping me busy, and that’ll do nicely up until Octopath Traveller (excite!) comes out.
Also, after not really feeling Yakuza Kiwami, I decided instead to crack on with my second play through of The Game of the Generation, more popularly known as The Witcher 3.
Watched that last night, funnily enough. It looks like it's got some really nice ideas, the factions and win conditions in particular.
The environment is already looking pretty good, as are some of those monster designs. The animations are truly appalling though, but it is early access so I can cut 'em some slack there.
So yeah, I'm interested. I'm not gonna jump in just yet, but I'll definitely be keeping an eye on it.
Yeah the core features are of great interest to me. I would like to get back to personalised online relationships. Fevir hits on this in the vid about server communities. It's something I greatly miss since server tech has allowed for cross-realm interaction and phasing.
It is my opinion that the reason a lot of online games fail these days is because of the community being diluted and players becoming alienated from one another due to tech conveniences.
Echtra Games (made up of former Runic and Blizzard North staff and veterans of the Diablo and Torchlight games) recently announced Torchlight Frontiers, an MMO ARPG continuation of the Torchlight games.
The new studio is owned by Perfect World Entertainment, the Chinese dev who bought and then closed both Runic and Motiga, developer of the criminally overlooked action MOBA, Gigantic.
As much as I like the idea of this game, Perfect World will absolutely fuck Echtra over if the game doesn't meet their absurd ambitions in the "games as a service" sector. Just like Motiga.
So I dunno. There's excitement and frustration in equal measure here for me.
I enjoyed the first. The second just felt like it delivered abilities too slowly and the layout was boring, just endless massive areas. Dunno, just felt really tiring.
Blizz absolutely nailed the console controls with D3 as well, for anyone worried about that kinda thing. The game feels fantastic to play on PS4 and will doubtlessly be the same on Switch.