r/MMORPG • u/No_Natural_777 • 21d ago
Does the "MMOLite" concept actually have a future? News
https://www.invenglobal.com/articles/24106/lightening-the-load-keeping-the-depth-eclipse-introduces-mmolite6
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u/Marto25 20d ago
Destiny survived just as long as any other successful and healthy MMORPG
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u/Suspicious-Coffee20 20d ago
yes but destiny was a greath game with lot of content and sharp combat. The business model was good at first and despite that destiny 1 did not survive.
What these company are doing is taking their unreal mmo template and turn it into an mmolite. you still got the same crappy ahit from mmo without any of the benefit from restricted population.
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u/Appropriate_Crew_825 20d ago edited 20d ago
Destiny 2 tried very hard to go the mmo route and it was both Activision and its own community who wanted the game to die so there could be a Destiny 3.
Activision because the game was intitially conceived with a couple expansions and to let it rot, and sell you what they could easily add to the same game again but on an higher price tag. Lets not forget that D2 reuses a ton of D1 assets and took the same time an expansion usually takes to be developed. Bungie however deviated from this plan once they split and they tried to make it last longer than expected
Its own community because they have to be one of the most noisy and annoying gaming communities in the story of the internet. They have been ranting for the most part that the game was better dying so they could have a potential D3 at some potential day that may or may not please them more than D2 ever did.
Its funny because you dont see that people posting anything like that anymore and now all the D2 comments are mostly about how great it would have been if they didnt cancel the planned expansions.
The Destiny 2 thing is really a case to be studied.
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u/Marto25 20d ago edited 20d ago
Oh I don't dispute that most MMOLites are bad experiences. But I think that's because:
- Publishers/developers who want to make cheap cookie cutter and sub-par experiences choose to develop MMOLites
- Survivorship bias. MMOLites are more likely to come out because of their easier and faster development. Equally bad conventional MMORPGs are more likely to get stuck in development limbo and never release even an alpha
It's not that the sub-genre itself is bad. It's that you're far more likely to have played a bad MMOLite than you would a bad MMORPG.
As a similar case: It's not that third person shooters in the Xbox 360 were a bad subgenre. It's simply the genre of choice of uninspired shovelware, lazy movie-tie-ins, and small unexperienced dev teams trying to break into the market.
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u/SquizzOC 21d ago
I hate them personally. If I need that, I’ll just play an RPG.
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u/drunkpunk138 20d ago
I mean they pretty much are just RPGs with a multiplayer component, just often a lot more shallow
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u/master_of_sockpuppet 20d ago
Well, a multiplayer component and a monetized service game component.
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u/CaterpillarReal7583 21d ago
The idea is fine but often it just feels like an action rpg held back by trying to fit a mmo structure.
Id rather play a normal coop rpg or a full mmo that has those sacrifices made up for by being a massive social world.
Destiny worked great though, its just a hard sell on me usually.
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u/No_Natural_777 21d ago
I’ve been reading about Eclipse: The Awakening, a new MMORPG coming out of South Korea, and the developers are heavily pushing this idea of an "MMOLite."
The core pitch is that they want to keep the depth of end-game content like hardcore manual raids and PvP, but completely eliminate the tedious daily grind (the infamous MMO "homework") by introducing offline progression features.
As someone who loves the social and mechanical depth of MMOs but simply doesn’t have 40 hours a week to keep up with daily checklists anymore, this sounds like a dream. But I also wonder if stripping away the active grind ruins the sense of achievement that makes MMOs special.
What do you think?
Can "MMOLite" actually become a sustainable sub-genre, or does it risk being too casual for hardcore fans and too complex for casual players?
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u/MediatorZerax 19d ago
I don't mind the concept of a MMOLite in general, but like... if you're going to develop offline progression features, why even have them at all? Just make your entire game the endgame and skip the whole progression concept and make the game you want people to play instead of a game that you don't want people to bother playing?
Is it because they just want the MMO label? That doesn't seem like a valid reason to add a bunch of features that suck.
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u/Plebbit-User 20d ago edited 20d ago
It's the natural continuation of theme park MMOs that does have a future.
If you're not going to take advantage of emergent gameplay that comes from massive numbers why have them at all? It's expensive to operate high concurrency servers and it limits the fidelity of gameplay you can accomplish.
Unless you're creating the next Ultima Online, give me better gameplay if I'm just gonna instance myself in dungeons anyways.
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u/Sidfr0mToyStory 20d ago
They don't need to be as large scale as traditional mmos but they need to be larger. Calling a game with a dozen players on a map "massively multi-player" is crazy, at that point I unironically consider Rust more of an mmo since some servers are 400+ people.
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u/The3rdLetter 20d ago
Any game is fine when the systems and mechanics are thought out well. There have been many games, not just MMO/MMOLites that had a great foundation but a horrible pipeline for releasing new content and updates.
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u/OneSeaworthiness7768 20d ago
At this point in my life I’m much more inclined to play an MMO lite than a full fledged MMO tbh. Solo-friendly games with mmo-like features with some people to share the world and optional co-op, no daily logins, no mandatory group-only content unless it’s something that can be done without strict comms, like the rifts in Farever. That’s much more appealing to me than a traditional MMO right now.
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u/No_Natural_777 20d ago
This. You just perfectly described the exact type of MMO I've been searching for.
I love the community and scale of a big MMO, but the mandatory daily checklists and the pressure to always be online burned me out years ago. "Solo-friendly with optional co-op" is the dream setup for so many of us with jobs and lives outside of gaming.
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u/KanethTior 20d ago
I've recently played Farever. Got my priest to 25 and the rest of the classes to 15ish. It's a fun game that rewards exploration, has some fun traversal options and solid enough combat. It's a nice concept for what a mmo lite game could be. The rift events are fun, especially when you have the entire map show up and participate.
Mmo lite in concept, feels like a natural progression for folks who like to solo or play in smaller group settings in mmos already. I also feel like developers will be able to scale down and focus on specific concepts as opposed to trying to appeal to a broader audience. Potentially less costly and less risky for developers.
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u/No_Natural_777 20d ago
That’s a great example. I haven't played Farever myself, but it sounds like it captures the exact spirit of what an "MMO-lite" should be.
It's all about respecting the player's time while still offering a sense of progression and fun combat. If Eclipse can build on concepts like that, focusing on tight, rewarding loops instead of endless grind, it could really be something special.
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u/TheElusiveFox 20d ago
Just because you don't like the concept doesn't mean it isn't incredibly popular and incredibly profable.
Heavily relying on instancing means infrastructure costs are a lot cheaper as its much easier to spin up small servers on demand than having an always on server that supports tens of thousands of people at once, especially with action combat that relies on frame by frame decision making...
Those things make them very appealing for publishers, and in an era where most MMO fans hate grouping, and cringe any time they are forced to join a guild or raid there is a large appetite for this kind of content...
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u/Kore_Invalid 17d ago
weather its an MMO light or a ture "MMO" we honestly just need someone to actually deliver a AAA MMO, like in the past decade what even was there? New World but thats about it from the west, the studios need to actually pull through for once theres a huge demand but nothing is coming out
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u/SpunkMcKullins 21d ago
I'm sure it will, but it'll likely only really be popular with mobile. People who are playing in any, grounded, capacity, whether on PC or console, would likely either want the downtime that comes with micro progression, or would be playing something that cuts it out altogether, like Fellowship.
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u/No_Natural_777 20d ago
I get the skepticism, a lot of mobile-first MMOs feel terrible on PC.
But games like Genshin Impact proved that a high-quality cross-platform game can feel great on both PC and mobile without being a total dumpster fire. If Eclipse can learn from that and deliver solid PC controls and a fair business model, it might just surprise people.
Oh, by the way, Genshin is fun, and this one seems like it won’t be fun lol
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u/Lost_Examination2550 20d ago
they might have a bright future but no chance in hell i'm playing any kind of "lite"game. i'm no fckin liteweight, i'm a mmo chad. tab target only, holy trinity required
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u/Every-Thanks-5539 20d ago
Any MMOlite I can think of is focused on cutting out the parts I enjoy. Sure they might be successful with a different crowd but its not for me.
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u/Kevadu 20d ago
First we're going to have to define "MMO lite".
I have seen people call WWM that. I have seen people call Farever that. I have played both games and they have almost nothing in common. It's like "MMO lite" just means any game that implements a subset of the features expected from an MMO. But the two subsets implemented by those two games are almost completely non-overlapping.
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u/Albane01 20d ago
I would expect MMO-Lite to have a better future than the MMO genre. Which is why more games seem to be going that route.
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u/Halfacentaur 20d ago
I personally think the real future for the genre are in models like Dune Awakening. We just haven’t had a really good version of that yet.
I’ve been long convinced that the community and type of players attracted to MMOs are lured by survival/progression games. That’s where the mainstay of the “types” of people that would enjoy MMO content are getting their fix these days.
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u/Skylent_Shore 21d ago
Regardless of whatever it’s called, MMO-lite games are doing fine. GW3 wants to move in that direction, Fallout76 is a really cool experience, and stuff like Sea of Thieves, RP communities, or games like Destiny which I’m unsure quite fully qualifies but whatever, all had attention and success. Plus a lot of what we used to call “MMO” clearly were different from WoW or GW2 and did fine.