MMO Hybrid Failures #1 - balance of genres

 I figured I'd do this pointing out certain design issues, I may not of made a good MMO but you don't need to be a genius to see the design issues in hand with some of these projects.

How to mix?

The question is how do things mix, what elements are pulled into what. The reason Diablo 4 failed is because it couldn't put enough MMO elements and enough looter elements mixed together as a unit. The game mechanics you keep and not keep matters. Think of this like a house.

Some genres that are mixed don't take away many game elements such as mixing rogue-lites with 2D platformers while other genres you need to take away the correct game elements to make a good Roguevania.

Feed into each other

Genres can take away and feed into each other; you need to find the proper game elements that feed into each other here. Are enough game elements of genre 1 feed into genre 2? There is a reason why so many genres follow similar rules or the same rules.

Some genres are less flexible than others while other games can get away with breaking said rules; an example, Fighting games have a healthy mix of playstyles to cater towards with defensive, offensive, grapple, etc. While a game such as Darkstalkers is walking the line of still being considered a fighting game while other genres with more defensive play are given more breathing room in the same genre.

What is considered a Rogue-like has no breathing room while a Rogue-lite has breathing room for what is considered one or not.

So you need to find how you can spice up said idea or how said two ideas can feed into other rather than take away in this sense of finding the spots where you can make things work.

Game speed

Different genres have different speeds; yes this part matters because the question is what part are you doing, are you going to stay the speed of the MMO or the speed of a dungeon crawler? Did you give meaningful quest as an MMO or did you give little to nothing? These questions matter when making your game count.

The problem

Looter shooters or in this case a dungeon crawler is focused on gaining loot and getting gear. A MMO is more social focused with working together with people or just having someone to show off gear to. It's no hard to combine the two, however the type of Dungeon Crawler you made does matter such as the speed of the game; a fast game should be kept fast, in a single player experience this doesn't matter much, however in an MMO space no one really has a reason to stay in the MMO part of the game.

If your game is fast paced for people getting through the game then you can't slow down the game to a crawl then.

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