One Thing I Wish MMORPGs Could Take From Games Like Honkai: Star Rail Is Their Content Schedule

Recently, my computer died and I was forced to get a new one. This, of course, resulted in me having to redownload the games I play on PC. At this point, I’ve got everything downloaded that I typically play – which mostly consists of free-to-play games like Wuthering Waves and Honkai: Star Rail, but also includes the one game I actually pay a sub for, Final Fantasy XIV. Here’s the thing. I’ve been in those games every day. I’ve loaded up FFXIV perhaps twice.

Part of the reasoning behind that is technical. Since this is a fresh download (and my foolish self didn’t think to use the feature that saves settings) I have to set everything up all over again. For those of you who don’t know, getting your hotbars just right is a pain with one job. But when you’re talking about 30-some-odd jobs, that’s like standing on one side of a gorge and trying to figure out how you’re getting across to the other side without spending an extended period of time doing it. It’s not easy to do. The other games, of course, are easy, because there really are no settings to be handled on my end. I just download and go.

But, that’s not my real reason of not spending a lot of time in traditional MMORPG's. It comes down to the content and pacing. No, I’m not saying that there’s not content to do. I can probably list several things that I could be working on in XIV right now. There are relics to grind and field operations to do. Nevermind the deep dungeon content.

But, at the moment it’s just not enough to get me to log in and fix my stuff so I can play. There are two reasons for this, and both of them are things I believe are existing problems for any MMORPG. The first is the content schedule. For people who require a certain amount of narrative initiative to stay interested in a game, MMORPGs can fall short. Expansions are often years apart and while there are content patches in-between they can be completed fairly quickly. So, unless you’re a raider or want to grind, there’s not a lot left to do in all the downtime.

And very often, that other content can be dependent upon having others to play with. Which leads to the other issue. MMORPGs simply have more staying power if you have people to do things with during all that downtime. But, if your friends begin to get bored or smacked in the face by life, it’s pretty easy to lose that core playgroup. Then you’re left with trying to find others to do content with. Depending on what you’re doing that can be relatively easy or rather difficult. Even if you do find a group interested in doing the content, there’s often the problem of working out a schedule where everyone can get together. And those schedules can change.

So, at the end of the day, there’s a good chance I’m just stuck waiting for the next big story drop rather than logging in to do anything. Non-MMORPG story-based games like Wuthering Waves and Hokai: Star Rail, on the other hand have shockingly regular story updates. With most of these games, I can count on something around every six weeks. And when the content drops, I’m looking at around 4-6 hours of main story content (provided I don’t go astray looking for new puzzles and chests to complete). In the most recent Genshin Impact update, it was about eight hours. And then we still have all the side content to go.Granted, a lot of that is cutscenes. But the same is kinda true for XIV’s MSQ at times, isn’t it?

This got me to thinking about how much I would love a story-based MMORPG that was capable of doing content drops like these. Rather than something that takes a week or so to complete (I think Dawntrail was about 10 days for me.) and you’re done, you have the full story roll out over a year.

I realize that I’m not a game dev, and as a result I don’t know what difference that makes in the work. Although, I do wonder if it might not be easier due to the fact that you’re pushing to get everything out in smaller chunks rather than facing that looming deadline at the end of it all where a massive amount of content has to be right.

Perhaps it just wouldn’t work in this case due to things like raid schedules and the like. But I would love it if it did. I’d have more reason to spend time in whatever MMO I play more frequently, rather than debating if I should invest time in a new one to fill the space. Of course, the upside of starting an MMORPG that’s been out for a bit is that there should be a good it of main story to keep me busy for a while. So, there’s always that.