Is One Feature Enough To Get You To Play An MMO?

When it comes to games, I think I’m a more or less well-rounded player. Yes, I typically join for the story content, and that’s what keeps me there. But I try to do all the things. I'm out here running dungeons, doing a bit of raiding, crafting (a lot), doing the gear grind, and getting involved in a lot of the mini-games and social content. Of course, there are things I like more than others. And some things I might skip on because most MMOs just have a lot of different things to do in order to accommodate the various tastes of players they hope to attract – too many for any single person to do them all well.

The good news is that we don’t actually have to do everything offered in an MMO. Yes, there are some things you’ll need to do in order to progress. So, unless your game has some sort of “skip” option for the game’s narrative and progression, you’re going to have to get out there and do those main quests. You may not have to do all the side quests, but the main quests are typically a given. And yes, you’ll have to unlock things to be able to do certain content. Not everything is available to you right out of the gate. For example, housing.

And this is what made me start wondering about people joining a game just because one feature lured them in. Recently, I was talking to a friend and offhandedly commented about Throne and Liberty getting housing. His response was a fairly negative one in regard to the overall game, but my housing-oriented brain was focused on how what little we know of the upcoming system looks interesting. And because of that alone, I’m considering playing a game I haven’t yet played.

It’s a free-to-play game, so even if I end up giving up on it, it’s not a huge deal in that way. That said, as I mentioned before, features like housing often take time to unlock, and you may have to do content you don’t really enjoy just to get to that particular feature.

The thing is, sometimes, I think it’s just worth it. It’s also worth noting that I don’t look for exactly the same things in games as my friend. We enjoy a lot of the same games, but aside from story content, it’s for pretty different reasons. I can live through bad mechanics or questionable features if there’s something else I’m after in a game. My friend has less tolerance for those kinds of things.

So, yes, it’s pretty likely I’ll actually download Throne and Liberty just to try out the housing.

I know for a fact I’m not the only person who operates this way. Someone else I know joined Final Fantasy XIV because someone told him about the crafting systems in that particular MMORPG. He was drawn in by the siren song of a crafting system that likes to cause us pain. As with these things in most MMOs, it’s something you have to unlock. So, you’re either playing all the content or buying skips from the store. But then, once you’re there, there are so many other things to unlock and level just to be able to properly take part in the crafting and gathering system. It’s not a “just run out and pick up this one thing and click this one button” scenario. And he loves it for that.

So, here we are with someone who has no interest in the game’s story, who’s really just there to craft and do similar things, and he’s paying a monthly sub to do it. With that in mind, I don’t think it’s too strange for me to download a F2P game just to play with its housing system when the time comes.

Still, I do have to wonder if many players are inclined to do the same thing. How many of us are out here playing MMOs to just get to one feature? In some ways, it would probably make more sense to just play games where the feature we’re after is a focus. But those are very often single-player games, and I think it’s just not quite the same thing.