Going through the absolute shit on offer currently it really is remarkable to me how backwards this industry has gotten. Micro-transactions were one thing but it looks like any kind of co-op game is just some god awful grind fest if it's free to play yet that's what the majority of the cons00mer types seem to be playing now.
At least Stardew Valley and Helldivers 2 can be called video games but honestly I tried PoE and it bored me to death not to mention the obvious trash FPS issues it seems to have right at the beginning. I'm going to just check out the Warframe gameplay rather than play it myself.
Even without the enemies having 500000 hitpoints it seems that matchmaking is often garbage in these games at the best of time which immediately gets me having flashbacks to GTA V and I go into a fetal position over that because rockstars matchmaking is truly awful. I don't think I could ever play co-op with people if they just quit halfway through and inevitably the instance ends right there so you're fucked and have to immediately jump to a queue only to have another twat abandon a game right after. So unless you can keep playing with people even after they leave or solo it that means the game is effectively unplayable.
Yep, offline or solo play only for me.
When the western versions have been so shit. To be fair that's just the big studios, indies are doing well. The Asians just know they need 3 things to get players in their games:
Beautiful/sexy characters
Great story
Great soundtrack
I have NIKKE fans saying spoilers over a their story so they're doing something right!
This is the answer.
After WoW's success, Western devs just stopped trying. They attempted a few like Tabula Rasa and the Hellgate games, but either it was a creative concept wrapped up in a bad design, or a bad idea wrapped up in a boring design. That's about the gist of most Western MMOs.
The Koreans focused on the three things you mentioned, plus moving away from tab-targeting and having real-time combat like in Vindictus, Black Desert, or TERA Online.
I liked Tabula Rasa, the game mostly die as it had no end game what so ever.
Tabula Rasa was basically proto-Destiny but 7 years early.
I don't doubt garriot wasted waaaaay too much money on the way and that's why it released basically half finished, but if NCSoft had enough balls to support it to the finish line they could have had all that Destiny 1 market share.