WELCOME TO HOLLYWOOD, says the giant sign out front.
How many amazing/innovative movies come out every year amonst the slop?... and how many times are they completely overlooked by people that like slop. For every low budget game trying to do new and amazing things, there is a movie doing the same thing, and ALL will be smashed by the 4th regurgitation of Micheal Bay's *anything*.
See a pattern yet?
"Support indie"
Writer / Musician / Game Designer
Now Playing: Skyrim, Wurm Online, Tropico 4 Waiting On: GW2, TSW, Archeage, The Rapture
Who needs innovation. Just take whats broken, fix it and then make it better.
A lot of the sandbox games now are broken. Take features from them, fix them and mak eit better.
Heres an example. Lets say a sandbox game has ffa full loot pvp. Thats broken. Why not allow a game to ffa full loot pvp, but it only works when fighting another faction. So if you want to grief players you have to sneak into enemy territory and hide as a bandit or gather a bunch of players and raid them.
Well this doesn't fix the problem completely, so just design in a way that the further you go into enemy territory the better the chance you'll get killed. maybe roaming guards are cowards and stay away from the frotier wars, but they'd be more than wiling to kill a pk who heads too deep into enemy territory. So they'd either have to stay in pvp zones or risk dying while crafters that support the fighters are relatively safe.Serious pkers can still do what they want. They'd just not be able to reach those who don't want to go near them. It would still mean that they could ambush caravans carrying reagents and stuff to the front. But those would be gaurded.
But what if you want your ffa pvp game to have territory control. Well how about making frontier zones free build and you fight for your faction by stealing territory and building castles in it. And why not making it worth holding that territory due to unique resources your crafters need and some sort of renown your guild gets for holding that territory.
You don't really need innovation if you can either use old ideas that nobody has seen [and as such would seem frash] or use an old system in a new way
WELCOME TO HOLLYWOOD, says the giant sign out front.
How many amazing/innovative movies come out every year amonst the slop?... and how many times are they completely overlooked by people that like slop. For every low budget game trying to do new and amazing things, there is a movie doing the same thing, and ALL will be smashed by the 4th regurgitation of Micheal Bay's *anything*.
See a pattern yet?
"Support indie"
This analogy doesn't work. I can find plenty of movies I like. Both blockbuster and indie. I can't find one MMO that rivals DAoC or EQ back in their heyday.
We have SWTOR, yes it's another traditional themepark, but the story makes it feel very diferent (only if you actually care about story in an MMO).
IMO SWTOR and Blade & Soul are the MMOs with less innovation, and they still feel very new.
Then you have GW2 and Tera, both with skill based combat, one with a new quest system and the other with sandbox elements in endgame.
And lastly, you have crazy games like The Secret World & ArcheAge, one without classes or levels, the other with so many features that would put almost every other MMO to shame.
"Esport with tournaments is for hardcore pvp'rs that want to be competitive. Openworld PVP with ganking and griefing is for casuals that just wants their pvp mixed with pve from time to time." otacu
I don't know, it seems that many (obviously not all, so if this statement doesn't apply to you, it doesn't apply to you) of the people saying they want innovation actually seem to want to go back to the days of EQ, UO, and SWG. That's not innovation or progression, that's regression by the verry deffinition of those words. It is going backwards. Now you can say that the genre shouldn't have gone forward in the way it did but that is the way it went forward, now many want it to go backwards again to the "way it use to be."
I don't know, it seems that many (obviously not all, so if this statement doesn't apply to you, it doesn't apply to you) of the people saying they want innovation actually seem to want to go back to the days of EQ, UO, and SWG. That's not innovation or progression, that's regression by the verry deffinition of those words. It is going backwards. Now you can say that the genre shouldn't have gone forward in the way it did but that is the way it went forward, now many want it to go backwards again to the "way it use to be."
Again that would be fine if the "way it use to be" was elementary gameplay compared to what we are doing now. I don't want to go backwards just for some nostalgia sake, I would want to go backwards because the gameplay was x percent more than it is now. What we have to get excited about these days is a setting change and voice acting?
I can't say I agree with the OP. In fact, it is only recently that AAA devs finally started getting it through their thick skulls that innovation in gameplay DOES sell, if done right.
Even the much-maligned SW:TOR which has been called a "wow-clone" has innovations of its own in many areas... it's just that I don't agree that those innovations are on the right track or that they'll improve the existing formula. GW2, TSW, Archeage... Planetside 2, Firefall, Wildstar... all the top anitcipated mmos today are all going out of their way trying to innovate the genre.
The innovative part of SW:TOR is actually having a ton of story content for once. This is the kind of innovation I heartily welcome.
Noteworthy innovations of SW:TOR, as I can think of them right now, are also:
- Everyone is a pet class when solo, thus allowing everyone to solo (much better than normal, anyway)
- Crafting isnt done on screen (getting rid of another really annoying grind)
- Ranged Tanks (well they are new to me, anyway)
- Full VO (I could definitely live without that one, but some people love it)
- No Autoattack (I utterly fail to see the point of praising that, but what can you do, some people love this)
All in all it seems to be a very enjoyable game, at least in its concept, and I fail to see the point of bashing it like the OP does.
Originally posted by Zalmon
[...] innovation does not guarantee succes nor fun. [...]
QFT.
Also: I prefer the approach of Vanguard: dont evade the problems, but fix them.
Originally posted by forest-nl
Bioware already lost longtime ago after baldurs gate 2.
Thats a way unfair comparison, because BG2 is IMHO still the best CRPG of all times.
Bioware did some great games after BG2, too. I love SW:KotOR and DA:O wasnt so bad either.
Originally posted by CalmOceans
It would be much easier to try something new.
What, in a big company ? Where you HAVE to succeed with high profit at all cost ? LOL
Originally posted by Zalmon
And they did add somethings new as i mentioned in my last reply. To be fair none of the upcoming MMOS is re inventing the wheel. They are staying true to themepark formula [...]
Given the fact that your game can either be a sandbox or a themepark, but no third option is available, your posting is pointless.
You are basically saying MMOs have to be sandbox to be any good.
Originally posted by Icewhite
Originally posted by Zalmon
There we go again. that word..'innovation'.
Seems to be the buzzphrase of the year, yas.
How do you predict (or even encourage) the next sleeper hit?
The i-word is far more horrible.
"Innovation" at least actually means something thats not a bad idea per se in the first place. It just has to be intelligent innovation, not being different just for being different.
Originally posted by ActionMMORPG
People want a hardcore, group oriented, soloable game for casuals.
That's a little hard to deliver.
1. Thats a different discussion
2. Many MMOs already offer that
Originally posted by arcanist
Who needs innovation. Just take whats broken, fix it and then make it better. [...]
My prefered kind of innovation, too.
Originally posted by Golelorn
This analogy doesn't work. I can find plenty of movies I like. Both blockbuster and indie. I can't find one MMO that rivals DAoC or EQ back in their heyday.
You can find plenty of movies because movies dont outdate.
There is no real issue to watch a movie from the 1920s. Yes its grayscale and yes the dialogue is read not spoken, but otherwise its not so different from today. Movies from the 1960s are already pretty much like todays movies, except if they have special effects.
While, if one tries playing a game from the 1990s ... many dont run anymore, and if they do, their graphics is beyond any tolerance level for todays gamers.
And if you actually want to claim you would find plenty of ACTUAL movies you like, well I can only envy you. Theatres right now bore me to death with what they have to offer.
First they were called mmorpg, then members of the community decided to call them MMO's, now we have someone calling them MO's. Soon people will just call them M's. Those abbreviation in themselves tell you whats wrong with MMorpg's.
The only innovation of note in the MMORPG genre is F2P, and all it is, is another way of pulling money out of your pocket. The biggest "innovation" in recent years is SWTOR's heavy use of voice acting.
Cue sarcasting "OOOOOOOHHH."
So yes, I'd say innovative MMORPGs are dead. Just like the core of gameplay in this genre.
You want me to pull out the interview from Blizzard where tey said voice acting adds incredible time to dev cost and making new content?
How about the fact only certain NPC's talk? You talk to the NPC's they tell you to talk to. The rest are just there and painted into the background. Voice acting is nothing other then the gamers unwlling to read anymore and it is more a sign of the tiems then a change in the genre.
If Trion told me content in Rift was delayed because they needed to voice act everything we would burn them at the stake. It is more of a fluke then a genre changer. GW2 turning all questing into dynamic events is something that can be copied and actually done by other companies and could be genre changing.
You realize the budget it takes to vocie act everything? That stuff is not even remotely cheap + the devs to make sure it works is a team all by itself. Cold chance in hell you ever see another dev even try it unless TOR is so unbelievably successful it makes billions.
Originally posted by Adamantine The innovative part of SW:TOR is actually having a ton of story content for once. This is the kind of innovation I heartily welcome.
For me, this and the companion play was the most innovative part of SWTOR I've found.
Sure, I've played games with incredible pet control, diversity and combat before (FFXI Beastmaster, WoW Hunter, Aion Spiritmaster) but only if you are a certain class do you get that, and most of the classes I actually thought were garbage and NOT fun. So for instance if you play Rift, you don't get a pet unless you pick one of eight classes out of a ton of souls and even then, you have to spec HEAVILY into the class so the pet does something worthwhile.
In TOR everyone gets a companion which is nice. No one is left out having to chose X class just to get one. The companions are part of the story as well, meaning they TALK and interact with you and you aren't choosing what the pet's say; it's scripted but it's different for the other classes.
If you don't want to play with the companion because you think it's OP and you want to use skill.. voila! Just dismiss it and be a solo or duoing badass with someone else. The companion is more important to your story, not necessarily for the survival of your character or makes your class viable, unlike every other pet class in every other mmo before TOR.
So story/lore and companions are good innovations TOR brings. Innovation in the sense they've really improved on what other games had only scratched the surface on in those two areas.
In TOR everyone gets a companion which is nice. No one is left out having to chose X class just to get one. The companions are part of the story as well, meaning they TALK and interact with you and you aren't choosing what the pet's say; it's scripted but it's different. If you don't want to play with the companion because you think it's OP and you want to use skill.. voila! Just dismiss it and be a solo or duoing badass with someone else. The companion is more important to your story, not necessarily for the survival of your character or makes your class viable, unlike every other pet class in every other mmo before TOR.
You say that and while it was cool I simply hated the fact it was forced on you. I do not have a choice of getting a companion I am forced to have one. Have you tried doing anything as a Sith Inquisitor without one? I know what they were going, but even in the movies C3PO and R2D2 were not with Luke 100% of the time and they sure as hell were not romantic love interest.
Innovation in MMO's aren't dead its just not as Innovative as we thought its gonna be.
APB , FFXIV , GW2, RIFT , AION are just some of the MMO's that tried something new, some succeeded, some failed, some is still awaiting for its verdict.
Innovation is defined as A new method, idea, product.
SWTOR utilizes a New Method to deliver quests and dialogue with the choices provided. GW2 utilizes a new idea for quests with dynamic events and AION utilizes a new method of travel.
There is no company in the world that is willing to create a brand new product when millions of Iinvestor dollars are in stake. FFXIV tried and failed, creating a physical example of when investment failes. MMO's are taking it a step at a time, going after existing IP's for immediate returns. Creating games with controls that is similiar so that its easy to pick up by Worn out MMO players.
If every gamer in the world promised to give a 6 month subscription to an MMO that is not yet developed but will have every innovative idea, sandbox themepark MMO, then they might consider in creating it. Otherwise all we will be seeing is something similar to the old with something new within something that we already know.
Life is a Maze, so make sure you bring your GPS incase you get lost in it.
In TOR everyone gets a companion which is nice. No one is left out having to chose X class just to get one. The companions are part of the story as well, meaning they TALK and interact with you and you aren't choosing what the pet's say; it's scripted but it's different. If you don't want to play with the companion because you think it's OP and you want to use skill.. voila! Just dismiss it and be a solo or duoing badass with someone else. The companion is more important to your story, not necessarily for the survival of your character or makes your class viable, unlike every other pet class in every other mmo before TOR.
You say that and while it was cool I simply hated the fact it was forced on you. I do not have a choice of getting a companion I am forced to have one. Have you tried doing anything as a Sith Inquisitor without one? I know what they were going, but even in the movies C3PO and R2D2 were not with Luke 100% of the time and they sure as hell were not romantic love interest.
I have played as a Sith Inquisitor and while I agree you do need your companion for a bit once you got some better skills and level up others you can dismiss your companion and Solo.
In TOR everyone gets a companion which is nice. No one is left out having to chose X class just to get one. The companions are part of the story as well, meaning they TALK and interact with you and you aren't choosing what the pet's say; it's scripted but it's different. If you don't want to play with the companion because you think it's OP and you want to use skill.. voila! Just dismiss it and be a solo or duoing badass with someone else. The companion is more important to your story, not necessarily for the survival of your character or makes your class viable, unlike every other pet class in every other mmo before TOR.
You say that and while it was cool I simply hated the fact it was forced on you. I do not have a choice of getting a companion I am forced to have one. Have you tried doing anything as a Sith Inquisitor without one? I know what they were going, but even in the movies C3PO and R2D2 were not with Luke 100% of the time and they sure as hell were not romantic love interest.
Just so you know, during beta, I didn't use a companion at all, I tried Trooper, and Jedi and if I were attempting an Heroic Quest all I did was join groups that was asking for more people, Or tried it solo. I was never forced to have an companion with me at all times. If I wanted I could, but I didn't. Nothing is forced upon you, they provided companions to everyone, but you have the choice of using them if you wanted. And for the Love interests, you didn't even have to trigger it if you don't want to. You were just given the choice to do it if you so choose.
Life is a Maze, so make sure you bring your GPS incase you get lost in it.
I don't know, it seems that many (obviously not all, so if this statement doesn't apply to you, it doesn't apply to you) of the people saying they want innovation actually seem to want to go back to the days of EQ, UO, and SWG. That's not innovation or progression, that's regression by the verry deffinition of those words. It is going backwards. Now you can say that the genre shouldn't have gone forward in the way it did but that is the way it went forward, now many want it to go backwards again to the "way it use to be."
EQ or UO may be backwards, but SWG is not.
I used to play SWG before all of the expanisons and the Combat Upgrade. I remember walking for like 20 minutes to kill Sand People to try and level trecking across Dantooine for hours on some crazy exp runs and being bored to fing tears at the tedious missions. It was my first MMO and I was a Star Wars fan I was waiting for the promised epic batte grounds, the guild towns, the guild space combat etc. Well months in you didn't have even half of that. I ended up quitting because I already had one job and I didn't need a second one.
Ironically the reason I quit was I was so bored with not being a Jedi and Not being a Star Wars hero that I tried KOTOR and wow after that i just couldn't play it anymore because you know what the most boring Star Wars adventure was my own! If SWG had delivered on what they promised it would still be around today and WoW may never have even taken off but it didn't and to create an eganging game with all those features that will appeal to the masses is very difficult.
I would love to see a game like that SWTOR well not perfect has innovated a lot and for where I am at in life it's the perfect MMO for me I don't have time to deal with DKP, 25 man raids, I want to log on play with some friends be taken to a Galaxy Far Far away play for a few hours when I can and then go back to reality. For me the immersive story and everything does that for me and I love it. Bioware has hit a home run with this one for the casuals and unfortunately that's where the money is. Since it's there first shot at an mmo I can't blame them for playing it safe
I don't think innovative MMO's are a dying breed we are just going through a "recession" as it's all about the money with big titles, when we start seeing some more second generation MMO's from Companies that made their first ones just recently, Blizzard, Bioware etc. I think we will start seeing some new and truly astonishing new ideas. Till then companies will play it safe but I do hope something amazing comes a long soon. Till then I will be enjoying my casual fun in SWTOR.
I would say GW2 is probably the best we are going to get. Although I question its success without having some type of instanced raiding. Just the base theory alone will push the genre forward more then people understand:
1. The graphics will force people to upgrade. This is long overdue for alot fo you people out their on Commodore 64s and after that happens the technology can catch up with times.
2. No trinity. Easily the biggest change. People are simply not getting how big this one is.
3. TOR questing while voiced basically boils down to gather x..get Y and I'll put money on it gets played down after launch exactly like people did with Rifts in Rift when they reduced them down to fancy public quest. Making everything dyanamic as a way to level up is basically Skyrim and people would donate their a kidney to have that in a mmorpg format.
4. B2P. Although I question how fast they can release content and this business model is basically boils down to a ponzy scheme in the fact it only works if people keep buying into it, but the idea is interesting as long as they keep releasing new content.
If it moves into the mmorpg format and lives up to any of the promises it is going to be a major factor. I see TOR, but when I play it I ask myself do I want to give up Rift full time for this and I see alot of WoW fans saying that too.
Why do some people think that there is this one almighty mmorpg that will please everyone that loves this genre. There was a thread not to long ago that said, let's make the perfect mmo. Kinda funny once you started reading the posts that everyone had a different idea and concept of what that entailed.
I just find it totally dumb that so many people are just so narrow minded to think that any one game is the best or the worst. Every game has it's take on tried and true system's that have been tweaked. MMO's are what they are, and this innovation will not come from the game in itself but the way we as gamers actually play the game.
Future monitors, 3-D, virtual systems and the like will innovate the gaming world and that not only includes SPG but mmo's as well. let's take for example AA. Is it's sandbox systems any different than what say SWG had, nope. Is it's combat system, this out of this world new innovation system tyhat hasn't been used before, nope. The same can also be said for TOR, GW2, TSW, TERA and other games coming down the pike.
All these games are alike and different in their own way, but by no means do they contain something so new and innovative that hasn't been seen or done before to a either lessor or more degree.
Innovative anything is a dying breed. That's sort of the point. It's genetic mutation. Most mutations fail, but the ones that survive move things forward and thrive.
Simple evolution, really.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
I would say GW2 is probably the best we are going to get. Although I question its success without having some type of instanced raiding. Just the base theory alone will push the genre forward more then people understand:
1. The graphics will force people to upgrade. This is long overdue for alot fo you people out their on Commodore 64s and after that happens the technology can catch up with times.
2. No trinity. Easily the biggest change. People are simply not getting how big this one is.
3. TOR questing while voiced basically boils down to gather x..get Y and I'll put money on it gets played down after launch exactly like people did with Rifts in Rift when they reduced them down to fancy public quest. Making everything dyanamic as a way to level up is basically Skyrim and people would donate their a kidney to have that in a mmorpg format.
4. B2P. Although I question how fast they can release content and this business model is basically boils down to a ponzy scheme in the fact it only works if people keep buying into it, but the idea is interesting as long as they keep releasing new content.
If it moves into the mmorpg format and lives up to any of the promises it is going to be a major factor. I see TOR, but when I play it I ask myself do I want to give up Rift full time for this and I see alot of WoW fans saying that too.
Why do you feel you have to give up Rift or WOW for TOR. Why do you feel obligated to playing the newest mmorpg that's coming out. IF you feel that TOR is not as good as the game you are playing now, then why leave or even want to leave. TOR will do just fine with those that actually find it to be fun and new and compelling.
Originally posted by Puremallace You say that and while it was cool I simply hated the fact it was forced on you. I do not have a choice of getting a companion I am forced to have one. Have you tried doing anything as a Sith Inquisitor without one? I know what they were going, but even in the movies C3PO and R2D2 were not with Luke 100% of the time and they sure as hell were not romantic love interest.
Just so you know (which you didn't seem to) there was a little button on your UI that toggled your companion off. By doing so, you can play your class just as effectively without the companion. You don't lose any skills or lose any of your class mechanics because no class is dependant on the companion. If you didn't like it being "force" on you, simply turn it off.
As Inquisitor? I found that the be one of the easiest classes to play with no companion. You probably aren't familiar with the true concept of crowd control because in Rift there's no need for it in ANY of the classes at all and in Aion I think you said you were a Templar tank, so understandably you had problems.
The proper rotation for Inquisitor solo was to Whirlwind the biggest (worse) mob of the bunch, take out the lesser two or three, then focus on the harder one again. That wasn't very hard at all. I found the Warrior to be a more of a disadvantage than the Inquisitor unless you hurried up and plowed through them (which required less planning).
You've shown you know little about the classes because the Warrior and the droid are not "romantically" involved with any humans. That's pretty strange. In fact, the droids comments I found were extremely funny such as:
Puremallace+ Rift= love affair. Other mmos< Rift.
That's how the syntax went but not the context of the story, lol. It was more about friendship, which if you saw the movies the droids expressed time and time again to the point where they went into danger. R2D2 often went off with C3P0 saying "what do you mean we have to go get Master Luke? Those guys will send us to the scrap heap" and such.
Originally posted by Puremallace I would say GW2 is probably the best we are going to get.
I don't know how you can bite into this "hype balloon" when all the while you were saying everyone else was biting into ToR's hype repeatedly.
Let me ask you this: How often have you played GW2? How many times have you played all the characters in GW2? What did you think about GW2's endgame? Did you like playing with the dragon mechanic in GW2 they had for demo? If so, how long did you get to play that... ten minutes?
I doubt you've even laid hands on GW2, yet you're saying "it's probably the best we are going to get" not even demoed it.
I think GW2 will be a good game as well from what I've SEEN and read, but the bottom line is I have yet to actually play it and only can rely on what someone else said for ten minutes at a time in a demo.
When was the last time you or anyone else heard anything from ArenaNet about the progress of GW2? For all you know, they had those small parts ready and working but are now sitting in the labs going "WTF? Why can't we get the rest of this to work with this other stuff properly? I mean, the demo stuff is clicking but all these other things aren't."
We simply have no idea what's going on, what works and what doesn't yet you say "GW2 will be the best." That's pretty amazing.
No, they are not a dying breed, you just have to turn away from AAA mmo's. It's quite simple really.
The trouble is that alot of folks are looking for AAA big buck development with the freedom and creativity of an indie production... and it's impossible to explain to them why this is such a rare animal, especially while they buy the latest derivative unambitious game based on a big IP.
It's funny, because you could proabably get them to agree with you if this was music we were discussing, but they seem blind to it when it come to games. SWTOR for example really is just the Justin Bieber of MMORPGs.
No support (with tolerance and money) for grass roots development = dominance of the 'suits'.
I would say GW2 is probably the best we are going to get.
I think GW2 will be a good game as well from what I've SEEN and read, but the bottom line is I have yet to actually play it and only can rely on what someone else said for ten minutes at a time in a demo.
When was the last time you or anyone else heard anything from ArenaNet about the progress of GW2? For all you know, they had those small parts ready and working but are now sitting in the labs going "WTF? Why can't we get the rest of this to work with this other stuff properly? I mean, the demo stuff is clicking but all these other things aren't."
We simply have no idea what's going on, what works and what doesn't yet you say "GW2 will be the best." That's pretty amazing.
I am excited for GW2 on a masive scale and agree based on whats on paper and what we have seen it looks amazing.
Comments
WELCOME TO HOLLYWOOD, says the giant sign out front.
How many amazing/innovative movies come out every year amonst the slop?... and how many times are they completely overlooked by people that like slop. For every low budget game trying to do new and amazing things, there is a movie doing the same thing, and ALL will be smashed by the 4th regurgitation of Micheal Bay's *anything*.
See a pattern yet?
"Support indie"
Writer / Musician / Game Designer
Now Playing: Skyrim, Wurm Online, Tropico 4
Waiting On: GW2, TSW, Archeage, The Rapture
Who needs innovation. Just take whats broken, fix it and then make it better.
A lot of the sandbox games now are broken. Take features from them, fix them and mak eit better.
Heres an example. Lets say a sandbox game has ffa full loot pvp. Thats broken. Why not allow a game to ffa full loot pvp, but it only works when fighting another faction. So if you want to grief players you have to sneak into enemy territory and hide as a bandit or gather a bunch of players and raid them.
Well this doesn't fix the problem completely, so just design in a way that the further you go into enemy territory the better the chance you'll get killed. maybe roaming guards are cowards and stay away from the frotier wars, but they'd be more than wiling to kill a pk who heads too deep into enemy territory. So they'd either have to stay in pvp zones or risk dying while crafters that support the fighters are relatively safe.Serious pkers can still do what they want. They'd just not be able to reach those who don't want to go near them. It would still mean that they could ambush caravans carrying reagents and stuff to the front. But those would be gaurded.
But what if you want your ffa pvp game to have territory control. Well how about making frontier zones free build and you fight for your faction by stealing territory and building castles in it. And why not making it worth holding that territory due to unique resources your crafters need and some sort of renown your guild gets for holding that territory.
You don't really need innovation if you can either use old ideas that nobody has seen [and as such would seem frash] or use an old system in a new way
This analogy doesn't work. I can find plenty of movies I like. Both blockbuster and indie. I can't find one MMO that rivals DAoC or EQ back in their heyday.
Take a look at some incoming MMOs...
We have SWTOR, yes it's another traditional themepark, but the story makes it feel very diferent (only if you actually care about story in an MMO).
IMO SWTOR and Blade & Soul are the MMOs with less innovation, and they still feel very new.
Then you have GW2 and Tera, both with skill based combat, one with a new quest system and the other with sandbox elements in endgame.
And lastly, you have crazy games like The Secret World & ArcheAge, one without classes or levels, the other with so many features that would put almost every other MMO to shame."Esport with tournaments is for hardcore pvp'rs that want to be competitive. Openworld PVP with ganking and griefing is for casuals that just wants their pvp mixed with pve from time to time."
otacu
I don't know, it seems that many (obviously not all, so if this statement doesn't apply to you, it doesn't apply to you) of the people saying they want innovation actually seem to want to go back to the days of EQ, UO, and SWG. That's not innovation or progression, that's regression by the verry deffinition of those words. It is going backwards. Now you can say that the genre shouldn't have gone forward in the way it did but that is the way it went forward, now many want it to go backwards again to the "way it use to be."
EQ or UO may be backwards, but SWG is not.
Again that would be fine if the "way it use to be" was elementary gameplay compared to what we are doing now. I don't want to go backwards just for some nostalgia sake, I would want to go backwards because the gameplay was x percent more than it is now. What we have to get excited about these days is a setting change and voice acting?
I can't say I agree with the OP. In fact, it is only recently that AAA devs finally started getting it through their thick skulls that innovation in gameplay DOES sell, if done right.
Even the much-maligned SW:TOR which has been called a "wow-clone" has innovations of its own in many areas... it's just that I don't agree that those innovations are on the right track or that they'll improve the existing formula. GW2, TSW, Archeage... Planetside 2, Firefall, Wildstar... all the top anitcipated mmos today are all going out of their way trying to innovate the genre.
Whether they'll succeed, we'll see.
The innovative part of SW:TOR is actually having a ton of story content for once. This is the kind of innovation I heartily welcome.
Noteworthy innovations of SW:TOR, as I can think of them right now, are also:
- Everyone is a pet class when solo, thus allowing everyone to solo (much better than normal, anyway)
- Crafting isnt done on screen (getting rid of another really annoying grind)
- Ranged Tanks (well they are new to me, anyway)
- Full VO (I could definitely live without that one, but some people love it)
- No Autoattack (I utterly fail to see the point of praising that, but what can you do, some people love this)
All in all it seems to be a very enjoyable game, at least in its concept, and I fail to see the point of bashing it like the OP does.
QFT.
Also: I prefer the approach of Vanguard: dont evade the problems, but fix them.
Thats a way unfair comparison, because BG2 is IMHO still the best CRPG of all times.
Bioware did some great games after BG2, too. I love SW:KotOR and DA:O wasnt so bad either.
What, in a big company ? Where you HAVE to succeed with high profit at all cost ? LOL
Given the fact that your game can either be a sandbox or a themepark, but no third option is available, your posting is pointless.
You are basically saying MMOs have to be sandbox to be any good.
The i-word is far more horrible.
"Innovation" at least actually means something thats not a bad idea per se in the first place. It just has to be intelligent innovation, not being different just for being different.
1. Thats a different discussion
2. Many MMOs already offer that
My prefered kind of innovation, too.
You can find plenty of movies because movies dont outdate.
There is no real issue to watch a movie from the 1920s. Yes its grayscale and yes the dialogue is read not spoken, but otherwise its not so different from today. Movies from the 1960s are already pretty much like todays movies, except if they have special effects.
While, if one tries playing a game from the 1990s ... many dont run anymore, and if they do, their graphics is beyond any tolerance level for todays gamers.
And if you actually want to claim you would find plenty of ACTUAL movies you like, well I can only envy you. Theatres right now bore me to death with what they have to offer.
First they were called mmorpg, then members of the community decided to call them MMO's, now we have someone calling them MO's. Soon people will just call them M's. Those abbreviation in themselves tell you whats wrong with MMorpg's.
You want me to pull out the interview from Blizzard where tey said voice acting adds incredible time to dev cost and making new content?
How about the fact only certain NPC's talk? You talk to the NPC's they tell you to talk to. The rest are just there and painted into the background. Voice acting is nothing other then the gamers unwlling to read anymore and it is more a sign of the tiems then a change in the genre.
If Trion told me content in Rift was delayed because they needed to voice act everything we would burn them at the stake. It is more of a fluke then a genre changer. GW2 turning all questing into dynamic events is something that can be copied and actually done by other companies and could be genre changing.
You realize the budget it takes to vocie act everything? That stuff is not even remotely cheap + the devs to make sure it works is a team all by itself. Cold chance in hell you ever see another dev even try it unless TOR is so unbelievably successful it makes billions.
Sure, I've played games with incredible pet control, diversity and combat before (FFXI Beastmaster, WoW Hunter, Aion Spiritmaster) but only if you are a certain class do you get that, and most of the classes I actually thought were garbage and NOT fun. So for instance if you play Rift, you don't get a pet unless you pick one of eight classes out of a ton of souls and even then, you have to spec HEAVILY into the class so the pet does something worthwhile.
In TOR everyone gets a companion which is nice. No one is left out having to chose X class just to get one. The companions are part of the story as well, meaning they TALK and interact with you and you aren't choosing what the pet's say; it's scripted but it's different for the other classes.
If you don't want to play with the companion because you think it's OP and you want to use skill.. voila! Just dismiss it and be a solo or duoing badass with someone else. The companion is more important to your story, not necessarily for the survival of your character or makes your class viable, unlike every other pet class in every other mmo before TOR.
So story/lore and companions are good innovations TOR brings. Innovation in the sense they've really improved on what other games had only scratched the surface on in those two areas.
"TO MICHAEL!"
You say that and while it was cool I simply hated the fact it was forced on you. I do not have a choice of getting a companion I am forced to have one. Have you tried doing anything as a Sith Inquisitor without one? I know what they were going, but even in the movies C3PO and R2D2 were not with Luke 100% of the time and they sure as hell were not romantic love interest.
Innovation in MMO's aren't dead its just not as Innovative as we thought its gonna be.
APB , FFXIV , GW2, RIFT , AION are just some of the MMO's that tried something new, some succeeded, some failed, some is still awaiting for its verdict.
Innovation is defined as A new method, idea, product.
SWTOR utilizes a New Method to deliver quests and dialogue with the choices provided. GW2 utilizes a new idea for quests with dynamic events and AION utilizes a new method of travel.
There is no company in the world that is willing to create a brand new product when millions of Iinvestor dollars are in stake. FFXIV tried and failed, creating a physical example of when investment failes. MMO's are taking it a step at a time, going after existing IP's for immediate returns. Creating games with controls that is similiar so that its easy to pick up by Worn out MMO players.
If every gamer in the world promised to give a 6 month subscription to an MMO that is not yet developed but will have every innovative idea, sandbox themepark MMO, then they might consider in creating it. Otherwise all we will be seeing is something similar to the old with something new within something that we already know.
Life is a Maze, so make sure you bring your GPS incase you get lost in it.
I have played as a Sith Inquisitor and while I agree you do need your companion for a bit once you got some better skills and level up others you can dismiss your companion and Solo.
Just so you know, during beta, I didn't use a companion at all, I tried Trooper, and Jedi and if I were attempting an Heroic Quest all I did was join groups that was asking for more people, Or tried it solo. I was never forced to have an companion with me at all times. If I wanted I could, but I didn't. Nothing is forced upon you, they provided companions to everyone, but you have the choice of using them if you wanted. And for the Love interests, you didn't even have to trigger it if you don't want to. You were just given the choice to do it if you so choose.
Life is a Maze, so make sure you bring your GPS incase you get lost in it.
I used to play SWG before all of the expanisons and the Combat Upgrade. I remember walking for like 20 minutes to kill Sand People to try and level trecking across Dantooine for hours on some crazy exp runs and being bored to fing tears at the tedious missions. It was my first MMO and I was a Star Wars fan I was waiting for the promised epic batte grounds, the guild towns, the guild space combat etc. Well months in you didn't have even half of that. I ended up quitting because I already had one job and I didn't need a second one.
Ironically the reason I quit was I was so bored with not being a Jedi and Not being a Star Wars hero that I tried KOTOR and wow after that i just couldn't play it anymore because you know what the most boring Star Wars adventure was my own! If SWG had delivered on what they promised it would still be around today and WoW may never have even taken off but it didn't and to create an eganging game with all those features that will appeal to the masses is very difficult.
I would love to see a game like that SWTOR well not perfect has innovated a lot and for where I am at in life it's the perfect MMO for me I don't have time to deal with DKP, 25 man raids, I want to log on play with some friends be taken to a Galaxy Far Far away play for a few hours when I can and then go back to reality. For me the immersive story and everything does that for me and I love it. Bioware has hit a home run with this one for the casuals and unfortunately that's where the money is. Since it's there first shot at an mmo I can't blame them for playing it safe
I don't think innovative MMO's are a dying breed we are just going through a "recession" as it's all about the money with big titles, when we start seeing some more second generation MMO's from Companies that made their first ones just recently, Blizzard, Bioware etc. I think we will start seeing some new and truly astonishing new ideas. Till then companies will play it safe but I do hope something amazing comes a long soon. Till then I will be enjoying my casual fun in SWTOR.
I would say GW2 is probably the best we are going to get. Although I question its success without having some type of instanced raiding. Just the base theory alone will push the genre forward more then people understand:
1. The graphics will force people to upgrade. This is long overdue for alot fo you people out their on Commodore 64s and after that happens the technology can catch up with times.
2. No trinity. Easily the biggest change. People are simply not getting how big this one is.
3. TOR questing while voiced basically boils down to gather x..get Y and I'll put money on it gets played down after launch exactly like people did with Rifts in Rift when they reduced them down to fancy public quest. Making everything dyanamic as a way to level up is basically Skyrim and people would donate their a kidney to have that in a mmorpg format.
4. B2P. Although I question how fast they can release content and this business model is basically boils down to a ponzy scheme in the fact it only works if people keep buying into it, but the idea is interesting as long as they keep releasing new content.
If it moves into the mmorpg format and lives up to any of the promises it is going to be a major factor. I see TOR, but when I play it I ask myself do I want to give up Rift full time for this and I see alot of WoW fans saying that too.
Why do some people think that there is this one almighty mmorpg that will please everyone that loves this genre. There was a thread not to long ago that said, let's make the perfect mmo. Kinda funny once you started reading the posts that everyone had a different idea and concept of what that entailed.
I just find it totally dumb that so many people are just so narrow minded to think that any one game is the best or the worst. Every game has it's take on tried and true system's that have been tweaked. MMO's are what they are, and this innovation will not come from the game in itself but the way we as gamers actually play the game.
Future monitors, 3-D, virtual systems and the like will innovate the gaming world and that not only includes SPG but mmo's as well. let's take for example AA. Is it's sandbox systems any different than what say SWG had, nope. Is it's combat system, this out of this world new innovation system tyhat hasn't been used before, nope. The same can also be said for TOR, GW2, TSW, TERA and other games coming down the pike.
All these games are alike and different in their own way, but by no means do they contain something so new and innovative that hasn't been seen or done before to a either lessor or more degree.
Innovative anything is a dying breed. That's sort of the point. It's genetic mutation. Most mutations fail, but the ones that survive move things forward and thrive.
Simple evolution, really.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
Why do you feel you have to give up Rift or WOW for TOR. Why do you feel obligated to playing the newest mmorpg that's coming out. IF you feel that TOR is not as good as the game you are playing now, then why leave or even want to leave. TOR will do just fine with those that actually find it to be fun and new and compelling.
As Inquisitor? I found that the be one of the easiest classes to play with no companion. You probably aren't familiar with the true concept of crowd control because in Rift there's no need for it in ANY of the classes at all and in Aion I think you said you were a Templar tank, so understandably you had problems.
The proper rotation for Inquisitor solo was to Whirlwind the biggest (worse) mob of the bunch, take out the lesser two or three, then focus on the harder one again. That wasn't very hard at all. I found the Warrior to be a more of a disadvantage than the Inquisitor unless you hurried up and plowed through them (which required less planning).
You've shown you know little about the classes because the Warrior and the droid are not "romantically" involved with any humans. That's pretty strange. In fact, the droids comments I found were extremely funny such as:
Puremallace+ Rift= love affair. Other mmos< Rift.
That's how the syntax went but not the context of the story, lol. It was more about friendship, which if you saw the movies the droids expressed time and time again to the point where they went into danger. R2D2 often went off with C3P0 saying "what do you mean we have to go get Master Luke? Those guys will send us to the scrap heap" and such.
"TO MICHAEL!"
Let me ask you this: How often have you played GW2? How many times have you played all the characters in GW2? What did you think about GW2's endgame? Did you like playing with the dragon mechanic in GW2 they had for demo? If so, how long did you get to play that... ten minutes?
I doubt you've even laid hands on GW2, yet you're saying "it's probably the best we are going to get" not even demoed it.
I think GW2 will be a good game as well from what I've SEEN and read, but the bottom line is I have yet to actually play it and only can rely on what someone else said for ten minutes at a time in a demo.
When was the last time you or anyone else heard anything from ArenaNet about the progress of GW2? For all you know, they had those small parts ready and working but are now sitting in the labs going "WTF? Why can't we get the rest of this to work with this other stuff properly? I mean, the demo stuff is clicking but all these other things aren't."
We simply have no idea what's going on, what works and what doesn't yet you say "GW2 will be the best." That's pretty amazing.
"TO MICHAEL!"
The trouble is that alot of folks are looking for AAA big buck development with the freedom and creativity of an indie production... and it's impossible to explain to them why this is such a rare animal, especially while they buy the latest derivative unambitious game based on a big IP.
It's funny, because you could proabably get them to agree with you if this was music we were discussing, but they seem blind to it when it come to games. SWTOR for example really is just the Justin Bieber of MMORPGs.
No support (with tolerance and money) for grass roots development = dominance of the 'suits'.
I am excited for GW2 on a masive scale and agree based on whats on paper and what we have seen it looks amazing.
Poppinjay is right here though.