I honestly dont see anything wrong with the analogy I used to show what the average person would or would not class as innovative. I Actually I didnt try to change the definition at all, infact I never even listed the definition Snaylor47 did and I just requoted it as is. You are trying to shoehorn things that you think are different to fit the definition but enough about that.
I have nothing against SWTOR. I own the game I even pre-ordered it back in july and I am from the red zone, however I am not currently playing nor do I intend to at this time. What irks me in this instance is the lead developer has taken time to try and convince people the game is innovative when it really is not all the while there are far bigger issues he should perhaps address that are being brought up by those players who would actually like to keep subscribing and playing who could really not care less if the game is innovative or not.
I personally don't care if a game is innovative or not, and IMO overall the game is not, that's not to say features within aren't. That doesn't make the entire game innovative, the premise of the overall game is a straight forward WOW-like.
I just get sick of reading people misuse that word over and over again. It's been going on for months. When I see people saying there's nothing innovative in TOR, I can't help but feel these people are simply ignorant of the actual meaning of innovation. Nothing "new" doesn't mean no innovation, TOR really doesn't do anything new, they've only taken different approaches to old systems and features.
Edit: to add, your opinion of TOR shouldn't matter, you could hate it with a passion for all I care, wouldn't change whether you have a solid point to make or not, which goes for the opposite as well.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
The thing most people don't get is that you can have small, very minor innovations and huge, world changing ones.
Being able to holocall to join a group conversation is small. Fully voiced story and quests is huge. As a whole the game sticks very close to the WoW themepark model.This overshadows the entire game and drowns any innovations in a sea of features either "to be added" or simply done very bad to mediocre.
"You CAN'T buy ships for RL money." - MaxBacon
"classification of games into MMOs is not by rational reasoning" - nariusseldon
Who cares? If you like TOR, play it. If you don't like it, don't play it. Why do people go so crazy about "innovation" and whether or not a game is "innovative" or not?
Because the GAME DIRECTOR (you know, person in charge of the direction of the game) SERIOUSLY thinks his game is innovative? If I made a movie called Perry Hatter. And it was about a group of witches at a school. And tell you that I'm innovative, what would you think?
Seriously.
I'm trying to give this game EVERY benefit of the doubt but silly stuff like this...
He also stated (before) that FPS issues were only like 5%.... well 5% turned out to be about 10 threads of over 1000 posts on the official forums. So yea, 5%.
I ask 2 things of my games: 1) Don't lie to me, I'm not an idiot. 2) If you see a problem, fix it. Fix it right. Fix it the first time. AND BY GOD TEST IT BEFORE LETTING IT GO LIVE.
The game is innovative. People just don't understand what that word means anymore. The definition is already given in the thread and if you believe SWTOR has no new methods then you are the silly one.
Yeah it's soooo inovative that many are citing "same ol' same ol' mechanics" or "it's WoW in 2008 with less polish."
There is only one aspect of innovation, and thats the immersion of class quests. Everything else bout every MMO has and the format and style is the same.
Innovative.... lol
Questing, companions, flashpoints and even crafting all include new methods. The game is innovative, you just have to look deeper.
Who cares? If you like TOR, play it. If you don't like it, don't play it. Why do people go so crazy about "innovation" and whether or not a game is "innovative" or not?
Because the GAME DIRECTOR (you know, person in charge of the direction of the game) SERIOUSLY thinks his game is innovative? If I made a movie called Perry Hatter. And it was about a group of witches at a school. And tell you that I'm innovative, what would you think?
Seriously.
I'm trying to give this game EVERY benefit of the doubt but silly stuff like this...
He also stated (before) that FPS issues were only like 5%.... well 5% turned out to be about 10 threads of over 1000 posts on the official forums. So yea, 5%.
I ask 2 things of my games: 1) Don't lie to me, I'm not an idiot. 2) If you see a problem, fix it. Fix it right. Fix it the first time. AND BY GOD TEST IT BEFORE LETTING IT GO LIVE.
The game is innovative. People just don't understand what that word means anymore. The definition is already given in the thread and if you believe SWTOR has no new methods then you are the silly one.
Yeah it's soooo inovative that many are citing "same ol' same ol' mechanics" or "it's WoW in 2008 with less polish."
There is only one aspect of innovation, and thats the immersion of class quests. Everything else bout every MMO has and the format and style is the same.
Innovative.... lol
Questing, companions, flashpoints and even crafting all include new methods. The game is innovative, you just have to look deeper.
There is a difference between the statements "This game is innovative" and "This game contains innovations". No one in their right mind would ever claim that SWTOR does not contain any innovations; however, the weighted ratio of innovations and copying, heavily goes towards the copying side, which is precisely what "This game is not innovative" means.
Questing, companions, flashpoints and even crafting all include new methods. The game is innovative, you just have to look deeper.
Erm did I blink and miss something here?
Questing they had Voice acting other then that it has 0 innovation (voice acting has been used before just not on this scale). Rather then rat tails it is robot memory chips you gather. The bonus system is not original just not widely used. And what does it do: "Kill 50 mobs, then a boss". WOW never had a quest to kill mobs or a boss before.
Companions...Really? Nothing like Hero’s in Guild Wars? Except in Guild Wars you had far more, better skill and attribute variation and ability to change it. They added the ability to send them off to 'slice' things and return with goods. This tiny detail (no graphics, textures, voice acting, dialogue, skill, variation needed) I will concede to them, I have not seen it before. Well done BW.
Flashpoints: They are more buggy then almost any MMO (recent) MMO I have played at launch. They are quest hubbed altogether (did WoW do I raid finder hub thing? I don’t play it so info would be good here) which makes them even less interesting and 'tacked' on. They present mildly interesting story lines, but then MANY MMO's have interesting instances with storyline in them. You can enter with 4 people only as well.
Crafting: Well the innovation would be having almost no crafting aspect in the game and nerfing what little crafting there is in recent patches. Wait you can get a companion to do it for you, this is different and frees you up to care even less about crafting. Different yes but again a very small part of the game.
So I can agree there are some minor differences between this MMO and others it is not identical. But innovative it has to be one of the worst out there. I thought RIFT would have the 'worst innovation' crown for years to come. Proves I was very wrong, EA/BW look like they are going keep it for a while to come. This the real SWTOR legacy.
I am disappointed with some of the things BW has done and will probably vent them here some day soon, but SWTOR definitely has things that we haven't seen before:
Solo-able (mostly) class quest chains from level 1 to max. There's variations that you can take, different stances/perspectives you can follow. I've gone through the same set (JK) 2x so far and liked it both times. There's no way you can remember it all - it's like watching a long, interactive movie where you get to influence the lead role. It will take more than 2 runs for me to get worn out on it and there's seven others I haven't looked much at yet. MMO'ers in general like to repeat content anyways.
interactions with our "pets" (we currently get 6 of them). All have personalities, talk and are fully gearable/controllable and otherwise are partially customizable. My Kira wears a bikini (with heavy armor mods) and she is damn hot (and calls me "master" when we aren't breaking the rules by making out).
We've seen Voice Acting in MMOs before - AoC, EQ2, Wow a little - but nowhere near the scale that SWTOR has used. Many of the voice actors are very experienced, very well regarded in their field with several having appeared and/or voiced in many TV shows.
Huttball. It's based on WSG but it has numerous additions which make it a new and completely different experience (not necessarily better, but definitely innovative).
Guard/Taunt/Tanking uses in PVP.
Datacrons. While AC1 and other games have had some platform jumps, the sorts of things that you have to do to get these are not present in other MMOs that i know of.
Space combat. It's new for an MMO, right?
Lightsaber reactive animations. When my jedi gets shot at or swung at, he often blocks the attack in an animation. Other MMOs have done similar things but never as well.
This is off the top of my head. Obviously, if you're just looking for things you have seen before the list is going to go on forever. Even if I was comparing Aliens (the movie) with Terminator 2, I could rattle off a long list of similarities - but both of them were considered ground-breaking in their day.
"So, I don't know, it's just the way it is, but I don't see us as not being innovative. We're actually a lot more innovative within the MMO space than comparable games in other spaces like the first-person genre, the action genre - games like that." -James Ohlen
So his defense against how little they have done to move us past this sticky point in this genre is too say 'we aren't as bad as those other guys in that other genre!!'.
I am disappointed with some of the things BW has done and will probably vent them here some day soon, but SWTOR definitely has things that we haven't seen before:
(of a product, idea, etc.) Featuring new methods; advanced and original
So by the strict defineition SWTOR is EXTREAMLY innovative.
Thanks for backing me up. The Key words there are: NEW, ADVANCED & ORIGINAL not one of which actually applies to SWTOR. If you want to debate the word "ADVANCED" SWTOR has not made enough changes to any of the systems they have taken from other games to call them advanced they are refined not advanced.
In·no·va·tion
[in-uh-vey-shuhn]
1.
something new or different introduced: numerous innovations in the high-school curriculum.
2.
the act of innovating; introduction of new things or methods.
Every year General Motors Holden will release a new version of their 4 door family car/cars. The new models will be almost the same as the previous ones but with some minor changes making them different. Now would you call that innovation or label it innovative ?No you wouldn't.
I don't know that much about cars.
Key word is "Featureing New Methods" SWTOR story and VO combined is a new method to story telling in MMOs. SWTOR has a new MEDTHOD to crafting.
I havent played TOR but i heard that you can have your pets craft for you. is this correct? if so that has to be the worst crafting system ever. to me its just a legal bot. imo thats not inovation. thats laziness
(of a product, idea, etc.) Featuring new methods; advanced and original
So by the strict defineition SWTOR is EXTREAMLY innovative.
Thanks for backing me up. The Key words there are: NEW, ADVANCED & ORIGINAL not one of which actually applies to SWTOR. If you want to debate the word "ADVANCED" SWTOR has not made enough changes to any of the systems they have taken from other games to call them advanced they are refined not advanced.
In·no·va·tion
[in-uh-vey-shuhn]
1.
something new or different introduced: numerous innovations in the high-school curriculum.
2.
the act of innovating; introduction of new things or methods.
Every year General Motors Holden will release a new version of their 4 door family car/cars. The new models will be almost the same as the previous ones but with some minor changes making them different. Now would you call that innovation or label it innovative ?No you wouldn't.
I don't know that much about cars.
Key word is "Featureing New Methods" SWTOR story and VO combined is a new method to story telling in MMOs. SWTOR has a new MEDTHOD to crafting.
I havent played TOR but i heard that you can have your pets craft for you. is this correct? if so that has to be the worst crafting system ever. to me its just a legal bot. imo thats not inovation. thats laziness
Ever play EvE?
Its a bit like that. You gather materials via missions or the world then you send your companion out to craft which takes anywhere from a few minutes to a couple of hours to craft an item.
I havent played TOR but i heard that you can have your pets craft for you. is this correct? if so that has to be the worst crafting system ever. to me its just a legal bot. imo thats not inovation. thats laziness
Yeah it's true, but it's not as terrible as you think. You have to "command" them to do each crafting task. So you can't just say "gather stuff all day" you have to actually send them out on each gather mission.
I don't think it's incredibly innovative, because crafting is essentially the same, but it's not really game-breaking either.
Voice acting, just used to a great extent, does not qualify as innovative. It's just a nice "AAA" feature, that's it.
This is not to say that voice acting can't be part of an innovative feature. For example...Bastion. It has voice acting, but it used it in an innovative manner. Specifically, a narrator constantly narrates your exploits as you play...innovative.
SWTOR though? Voice acting is used in a very traditional manner.
[Quote]"So, I don't know, it's just the way it is, but I don't see us as not being innovative. We're actually a lot more innovative within the MMO space than comparable games in other spaces like the first-person genre, the action genre - games like that." -James Ohlen[/Quote]
But this isnt a first-person or action style game, its a mmorpg. Not mmofps, mmorts, mmoblah blah blah... Compared to EVE and even SWG space combat, its not innovating at all. It was kinda cool the first few, then got boring. Sorry for those that disagree. But it could have been so much more with the 200+ million and several years of polishing.
Voice acting, just used to a great extent, does not qualify as innovative. It's just a nice "AAA" feature, that's it.
This is not to say that voice acting can't be part of an innovative feature. For example...Bastion. It has voice acting, but it used it in an innovative manner. Specifically, a narrator constantly narrates your exploits as you play...innovative.
SWTOR though? Voice acting is used in a very traditional manner.
You agreeing with the guy about the EQ comparison is like someone else saying GW2 DEs are not innovative because Rift and WAR already did them. You and I both know that's not an accurate statement, nor was the EQ2 comparison. This all goes back to what innovation actually means. It doesn't just mean something is brand new and never done before.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
All in all this is the most innovative MMO out right now.
The mixture of VO and Story to the MMO genre is innovative as is the Sandbox/themepark hybred of AA or the combat and DE system of GW2 is.
-SNIP-
Please look up the definition of innovation and then repost.
in·no·va·tive/?in??v?tiv/
Adjective:
(of a product, idea, etc.) Featuring new methods; advanced and original
So by the strict defineition SWTOR is EXTREAMLY innovative.
Aside from the voice acting and sending your crew members to craft while you do other things, what exactly is that innovative? I can't lie, I enjoyed leveling up in this game. The story did make the experience better imo. Aside from that, though... I can't think of anything else innovative about this game. So I don't think I would use the word EXTREME.
Voice acting, just used to a great extent, does not qualify as innovative. It's just a nice "AAA" feature, that's it.
This is not to say that voice acting can't be part of an innovative feature. For example...Bastion. It has voice acting, but it used it in an innovative manner. Specifically, a narrator constantly narrates your exploits as you play...innovative.
SWTOR though? Voice acting is used in a very traditional manner.
You agreeing with the guy about the EQ comparison is like someone else saying GW2 DEs are not innovative because Rift and WAR already did them. You and I both know that's not an accurate statement, nor was the EQ2 comparison. This all goes back to what innovation actually means. It doesn't just mean something is brand new and never done before.
Actually no it's not because Rift and War had timed events NOT dynamic. No one's ever done dynamic before, where the NPC's in an area can affect the next stage of an event, and the events change from time to time, they aren't the same ones over and over and over in the same spot. Actually innovative means both something that's never done before and something that's been improved upon, look it up there are two major dictionaries with conflicting definitions. So yeah, the dev could claim it's innovative with the second definition however it's still not new.
Comments
I personally don't care if a game is innovative or not, and IMO overall the game is not, that's not to say features within aren't. That doesn't make the entire game innovative, the premise of the overall game is a straight forward WOW-like.
I just get sick of reading people misuse that word over and over again. It's been going on for months. When I see people saying there's nothing innovative in TOR, I can't help but feel these people are simply ignorant of the actual meaning of innovation. Nothing "new" doesn't mean no innovation, TOR really doesn't do anything new, they've only taken different approaches to old systems and features.
Edit: to add, your opinion of TOR shouldn't matter, you could hate it with a passion for all I care, wouldn't change whether you have a solid point to make or not, which goes for the opposite as well.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
The thing most people don't get is that you can have small, very minor innovations and huge, world changing ones.
Being able to holocall to join a group conversation is small. Fully voiced story and quests is huge. As a whole the game sticks very close to the WoW themepark model.This overshadows the entire game and drowns any innovations in a sea of features either "to be added" or simply done very bad to mediocre.
"classification of games into MMOs is not by rational reasoning" - nariusseldon
Love Minecraft. And check out my Youtube channel OhCanadaGamer
Try a MUD today at http://www.mudconnect.com/+1 for the Holocall feature. I'll give Swtor credit for that one.
Questing, companions, flashpoints and even crafting all include new methods. The game is innovative, you just have to look deeper.
There is a difference between the statements "This game is innovative" and "This game contains innovations". No one in their right mind would ever claim that SWTOR does not contain any innovations; however, the weighted ratio of innovations and copying, heavily goes towards the copying side, which is precisely what "This game is not innovative" means.
Erm did I blink and miss something here?
Questing they had Voice acting other then that it has 0 innovation (voice acting has been used before just not on this scale). Rather then rat tails it is robot memory chips you gather. The bonus system is not original just not widely used. And what does it do: "Kill 50 mobs, then a boss". WOW never had a quest to kill mobs or a boss before.
Companions...Really? Nothing like Hero’s in Guild Wars? Except in Guild Wars you had far more, better skill and attribute variation and ability to change it. They added the ability to send them off to 'slice' things and return with goods. This tiny detail (no graphics, textures, voice acting, dialogue, skill, variation needed) I will concede to them, I have not seen it before. Well done BW.
Flashpoints: They are more buggy then almost any MMO (recent) MMO I have played at launch. They are quest hubbed altogether (did WoW do I raid finder hub thing? I don’t play it so info would be good here) which makes them even less interesting and 'tacked' on. They present mildly interesting story lines, but then MANY MMO's have interesting instances with storyline in them. You can enter with 4 people only as well.
Crafting: Well the innovation would be having almost no crafting aspect in the game and nerfing what little crafting there is in recent patches. Wait you can get a companion to do it for you, this is different and frees you up to care even less about crafting. Different yes but again a very small part of the game.
So I can agree there are some minor differences between this MMO and others it is not identical. But innovative it has to be one of the worst out there. I thought RIFT would have the 'worst innovation' crown for years to come. Proves I was very wrong, EA/BW look like they are going keep it for a while to come. This the real SWTOR legacy.
Healing the world since 2005
Take the Magic: The Gathering 'What Color Are You?' Quiz.
I am disappointed with some of the things BW has done and will probably vent them here some day soon, but SWTOR definitely has things that we haven't seen before:
Solo-able (mostly) class quest chains from level 1 to max. There's variations that you can take, different stances/perspectives you can follow. I've gone through the same set (JK) 2x so far and liked it both times. There's no way you can remember it all - it's like watching a long, interactive movie where you get to influence the lead role. It will take more than 2 runs for me to get worn out on it and there's seven others I haven't looked much at yet. MMO'ers in general like to repeat content anyways.
interactions with our "pets" (we currently get 6 of them). All have personalities, talk and are fully gearable/controllable and otherwise are partially customizable. My Kira wears a bikini (with heavy armor mods) and she is damn hot (and calls me "master" when we aren't breaking the rules by making out).
We've seen Voice Acting in MMOs before - AoC, EQ2, Wow a little - but nowhere near the scale that SWTOR has used. Many of the voice actors are very experienced, very well regarded in their field with several having appeared and/or voiced in many TV shows.
Huttball. It's based on WSG but it has numerous additions which make it a new and completely different experience (not necessarily better, but definitely innovative).
Guard/Taunt/Tanking uses in PVP.
Datacrons. While AC1 and other games have had some platform jumps, the sorts of things that you have to do to get these are not present in other MMOs that i know of.
Space combat. It's new for an MMO, right?
Lightsaber reactive animations. When my jedi gets shot at or swung at, he often blocks the attack in an animation. Other MMOs have done similar things but never as well.
This is off the top of my head. Obviously, if you're just looking for things you have seen before the list is going to go on forever. Even if I was comparing Aliens (the movie) with Terminator 2, I could rattle off a long list of similarities - but both of them were considered ground-breaking in their day.
So his defense against how little they have done to move us past this sticky point in this genre is too say 'we aren't as bad as those other guys in that other genre!!'.
...
picard.jpg
I havent played TOR but i heard that you can have your pets craft for you. is this correct? if so that has to be the worst crafting system ever. to me its just a legal bot. imo thats not inovation. thats laziness
Everquest II and DDO have voice acting.. new my ass
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OJcoWP2QHF4
for example
Ever play EvE?
Its a bit like that. You gather materials via missions or the world then you send your companion out to craft which takes anywhere from a few minutes to a couple of hours to craft an item.
I don't care about innovation I care about fun.
Yeah it's true, but it's not as terrible as you think. You have to "command" them to do each crafting task. So you can't just say "gather stuff all day" you have to actually send them out on each gather mission.
I don't think it's incredibly innovative, because crafting is essentially the same, but it's not really game-breaking either.
Are you team Azeroth, team Tyria, or team Jacob?
In the way/scale that its implemented it is pretty new.
Thats like saying the combat TSW and GW2 have isn't new becaue Vindictus has done skill based combat.
I don't care about innovation I care about fun.
I agree.
Voice acting, just used to a great extent, does not qualify as innovative. It's just a nice "AAA" feature, that's it.
This is not to say that voice acting can't be part of an innovative feature. For example...Bastion. It has voice acting, but it used it in an innovative manner. Specifically, a narrator constantly narrates your exploits as you play...innovative.
SWTOR though? Voice acting is used in a very traditional manner.
Are you team Azeroth, team Tyria, or team Jacob?
[Quote]"So, I don't know, it's just the way it is, but I don't see us as not being innovative. We're actually a lot more innovative within the MMO space than comparable games in other spaces like the first-person genre, the action genre - games like that." -James Ohlen[/Quote]
But this isnt a first-person or action style game, its a mmorpg. Not mmofps, mmorts, mmoblah blah blah... Compared to EVE and even SWG space combat, its not innovating at all. It was kinda cool the first few, then got boring. Sorry for those that disagree. But it could have been so much more with the 200+ million and several years of polishing.
I don't think that "having skill-based combat" is innovative in and of itself.
But wouldn't cross-profession combos be innovative?
Are you team Azeroth, team Tyria, or team Jacob?
and UO before that, and it's true so what is your point? it is not new
if you take something that exists but go nuts on it, makes it bigger.. not "a new way"
if I make a pie made out of butterflies and you go ahead and make 10 pies with butterflies.. that does not make it "new"
about "not being innovative"
just look at those textures:
2011 vs 2003
http://imageshack.us/f/853/1326346135153.jpg/
LOL where's the like button on this thing?
You agreeing with the guy about the EQ comparison is like someone else saying GW2 DEs are not innovative because Rift and WAR already did them. You and I both know that's not an accurate statement, nor was the EQ2 comparison. This all goes back to what innovation actually means. It doesn't just mean something is brand new and never done before.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
As someone who is playing on a four year old computer, Awesome.
I don't care about innovation I care about fun.
Aside from the voice acting and sending your crew members to craft while you do other things, what exactly is that innovative? I can't lie, I enjoyed leveling up in this game. The story did make the experience better imo. Aside from that, though... I can't think of anything else innovative about this game. So I don't think I would use the word EXTREME.
Actually no it's not because Rift and War had timed events NOT dynamic. No one's ever done dynamic before, where the NPC's in an area can affect the next stage of an event, and the events change from time to time, they aren't the same ones over and over and over in the same spot. Actually innovative means both something that's never done before and something that's been improved upon, look it up there are two major dictionaries with conflicting definitions. So yeah, the dev could claim it's innovative with the second definition however it's still not new.
Textures are the "she's got a really great personality" of the MMO industry.