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Gameplay first, graphics later.
Abuz0r
Member UncommonPosts: 550
Every dev is in some stupid contest to make the lushest most beautiful gaming world with the prettiest graphics ever.
NOBODY CARES. All amazing graphics do is make people cry about lag or how they can't play on such and such computer.
I don't want to hear fantasy world music or the leaves of grass blowing in the wind, I want fun gameplay and unique items.
Believe it or not, what I have listed below rules out 99% of mmos within 10 minutes of logging on. Devs you should have a look at these things as they are subtly noticed by everyone.
My qualities I search for in an MMO:
1) Ability to jump over and on to objects. I immediately quit games where jumping is basically an emote.
2) Directional combat, must be facing your opponent, ability to stop attacking. If I'm running away and I'm still hitting the mob because it's in proximity, it just feels stupid. Wow is really good at this, in Aion, you would at least turn to face your opponent if you attacked facing the wrong direction.
3) Non-instantaneous respawns. When mobs respawn instantly or within 3 seconds of me killing them, I close the game.
4) Professions that you can participate in from starter levels. When you look at a games professions and how many unique options there are, it tells you a little about how much time was put into the game. For example, if theres 3 different sets of armor that would all be useful to a warrior, depending on how he wanted to play. Cooking fishing crafting landscaping shoemaking streetsweeping stormchasing.... Runescape believe it or not did an amazing job with professions, I played that years ago, and I spent more time doing professions than combat.
5) Clutter, if the games don't have clutter at early levels, you can bet it's going to get worse at higher levels, I don't care how amazingly detailed the clutter is, but I don't want the game looks like zelda either.
6) Non-epic music, I don't want to play a fairy tale and I'd say that goes for most people. Sure music is fine, but make it more of a back ground thing. Some more modern choices too, Aion asmodian music was phenomenal, Path of Exile is great too. I don't want to hear some amazing epic adventure song every time I walk into a city or town, Lineage 2 shame on you on this one.
7) Dippy SoundFX. When I take a quest, I don't need a sound effect, instead I would prefer a visual "You have taken this quest" When I complete a quest, I don't want it to sound like I won on a slot machine at Las Vegas. Lineage 2 had good sound effects, they took their time to actually voice act some of them.
8) 40/60 grind to quest ratio. I can actually pick up on this way before level 10. If all I've done is walk talk and kill the assigned mobs and I'm level 7, I'll probably log out. The reliance on quests develops a dependency later in game. There needs to be a percentage of grind happening on the mobs, and the loot you may come across from the mobs needs to also lead to other avenues of the game.
9) Darker, grimmer environment, again this goes back to the fairytale thing. I don't need a MMO version of Mario or Zelda. I don't want all the npcs smiling at me and happy all the time, after all this game is about killing things. If the game doesn't feel like it's serious, it just doesn't stick well.
10) Item uniqueness. If I look around and every level 30 warrior has exactly the same gear equipped (at least armor) I know the devs did a quickie game and didn't put any thought into depth. Depth to me means rolled items like on Diablo or Helbreath. Every item that drops from a monster should have a roll of random attributes assigned to it. Binding the item is fine with me, but when you loot the same items you get from quests which are the same items you get from crafting, I get bored to death.
More on #10. Unique and rolled items rewards grinding, a character should be competitive in basic gear, as in, able to play and join in groups. Someone who wants to go out and grind for better gear should be able to do so. Some people have the desire to craft items, they should be able to craft more competitive gear than can be bought in the store. Rolled items always add a fun level of randomness to the game.
11) Halfway realistic loot. If animals drop gold coins, this is a REALLY bad sign.
12) Multiple starting areas. If there is only 1 leveling path in a game, then I'm only going to play it until I get bored ONCE.
13) PVP. If there's no sign of PvP, or no purpose for PvP, or no factions, ETC what's the point?
If you want to use words like depth, uniqueness, or immersion. At least implement half of the above qualities first.
DID I MISS ANYTHING?
Comments
I endorse this message.
Give me a spectacular and immersive 2d world with stories that draw me in and keep me playing than a steaming pile of monkey crap 3d game with no plot or immersion.
Express your opinion
http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/thread/371172/Poll-Most-hated-MMORPG.html
Yeah .. and it is not about 2D vs 3D. It is about good art vs bad art. Good 2D games can look better than bad 3D ones.
Let's please not turn this into a 2d vs 3d discussion. 2D games can be great if done right, as can 3d games.
The point of my post is to identify the traits that make a game great. Obviously train #1 was jumping, which I've never seen done in a 2D game other than Conquer Online.
In a 2d game it is less of an issue however.
I don't judge a game on their graphics so much as I do their setting, I don't like fantasy games where everything is wonderful and beautiful, except the animals that I have to kill. I'd rather a grim environment.
Environment and graphics, totally different.
And to the guy who responded, NO gameplay is a lot more important than graphics.
Graphics are subject to a persons machine, and can't be enjoyed by everyone, where as gameplay impacts all parties involved. Gameplay is what decides if a MMO lives or dies.
I disagree. There is no need to choose. You have to have both. Dead Space would not be such a great game if not for the aesthetic design, and would be awful done in N64 graphics.
Not all games need expensive graphics, but they have to be good and appropriate. Even simple games like tower defense on a phone should look good even in 2D with small monster moving around.
You can't reasonably say that your priority is fun gameplay rather than graphics or sound, and then put 5, 6, 7, and 9 on your list of what constitutes fun gameplay. Depending on how it's implemented, 1 and 2 may be just graphical things, too.
If you want a game to be 40% grinding and 60% questing as opposed to 30/70 or 50/50, that's fine. But I'll bet you're in a very small minority there.
To the guy criticizing the order of my list, I agree with you, however my list was not in order of importance, it was just a list that I blurted off the top of my head and later came back and added to.
I have made a whole other topic explaining why grinding is important to a game.
Grinding constitutes your reason for staying in the game after you've finished all the content and are waiting for new content. In quest based games your experience is entirely in the hands of the developer.
It's not the order of the points. Order is irrelevant. You're trying to claim that no one cares about graphics, but what's important to you is graphics and various other things. Or various other things and graphics. Either you care about the graphics or you don't. You can't have it both ways.
I said gameplay first, graphics later. I didn't say "Gameplay, not graphics"
When these new games come out, they need to focus on how great the game is for playing. If they want to make graphics they can do it when players are satisfied with the gameplay. You can always make subtle graphical updates. These games which have a 300 million budget and spend 285m on graphics and 15m on gameplay always wonder why they don't make a profit.
Why are we arguing about it? That's obvious.
I said gameplay first, graphics later. I didn't say "Gameplay, not graphics"
When these new games come out, they need to focus on how great the game is for playing. If they want to make graphics they can do it when players are satisfied with the gameplay. You can always make subtle graphical updates. These games which have a 300 million budget and spend 285m on graphics and 15m on gameplay always wonder why they don't make a profit.
Why are we arguing about it? That's obvious.
This is horrible thinking. We can do both now.
There is a huge back catalogue of great gameplay lower graphics games from the 80's, 90's and 00 if your looking..
TSW - AoC - Aion - WOW - EVE - Fallen Earth - Co - Rift - || XNA C# Java Development
Thank you for affirming me. These games are actually still around with active player bases, unlike all these new fails that are all graphics focused that shut down or are ghost towns within a year after release.
A lot of us are looking for rebuilds of these GOOD older games where we can start fresh with our friends.
You missed that most MMO gamers care. A recent example of this is Wizardry Online. Not to say there aren't other aspects people don't find fault with, but the number one most common response on these forums to the game is that the graphics are dated. Many said they simply would not try it because of that. Some said they quit the beta because of that.
If players didn't care, marketing wouldn't care. However, those early screenshots and first experiences in game make a huge difference to the MMO gaming crowd. Day Z, Minecraft and several other indie titles built a core audience outside the MMORPG circles, which allowed them to grow their audience. This can even be seen within a single developer's projects. Haven and Hearth built a cult following, but Salem - by the same developers - was pitched to the MMORPG crowd and it couldn't garner a following to save its life. The hundred or so people that follow it are probably the most it will ever see... unless they once again target circles outside of the ones MMO gamers are in.
If an MMO doesn't have the latest graphics, it has to be pitched outside MMO circles first otherwise it will be torn to shreds and face an uphill battle all the way to release and beyond.
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein
"Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
How are developers supposed to test out their gameplay if the graphics for it aren't in place yet? If your program tries to load graphics assets that aren't there, it probably crashes. If you make placeholder graphical assets, then you've spent time doing that knowing full well that you're going to discard them later. (Sometimes you do that anyway, but you'd rather not overdo it if you can help it.)
Furthermore, the people who make the art assets mostly aren't the same people who implement actual game mechanics. You have some artists working on artwork and some programmers working on game mechanics at the same time. If you ask an artist to go program some new game mechanics, that's unlikely to end well.
You could argue that a game should spend more of its budget on programmers and less on artists. But throwing more programmers at a project as if by brute force doesn't necessarily make the project better. Rather, you spend what it takes in each department to make the game you're trying to make. Or perhaps, the game that your programmers can make, once they try to implement the cool, innovative ideas and discover that they just can't get a lot of them to work acceptably so they have to be cut out.
What you definitely can do is to reduce the budget by spending less on artwork. But that doesn't seem to be what you're looking for.
Usually graphics are built into the engine of the game. Game play comes from design of the game. You can't have one without the other.
If you don't like a company's game design - don't play it. It is that simple. Don't like it, don't play it - move on. There doesn't have to be this gnashing of teeth and extraordinary ennui that seems to fill this board.
You test the game with untextured models and blockout environments. Wireframes, even. If the game is fun when everything is a white cube, it'll be even more fun when it looks great afterwards.
One of the biggest mistakes by hobbyist game makers is to start building their zones or art assets first. "Look, we made a town! Look at our cool zone!" Yeah, that's great. It's just going to get thrown out once they realize that their game mechanics don't fit within the worldspace or function within the arbitrary confines they prematurely created.
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein
"Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
I disagree with 9. I want every one happy and a color a world of unicorn barf colors. Also I feel like this is a spritual cousin of my thread.
You don't care. I don't care as well.
But millions of other people do. They buy games cause they've seen a pretty trailer with flashy combat animations.
I maintain this List of Sandbox MMORPGs. Please post or send PM for corrections and suggestions.
Heads up some one heard you. :P
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1784263141/topia-online?ref=live
The first thing I made with tessellation was a sphere. It was completely white, on a completely black background. That made it indistinguishable from a circle. If you draw white boxes on top of other white boxes on top of other white boxes, how do you tell where one box ends and another starts?
Now, you don't have to build all of a game's artwork before you can do anything else. Of course not. But there many situations where you have to make both underlying game mechanics and graphics for them. And you need to make them match each other, for which it is tremendously helpful if you have the option of changing either one to match the other.
When I wanted to test collision detection between a cylinder and an ellisoid, I needed to be able to draw both an cylinder and an ellipsoid. I didn't need to draw a thousand cylinders or a thousand ellipsoids. Though just one of each wouldn't do, as I needed to draw a bunch of different ellipsoids to help figure out why where the game thought an ellipsoid was for physics purposes didn't match where it thought the ellipsoid was for graphics purposes.
Great opinion piece. I totally don't agree with most of it, but that's why they are opinions.
I like graphics - they don't have to be top notch, but I don't want to go back to playing 2D top-down MUDs....
Also - could care less about PvP.
I care.
I imagine there are those like me.
So you missed an entire segment of the gaming population who doesn't think it is an either/or situation. Or a this first or that first.
It is the 21st century - If I don't get the flying hover car I was promised as a child, the very least I'm owed is a video game with both good gameplay and graphics. It is entirely possible to build a good game with good graphics concurrently.
There are plenty of great games out there with crappy graphics; if that's your thing, go play a classic.
Yeh ...
There is no need to choose. And graphics add atmosphere to a game.
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein
"Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
On the first part, in other words, in order to do the testing, you do have to have some sort of graphics available. Not necessarily textures, but something.
As for the second part, well then, maybe I'm doing it wrong. I take an extremely unusual approach to textures, though, as I don't have any saved on the hard drive. Everything is generated on the processor, so creating the texture for a new object is typically about 5 lines of source code--and often much of that is a copy and paste from elsewhere.
Whenever I try to implement something new, it's likely to crash the first time because I forgot to specify some attribute. It's usually pretty easy to fix, I'm getting better at it, and it doesn't lend itself to low-probability crashes that are a major pain to debug. But maybe I am doing it wrong. Do you know an easy fix for that?