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Why do we applaud such weak innovation?
PioneerStew
Member Posts: 874
I will go through the list over the last ten years: -
- I think that the first mmo with zone events and shared kills was Warhammer.
- I believe that WOW introduced dungeon finder and most tools that turn a world into a lobby.
- The first mmo to have a deep and immersive story with excessive voice acting and cut scenes was SWTOR.
- The first game to create a real purpose for skills and truly interesting dungeons was DDO- strangely this positive innovation was ignored in the search for easymodes.
- The first mmo to take ! and turn them into heart shaped symbols was GW2. Clap.... clap.
- The first mmo to take an outmoded 80's platformer design and turn it into trivial distractions in an otherwise tedious game was GW2. Remember this game was applauded for its innovation.....
- What was the first mmo with action combat? Probably Chronicles of Spellborn? I mean you had to dodge a static coloured circle.
Anyway, my point is that the innovation is insubstantial. I would argue that it is baby steps, but most other industries do not take baby steps, they stride forward. I would like to see something truly different.
Do you think that the mmo industry has made sufficient innovations over the last decade? Or should we have seen something truly new and innovative by now?
Comments
It seems you've never played anything pre-WOW.
That aside, there has been constant innovation for the past fifteen years, however it is a safe bet that you'll dismiss almost every change given with one or more of the following:
Right?
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 said the last ten years for a reason, as that was when wow was released. I see you do not make a single worthwhile point in your post other than to dismiss the OP with your own preconceptions.
Hard to take you serious when you make a list and load a bunch of your own bias onto one of the games.
I'm not looking for a game to replace my life or have my wildest fantasy fulfilled. I play a game to have fun. It doesn't have to be a totally unique experience with every new game.
I think a better question would be why do some gamers have totally unrealistic expectations when it comes to mmos. If every mmo "fails" to live up to what you think it could be....do you really think it's them and not you ?
However all in all you are correct innovation has been very slack but you have missed out on several innovations from games like FFXI and Vanguard as examples.To this day NOBODY has a language translator yet FFXI a game released over 10 years ago and for the console has one.
Personally i do not applaud the current flooding of the market with very superficial cheap looking games.I either see the typical linear hand holding design and in MANY cases VERY low poly art and graphics/textures.
I do NOT see a positive for this genre,nobody is putting in the effort i would expect to see.I understand not everyone has a big budget,matter of fact there are VERY few who do but a real outgoing developer COULD get a large financial backing if their concepts were good enough.Instead devs aim for shallow concepts and cheap game design in the hopes of making it rich with little investment.We have gone further into the deep end with these same shallow devs now asking for free handouts,i expect nothing from these type of developers.
Instead we get a dev like Anet putting a spin on words trying to make the same old sound amazing and new,well it doesn't fool me one bit.Ideas like "Living Story" "Dynamic Content" are just a spin on words they are NOTHING innovative or new to gaming just using a different terminology to MARKET a product in a different way,sort of like using the term FREE to play when it really is not FREE.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
1) Most innovation actually doesn't get applauded, and you've demonstrated you're no different in this regards. Out of all the things GW2 did differently, you chose to only mention hearts (which were added because players complained about not having enough indicators about where to go / what to do), and jumping puzzles. Neither of which were the main reason that game was received so highly within the industry.
2) Most innovation actually does come in 'baby steps'. It's extremely rare to see a huge innovation 'leap' or 'stride' without being accompanied by new technology or genre. Can you give examples of what you believe to be the last big innovative leap in games? in mmos? in books? in movies? in music? I think you're overexaggerating just how many industries truly innovate in strides.
3) The mmo industry has made some significant innovations over the last decade. For the better? well that's the debatable part. But if you were to take the games today, and do a side-by-side comparison over a game released 10 years ago, you'd see some differences.
The one big thing you need to keep inmind when talking about innovation amongst MMOs, is that MMOs have a much LONGER development cycle than other forms of media. It's getting slightly shorter, but 10 years ago it was fairly common for an MMO to take ~7-8 years to come out. That's nearly a decade PER game. It's unrealistic to expect fast / massive innovation with a turnaround rate that slow.
Anarchy Online & City of Heroes innovated a lot of then dubbed 'quality of life' features that we see 'innovating' the market since their release. But that was strong innovation that's been hashed out to us ever since.
We're stuck in MMORPG's 2nd generation. Hardware & development can't move pass it.
Just enjoy what we got I guess.
a yo ho ho
In answer to no. 2, since we are talking about computers I will simply refer you to Moore's Law.
We don't need new innovation. The existing systems and mechanics are good enough. Innovation isn't what's wrong with this genre.
Give an example of other genre, that made huge innovations over the last few years and list those innovations.
Innovations are, where innovations are needed.
The reason why so many indie developers fail is not because of small funds, but because of trying to make a boat fly.
I have already answered this with Moore's Law if you read the above posts.
Except that he's right...
If you want innovation, there's plenty of innovation out there, even if you restrict to the last ten years. For example, try Uncharted Waters Online. See if you can find any major mechanics that are not innovative. If you think you've found one, that probably just means that you don't understand how it works in UWO and are trying to shoehorn it into being like something else that it's not.
Guild Wars 1 and 2 both introduced a lot of cool stuff, as ArenaNet is one of the few game studios that will build a lot of grouping content around trying to make it easy for practical to get groups. In GW1, the approach was to let you fill out your group with henchmen and later heroes. In GW2, you had auto-grouping for dynamic events, and having combat designed such that you really just needed to get 5 people for a dungeon group rather than having to track down particular classes.
Guild Wars 1 introduced hard mode and I think they were the first MMO to do it. That's a huge deal. I'm not sure if GW1 was the first MMO with the achievement system that now seems to be ubiquitous, but they had it. Guild Wars 1 also brought a system of, you get to the cap fast and then can just go play the game and have fun. To this day, that's unique or nearly so among MMOs. It also brought map travel.
Guild Wars 2, meanwhile, brought dynamic events to the game. Other games had public quests, but GW2 was the first to largely build a world around it, rather than having a few public quests off in a corner for people to ignore.
Moore's Law only helps for things that are limited by computational power, not by other things. Analogous scaling in memory and storage helps with things limited by memory capacity or bandwidth or storage capacity. But few things in MMORPGs other than graphics were limited by any of those a decade ago. And graphics in modern games do look a lot better than ten years ago.
If the only barrier to doing something ten years ago was programmer cleverness, that barrier probably hasn't gone away. Human intelligence doesn't scale with Moore's Law.
I wasn't talking about it in reference to mmo's. I was talking about an industry that has made strides forward in the last ten years. If you want others then just look at almost any technological industry.
He's not having a discussion, he's picking a fight...
Today's CPUs mostly do about the same things as CPUs from ten years ago, but just do it faster and perhaps while using less power. Or do you regard AVX as something revolutionary and not a straightforward extension of SSE?
We can all throw very specific aconyms around, but it does not an argument win. Did you have a smart phone capable of half of what todays smartphones can do at £20 a month ten years ago? The answer is no.
1. Indy companies can innovate and do things drastically different, but it is hard to catch-on when if your innovations are deep in the game. I´ve played a few indy games that had a lot of cool features, but they never went anywhere because everywhere you looked, they were getting slammed for crappy graphics and stuff like that
2. Big companies can´t drastically innovate a MMORPG because they cost so much money and nobody is going to foot a $300M budget on a gamble. Madden 45 will earn nearly the same as Madden 44. It is just hard for big companies, especially publicly traded ones to make a gamble on something huge.
But I do think you are discounting the innovation that goes on within AAA titles as they age. Some of the tech involved with scaling raids and/or forming groups has revolutionized gameplay. When WOW launched, you literally had to stand in your own capital city spamming to find a group to do a 5 man. Now you can queue for raids that scale to you size, join raids with people not even on your server. While you may not like those changes, you can´t say they aren´t innovative.
Lead developer of Holdpoint Online a PvE-only sandbox MMORPG. www.holdpoint-online.com Launching July, 2015
So OP... in an MMO context what would you consider "truly different"?
I can't help but look at your cherry-picked list and think that maybe it's just your attitude and mood that're making you ignore the obvious incremental advances in the games you use as your negative examples...
... but I could be wrong. So please give us an example of a feature you would consider "truly different" in an MMO.
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?”
― CD PROJEKT RED
In the same way that I cannot design cars, I cannot design mmo's.
However, I can design buildings and the use of pre-fabricated pods in hotel and flat design allows you to build them vastly more cheaply and quickly, you just truck them in and get rid of all the wet or hot trades on site and most of the specialists.
Just as I would not expect an mmo developer to build my building, I would not pretend to be a designer of mmos.
Would you consider cheaper and faster an innovation ? Cause in my eyes, hotel rooms haven't changed much in over 30 years.
Here is what I would like to see in an MMO:
1) open game world, no lobbies, arenas, BG's, instances. NONE.
2) no limits to who I can guild, party, chat with. Allow for game design and mechanics to determine how players align, by the players own choosing.
3) difficult, game play. not over the top hardcore mode crazy, but if I die, make it HURT... just not to the point where I want to quit. some of us have lives, families or tv shows to watch too.
4) difficult gameplay = PvP. WELL done, thought out PvP...also allow servers for the carebears. that way they can STFU and all hold hands and be friends in candyland together.
5) decent PvP and decent PvE all in one game....YES it can be done. it aint hard. L2 had decent pve and pvp.
6) themepark elemts are ok, as long as sandpark elements exist as well.
7) piss off with the hand holding.
whats the best/nicest hotel you ever stayed at, lol.