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.
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.
whats the best/nicest hotel you ever stayed at, lol.
A serious answer to the question is this. If you have a return on a hotel over 25 years of £25m and the hotel costs £23m to build you will never build it. If it costs £15m to build via newer technology then you will.
I would not choose to stay in one of these hotels unless I was on business, but this is what they are designed for, a comfortable place to stay while on a business trip. It is an entirely different customer base to your boutique in the centre of an historic city. But it is an innovation that allows things to exist that otherwise might not.
Now, I would put this on a par to most F2P models in mmos, and the monetization system is probably the only real advance we have seen in the mmo industry. Sad really but a symptom of the corporate world we live in.
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.
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.
whats the best/nicest hotel you ever stayed at, lol.
How is that relevent ? 30 years ago they had pretty over the top hotels too. Just saying that the way they are built doesn't always show on the surface. They serve their purpose, but nothing really improved. A bed is still a bed, AC do less noise, the TV are bigger. You still have the same alchool in the bar. You now have WiFi in hotels ..
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 ?
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.
This has been done before Asheron call 1... Some indies are close to this.... I'm a gamer who turned Dev because I got tired of some of the games I seen. Now that I see the other side. its not always the devs, but the feed back from players is so bad..
I see stuff from players, you get a ticket, it says your game sucks.. What is the problem sir... Well it crashes, what is your specs, your game just sucks. Mind you this is during Alpha phase even....
I also love the ones, were I get its Alpha but why so many bugs ??? Really you get its Alpha, but expect the game to not have bugs?? If that was the case it would be Open beta or release..
I have seen people on chat , say , tell the devs there is no bugs so they hurry and release, I have seen this many times.. So who's fault is it here??? The devs or the gamers??
I have played games since Atari, games have changed so darn much, its sick..... MMO's same thing, we have so much hand holding, its nearly completes the quest it self.. I personally would like to see older games come back like Asheron call
My wife bugs me to make a Modern AC3, something like it, but with better graphics, and better combat, but the same style with no hand holding, the patron , vassels, she loved that...
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 ?
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.
This has been done before Asheron call 1... Some indies are close to this.... I'm a gamer who turned Dev because I got tired of some of the games I seen. Now that I see the other side. its not always the devs, but the feed back from players is so bad..
I see stuff from players, you get a ticket, it says your game sucks.. What is the problem sir... Well it crashes, what is your specs, your game just sucks. Mind you this is during Alpha phase even....
I also love the ones, were I get its Alpha but why so many bugs ??? Really you get its Alpha, but expect the game to not have bugs?? If that was the case it would be Open beta or release..
I have seen people on chat , say , tell the devs there is no bugs so they hurry and release, I have seen this many times.. So who's fault is it here??? The devs or the gamers??
I have played games since Atari, games have changed so darn much, its sick..... MMO's same thing, we have so much hand holding, its nearly completes the quest it self.. I personally would like to see older games come back like Asheron call
My wife bugs me to make a Modern AC3, something like it, but with better graphics, and better combat, but the same style with no hand holding, the patron , vassels, she loved that...
This was never a problem when alpha/ beta players new they were testing an unfinished product. But now developers sell access...
I am not saying that you do, but I think that created the shift in the consumer mindset.
Guild Wars 2 actually is one of the most innovating MMOs from the last couple of years. Dynamic events that make the world feel more alive and evolving, downscaling that allows to visit any level area without one hitting everything, Living Story instead of a gear treadmill, NO P2P, World vs World (very few games have this), PvP that could one day become an esport.
Originally posted by toksiks Guild Wars 2 actually is one of the most innovating MMOs from the last couple of years. Dynamic events that make the world feel more alive and evolving, downscaling that allows to visit any level area without one hitting everything, Living Story instead of a gear treadmill, NO P2P, World vs World (very few games have this), PvP that could one day become an esport.
I would say that GW1 was pretty innovative. I think that GW2 threw out a lot of that innovation unfortunately. I know that people will argue that some of the elements you have listed above are innovative, but many of them are derivative or at best a slap of pain over age old mechanics.
EDIT: 'pain' was a typo for 'paint' but I'm leaving it.
Because a game first has to be enjoyable to play. Doing things differently just for the sake of innovation doesn't mean that it will be so. Also imo there is plently of innovation if you care to see it. There is not a single MMO out that doesn't have a unique game system or style of play.
Originally posted by toksiks Guild Wars 2 actually is one of the most innovating MMOs from the last couple of years. Dynamic events that make the world feel more alive and evolving, downscaling that allows to visit any level area without one hitting everything, Living Story instead of a gear treadmill, NO P2P, World vs World (very few games have this), PvP that could one day become an esport.
I would say that GW1 was pretty innovative.
I wouldn't. It wasn't even an MMO really, just a COOP online RPG. Not innovative at all.
Originally posted by toksiks Guild Wars 2 actually is one of the most innovating MMOs from the last couple of years. Dynamic events that make the world feel more alive and evolving, downscaling that allows to visit any level area without one hitting everything, Living Story instead of a gear treadmill, NO P2P, World vs World (very few games have this), PvP that could one day become an esport.
I would partially agree with SOME of this. The dynamic events are where the future of MMOs need to go. The problem is GW2 doesn't put any consequence in its games, and the level scaling makes all the content trivial. It wasn't the first to do level scaling, but its a feature most people hate in RPGs. The living story is, again, useless, because there's no player choice or consequences. It's just a bunch of mini expansions, which isn't innovative. And the WvW was an attempt at a copy of RvR, but failed on numerous levels, from engine to execution. Again not innovative, or even good.
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?
Game companies and publishers follow where the monies goes.
So, no money no talk. It is sad, indeed. At least there are uprising, out of the norm kickstarters to follow.
The possibility of the universe collapsing into a singularity is higher than the birth of a perfect MMORPG.
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?
Not saying that i am not to dissapointed with the evolvement of MMOs.. but other genres stride forward?
In RTS.. the current RTS Starcraft 2 is more or less the same as the first of that genre Dune 2.
In FPS Call of duty 7(or what ever number they now have) is more or less the same as Call of Duty 1 or Half Life or Wolfenstein.
Well.. other genres don't evolve much either.. it is much more that some new genres, or some games you can not count to any genre come out and are actually innovative.. minecraft come to mind. And create a genre on its own..
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.
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.
Good example actually.
You as a building designer have a unique appreciation of innovation in building design whereas the majority of hotel room guests would neither know nor care less about this particular innovation you can appreciate. They'll like or not like their hotel room stay for totally personal and semi-random reasons. And some of those reasons can even be totally dependent on the mood or attitude of the guest. But the bottom line is that it's just a hotel room to them not all that different from any hotel rooms from 10 years ago.
So you have no idea what went into designing an MMO in a particular way. You just know that you find, to use one of your examples, the use of voice acting in SWTOR "excessive". To you it's just another MMO not all that different from any MMO from 10 years ago.
"Social media gives legions of idiots the right to speak when they once only spoke at a bar after a glass of wine, without harming the community ... but now they have the same right to speak as a Nobel Prize winner. It's the invasion of the idiots”
― Umberto Eco
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?” ― CD PROJEKT RED
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.
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.
Good example actually.
You as a building designer have a unique appreciation of innovation in building design whereas the majority of hotel room guests would neither know nor care less about this particular innovation you can appreciate. They'll like or not like their hotel room stay for totally personal and semi-random reasons. And some of those reasons can even be totally dependent on the mood or attitude of the guest. But the bottom line is that it's just a hotel room to them not all that different from any hotel rooms from 10 years ago.
So you have no idea what went into designing an MMO in a particular way. You just know that you find, to use one of your examples, the use of voice acting in SWTOR "excessive". To you it's just another MMO not all that different from any MMO from 10 years ago.
The difference being that the raison d'etre for these hotels is to make a return on the initial investment over circa 25 years. As I said above, they are not boutiques in the centre of some historic city, they are largely for people on business trips. In order to achieve this the best innovations are those that enable them to be built more quickly and cheaply.
Surely the point of mmo's is to attract and retain players, and to do that you need to provide a reason for those players not to go to the competition. It requires an entirely different response. That is where the innovation in mmo's should be taking us.
Again, as I said above the only real innovation seems to be in the monetization system. So yes, games are treated like my example above, in order to get the best return for the least effort and I would argue that is why so many modern mmo's are bleeding players a few months after launch.
Innovative. I don't think that word means what you think it does. Certainly not in this context.
Innovative does not mean only changes that you (or I) like.
MMOs tend to be about 5 year projects, with many elements nailed down in the first year or so of development. If you are in year four of development, and you decide to redo some basic idea, you are looking at years of redevelopment. And like hotels, their has to be consideration of making a profit on your project, or else your project (and possibly your career) will crater.
Innovation (usually) comes with its costs. Take the 'excessive voice acting' of SWTOR. It was an innovation of sorts, but it brings with it problems. You can be far less agile in your story/writing, when you have to voice everything. No longer can you call up a text editor and redo things on the fly. I personally found that there were main characters that I wouldn't ever play because of the way the character was voiced.
Innovation is wonderful! Innovation is dangerous.
And it may be totally disregarded. Van Gogh sold two paintings while he was alive.
If you are holding out for the perfect game, the only game you play will be the waiting one.
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.
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.
Good example actually.
You as a building designer have a unique appreciation of innovation in building design whereas the majority of hotel room guests would neither know nor care less about this particular innovation you can appreciate. They'll like or not like their hotel room stay for totally personal and semi-random reasons. And some of those reasons can even be totally dependent on the mood or attitude of the guest. But the bottom line is that it's just a hotel room to them not all that different from any hotel rooms from 10 years ago.
So you have no idea what went into designing an MMO in a particular way. You just know that you find, to use one of your examples, the use of voice acting in SWTOR "excessive". To you it's just another MMO not all that different from any MMO from 10 years ago.
The difference being that the raison d'etre for these hotels is to make a return on the initial investment over circa 25 years. As I said above, they are not boutiques in the centre of some historic city, they are largely for people on business trips. In order to achieve this the best innovations are those that enable them to be built more quickly and cheaply.
Surely the point of mmo's is to attract and retain players, and to do that you need to provide a reason for those players not to go to the competition. It requires an entirely different response. That is where the innovation in mmo's should be taking us.
Again, as I said above the only real innovation seems to be in the monetization system. So yes, games are treated like my example above, in order to get the best return for the least effort and I would argue that is why so many modern mmo's are bleeding players a few months after launch.
And my point is that there has been a lot of innovation but you either don't see it or are just not enjoying yourself very much ATM so you are not inclined to see them as innovations. To you they're just "the same old shit"... but it's you, not the MMOs.
"Social media gives legions of idiots the right to speak when they once only spoke at a bar after a glass of wine, without harming the community ... but now they have the same right to speak as a Nobel Prize winner. It's the invasion of the idiots”
― Umberto Eco
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?” ― CD PROJEKT RED
Most people don't look for innovative games, they look for games that can give them an improved experience of something they previously played. Its all over these forums.
UO and SWG players looking for a sandbox that reminds them of their old game
EQ players looking for a new oldschool MMO
DaoC players looking for RvR experiences
WoW players looking for the game that can take them back to the fun they had when playing vanilla, tbc or whatever expansion they liked the most.
The only time they look at something different is when something gets crazy hyped.
Iselin: And the next person who says "but it's a business, they need to make money" can just go fuck yourself.
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.
You are wrong on this. Rift had them before GW2 only in Rift they call them rifts but it is the same thing.
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 ?
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.
Originally posted by Shaigh Most people don't look for innovative games, they look for games that can give them an improved experience of something they previously played. Its all over these forums.
UO and SWG players looking for a sandbox that reminds them of their old game EQ players looking for a new oldschool MMO DaoC players looking for RvR experiences WoW players looking for the game that can take them back to the fun they had when playing vanilla, tbc or whatever expansion they liked the most.
The only time they look at something different is when something gets crazy hyped.
This is sooo true
I played both UO and SWG and THAT is the sort of game i want
Btw ..The first game to create a real purpose for skills and truly interesting dungeons was DDO .. Incorrect, UO was skill based, everyone went for 7 GM skills, they could train skills up and set others to train down while locking certain one's in place.
I haven't seen anything like that since and it was one the THE most social games, along with AO, yet another skill based game, before DDO.SWG was very social as well.
So the DDO for real purpose for skills i'd say is incorrect. For the dungeon's .. now that's right. When i played it anyway, we had a 3 hour dungeon, only 1 had to leave and we stopped multiple times for someone to deal with their baby, me to get coffee (hey, it's important stuff) and other's phone calls.
Nowadays i don't think people have the patience for that though.
I played both UO and SWG and THAT is the sort of game i want
Btw ..The first game to create a real purpose for skills and truly interesting dungeons was DDO .. Incorrect, UO was skill based, everyone went for 7 GM skills, they could train skills up and set others to train down while locking certain one's in place.
I haven't seen anything like that since and it was one the THE most social games, along with AO, yet another skill based game, before DDO.SWG was very social as well.
So the DDO for real purpose for skills i'd say is incorrect. For the dungeon's .. now that's right. When i played it anyway, we had a 3 hour dungeon, only 1 had to leave and we stopped multiple times for someone to deal with their baby, me to get coffee (hey, it's important stuff) and other's phone calls.
Nowadays i don't think people have the patience for that though.
I think this is really the core of the problem. There may be innovation in the mmo-genre, but it all happens within very narrow confinements.
The mmo-genre is not what it ones was. Before the advent of WoW it was much more diverse but after WoW it went through a very narrow bottleneck. The sandboxes where driven into the niche and the themepark genre was narrowed down too.
One could say that the old mmo-genre died and what we have today is the WoW-clone-genre (or the WoW-successor-genre if you want to put it mildly). There was innovation but it all consisted of tinkering around with the WoW-model. For the last decade the developers tried to remake WoW and add some minor changes to it, for example to remake it with the Star Wars franchise and add voiceovers.
It seems to me that a lot of people have lost the ability to think outside the box and imagine that there can be a game that isn't based on linear quest and dungeon grinding.
WoW propelled mmos into the mainstream but it also held back their evolution for a decade. Imagine what the successors of UO and Star Wars Galaxies might have looked like, but unfortunately they where never made.
I never really liked it, but apparently this was what the majority of players wanted for the last decade. Why not stick to a model as long as it sells, although these WoW-successors where never really successful.
But in the recent years the customers started to get bored with the WoW-model and new games became increasingly less successful as you can see with Elder Scrolls Online.
I hope we are going to see more innovation and more variety in the future alongside with a revival of the sandbox genre, although it is hard to predict what Everquest Next will be like or what will come out of these Kickstarter mmos.
There is an article on Slashdot talking about why the cheap T-Mobile phones are so bug ridden and why the free market doesn't reward companies for fixing things like that.
Basically the gist of the article is that things like number of bugs or cr@p you have to deal with isn't easily quantifiable the way a feature list is, so when a developer has to cut some corners, they cut corners on the things that aren't easily quantifiable and focus on the things that are quantifiable. This seems to be part of the reason we get a large feature list with new releases, but bugs tend to run around unsquished for a long time. Consumers will reward producers for giving them a larger quantifiable list of things rather than a smaller list of things that work better.
You could apply this thinking to new games or MMORPGs where consumers will reward producers that provide an easily quantifiable list of things they are familiar with, rather than a large list of things that they aren't familiar with and which can't be easily quantified.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
Based on the OP thread, i think he is just hating on GW2. His points on GW2 are the only ones he sarcastically states as negative. Plus he only stated the wrong points.
Hearts and ! are the same thing, they only made it less tedious and shared between everyone, that is a plus. 80's platform design turned into trivial distractions.... are you talking about jumping puzzles? If so, its ok you dont like them, i personally dislike the crappy rewards after a long and frustratingly fun jumping journey. It was innovation within the genre mmorpg and i still applaud it.
Your other points regarding other games seem OK so my question to you is, why the hate on GW2? If you look at the good things it has you wouldnt be posting this nonsense as a reason to blame weak innovation. Its not a perfect game and id love to see some improvements in some areas, but it has done a lot of things better than most current mmos.
Based on the OP thread, i think he is just hating on GW2. His points on GW2 are the only ones he sarcastically states as negative. Plus he only stated the wrong points.
Hearts and ! are the same thing, they only made it less tedious and shared between everyone, that is a plus. 80's platform design turned into trivial distractions.... are you talking about jumping puzzles? If so, its ok you dont like them, i personally dislike the crappy rewards after a long and frustratingly fun jumping journey. It was innovation within the genre mmorpg and i still applaud it.
Your other points regarding other games seem OK so my question to you is, why the hate on GW2? If you look at the good things it has you wouldnt be posting this nonsense as a reason to blame weak innovation. Its not a perfect game and id love to see some improvements in some areas, but it has done a lot of things better than most current mmos.
There are elements of GW2 that I enjoy. it is a solid casual mmo that is fun to play in small doses.
There are two aspects I dislike, the first is the way it was held up as a shining example of innovation at release where I really saw very little. It is a rather derivative game. The second is this move away from interesting, immersive worlds you can explore and towards being bombarded with trivial distractions and pointless achievements as if we all suffer from ADHD these days.
In fact I would go so far as to say that a lot of the innovation present in GW1 was removed in favour of going for a more generic mmo experience.
Unfortunately a lot of the changes mmo's have gone through are to simply add more fluff at the expense of depth and immersion. But that is personal preference.
To OP: Glad someone else noticed DDO besides me. Seems so few people saw it's unique value. Not sure it's worth anything anymore tho. They went in a totally wrong direction with it. Not the f2p because that's when I joined. It was making those stupid noisy guild airships when what we needed was more dungeons, an open world area, and better char creation. I miss that game but I played it to death.
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A serious answer to the question is this. If you have a return on a hotel over 25 years of £25m and the hotel costs £23m to build you will never build it. If it costs £15m to build via newer technology then you will.
I would not choose to stay in one of these hotels unless I was on business, but this is what they are designed for, a comfortable place to stay while on a business trip. It is an entirely different customer base to your boutique in the centre of an historic city. But it is an innovation that allows things to exist that otherwise might not.
Now, I would put this on a par to most F2P models in mmos, and the monetization system is probably the only real advance we have seen in the mmo industry. Sad really but a symptom of the corporate world we live in.
How is that relevent ? 30 years ago they had pretty over the top hotels too. Just saying that the way they are built doesn't always show on the surface. They serve their purpose, but nothing really improved. A bed is still a bed, AC do less noise, the TV are bigger. You still have the same alchool in the bar. You now have WiFi in hotels ..
I'd say it's minor adjustment.
This has been done before Asheron call 1... Some indies are close to this.... I'm a gamer who turned Dev because I got tired of some of the games I seen. Now that I see the other side. its not always the devs, but the feed back from players is so bad..
I see stuff from players, you get a ticket, it says your game sucks.. What is the problem sir... Well it crashes, what is your specs, your game just sucks. Mind you this is during Alpha phase even....
I also love the ones, were I get its Alpha but why so many bugs ??? Really you get its Alpha, but expect the game to not have bugs?? If that was the case it would be Open beta or release..
I have seen people on chat , say , tell the devs there is no bugs so they hurry and release, I have seen this many times.. So who's fault is it here??? The devs or the gamers??
I have played games since Atari, games have changed so darn much, its sick..... MMO's same thing, we have so much hand holding, its nearly completes the quest it self.. I personally would like to see older games come back like Asheron call
My wife bugs me to make a Modern AC3, something like it, but with better graphics, and better combat, but the same style with no hand holding, the patron , vassels, she loved that...
This was never a problem when alpha/ beta players new they were testing an unfinished product. But now developers sell access...
I am not saying that you do, but I think that created the shift in the consumer mindset.
I would say that GW1 was pretty innovative. I think that GW2 threw out a lot of that innovation unfortunately. I know that people will argue that some of the elements you have listed above are innovative, but many of them are derivative or at best a slap of pain over age old mechanics.
EDIT: 'pain' was a typo for 'paint' but I'm leaving it.
I wouldn't. It wasn't even an MMO really, just a COOP online RPG. Not innovative at all.
I would partially agree with SOME of this. The dynamic events are where the future of MMOs need to go. The problem is GW2 doesn't put any consequence in its games, and the level scaling makes all the content trivial. It wasn't the first to do level scaling, but its a feature most people hate in RPGs. The living story is, again, useless, because there's no player choice or consequences. It's just a bunch of mini expansions, which isn't innovative. And the WvW was an attempt at a copy of RvR, but failed on numerous levels, from engine to execution. Again not innovative, or even good.
As for PvP esports... no. Not the first.
Game companies and publishers follow where the monies goes.
So, no money no talk. It is sad, indeed. At least there are uprising, out of the norm kickstarters to follow.
The possibility of the universe collapsing into a singularity is higher than the birth of a perfect MMORPG.
Not saying that i am not to dissapointed with the evolvement of MMOs.. but other genres stride forward?
In RTS.. the current RTS Starcraft 2 is more or less the same as the first of that genre Dune 2.
In FPS Call of duty 7(or what ever number they now have) is more or less the same as Call of Duty 1 or Half Life or Wolfenstein.
Well.. other genres don't evolve much either.. it is much more that some new genres, or some games you can not count to any genre come out and are actually innovative.. minecraft come to mind. And create a genre on its own..
Good example actually.
You as a building designer have a unique appreciation of innovation in building design whereas the majority of hotel room guests would neither know nor care less about this particular innovation you can appreciate. They'll like or not like their hotel room stay for totally personal and semi-random reasons. And some of those reasons can even be totally dependent on the mood or attitude of the guest. But the bottom line is that it's just a hotel room to them not all that different from any hotel rooms from 10 years ago.
So you have no idea what went into designing an MMO in a particular way. You just know that you find, to use one of your examples, the use of voice acting in SWTOR "excessive". To you it's just another MMO not all that different from any MMO from 10 years ago.
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?”
― CD PROJEKT RED
The difference being that the raison d'etre for these hotels is to make a return on the initial investment over circa 25 years. As I said above, they are not boutiques in the centre of some historic city, they are largely for people on business trips. In order to achieve this the best innovations are those that enable them to be built more quickly and cheaply.
Surely the point of mmo's is to attract and retain players, and to do that you need to provide a reason for those players not to go to the competition. It requires an entirely different response. That is where the innovation in mmo's should be taking us.
Again, as I said above the only real innovation seems to be in the monetization system. So yes, games are treated like my example above, in order to get the best return for the least effort and I would argue that is why so many modern mmo's are bleeding players a few months after launch.
Innovative. I don't think that word means what you think it does. Certainly not in this context.
Innovative does not mean only changes that you (or I) like.
MMOs tend to be about 5 year projects, with many elements nailed down in the first year or so of development. If you are in year four of development, and you decide to redo some basic idea, you are looking at years of redevelopment. And like hotels, their has to be consideration of making a profit on your project, or else your project (and possibly your career) will crater.
Innovation (usually) comes with its costs. Take the 'excessive voice acting' of SWTOR. It was an innovation of sorts, but it brings with it problems. You can be far less agile in your story/writing, when you have to voice everything. No longer can you call up a text editor and redo things on the fly. I personally found that there were main characters that I wouldn't ever play because of the way the character was voiced.
Innovation is wonderful! Innovation is dangerous.
And it may be totally disregarded. Van Gogh sold two paintings while he was alive.
If you are holding out for the perfect game, the only game you play will be the waiting one.
And my point is that there has been a lot of innovation but you either don't see it or are just not enjoying yourself very much ATM so you are not inclined to see them as innovations. To you they're just "the same old shit"... but it's you, not the MMOs.
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?”
― CD PROJEKT RED
Most people don't look for innovative games, they look for games that can give them an improved experience of something they previously played. Its all over these forums.
You are wrong on this. Rift had them before GW2 only in Rift they call them rifts but it is the same thing.
This sounds boring as f---.This is sooo true
I played both UO and SWG and THAT is the sort of game i want
Btw ..The first game to create a real purpose for skills and truly interesting dungeons was DDO .. Incorrect, UO was skill based, everyone went for 7 GM skills, they could train skills up and set others to train down while locking certain one's in place.
I haven't seen anything like that since and it was one the THE most social games, along with AO, yet another skill based game, before DDO.SWG was very social as well.
So the DDO for real purpose for skills i'd say is incorrect. For the dungeon's .. now that's right. When i played it anyway, we had a 3 hour dungeon, only 1 had to leave and we stopped multiple times for someone to deal with their baby, me to get coffee (hey, it's important stuff) and other's phone calls.
Nowadays i don't think people have the patience for that though.
I think this is really the core of the problem. There may be innovation in the mmo-genre, but it all happens within very narrow confinements.
The mmo-genre is not what it ones was. Before the advent of WoW it was much more diverse but after WoW it went through a very narrow bottleneck. The sandboxes where driven into the niche and the themepark genre was narrowed down too.
One could say that the old mmo-genre died and what we have today is the WoW-clone-genre (or the WoW-successor-genre if you want to put it mildly). There was innovation but it all consisted of tinkering around with the WoW-model. For the last decade the developers tried to remake WoW and add some minor changes to it, for example to remake it with the Star Wars franchise and add voiceovers.
It seems to me that a lot of people have lost the ability to think outside the box and imagine that there can be a game that isn't based on linear quest and dungeon grinding.
WoW propelled mmos into the mainstream but it also held back their evolution for a decade. Imagine what the successors of UO and Star Wars Galaxies might have looked like, but unfortunately they where never made.
I never really liked it, but apparently this was what the majority of players wanted for the last decade. Why not stick to a model as long as it sells, although these WoW-successors where never really successful.
But in the recent years the customers started to get bored with the WoW-model and new games became increasingly less successful as you can see with Elder Scrolls Online.
I hope we are going to see more innovation and more variety in the future alongside with a revival of the sandbox genre, although it is hard to predict what Everquest Next will be like or what will come out of these Kickstarter mmos.
There is an article on Slashdot talking about why the cheap T-Mobile phones are so bug ridden and why the free market doesn't reward companies for fixing things like that.
http://features-beta.slashdot.org/story/14/07/21/1247211/why-my-lg-optimus-cellphone-is-worse-than-its-supposed-to-be
Basically the gist of the article is that things like number of bugs or cr@p you have to deal with isn't easily quantifiable the way a feature list is, so when a developer has to cut some corners, they cut corners on the things that aren't easily quantifiable and focus on the things that are quantifiable. This seems to be part of the reason we get a large feature list with new releases, but bugs tend to run around unsquished for a long time. Consumers will reward producers for giving them a larger quantifiable list of things rather than a smaller list of things that work better.
You could apply this thinking to new games or MMORPGs where consumers will reward producers that provide an easily quantifiable list of things they are familiar with, rather than a large list of things that they aren't familiar with and which can't be easily quantified.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
Based on the OP thread, i think he is just hating on GW2. His points on GW2 are the only ones he sarcastically states as negative. Plus he only stated the wrong points.
Hearts and ! are the same thing, they only made it less tedious and shared between everyone, that is a plus. 80's platform design turned into trivial distractions.... are you talking about jumping puzzles? If so, its ok you dont like them, i personally dislike the crappy rewards after a long and frustratingly fun jumping journey. It was innovation within the genre mmorpg and i still applaud it.
Your other points regarding other games seem OK so my question to you is, why the hate on GW2? If you look at the good things it has you wouldnt be posting this nonsense as a reason to blame weak innovation. Its not a perfect game and id love to see some improvements in some areas, but it has done a lot of things better than most current mmos.
There are elements of GW2 that I enjoy. it is a solid casual mmo that is fun to play in small doses.
There are two aspects I dislike, the first is the way it was held up as a shining example of innovation at release where I really saw very little. It is a rather derivative game. The second is this move away from interesting, immersive worlds you can explore and towards being bombarded with trivial distractions and pointless achievements as if we all suffer from ADHD these days.
In fact I would go so far as to say that a lot of the innovation present in GW1 was removed in favour of going for a more generic mmo experience.
Unfortunately a lot of the changes mmo's have gone through are to simply add more fluff at the expense of depth and immersion. But that is personal preference.