What is a New Idea?

Ungood

I see all this talk of Innovation and new game designs for MMO, but, I have got to ask, what are people expecting when they say this?

What would a NEW MMO coming out need to do to be "Innovative".. I would like exact idea. Something more then "Not what was done before" I want to hear what people expect from these games, not simply some dismissive "Just not a wow clone"..

So what exactly would people WANT that would make a game unique or innovative that has not been already?

Slapshot1188

AI that is indistinguishable from a player.  This would extend to mobs which would also act intelligently. 

No "pulling" guards 1 at a time down a hallway while the others ignore the sounds of fireballs and death 20 feet away.

This would also extend into other areas such as merchants who would intelligently price things based on supply and demand.

Such an AI would go a long way toward creating immersion into a virtual world.

Amathe

A new idea by my definition is one where my experience of being my character, or my experience of being in and interacting with the world, is qualitatively improved. 

As an example, when WoW introduced flying mounts. I personally had never experienced flight in an mmorpg before then. 

centkin

A new idea is something that is unfinished and unready that when first implemented either dooms a product or is ill-acknowledged.

These ideas are later refined(stolen) by someone else who makes millions.

Ungood

Amathe said:

A new idea by my definition is one where my experience of being my character, or my experience of being in and interacting with the world, is qualitatively improved. 

As an example, when WoW introduced flying mounts. I personally had never experienced flight in an mmorpg before then. 

ok.. so what would an MMO need to do, today.. to pull this off for you?

Amathe

Ungood said:

ok.. so what would an MMO need to do, today.. to pull this off for you?

If I had an answer to that question I would work in the game industry.  

But recall I am not someone calling for innovation. I just want back what I have lost. 

Ungood

Amathe said:

Ungood said:

ok.. so what would an MMO need to do, today.. to pull this off for you?

If I had an answer to that question I would work in the game industry.  

But recall I am not someone calling for innovation. I just want back what I have lost. 

What did you lose, and how do you think you could get it back?

Amathe

Ungood said:

What did you lose, and how do you think you could get it back?

I lost what was once Everquest and games like Everquest (which games today are no longer the same). There are about 4-5 indy games, such as Pantheon, which I hope will make it to launch and bring back some of the old game features. 

cheyane

Amathe said:

A new idea by my definition is one where my experience of being my character, or my experience of being in and interacting with the world, is qualitatively improved. 

As an example, when WoW introduced flying mounts. I personally had never experienced flight in an mmorpg before then. 

Did you ever play City of Heroes or Anarchy Online?

Gamer54321

Two things comes to mind:
1) Form
2) Content

I.e something "new" would be new 'form' or new 'content'. I.e old form, new content, or old content, new form.

What I wrote above is basically what Scott McCloud's wrote about art in his book on 'Understanding Comics'.

Gutlard

I come up with great ideas all the time, and post them on here for all to ignore as usual... 

Fleshing out game mechanics to incorporate more tech like phones, tablets, smart watches, AR/VR, etc...used in conjunction with a computer.

I'd like a safe HUD for my car windshield to be able to work on crafting or something while driving home and stuck in traffic, safety features abound of course. Other 'non essential' mechanics could be handled in the same way, with possible Alexa/Google integration and voice commands as well.

All in an attempt to create a truly deep intuitive game world that could be played as normal or as deep down the rabbit hole as you would want to go, with regards to tech. Of course the more all of our tech talked to each other the better it would be.

Want to make some Legendary food that takes hours in-game? You could knock it out simultaneously while putting together a Thanksgiving Dinner IRL.

Need to temper your forge a little? That could be handled by taking a leak during break.

Dev's could come up with tons a different ideas across the spectrum on how to use all the tech in our lives to make their game worlds as immersive as possible. Some of us would stick with the one rig to rule them all approach, but you know a lot of us would use as many tools as possible for the FUN of it.

Gut Out!

Amathe

cheyane said:

Amathe said:

A new idea by my definition is one where my experience of being my character, or my experience of being in and interacting with the world, is qualitatively improved. 

As an example, when WoW introduced flying mounts. I personally had never experienced flight in an mmorpg before then. 

Did you ever play City of Heroes or Anarchy Online?

Yes to CoH. And you are right, it had flight. Forgot that since I always used jumping.

Gutlard

It's like I'm a ghost...haha

Gut Out!

iixviiiix

There are no need new idea , the genre just need the developer polish they work and get off "still in develop stage"

The only "Innovative" i want is the monetize system . The F2P system need more "innovative" so it don't ruin the game by add P2W shit .

sunandshadow

Personally I want the ability to "collect" NPCs with which I have a high relationship to my house.  That seems pretty innovative.

Slapshot1188

sunandshadow said:

Personally I want the ability to "collect" NPCs with which I have a high relationship to my house.  That seems pretty innovative.

A game called Gods and Heroes had something like that.. before it was canceled... brought back and canceled again.

Quizzical

What has been will be again,
what has been done will be done again;
there is nothing new under the sun.

Is there anything of which one can say,
“Look! This is something new”?
It was here already, long ago;
it was here before our time.

No one remembers the former generations,
and even those yet to come
will not be remembered
by those who follow them.

-Ecclesiastes 1:9-11 (NIV)

Even complaining about a lack of innovation isn't a new thing.

AlBQuirky

Slapshot1188 said:

AI that is indistinguishable from a player.  This would extend to mobs which would also act intelligently. 

No "pulling" guards 1 at a time down a hallway while the others ignore the sounds of fireballs and death 20 feet away.

This would also extend into other areas such as merchants who would intelligently price things based on supply and demand.

Such an AI would go a long way toward creating immersion into a virtual world.

I would like to see better AI, too, but "Indistinguishable from players?" I fat finger, miss-click, and other "human mistakes" that computer AI will never do. They will never misjudge a distance like I do. They "see" the game as data as I see it as graphical interfaces.

Do we program the mistakes players make into an AI or get pour butts handed to us 100% of the time?

AlBQuirky

Ungood said:

Amathe said:

Ungood said:

ok.. so what would an MMO need to do, today.. to pull this off for you?

If I had an answer to that question I would work in the game industry.  

But recall I am not someone calling for innovation. I just want back what I have lost. 

What did you lose, and how do you think you could get it back?

The ability to fail. Spells fizzling. Crafting going awry. A sword thrust that actually "misses."

AlBQuirky

Gutlard said:

I'd like a safe HUD for my car windshield to be able to work on crafting or something while driving home and stuck in traffic, safety features abound of course. Other 'non essential' mechanics could be handled in the same way, with possible Alexa/Google integration and voice commands as well.

Gut Out!

I think flying cars were slated to have this incorporated

ConstantineMerus

EverQuest Next. For me that was it.

Cryomatrix

Ability to play a game as a non combatant and be able to thrive and be in demand.

A place where everyone looks unique. 

A place where it feels like a world

Scot

Innovation has to get over two hurdles, first you have to hear about it, I had not heard about the three bears in Allods that Nyct told us about. Secondly you have to have never seen anything sufficiently like it before, well I have seen Controller classes but not a race where you are three individual beings.

That's different enough for me to call it innovation. Amathe had not seen flying mounts before WoW, I too had seen them (flying vessels) in Anarchy Online. So for me that's not as innovative.

Now you may be saying hang on, "first you have to hear about it" well that's true for anything, how is that a special hurdle for MMO innovation? Well because so much innovation we do see in MMOs is never seen again or is rarely repeated. Not seen flying repeated that much have we, does anyone think we will see the idea of three beings as your avatar for your race again? So much in MMOs gets lost from gameplay.

The same is true for general gaming but less so, I imagine it is for two reasons, the longer development cycles of MMOs and sticking to the WoW template. You have so many boxes that need to get ticked before launch, you stick to the tried and tested.

P.S I nearly forgot to mention how innovative MMOs have been in their revenue models, and the uncanny way that unlike innovative gameplay, innovative ways of taking your money seem to become industry standards overnight. For some strange reason, new ways of taking money of us never get forgotten.

delete5230

Anything new gets old fast, then people would say we need something new again. 


Back before the 80's we manually rolled up our windows on are cars, then came electric windows. two weeks after your very first electric windows we took it for granted !! 

What we need is an mmo that plays like a real mmorpg, now that would be new all over again

anemo

Worlds Adrift takes a game like Space Engineers/Rust and tosses it at MMO-Scaled servers.   Even has a few interesting hooks: Indirect Character levels through crafting, Player made islands, and a loveable movement system with Airships/grappling hooks.    Worth a buy and tossing almost 200 hours. 

Screeps.   Takes an RTS and tosses it at being MMO-Scaled again.   The hook they used for making it a reasonable game was making it about programming an AI that runs everything, and taking some of the best steps to have simple/intermediate stages for starting/weaker programmers I've ever seen in a game.   This is where I retreat to now, where it used to be EVE Online.

Haven and Hearth.   Is basically your Rust like game, that has a WAY better focus on actual crafting (though it's from way before rust was a thing).   There are just so many good and new hooks here:  Like crafting being what levels you, a crafting tree that would be Stellaris'es tech tree to shame, and making it MMO scale persistent again.    I've put a few hundred hours here as well.

Right now I'm playing Alter Aeon,  a MUD that has an awesome classing sytstem that MUST be implemented in a mainstream game.   Basically you choose your first class that levels normally, a second class at half rate, a third class at 4th rate, and on until you have all the classes.   Then it has a "practice" mechanic that has you choosing which class feature you actually grab for yourself (you will need to skip some for a long while), and with further trade offs since Practices are what are used for leveling your characteristics as well (Str/dex/con).   

__________________________________________

Frankly some of those are quite ancient, like Alter Aeon is over a decade old.   Though it all feels new to me since it has new and awesome mechanics to me (though the top two are actually pretty recent).    Which is what matters.

Ungood

ikcin said:

This is hilarious - you discuss new ideas in old games, where in fact the ideas are not even first implemented.

What is a new idea - an idea that never existed before in your mind or in general.

The idea of this thread is a nonsense. If something is truly innovative - the people cannot ask or want it.

The players think about the games in the limits of their previous experience. So if you never played a game, or you did not like a game (no matter how subjective are the reasons) that limits what you think is a good game. In general players dream for the old games they liked. And that means the developer should never ask the players when he wants to make a new game.

So that happens here - at the question -

Ungood said:

So what exactly would people WANT that would make a game unique or innovative that has not been already?

you get the answers what people liked in the games they have played. And there is not even one new idea.

UO and EQ were very ground breaking games. They quite literally were the first of their Gen.

Now, WoW had EQ players on their development team to help them guide their game to be what players wanted, so, apparently, asking players what they want.. was hugely successful. Not to mention most game companies want developers who are passionate about games, and at the very least, would want to play the game they make. What you have done is channel the Smedly of SoE, who later said, after moving on to Daybreak, admitted that was the wrong approach to game development.

So, the pros themselves disagree with what you just said.

With that said.

My question was posed to players who want innovation, because someone who in fact wants something, at the very least, should have an idea of what this should entail.

As such, it is always a good idea to discuss this, because if nothing else, it gets people to think about what it is they want.

And apparently.. you do not want innovation, so this is really not the topic for you.