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Can A:IR and Bless Revitalize the AAA MMORPG? - Bill Murphy - MMORPG.com

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Comments

  • uriel_mafessuriel_mafess Member UncommonPosts: 138
    Seeing this article and the previous one about MHW it brought me back to my major concern.

    Monster IA. It seems that its hard to find good monster IA. Most games just rely on giving monsters advantages (numerical) or gimping players through debuffs or environment penalties.

    Im not a scholar about MMOs so maybe it has been tried before what im about to say but I always thought that it would be a good try (even if it failed). IA isnt a real challenge. Hence why PvP is an important part of the genre. A human competitor is more thrilling and surprising than any IA.

    So why not give human control to Open world bosses and their minions? Throw a random invite to control X monster that is about to spawn in 60 seconds and let a player control it. Or lets say some GMs/Devs or whatever. If its a player give him rewards for foes slayed and time spent alive (so he just doesnt let players win an easy fight) or try some mechanics with it (moving fights into PvE areas so players have to worry both about the boss and the nearby regular mobs) or make teamplays with other human controlled mini-bosses aka bodyguards of the big boss.

    I know that some people would find a way to ruin it or try to exploit it but still just a single good interaction with a good "boss player" would so much more interesting and challenging than a whole week of farming IA bosses.

    Maybe it has been tried before and failed or it cant even be done (or is just too much of work/money to implement and create the interface for it) but this is my 5 cents in what could revitalize the genre.

    Actual IA is nonexistent (even best scripted boss fights dont have much to offer) so lets add "PvP" into PvE.
  • MystralzMystralz Member UncommonPosts: 52
    THe title of this article isnt even right. These games are not triple a titles. These are very low budget game. Bless is dated its a concept from 2011. And the graphics of air in game dont actually look that great.
    will they revitalize the mmo community well i guess it would be better to assume your talking about the us community. Nether of these games are even known to the us. On this site itself bless has been talked about for a long time and is not on the top of the list for upcoming games

    In its native country it has already failed. And there are already more low budget games replacing it that are actually current.
    In its native territory you could consider mmos still doing fine to begin with.
    You could even consider old games like lineage 1 being completely fine.
    WE dont live in china or korea or japan

    For the us you should probably be looking at ashes of creation to talk about triple a developers bringing mmos back.
    But the funny thing is ashes ofcreation is actually an indie title funded by kickstarter parshillaly do you probably couldnt even consider it triple a.
    The us seems very uninterested in trying to come out with new innovative mmos.
  • MirandelMirandel Member UncommonPosts: 143
    How on earth two very traditional Asian games, one of which completely failed twice already, are supposed to "revitalize" the genre? Everything they have - other games have already. And unlike Bless at least, that "everything" in other games works.

    Truly, deadlines make people write all kind of nonsense.
  • MikehaMikeha Member EpicPosts: 9,196
    edited February 2018
    Eastern mmos are not niche in the West. 

    Black Desert Online and Final Fantasy XIV are not niche.   They are 2 of the top mmos out in the West right now. 
    cjmarsh[Deleted User][Deleted User]
  • moosecatlolmoosecatlol Member RarePosts: 1,530
    R E M O V E K O R E A.
    MikehaTheScavenger
  • cjmarshcjmarsh Member UncommonPosts: 299
    BruceYee said:
    cjmarsh said:
    Shaigh said:
    Torval said:
    Shaigh said:
    A:IR looks like garbage and bless online already failed in korea and russia. For a revitilization of mmorpg genre we have to rely on kickstarter games.
    In the interest of full disclosure, you should point out they all look like kickstarted mmos with the exception of Ashes. I'm not sure how they're pulling off something that looks good so quickly while these other projects keep fuddling around for years on end with little to show.
    Ashes of creation doesn't look good, they have some landscape and animation but their combat model is extremely basic, you hit mobs with damage and they die after dealing damage while those mobs barely deal any damage back.
    Ashes of creation might have some flaws with its art direction but you could only say it looks bad if you didn't understand how incredibly hard it is to make enough assets for an entire MMO, let alone an underfunded one.
    But didn't they say in one of their promo videos that they have "some of the most experienced MMO developer's the gaming industry has ever seen"? view here at 0:30


    When you have those experienced people +30mil already secured then stuff like combat animations and creating terrain that doesn't all look like copy and paste jobs shouldn't be too hard?

    That sounds exactly like a marketing blurb rather than anything backed up by facts but I don't know who they have on their team so I can't speak about it one way or another. My point was more meant to highlight that most of the assets haven't even been made yet at this stage of development. Any other studio that wasn't in crowdfunding wouldn't even be releasing videos of prototypes at this stage because so much is still subject to change. The crowdfunding dynamic forces their release, however, as even this very site proves people are not patient enough to give developers the time necessary to build a project with the scope of an MMO. As a result, the development is often worked on in a direction that isn't necessarily conducive to overall speed but gets visible results fast (like making early pre-alpha videos).

    The terrain and assets are still being worked on, and frankly some of the assets I saw in even the prototypes were pretty impressive though suffering from a lack of overall vision. What I mean by that is things like the flowers had too much contrast, particle effects were too intense when players grouped up, enemies weren't clearly indicated as mobile enemies, things like that. Most of that stuff is just a matter of it being early and not having iterated on and tested enough. Reducing the particle effects, tweaking animations, adding scenery models for specific biomes, all of that generally is done behind the scenes before the first gameplay video is released. They're working through it, just not necessarily in an optimal way as is necessitated by their crowdfunding model.
  • Azaron_NightbladeAzaron_Nightblade Member EpicPosts: 4,829
    Western devs are too greedy to invest into MMOs where the returns seem to be slow, while they could churn out mobile games and make bank instead. Or the EA/Bioware example: let's drop story entirely and focus on just making money from loot box infested multiplayer modes. Although I imagine they might be going back on that idea, given what happened.

    I hope future Asian games follow BDO's example, or improve on it when it comes to cash shops. It's far from perfect, and could definitely do with some tweaks, but it is better than most Eastern MMOs.
    Mikeha[Deleted User]cjmarsh

    My SWTOR referral link for those wanting to give the game a try. (Newbies get a welcome package while returning players get a few account upgrades to help with their preferred status.)

    https://www.ashesofcreation.com/ref/Callaron/

  • truewarlordtruewarlord Member UncommonPosts: 78
    Is too easy to say "Bless failed already" ignoring the reasons why it failed.
    What were the problems? Can it be fixed? Are they working on it?

    Also, since when Bless is a low budget game? Do you even know what you're talking about? How much do you guess was Bless development cost?

    Anyway, people seem to love to spread the common sense, they heard somewhere something, it is an easy thought, so they're comfortable replicating easy and superficial thoughts.

    I bet Bless will do very well, it is a new open world theme park, it is fresh and without P2W schemes it has everything to be top notch in the west.

  • DvoraDvora Member UncommonPosts: 499

    exile01 said:



    DMKano said:


    In current state - Bless will only disappoint. The Korean devs are making a HUGE mistake letting an unfinished version on Steam be the firsr impression in the west.

    AIR - too little is known to make an educated opinion at this time.








    comone you played almost all MMOs and yet you dare to stay you dont have a opinion over a reskinned mmo?



    Reskinned version of what game?
  • GruugGruug Member RarePosts: 1,789
    I am going to say it again, microtransactions and secondary purchasing of game items is the bane of any MMO released in the West. I use to love MMO's until they started putting in those extra pay systems. Now, if you buy an MMO you don't know that you are getting the full game and in fact probably aren't. MMO's are becoming pretty much dead to me.

    Let's party like it is 1863!

  • DoctorhooDoctorhoo Member UncommonPosts: 235
    In Regards to Bless Online, the original game was found lacking especially in combat, UI, and optimization.  Later they started a "Rebuild Project" to fix the game - which some video footage from various people, showed things to be better (than launch).  From their Steam page, it looks like they might have have a new younger Game Director.  So does that mean the last one was fired or left?  I don't know but is this a plus or minus?  In either case, you still loose some continuity.  They did release a Road Map post on their Steam page but it doesn't really advance our knowledge on things and the question for Early Access never really fully addressed.

    Honestly, I don't think they have good communication regarding their product.  Just seems like they keep kicking the bucket further down the road with little info for firm dates as of yet.  Q1 of 2018 is what i last heard for EA but no dates as of yet.  I hope the game does well on the Rebuild Version to be released on EU/NA but still having a hard time buying fully into it until I see and hear more about this "New" version of it.
  • NildenNilden Member EpicPosts: 3,916
    You mean the three and four player co-op from Destiny 2 and Warframe didn't already revitalize the (in Jim Sterling voice) "triple A" MMORPG?

    Image result for flabbergasted

    "You CAN'T buy ships for RL money." - MaxBacon

    "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/ 

  • lahnmirlahnmir Member LegendaryPosts: 5,041



    DMKano said:

    In current state - Bless will only disappoint. The Korean devs are making a HUGE mistake letting an unfinished version on Steam be the firsr impression in the west.

    AIR - too little is known to make an educated opinion at this time.




    coming from a devout WoW fan, I'll take 2 grains of salt. 

    I'll take niche over theme park treadmills any day of the week.



    Good for you...

    To revitalize an interest in AAA games requires a demonstration of mass market appeal to justify the cost, something that at least WoW historically achieved and somewhat maintains.

    No matter how good a game scratches a niche it will at best inspire more niche, and as such won't revitalize anything.
    What is there to revitalize? What the fuck are you even talking about. The only people complaining that the market is stale are WoW players.  THe only people whining are "WoW players. There are hundred of millions of non-wow players enjoying many types of games. 

    For real, Black Desert is populated, Blade and Soul Populated, GW 2 is populated, Eve is populated. This fallacy that a genre is dead because WoW is still losing players, is not only redundant but ignorantly misleading.


    WoWplayer says "Boo hoo im not happy in the genre, so sniffle sniffle its dead and needs revitalized. "

    Tjhe Mars Orbital death ray says "Get the fuck out of here with the whiny bullshit"
    Interesting. Because all the "boohoo the genre is dying" nonsense I hear comes from people that don't like WoW. I have never, ever heard WoW players complain about this. Its the group that keeps calling every other MMO a WoW clone and WoW a dumb kiddie game that keep on whining about the death and decay of the genre. I have been around here for a fair while and have never seen what you describe. The opposite though? Many a time. 

    /Cheers,
    Lahnmir
    [Deleted User][Deleted User]
    'the only way he could nail it any better is if he used a cross.'

    Kyleran on yours sincerely 


    'But there are many. You can play them entirely solo, and even offline. Also, you are wrong by default.'

    Ikcin in response to yours sincerely debating whether or not single-player offline MMOs exist...



    'This does not apply just to ED but SC or any other game. What they will get is Rebirth/X4, likely prettier but equally underwhelming and pointless. 

    It is incredibly difficult to design some meaningfull leg content that would fit a space ship game - simply because it is not a leg game.

    It is just huge resource waste....'

    Gdemami absolutely not being an armchair developer

  • NildenNilden Member EpicPosts: 3,916
    lahnmir said:



    DMKano said:

    In current state - Bless will only disappoint. The Korean devs are making a HUGE mistake letting an unfinished version on Steam be the firsr impression in the west.

    AIR - too little is known to make an educated opinion at this time.




    coming from a devout WoW fan, I'll take 2 grains of salt. 

    I'll take niche over theme park treadmills any day of the week.



    Good for you...

    To revitalize an interest in AAA games requires a demonstration of mass market appeal to justify the cost, something that at least WoW historically achieved and somewhat maintains.

    No matter how good a game scratches a niche it will at best inspire more niche, and as such won't revitalize anything.
    What is there to revitalize? What the fuck are you even talking about. The only people complaining that the market is stale are WoW players.  THe only people whining are "WoW players. There are hundred of millions of non-wow players enjoying many types of games. 

    For real, Black Desert is populated, Blade and Soul Populated, GW 2 is populated, Eve is populated. This fallacy that a genre is dead because WoW is still losing players, is not only redundant but ignorantly misleading.


    WoWplayer says "Boo hoo im not happy in the genre, so sniffle sniffle its dead and needs revitalized. "

    Tjhe Mars Orbital death ray says "Get the fuck out of here with the whiny bullshit"
    Interesting. Because all the "boohoo the genre is dying" nonsense I hear comes from people that don't like WoW. I have never, ever heard WoW players complain about this. Its the group that keeps calling every other MMO a WoW clone and WoW a dumb kiddie game that keep on whining about the death and decay of the genre. I have been around here for a fair while and have never seen what you describe. The opposite though? Many a time. 

    /Cheers,
    Lahnmir
    Hell if I was going to write an article on something revitalizing the genre it would be classic WoW.
    lahnmir

    "You CAN'T buy ships for RL money." - MaxBacon

    "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/ 

  • lahnmirlahnmir Member LegendaryPosts: 5,041
    Nilden said:
    lahnmir said:



    DMKano said:

    In current state - Bless will only disappoint. The Korean devs are making a HUGE mistake letting an unfinished version on Steam be the firsr impression in the west.

    AIR - too little is known to make an educated opinion at this time.




    coming from a devout WoW fan, I'll take 2 grains of salt. 

    I'll take niche over theme park treadmills any day of the week.



    Good for you...

    To revitalize an interest in AAA games requires a demonstration of mass market appeal to justify the cost, something that at least WoW historically achieved and somewhat maintains.

    No matter how good a game scratches a niche it will at best inspire more niche, and as such won't revitalize anything.
    What is there to revitalize? What the fuck are you even talking about. The only people complaining that the market is stale are WoW players.  THe only people whining are "WoW players. There are hundred of millions of non-wow players enjoying many types of games. 

    For real, Black Desert is populated, Blade and Soul Populated, GW 2 is populated, Eve is populated. This fallacy that a genre is dead because WoW is still losing players, is not only redundant but ignorantly misleading.


    WoWplayer says "Boo hoo im not happy in the genre, so sniffle sniffle its dead and needs revitalized. "

    Tjhe Mars Orbital death ray says "Get the fuck out of here with the whiny bullshit"
    Interesting. Because all the "boohoo the genre is dying" nonsense I hear comes from people that don't like WoW. I have never, ever heard WoW players complain about this. Its the group that keeps calling every other MMO a WoW clone and WoW a dumb kiddie game that keep on whining about the death and decay of the genre. I have been around here for a fair while and have never seen what you describe. The opposite though? Many a time. 

    /Cheers,
    Lahnmir
    Hell if I was going to write an article on something revitalizing the genre it would be classic WoW.
    Absolutely. But when you have an anti WoW agenda going on it is easy to bend the truth to fit your narrative.

    /Cheers,
    Lahnmir
    [Deleted User]
    'the only way he could nail it any better is if he used a cross.'

    Kyleran on yours sincerely 


    'But there are many. You can play them entirely solo, and even offline. Also, you are wrong by default.'

    Ikcin in response to yours sincerely debating whether or not single-player offline MMOs exist...



    'This does not apply just to ED but SC or any other game. What they will get is Rebirth/X4, likely prettier but equally underwhelming and pointless. 

    It is incredibly difficult to design some meaningfull leg content that would fit a space ship game - simply because it is not a leg game.

    It is just huge resource waste....'

    Gdemami absolutely not being an armchair developer

  • WizardryWizardry Member LegendaryPosts: 19,332
    Well to the person never hearing about AIR,you will soon enough via marketing/advertising and NOT by word of mouth.
    Example,i discover 4x games by listening to other posters talking about them,not because of this site which most often posts sponsored/partnered stuff with no care for quality of a game.

    I notice mention of BDO,yeah what did BDO do over here,release LESS of a game,it is all about how you market your product and not about quality of the product and that is very sad.This was a similar gimmick done by Arena.net,oh look we have FREE new content,NO you released a half assed game and are only now releasing the unfinished rest of it.People had to wait quite a long time to get the full version of BDO over here.

    The biggest problem with ANY game coming out now...micro transactions,selfish greed,lame lying labels like f2p ,knowing very well these games are anything but free.

    As to Bless,i look at one simple fact,if Aeria a very low standard lame operation turned this game down,you can just imagine how bad it is.
    A:IR i see a severe lack of color,obviously support easier loading,lower bandwaidth,less testing and optimizing.So i don't see a HQ game,just a game trying to sell on the airships,flying around gimmick.I don't endorse FFXIV but would play that over A:IR easily until i see more telling me otherwise.

    Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.

  • claytondoraclaytondora Member UncommonPosts: 28
    AI:R looks straight garbo.

    Bless Rework may do alright and looks like it'll be fun, but it's unlikely to explode.

    On the Horizon, The Lineage 3 Remake/Rework & Star Citizen have potential - but only time will tell if either really shine.
    lahnmir
  • Loke666Loke666 Member EpicPosts: 21,441
    I don't think either of them will be large enough to vitalize the genre, just like BDO while successful isn't. It certainly can't hurt if they do well though but we need a massive success to reboot the genre, or at least a bunch of medium successes, a couple ain't enough.
  • SagornSagorn Member UncommonPosts: 25

    beebop500 said:

    Don't forget that Bless, at least in its original version, allowed so-called "open world PvP" anywhere, any time; there were no safe zones, meaning players talking to a quest giver or doing something else innocuous can be killed repeatedly by the "leet PvPers" who infest those games and who seek out lowbies to gank.



    Why anyone would release a game like that in the West is beyond me. Gamers here are entitled and self-centered and our communities do not police themselves as they tend to do in the East, which means (IMO) that a game like that will do nothing but breed idiocy and elitism. The only revitalization of the MMO genre we'll see, is a fantasy day way off in the future where society stops being addicted to social media and selfies and increases its overall attention span to more than 140 characters at a time. Considering the swaths of terrible and/or uneducated people playing these games, is the state of them any real surprise?



    I couldn't have said it better myself. It has inspired me to post my MMO-manifesto as soon as I stop being lazy and write it.
  • time007time007 Member UncommonPosts: 1,062
    doubtful

    IMPORTANT:  Please keep all replies to my posts about GAMING.  Please no negative or backhanded comments directed at me personally.  If you are going to post a reply that includes how you feel about me, please don't bother replying & just ignore my post instead.  I'm on this forum to talk about GAMING.  Thank you.
  • KajidourdenKajidourden Member EpicPosts: 3,030
    They both run like absolute shit even on the tech demos.

    BLESS has failed massively in every territory it launched in. I'm surprised they're even bothering with it.
  • jarsku85jarsku85 Member UncommonPosts: 84
    edited February 2018

    DMKano said:

    In current state - Bless will only disappoint. The Korean devs are making a HUGE mistake letting an unfinished version on Steam be the firsr impression in the west.





    Why it would be mistake ? They soft launched Black Squad to steam early access as alpha and it has got over 10k concurrent players everyday for like half year now (source: http://steamcharts.com/app/550650 ) :) Also it's player base is raising every day now. PLUS it is only 100 % free F2P FPS on the market :)
    cjmarsh
  • RealizerRealizer Member RarePosts: 724
    In short, nope. Reason being is Bless rework doesn't seem to be focused on fixing the actual engine issues. From what I understand they are just changing menu items and making things look more inviting and easier to navigate. The issue they had was a memory leak with rapidly degrading fps in pvp fights, among other things.  I actually tested this game via VPN and a friends log in. 

    A:IR has a neat concept with the airships, but I haven't tested it for myself, or even seen enough of it to give an opinion either way. I was more excited about this when it was still called Project W. Honestly I lost a bit of hype when I saw, "created with Unreal Engine 3... "
  • HefaistosHefaistos Member UncommonPosts: 388
    I play mmo for 20 years. I was insulted by BDO KAKAO with their pay to upgrade, pay to skip, pay to win tactics. I will never ever BUY another game from this company and mostly asian online games.
  • cjmarshcjmarsh Member UncommonPosts: 299
    Torval said:
    Nilden said:
    You mean the three and four player co-op from Destiny 2 and Warframe didn't already revitalize the (in Jim Sterling voice) "triple A" MMORPG?

    Image result for flabbergasted
    Well, let's see both CoD:WWII and Destiny 2 carried Activisions bottom line, so "Yes!" is the answer to your question.
    The question was about how the two titles weren't really a member of the genre not about how profitable they were...
    Scot
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