I would have to say that engaging, story driven, goal centric game play is what keeps most of us playing games. The system that we dread and complain about is actually a system that keeps the mass market playing games like WOW. The sense of achievement, leveling to 85 and having familiar game interfaces are all elements that hold people. Let's face it when new games come out with innovative and new gaming structures they will have to bridge the current clientele of the majority of mmo's to the new gaming structures. It all sounds great to have a new way of playing but the burning question is, will the client allow the new and innovative game play to succeed or will they return to what they feel comfortable with. My guess is the later.
The worst and real TRAP in MMO world is PURE MYTH that players "crave fo innovation". Idiocy. Trap set up by vocal minority. I crave only for fun and well playable game. The one that feels right when using keyboard and mouse. The one that keeps me playing. AND INNOVATION IS ***LAST*** THING IN THE WORLD THAT MATTERS FOR ME. Period.
And last thing that matters for me is if my new car will be using 4 standard wheels, 2, 12, none, ... as long as it is fun. And have good manovrabilty. And when sitting behind cockpit feels like at home, natural, .... But so far I think 4 wheel cars are recipe to stick with. So far my best ever fun are Wow and Rift, rappresenting 90% of the whole of all times.
typically when these games "innovate" they focus all their attention on one specific idea and forget about everything else. leaving a sweet idea poorly executed.
Maybe because innovation does not guarantee fun? when devs focus too much on innovation they forget about the 'fun' part.
How many servers SWTOR will launch with on release?
ShredderSE - Umm how many do they need? Maybe 6. US, EU, Asian, France, German and Russian. Subs will be so low there is no need for more Snoocky-How many servers? The first 3 months a lot...after that 2 i guess, one for PVE and 1 for PVP...
Thorbrand - SWTOR doesn't have longevity at all. Might be one of the shortest lived MMOs.
If word of mouth didn't build you up slowly, perhaps innovation is not all that it takes to make a good MMO.
Self-pity imprisons us in the walls of our own self-absorption. The whole world shrinks down to the size of our problem, and the more we dwell on it, the smaller we are and the larger the problem seems to grow.
PRODUCTION QUALITY - FUN FACTOR - MINIMUM BUGS/EXPLOITS
How many innovative games we have with all that incorporated? Zero.
Yeah, but to be honest can you count even the regular games with those things on the fingers of a fan inspectors left hand.
But I agree. People do want innovation but they also want a well made game. A innovantive piece of garbage is still garbage no matter how cool ideas they fail to implement correctly into the game.
A good lead programmer is the minimum requirement for any MMO to do succed.
Most innovative MMOs only focuses on it's INNOVATION, and completely neglects the fundamental core aspects of every MMORPG.
That's why WoW used to be the best MMORPG ever made. They stuck with the tried and true method but added their own style to it and it spread it's wings and flew.
Problem these days is there is no innovation. You can't say SWTOR is innovative in ANY way because the whole voice over and storyline has been done.. in their other games. I really hate people who say ''oh my goood, star wars has voice acting and story and bla bla bla, it's so amazing, here take my money!'', and they play it and find out that it's the most boring piece of shit ever because all they were thinking about was the voice acting.
That's how companies make money these days, they gimmick up their game so people will ignore the blandness that it really holds.
Think where the OP goes wrong from the start is with the assumption that the people asking for innovation are not currently subscribed to the last good innovative games that came out. As for the more recent games that were innovative they had some major issues that caused people to leave after a while (AoC).
Those looking for innovation are in the minority. No big game company wants to cater to a minority. No big company wants to take major risks because you can't predict their results. I'm sure Notch couldn't have predicted the success of Minecraft. I'm sure Notch wouldn't have created such a game if he had a team of people and funding, it was something simple that he could do and it just took off. You can't predict that.
It's like the wrestling business. There are some people that enjoy genuine wrestling between two people that are technically sound in the art of putting on a good competitive match. There are many more that just want to be entertained and wrestling amounts to two guys in their underwear grabbing each other in the ring, and it's more about the show and the storylines and everything around it that makes it fun. You know why you don't see real amateur wrestling on TV? Because nobody wants to watch it. Putting something like that on TV I suppose could be innovative but how many people are actually going to watch your real amateur wrestling program?
The only major upside to taking a risk is that if it works, you're the king of the mountain... but how many times has that happened compared to risks that fail?
Now Playing: Mission Against Terror, Battlefield 3, Skyrim, Dark Souls, League of Legends, Minecraft, and the piano. =3
But that's the thing indeed. I think that the vast majority of MMO gamers, not only the ones who played WoW, want content and polish above innovation, no matter what's being said on forums like these.
Content and polish are the primary wish of most MMO gamers, innovation maybe a second or tertiary.
At least, that's what the past years have shown.
I generally agree.
Polish is a minimum. If a game is broken, ugly, or just all-around clunky, players won't play it, period. There is a minimum level of polish that developers have to meet, or players won't play their games.
Content is the critical factor that has been the result of so many failures of late. I don't know how developers got to this point, but nearly every game company seems to have the mentality of "if players like the game design enough and if it's innovative enough, they'll stick around while we fill out the content". No, they won't. Game after game, developers are stunned when players blow through the early game content in a matter of days, and the late game content in a matter of weeks.
For a game to be competitive at this point, it needs to have an incredible amount of content, and ideally a slower leveling curve, so that players actually take some time to level up to clear that content. Perhaps not as much as World of Warcraft, but at least at the same order of magnitude. If game companies want players to pay for a subscription across several months, then they will need what is literally months of content, when the game launches, and be ready to add more as fast as possible.
Again, I don't know how it is, but developers seem to severely underestimate how quickly players can do content, and how much content players are going to want. Given that it's not at all unusual for players to hit several hundred hours of play time on a single character, developers need to think seriously about what content they are providing that is going to fill that playing time. 200 hours of content for SW:TOR - which many players are reporting can be blown through in less than half of that time - is absolutely not going to cut it.
Innovation is still essential. A game trying to compete with WoW on content and polish is going to lose every time, because WoW effectively can't be beat on those terms (I suspect even Blizzard is worried about how it is going to follow up WoW). But an innovative game can compete, as long as it's polished and has an amount of content that is at least the same order of magnitude as what WoW provides.
Well polish and content is MANDATORY now. Genre is too mainstream atm, to not have those. Almost all mmorpg's without certain level of polish & content will fail or have very limited success.
Still without innovation genre will imo stagnate and ultimatelly will starting to lose more and more to mmofps and para-mmo's like LOL & Dota2 & other Moba games, pseudo mmorpg games like Vindictus, FPS genre, various co-op games, etc
First of all mmorpg does not need to be as big as WoW in terms of playerbase to be considered succesful as proapbly we won't see second mmorpg with 12 mln subs in loooong time.
Without innovation retention will be MAJOR problem. Swtor gamble it on trying to bring new players to mmorpg games and there is plenty of pure single player gamers whose first mmo will be Swtor cause it is BW game.
Kinda hard to tell atm, but imo cost of keeping players playing Swtor for long peroids of times, will be huge and while it certainly will be succesful game, it will suffer from not beign able to produce enough content cause players consume it too fast.
I think and I actually HOPE that mmorpg genre will split into more clearly defined subgenres, cause if almost all mainstream mmorpg's will copy "wow-like" gameplay model, genre stagnation will bite hard in coming years.
Effects of Warhammer Online, FFXIV, AoC, Cataclysm and a bunch of smaller games like STO failures and smaller-than-anticipated (imo) success of Rift will just start to show.
Remember in mmorpg genre everything take alot of time.
But that's the thing indeed. I think that the vast majority of MMO gamers, not only the ones who played WoW, want content and polish above innovation, no matter what's being said on forums like these.
Content and polish are the primary wish of most MMO gamers, innovation maybe a second or tertiary.
At least, that's what the past years have shown.
I generally agree.
Polish is a minimum. If a game is broken, ugly, or just all-around clunky, players won't play it, period. There is a minimum level of polish that developers have to meet, or players won't play their games.
Content is the critical factor that has been the result of so many failures of late. I don't know how developers got to this point, but nearly every game company seems to have the mentality of "if players like the game design enough and if it's innovative enough, they'll stick around while we fill out the content". No, they won't. Game after game, developers are stunned when players blow through the early game content in a matter of days, and the late game content in a matter of weeks.
For a game to be competitive at this point, it needs to have an incredible amount of content, and ideally a slower leveling curve, so that players actually take some time to level up to clear that content. Perhaps not as much as World of Warcraft, but at least at the same order of magnitude. If game companies want players to pay for a subscription across several months, then they will need what is literally months of content, when the game launches, and be ready to add more as fast as possible.
Again, I don't know how it is, but developers seem to severely underestimate how quickly players can do content, and how much content players are going to want. Given that it's not at all unusual for players to hit several hundred hours of play time on a single character, developers need to think seriously about what content they are providing that is going to fill that playing time. 200 hours of content for SW:TOR - which many players are reporting can be blown through in less than half of that time - is absolutely not going to cut it.
Innovation is still essential. A game trying to compete with WoW on content and polish is going to lose every time, because WoW effectively can't be beat on those terms (I suspect even Blizzard is worried about how it is going to follow up WoW). But an innovative game can compete, as long as it's polished and has an amount of content that is at least the same order of magnitude as what WoW provides.
quite right. if the game is clunky but decently polished up most gamers can look past the clunky stuff (2012 game with EQ graphics kinda clunky)
but if its clunky and not polished at all... to the point there is more bugs then anything well no one will like it period..
but sadly dispite what a dev wants or players want... ultimately the real reason games are pushed out the door in their poor states is do to the investers demanding returns on their money.. im sure if it cost peanuts to make a game like it did in 1990s.... people would spend 10yrs working on a game to give it over a year of content before launching it (take the sims 1 vs the sims 3....)
people want new stuff and change but at the same time they dont want to be totally blindsided by it i think that with the lower quality of games (which should be higher quality) is turning people off from alot of altering of games now...
no one wants to take a chance with games (look at MO or DFo or even FE) even with decent contect or polish people are just timid to try new things from past mistakes or problems... and alot of people want more bang for their buck as well
To me it looks as if the big budget companies that can afford a polished production look for solid low risk investments, which means taking the beaten path.
And new low budget companies take more risk to get more attention, which leads to innovative designs and running out of funds before they can get to the polished production stage.
But sometimes one of those smaller low budget companies manages to keep the momentum of attention going and comes up with a gem (EVE). But this is apparently very difficult and maybe also about lucky timing.
PEople want something different....But people that want something different, often want something different than the other different guy....
How many decently funded 'wow clones' dont make it big?
I played 1 of those 3 you mentioned, Vanguard, and I played it, and loved it through the bugs, but I had a brand new high end computer, so the bugs/lag didn't hit me as bad, as some....A lot of people couldn't play the game in the state it was launched, I mean how could you critisize someone for not keeping a sub, when they couldn't play the game? Then they lost so many due to the poor launch/history, that they started putting less time/money into the game, then they came out and told the pvpers that they were 'going to focus on pve, until it was 'fixed', then they would look at pvp'....Well anyone could read between the lines, and knew, that meant they were going to ignore it from that point on for the most part....Most of those that were left went to AoC...Then they pretty much stopped all support... I left after the AoC exudus of pvpers.
A lot of people were excited for Vanguard, if Vanguard would of launched in the state it was, when I left, I think it would of done very nicely, not WoW number or anything, but probably 250,000 in the first 6 months, that would of allowed for steady growth, for a game with nice pve, good classes, great crafting/harvesting, decent raiding (at the time I mentioned).
I don't think people wanting something different is an illusion, but they don't want it at the cost of having to play something that looks 10 years old (generally, people are obsessed with graphics to a point usually, I can still play UO 2d client and be fine), is laggy/buggy, full of exploits/exploiters....
Its just like all the why aren't you playing this sandbox threads....Just because people are supporters of something, doesn't mean they have to play a broken pos.
It's difficult to be innovative, content rich, polished and mainstream at the same time.
Innovation is use of new and thereby unproven designs. I consider such features as expensive to develop because there is more required in design and programming. Then there's the unknown player reaction to new designs. It's almost the opposite of mainstream because there's a learning and adaptation curve when things change. It seems that for any person who does like the change there will be others who do not, and consider the new features to be "broken".
Content is another tough one. MMORPGs rely on having the player repeat the same sort of content over and over. Combat is an example of this. Sure one may get new skills and improved stats along the way, but except for things like raid bosses, combat at the end of the game is very much like at the beginning. In most cases, it's tank-n-spank.
Storyline PVE content is another. With the exception of a huge team devoted entirely to this, there doesn't seem to be a way to create enough content to keep folks happy. In Cata my GF and I did all the quests in all but one of the new zones and it took us less than a month playing casually. Many burnt through it in a matter of a week or so.
Polish is super tough. My estimation is that it takes as long to polish a game as it does to build a working base framework. Something can always be better. From a development standpoint that's a huge time sink. At what point is it "good enough" for release if it can always be made better.
Mainstream seems to be all but impossible given the diversity of players. It's either too easy or too hard. Too fast or too slow. Too journey oriented (grindy) or too endgame oriented (rush to cap then raid). Too group oriented or too soloable. How any developer hopes to keep everyone happy is beyond me.
I'm in agreement with the others. Innovative games fail because the market expectations are so high that anything less than very well done is seen as a fail, and playerbase drops off quickly. Polished mainstream games tend not to be innovative, and innovative games tend not to make it to mainstream.
Ken Fisher - Semi retired old fart Network Administrator, now working in Network Security. I don't Forum PVP. If you feel I've attacked you, it was probably by accident. When I don't understand, I ask. Such is not intended as criticism.
A game doesn't have to be innovative to be great, and I am not so sure people care if X product is innovative or not, I think what players are looking for first and foremost is a good game. If a game does do something innovative and is a good game, well, then that is just icing on the cake.
Simple, Large developers only copy what they beleive is proven to work (in this case, theampark style games like WoW). Indy developers try to make innovative games which have great ideas but on a $5 budget. We are yet to see great, innovative game with great graphics (at least since WoW was released), to release bug free.
You can see this all over the place. Some people like crafting (and when I say crafting, lets be clear - realistic crafting). But, most games that have great crafting are either bugged, 1970's graphics (WURM online), restrictive (Istaria), all PVP (MO, DF), reset every ten mintes (AtiTD), etc, etc.
Some peeps like better combat but most go with target, click and kill (thats been done to the point that I'm suprized anyone even has a mouse). Their are game that have tried new combat ideas like FE (great idea but bugged at release which turned many away), Vindicus which has the best imo but it's all phased/instanced (none open world), Vangard tried really the same click and kill setup as most but added combo's which was cool but again the game was bugged, badly.
Some like the story like myself. The problem here is repeatability as Dev want to keep subs and hard to do for months, much less years. SWToR has a vary deed story (for thoses interested but like all other creations before, they took a great idea and burried it under a mountain of crap with 80m in voiceovers, phasing, etc.
Bottom line, the gaming folks have already been playing for years and will not except anything other that the absolute best (sorry to say, most AAA devs are to corporate to care and indy devs are to broke to do anything about it).
For what it worth, I will be most likely trying Vangaurd again (now that theirs a glimmer of hope for it) and I'll continue watching for the next great one.
PS, Yes we all know there are some great games out, we are talking about the majority.
Originally posted by MMO.Maverick Something I've been wondering about for a while now, especially since I started reading the mmorpg.com forums where you hear the cry for innovation and the branding of 'WoW clone' of every themepark MMO so much more than on other sites.
I mean, everyone wants to be pleasantly surprised by something different or new, especially after playing years of MMO's. I have it myself, only not to the point that I started disliking themepark MMO's. But I am puzzled by the discrepancy, the gap between reality and perceived preferences of the MMO playerbase: if so many MMO gamers really want something new, innovative and/or different, then why is it that the really different MMO's failed? And why is it that MMO gamers craving for something different aren't playing them now? Except for TCOS ofc that has been cancelled.
Look at Ryzom, The Chronicles of Spellborn or Vanguard. They all had features and mechanics that were different from the current themepark model. Then why did they fail? Was it because of the time they were released in? People weren't as saturated yet with themepark mechanics like they are these days? So, would that mean that if these games would've been released now as brand new instead of years ago and with upgraded graphics, then MMO gamers would flock to these games for the different MMO gameplay they have to offer?
Or was it because of advertising and polish that both were lacking for these MMO's, that if those two aspects would've taken care of, then these MMO's would've been far more successful?
Or is it that most of the complaints about something new and different is just an illusion, something you'll only hear on gathering places for the jaded, burnt out MMO gamers as here, while the majority of the MMO gamers is happily playing MMO's with the same themepark game mechanics and features that they've been playing for years?
I haven't yet been able to figure out what of those reasons is the main one, but the gap between the numerous voiced wishes for some innovation or something different with the reality that different MMO's are hardly played is hard to ignore.
I think it was 2 years ago when Saga of Ryzom went free two play for while back when it still was called Saga of Ryzom and i also remember it got a huge influx of new players who mainly came from games like WoW man that was just terrible they screamed in CAPS where are npcs in CAPS who give quests, becouse no exclamation marks above heads or why they could not jump and screamed in general chat with caps THIS GAME SUCKS. Ryzom is one of the BETTER mmos out there but first no advertisement nobody know the game and somehow older games dont appeal to vetran players anymore these days.
I think there only WoW-TOR and soon GW2 mmo players left and frustrated sandbox fans whining whole day how the mmo has gone down the toilet on forums hehe.
Sage is free 2 play and a great sandbox mmo but i don't know why people dont play it is beyond me?
Dont forget only very small portion of mmorpg.com community comes regualar here on forums and even a smaller portion of the whole mmo community world wide comes here i say 0.0001% so it maybe seems many dislike how mmo have evolved but i serious doub that if you look at the crap load of shitty mmo's comming from asia and the crap load of shitty mmo's developed by western companys there all themepark who are succefull thats why most innovative mmos dont get anywhere these days and have empty server.
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I don't think that the devs and the players want the same thing, most devs just want the game to be as simple as possible to make and the current model is simple.
There are also 2 kinds of MMO players, the ones that played several MMOs or more and the ones that only played a single (usually Wow). The ones that just play one game and never bothered to play another is not a good target group for any new game, new thinking or not. They might be the largest group of players but they just don't move.
As for the games you mention, I dunno about Ryzom but Vanguard fail because of terrible coding while TCoS failed because it had no content whatsoever and the idea behind the combat system was sound but it was too simple and not fun enough.
Both those games had potential but never delivered due to simple mistakes.
All "innovative" MMOs have been done by small and inexperienced indie devs. And they usually fail no matter if they do standard themeparks or innovative games. They lack the experience even if they have the vision.
There are coming MMOs with innovation from team with experienced devs soon, like GW2 from ANET and WoDO from CCP. I think they will do a lot better.
Saying that innovative games will fail because SIGIL failed is unfair, it is like saying that regular themepark games always fail based on Cryptic.
Its funny isn't it? People say they want "more' or 'new' concepts, yet they go and watch the same explosion happy action films and the same lack luster experience becomes successful on the box office. Same is with games.
In acknowledgement that this will get me flamed by fanboys, Swtor is pretty much a good example. You can claim the 'story' elements are new, but a LOT of people are just breezing over it. So much of it is being skipped on as people just play the game right up front without much regard to those portions. The gameplay is generic as can be and yet people eat it up like its candy, despite many going on about wanting 'better combat'.
Heck, I'll admit I tend to want more innovation, and yet I enjoy rift greatly. Besides the rift aspect and other things, its pretty much using the generic formula for an MMo, yet I like it. a lot. While it might not take generic as far as SWTOR, its still something I seem to over-look despite wanting more innovation.
Its funny isn't it? People say they want "more' or 'new' concepts, yet they go and watch the same explosion happy action films and the same lack luster experience becomes successful on the box office. Same is with games.
Are you sure that those are always the same people? I mean if some people want more and new concepts, that doesnt mean that other people suddenly stop watching the same old boring stuff.
And then there are probably people who want more and new concepts but because of the lack of well executed ones, they settle for same boring stuff and keep complaining. Even mediocre entertainment is better then no entertainment.
Well, nowadays, as far as indie developers trying to make "sandbox" games goes, there seems to be one common thread. The number of "features" planned for the game is usually inversely proportional to the size of the dev team.
How these guys ever believe that they can pull all that off in a 3D gameworld just baffles me, given their meagre resources and experience. None of the recent attempts have delivered a fraction of what they promised at the outset, and most require a few thousand people to give them a AAA-level monthly sub for the next 2 to 3 years before they MAY get a reasonably playable and filled-out gameworld running.
Innovation is not a requirement for success per se, but it would be the cherry on top. Solid gameplay and a minimum of nasty bugs, dupes and exploits are non-negotiable prerequisites for success in today's market.
Comments
The worst and real TRAP in MMO world is PURE MYTH that players "crave fo innovation". Idiocy. Trap set up by vocal minority. I crave only for fun and well playable game. The one that feels right when using keyboard and mouse. The one that keeps me playing. AND INNOVATION IS ***LAST*** THING IN THE WORLD THAT MATTERS FOR ME. Period.
And last thing that matters for me is if my new car will be using 4 standard wheels, 2, 12, none, ... as long as it is fun. And have good manovrabilty. And when sitting behind cockpit feels like at home, natural, .... But so far I think 4 wheel cars are recipe to stick with. So far my best ever fun are Wow and Rift, rappresenting 90% of the whole of all times.
Why messing with working recipe?
typically when these games "innovate" they focus all their attention on one specific idea and forget about everything else. leaving a sweet idea poorly executed.
Maybe because innovation does not guarantee fun? when devs focus too much on innovation they forget about the 'fun' part.
How many servers SWTOR will launch with on release?
ShredderSE - Umm how many do they need? Maybe 6.
US, EU, Asian, France, German and Russian.
Subs will be so low there is no need for more
Snoocky-How many servers?
The first 3 months a lot...after that 2 i guess, one for PVE and 1 for PVP...
Thorbrand - SWTOR doesn't have longevity at all. Might be one of the shortest lived MMOs.
thinly veiled gw2 rant by a swtor fanboy
WoW was innovative when it came out. EVE online hasn't failed or sunk. GW was innovative.
the "winning formula" mmo's have all failed with the exception of the single game they base their me-too design on.
there's also the fun factor, which the bulk of MMO's fail to deliver.
If word of mouth didn't build you up slowly, perhaps innovation is not all that it takes to make a good MMO.
Self-pity imprisons us in the walls of our own self-absorption. The whole world shrinks down to the size of our problem, and the more we dwell on it, the smaller we are and the larger the problem seems to grow.
aka rift. tobad they missed out on the innovation part as well....
see i can post hunt to
???ninja???
PRODUCTION QUALITY - FUN FACTOR - MINIMUM BUGS/EXPLOITS
How many innovative games we have with all that incorporated? Zero.
NEW IDEAS that can refresh the STALE state of MMORPGs
Yeah, but to be honest can you count even the regular games with those things on the fingers of a fan inspectors left hand.
But I agree. People do want innovation but they also want a well made game. A innovantive piece of garbage is still garbage no matter how cool ideas they fail to implement correctly into the game.
A good lead programmer is the minimum requirement for any MMO to do succed.
This is really easy to answer.
Most innovative MMOs only focuses on it's INNOVATION, and completely neglects the fundamental core aspects of every MMORPG.
That's why WoW used to be the best MMORPG ever made. They stuck with the tried and true method but added their own style to it and it spread it's wings and flew.
Problem these days is there is no innovation. You can't say SWTOR is innovative in ANY way because the whole voice over and storyline has been done.. in their other games. I really hate people who say ''oh my goood, star wars has voice acting and story and bla bla bla, it's so amazing, here take my money!'', and they play it and find out that it's the most boring piece of shit ever because all they were thinking about was the voice acting.
That's how companies make money these days, they gimmick up their game so people will ignore the blandness that it really holds.
Think where the OP goes wrong from the start is with the assumption that the people asking for innovation are not currently subscribed to the last good innovative games that came out. As for the more recent games that were innovative they had some major issues that caused people to leave after a while (AoC).
My theme song.
Those looking for innovation are in the minority. No big game company wants to cater to a minority. No big company wants to take major risks because you can't predict their results. I'm sure Notch couldn't have predicted the success of Minecraft. I'm sure Notch wouldn't have created such a game if he had a team of people and funding, it was something simple that he could do and it just took off. You can't predict that.
It's like the wrestling business. There are some people that enjoy genuine wrestling between two people that are technically sound in the art of putting on a good competitive match. There are many more that just want to be entertained and wrestling amounts to two guys in their underwear grabbing each other in the ring, and it's more about the show and the storylines and everything around it that makes it fun. You know why you don't see real amateur wrestling on TV? Because nobody wants to watch it. Putting something like that on TV I suppose could be innovative but how many people are actually going to watch your real amateur wrestling program?
The only major upside to taking a risk is that if it works, you're the king of the mountain... but how many times has that happened compared to risks that fail?
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I generally agree.
Polish is a minimum. If a game is broken, ugly, or just all-around clunky, players won't play it, period. There is a minimum level of polish that developers have to meet, or players won't play their games.
Content is the critical factor that has been the result of so many failures of late. I don't know how developers got to this point, but nearly every game company seems to have the mentality of "if players like the game design enough and if it's innovative enough, they'll stick around while we fill out the content". No, they won't. Game after game, developers are stunned when players blow through the early game content in a matter of days, and the late game content in a matter of weeks.
For a game to be competitive at this point, it needs to have an incredible amount of content, and ideally a slower leveling curve, so that players actually take some time to level up to clear that content. Perhaps not as much as World of Warcraft, but at least at the same order of magnitude. If game companies want players to pay for a subscription across several months, then they will need what is literally months of content, when the game launches, and be ready to add more as fast as possible.
Again, I don't know how it is, but developers seem to severely underestimate how quickly players can do content, and how much content players are going to want. Given that it's not at all unusual for players to hit several hundred hours of play time on a single character, developers need to think seriously about what content they are providing that is going to fill that playing time. 200 hours of content for SW:TOR - which many players are reporting can be blown through in less than half of that time - is absolutely not going to cut it.
Innovation is still essential. A game trying to compete with WoW on content and polish is going to lose every time, because WoW effectively can't be beat on those terms (I suspect even Blizzard is worried about how it is going to follow up WoW). But an innovative game can compete, as long as it's polished and has an amount of content that is at least the same order of magnitude as what WoW provides.
Well polish and content is MANDATORY now. Genre is too mainstream atm, to not have those. Almost all mmorpg's without certain level of polish & content will fail or have very limited success.
Still without innovation genre will imo stagnate and ultimatelly will starting to lose more and more to mmofps and para-mmo's like LOL & Dota2 & other Moba games, pseudo mmorpg games like Vindictus, FPS genre, various co-op games, etc
First of all mmorpg does not need to be as big as WoW in terms of playerbase to be considered succesful as proapbly we won't see second mmorpg with 12 mln subs in loooong time.
Without innovation retention will be MAJOR problem. Swtor gamble it on trying to bring new players to mmorpg games and there is plenty of pure single player gamers whose first mmo will be Swtor cause it is BW game.
Kinda hard to tell atm, but imo cost of keeping players playing Swtor for long peroids of times, will be huge and while it certainly will be succesful game, it will suffer from not beign able to produce enough content cause players consume it too fast.
I think and I actually HOPE that mmorpg genre will split into more clearly defined subgenres, cause if almost all mainstream mmorpg's will copy "wow-like" gameplay model, genre stagnation will bite hard in coming years.
Effects of Warhammer Online, FFXIV, AoC, Cataclysm and a bunch of smaller games like STO failures and smaller-than-anticipated (imo) success of Rift will just start to show.
Remember in mmorpg genre everything take alot of time.
quite right. if the game is clunky but decently polished up most gamers can look past the clunky stuff (2012 game with EQ graphics kinda clunky)
but if its clunky and not polished at all... to the point there is more bugs then anything well no one will like it period..
but sadly dispite what a dev wants or players want... ultimately the real reason games are pushed out the door in their poor states is do to the investers demanding returns on their money.. im sure if it cost peanuts to make a game like it did in 1990s.... people would spend 10yrs working on a game to give it over a year of content before launching it (take the sims 1 vs the sims 3....)
people want new stuff and change but at the same time they dont want to be totally blindsided by it
i think that with the lower quality of games (which should be higher quality) is turning people off from alot of altering of games now...
no one wants to take a chance with games (look at MO or DFo or even FE) even with decent contect or polish people are just timid to try new things from past mistakes or problems... and alot of people want more bang for their buck as well
To me it looks as if the big budget companies that can afford a polished production look for solid low risk investments, which means taking the beaten path.
And new low budget companies take more risk to get more attention, which leads to innovative designs and running out of funds before they can get to the polished production stage.
But sometimes one of those smaller low budget companies manages to keep the momentum of attention going and comes up with a gem (EVE). But this is apparently very difficult and maybe also about lucky timing.
PEople want something different....But people that want something different, often want something different than the other different guy....
How many decently funded 'wow clones' dont make it big?
I played 1 of those 3 you mentioned, Vanguard, and I played it, and loved it through the bugs, but I had a brand new high end computer, so the bugs/lag didn't hit me as bad, as some....A lot of people couldn't play the game in the state it was launched, I mean how could you critisize someone for not keeping a sub, when they couldn't play the game? Then they lost so many due to the poor launch/history, that they started putting less time/money into the game, then they came out and told the pvpers that they were 'going to focus on pve, until it was 'fixed', then they would look at pvp'....Well anyone could read between the lines, and knew, that meant they were going to ignore it from that point on for the most part....Most of those that were left went to AoC...Then they pretty much stopped all support... I left after the AoC exudus of pvpers.
A lot of people were excited for Vanguard, if Vanguard would of launched in the state it was, when I left, I think it would of done very nicely, not WoW number or anything, but probably 250,000 in the first 6 months, that would of allowed for steady growth, for a game with nice pve, good classes, great crafting/harvesting, decent raiding (at the time I mentioned).
I don't think people wanting something different is an illusion, but they don't want it at the cost of having to play something that looks 10 years old (generally, people are obsessed with graphics to a point usually, I can still play UO 2d client and be fine), is laggy/buggy, full of exploits/exploiters....
Its just like all the why aren't you playing this sandbox threads....Just because people are supporters of something, doesn't mean they have to play a broken pos.
It's difficult to be innovative, content rich, polished and mainstream at the same time.
Innovation is use of new and thereby unproven designs. I consider such features as expensive to develop because there is more required in design and programming. Then there's the unknown player reaction to new designs. It's almost the opposite of mainstream because there's a learning and adaptation curve when things change. It seems that for any person who does like the change there will be others who do not, and consider the new features to be "broken".
Content is another tough one. MMORPGs rely on having the player repeat the same sort of content over and over. Combat is an example of this. Sure one may get new skills and improved stats along the way, but except for things like raid bosses, combat at the end of the game is very much like at the beginning. In most cases, it's tank-n-spank.
Storyline PVE content is another. With the exception of a huge team devoted entirely to this, there doesn't seem to be a way to create enough content to keep folks happy. In Cata my GF and I did all the quests in all but one of the new zones and it took us less than a month playing casually. Many burnt through it in a matter of a week or so.
Polish is super tough. My estimation is that it takes as long to polish a game as it does to build a working base framework. Something can always be better. From a development standpoint that's a huge time sink. At what point is it "good enough" for release if it can always be made better.
Mainstream seems to be all but impossible given the diversity of players. It's either too easy or too hard. Too fast or too slow. Too journey oriented (grindy) or too endgame oriented (rush to cap then raid). Too group oriented or too soloable. How any developer hopes to keep everyone happy is beyond me.
I'm in agreement with the others. Innovative games fail because the market expectations are so high that anything less than very well done is seen as a fail, and playerbase drops off quickly. Polished mainstream games tend not to be innovative, and innovative games tend not to make it to mainstream.
A game doesn't have to be innovative to be great, and I am not so sure people care if X product is innovative or not, I think what players are looking for first and foremost is a good game. If a game does do something innovative and is a good game, well, then that is just icing on the cake.
Simple, Large developers only copy what they beleive is proven to work (in this case, theampark style games like WoW). Indy developers try to make innovative games which have great ideas but on a $5 budget. We are yet to see great, innovative game with great graphics (at least since WoW was released), to release bug free.
You can see this all over the place. Some people like crafting (and when I say crafting, lets be clear - realistic crafting). But, most games that have great crafting are either bugged, 1970's graphics (WURM online), restrictive (Istaria), all PVP (MO, DF), reset every ten mintes (AtiTD), etc, etc.
Some peeps like better combat but most go with target, click and kill (thats been done to the point that I'm suprized anyone even has a mouse). Their are game that have tried new combat ideas like FE (great idea but bugged at release which turned many away), Vindicus which has the best imo but it's all phased/instanced (none open world), Vangard tried really the same click and kill setup as most but added combo's which was cool but again the game was bugged, badly.
Some like the story like myself. The problem here is repeatability as Dev want to keep subs and hard to do for months, much less years. SWToR has a vary deed story (for thoses interested but like all other creations before, they took a great idea and burried it under a mountain of crap with 80m in voiceovers, phasing, etc.
Bottom line, the gaming folks have already been playing for years and will not except anything other that the absolute best (sorry to say, most AAA devs are to corporate to care and indy devs are to broke to do anything about it).
For what it worth, I will be most likely trying Vangaurd again (now that theirs a glimmer of hope for it) and I'll continue watching for the next great one.
PS, Yes we all know there are some great games out, we are talking about the majority.
I think it was 2 years ago when Saga of Ryzom went free two play for while back when it still was called Saga of Ryzom and i also remember it got a huge influx of new players who mainly came from games like WoW man that was just terrible they screamed in CAPS where are npcs in CAPS who give quests, becouse no exclamation marks above heads or why they could not jump and screamed in general chat with caps THIS GAME SUCKS. Ryzom is one of the BETTER mmos out there but first no advertisement nobody know the game and somehow older games dont appeal to vetran players anymore these days.
I think there only WoW-TOR and soon GW2 mmo players left and frustrated sandbox fans whining whole day how the mmo has gone down the toilet on forums hehe.
Sage is free 2 play and a great sandbox mmo but i don't know why people dont play it is beyond me?
Dont forget only very small portion of mmorpg.com community comes regualar here on forums and even a smaller portion of the whole mmo community world wide comes here i say 0.0001% so it maybe seems many dislike how mmo have evolved but i serious doub that if you look at the crap load of shitty mmo's comming from asia and the crap load of shitty mmo's developed by western companys there all themepark who are succefull thats why most innovative mmos dont get anywhere these days and have empty server.
Hope to build full AMD system RYZEN/VEGA/AM4!!!
MB:Asus V De Luxe z77
CPU:Intell Icore7 3770k
GPU: AMD Fury X(waiting for BIG VEGA 10 or 11 HBM2?(bit unclear now))
MEMORY:Corsair PLAT.DDR3 1866MHZ 16GB
PSU:Corsair AX1200i
OS:Windows 10 64bit
Here, here. I second all that you said.
Its funny isn't it? People say they want "more' or 'new' concepts, yet they go and watch the same explosion happy action films and the same lack luster experience becomes successful on the box office. Same is with games.
In acknowledgement that this will get me flamed by fanboys, Swtor is pretty much a good example. You can claim the 'story' elements are new, but a LOT of people are just breezing over it. So much of it is being skipped on as people just play the game right up front without much regard to those portions. The gameplay is generic as can be and yet people eat it up like its candy, despite many going on about wanting 'better combat'.
Heck, I'll admit I tend to want more innovation, and yet I enjoy rift greatly. Besides the rift aspect and other things, its pretty much using the generic formula for an MMo, yet I like it. a lot. While it might not take generic as far as SWTOR, its still something I seem to over-look despite wanting more innovation.
Are you sure that those are always the same people? I mean if some people want more and new concepts, that doesnt mean that other people suddenly stop watching the same old boring stuff.
And then there are probably people who want more and new concepts but because of the lack of well executed ones, they settle for same boring stuff and keep complaining. Even mediocre entertainment is better then no entertainment.
Well, nowadays, as far as indie developers trying to make "sandbox" games goes, there seems to be one common thread. The number of "features" planned for the game is usually inversely proportional to the size of the dev team.
How these guys ever believe that they can pull all that off in a 3D gameworld just baffles me, given their meagre resources and experience. None of the recent attempts have delivered a fraction of what they promised at the outset, and most require a few thousand people to give them a AAA-level monthly sub for the next 2 to 3 years before they MAY get a reasonably playable and filled-out gameworld running.
Innovation is not a requirement for success per se, but it would be the cherry on top. Solid gameplay and a minimum of nasty bugs, dupes and exploits are non-negotiable prerequisites for success in today's market.