I enjoy quests also but saying that quest hubs are done is not the same as saying quests are done. The hearts in GW2 are really just a form of locational quests that consolidate 2-5 tasks into one completion meter that also simply don't need you speak with the NPC in order to start. I would say that they are still essentially quests but with the delivery changed up a bit.
The questions become, 1) will we be seeing individual tasks continue or will they be consolidated. 2) will these tasks need to be accepted before starting them. 3) will tasks disappear all together in favor of something more like DEs.
1) consolidated tasks are very nice, especially if you like doing one thing more than another. Feed the cows or fight the bandits. I would rather fight but I can feed cows if no bandits can be found. It is also nice to not feel like you just need 1 more special bandit so now you need to weave between all the normal bandits wandering around because they wont give you quest credit. Long before GW2 I have imagined the farmer wanting to say, "Gah, just kill me some bandits. 10 would be great but more is even better."
Which brings up the only thing I think GW2 did wrong with the hearts. Once you fill the meter magically the farmer could care less any more if you killed another bandit in your life. Yet they are still crawling all over his farm. If the farmer wanted you to kill bandits in the first place then surely he would appreciate you continuing to do so. I am sure Anet caps this because they don't want people to bot but again that strikes me as poisoning the fun well for everyone so that the bad guys cant do what they want.
I would like to see games go more in the direction of go over here and help so and so as much as you want with diminishing returns after a certain point to encourage you to move on and help lots of different people but ultimately you decide how much you will help farmer Dan. Less artificial limitations on questing but there will still be questing.
2) yeah it is nice to not have to accept the quest before hand. Although it is a bit unrealistic to come into an area and magically know what farmer Dan needs done. What if Farmer Dan or one of his family were to come up to you and say "hey, I am glad to see you, would you be willing to do somethings for me?" and then have the quest automatically land in your log with the details. Meh, just a detail really. Wouldn't change anything. I think it works either way to have a group of quests or a consolidated quest land in your task list automatically when you get to a new place. I definitly like it when NPCs in GW2 direct you to particular events. What I don't like is when those events are finished before I get there.
3) I don't think task, missions or little quests will disappear in favor of dynamic events. The Hearts in GW2 or hubs in other games are a good mechanic to draw you though a world and make sure you at least hit all the big locations. And I think that things will remain geographic only because it is too easy to go though an area at just the wrong time and not see any events pop up. I we place all content on a space/time maping then we run the real risk of our timing being bad. Further, even if you do see a good bit of the content, people will still only be seeing a part of what you worked on. I think spreading SOME content across a time dimension is good in that it makes things seem more realistic and it makes for great replayibility but that also makes it more expensive because you will have to have much more content over all since you have to take into account people missing a certain percentage of that content when they go though. I think this model will become more populate at the high end of MMOs but not necessarily over all. Possibly this will become what separates Buy or Sub to play from Free or Shop to play.
I liked your sig so much I rewrote it to fit these forums better .
The Theory of Conservative Conservation of Ignorant Stupidity: Having a different opinion must mean you're a troll.
3) GW2 auto grouped everyone: Yup, and they killed all socialization by doing so. Good to know the future of gaming is an MMO where no one ever talks to each other. Sounds fun.
I don't think it is the autogrouping itself that is the problem. It just makes it more noticeable when someone helps you out and then simply pushes on. Other games have little socialization as well, but there someone will simply avoid helping you at all in the first place.
The real problem is that people don't want to take the time to type something if they were just passing by so maybe you get a macro'd thank you and that is it.
Ideally It would be great if we could simply talk to people as easily as we can in the real world. But having a voip channel that is roughly equivalent to a short range /say is just asking for socially autistic brats to start voice bombing everybody they see. Unfortunately social civility only maintains itself in a cultrually enforceable context.
I've heard the MMORPG audience is a tough crowd. I think you guys have every right to be angry that MMOs haven't changed much in the past 10 years. Glad to see people still want more, as it really makes me want to figure out what the "more" is as a game maker.
- Mark Kern
and cars have changed very little since the days when the first model T rolled off the line
how about games ? baseball, football ? basketball ? uniforms and some small rule changes but a home run is still a home run. Chess rules been the same for several hundred years.
on a MMO the designers still are forced to work within the limits of the technology, you have a pixilated character tha is limited to movement and intereaction with mobiles.You can't smell taste ot do much withthem except destroy them or move them from point A to point B. Not sure what peoiple expect.
you can make that mobile represent a pirate, a space trooper, a rat, or a zopmbie but at the end of the day you are going to have to kill ten , twelve or seven of them to advance your character. That is just the nature of the MMO, don't like it then find a new hobby or come up with some ground breaking idea.
Sam Rayburn once said " Any jackass can kick down a barn but it takes a carpenter to build one.
Are any carpenters here? or just a bunch of jackasses
Guild Wars 2 changed nothing! It made some slight changes to existing to existing design ideas, but there was nothing very innovative in the game at all.
If you notice GW2 is still a class/level system which puts extreme limits on character development. As long as you use such a design you are going to be placing big limits on what people can do in a MMO.
Much more dynamic content (longer downtime, longer chains, more branching).
Content made by players (dungeons, quests).
Content that can be played without using force (Classical adventuring, were you just talk to people and run around to solve a mystery).
More complex riddles, traps and secret doors with a minigame-system that involves skill to disarm and open.
Classes do not only differ in their combat-style, but also in their social style: thiefs are connected with a secret guild, that often has its headquarters in hidden parts of the city (instanced only for thiefs), they also have some skills to work as cone artists (disguise, cheating in games, etc.) and can do some fluffy stuff like juggling. This could even lead to the effect, that they are wanted in some cities. Class-quests can lead to conflict between classes. So Necromancer may have a quest to call for a demon that dynamicaly triggers a quest for Priests and Paladins to get rid of this demon.
The future:
Physics Engine - Players can interact with the enviroment in a creative way, eg build a bridge of planks to get over an obstacle.
Personality Engine - Designers just give an NPC some parameters (Dwarf, likes to drink, does not like Elfs, greedy for money) and the engine is responsible for the behaviour.
Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don't need.
I don't think GW2 changed anything so much as nudged the genre in down a path the genre has slowly been following for years...
For a while, MMOs have become about a grind. Grinding "quests" to level up. Grinding instances to gear up. Grinding token-systems to get rewards. Grinding achievements for even more rewards. Essentially, MMOs have long primarily catered to that urge to get-that-carrot. We play to level up. We play to get that new chest piece. We play to boost our achievement points. Whereas... shouldn't we be playing because we really want to prevent centaurs from overtaking a village? We really want to defeat the uber-evil-dragon-of-dimensions and temporarily prevent an apocolypse?
For a short while, GW2 does something different. It encourages players to just "experience" the game and its content. For a while, the player is engaged not necessarily because there is a reward at the end of it, but because its interesting and fun. However, the game does eventually settle into a carrot-driven-design. For a while, the game does get you to think, "I really don't want these centaurs to succeed!". And then, it becomes... "Oh look, those centaurs are trying to take over that village.. and I need karma!"
I think players really want a game where consequences are legitimate. Where, if you fail a quest... there are consequences you have to deal with... When you wrong another player, your reputation within the community may be severely impacted. Where there is always a hint of unknown and mystery...
I would argue that Dynamic Events are a step in the right direction. But, they aren't "meaty" enough to be truly game-changing. As with Rift and WAR - there is too much "static" and not enough "dynamic" in these events.
Edit:
As others have pointed out, ANet has done an awesome job. I love the auto-level-scaling. I really enjoy the crafting system and having to "figure" out recipes. I really enjoy the fact that the gear grind that exists is almost purely cosmetic in nature. I also enjoy their take on the traditional "tabbed targeting combat". There is a lot of GOOD work in GW2. The game is full of love, and you can sense it.
I am with the others that did not see much change, overall. Quests didn't really change much in the end of the day, and in spite of everyone saying they are so much different from PQs in Warhammer and RIFTs would be from DEs, they feel pretty much the same to me. Mechanically speaking, it feels pretty much the same. Combat is a bit different, but not all the changes in combat are a positive imo.
Don't get me wrong, I like this game and am having a good time with it, but it surely isn't the messiah of MMORPGs heralding the trumpets of change or revolution in the industry. I have to be honest, it feels way more like every other themepark MMO that I have ever played than I thought it would given the expectations.
It could, possibly, alter the subscription model, and make B2P the norm (a change I would not like, btw), but only in GW2 has good, solid, long term financial numbers. They need to make a good profit off the rmts and keep the development of expansions quick, without suffering poor quality. If all that can happen, and IF they are still well in the black, I suppose future devs will look at that as a viable way to collect profits for their game. But the jury will be out on this for a while.
Like all MMOs, I think those that come in the future will look to the past and use what works (which is of course why we have 100 incarnations of WoW). They will do the same with this game. Future developers will cherry pick a few things from the skeleton of GW2, but I don't see how GW2 changes much of anything going forward.
It feels more like the past than I hoped it would...but then maybe I am playing it wrong. ;-)
This article has "win" written all over it. Mark's idea in a sandbox + other continuous twisting plots around it + multiple ways for character advancement + three or more faction pvp = The impact GW2 attempted to make
I've heard the MMORPG audience is a tough crowd. I think you guys have every right to be angry that MMOs haven't changed much in the past 10 years. Glad to see people still want more, as it really makes me want to figure out what the "more" is as a game maker.
- Mark Kern
and cars have changed very little since the days when the first model T rolled off the line
how about games ? baseball, football ? basketball ? uniforms and some small rule changes but a home run is still a home run. Chess rules been the same for several hundred years.
on a MMO the designers still are forced to work within the limits of the technology, you have a pixilated character tha is limited to movement and intereaction with mobiles.You can't smell taste ot do much withthem except destroy them or move them from point A to point B. Not sure what peoiple expect.
you can make that mobile represent a pirate, a space trooper, a rat, or a zopmbie but at the end of the day you are going to have to kill ten , twelve or seven of them to advance your character. That is just the nature of the MMO, don't like it then find a new hobby or come up with some ground breaking idea.
Sam Rayburn once said " Any jackass can kick down a barn but it takes a carpenter to build one.
Are any carpenters here? or just a bunch of jackasses
Great point, where the hell is my flying car? I was promised one back in the 60's and yet here in 2012 I still don't see one anywhere. (same with my jetpack btw)
Because that's really what we're asking for, stop evolving the model T, do something radically different, some entirely new system of transportation like teleporters.
Same with MMORPG's, let's see some really big innovation/change here and knock my socks off. (think New Cap City in Caprica)
As for being a carpenter, leave that to the people who are paid to build these worlds, up to them to figure it out, stop giving me excuses why they can't do it.
Excuse me, my household robot just served my lunch.
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
It's been a while since I've been thinking about this. It's shouldn't be too hard to do. I mean, to make some kind of "time" into a game, you need to make the "area/zone" change on what player are doing. Game are just not build toward this goal.
They should make some "default map" and each of them have some "layer" to progress and disgress in time. city could grow in time with player activity or go into ghost town, and in each pattern come all kind of even. A big city getting bigger would spawn new merchant, new district and probably some kind of underground challenge (theive and other), while if that same city go deserted by player and the economy drop out, those big building would go empty and could resume into a ghost town, poverty and everything attached to that subject. All this are evolving arround the player action and seem to be easy to do with parameter that gauge player action.
You can make this kind of pattern for a lot of thing, a forest filled with wolve, if player come and hunt them down and keep killing them as they "respawn" if respawn they are, some counter get up and then no more wolve spawn and probably let other creature come like maybe more deer spawn and if the player let the deer live, wolve might come back coming from another place and soo forth. In that same forest, if the tree get cut down and on an higher rate then they grow, some NPC could asked to stopped, like a Druid or fairy atk. And you can keep going like this.
A montain, you can discover a mine, set it up and get the close settlement to grow with all the new trade and unlock some new job, (Escort the new ore from the mine to the settlement). Then if the mine is unexploited, it can become the lair of some kind of monster.
I've only put some, but all these seem fairly easy to think. It might get to a challenge in prog, but with parameter for each even, (parameter could be zone type, player action A, B C ... Killing/time ... material used ... and soo on). Each can occur an new even at some time/tick. A city won't grow from village to metropolis, but could have some building add in time.
In the end, it might be a lot of work, but you doesn't need A BIG map to have player having fun, since each area will evolve and let player experience new stuff, you could easily stay in the same area all the time and never do the same thing.
Seem doable, but that kind of game is way far from the "theme park" and is unpredictable, it's might be more a niche than theme park and, since it's a niche, the $ that could be made is more risky
I've heard the MMORPG audience is a tough crowd. I think you guys have every right to be angry that MMOs haven't changed much in the past 10 years. Glad to see people still want more, as it really makes me want to figure out what the "more" is as a game maker.
- Mark Kern
and cars have changed very little since the days when the first model T rolled off the line
how about games ? baseball, football ? basketball ? uniforms and some small rule changes but a home run is still a home run. Chess rules been the same for several hundred years.
on a MMO the designers still are forced to work within the limits of the technology, you have a pixilated character tha is limited to movement and intereaction with mobiles.You can't smell taste ot do much withthem except destroy them or move them from point A to point B. Not sure what peoiple expect.
you can make that mobile represent a pirate, a space trooper, a rat, or a zopmbie but at the end of the day you are going to have to kill ten , twelve or seven of them to advance your character. That is just the nature of the MMO, don't like it then find a new hobby or come up with some ground breaking idea.
Sam Rayburn once said " Any jackass can kick down a barn but it takes a carpenter to build one.
Are any carpenters here? or just a bunch of jackasses
Great point, where the hell is my flying car? I was promised one back in the 60's and yet here in 2012 I still don't see one anywhere. (same with my jetpack btw)
Because that's really what we're asking for, stop evolving the model T, do something radically different, some entirely new system of transportation like teleporters.
Same with MMORPG's, let's see some really big innovation/change here and knock my socks off. (think New Cap City in Caprica)
As for being a carpenter, leave that to the people who are paid to build these worlds, up to them to figure it out, stop giving me excuses why they can't do it.
Excuse me, my household robot just served my lunch.
I've heard the MMORPG audience is a tough crowd. I think you guys have every right to be angry that MMOs haven't changed much in the past 10 years. Glad to see people still want more, as it really makes me want to figure out what the "more" is as a game maker.
- Mark Kern
and cars have changed very little since the days when the first model T rolled off the line
how about games ? baseball, football ? basketball ? uniforms and some small rule changes but a home run is still a home run. Chess rules been the same for several hundred years.
on a MMO the designers still are forced to work within the limits of the technology, you have a pixilated character tha is limited to movement and intereaction with mobiles.You can't smell taste ot do much withthem except destroy them or move them from point A to point B. Not sure what peoiple expect.
you can make that mobile represent a pirate, a space trooper, a rat, or a zopmbie but at the end of the day you are going to have to kill ten , twelve or seven of them to advance your character. That is just the nature of the MMO, don't like it then find a new hobby or come up with some ground breaking idea.
Sam Rayburn once said " Any jackass can kick down a barn but it takes a carpenter to build one.
Are any carpenters here? or just a bunch of jackasses
Great point, where the hell is my flying car? I was promised one back in the 60's and yet here in 2012 I still don't see one anywhere. (same with my jetpack btw)
Because that's really what we're asking for, stop evolving the model T, do something radically different, some entirely new system of transportation like teleporters.
Same with MMORPG's, let's see some really big innovation/change here and knock my socks off. (think New Cap City in Caprica)
As for being a carpenter, leave that to the people who are paid to build these worlds, up to them to figure it out, stop giving me excuses why they can't do it.
Excuse me, my household robot just served my lunch.
+1 to this.
The problem with this example is that to "evolve" the car into "something else", and by reference the MMORPG, is that key elements are missing to do so. First we need a half-decent safe anti-gravity solution to make "flying cars".
By direct reference, we need better engines that allow for more in-depth mechanics to evolve the genre. However, all anyone keeps doing is re-inventing the MMO engine by simply "remaking" their own version of the basic MMO.
This, I believe, is the REAL issue. They need to create engines that are built for a specific mindset rather than building an engine for a specific GAME.
The Theory of Conservative Conservation of Ignorant Stupidity: Having a different opinion must mean you're a troll.
Originally posted by Tardcore Originally posted by grummz I've heard the MMORPG audience is a tough crowd. I think you guys have every right to be angry that MMOs haven't changed much in the past 10 years. Glad to see people still want more, as it really makes me want to figure out what the "more" is as a game maker. - Mark Kern
And I do not envy you in your task Sir, as trying to find out what we as players want from an MMO must be quite like the parable of the blind men describing an elephant.
Problem is, giving players what they say they want is what caused this mess. Never trust players to tell you what they want. We have no clue what we want. Developers need to do research and find out what players are willing to do for a longer term.
So I was a little confused about the dynamic event system before too, cuz it seemed same event and all a lot in some areas. But later on I did learn they are dynamic, theres NPCs in other places who will run to villages for help, and yell around to get people. Some of the events after ending if you hang around run to a new area and start another event (like a story). Can be up to 3-4 parts from what i've seen, I admit the dynamic system needs to polishing, and more stuff done with it though to truly feel dynamic.
Also reading, I did feel same way with hearts. Hearts/mini quest hub, pretty much same thing, but this does incourage more exploring and you don't have to do heart task all the time.
Mark, I think you're spot on with this article.. and I agree with other people who post that it's going to take a company who will take a risk. Since the tools don't exist they need to build them and their own engine. Well, that sounds a lot like Citadel of Sorcery to me
So I was a little confused about the dynamic event system before too, cuz it seemed same event and all a lot in some areas. But later on I did learn they are dynamic, theres NPCs in other places who will run to villages for help, and yell around to get people. Some of the events after ending if you hang around run to a new area and start another event (like a story). Can be up to 3-4 parts from what i've seen, I admit the dynamic system needs to polishing, and more stuff done with it though to truly feel dynamic.
Also reading, I did feel same way with hearts. Hearts/mini quest hub, pretty much same thing, but this does incourage more exploring and you don't have to do heart task all the time.
What you just explained is called a "Scripted Event". There was not a single part of that explanation that was "Dynamic".
Those NPCs ALWAYS go out during major events to each town to ask people for help. That is scripted, not Dynamic.
Originally posted by RefMinor It didn't change everything, so the premise of your question is incorrect.
Definetly this.
1) GW2 got rid of quest hubs: Yes, it also pretty much got rid of quests too. So.... I'll take quest hubs over that. The game is at least 98% kill/gather/destroy tasks. You know, those exact things people complain about in other games but for some reason when ANet does it, it is revolutionary.
You're looking too much purely at the objectives. I think it's great that in GW2 you are just exploring any part of the world and then suddenly you get involved in an event regardless of where in the world you are or if you wanted to quest or not. Those other games you know which town they're going to send you next only by looking at the map and more often than not if you try to do all quests in a zone they turn grey on you.
2) GW2 is B2P: Yes, they successfully tricked players into paying $60 for a F2P game. Yet again, because it was ANet, it is revolutionary and will be the future of gaming. So the future is we'll all pay $60 for a F2P when currently you get F2P games for free to start with... good improvement.
There's still a very important difference with F2P, in F2P ALL income is generated from the item store so you typically have to pay to unlock basic content like being able to access a zone or do any quests there, not just convenience stuff like extra bank storage or character slots.
3) GW2 auto grouped everyone: Yup, and they killed all socialization by doing so. Good to know the future of gaming is an MMO where no one ever talks to each other. Sounds fun.
I don't see how auto grouping kills socialization, other themeparks are made solo'able up until the end game content and the only reason for grouping up until then is to not stand in a queue to kill a boss mob. Not because the challenge is too big, in almost every single themepark it's nigh impossible to die even with crap gear unless you do a very stupid pull.
4) GW2 did combos!!: Oh wait, other games already did those.
That's true but nobody said they created only new stuff that hadn't been done before, it's what the total package overall offers and how much of it is differently perceived. Purely looking at features or underlying systems / mechanics of course everything has been done before and nothing new can ever be invented again.
5) GW2 did Dynamic Events!!: Oh wait, other games already did those.
Not as the main content of the game, the few that did have something simmilar offered it as a sideshow and were usually the exact same stuff with only different mobs (rifts in Rift).
6) GW2 did WvW PvP!!: Not any different from RvR that has been done before only this time there is absolutely no point to it at all so it is boring as hell. Not a good improvement.
Hasn't been done by many and not for a long time. What point you're looking for? I bet it's shinies and not fun. Of course whatever does it for you but still I think it's strange that folks need pixel reward incentives in order to do anything.
While shifting new content to being based on time instead of location seems like a good way to make content less predictable, it also takes a lot of control away from the customer. Normally the players decides what content they want and when, they control the pacing. They know what to expect when they go to a specific location. It seems like basing the content on time, takes a lot of control away from the character. It makes sense in D&D where its a small group of friends and you know what everyone likes, but on a massive scale with hundreds of thousands of players, seems like a time based tool where you take the control away from the players is going to alienate a lot of them.
Question is, did it change anything? The answer is no. It used different types of filters and facades, but still the same gameplay, if not more grindy now than ever.
The best and most innovative thing GW2 brought around was the idea that people don't share crafting nodes in the open world. That was genius....nothing else was invented though....all re-hashed with a different book cover.
Why does everything have to be scripted or ai controlled in an MMO? Would it be cool if a percentage of a sub went into paying for a live team, Dungeon master's if you will. Give them a host of controllable mobs and bosses and let them reek havoc on player's. Have a book full of encounter's from the small and personal to massive boss attacks on a city ( a dragon picking up player's and swallowing them or tossing them across town would be an absolute riot)
So many things you could do and it would never be the same twice
This genre needs to die and born again and start from the basics and core elements which are now missing.
Next step will be the search of those core elements,these GW2 and SWTOR´s etc helps in that because its so easy to notice what is missing and why MMORPG´s are dying.
Like basic P&P session,DM doesnt tell to players what they have to do next ,it goes the way that player does whatever he wants.
But in todays MMO´s ,these things doesnt ask anything ,these scripts and stories and limited character customisations and actions forces players to play like game commands them.
By some weird powers from other dimension Blizzard might have given birth accidentally to something good with their phasing system,now imagine that in real time,when player does something which makes changes in the world then it changes for eveybody in the server,something unpredictable happens,like in P&P games happens all the time.
Comments
I liked your sig so much I rewrote it to fit these forums better
.
The Theory of Conservative Conservation of Ignorant Stupidity:
Having a different opinion must mean you're a troll.
I don't think it is the autogrouping itself that is the problem. It just makes it more noticeable when someone helps you out and then simply pushes on. Other games have little socialization as well, but there someone will simply avoid helping you at all in the first place.
The real problem is that people don't want to take the time to type something if they were just passing by so maybe you get a macro'd thank you and that is it.
Ideally It would be great if we could simply talk to people as easily as we can in the real world. But having a voip channel that is roughly equivalent to a short range /say is just asking for socially autistic brats to start voice bombing everybody they see. Unfortunately social civility only maintains itself in a cultrually enforceable context.
All die, so die well.
and cars have changed very little since the days when the first model T rolled off the line
how about games ? baseball, football ? basketball ? uniforms and some small rule changes but a home run is still a home run. Chess rules been the same for several hundred years.
on a MMO the designers still are forced to work within the limits of the technology, you have a pixilated character tha is limited to movement and intereaction with mobiles.You can't smell taste ot do much withthem except destroy them or move them from point A to point B. Not sure what peoiple expect.
you can make that mobile represent a pirate, a space trooper, a rat, or a zopmbie but at the end of the day you are going to have to kill ten , twelve or seven of them to advance your character. That is just the nature of the MMO, don't like it then find a new hobby or come up with some ground breaking idea.
Sam Rayburn once said " Any jackass can kick down a barn but it takes a carpenter to build one.
Are any carpenters here? or just a bunch of jackasses
I miss DAoC
Guild Wars 2 changed nothing! It made some slight changes to existing to existing design ideas, but there was nothing very innovative in the game at all.
If you notice GW2 is still a class/level system which puts extreme limits on character development. As long as you use such a design you are going to be placing big limits on what people can do in a MMO.
The next step:
Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don't need.
I don't think GW2 changed anything so much as nudged the genre in down a path the genre has slowly been following for years...
For a while, MMOs have become about a grind. Grinding "quests" to level up. Grinding instances to gear up. Grinding token-systems to get rewards. Grinding achievements for even more rewards. Essentially, MMOs have long primarily catered to that urge to get-that-carrot. We play to level up. We play to get that new chest piece. We play to boost our achievement points. Whereas... shouldn't we be playing because we really want to prevent centaurs from overtaking a village? We really want to defeat the uber-evil-dragon-of-dimensions and temporarily prevent an apocolypse?
For a short while, GW2 does something different. It encourages players to just "experience" the game and its content. For a while, the player is engaged not necessarily because there is a reward at the end of it, but because its interesting and fun. However, the game does eventually settle into a carrot-driven-design. For a while, the game does get you to think, "I really don't want these centaurs to succeed!". And then, it becomes... "Oh look, those centaurs are trying to take over that village.. and I need karma!"
I think players really want a game where consequences are legitimate. Where, if you fail a quest... there are consequences you have to deal with... When you wrong another player, your reputation within the community may be severely impacted. Where there is always a hint of unknown and mystery...
I would argue that Dynamic Events are a step in the right direction. But, they aren't "meaty" enough to be truly game-changing. As with Rift and WAR - there is too much "static" and not enough "dynamic" in these events.
Edit:
As others have pointed out, ANet has done an awesome job. I love the auto-level-scaling. I really enjoy the crafting system and having to "figure" out recipes. I really enjoy the fact that the gear grind that exists is almost purely cosmetic in nature. I also enjoy their take on the traditional "tabbed targeting combat". There is a lot of GOOD work in GW2. The game is full of love, and you can sense it.
I am with the others that did not see much change, overall. Quests didn't really change much in the end of the day, and in spite of everyone saying they are so much different from PQs in Warhammer and RIFTs would be from DEs, they feel pretty much the same to me. Mechanically speaking, it feels pretty much the same. Combat is a bit different, but not all the changes in combat are a positive imo.
Don't get me wrong, I like this game and am having a good time with it, but it surely isn't the messiah of MMORPGs heralding the trumpets of change or revolution in the industry. I have to be honest, it feels way more like every other themepark MMO that I have ever played than I thought it would given the expectations.
It could, possibly, alter the subscription model, and make B2P the norm (a change I would not like, btw), but only in GW2 has good, solid, long term financial numbers. They need to make a good profit off the rmts and keep the development of expansions quick, without suffering poor quality. If all that can happen, and IF they are still well in the black, I suppose future devs will look at that as a viable way to collect profits for their game. But the jury will be out on this for a while.
Like all MMOs, I think those that come in the future will look to the past and use what works (which is of course why we have 100 incarnations of WoW). They will do the same with this game. Future developers will cherry pick a few things from the skeleton of GW2, but I don't see how GW2 changes much of anything going forward.
It feels more like the past than I hoped it would...but then maybe I am playing it wrong. ;-)
Great point, where the hell is my flying car? I was promised one back in the 60's and yet here in 2012 I still don't see one anywhere. (same with my jetpack btw)
Because that's really what we're asking for, stop evolving the model T, do something radically different, some entirely new system of transportation like teleporters.
Same with MMORPG's, let's see some really big innovation/change here and knock my socks off. (think New Cap City in Caprica)
As for being a carpenter, leave that to the people who are paid to build these worlds, up to them to figure it out, stop giving me excuses why they can't do it.
Excuse me, my household robot just served my lunch.
(now, if I could only get "her" to.... )
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It's been a while since I've been thinking about this. It's shouldn't be too hard to do. I mean, to make some kind of "time" into a game, you need to make the "area/zone" change on what player are doing. Game are just not build toward this goal.
They should make some "default map" and each of them have some "layer" to progress and disgress in time. city could grow in time with player activity or go into ghost town, and in each pattern come all kind of even. A big city getting bigger would spawn new merchant, new district and probably some kind of underground challenge (theive and other), while if that same city go deserted by player and the economy drop out, those big building would go empty and could resume into a ghost town, poverty and everything attached to that subject. All this are evolving arround the player action and seem to be easy to do with parameter that gauge player action.
You can make this kind of pattern for a lot of thing, a forest filled with wolve, if player come and hunt them down and keep killing them as they "respawn" if respawn they are, some counter get up and then no more wolve spawn and probably let other creature come like maybe more deer spawn and if the player let the deer live, wolve might come back coming from another place and soo forth. In that same forest, if the tree get cut down and on an higher rate then they grow, some NPC could asked to stopped, like a Druid or fairy atk. And you can keep going like this.
A montain, you can discover a mine, set it up and get the close settlement to grow with all the new trade and unlock some new job, (Escort the new ore from the mine to the settlement). Then if the mine is unexploited, it can become the lair of some kind of monster.
I've only put some, but all these seem fairly easy to think. It might get to a challenge in prog, but with parameter for each even, (parameter could be zone type, player action A, B C ... Killing/time ... material used ... and soo on). Each can occur an new even at some time/tick. A city won't grow from village to metropolis, but could have some building add in time.
In the end, it might be a lot of work, but you doesn't need A BIG map to have player having fun, since each area will evolve and let player experience new stuff, you could easily stay in the same area all the time and never do the same thing.
Seem doable, but that kind of game is way far from the "theme park" and is unpredictable, it's might be more a niche than theme park and, since it's a niche, the $ that could be made is more risky
that's mostly my thought
+1 to this.
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The problem with this example is that to "evolve" the car into "something else", and by reference the MMORPG, is that key elements are missing to do so. First we need a half-decent safe anti-gravity solution to make "flying cars".
By direct reference, we need better engines that allow for more in-depth mechanics to evolve the genre. However, all anyone keeps doing is re-inventing the MMO engine by simply "remaking" their own version of the basic MMO.
This, I believe, is the REAL issue. They need to create engines that are built for a specific mindset rather than building an engine for a specific GAME.
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Problem is, giving players what they say they want is what caused this mess.
Never trust players to tell you what they want. We have no clue what we want.
Developers need to do research and find out what players are willing to do for a longer term.
Whats next? I dunno. What genres are left to be dumped into an mmo? Maybe we can copy ddr and "reinvent" the genre for the upteenth time.
So I was a little confused about the dynamic event system before too, cuz it seemed same event and all a lot in some areas. But later on I did learn they are dynamic, theres NPCs in other places who will run to villages for help, and yell around to get people. Some of the events after ending if you hang around run to a new area and start another event (like a story). Can be up to 3-4 parts from what i've seen, I admit the dynamic system needs to polishing, and more stuff done with it though to truly feel dynamic.
Also reading, I did feel same way with hearts. Hearts/mini quest hub, pretty much same thing, but this does incourage more exploring and you don't have to do heart task all the time.
And every common sense consumer says, "If I pay to have a barn built, the carpenter better do a damn good job or I want my money back."
What you just explained is called a "Scripted Event". There was not a single part of that explanation that was "Dynamic".
Those NPCs ALWAYS go out during major events to each town to ask people for help. That is scripted, not Dynamic.
While shifting new content to being based on time instead of location seems like a good way to make content less predictable, it also takes a lot of control away from the customer. Normally the players decides what content they want and when, they control the pacing. They know what to expect when they go to a specific location. It seems like basing the content on time, takes a lot of control away from the character. It makes sense in D&D where its a small group of friends and you know what everyone likes, but on a massive scale with hundreds of thousands of players, seems like a time based tool where you take the control away from the players is going to alienate a lot of them.
Question is, did it change anything? The answer is no. It used different types of filters and facades, but still the same gameplay, if not more grindy now than ever.
The best and most innovative thing GW2 brought around was the idea that people don't share crafting nodes in the open world. That was genius....nothing else was invented though....all re-hashed with a different book cover.
Why does everything have to be scripted or ai controlled in an MMO? Would it be cool if a percentage of a sub went into paying for a live team, Dungeon master's if you will. Give them a host of controllable mobs and bosses and let them reek havoc on player's. Have a book full of encounter's from the small and personal to massive boss attacks on a city ( a dragon picking up player's and swallowing them or tossing them across town would be an absolute riot)
So many things you could do and it would never be the same twice
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This genre needs to die and born again and start from the basics and core elements which are now missing.
Next step will be the search of those core elements,these GW2 and SWTOR´s etc helps in that because its so easy to notice what is missing and why MMORPG´s are dying.
Like basic P&P session,DM doesnt tell to players what they have to do next ,it goes the way that player does whatever he wants.
But in todays MMO´s ,these things doesnt ask anything ,these scripts and stories and limited character customisations and actions forces players to play like game commands them.
By some weird powers from other dimension Blizzard might have given birth accidentally to something good with their phasing system,now imagine that in real time,when player does something which makes changes in the world then it changes for eveybody in the server,something unpredictable happens,like in P&P games happens all the time.
Let's internet