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Do New MMO's have to be groundbreaking to be Great Games.
caremuchless
Member Posts: 603
Do mmo's have to have groundbreaking, new, innovative combat to be great?
Do they have to have an incredible story? (to be great)
Does it have to have classes that are different than anything ever seen?
Does a new mmo have to have different controls, completely different UI?
- I believe MMO's need to do many things "very well" to be enjoyable, but everything doesn't have to be cutting edge and ground breaking for an MMO to succeed.
What do you think?
Comments
No, clones aren't entirely bad. The problem is the clones we get are clones of really bad games that offer NOTHING new. Not a single new idea or feature.
I'd kill for a UO clone. A game offering 1/2 of what UO offered when it came out would get game of the year awards.
Somebody, somewhere has better skills as you have, more experience as you have, is smarter than you, has more friends as you do and can stay online longer. Just pray he's not out to get you.
Considering where the bar is set right now...yes they do. but a game can be good without doing everything new/innovative ect.
Game can copy other popular features but they do have to be their own game. Things like UI or quest logs ( if you're in a themepark ) ect don't have to be new and exciting they just have to be functional and familiar is often better.
Things like combat and player skills have to offer something new or the game really is just a clone.
And obviously a story doesn't have to be great but it if isn't you'll lose your die hard lore fans if you don't. They tend to be some of the ones who stick around the longest.
The bar has never been lower than it is now. Hell, people are even seeing the silver lining in clones like Rift.
Games like LotRO, AoC, Rift, would have been laughed off the market in 2001.
If lotro, AoC and Rift came out in 2001 looking and playing as they did on their release they would be the biggest games of their time and would have decimated the other games.
As it is... they are among the biggest games today and have helped decimate the other games from 2001, except Eve
The biggest games? Rift has had to merge servers 3 times and was forced to go FTP. Age of Conan crashed so hard that two partner companies with Funcom went bankrupt and they fired half their staff. LotRO, despite having the biggest IP in the world, limped along with ho hum numbers, eventually being forced to go FTP.
And obviously I'm not talking about graphics, Mr. Strawman. I'm talking about the way the games were built. Nothing new, a ton of broken half assed features, and LESS features than most MMOs had at launch in the freaking 90s.
Well, our standards have dropped to the point that we think a dodge button is groundbreaking so I guess it can only go up from here.
Good thing I said looking and playing.
Merging servers or not they are still among the biggest games today and would have destroyed the other MMO's.
and those three games have just as many features as most of the older mmo's.
No. Groundbreaking does not mean automatically good or fun.
- Al
Personally the only modern MMORPG trend that annoys me is the idea that MMOs need to be designed in a way to attract people who don't actually like MMOs. Which to me makes about as much sense as someone trying to figure out a way to get vegetarians to eat at their steakhouse.- FARGIN_WAR
To be great? Yes. To be good? No.
That said, by that logic, I would have to argue against WoW being great which I am happy to do but as far as success and numbers go it is great. Just not what I consider great.
MMO's are rare beasts of a game that are designed to be around for a long time, they aren't simpler or smaller scoped games that are released and might get a DLC or three then vanish into the depths of your steam account until you've forgotten and play it again.
For an MMO to be successful, it needs to have a brilliant idea to start with and near on flawless execution the whole way through. They cannot rely on a single gimmick to make the game, be it a nifty feature, combat, or graphics. It must be a strong comprehensive whole, meshed with a strong and active story to entice the players to stay and spend their money. MMO's fail today because they are either a stupid concept to begin with - or fail in executing the one simple basic requirement of a game - it must not suck.
It can't just be blamed on MMO's however, the last few years since the recession started has seen mediocre games praised what seems like common sense, that games 7+ years ago already had! We live in a very risk adverse time now, and because even the simplest game costs millions and millions to make, trying to brand an MMO which can cost upwards of ten times that amount, with far out ideas or concepts will have investors and publishers go look for something else to sink their money into.
What's most often requested is a set of features from the turn of the century. So...no.
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.
Yeah, I'm sure the audience of 2001 would have absolutely loved heavily instanced hand holding linear quest grinding games, and having them all play identical to one another.
Oh wait, I'm pretty sure the MODERN audience isn't too fond of that either. No, those games are not anywhere near the biggest MMOs of today. Not even in the west.
Your sentence is voluntary, you know.
The judge is willing to offer you time-served amnesty, whenever you want it.
You keep telling him, "No, no, I must keep grinding, got to get that next set," with an addict's twitch. "Here, let me buy another time card and pay another year's sub. How long til the next expansion?"
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.
I believe the answer to those would be "no" to all of them.
When we hear the terms "WoW Clone" and "Gear Treadmill" those are a result of the current state of Themeparks.
But only the current state. Everything on the market we see today that we consider a WoW Clone is a copy of WoW after WOTLK. The point where WoW got real dumbed down. Even WoW itself is suffering from it's own Clone syndrome.
But that is what began WoW's down turn. But what about the design that brought in 10Mil? The harder design. The one where every single thing you were ever able to do was earned and worked for. Every abilty, every skill, every button, every thing.
I know, I've heard it before "But I didn't like the grind" "It took way too long to accomplish anything" "I didn't like walking everywhere before level 40" Etc etc....
Yeah, you didn't like it. But you came back month after month for in some cases, years.
I'd bet that if someone went back to the grass roots and cloned WoW from Vanilla, Using that same formula but adding some of the more recent innovations from games such as Rift and GW2 among others, The game would be a huge success.
I certainly don't know "the 'innovation' word brings in the investor money for whatever reason." as you put it. Infact I was under the opposite impression. I thought that investors wanted a proven formula not some new risk which is what is associated with innovation.
Reminded me of this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=abLspv3bgRo&list=PL8B35CA833DCDA9A4&index=16
Jimquisition on innovation
Depends on your definition of groundbreaking.
WOW isn't considered groundbreaking by most. It's skin-deep featureset wasn't considerably different from its predecessors. But the specifics of how those features were implemented were what set it apart (and were a big part of why it was so successful.)
Unique takes on MMO genres have plenty of potential (MMOFPSes like Planetside 2 or action MMORPGs like TERA.) There are undoubtedly some incredible unique games left to discover (although the MMO part specifically is actually pretty bad about carrying its own weight, and there's a lot more potential in non-MMO genre creation.)
But there's also still potential with a classic MMORPG which shakes up gameplay like WOW did (it's various unique class playstyles and mechanics, like energy for rogues and rage for warriors.) Those new mechanics were the new games which made WOW a unique game, and if we pretend WOW isn't groundbreaking then a similar non-groundbreaking game would have to create similarly unique gameplay of its own.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver