Hehe its not really fair to compare Ubisoft to other game devs. Maybe Rockstar and possibly Naughty Dog, but those are elite game developers.
Im glad they are finally stepping into the mmo scene with The Division and Destiny.
Divison and Destiny are not MMOs.
Really because that public event with all those people in different groups at the end of the 12 minute gameplay video of destiny in that open world map screamed out mmo to me. Same for The Division when they showed all those players on its open world map at the end and two groups of players running into each other and getting into pvp.
Two groups of what? 5 players each? The bar for MASSIVELY Multiplayer has really been lowered
But yeah, anything seems to pass for MMO these days, even if everything is instanced and you can never have more than a handful of players in the same space.
None of that gameplay was instanced, they were both open world. Ubisoft them selves said The Division is open world.
Heres a quote from Bungie about Destiny
“In Borderlands you can run around with enemies and run into a few enemies to kill,” Staten said, “in Destiny you will run around with your friends, run into other small groups of friends who are also there killing monsters, you see other people off on the horizon, hear gunfire over a hill and you see space magic flying behind some trees. There are other people out there.”
This version of the game was built with Voxels in mind from the start, they didn't know when they started looking at art styles how small or smooth or detailed they could get the Voxels, and even though its looking far better now that Voxel Farm has improved the tool set they can use, it would still result in a horrible clash to have next gen realism on the character models with simplified buildings and enviroments with blocky destruction physics.
Also the animations are still been developed, this is pre-alpha after all and animations are not top priority. I see no validity to this line of criticism at all.
Well what you should say is SOE and every other developer this is how I prefer my games to look. The reason being is that many thought graphics were important and for 11 years WoW proved that wrong. So I like the look of those games you posted but I'd never randomly assert this is how you do it right until one of these games present strong player bases.
One thing I'd like to note is that those environments are static for instance in the division video there is debris every where and none of it moves the guy tries to shoot through a car window... it acts like hitting a brick wall; very unFPS like. In the Destiny video you see horrible boss AI and simplistic combat similar to DEFIANCE. Better graphics though. Then you add Planetside 2 from SOE I guess as a "Why u no look like these" type of thing and that's because it's already released and that's usually how ported games work. DC Universe, Ever Quest which I think ended up looking worse if I recall.
Moral of the story is: Cool; I hope those games live up to the hype; they have been dumbed down for mass appeal but they didn't seem to remove too much "From what I could tell" that would allow it to be considered a MMO. Yet what I've learned over the years is Hype generally leads to disappointment so I prefer not to talk **** about other games until I've been proven right." Wildstar, EQN, Black Desert (Which looks like crap in gameplay videos I might add) Archeage and so many others are the new breed, they present some new design choices which could lead to popular appeal if I had to guess between those Destiny will be the more successful MMOFPS and Division will be a niche as it lacks levels and without progression people get bored. For MMORPG it's tough and I can't even decide but I think either Wildstar or EQN will blow up or maybe I'll be surprised and gamers will learn how to appreciate multiple games at the same time.
Let's say there are 100 toons in close proximity. Now there are 100 sources of data each participant must render in real time (including AI). That just isn't possible for most gamers' machines as you raise the level of detail, and add particle effects, shaders and ambient lighting... hey let's add more complex animation and see if we can actually make peoples' rigs fizzle and smoke.
On another note, the game you selected, while agreeably pretty, has pretty boring, repetitious gameplay. So you're chosen a graphic-intensive, shallow game and said, "why can't mmos be more like this".
Every mmo I have played since 1998 had repetitious gameplay, doing the same hotbar rotation...123456...123456 on majority of battles. I wish mmos were as fun as Assassins Creed gameplay. Ship Combat, Climbing, parkour, Air Attacks, Pick Pocketing, All sorts of stealth positional attacks, real time ranged combat where you can aim even things like poison darts and smoke bombs, boarding and taking ships for new crew and crafting materials. Have you played Assassins Creed?
Yes, I own it. It's graphic intensive. It's repetitive.
I know what you mean about 123456, or in many cases just 123, and that's the end-user perspective of the combat system. Really, generally, 7 8 9 10 11 and 12 exist, but they're moot for the specific scenario or situation, so to have the most calculable affect, experienced players learn 1235 423 123 15. I find that to be another issue entirely.
edit: I mean, if you want to argue that, most of AC4 is left and right clicking with an opportunely-timed additional key. It "wishes" it was 123456, when it's leftclick leftclick rightclick 1
Time will tell what ps2 and defiance deliver. More power to them. EQN is a completely different beast. As has been said, it is voxel-based and is known beyond pr hype to be a fully persistent-world mmorpg.
If providing Assassin's Creed-level gameplay and character detail in a huge, destructible, deformable mmo is as simple as just deciding to be awesome and do it, then i guess every developer in the world just doesn't want to do it. That must be why none have been released.
Now, this was 2 years before they announced they were going to Voxels - that doesn't necessarily mean that Forgelight went into the trash can. It's a huge deal to develop a proprietary graphics engine, and it's a huge deal to throw out 2 years worth of game development work. So I don't know that being voxel-based and Forgelight are mutually exclusive - EQL/EQN could still be using Forgelight just with voxels, it isn't very clear at this point.
But, more closely related - it's very easy to put 2000 characters on the screen at the same time when they all look the same and you just have some pretty terrain (that is static) along with that to draw. It's an entirely different manner when you have 2000 players on the screen and every single one of them is unique, and can, at any time, change their appearance by equipping any of thousands of different combinations of models and textures.
Fair cop about SP to MMO's, however the point about planetside 2 is valid latest rounds of optimization for the game have made it very good under load, though personnel experiences do differ.
Even if they just pushed up to near the level of PS2 I think all will agree it would look better, same engine but one looks like a re-rendering of WOW and the other looks well good.
PS2 has pretty minimal customization for character models. That's why it can run FPS battles between 200 people and make it work.
But everquest isnt FPS style gameplay so it doesnt have to sacrifice character models for FPS mechanics like real time bullets and no where near as much particle effects as PS2. And I dont mind if they lower the 2000 player to 1000 player limit per map, 1000 is still a lot.
We don't know how much customization EQ will have. I would be willing to bet it is a lot.
Anyhow, this has been debated a dozen times already. "Cartoony" graphics weather time much better than "realistic" graphics. Your example of AC4 will look pathetic in 5 years, whereas EQNext graphics will still look just as fine, although they are still "cartoony" and that doesn't fit everyone's taste.
Funnily enough, the most popular MMO of all times has "cartoony" graphics. Coincidence?
WoW is like an anomaly, it came out at the right time and instead of doing anything new they played it safe and improved upon what EQ and other mmos did before it. It also made the mmo genre very easy for none gamers and none mmo gamers to get into. And for its time all those things were good in terms of gameplay and graphics. Back then I could understand the cartoony graphics as most games that went for more realism looked bad anyway. But these are different times and realistic graphics really do look realistic and would look awsome even 5-10 years from it. Assassins Creed 4 would still look great to me 5 years from now because it doesnt have blocky body parts and bland textures like the games of early 2000s that attempted realism.
It was never the graphics that made WoW great to players, other than maybe working on standard PCs on lowest settings. But these days I see a lot of average PCs with nvidia and amd cards in them with multi-core cpus and at least 4 gigs of ram.
Ill bet if Rockstar made a full blown mmo of GTA it would retain much of its graphics quality from the single player games and have at least half of a billion active players since theres obviously over a billion fans of GTA fans from GTA5 sales.
Fair cop about SP to MMO's, however the point about planetside 2 is valid latest rounds of optimization for the game have made it very good under load, though personnel experiences do differ.
Even if they just pushed up to near the level of PS2 I think all will agree it would look better, same engine but one looks like a re-rendering of WOW and the other looks well good.
PS2 has pretty minimal customization for character models. That's why it can run FPS battles between 200 people and make it work.
But everquest isnt FPS style gameplay so it doesnt have to sacrifice character models for FPS mechanics like real time bullets and no where near as much particle effects as PS2. And I dont mind if they lower the 2000 player to 1000 player limit per map, 1000 is still a lot.
We don't know how much customization EQ will have. I would be willing to bet it is a lot.
Anyhow, this has been debated a dozen times already. "Cartoony" graphics weather time much better than "realistic" graphics. Your example of AC4 will look pathetic in 5 years, whereas EQNext graphics will still look just as fine, although they are still "cartoony" and that doesn't fit everyone's taste.
Funnily enough, the most popular MMO of all times has "cartoony" graphics. Coincidence?
Not a coincidence at all. You can run the game you're talking about on a laptop from 2002. It's so popular because of it's accessibilty. Most people who play don't even know there are bigger better games out there - or can't run them. AC4's graphics won't be comparable to what comes out in 5 years - neither will EQN's, it doesn't even look decent compared to games at the present time. That is what the thread is about. I completely agree with the OP - EQ hasn't had cartoony character models before why were they changed? Trying to beat wow still by applying to the masses? I wish a game dev would ignore wow and forget it exists and just make a damn game.
Let's say there are 100 toons in close proximity. Now there are 100 sources of data each participant must render in real time (including AI). That just isn't possible for most gamers' machines as you raise the level of detail, and add particle effects, shaders and ambient lighting... hey let's add more complex animation and see if we can actually make peoples' rigs fizzle and smoke.
On another note, the game you selected, while agreeably pretty, has pretty boring, repetitious gameplay. So you're chosen a graphic-intensive, shallow game and said, "why can't mmos be more like this".
Every mmo I have played since 1998 had repetitious gameplay, doing the same hotbar rotation...123456...123456 on majority of battles. I wish mmos were as fun as Assassins Creed gameplay. Ship Combat, Climbing, parkour, Air Attacks, Pick Pocketing, All sorts of stealth positional attacks, real time ranged combat where you can aim even things like poison darts and smoke bombs, boarding and taking ships for new crew and crafting materials. Have you played Assassins Creed?
Yes, I own it. It's graphic intensive. It's repetitive.
I know what you mean about 123456, or in many cases just 123, and that's the end-user perspective of the combat system. Really, generally, 7 8 9 10 11 and 12 exist, but they're moot for the specific scenario or situation, so to have the most calculable affect, experienced players learn 1235 423 123 15. I find that to be another issue entirely.
edit: I mean, if you want to argue that, most of AC4 is left and right clicking with an opportunely-timed additional key. It "wishes" it was 123456, when it's leftclick leftclick rightclick 1
Its the number of activities that makes it less repetitive than of what you would do in a typical mmo. For instance in mmos you pretty much grind quest from quest hubs to max level and do raids. In AC4 you sail, take forts, spearing sharks and whales from a small boat (lol mmo fishing is a joke compared to this), bribing NPCs, chases, under water gameplay is actually fun too because its doing it properly.
In mmos every activity is based on the same rpg mechanics which is the dice roll. Basically its the way you interact with the world.
WoW is like an anomaly, it came out at the right time and instead of doing anything new they played it safe and improved upon what EQ and other mmos did before it. It also made the mmo genre very easy for none gamers and none mmo gamers to get into. And for its time all those things were good in terms of gameplay and graphics. Back then I could understand the cartoony graphics as most games that went for more realism looked bad anyway. But these are different times and realistic graphics really do look realistic and would look awsome even 5-10 years from it. Assassins Creed 4 would still look great to me 5 years from now because it doesnt have blocky body parts and bland textures like the games of early 2000s that attempted realism.
It was never the graphics that made WoW great to players, other than maybe working on standard PCs on lowest settings. But these days I see a lot of average PCs with nvidia and amd cards in them with multi-core cpus and at least 4 gigs of ram.
Ill bet if Rockstar made a full blown mmo of GTA it would retain much of its graphics quality from the single player games and have at least half of a billion active players since theres obviously over a billion fans of GTA fans from GTA5 sales.
I don't know what kind of world you live in, but games are still far, far from looking actually realistic - as in indistinguishable from movies or real life.
I'll get back to your statement about AC4:s realistic graphics in 5 years, ok?
And you need to go back to school for either reading comprehension or math class. GTA5 did not sell a billion copies. There aren't even a billion people in the world with a PS3 or X360 (total sold amount for those consoles combined is somewhere around 150 million, and from that number take off broken consoles, ones that are not used anymore, and those people who own both).
WoW is like an anomaly, it came out at the right time and instead of doing anything new they played it safe and improved upon what EQ and other mmos did before it. It also made the mmo genre very easy for none gamers and none mmo gamers to get into. And for its time all those things were good in terms of gameplay and graphics. Back then I could understand the cartoony graphics as most games that went for more realism looked bad anyway. But these are different times and realistic graphics really do look realistic and would look awsome even 5-10 years from it. Assassins Creed 4 would still look great to me 5 years from now because it doesnt have blocky body parts and bland textures like the games of early 2000s that attempted realism.
It was never the graphics that made WoW great to players, other than maybe working on standard PCs on lowest settings. But these days I see a lot of average PCs with nvidia and amd cards in them with multi-core cpus and at least 4 gigs of ram.
Ill bet if Rockstar made a full blown mmo of GTA it would retain much of its graphics quality from the single player games and have at least half of a billion active players since theres obviously over a billion fans of GTA fans from GTA5 sales.
I don't know what kind of world you live in, but games are still far, far from looking actually realistic - as in indistinguishable from movies or real life.
I'll get back to your statement about AC4:s realistic graphics in 5 years, ok?
And you need to go back to school for either reading comprehension or math class. GTA5 did not sell a billion copies. There aren't even a billion people in the world with a PS3 or X360 (total sold amount for those consoles combined is somewhere around 150 million, and from that number take off broken consoles, ones that are not used anymore, and those people who own both).
I meant its billion dollar sales record in 3 days from release lol. its 3 am here and im sleepy
Not a coincidence at all. You can run the game you're talking about on a laptop from 2002. It's so popular because of it's accessibilty. Most people who play don't even know there are bigger better games out there - or can't run them. AC4's graphics won't be comparable to what comes out in 5 years - neither will EQN's, it doesn't even look decent compared to games at the present time. That is what the thread is about. I completely agree with the OP - EQ hasn't had cartoony character models before why were they changed? Trying to beat wow still by applying to the masses? I wish a game dev would ignore wow and forget it exists and just make a damn game.
You understand why WoW is popular, but don't understand why SOE would want to tap into that popularity and/or give their game longevity?
You think SOE doesn't want their MMO to be popular after 5-10 years?
Also funny thing about cartoony graphics. I have little problem playing with WoW graphics after all these years, but I can't play any of the "realistic" looking games that were made at the same time because they look so damn ugly.
WoW is like an anomaly, it came out at the right time and instead of doing anything new they played it safe and improved upon what EQ and other mmos did before it. It also made the mmo genre very easy for none gamers and none mmo gamers to get into. And for its time all those things were good in terms of gameplay and graphics. Back then I could understand the cartoony graphics as most games that went for more realism looked bad anyway. But these are different times and realistic graphics really do look realistic and would look awsome even 5-10 years from it. Assassins Creed 4 would still look great to me 5 years from now because it doesnt have blocky body parts and bland textures like the games of early 2000s that attempted realism.
It was never the graphics that made WoW great to players, other than maybe working on standard PCs on lowest settings. But these days I see a lot of average PCs with nvidia and amd cards in them with multi-core cpus and at least 4 gigs of ram.
Ill bet if Rockstar made a full blown mmo of GTA it would retain much of its graphics quality from the single player games and have at least half of a billion active players since theres obviously over a billion fans of GTA fans from GTA5 sales.
I don't know what kind of world you live in, but games are still far, far from looking actually realistic - as in indistinguishable from movies or real life.
I'll get back to your statement about AC4:s realistic graphics in 5 years, ok?
And you need to go back to school for either reading comprehension or math class. GTA5 did not sell a billion copies. There aren't even a billion people in the world with a PS3 or X360 (total sold amount for those consoles combined is somewhere around 150 million, and from that number take off broken consoles, ones that are not used anymore, and those people who own both).
I meant its billion dollar sales record in 3 days from release lol. its 3 am here and im sleepy
Yes. That's better.
Now think about it. If Rockstar had the technology and know-how to make a GTA MMO with GTA V graphics (which aren't that good, by the way, because they're running on 8-year old tech), wouldn't you think they alread had done it and were now swimming in money? Oh right, they're already swimming in money, but you get the point.
Same deal with bethesda and skyrim. Everyone (almost) loves how Skyrim looks. Don't you think they want to make ESO "look" and "play" like Skyrim? Of course they do, and it does kinda, but you'll see differences because ESO is a mmo and every little change needs to be "drawn" for any who could potentially witness it.
Originally posted by Mattatron Same deal with bethesda and skyrim. Everyone (almost) loves how Skyrim looks. Don't you think they want to make ESO "look" and "play" like Skyrim? Of course they do, and it does kinda, but you'll see differences because ESO is a mmo and every little change needs to be "drawn" for any who could potentially witness it.
that reminds me I gotta download the beta client for tomorrow lol
Semi-interesting and related fact:Planetside 2 uses the Forgelight engine, which is a proprietary engine developed by SoE.When it was announced, shortly before PS2 released, it was announced that it was also going to be the graphics engine for EQN.http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/111555-EverQuest-Next-and-Planetside-2-To-Use-New-Forge-Light-EngineNow, this was 2 years before they announced they were going to Voxels - that doesn't necessarily mean that Forgelight went into the trash can. It's a huge deal to develop a proprietary graphics engine, and it's a huge deal to throw out 2 years worth of game development work. So I don't know that being voxel-based and Forgelight are mutually exclusive - EQL/EQN could still be using Forgelight just with voxels, it isn't very clear at this point.But, more closely related - it's very easy to put 2000 characters on the screen at the same time when they all look the same and you just have some pretty terrain (that is static) along with that to draw. It's an entirely different manner when you have 2000 players on the screen and every single one of them is unique, and can, at any time, change their appearance by equipping any of thousands of different combinations of models and textures.
EQL/EQN still uses Forgelight, Voxel Farm is only one part of the engine.
EQN looks as good as it can be given the constraints such as: 1. Extremely large open and seemless world. 2. Need for hundreds of players on the screen. 3. Voxels
As with all things in life there's a give and take. Whether you like the style is another matter.
EQN is voxel based, so its visual limitations is even greater than general mmos, be glad it doesn't look like CubeWorld or Trove.
Voxel tech is a massive leap forward in both development speed, cost and manpower usage that also allows for player made content. It's a new start for the mmo genre, so yes, get used to 8-bit or 16-bit art styles, which seems appropriate somehow, but at least you have this one AAA developer pushing the tech to allow this graphical level.
Voxel tech has been around for ages, don't fall for the SOE buzz word.
But to the OP, This is how MMO should look in 2013.
Hehe its not really fair to compare Ubisoft to other game devs. Maybe Rockstar and possibly Naughty Dog, but those are elite game developers.
Im glad they are finally stepping into the mmo scene with The Division and Destiny.
Divison and Destiny are not MMOs.
Really because that public event with all those people in different groups at the end of the 12 minute gameplay video of destiny in that open world map screamed out mmo to me. Same for The Division when they showed all those players on its open world map at the end and two groups of players running into each other and getting into pvp.
Two groups of what? 5 players each? The bar for MASSIVELY Multiplayer has really been lowered
But yeah, anything seems to pass for MMO these days, even if everything is instanced and you can never have more than a handful of players in the same space.
None of that gameplay was instanced, they were both open world. Ubisoft them selves said The Division is open world.
Heres a quote from Bungie about Destiny
“In Borderlands you can run around with enemies and run into a few enemies to kill,” Staten said, “in Destiny you will run around with your friends, run into other small groups of friends who are also there killing monsters, you see other people off on the horizon, hear gunfire over a hill and you see space magic flying behind some trees. There are other people out there.”
Ah, but the question is, how many people will you actually run into. 5, 10 even 50 does not make a game a MMO, now if we're talking perhaps 200 or more , then we're in the same ball park.
But back to your OP, game play over graphics, all that has ever mattered at the end of the day. (at least to me).
Growing up playing terrific games which had 4 color cga graphics I guess colored my view on this and made me less particular on this issue.
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
Hehe its not really fair to compare Ubisoft to other game devs. Maybe Rockstar and possibly Naughty Dog, but those are elite game developers.
Im glad they are finally stepping into the mmo scene with The Division and Destiny.
Divison and Destiny are not MMOs.
Really because that public event with all those people in different groups at the end of the 12 minute gameplay video of destiny in that open world map screamed out mmo to me. Same for The Division when they showed all those players on its open world map at the end and two groups of players running into each other and getting into pvp.
Two groups of what? 5 players each? The bar for MASSIVELY Multiplayer has really been lowered
But yeah, anything seems to pass for MMO these days, even if everything is instanced and you can never have more than a handful of players in the same space.
None of that gameplay was instanced, they were both open world. Ubisoft them selves said The Division is open world.
Heres a quote from Bungie about Destiny
“In Borderlands you can run around with enemies and run into a few enemies to kill,” Staten said, “in Destiny you will run around with your friends, run into other small groups of friends who are also there killing monsters, you see other people off on the horizon, hear gunfire over a hill and you see space magic flying behind some trees. There are other people out there.”
Time will tell how this will be handled and how big the groups you can run into are.
All in all, it can bring a good illusion of a massive world, even if you don't run into big bunch of people, but it still isn't Massive. I believe Star Citizen will use similar system, where all are essentially connected into the same world, but only a limited number of players/ships will be in the same space at a same time. And that's fine for a game. It just isn't an MMO. Roberts has many times declared himself that SC is not an MMO.
Neither will be Destiny or Division, unless we start really stretching what is and isn't a Massively Multiplayer Online game.
[mod edit] The movement in the EQ Next trailers looks better than this. Obviously a MMORPG with these graphics would be just awful since the game engine would never be able to handle it but if you are going to attack anything about EQ Next the animations aren't the thing to attack. Those looked great.
Those black dessert videos above are a great example. The movement is so sluggish that you can tell the game is going to be awful. When you stick graphics into a MMORPG the absolute top priority is to make the gameplay smooth, if you can't achieve 100% smooth gameplay you already failed.
Rift, SWTOR, AION, WAR etc all were DOA because they tanked on the basic gameplay. You can dissect plenty of other reasons they were largely failures but the #1 can't get past it reasons are the basic gameplay itself. TSW fits into this mold as well, such a great idea, a pretty good execution but stilted movement and pedestrian combat stopped it from ever having a chance of being a great success instead of a moderate one.
Any time you are attacking graphics in a MMORPG you are just showing you don't understand the genre imo. I'll take whatever graphics you hand me if it means the game plays as smoothly as GW2 or WoW, most games never stand a chance because they don't understand this.
Comments
None of that gameplay was instanced, they were both open world. Ubisoft them selves said The Division is open world.
Heres a quote from Bungie about Destiny
“In Borderlands you can run around with enemies and run into a few enemies to kill,” Staten said, “in Destiny you will run around with your friends, run into other small groups of friends who are also there killing monsters, you see other people off on the horizon, hear gunfire over a hill and you see space magic flying behind some trees. There are other people out there.”
http://pixelenemy.com/bungie-compares-destiny-player-count-to-borderlands-in-destiny-there-are-other-people-out-there/
This version of the game was built with Voxels in mind from the start, they didn't know when they started looking at art styles how small or smooth or detailed they could get the Voxels, and even though its looking far better now that Voxel Farm has improved the tool set they can use, it would still result in a horrible clash to have next gen realism on the character models with simplified buildings and enviroments with blocky destruction physics.
Also the animations are still been developed, this is pre-alpha after all and animations are not top priority. I see no validity to this line of criticism at all.
Well what you should say is SOE and every other developer this is how I prefer my games to look. The reason being is that many thought graphics were important and for 11 years WoW proved that wrong. So I like the look of those games you posted but I'd never randomly assert this is how you do it right until one of these games present strong player bases.
One thing I'd like to note is that those environments are static for instance in the division video there is debris every where and none of it moves the guy tries to shoot through a car window... it acts like hitting a brick wall; very unFPS like. In the Destiny video you see horrible boss AI and simplistic combat similar to DEFIANCE. Better graphics though. Then you add Planetside 2 from SOE I guess as a "Why u no look like these" type of thing and that's because it's already released and that's usually how ported games work. DC Universe, Ever Quest which I think ended up looking worse if I recall.
Moral of the story is: Cool; I hope those games live up to the hype; they have been dumbed down for mass appeal but they didn't seem to remove too much "From what I could tell" that would allow it to be considered a MMO. Yet what I've learned over the years is Hype generally leads to disappointment so I prefer not to talk **** about other games until I've been proven right." Wildstar, EQN, Black Desert (Which looks like crap in gameplay videos I might add) Archeage and so many others are the new breed, they present some new design choices which could lead to popular appeal if I had to guess between those Destiny will be the more successful MMOFPS and Division will be a niche as it lacks levels and without progression people get bored. For MMORPG it's tough and I can't even decide but I think either Wildstar or EQN will blow up or maybe I'll be surprised and gamers will learn how to appreciate multiple games at the same time.
Yes, I own it. It's graphic intensive. It's repetitive.
I know what you mean about 123456, or in many cases just 123, and that's the end-user perspective of the combat system. Really, generally, 7 8 9 10 11 and 12 exist, but they're moot for the specific scenario or situation, so to have the most calculable affect, experienced players learn 1235 423 123 15. I find that to be another issue entirely.
edit: I mean, if you want to argue that, most of AC4 is left and right clicking with an opportunely-timed additional key. It "wishes" it was 123456, when it's leftclick leftclick rightclick 1
If providing Assassin's Creed-level gameplay and character detail in a huge, destructible, deformable mmo is as simple as just deciding to be awesome and do it, then i guess every developer in the world just doesn't want to do it. That must be why none have been released.
http://www.mmorpg.com/blogs/PerfArt
Semi-interesting and related fact:
Planetside 2 uses the Forgelight engine, which is a proprietary engine developed by SoE.
When it was announced, shortly before PS2 released, it was announced that it was also going to be the graphics engine for EQN.
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/111555-EverQuest-Next-and-Planetside-2-To-Use-New-Forge-Light-Engine
Now, this was 2 years before they announced they were going to Voxels - that doesn't necessarily mean that Forgelight went into the trash can. It's a huge deal to develop a proprietary graphics engine, and it's a huge deal to throw out 2 years worth of game development work. So I don't know that being voxel-based and Forgelight are mutually exclusive - EQL/EQN could still be using Forgelight just with voxels, it isn't very clear at this point.
But, more closely related - it's very easy to put 2000 characters on the screen at the same time when they all look the same and you just have some pretty terrain (that is static) along with that to draw. It's an entirely different manner when you have 2000 players on the screen and every single one of them is unique, and can, at any time, change their appearance by equipping any of thousands of different combinations of models and textures.
WoW is like an anomaly, it came out at the right time and instead of doing anything new they played it safe and improved upon what EQ and other mmos did before it. It also made the mmo genre very easy for none gamers and none mmo gamers to get into. And for its time all those things were good in terms of gameplay and graphics. Back then I could understand the cartoony graphics as most games that went for more realism looked bad anyway. But these are different times and realistic graphics really do look realistic and would look awsome even 5-10 years from it. Assassins Creed 4 would still look great to me 5 years from now because it doesnt have blocky body parts and bland textures like the games of early 2000s that attempted realism.
It was never the graphics that made WoW great to players, other than maybe working on standard PCs on lowest settings. But these days I see a lot of average PCs with nvidia and amd cards in them with multi-core cpus and at least 4 gigs of ram.
Ill bet if Rockstar made a full blown mmo of GTA it would retain much of its graphics quality from the single player games and have at least half of a billion active players since theres obviously over a billion fans of GTA fans from GTA5 sales.
Not a coincidence at all. You can run the game you're talking about on a laptop from 2002. It's so popular because of it's accessibilty. Most people who play don't even know there are bigger better games out there - or can't run them. AC4's graphics won't be comparable to what comes out in 5 years - neither will EQN's, it doesn't even look decent compared to games at the present time. That is what the thread is about. I completely agree with the OP - EQ hasn't had cartoony character models before why were they changed? Trying to beat wow still by applying to the masses? I wish a game dev would ignore wow and forget it exists and just make a damn game.
Its the number of activities that makes it less repetitive than of what you would do in a typical mmo. For instance in mmos you pretty much grind quest from quest hubs to max level and do raids. In AC4 you sail, take forts, spearing sharks and whales from a small boat (lol mmo fishing is a joke compared to this), bribing NPCs, chases, under water gameplay is actually fun too because its doing it properly.
In mmos every activity is based on the same rpg mechanics which is the dice roll. Basically its the way you interact with the world.
I don't know what kind of world you live in, but games are still far, far from looking actually realistic - as in indistinguishable from movies or real life.
I'll get back to your statement about AC4:s realistic graphics in 5 years, ok?
And you need to go back to school for either reading comprehension or math class. GTA5 did not sell a billion copies. There aren't even a billion people in the world with a PS3 or X360 (total sold amount for those consoles combined is somewhere around 150 million, and from that number take off broken consoles, ones that are not used anymore, and those people who own both).
I meant its billion dollar sales record in 3 days from release lol. its 3 am here and im sleepy
You understand why WoW is popular, but don't understand why SOE would want to tap into that popularity and/or give their game longevity?
You think SOE doesn't want their MMO to be popular after 5-10 years?
Also funny thing about cartoony graphics. I have little problem playing with WoW graphics after all these years, but I can't play any of the "realistic" looking games that were made at the same time because they look so damn ugly.
Yes. That's better.
Now think about it. If Rockstar had the technology and know-how to make a GTA MMO with GTA V graphics (which aren't that good, by the way, because they're running on 8-year old tech), wouldn't you think they alread had done it and were now swimming in money? Oh right, they're already swimming in money, but you get the point.
that reminds me I gotta download the beta client for tomorrow lol
EQL/EQN still uses Forgelight, Voxel Farm is only one part of the engine.1. Extremely large open and seemless world.
2. Need for hundreds of players on the screen.
3. Voxels
As with all things in life there's a give and take. Whether you like the style is another matter.
Voxel tech has been around for ages, don't fall for the SOE buzz word.
But to the OP, This is how MMO should look in 2013.
Above vid
And just to put the knife in deeper https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1n5HVzb59rY
And deeper https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=InipW2qDLdk
Exactly.
If you want a new idea, go read an old book.
In order to be insulted, I must first value your opinion.
Ah, but the question is, how many people will you actually run into. 5, 10 even 50 does not make a game a MMO, now if we're talking perhaps 200 or more , then we're in the same ball park.
But back to your OP, game play over graphics, all that has ever mattered at the end of the day. (at least to me).
Growing up playing terrific games which had 4 color cga graphics I guess colored my view on this and made me less particular on this issue.
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Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
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Time will tell how this will be handled and how big the groups you can run into are.
All in all, it can bring a good illusion of a massive world, even if you don't run into big bunch of people, but it still isn't Massive. I believe Star Citizen will use similar system, where all are essentially connected into the same world, but only a limited number of players/ships will be in the same space at a same time. And that's fine for a game. It just isn't an MMO. Roberts has many times declared himself that SC is not an MMO.
Neither will be Destiny or Division, unless we start really stretching what is and isn't a Massively Multiplayer Online game.
[mod edit] The movement in the EQ Next trailers looks better than this. Obviously a MMORPG with these graphics would be just awful since the game engine would never be able to handle it but if you are going to attack anything about EQ Next the animations aren't the thing to attack. Those looked great.
Those black dessert videos above are a great example. The movement is so sluggish that you can tell the game is going to be awful. When you stick graphics into a MMORPG the absolute top priority is to make the gameplay smooth, if you can't achieve 100% smooth gameplay you already failed.
Rift, SWTOR, AION, WAR etc all were DOA because they tanked on the basic gameplay. You can dissect plenty of other reasons they were largely failures but the #1 can't get past it reasons are the basic gameplay itself. TSW fits into this mold as well, such a great idea, a pretty good execution but stilted movement and pedestrian combat stopped it from ever having a chance of being a great success instead of a moderate one.
Any time you are attacking graphics in a MMORPG you are just showing you don't understand the genre imo. I'll take whatever graphics you hand me if it means the game plays as smoothly as GW2 or WoW, most games never stand a chance because they don't understand this.
I think you need to get your eyes checked out
let's compare a single player / MP deathmatch game to an mmo and hope no one notices you are trolling.
for the record, i noticed.
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Black Desert did it