Innovation

jusomdude

It's pretty sad to see the gaming industry so stale. Not entirely informed, but the only real innovation over the last decade that has made any significant impact, I know of to the MMO genre has been battle royale. There's VR I guess but i don't really hear too much about it.

I want to see more but all that seems to be on the horizon is more of the same with a twist, which I guess that's all battle royale really is.

What are your thoughts on the lack of innovation in gaming?

Cryomatrix

Lack of innovation with mmorpgs specifically prevents me from even trying recently released Mmos.

ragebullet

everyone is too focused on making millions instead of making a solid,fun game. pretty simple

Grunty

That will depend on how you look at the changes made in various games.

The candle, coal oil lantern, gas lantern, light bulb, florescent light, LED, LASER are all innovations. 

Or you can look at all of those and say they aren't innovations.  They are just changes in putting the light from a fire in a more convenient package.

Scorchien

Grunty said:

That will depend on how you look at the changes made in various games.

The candle, coal oil lantern, gas lantern, light bulb, florescent light, LED, LASER are all innovations. 

Or you can look at all of those and say they aren't innovations.  They are just changes in putting the light from a fire in a more convenient package.

   Well, yes .. But the problem comes in  where some games add a Second Wick to a Candle and Players think there game has Innovated...

  There ..imo .. has'nt been anything Innovative in many , many years

hallucigenocide

it's not really an mmorpg issue.
innovation is that special snowflake thing that everyone wants but no one is willing to invest in until it's already been done.

Cryomatrix

hallucigenocide said:

it's not really an mmorpg issue.
innovation is that special snowflake thing that everyone wants but no one is willing to invest in until it's already been done.

I hate it when people use the word snowflake. 

KnightFalz

RIFT introduced randomly spawning dimensional breaches ranging from solo to small group sized, to region spanning invasions, to make the world more dynamic and provide opportunity for spontaneous grouping. They also introduced modular ability tree selection, that allow you to select three trees from the pool of those available for your class, adding a higher degree of customization than is otherwise typical.

GW2 did away with the need to seek out quest givers to both get and turn in missions, made travel times negligible, and generally eliminating or reducing tedious MMORPG elements. They also introduced a system where your combat abilities varied greatly depending on your equipped weapons, adding an atypical layer of customization.

ESO uses scaling to eliminate the structured flow of many MMORPGs that require you to proceed through content along a strict path where your choices are largely limited by level, instead allowing players to adventure where they want regardless.

These aren't "invention of the printing press" scale innovations, but each brought something new to the table that caused them to stand out from their fellows.

jusomdude

KnightFalz said:

RIFT introduced randomly spawning dimensional breaches ranging from solo to small group sized, to region spanning invasions, to make the world more dynamic and provide opportunity for spontaneous grouping. They also introduced modular ability tree selection, that allow you to select three trees from the pool of those available for your class, adding a higher degree of customization than is otherwise typical.

GW2 did away with the need to seek out quest givers to both get and turn in missions, made travel times negligible, and generally eliminating or reducing tedious MMORPG elements. They also introduced a system where your combat abilities varied greatly depending on your equipped weapons, adding an atypical layer of customization.

ESO uses scaling to eliminate the structured flow of many MMORPGs that require you to proceed through content along a strict path where your choices are largely limited by level, instead allowing players to adventure where they want regardless.

These aren't "invention of the printing press" scale innovations, but each brought something new to the table that caused them to stand out from their fellows.

I guess these are slight improvement and tweaks that are good QoL improvements except maybe the Rift changes which were a little more original. I liked the rifts when I first played Rift. Although nothing here can really be called an innovation since they did nothing to disrupt or really change how MMOs are played. I'd say these are mostly "another wick on the candle" changes.

I don't have answers as to what they could do to really refresh the MMO genre but I know that I'm getting real tired of playing mostly the same game with a different title and skin since the invention of the MMO

delete5230

jusomdude said:

KnightFalz said:

RIFT introduced randomly spawning dimensional breaches ranging from solo to small group sized, to region spanning invasions, to make the world more dynamic and provide opportunity for spontaneous grouping. They also introduced modular ability tree selection, that allow you to select three trees from the pool of those available for your class, adding a higher degree of customization than is otherwise typical.

GW2 did away with the need to seek out quest givers to both get and turn in missions, made travel times negligible, and generally eliminating or reducing tedious MMORPG elements. They also introduced a system where your combat abilities varied greatly depending on your equipped weapons, adding an atypical layer of customization.

ESO uses scaling to eliminate the structured flow of many MMORPGs that require you to proceed through content along a strict path where your choices are largely limited by level, instead allowing players to adventure where they want regardless.

These aren't "invention of the printing press" scale innovations, but each brought something new to the table that caused them to stand out from their fellows.

I guess these are slight improvement and tweaks that are good QoL improvements except maybe the Rift changes which were a little more original. I liked the rifts when I first played Rift. Although nothing here can really be called an innovation since they did nothing to disrupt or really change how MMOs are played. I'd say these are mostly "another wick on the candle" changes.

I don't have answers as to what they could do to really refresh the MMO genre but I know that I'm getting real tired of playing mostly the same game with a different title and skin since the invention of the MMO

Guess these are slight improvements ??… I would consider them as Major !! 

First you have to understand your only dealing with a flat screen monitor, how much could you really expect. 

Next every gimmick gets old quick no matter what it is. 

You have to love the living room people that feels like we should have colonized Mars by now  

Maurgrim

So what kind of "innovations" are we talking about here, can you give some examples?

jusomdude

Uh, no, I already said I couldn't, but something that's more than... skinnerbox v1.0.1. I haven't given it a lot of thought, maybe if I start a kickstarter that will inspire me to come up with "mega innovative dream game." Probably not though since I'm not an old dev vet and can't get people to throw money at me for my past success, who's currently out of his element.

Scot

This is an issue facing the whole of entertainment media, reboots, genre hybrids (if they are not keen on one genre they will watch it for the other). Shorter series, franchises, it just goes on and on. The more business lead entertainment is, the less big mistakes it makes and the less innovation it has.

Scorchien

KnightFalz said:

RIFT introduced randomly spawning dimensional breaches ranging from solo to small group sized, to region spanning invasions, to make the world more dynamic and provide opportunity for spontaneous grouping. They also introduced modular ability tree selection, that allow you to select three trees from the pool of those available for your class, adding a higher degree of customization than is otherwise typical.

GW2 did away with the need to seek out quest givers to both get and turn in missions, made travel times negligible, and generally eliminating or reducing tedious MMORPG elements. They also introduced a system where your combat abilities varied greatly depending on your equipped weapons, adding an atypical layer of customization.

ESO uses scaling to eliminate the structured flow of many MMORPGs that require you to proceed through content along a strict path where your choices are largely limited by level, instead allowing players to adventure where they want regardless.

These aren't "invention of the printing press" scale innovations, but each brought something new to the table that caused them to stand out from their fellows.

All slight parallel movement of systems done before... Nothing innovative there imo

Wizardry

Well first of all the Battle Royale idea is by no means new,it is very old.The ideas that have been added to it are at times very silly looking,example Fortnite's on the fly building looks really silly to me.

The gas idea is also imo dumb and looks really unrealistic.A gaseous cloud is plausible but it wouldn't encompass a circular effect around the entire game leaving one small area.
Also seeing players just running along and pretty much instantly harvesting is again an ADD idea that is not plausible.We don't NEED to do everything so fast ,why not be creative with weapons the way Unreal Tournament was and why it was so good and popular,same as Quake.

A map is just a map,doesn't matter if it is an arena or outdoors it is still a map with boundaries.
What else did i see that looked goofy,oh yeah the exaggerated leading of a weapon shot looked way off.

Then for every idea i think looks goofy,what has the Royale genre done besides pretty much ONE MAP and a couple weapon choices,yep pretty much nothing.

I'll toot the same horn,the ONLY game/developer i have seen that introduced a multitude of new ideas was FFXI and SE and still to his day has more innovation than any game/genre i have noticed.Example language translator,not ONE single game on the planet has yet to have this but FFXI does.

Octagon7711

The value of innovations has always been in the eye of the beholder.  Some people think it was a great achievement to actually land on the moon and others think it was minor because there's nothing much to do up there.

Being able to download games instead of going to a store and buying a game cd is a big deal for me as well as having an internet connection that lets me download games in mins and not days, which also gives me access to a large amount of add-ons which help to tailor my game experience.  High level graphics and so many games available I can't even get to them all for awhile I find very innovative and something I won't take for granted just because I can.  Considering how much gaming has changed since Pong, I'm a happy camper.

Cryomatrix

I guess in terms of innovation, im thinking more than level up to kill static mobs to do some gear mill thingy. Or perhaps, i am just bored of MMOs

Vermillion_Raventhal

Procedural questing SHOULD be the next big thing.  Being able to have quest and world dynamic events be run by algorithms would change how we played MMORPG.

anemo

Vermillion_Raventhal said:

Procedural questing SHOULD be the next big thing.  Being able to have quest and world dynamic events be run by algorithms would change how we played MMORPG.

Right now the next big thing everyone is focusing on is how to get more data on their clients, and leverage that data to get them to be more valuable (usually spending more, sometimes getting them to play more).

In my opinion you can usually tell where innovation is happening by what people are getting angry about.   At one point is was anger over blood and gore since games had the fidelity to show it off,  then it was sex/breasts, then followed by violence.   Now it's all about getting angry about F2P, gambling systems, and data collection.   Devs/publishers naturally just want to push the boundary of what they are focusing on, until someone tells them no.

Quizzical

There's an enormous difference between:

1)  Games aren't implementing the one particular innovation that I want to see.
2)  Games aren't implementing any major innovations that I really like.
3)  Games aren't implementing anything innovative at all.

From crowdfunding to loot boxes to cryptojacking, part (3) is clearly false.  But then, it's also not the one that you're looking for.

Xiaoki

Innovation is worthless without proper implementation.

If an innovation is done well, fully integrated into the game and intuitive to use then its a game changer.

If its done poorly then its an annoying gimmick.

There are innovative features for MMOs that have been tried before but done poorly and so been largely forgotten about.

esc-joconnor

Vermillion_Raventhal said:

Procedural questing SHOULD be the next big thing.  Being able to have quest and world dynamic events be run by algorithms would change how we played MMORPG.

Right now the next big thing everyone is focusing on is how to get more data on their clients, and leverage that data to get them to be more valuable (usually spending more, sometimes getting them to play more).

In my opinion you can usually tell where innovation is happening by what people are getting angry about.   At one point is was anger over blood and gore since games had the fidelity to show it off,  then it was sex/breasts, then followed by violence.   Now it's all about getting angry about F2P, gambling systems, and data collection.   Devs/publishers naturally just want to push the boundary of what they are focusing on, until someone tells them no.

I 'm sure we can all agree there is some innovation going on.  Updates to graphic models and hardware to give better performance. I'm sure there is also innovation happening in account having to get credit card details or to buy in game items to sell for real money. But that's not really what this thread is about. There hasn't been anything significant in recent years to make gaming better. The only thing I can think of was being able to see my own feet in an FPS when looking down XD

Phaserlight

If you are looking for a weather change in the gaming industry, it's VR*

*I don't know whether or not it's going to catch on.  I will say that having grown up in the SNES era and seeing the changes in game design brought about by 3D polygonal graphics especially with the N64, VR is at least as big of a step forward.  Playing my favorite MMORPG in VR is great:

It's very different from on a flat monitor screen.  The main issue is the control scheme; I have much better, more precise agency with a keyboard, mouse and gamepad.  I suspect this is partly due to the lack of quality peripherals for the Gear VR; hardware manufacturers have lamentably seemed to have taken an "oh it's just mobile" blasé attitude toward the platform (along with many software developers): the marquee controller advertised for the Gear VR suffers from major issues, and there are few if any options for a HOTAS or my preferred dual joys with z-rotation (for six degrees of freedom).  This is unfortunate because it severely shortchanges what the platform is and is capable of.

It's probably a different story on a PC rig like Rift (which Vendetta also runs on), and I expect things to improve as time goes on.  That said, prevailing winds point toward 2018 not being a good year for VR sales despite new low-cost, lean machines like Go aimed directly at mass market.

For me it's more difficult to predict what the next few years will look like in the larger tech industry now than five or seven years ago.

Quizzical

Phaserlight said:

If you are looking for a weather change in the gaming industry, it's VR*

*I don't know whether or not it's going to catch on.  I will say that having grown up in the SNES era and seeing the changes in game design brought about by 3D polygonal graphics especially with the N64, VR is at least as big of a step forward.  Playing my favorite MMORPG in VR is great:

That's not a very comforting comparison.  From my perspective, it was about 8-10 years or so from the time that 3D graphics based on rasterization became common until it had advanced far enough to really have a point.  Around the turn of the millennium, there were a whole lot of games that went 3D for the sake of going 3D, but managed to look and feel worse than if they had just gone 2D with traditional sprites.

I sure hope that we don't repeat that dark age of having a hard time finding decent games to play because everyone wants to make bad VR games.  So far, it doesn't look like that's going to happen.  The bigger threat seems to be a push toward game streaming.  It's also possible that games have become easy enough to make now that even if the big industry titans run off and focus on something stupid, indie developers can fill in and offer something good.

DabOnThem

There is plenty innovation.

When WoW was released, developers came up with innovative ways to recreate WoW.

What about MOBA? When the LoL craze hit, everyone dev attempted to recreate LoL.

Then when the battleroyale craze hit, they found innovative ways to incorporate that into their games.

KnightFalz

Phaserlight said:

If you are looking for a weather change in the gaming industry, it's VR*

Someday I expect it will be. Right now I see it more as a contemporary Virtual Boy, but with a potentially brighter future.