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"So, you know, you pay attention to those things..."
nomss
Member UncommonPosts: 1,468
"WoW in particular, one thing is, it has set consumer expectations. It also set a set of conventions of gameplay that have been experienced by millions of people. So, you know, you pay attention to those things, but while you're paying attention, you're doing your own thing."
"According to James Phinney, lead designer of StarCraft and Guild Wars, every great game starts with one question: "What do I want to play next?". This may seem an obvious statement, but his point is that designers are often asked to make a game that is specifically designed to be "better" than a successful game from a competitor, rather than making a game that is exciting and new. How many designers have been asked to make a "GTA killer", or a "Guitar Hero killer", or a "WoW killer"? I personally have heard numerous designers and producers working on unreleased MMO projects describe their game in these terms: "It's like WoW, but..." I just shake my head when I hear this, because the team that is best poised to deliver a successful game that is an evolution of WoW is... well, the WoW team. They've got their thing, and they're good at it. Let's all carve out our own thing, and be the best at it. Truly great games are made by passionate teams who are on fire with the notion of changing the industry. If you are aiming at a competitor rather than aiming to make something fresh and innovative, you've lost."
http://www.guildwars.com/events/tradeshows/gc2007/gcspeech.php
Uhhhh.... I can't rid of the feeling that TOR's is trouble.
Guild Wars 2's 50 minutes game play video:
http://n4g.com/news/592585/guild-wars-2-50-minutes-of-pure-gameplay
Everything We Know about GW2:
http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/thread/287180/page/1
Comments
Well, as a composer I can tell you that I just don't always sit there and "bam" something new arrives in my head.
Oh sure, it sometimes can work that way or I'll be walking and suddenly a melody and other materials will start filtering through my head.
But sometimes I want to write a piece that's a nocturne, or in a recent example, anew project i was asked to write which is a type of lullaby.
So what I might do is listen to pieces I love and then mull those over, move things around in my head, change rythms, etc.
Until I have a firm jumping off point and then I can go from there.
art, of any type is not made in a vacuum.
In any case, I'm not really worried for SWToR. It just needs to be able to have enough longevity or itneresting things to do that will carry it to it's next large content update.
As far as the game play it will do just fine.
Godfred's Tomb Trailer: https://youtu.be/-nsXGddj_4w
Original Skyrim: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/109547
Serph toze kindly has started a walk-through. https://youtu.be/UIelCK-lldo
why change stuff that works... nuff said
Because eventually it will stop working, and even though recent traditional MMORPGs such as Rift are very well-made, people want something that's really different. If your end-game is similar or equal to the one that can be found in World of Warcraft you can't be sure of the financial future of your MMORPG and your company.
Go play KoToR and you will see why they are fine. The stories are going to be great, the gameplay will be top notch. Sure it might be a little different than wow, but that does not mean that it will fail.
I agree that art is not made in a vacuum. I think though what he is getting at is that doesn't mean a composer should set out to just be the next, or the continuation of, Frederic Chopin. If any of the great composers had sat down and thought "well wait a minute, better not get carried away here, better make my music similar to what everyone else is doing so people don't feel alienated" there wouldn't be many great classics.
"Gypsies, tramps, and thieves, we were called by the Admin of the site . . . "
Except that doesn't really hold up in light of how things actually are.
You are correct, we all want to see "somethign new", "something different'.
But if you look at what is being created, has been created, with movies, music, books, you name it, it all stems from something that has gone before and in some cases uses the very "bones" of those things to frame "new" things.
There is not a song you are listening to that hasn't already been written thousands of times before. There is not a movie you will see that doesn't have a story which we haven't seen before.
It's the creators job to take those elements, those "bones" and to retell it in a new way and a fresh way and a way that is personal to the creator.
The hope is that there is enough new so that it isn't a complete regurgitation of what has gone before.
Godfred's Tomb Trailer: https://youtu.be/-nsXGddj_4w
Original Skyrim: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/109547
Serph toze kindly has started a walk-through. https://youtu.be/UIelCK-lldo
Soo, did the rest of you fail to read everything there? They said they're doing their own thing. Yes, some things will be similar to WoW....because those things work.
This is the most expensive game ever made with a developer who has a better looking track record than most saints.
In trouble? I think it'll manage.
That's sort of true.
The issue there is that when we see taht we are thinking withour 21st century mind.
Of course chopin is a good example because he is a romantic composer and falls into tthat category of "letting it all hang out"" in a way that was "him" and putting his personal stamp on things. However, for him we need to remember that he used to play in parlors and had to satisfy the patrons so he wasn't just going off on things that were completely new. He was following styles that the people new and liked.
Prior to him it wasn't ever about being "new".
It wasn't about my stuff is different from your stuff.
People wrote in what was the style of the time. So if one wrote a piece that sounded like Vivaldi that was ok. This is not to say there wasn't experimentation but there was a lot of borrowing. Heck, that's what parody masses were. They would take popullar melodies and just straight away lift them and use them in the pieces. And it was all "ok". Writing was more about the style of the time than being an individual and makign things completely new.
It wasn't until much later, with romantic composers, performers, that the idea of indiviuality was really cemented.
And even with those masterpieces, look under the hood and it's the same harmonic structures that drive them. That's why I'll always say "any song you are listening to has already been composed thousands upon thousandds of times before". Same harmonic structures, rhythms, etc. (well until we get to the 12 tone stuff)
So "yes" we need to have developers apply themselves to creating great games and games that seem fresh, but there will alwasys be a tie to what has gone before.
Godfred's Tomb Trailer: https://youtu.be/-nsXGddj_4w
Original Skyrim: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/109547
Serph toze kindly has started a walk-through. https://youtu.be/UIelCK-lldo
When your making a new game especially when your new to the genre you have to first get a feel for what works in that genre, and equally important what doesn't work in this genre. What do people like to do, what don't they like to do. You gotta look at the whole.
You can very easily go off and do some odd ball thing and be totally new and innovating and still fail horribly. Bioware at this point while i will say they are a very good dev company, this is still their first MMO so they gotta look at something to get a grounds of how to work the games out, what works and what doesn't. What works right now is WoW. It's the top leader so they must be doing something right or they wouldn't remain there.
However it's easy to skip the part where they also say they take a look at many of the major games and see what works. They didn't just simply go
Hmm okay wow is at the top, yeah lets do what they do.
They go hmm okay WoW is working so lets start there. People generally like questing lets throw some of that in, but they hate doing the same quest with no meaning over and over again. So lets spice it up by allowing you to split the story, add in some Voice overs and voila a new take on the questing system. They like an intuitive easy to learn UI, and they hated how hard it was to navigate the UI in FF14, so lets try and make it closer to WoW and not like FF14.
Then they look at other games like War where people liked the PvP. They think to themselves. Well we don't know much about PvP having never done it before, but we got these guys at mythic that just happen to have made WaR. People liked that PvP system. Lets give them a wack at it.
Then they looked at all the other games out there and throw in some good bits from them like soft trinities, exploration, and various other features.
Then when going with that they took all that threw in their own stuff, companions, good and evil allignment system, character morphing, branching story arcs, seasoned it with Full Voice over and said okay now we got something here. Lets make this a game.
When your the new person in town you really should get a feel for how the industry runs. You can mind you attempt to go way out there and try and do something crazy and you might hit it out of the park, or...you might fail horribly.
Wether this method works for Bioware or not, we are about to find out. I'm hoping it does.
Help me Bioware, you're my only hope.
Is ToR going to be good? Dude it's Bioware making a freaking star wars game, all signs point to awesome. -G4tv MMo report.
Op is making a good point , and thats exactly why i wont hype myself for this game .
I was a huge WAR fanboi , game looked great PQ , RvR , PvP level etc etc , and i didint even resub past first month .
Because in the end it was so similar to WoW but not as good .
SW tor has what ? Instance? warfront ( bg? ) Raid? Mount ? Tradeskill? Gameplay better be VERY good or it will fail like every last mmo who tried to copy wow .
And stop with the OMG SW TOR HAS STORY , ppl who want to play single player game dont play mmo .
I'm sorry but carving your own niche has its place in gaming but that doesn't always necessarily mean that doing it will guarantee success of any sort.
Games come and go and every game follows a particular style of gameplay, most of which is just the same rehash systems we've seen prior with little nuances like UI or class differences, maybe some minor mechanics.. etc.
Building an entirely new game from the ground up happens much less frequently and just about every game thats ever been created that is worth its weight in cash is rarely a stark change in fundamental gameplay.
The best shooters have stayed similar to shooters we've been seeing for 10 years, adventure and 3rd person titles... the same mechanically as well.
The only change we're seeing is a hybridization of genres now. Shooters merging with MMOs, survival merging with MMOs, Story RPGs merging with MMOs.
Arenanet has always been a company that plays sleight of hand with its fans. They like to use buzz words and shift their focus specifically so they aren't competing, and thereby win by default in the non-compete category. In this way it doesn't matter if they pass or fail, just that they weren't trying to win any competition.
On the other end of the spectrum, BioWare took the regular RPG ideas that people knew of, and expanded them, changed the scope of how people see RPGs in general, and brought a very popular and polished piece of gameplay to the mainstream. They've built upon these principles and created some of the best RPGs the industry has ever seen.
With all that said, keeping a blind eye to the market and what is popular is ridiculous. As I was saying in the beginning of this post, building upon what is out there currently and making it new, more polished, and more interactive is what makes games and genres great.
So BW wanted to make a MMO and go back to the days of KOTOR. So they got their writters together, anywhere from 12 to 16 writters. They studdied the info on SW from around the time line they chose. After researching, they have written over 50 novels worth of story for TOR. Then they decided that just reading that story would be too boring as most MMO currently are. So all 50+ novels had to be turned into VO. But not just VO, but VO that created choice that changes things in the story with their dialogue wheele. But not just story changed, but aligment changing and add in companions that are a part of the story and try to effect your choices and are effected by the choices you make.
After having all that, they had to put that into a MMO format. So bringing in devs from other MMO's seems like a good idea for help. Obviously money is a big driving factor with investers. So most gaming investers salivate at the thought of millions of subs a month. There is only one example of millions of subs currently out there. So a good place to start with the basicis of your MMO for the investers is the themepark king WoW.
So what makes a themepark a themepark. A leveling system based on questing and XP. An open persistant world where all players on a server can meet up and play together. A dungeon system based on instances so you can create content for small to large groups. A skill tree system for character customization and creating player roles in the RPG. A UI system that uses the skills from the trees as a launch point for combat. Gear based reward system for the carrot to keep players subed. Crafting with an AH so all players on a server within a faction can buy and sell to create an economy in the system. Open world PvP as well as controled PvP. Different server types with multiple servers. End game that is based on group activies as in raids and small group play.
Then you take all the features of a themepark and expand them, refine them and make changes that are your own. Making questing on par with SPGs is an upgrade from the normal themepark MMOs. Having seemless instancing that doesn't disconect your player from the open world is an upgrade. Open worlds as planets that each have their own story and working lore that the player can interact with as well as exploration within each. Skill trees that allow for multiple roles for the same class. All viable as mains or hybrids for a change of pace. Reactive combat that has multiple segments to each skill. Segments that cause an actual block of a blaster on a lightsaber or lightsaber on lightsaber. Segments that can miss changing the outcome and allowing for a setup or escape based on the miss or hit. Easy to use UI that has worked in both MMO's and SPGs. A gear chace, but one that has multiple ways of getting similar gear. Crafted gear on par with end game gear. PvP gear that is only 10% better than PvE or even less for crafted PvP gear. Warzone PvP that is story based and objective based. Open world PvP on PvP servers and open world objective based PvP in PvP zones on both PvP and PvE servers. End game operations that require coodinated planning, not just tank and spank. Plus a lot more that still has not been released and is still being worked on.
TLDR: Similar base features in a Themepark MMO doesn't make that game a clone of other Themeparks. It is what is different that will define a game. You do not have to change every feature to be innovative.
How many people long for that "past, simpler, and better world," I wonder, without ever recognizing the truth that perhaps it was they who were simpler and better, and not the world about them?
R.A.Salvatore
That was an interesting read.
An honest review of SW:TOR 6/10 (Danny Wojcicki)
Are you for real?
One person holds a speech about his own thoughts, and suddenly that becomes like a gospel?
To me it just sounds like he said things that resonated with your own thoughts and feelings, but that doesn't mean that what he says is sort of an ultimate truth.
As Sovrath has already said, look at all the other interests people can have, there are people that want/need something different all the time, but also you have whole hordes of people that are able to enjoy the same entertainment for years after years. The same kind of music, the same kind of movies or tv shows, the same kind of sports either playing or watching or being a fan of, the same type of food for years, enough people that haven't grown disgusted of fries, burgers and pizza or oriental dishes even after years of eating it.
In fact, we take a look at our lives thoroughly, you'll see a whole of same things that we've chosen to do for many years because they fall into our comfort zone and we enjoy them more than other options that we could have chosen.
If someone is bored of something, then sure, it's time to move on to do and enjoy something else. But people often make the mistake that because they are bored with something, they think that everyone is growing bored of the same things they have.
I think you're projecting your own feelings and taste upon a generic "people".
People have all kinds of tastes and preferences that are different from eachother.
If people were sick of themepark style of gameplay, they wouldn't have played WoW or these other themepark MMO's for many, many years.
The ACTUAL size of MMORPG worlds: a comparison list between MMO's
The ease with which predictions are made on these forums:
Fratman: "I'm saying Spring 2012 at the earliest [for TOR release]. Anyone still clinging to 2011 is deluding themself at this point."
Excuse me, I love to play single player games and MMOs. People CAN do both you know. There will be more than enough people like me to make this game successful.
Well, let's not forget that Lucas has borrowed heavily from Akira Kurosawas "Hidden fortress" (fabulous movie, go see it) for New Hope which we all love, so in that spirit...
"Can I crush his neck now, master? Just a little? It's been a long time fantasy of mine..." - HK-47
This is just another out of context post; This has alrady been discussed to death in other posts.
The context Bioware reffer to WoW is it's scale and position within the MMO market and to ignore this would be just plain stupid.
As far as SWTOR development and game goes this just allows for considerations when developing nothing more. They respect what WoW has acheived and are developing their own game....
Not much more needs to be said but people getting exasperated over the statement need to read in context, this is just another lazy post...... Someone trying to be clever but in reality looking rather stupid.
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Sorcery must persist, the future is the Citadel