GW2's most innovative feature is to reward cooperation and not thuggery. At it's heart, this is the change from which all things in the game flow. Without the innate competition between players while fighting and gathering the entire dynamic of player interaction has changed. This is the only game i have seen/played that does this. No innovatuion is more important to me than this.
There is NO miracle patch.
95% of what you see in beta won't change by launch.
Hope is not a stategy. ______________________________ "This kind of topic is like one of those little cartoon boxes held up by a stick on a string, with a piece of meat under it. In other words, bait."
Yeah, that's pretty much the bones of it. They literally are unable to admit things that are right in front of their face. There are things in this game that have not been done before. Their argument should be, "I don't like the new things," not, "the new things don't exist," while they bury their heads in the sand.
How many posts in this thread alone actually list at least 4 innovative things that you can genuinely look at and say, "yes, that actually was innovative?" How many posts have a single line that tells us that it has zero innovations? I mean... they say zero... nothing... at all. It's mindblowing to see how far underground their heads are. Most MMORPGs actually have at least a couple of innovations, it's whether or not you like them that matters.
You also have the flip side .. People are not willing to see that while it does innovate in some aspects IT's not as innovative as they claim .. Both sides are guilty of the Ostrich Syndrome
I still take exception to the one-liners. "Not a single thing in GW2 is innovative." It's just a stupid thing to say and shows a person's extreme bias.
There are people that have listed things that are not innovative. But there are people that have listed things that are. And there are people that have made lists that include both innovative things and not so innovative things.
GW2's most innovative feature is to reward cooperation and not thuggery. At it's heart, this is the change from which all things in the game flow. Without the innate competition between players while fighting and gathering the entire dynamic of player interaction has changed. This is the only game i have seen/played that does this. No innovatuion is more important to me than this.
See that's the wonderful thing about opinions, while I can not argue with your view I think they have taken it to far and have removed a lot of the need to be social .. but I guess that's a different topic
What did GW2 Truly Innovate for this game? You cant say DE because Rift has those...
I was in Queen's Dale for a couple of days checking out different classes and saw how the bandits tried to poison the town waters, burn the water pipes, conquer a mill, saw a bull that had to be driven back to it's pen, centaurs attacking a fort etc etc. None of them succeeded because of the initial rush, but one morning when I logged and there was few people online the bandits actually HAD poisoned the water, and that resulted in the crop going bad and turning into some weird slime creatures.
What I see in Rift is random telly-ports appearing here and there pouring a bunch of mobs on people so they can kill them. Even Warhammer got the basics right better than Rift with the static PQ-events. GW2 can be called innovation since they have added and improved on the system.
When I type the word innovation into a translater it says "to better" or "to improve and upgrade upon" it does not say "make something awesome out of thin air that no one ever thought about before even in this time when everything has been already done in one shape or another".
GW2's most innovative feature is to reward cooperation and not thuggery. At it's heart, this is the change from which all things in the game flow. Without the innate competition between players while fighting and gathering the entire dynamic of player interaction has changed. This is the only game i have seen/played that does this. No innovatuion is more important to me than this.
See that's the wonderful thing about opinions, while I can not argue with your view I think they have taken it to far and have removed a lot of the need to be social .. but I guess that's a different topic
Yes. A totally different topic actually. I'm one of those weirdos that just talks to people without wanting something from them or to take advantage of them is some way. Just my opinion though, right?
There is NO miracle patch.
95% of what you see in beta won't change by launch.
Hope is not a stategy. ______________________________ "This kind of topic is like one of those little cartoon boxes held up by a stick on a string, with a piece of meat under it. In other words, bait."
Yeah, that's pretty much the bones of it. They literally are unable to admit things that are right in front of their face. There are things in this game that have not been done before. Their argument should be, "I don't like the new things," not, "the new things don't exist," while they bury their heads in the sand.
How many posts in this thread alone actually list at least 4 innovative things that you can genuinely look at and say, "yes, that actually was innovative?" How many posts have a single line that tells us that it has zero innovations? I mean... they say zero... nothing... at all. It's mindblowing to see how far underground their heads are. Most MMORPGs actually have at least a couple of innovations, it's whether or not you like them that matters.
Tell us about it.
However, like i said before it is quite possible to enjoy the game even though you don't think it is innovative. Problem is that a lot of fans are getting defensive and equating innovation with fun.
"If you don't think it is innovative then it means you are a "hater"..duh!!"
I don't know why you think I would respond that way. I won't. I try not to. I already listed some in one of the first responses in the thread. But here is one of them:
WvW ladder system among servers. I've never seen this done before. In any game. Which may make it more than an innovation. It's purpose is to promote competitive balance. It is a solution to a problem that was seen in earlier game systems where sometimes, even when there were 3 factions, 1 faction would dominate the other two. For years.
Some people don't like that innovation. And that's fine. But to act like it doesn't exist in order to try and push some kind of agenda on the other people is asinine.
GW2's most innovative feature is to reward cooperation and not thuggery. At it's heart, this is the change from which all things in the game flow. Without the innate competition between players while fighting and gathering the entire dynamic of player interaction has changed. This is the only game i have seen/played that does this. No innovatuion is more important to me than this.
See that's the wonderful thing about opinions, while I can not argue with your view I think they have taken it to far and have removed a lot of the need to be social .. but I guess that's a different topic
You know, WoW is the biggest MMO ever, and it is not inherently social. In fact, the only reason I ever spoke to anyone was because I randomly joined guilds from Trade chat. That's where I met my friends. That's what people are doing in GW2. I see absolutely no difference in the limitations of social "need" between the two games. You don't need to be social in any MMO. If you see limits and you don't like them, break them.
EDIT: Crap, you're right, it is a different topic lol
Yeah, that's pretty much the bones of it. They literally are unable to admit things that are right in front of their face. There are things in this game that have not been done before. Their argument should be, "I don't like the new things," not, "the new things don't exist," while they bury their heads in the sand.
How many posts in this thread alone actually list at least 4 innovative things that you can genuinely look at and say, "yes, that actually was innovative?" How many posts have a single line that tells us that it has zero innovations? I mean... they say zero... nothing... at all. It's mindblowing to see how far underground their heads are. Most MMORPGs actually have at least a couple of innovations, it's whether or not you like them that matters.
Tell us about it.
However, like i said before it is quite possible to enjoy the game even though you don't think it is innovative. Problem is that a lot of fans are getting defensive and equating innovation with fun.
"If you don't think it is innovative then it means you are a "hater"..duh!!"
I don't know why you think I would respond that why. I won't. I try not to. I already listed some in one of the first responses in the thread. But here is one of them:
WvW ladder system among servers. I've never seen this done before. In any game. Which may make it more than an innovation. It's purpose is to promote competitive balance. It is a solution to a problem that was seen in earlier game system where sometiems, even when there were 3 factions, 1 faction would dominate the other two. For years.
Some people don't like that innovation. And that's fine. But to act like it doesn't exist in order to try and push some kind of agenda on the other people is asinine.
I never said you would reply that way, i am giving you amalgamation of some typical defensive posts through out 13 pages. All i am trying to say is that only because people think that GW2 isn't innovative doesn't mean they hate the game or not enjoying it. People need to seperate the two issues and look at it individualy.
I haven't play alot of MMO's but, I dunno any other MMO that has spells that has combos, and combo finishers. Usually every MMO i play there's 30 spells and they all do 1 thing and you only use maybe half of them. The way classes have to work together to create a certain synergy is interesting, more in depth than other MMO's.
Originally posted by kabitoshin I haven't play alot of MMO's but, I dunno any other MMO that has spells that has combos, and combo finishers. Usually every MMO i play there's 30 spells and they all do 1 thing and you only use maybe half of them. The way classes have to work together to create a certain synergy is interesting, more in depth than other MMO's.
That's the problem I had with people complaining about the number of skills in GW2 months back. In WoW, as a paladin, there were precious few skills I actually needed, or heck, were even viable in most fights. Yet I had 3 hot bars full of garbage and could destroy anything with the skills on 1. In my experience, pure mage classes are one of the few archetypes that benefit from more skill slots on-screen.
Here's something sarcastically innovative for you. They innovated the FUN factor of an MMO. If u compare it to 99.99% of mmos out there (a scientifically proven statistic that should never be doubted) this game actually is fun.
It's fun to craft even if u hate crafting
It's fun to quest because they are all SOCIAL ACTIVITIES and not some crappy traditional quests where u hope no one is in that place so u can finish it faster
It's fun to die..most are hilarious deaths and because of the "anyone can res u" + 2 way res system it's actually fun and doesn't HIT u as badly as before
It's fun to go spvp/wvw (won't even explain..anyone who played it knows it's fun)
It's fun to play solo. This game is like a true RPG that makes u feel u are actually doing something special (campaign)....you battle huge armies...u have covert quests, u have huge boss fights. The story is touching and characters are memorable. I remember i had 1 character in my party for about 4-5 missions. When he died i was actually sad about it and the way he died. Also another character that i got killed was because of the OPTION i personally chose to follow.
It's fun to EXPLORE. U get rewards for exploring. Exp, money, karma and even full map completition rewards and all of them are in a proportionate ratio (not to big not to small)
It's fun to grind. Because all grinding is social and tricky specially on Orr.
It's fun to LOOT...each has his own loot. Also available for boss-chests and overall public quest rewards.(rank)
It's fun to gather materials..besides the material itself, you get runes for your weapons AND exp
Another thing that fits in that 99.99% statistic is...IT'S FUN TO LOGIN AND JUST PLAY THE GAME!@$!@ without feeling time-preasured..without feeling u will miss out on anything if u can't play a certain day...without having to wake up at 3AM in the morning to kill "THE BIGEST CRAB BOSS THAT EVER EXISTED" just to get an item, on which THE WHOLE GROUP ROLLS.
They literally "innovated" FUN (as in took something that existed at a conceptual level, and actually made it). Something that if u ask me almost no mmos have.
So as we are talking about innovation and not invention:
1. Updates : You get a warning that your client will restart in a few minutes or so to download an update. You can exit immediately, download the update and then log back in again. No servers being down for hours, which is plain awesome imo.
2. The automatic scaling down of characterlvl to the appropiate lvl of the area. And to keep it interesting, you will still find loot for your own lvl. In a lot of other MMO's low lvl content lacks the incentives for players to go back.
3. (When it works) The mailing of items from any point in the world at any time. Ppl might think they prefer the direct trade. But the mailing system is definately less disruptive. You can mail (without having to travel to a mail box first ) your item that you want to share with your guildie and the guildie can pick it up when convenient. (no full backpack crap , no getting attacked while trading etc). Tip : rightclick name in chat or portrait for mail option, so you dont have to type in weird names.
4. Linking map waypoints/points of interests etc. When you are asking for help in /map to tackle down a champion mob or skill challenge, just link the closest waypoint in /map chatchannel. This really helps getting players to your location fast to help you.
This is just from the top of the head. But there is a lot of innovation here.
- no linear approach (Freedom of Choice so everyone can play the way they want)
- everything you do rewards you for your time and effort cause exploration, crafting, gathering, heart quests, DEs, Meta DEs, Dungeons, WvsWvsW, completing a areas vistas/POIs/Hearts/waypoints, sPVP gives you character XP and other rewards.
- underwater combat
Those things on their own are not innovation and have been done before .. As other's have said GW2 innovates by taking the mixed ingrediants from other places and baking them into one cake .Not by the list of ingrediants themselves
- Freedom of choice and rewards:
You are actually wrong at this cause we are talking about mmos and out of over 350+ mmos I tested and played through the years the only other mmo that one had somewhat the freedom to go and wander around do things partially was Wakfu and on the bottomline even that one was badly executed cause you have to grind your heart out to level and the crafting system has you crafting garbage 24/7 before you can end up crafting something decent at all.
You still didn't got rewarded the way GW 2 does and you were still stuck into killing low level mobs before you started greeding one certain type of mob till max level 24/7.
In GW2 in comparison, I went on a pet taming tour after the tutorial and I leveled from level 2 to 15+ alone by traveling through the areas to charm pets without having to do one single battle ever.
After that while still on the tour I gathered a few crafting materials which helped me to level 16 additionaly.
At the end of the day I was level 17,5 by having killed a total of like 7-9 mobs in overall and it was really fun to say the least.
- Underwater battle
Underwater combat in that style and with this type of skills never have been done before in a mmo either.
- In overall:
Alone the way the Elementalist class works, makes it one of the most innovative classes ever existed in a mmo.
Not to mention the DEs chains depending on if you succeded or failed a DE that lead to a other outcome with different event getting chained to it.
You should also differentiate "Innovative" from "revolutionary" or new cause a Innovation is indeed something that existed either in the same or a other form and got upgraded to something better.
GW2 takes everything I loved from other games and put them into their game. It doesn't matter if it's innovative or not. It's extremely fun, extremely addictive and I don't have to pay a monthly fee to play.
I honestly think the OP and others who share this view on innovation just like to argue for the sake of arguing. It doesn't matter what you say, you aren't going to change their minds. The steel trap is rusted shut, so to speak.
- no linear approach (Freedom of Choice so everyone can play the way they want)
- everything you do rewards you for your time and effort cause exploration, crafting, gathering, heart quests, DEs, Meta DEs, Dungeons, WvsWvsW, completing a areas vistas/POIs/Hearts/waypoints, sPVP gives you character XP and other rewards.
- underwater combat
Those things on their own are not innovation and have been done before .. As other's have said GW2 innovates by taking the mixed ingrediants from other places and baking them into one cake .Not by the list of ingrediants themselves
- Freedom of choice and rewards:
You are actually wrong at this cause we are talking about mmos and out of over 350+ mmos I tested and played through the years the only other mmo that one had somewhat the freedom to go and wander around do things partially was Wakfu and on the bottomline even that one was badly executed cause you have to grind your heart out to level and the crafting system has you crafting garbage 24/7 before you can end up crafting something decent at all.
You still didn't got rewarded the way GW 2 does and you were still stuck into killing low level mobs before you started greeding one certain type of mob till max level 24/7.
In GW2 in comparison, I went on a pet taming tour after the tutorial and I leveled from level 2 to 15+ alone by traveling through the areas to charm pets without having to do one single battle ever.
Should Check out an old niche Game called Eternal Lands .. I'm not saying it's a good game but it allows freedom of leveling since 99.9% of things give both skill and OA xp
Crafting and it's various sub skills , Harvesting, Magic , Attack , Defence all give XP
It's a classless game:
So if you wish to level by just healing other people .. sure
Wish to do nothing but make armour and weapons and clothes but still level .. go for it
Want to harvest , make money and supply other players .. Good for you and you get XP as well
etc etc
People in the game have leveled without even engaging in fighting
....
From what I have seen so far I'm not sure outside of giving you a specfic " underwater " weapon set how the combat differs much from PWI's water combat ..
I like how each weapon has its own set of abilities, and along with traits you can find good combinations. I also like how you can jump right into pvp without needing to grind anything. Oh and other key features is the contents stay challenging when you go back into a lower level zone or such, and you get xp for reviving allies, lots of ways to get rewarding things.
That's something most MMO's been missing for years.
What did GW2 Truly Innovate for this game? You cant say DE because Rift has those...
I was in Queen's Dale for a couple of days checking out different classes and saw how the bandits tried to poison the town waters, burn the water pipes, conquer a mill, saw a bull that had to be driven back to it's pen, centaurs attacking a fort etc etc. None of them succeeded because of the initial rush, but one morning when I logged and there was few people online the bandits actually HAD poisoned the water, and that resulted in the crop going bad and turning into some weird slime creatures.
What I see in Rift is random telly-ports appearing here and there pouring a bunch of mobs on people so they can kill them. Even Warhammer got the basics right better than Rift with the static PQ-events. GW2 can be called innovation since they have added and improved on the system.
When I type the word innovation into a translater it says "to better" or "to improve and upgrade upon" it does not say "make something awesome out of thin air that no one ever thought about before even in this time when everything has been already done in one shape or another".
But whether DE's are better than Rifts is simply a matter of perspective and taste. Personally, I like the Rifts better because they *aren't* storylines. Storylines can be great the first time you play them, but on subsequent play throughs they actually reduce immersion. You know you've talked to Sue the Apple Vendor 12 times, but she doesn't seem to remember.
Not to mention, when you have to create narrative content on that large a scale, quality suffers. I can name a couple of classic quests in WoW, the rest were mostly dreck. The same is true of GW2, do I really care that some chick had bigass spiders eating her apples? Who's bright idea was it to buy an apple orchard with lethal spiders in the trees? Didn't Sue and her husband get an inspection? Ask about the human bodies in cocoons, maybe?
Conversely, no matter how many time you run into a rift, it is consistent with the game lore of Rift. You've never seen that particular dimensional hole-thing before, and closing it is simply ongoing maintenance of a weakened/tattered reality.
Back to your main point, there is a difference between innovation and "something you like". In some ways DEs are more innovative than Rifts (they are dynamic and branching), but in other ways rifts are more innovative (they do away with the thin veneer of faux narrative). It's not that GW2's systems aren't innovative (they are), but that innovative systems aren't really that unusual in MMOs.
Case in point: SWTOR. As derivative as much of the game is, the game's voiceover content is actually groundbreaking, clearly different from any previous MMO. The space combat was innovative. They were the first to give each MMO player his own personal story-world. Yet any number of people will tell you that SWTOR brought nothing new to the genre, simply because they didn't find the game fun.
GW2s innovative feature to me it that is people are working together whether they want to or not. Everything is public. It's not PQ's like War + CO, it's not Rifts... it's the WHOLE game. Players are grouping when they don't even know it, when they do know it and even when they don't need to. You couldn't play on your own in this game even you tried and no game has done this before, that is innovation.
I don't suffer from insanity, I enjoy every minute of it.
- no linear approach (Freedom of Choice so everyone can play the way they want)
- everything you do rewards you for your time and effort cause exploration, crafting, gathering, heart quests, DEs, Meta DEs, Dungeons, WvsWvsW, completing a areas vistas/POIs/Hearts/waypoints, sPVP gives you character XP and other rewards.
- underwater combat
Those things on their own are not innovation and have been done before .. As other's have said GW2 innovates by taking the mixed ingrediants from other places and baking them into one cake .Not by the list of ingrediants themselves
- Freedom of choice and rewards:
You are actually wrong at this cause we are talking about mmos and out of over 350+ mmos I tested and played through the years the only other mmo that one had somewhat the freedom to go and wander around do things partially was Wakfu and on the bottomline even that one was badly executed cause you have to grind your heart out to level and the crafting system has you crafting garbage 24/7 before you can end up crafting something decent at all.
You still didn't got rewarded the way GW 2 does and you were still stuck into killing low level mobs before you started greeding one certain type of mob till max level 24/7.
In GW2 in comparison, I went on a pet taming tour after the tutorial and I leveled from level 2 to 15+ alone by traveling through the areas to charm pets without having to do one single battle ever.
Should Check out an old niche Game called Eternal Lands .. I'm not saying it's a good game but it allows freedom of leveling since 99.9% of things give both skill and OA xp
Crafting and it's various sub skills , Harvesting, Magic , Attack , Defence all give XP
It's a classless game:
So if you wish to level by just healing other people .. sure
Wish to do nothing but make armour and weapons and clothes but still level .. go for it
Want to harvest , make money and supply other players .. Good for you and you get XP as well
etc etc
People in the game have leveled without even engaging in fighting
....
From what I have seen so far I'm not sure outside of giving you a specfic " underwater " weapon set how the combat differs much from PWI's water combat ..
Yep I know it and you are right that it gives more freedom the other mmos at its time or even later did.
Not to that extent GW2 does and not in every way but it was still a good approach.
It's class system is the opposite of Eden Eternal in which you can be all classes from every branch with one character by switching. A nice approach aswell and innovative in its own manner.
As about the underwater battle the difference is the type of combat that makes it more active, the active dodging system, the partying without having to be in the same party, the possibility of using different underwater weapons for some classes while been able to switch through 4 elements in the elementalist case on the fly while in combat underwater.
Another nice thing GW2 brought up is that if you are in a party, you can switch character by going back to the character selection and when you come back you are still in your party with the new character so no one has to invite you again.
You can even go offline and stay in the party (have been done before to a extent though) till you login again or until someone drops you or the party disbands.
Comments
GW2's most innovative feature is to reward cooperation and not thuggery. At it's heart, this is the change from which all things in the game flow. Without the innate competition between players while fighting and gathering the entire dynamic of player interaction has changed. This is the only game i have seen/played that does this. No innovatuion is more important to me than this.
There is NO miracle patch.
95% of what you see in beta won't change by launch.
Hope is not a stategy.
______________________________
"This kind of topic is like one of those little cartoon boxes held up by a stick on a string, with a piece of meat under it. In other words, bait."
I still take exception to the one-liners. "Not a single thing in GW2 is innovative." It's just a stupid thing to say and shows a person's extreme bias.
There are people that have listed things that are not innovative. But there are people that have listed things that are. And there are people that have made lists that include both innovative things and not so innovative things.
See that's the wonderful thing about opinions, while I can not argue with your view I think they have taken it to far and have removed a lot of the need to be social .. but I guess that's a different topic
I was in Queen's Dale for a couple of days checking out different classes and saw how the bandits tried to poison the town waters, burn the water pipes, conquer a mill, saw a bull that had to be driven back to it's pen, centaurs attacking a fort etc etc. None of them succeeded because of the initial rush, but one morning when I logged and there was few people online the bandits actually HAD poisoned the water, and that resulted in the crop going bad and turning into some weird slime creatures.
What I see in Rift is random telly-ports appearing here and there pouring a bunch of mobs on people so they can kill them. Even Warhammer got the basics right better than Rift with the static PQ-events. GW2 can be called innovation since they have added and improved on the system.
When I type the word innovation into a translater it says "to better" or "to improve and upgrade upon" it does not say "make something awesome out of thin air that no one ever thought about before even in this time when everything has been already done in one shape or another".
Yes. A totally different topic actually. I'm one of those weirdos that just talks to people without wanting something from them or to take advantage of them is some way. Just my opinion though, right?
There is NO miracle patch.
95% of what you see in beta won't change by launch.
Hope is not a stategy.
______________________________
"This kind of topic is like one of those little cartoon boxes held up by a stick on a string, with a piece of meat under it. In other words, bait."
I don't know why you think I would respond that way. I won't. I try not to. I already listed some in one of the first responses in the thread. But here is one of them:
WvW ladder system among servers. I've never seen this done before. In any game. Which may make it more than an innovation. It's purpose is to promote competitive balance. It is a solution to a problem that was seen in earlier game systems where sometimes, even when there were 3 factions, 1 faction would dominate the other two. For years.
Some people don't like that innovation. And that's fine. But to act like it doesn't exist in order to try and push some kind of agenda on the other people is asinine.
You know, WoW is the biggest MMO ever, and it is not inherently social. In fact, the only reason I ever spoke to anyone was because I randomly joined guilds from Trade chat. That's where I met my friends. That's what people are doing in GW2. I see absolutely no difference in the limitations of social "need" between the two games. You don't need to be social in any MMO. If you see limits and you don't like them, break them.
EDIT: Crap, you're right, it is a different topic lol
I never said you would reply that way, i am giving you amalgamation of some typical defensive posts through out 13 pages. All i am trying to say is that only because people think that GW2 isn't innovative doesn't mean they hate the game or not enjoying it. People need to seperate the two issues and look at it individualy.
Let's play Fallen Earth (blind, 300 episodes)
Let's play Guild Wars 2 (blind, 45 episodes)
That's the problem I had with people complaining about the number of skills in GW2 months back. In WoW, as a paladin, there were precious few skills I actually needed, or heck, were even viable in most fights. Yet I had 3 hot bars full of garbage and could destroy anything with the skills on 1. In my experience, pure mage classes are one of the few archetypes that benefit from more skill slots on-screen.
Here's something sarcastically innovative for you. They innovated the FUN factor of an MMO. If u compare it to 99.99% of mmos out there (a scientifically proven statistic that should never be doubted) this game actually is fun.
They literally "innovated" FUN (as in took something that existed at a conceptual level, and actually made it). Something that if u ask me almost no mmos have.
A game doesn't need to do new things to be good or fun.
So as we are talking about innovation and not invention:
1. Updates : You get a warning that your client will restart in a few minutes or so to download an update. You can exit immediately, download the update and then log back in again. No servers being down for hours, which is plain awesome imo.
2. The automatic scaling down of characterlvl to the appropiate lvl of the area. And to keep it interesting, you will still find loot for your own lvl. In a lot of other MMO's low lvl content lacks the incentives for players to go back.
3. (When it works) The mailing of items from any point in the world at any time. Ppl might think they prefer the direct trade. But the mailing system is definately less disruptive. You can mail (without having to travel to a mail box first ) your item that you want to share with your guildie and the guildie can pick it up when convenient. (no full backpack crap , no getting attacked while trading etc). Tip : rightclick name in chat or portrait for mail option, so you dont have to type in weird names.
4. Linking map waypoints/points of interests etc. When you are asking for help in /map to tackle down a champion mob or skill challenge, just link the closest waypoint in /map chatchannel. This really helps getting players to your location fast to help you.
This is just from the top of the head. But there is a lot of innovation here.
- Freedom of choice and rewards:
You are actually wrong at this cause we are talking about mmos and out of over 350+ mmos I tested and played through the years the only other mmo that one had somewhat the freedom to go and wander around do things partially was Wakfu and on the bottomline even that one was badly executed cause you have to grind your heart out to level and the crafting system has you crafting garbage 24/7 before you can end up crafting something decent at all.
You still didn't got rewarded the way GW 2 does and you were still stuck into killing low level mobs before you started greeding one certain type of mob till max level 24/7.
In GW2 in comparison, I went on a pet taming tour after the tutorial and I leveled from level 2 to 15+ alone by traveling through the areas to charm pets without having to do one single battle ever.
After that while still on the tour I gathered a few crafting materials which helped me to level 16 additionaly.
At the end of the day I was level 17,5 by having killed a total of like 7-9 mobs in overall and it was really fun to say the least.
- Underwater battle
Underwater combat in that style and with this type of skills never have been done before in a mmo either.
- In overall:
Alone the way the Elementalist class works, makes it one of the most innovative classes ever existed in a mmo.
Not to mention the DEs chains depending on if you succeded or failed a DE that lead to a other outcome with different event getting chained to it.
You should also differentiate "Innovative" from "revolutionary" or new cause a Innovation is indeed something that existed either in the same or a other form and got upgraded to something better.
I think when I discovered Sex that happened , so I'm not sure GW2 can take the credit
The answer to the OP's question is: I don't care.
GW2 takes everything I loved from other games and put them into their game. It doesn't matter if it's innovative or not. It's extremely fun, extremely addictive and I don't have to pay a monthly fee to play.
I honestly think the OP and others who share this view on innovation just like to argue for the sake of arguing. It doesn't matter what you say, you aren't going to change their minds. The steel trap is rusted shut, so to speak.
Should Check out an old niche Game called Eternal Lands .. I'm not saying it's a good game but it allows freedom of leveling since 99.9% of things give both skill and OA xp
Crafting and it's various sub skills , Harvesting, Magic , Attack , Defence all give XP
It's a classless game:
So if you wish to level by just healing other people .. sure
Wish to do nothing but make armour and weapons and clothes but still level .. go for it
Want to harvest , make money and supply other players .. Good for you and you get XP as well
etc etc
People in the game have leveled without even engaging in fighting
....
From what I have seen so far I'm not sure outside of giving you a specfic " underwater " weapon set how the combat differs much from PWI's water combat ..
I like how each weapon has its own set of abilities, and along with traits you can find good combinations. I also like how you can jump right into pvp without needing to grind anything. Oh and other key features is the contents stay challenging when you go back into a lower level zone or such, and you get xp for reviving allies, lots of ways to get rewarding things.
That's something most MMO's been missing for years.
i counter your rift with warhammer public quests. so.
what did rift truly add to the mmo market?!
"I'll never grow up, never grow up, never grow up! Not me!"
But whether DE's are better than Rifts is simply a matter of perspective and taste. Personally, I like the Rifts better because they *aren't* storylines. Storylines can be great the first time you play them, but on subsequent play throughs they actually reduce immersion. You know you've talked to Sue the Apple Vendor 12 times, but she doesn't seem to remember.
Not to mention, when you have to create narrative content on that large a scale, quality suffers. I can name a couple of classic quests in WoW, the rest were mostly dreck. The same is true of GW2, do I really care that some chick had bigass spiders eating her apples? Who's bright idea was it to buy an apple orchard with lethal spiders in the trees? Didn't Sue and her husband get an inspection? Ask about the human bodies in cocoons, maybe?
Conversely, no matter how many time you run into a rift, it is consistent with the game lore of Rift. You've never seen that particular dimensional hole-thing before, and closing it is simply ongoing maintenance of a weakened/tattered reality.
Back to your main point, there is a difference between innovation and "something you like". In some ways DEs are more innovative than Rifts (they are dynamic and branching), but in other ways rifts are more innovative (they do away with the thin veneer of faux narrative). It's not that GW2's systems aren't innovative (they are), but that innovative systems aren't really that unusual in MMOs.
Case in point: SWTOR. As derivative as much of the game is, the game's voiceover content is actually groundbreaking, clearly different from any previous MMO. The space combat was innovative. They were the first to give each MMO player his own personal story-world. Yet any number of people will tell you that SWTOR brought nothing new to the genre, simply because they didn't find the game fun.
Lol...i was obviously referring to the MMORPG world strictly. Don't tell me u discovered sex in an mmo please.
This isn't a signature, you just think it is.
Yep I know it and you are right that it gives more freedom the other mmos at its time or even later did.
Not to that extent GW2 does and not in every way but it was still a good approach.
It's class system is the opposite of Eden Eternal in which you can be all classes from every branch with one character by switching. A nice approach aswell and innovative in its own manner.
As about the underwater battle the difference is the type of combat that makes it more active, the active dodging system, the partying without having to be in the same party, the possibility of using different underwater weapons for some classes while been able to switch through 4 elements in the elementalist case on the fly while in combat underwater.
Another nice thing GW2 brought up is that if you are in a party, you can switch character by going back to the character selection and when you come back you are still in your party with the new character so no one has to invite you again.
You can even go offline and stay in the party (have been done before to a extent though) till you login again or until someone drops you or the party disbands.