Last few years ??LMAO i am not sure i have seen an innovation in the last few years but then again i have been gaming longer and in more game types than likely anyone in the forums.SO i have seen pretty much everything every genre has done.
Melting brain cells,must think......well i can think of a few innovations,if i want to call them that but NONE i would call BEST OF.
Best and likely only innovation has been what Red Faction has been doing.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
Better combat is the main thing. Early MMORPGs were mostly about combat, but mostly didn't seem to care if their combat was any good. Enter combat, don't particularly pay attention, wait for mobs to die, rest to recover health/mana, then rinse and repeat is not fun. That wasn't acceptable in console games 30 years ago, so I'm not sure why so many developers thought it was fine in MMORPGs 10 years ago. Now it's becoming more prevalent for games to have you actually do something in combat other than wait for it to end.
I bit sad to say, but to me, the best and most responsive MMORPG "non-action" (aka "classical") combat is still WoW. No other game beats the "press key / action happens on screen" synchronization WoW achieves, even though some come close enough to be very good.
Have to agree, WoW is definitely the best combat of its type. And its certainly not slow "wait for mob to die". I certainly cant think of a MMORPG that came after it that I would call as good, let alone better. It just feels right.
What i would love to see is a little slower pace (think FFXIV) combined with group mechanics like EQ. FFXIV's combat kind of sucks not because of its pace, but because it lacks the depth of the earlier games.
When is the last time you actually had the chance to save or be saved by someone in a fight? That has more to do with lack of challenge with quick trash mob fights.
Better combat is the main thing. Early MMORPGs were mostly about combat, but mostly didn't seem to care if their combat was any good. Enter combat, don't particularly pay attention, wait for mobs to die, rest to recover health/mana, then rinse and repeat is not fun. That wasn't acceptable in console games 30 years ago, so I'm not sure why so many developers thought it was fine in MMORPGs 10 years ago. Now it's becoming more prevalent for games to have you actually do something in combat other than wait for it to end.
Whoa now. Watch out, your subjective preference is being misinterpreted as fact.
Not only do many of us prefer said Combat type but we are sorry to see it go. Many of us actively seek it out. The enterprising among us even seek to recreate it.
Consider Final Fantasy 1 vs Super Mario Brothers 1. In FF1 You enter the instructuons and set down the controller. In SMB your fingers get sore.
I think Guild Wars 2 is more or less the only newer mmo which offers innovations, i quess good & bad:D. ''Action combat'' system that came with action mmos or however they are called, like it or hate it. But I did notice that latest mmo's offer a choice between different combat systems. I think by Bless online you can choose between 2 different combat styles, while I know for sure that in Moonlight Blade online you can choose between 3.
honestly I think the description of some new innovation in MMOs should not contain the word 'combat' in the description. Isnt combat iself in gaming WAY over done
Please do not respond to me, even if I ask you a question, its rhetorical.
honestly I think the description of some new innovation in MMOs should not contain the word 'combat' in the description. Isnt combat iself in gaming WAY over done
There is no such thing as Dynamic events,they are quests that simply appear after being triggered,no different than what questing has been doing for 20 years now. A REL dynamic event would be where a GM sits there and creates a quest out of nothing and then it is gone,what we are seeing is pre scripted ,auto generated stuff.
Imo the idea that i feel brought me the most enjoyment,was the SUB CLASS idea.It opened up classes and combat to a whole new level.Equal to number 1 is online grouping,without it we don't have the mmo genre.
This is true, but it's a largely meaningless distinction. The events may not be dynamic, but they still create a dynamic feeling to gameplay by the simple fact that they are not an expected situation. I can play through the same map of Guild Wars 2 twice and run into an entirely different set of events in both playthroughs. The value of these is that they add variety and spontaneity to gameplay. blueturtle13 said:
Emergent A.I. needs to show up in MMO's at some point
We can talk about emergent AI once it becomes a plausibility. It might be vaguely possible at this point, but it isn't a realistic implementation and certainly hasn't made its way into mainstream game development. That's a subject for 5-10 years from now.
Emergent A.I. needs to show up in MMO's at some point
We can talk about emergent AI once it becomes a plausibility. It might be vaguely possible at this point, but it isn't a realistic implementation and certainly hasn't made its way into mainstream game development. That's a subject for 5-10 years from now.
actually....
from an interview or something i read not sure which developer stated that the trick to AI is actually to dumb it down for players to be able to have a chance. He said if they wanted to they could make AI out smart you every single time.
So when you play dumb AI what you are really playing is what the developer thinks the dumbest player is like
Please do not respond to me, even if I ask you a question, its rhetorical.
I would like to see AI at least be made more challenging than overwhelming trash and HP and damage. At least where it make sense. You are attacking a fort and no alarm goes up. Nobody man's the walls. Nobody cares about what goes on in the next room. NPCs can't see 10 feet in front of them. Even just scripting a defense would nice.
I think when dealing with intelligent life they should have different responses.
Using a base location as the pre-event scene, the event scene, and the post-event scene without separating the player from the base location.
'Sandbox MMO' is a PTSD trigger word for anyone who has the experience to know that anonymous players invariably use a 'sandbox' in the same manner a housecat does.
When your head is stuck in the sand, your ass becomes the only recognizable part of you.
No game is more fun than the one you can't play, and no game is more boring than one which you've become familiar.
How to become a millionaire: Start with a billion dollars and make an MMO.
I believe Voice Acting has been the most profound "innovation" to the MMORPG genre.
EQ2 is over 10 years old now. Voice acting isn't new.
Also WAR launched 8 years ago. Dynamic events aren't new.
Most of the good points in here are more than a few years old. Im a big fan of AoE loot myself. Maybe GW2's crafting bank setup? Not sure if that was done before GW2 but I sure love having a separate bank for my mats and being able to craft directly from it.
And regardless of what others have said, combat has taken a huge leap backwards as group mechanics are almost non existent these days. Also, I dont want my fingers to be more active, I want my brain to be more active.
Separate craft space in GW2 is awesome. Games that encourage crafting but come up short on inventory space are a no no, like Aion and ESO.
"We all do the best we can based on life experience, point of view, and our ability to believe in ourselves." - Naropa "We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are." SR Covey
I would like to see AI at least be made more challenging than overwhelming trash and HP and damage. At least where it make sense. You are attacking a fort and no alarm goes up. Nobody man's the walls. Nobody cares about what goes on in the next room. NPCs can't see 10 feet in front of them. Even just scripting a defense would nice.
I think when dealing with intelligent life they should have different responses.
When I want to play a game wherein the combat is the primary challenge and consumes much of the development hours, I fully agree.
EQ however is not this type of game. Instead of a Skyrim approach, where, as you describe, the fort is on high alert and guards point out dangers etc, EQ has you fighting patrols, runners, teleporters, etc. There is still a sense of being surrounded by danger but there isn't as much twitch requirement nor as much strategy in the approach.
Both types are wonderful but I'd be sorry to see either disappear.
I believe Voice Acting has been the most profound "innovation" to the MMORPG genre.
EQ2 is over 10 years old now. Voice acting isn't new.
Also WAR launched 8 years ago. Dynamic events aren't new.
Most of the good points in here are more than a few years old. Im a big fan of AoE loot myself. Maybe GW2's crafting bank setup? Not sure if that was done before GW2 but I sure love having a separate bank for my mats and being able to craft directly from it.
And regardless of what others have said, combat has taken a huge leap backwards as group mechanics are almost non existent these days. Also, I dont want my fingers to be more active, I want my brain to be more active.
Separate craft space in GW2 is awesome. Games that encourage crafting but come up short on inventory space are a no no, like Aion and ESO.
Managing inventory is actually a game play feature.
Whether you like it or not, GW2 took it away from you.
They keep getting more simple, but it isn't innovation in my book. Novel perhaps, but still less than before.
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
Until they get AI to react with the world better dynamic events arent all that dynamic theyre basically the same thing over and over again.
I said it when they were talking about it, until they have random spawn points and accelerated spawns (more mobs spawn the longer they arent interacted with) and allow theseNPCS to build actual towns or base which are different each tome (drawn form a pool of a few dozen possibilities at least) then its just something that people will memorize in about 3 encounters.
Better combat is the main thing. Early MMORPGs were mostly about combat, but mostly didn't seem to care if their combat was any good. Enter combat, don't particularly pay attention, wait for mobs to die, rest to recover health/mana, then rinse and repeat is not fun. That wasn't acceptable in console games 30 years ago, so I'm not sure why so many developers thought it was fine in MMORPGs 10 years ago. Now it's becoming more prevalent for games to have you actually do something in combat other than wait for it to end.
I bit sad to say, but to me, the best and most responsive MMORPG "non-action" (aka "classical") combat is still WoW. No other game beats the "press key / action happens on screen" synchronization WoW achieves, even though some come close enough to be very good.
Have to agree, WoW is definitely the best combat of its type. And its certainly not slow "wait for mob to die". I certainly cant think of a MMORPG that came after it that I would call as good, let alone better. It just feels right.
What i would love to see is a little slower pace (think FFXIV) combined with group mechanics like EQ. FFXIV's combat kind of sucks not because of its pace, but because it lacks the depth of the earlier games.
The problem is that a game has the "best classical MMORPG combat" is kind of like saying someone is the "world's tallest midget". It's not at all similar to actually having good combat.
WoW combat is hardly the worst out there. It's not as egregiously bad as Runescape or Anarchy Online, for example, nor some of the more recent browser-based games that basically play the game for you. But I want for the outcome of combat to strongly depend on what you do in combat, while WoW is almost entirely about level, gear, and group size.
Action combat is hardly the only way to do it. I liked the combat in Wizard 101 and Atlantica, and those are completely turn-based. I liked the naval combat in Pirates of the Burning Sea, and that's slower than WoW. But those are much more than sticking a pretty skin on a level and gear check.
Wish there was SWG with modern graphics, action combat, dynamic events, some major questchains that evolve based on the skills you raise with superb voice when encountering iconic characters from the movies. Improved crafting with bits that were added during late NGE. Dynamic events (Imperial raids to look for rebel sympathisers etc, so many events to think of actually). Lotsa polish added (especially space combat). Oh, big ships from late NGE for space combat added too. Housing and player cities improved (again pre CU with late NGE stuff added).
For me, since this is purely opinion based, the coolest concept is the one developed by Hello Games called "Endless Sky." The game universe is randomly generated to include planets, locations, animals, resources, and so on. Sure the generated "things" follow a template but what you encounter on one planet may be nothing like what you encounter on another.
You could be the first one to visit a distant planet, could be the first one to find an exotic animal, could be the first one to build a specific type of space craft and, conceivably, you could travel the entire game without encountering anyone else. I wouldn't classify it as a traditional MMO by any means but, based off of what I've seen from Alpha footage, the game looks amazing. Everything is random, nothing is the same, and it is what you make of it. Combat is almost laughable but the exploration aspect of this game is what I would call truly innovative.
I don't believe there has been an innovation. At all.
It's as stale a genre as Jrpg's are. Same ole Tropes. Same ole Systems.. Just you know reskinned and renamed...THAT'S NOT MANA! That's SP!
Even crafting. Most "crafting" follows the daoc system or the Daoc system +some wow style. BDO is right around there.
I think the genre isn't so much dying as...it's boring. MMO's used to be played because it's what we had. Now we have so many choices for Multiplayer games from Survival to Voxel building.
The only thing a mmo can do over the current mp games is host more gold farmers.
The genre simply hasn't had the innovations, the graphics upgrades, the aestics to stick a player for a long time let alone over 90 or so hours a single rpg can provide.
This site alone is a good example of the mmo industry collapsing under it's own stupidity. Half of the games these guys post now are multiplayer. No mmo. Just Multiplayer.
There isn't a game in dev that can currently challenge the system and that's just fine imo.
Atari killed games for a few years and then they came back with Stories and Character driven plots.
Perhaps it'll be like that again only this time? No character driven plot and no stories.
We never wanted S-rpg in our MMORPG. They just assumed we did.
We did not play the mmorpg's because it was what we had,i still had a choice,we played them because at that time,it was a solid effort,we were all growing with technology and game design,both players and develoeprs. However NOW developers are just plain lazy and cheap,they are not even trying to advance the genre or improve or even complete the systems,instead cutting corners everywhere.
Now FFXIV ....BDO they at least added nicer graphics,that is better than cheap ass cartoon graphics.BDO they have some depth,sort of reminds me of FFXI a bit but yes we still see a lot of the same tropes but as long as the developer is TRYING to improve something i am ok with that.
It is only when developers are trying to sell me 1990 gaming that i draw the line,1990 gaming would be worth about 5 bucks right now,not the 30/50/100 for early access crap.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
Comments
Melting brain cells,must think......well i can think of a few innovations,if i want to call them that but NONE i would call BEST OF.
Best and likely only innovation has been what Red Faction has been doing.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
Not only do many of us prefer said Combat type but we are sorry to see it go. Many of us actively seek it out. The enterprising among us even seek to recreate it.
Consider Final Fantasy 1 vs Super Mario Brothers 1. In FF1 You enter the instructuons and set down the controller. In SMB your fingers get sore.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
거북이는 목을 내밀 때 안 움직입니다
Please do not respond to me, even if I ask you a question, its rhetorical.
Please do not respond to me
blueturtle13 said: We can talk about emergent AI once it becomes a plausibility. It might be vaguely possible at this point, but it isn't a realistic implementation and certainly hasn't made its way into mainstream game development. That's a subject for 5-10 years from now.
from an interview or something i read not sure which developer stated that the trick to AI is actually to dumb it down for players to be able to have a chance. He said if they wanted to they could make AI out smart you every single time.
So when you play dumb AI what you are really playing is what the developer thinks the dumbest player is like
Please do not respond to me, even if I ask you a question, its rhetorical.
Please do not respond to me
I think when dealing with intelligent life they should have different responses.
Using a base location as the pre-event scene, the event scene, and the post-event scene without separating the player from the base location.
'Sandbox MMO' is a PTSD trigger word for anyone who has the experience to know that anonymous players invariably use a 'sandbox' in the same manner a housecat does.
When your head is stuck in the sand, your ass becomes the only recognizable part of you.
No game is more fun than the one you can't play, and no game is more boring than one which you've become familiar.
How to become a millionaire:
Start with a billion dollars and make an MMO.
"We all do the best we can based on life experience, point of view, and our ability to believe in ourselves." - Naropa "We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are." SR Covey
EQ however is not this type of game. Instead of a Skyrim approach, where, as you describe, the fort is on high alert and guards point out dangers etc, EQ has you fighting patrols, runners, teleporters, etc. There is still a sense of being surrounded by danger but there isn't as much twitch requirement nor as much strategy in the approach.
Both types are wonderful but I'd be sorry to see either disappear.
Whether you like it or not, GW2 took it away from you.
They keep getting more simple, but it isn't innovation in my book. Novel perhaps, but still less than before.
I am Phenomenal
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
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
It's wonderful example of planning a game years ahead into the future. This is so unlike most companies.
I'm looking forward to exploring procedurally generated temperate planets using Oculus Rift.
The Cobra engine is the most future-proofed engine that I know of.
I think David Braben is an awesome guy.
거북이는 목을 내밀 때 안 움직입니다
I said it when they were talking about it, until they have random spawn points and accelerated spawns (more mobs spawn the longer they arent interacted with) and allow theseNPCS to build actual towns or base which are different each tome (drawn form a pool of a few dozen possibilities at least) then its just something that people will memorize in about 3 encounters.
WoW combat is hardly the worst out there. It's not as egregiously bad as Runescape or Anarchy Online, for example, nor some of the more recent browser-based games that basically play the game for you. But I want for the outcome of combat to strongly depend on what you do in combat, while WoW is almost entirely about level, gear, and group size.
Action combat is hardly the only way to do it. I liked the combat in Wizard 101 and Atlantica, and those are completely turn-based. I liked the naval combat in Pirates of the Burning Sea, and that's slower than WoW. But those are much more than sticking a pretty skin on a level and gear check.
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been -Wayne Gretzky
Well, I can dream
You could be the first one to visit a distant planet, could be the first one to find an exotic animal, could be the first one to build a specific type of space craft and, conceivably, you could travel the entire game without encountering anyone else. I wouldn't classify it as a traditional MMO by any means but, based off of what I've seen from Alpha footage, the game looks amazing. Everything is random, nothing is the same, and it is what you make of it. Combat is almost laughable but the exploration aspect of this game is what I would call truly innovative.
At all.
It's as stale a genre as Jrpg's are. Same ole Tropes. Same ole Systems.. Just you know reskinned and renamed...THAT'S NOT MANA! That's SP!
Even crafting. Most "crafting" follows the daoc system or the Daoc system +some wow style.
BDO is right around there.
I think the genre isn't so much dying as...it's boring.
MMO's used to be played because it's what we had. Now we have so many choices for Multiplayer games from Survival to Voxel building.
The only thing a mmo can do over the current mp games is host more gold farmers.
The genre simply hasn't had the innovations, the graphics upgrades, the aestics to stick a player for a long time let alone over 90 or so hours a single rpg can provide.
This site alone is a good example of the mmo industry collapsing under it's own stupidity.
Half of the games these guys post now are multiplayer. No mmo. Just Multiplayer.
There isn't a game in dev that can currently challenge the system and that's just fine imo.
Atari killed games for a few years and then they came back with Stories and Character driven plots.
Perhaps it'll be like that again only this time? No character driven plot and no stories.
We never wanted S-rpg in our MMORPG. They just assumed we did.
However NOW developers are just plain lazy and cheap,they are not even trying to advance the genre or improve or even complete the systems,instead cutting corners everywhere.
Now FFXIV ....BDO they at least added nicer graphics,that is better than cheap ass cartoon graphics.BDO they have some depth,sort of reminds me of FFXI a bit but yes we still see a lot of the same tropes but as long as the developer is TRYING to improve something i am ok with that.
It is only when developers are trying to sell me 1990 gaming that i draw the line,1990 gaming would be worth about 5 bucks right now,not the 30/50/100 for early access crap.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.