Actually I think the fact that the "CSM Chairperson" couldn't manage to sound like an articulate adult and felt the need to constantly inject profanity while insulting lots of EVE players (as well as throwing in a totally OT slam at the Tea Party movement) was far more telling.

CCP clearly dropped the ball on this one from a PR standpoint, but that is hardly anything new for them. Everything about Incarna and Ambulation has been a hysterical PR blunder for a while now.

While the locations do sound interesting; I think that overall it puts an end to any thoughts that this will be an open world in any meaningful sense. This is clearly going to be the same kind of narrowly defined 'zone' based game and they will almost certainly be the same instanced junk as AoC.

I personally dislike the entire 'F2P' model, largely because I despise micro-transactions in general. In my experience they have become an excuse for companies to try and squeeze ever more money out of their customers; usually for content that would have been free patches in the past. However, at least in the 'freemium' model, they aren't soaking you up front for the game so I can see why some like it.

What bothers me the most is that far too many companies seem to be rushing to abandon the traditional revenue model, largely because it seems they cannot manage to run a successful product for any length of time. I prefer the traditional model and I am worried that within the next couple of years there will be nothing left for me to even consider playing.

Originally posted by Totec

 Not very many people in today's MMO community consider the hundreds of hours that go into a single NPC

No offense here, but if the NPCs (or storylines) in current games take anyone "hundreds of hours" then that person needs to be fired and replaced by someone with a clue.  Take a look at the mods out there for games like Mount and Blade; amateurs in their spare time are creating more interesting quest lines, dialogue and model skins than the so called "professionals" at most MMO teams. So no, it doesn't take hundreds of hours of work.

I'm sorry but the question really has no answer; you just left way too many variables and possibilities undefined; starting with the entire premise!

What is a "harsh" death penalty? To many true old school people massive exp and item loss without a harrowing corpse run is the way things should be, not harsh. To many of the current generation, anything that costs them more than a minute reforming for round 2 is just unbearably harsh. (and on and on..."harsh death penalty" isn't a gold standard, just a wildly variable scale)

Then at the other end, are the pvp mechanics the same across the three systems and if so, *how*? Consider an example from EVE; Team A is purely high sec and does in-corp frigate death matches...quick, cheap and no real risk of any loss; Team B meanwhile is doing null sec territorial warfare for the same span of time. If the "hybrid" match up at the end is anything other than high sec frigate fighting then Team B will just *bury* Team A and dance on the wreckage.

Originally posted by COOKERpl

OK game was different back then and you liked it more - BUT why to bash it to death now ?

Perhaps because if SOE decides tomorrow that the "proper" SWG experience is playing as a small blue squirrel using a WII controller interface they would do it in a week without telling you...probably right after selling you an expansion pack??

Old SWG had problems, but rather than work on fixing them SOE decided to mislead ~250k paying subscribers for months and then suddenly attempt to relaunch a totally different game in pursuit of what turned out to be a mythical larger audience. That they have spent the years since making that relaunched game better doesn't make those of us burned by them any more likely to trust them again.

I couldn't disagree more with the OP; if anything the MMO market has done nothing but buy whatever was slopped in front of it for years now. Most consumers are asking far too little of the MMO industry. They may be constantly whinging about various bits of content or balance, but they have continued to buy and pay for product after product.

What we need is less forum raging and more consumer discretion. The industry would be greatly improved if more players just accepted that not every game will cater to what they specifically want and started just avoiding games rather than jumping into them and then complaining endlessly that they want it changed. Corporate also needs to "man up" in a lot of cases and stop demanding that dev teams try to make everyone happy or make the "everyman's game".

I would point to the changes in game mechanics over the years and not the role. When the "holy trinity" evolved it was actually 4 roles; tank, healer, dps and crowd control - every part of which had to function well and each role required different player skills (and each role *could* be filled at least to some degree by a different class depending on specialization and gear).

Over time, the trends towards more pvp, faster combats, easier soloing and more flexible characters have really left the "tank" a bit out n the cold. (although not as badly as the CC role which has mostly ceased to exist entirely)

I don't think all "player created content" would be good, but then that is true of "dev created content" as well. My ideal sort of game would have a world where players could establish permanent "living" presences in game using game-provided tools and where the devs had set strong thematic and mechanics limits in place.

Consider SWG for example and the great "problem" of unused/abandoned buildings all over the landscape..if those buildings had actually decayed (in appearance as well) via game mechanics and become lairs/hideouts for bandits and wildlife then they would have been "content" instead of wasted space and eyesores.

While I agree with a lot of the OP; I'd prefer to see it done using player resources rather than a "god" mode. As an example, a player (or group) builds a bar with their characters' resources, hiring npc guards/staff etc who have various behaviors based on random traits and some controlling skills of the "owner" character; the bar owner also sets things like the rules and prices the bar operates on. The bar and employees then interact with their surroundings in a "sims"-like fashion, pulling in npc activity as well as hopefully PCs for various reasons. Depending on how it goes (and creating various dilemmas and possibly mini quests for the bar creator along the way) it might become a center for gambling,  job offers, fences, group recruiters etc or devolve in a dive known for bar fights every night.

If successful, running the place gains the creator revenue, skill gain or experience in managing and if patronized by PCs, some form of "karma" points that the player could either use to offset his sub fee, buy cosmetic perks or something of the sort.

As I see it

A: No purely dev-created content can be interesting enough or created fast enough to keep players happy in the long term. You have to create game mechanics and tools that allow "player created content" for other players. Ideally you want a system which both enables this and rewards the player for the time invested creating content for other players.

A game such as EVE with the extensive player corporation structure, open market and so on goes a long way towards this but then sadly falls rather short on part B.

B: Player to player interactions alone aren't enough. People have wildly varying schedules and play styles; a "player town" which is a virtual ghost town 18hrs of the day and deadlier than the worst slum of Chicago the other 6hrs isn't really "good content". The best way to manage this is an interactive and responsive "living" world of NPCs, factions and powers which operate within their own guidelines and rules but which can be influenced/countered/triggered by player actions.

To me it seems as though a game dev who wanted to go down this route needs to get away from pre-packaged events and stock missions, moving towards a more 'SIMS' like experience driven by cause/effect.

Originally posted by Kyleran

Perhaps I'm missing something, but as I read through these many fine posts I keep thinking to myself, "yep, EVE has that".

So I'm not quite clear what is being asked for here that EVE doesn't already offer, hoping someone here can help me understand what I'm missing.

As an ex-EVE player, let me see if I can help:

EVE lacks any interactive elements to the NPC story; CCP has failed miserably first with the various Dev fiascos and then with Aurora program. Before you hold up the "Council of Stellar Management" or whatever, that is more of a forum for game dev issues than storyline. To be fair, I give CCP full credit for at least occasionally trying but they really haven't done a good job with the game lore, npc story or any kind of player created story stuff in Empire space. Factional warfare and the faction system in general is just poorly done; they could have added so much more in terms of player interaction with the NPC storyline, player created missions, heck even real variation in missions.

...and yes, Player alliances and corps are a very good thing and do "drive" most of the story of EVE really, but only for those in it...and what 80% of the players don't even go out there!. It shouldn't have to be an either/or decision; CCP has never added the tools that they could have to make high-sec story/missioning more interesting nor have they done anything in the past 2 years or so except crap all over the lore they did have.

The mission/story side of EVE as it is now just lacks the depth needed to keep me playing. (I love the pvp side, but staring at a graphical chat program for hours waiting for that one good roam or fight got to be way too boring)

Originally posted by Gdemami

 

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Originally posted by generals3

A: You claim genre in gaming is based on setting
B: I posted a definition basing genre on gameplay
C: i gave the example of two types of games with a totally different gameplay but same setting.

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A and B does not exclude each other.

World of Warcraft and Warcraft are both fantasy(genre) games while one is MMORPG/RPG(genre), the other is RTS(genre).

 

Only what you said is that there are specific video game genres. Yes, there are so what?

Was anyone arguing there are not? No. Does it affect anything I said before? No. Your point? None.

 

If I go on with definition you linked:

 

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Originally posted by generals3
These genres serve as a descriptor of the general nature of the gameplay inherent to a given title.

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RTS or RPG have both inherited, specific constants in their gameplay.

Game design =/= game play

Game design is how the game elements (such as gameplay) interacts with each other, it is the structure, core game mechanics of the game, how the game is put together.

Just because I think I can simplify this a bit:

RTS, Turn-based, FPS etc are certainly "genres", however that does not mean that themepark and sandbox are.

I could make a "sandbox" FPS: FPS being the mechanics of the game interface and "sandbox" referring to open world elements within the game such as destructible terrain, player built structures, resource gathering etc. Similarly I could make an FPS themepark with a linear map design and nothing but fixed terrain and structures.

Yes, but the answer depends on what you consider success and what you'd consider a AAA title. I think there are more than enough sandboxistas out there to support a well done sandbox game in the range of 100k+ box sales and 50k+ recurring subs but I am not sure industry as a whole considers that enough of a market to bother chasing these days. The overwhelmning comercial success of WoW has raised the bar so high that most companies seem uninterested at best in chasing the smaller niche markets. (Although I would say that Fallen Earth bucks that trend and is a reasonable example of a successful niche game, even though it isn't really a true sandbox game...just closer than most)

and no, Sandbox isn't a genre; it is a style. To get that kind of market the game would have to be a sandbox style game set in a popular genre such as Sci-Fi or traditional fantasy.

There are a couple of other aspects beyond pure landmass size though. Travel time is a big one, games with easy long distance teleports/fast transit will feel much smaller, same for ones with very fast land movement rates. EVE is probably the largest map out there in terms of transit times.

Terrain usage is another one; Anarchy Online (early on) is a prime example of a pointlessly large world...lots of map space and nothing to do in any of it.  LotRO used to be much better about this, but the latest revamps have moved it ever more towards quest hubs and away from wandering. Fallen Earth is the best in this regard out of the ones I have played recently. I suppose diversity factors in here too; EVE for example has a lot of space and most of it is exactly the same as every other bit of it.

FunCom have great concept people and some great ideas, unfortunately they also have a couple of really strong negatives:

They have serious problems getting handling the network requirements of a large online game. Most of the reason AO was such a trainwreck of a game was just terrible instancing, zone hand off and other networking issues. It took them a very long time to even "mostly" solve those problems and some of them were still cropping up years after launch. AoC had many similar issues at launch. I cannot explain how such a basic element of the industry remains a significant problem for a company that has been doing this for a decade now.

They have a terrible record of presenting concepts and things they *want* to do as completed features. There were things claimed pre-launch of AO that never materialized. (To be fair, some did...but far from all) AoC had similar problems. They seem to have a real problem assessing what they can actually deliver on versus what they can dream up.

Lastly, I do not feel as though they have ever treated their customers with sufficient respect and consideration. They never made what I would consider an adequate effort to "make things right" for those who bought into their disastrous launches.

PS In so far as I know, they did not "lose hundreds of millions" on AoC's launch. They very nearly went bankrupt immediately prior to launch and their stock price plummetted, but they were able to secure a last minute loan/source of funding and finish the launch. They recovered more than enough from the box sales at launch to cover their investors, creditors and assorted debts. However the subsequent massive exodus of players does raise questions about how much operating capital they have at the moment.

(They are a publicly traded company so if you are really interested you can wade through their financial statements)

Just to be clear, I desperately want FC to deliver on this one; I just really want them to manage the hype and deliver what is promised, even if what ends up being promised is just a base to build on. I'd be much happier buying a limited game that promised to do more later, rather than the current industry-wide model which is to promise everything under the sun at launch and fail to deliver on most of it.

I should also add that I don't think the industry is self-correcting at all; the over-riding message of the last 10yrs of the MMO market has been that the players will *always* forgive you and line up to be suckers again...or at least enough of them...even if this is another total debacle, FC will have diehard fans who will leap at the next game.

I would also highly recommend Mount and Blade; either the original or the Warband expansion. Although you definitely need to check out the mods as the basic game universe is a bit on the small side. If you want more historical flavor and more story, their latest "with Fire and Sword" or something like that is coming out soon.

While I agree with you, I expect that TSW will be heavily instanced/phased. FunCom is in love with the concept and have always been one of the companies driving it forward.

He is clearly saying all the right things; sadly I remember going down this path before. They *said* all the right things when Anarchy Online was approaching beta as well; it was only after we had suffered through a horrid launch and endless months of game-breaking bugs that it was finally obvious that so much of what had been talked about simply was not there.