Originally posted by mmoski

Nice post an recap of SC, can't wait for this and elite dangerous, no matter what other people say they will be MMO's, possibly different to what we typically see, but none the less.

I hope both games do very well and inaugurate a new era of space sims. I for one am very excited.

Originally posted by Ulorik

Do we really NEED classes?

 

A skill distribution system a la Asheron's Call or (non-mmo example) Skyrim would be much more appealing to me.

Build your own character

Maybe not, but MJ says they believe classes are the way to go for this particular game.

Straight-up melee man-at-arms/knight/soldier types that rely purely on might and skill to get the job done. I'm fine with magic-based classes, but there should be might-based ones as well. I dislike it when there's only glitter sparkly spark options even for melee.

I'm also big on pure magic schools based in elements. Such as Aeromancy (lightning, winds), Pyromancy (fire), Hydromancy (water, ice) and Geomancy (earth). Each element could have a class representing it.

As a European I had no issues pledging through Amazon, so I didn't have to wait for the PayPal option. Very, very few people where I live have no credit card.

GOA won't be hosting CU's servers in Europe since GOA doesn't exist anymore.

He means many MMOs today railroad the player down a fairly linear path, while older MMOs were more nonlinear in their constructs.

A typical level in Doom typically allows some freedom in terms of which order you visit the various areas. The video shows a new version of that game where it's been changed to railroad the player down a linear path. It's a classic game with much of the features old school gamers hate about new games. Railroading, cutscenes and handholding designed to stop the player from thinking on his own with a dash of DLC greed.

So it's a parallel to the MMO scene. Exploration before and railroading (and handholding) now. The video is directly targeted at Call of Duty of course, but some aspects compare well to the MMO scene. If you've never played the original Doom it will of course be difficult to see the connection.

Sometimes things really were better back then.

I actually think travel time and downtime is a good thing as long as it's in moderation. It provides some contrast to the combat gameplay. You can't have highs without lows. It's used very expertly in many games and other media such as books and movies. Take the Lord of the Rings movies for example. There's a lot of calm moments where they're traveling or talking in-between the action scenes, and none of the action scenes are allowed to go on for too long.

I think MMOs tend to forget about this and that many players are in fact looking for more of a virtual world aspect from the genre than lobby-based multiplayer. I think this is one of the major reasons pretty much all MMOs coming out lose most of their playerbase so quickly.

I think there is room for some kinds of fast travel, but I dislike the inexplicable teleportation from LFG systems. I think teleportation and summoning spells are cooler because they're part of the world simulation rather than an arbitrary UI.