128 replies to this topic

[Illein]

Heart Collector, on 11 December 2012 - 12:43 PM, said:

Ah... That's my pain as well :/

You know... If Bioware had made its open world content more like GW2 but with the inclusion of actual Bioware-style story driven quests (some of which repeatable and maybe with "heroic" versions for max level) to complement DEs and give context to the world, and its space combat more like Faster Than Light than the shallow tunnel shooter (which is actually pretty good for what it is, just not good enough for a space sim fan like me), I'd still be playing it, sub fee and all. All the game served was to make me fully realize that WoW-style MMOs just aren't my thing. What a waste of potential it was... Sigh...

Well, hold off until Star Citizen (though it's all about space combat), or wait for Mass Effect Online

The issue is with the success of Bioware's MMO (or the lack thereof, rather) investors look at it and conclude that the MMO market is simply oversated or not profitable anymore and that World of Warcraft is a freak of nature. Albeit that might be true - it's still a widely popular game genre and if you make the right game, you can earn your company's fattest employees weight in gold each single day.

But yeah, takes investors with far-sight to see that AND then have a product on their hand that can objectively fulfil the criteria of a successful MMORPG these days. Which is quite hard, as we all know better than anyone.

So - while people always wish other franchise games to fail, I'd hope there will be very successful ones in the near future, otherwise the budgets get smaller and smaller and the quality suffers.

Though to be fair, for the dimension of budget SWTOR had - they sure drove the game into a ditch quite expertly. Still no idea how they managed that. Guess a solid 'Voice-over' didn't camouflage over the big ass flaws the game had

[Heart Collector]

Illein, on 11 December 2012 - 01:04 PM, said:

The issue is with the success of Bioware's MMO (or the lack thereof, rather) investors look at it and conclude that the MMO market is simply oversated or not profitable anymore and that World of Warcraft is a freak of nature. Albeit that might be true - it's still a widely popular game genre and if you make the right game, you can earn your company's fattest employees weight in gold each single day.

But yeah, takes investors with far-sight to see that AND then have a product on their hand that can objectively fulfil the criteria of a successful MMORPG these days. Which is quite hard, as we all know better than anyone.

So - while people always wish other franchise games to fail, I'd hope there will be very successful ones in the near future, otherwise the budgets get smaller and smaller and the quality suffers.

Though to be fair, for the dimension of budget SWTOR had - they sure drove the game into a ditch quite expertly. Still no idea how they managed that. Guess a solid 'Voice-over' didn't camouflage over the big ass flaws the game had

That's the problem - people hear "MMO industry" and think "WoW"... When WoW was - or rather should have been - merely a certain variant of a broad genre, just like the case with RPGs is. I mean there are so many different types of RPGs. We have turn based JRPGs, traditional squad based Baldur's Gate style games, weird niche games like Gothic, hybrids like Mass Effect, slashers like Diablo... Hell one could even consider Freelancer and Faster Than Light to be RPGs, though that would be straining the term a lot, lol.

I think that the game industry needs to realize that RPGs are a actually a niche market, despite WoW's huge success. Stop trying to appeal to everyone and make a game with substance, exploration, meaningful character customization, as good a lore as your budget allows... After all that's what we as RPG fans crave. We want games where we play characters that grow and develop and carve their own way in a fully fledged world, alone or alongside others. It's all about the journey!

[Fable322]

Illein, on 09 December 2012 - 09:51 AM, said:

A Shadowrun MMO! Man, that's the stuff *drools* Either that or a "Deadlands" MMO - Steampunkwestern with gatling guns and all that juicy meat! Too bad it wouldn't attract nearly as many people as it would have to, to be a profitable MMO ;(

Blizzard's Titan will interest you.  Its definately on my radar down the line.  Now if someone ever did a Deadlands MMO - I would be all over that too!

[Illein]

Fable322, on 11 December 2012 - 01:22 PM, said:

Blizzard's Titan will interest you.  Its definately on my radar down the line.  Now if someone ever did a Deadlands MMO - I would be all over that too!

Well it does, but knowing absolutely NOTHING about it and given Blizzard's latest two *-ups (DIII and MoP) I am a lot less enthusiastic about it, than I was 2 years ago

Heart Collector, on 11 December 2012 - 01:18 PM, said:

That's the problem - people hear "MMO industry" and think "WoW"... When WoW was - or rather should have been - merely a certain variant of a broad genre, just like the case with RPGs is. I mean there are so many different types of RPGs. We have turn based JRPGs, traditional squad based Baldur's Gate style games, weird niche games like Gothic, hybrids like Mass Effect, slashers like Diablo... Hell one could even consider Freelancer and Faster Than Light to be RPGs, though that would be straining the term a lot, lol.

I think that the game industry needs to realize that RPGs are a actually a niche market, despite WoW's huge success. Stop trying to appeal to everyone and make a game with substance, exploration, meaningful character customization, as good a lore as your budget allows... After all that's what we as RPG fans crave. We want games where we play characters that grow and develop and carve their own way in a fully fledged world, alone or alongside others. It's all about the journey!

And while that all holds great merit - Investors think money, inevitably. And appealing to the largest possible audience just means $_$

So it might be fair to say, niche games may be the prerogative of kickstarter projects in the future - which sucks, needless to say - but what can you do, really.

[Heart Collector]

Illein, on 11 December 2012 - 02:06 PM, said:

And while that all holds great merit - Investors think money, inevitably. And appealing to the largest possible audience just means $_$

So it might be fair to say, niche games may be the prerogative of kickstarter projects in the future - which sucks, needless to say - but what can you do, really.

Better that way. Cut out the middleman, the frakking publishers who should have little to no say in the games development by rights, and get great games straight from the developers with as few moneybags as possible limiting them. And yeah I do feel that the big budgets actually limit developer creativity. Here's hoping Star Citizen will bring about a revolution of sorts in the way games are developed - as it is the no1 crowdfunded game in development.

Maybe what I'm saying is utopian - but crowdfunding is still quite early in its development. I believe that it does have the potential to evolve into a major player in the quality front of the gaming industry. We'll see...

[Treble]

Red_Falcon, on 11 December 2012 - 09:03 AM, said:

FF sounds like another grindfest a la WoW to me.
I loved FF games and completed them multiple times, but FF MMOs always left me hugely disappointed.

FF MMO's aren't like most MMO's in the first place. They follow more closely to traditional RPG's, where combat is a lot slower paced, much more deliberate, and there is a heavy emphasis on party play. That last bit is what made FFXI especially incredible, because the community that players were forced to create was something I haven't ever seen in another MMO. But that also made it extremely niche, since your typical MMO player wouldn't know to socialize and form static groups, and would end up sitting in one spot looking for a party for hours.

Devious, on 11 December 2012 - 09:22 AM, said:

FFXIV: ARR, next year, the alpha's awesome & probably Blade & Soul once it comes out.
Tho- I'll always keep playing GW2, like I played GW1, on and off, with breaks.

I've given up hope for an Alpha invite. Here's hoping for a Beta invite now. But I have heard very good things about Alpha.

Edited by Treble, 11 December 2012 - 02:40 PM.

[Red_Falcon]

Treble, on 11 December 2012 - 02:40 PM, said:

FF MMO's aren't like most MMO's in the first place. They follow more closely to traditional RPG's, where combat is a lot slower paced, much more deliberate, and there is a heavy emphasis on party play. That last bit is what made FFXI especially incredible, because the community that players were forced to create was something I haven't ever seen in another MMO. But that also made it extremely niche, since your typical MMO player wouldn't know to socialize and form static groups, and would end up sitting in one spot looking for a party for hours.

I never really liked the "forced to team everywhere" thing - pugging leads to peopel blaming each other for mistakes, fights, etc.
Plus it removes the ability to play at your own pace: you have to follow the party, you cannot stop to do what you want - and most of the times what people wants is grinding and rushing and hurrying and running.

I much prefer the GW2 approach to combat; the reason the community is less tight here is because even though the combat system is great, there is no incentive to play with others for anything beside instances.
If GW2 endgame was more party-based (say the endgame zones were not soloable) then we would see the same community spirit.

I say both solo and party content are equally important and valuable, neglecting either leads to bad results.

[Stargate]

Illein, on 09 December 2012 - 09:51 AM, said:

I wish someone would take the absolute genius Funcom's ANARCHY ONLINE was and make another cyberpunk MMO out of it. That game just needs a super polished engine with next-gen graphics and it'd be the gamer world's next best thing

As much as I love medieval fantasy - I realllllllllllllly could do with some Sci-Fi with a proper engine/graphic that isn't the garbage SWTOR was..

A Shadowrun MMO! Man, that's the stuff *drools* Either that or a "Deadlands" MMO - Steampunkwestern with gatling guns and all that juicy meat! Too bad it wouldn't attract nearly as many people as it would have to, to be a profitable MMO ;(

Fable322, on 11 December 2012 - 01:22 PM, said:

Blizzard's Titan will interest you.  Its definately on my radar down the line.  Now if someone ever did a Deadlands MMO - I would be all over that too!

Illein, on 11 December 2012 - 02:06 PM, said:

Well it does, but knowing absolutely NOTHING about it and given Blizzard's latest two *-ups (DIII and MoP) I am a lot less enthusiastic about it, than I was 2 years ago

Oh yes we know slightly about Titan.

Stargate, on 09 December 2012 - 05:32 AM, said:

I want to play Blizzards next MMO with project code name Titan and I know it is SCIFI, but yeah we are pretty much in the dark about that game. I suspect they will talk about Titan in Blizzcon 2013 and my wild guess for Titan release date is 2015(unknown my guess).

Cyberpunk? Cool idea IF Titan has that!



I must say I prefer slightly this kind of PsyTrance music. After the intro music begins really roughly like after 45 seconds...

Titan is not some medieval knights and Dragons. It is SCIFI 100% sure it has been said many times. Therefore Fable322 WILD guess that it could have even CyberPunk theme is not impossible.

However lets make one thing clear. When they say SCIFI it could be near future like 20 years in future or far 200 years. I do not know how far in future Titan is and neither do I know if it has CyberPunk. However Titan project is pretty high tech and Blizzard said that they focus on PC now, but if(maybe) they will support consoles then it will be next generation Playstation 4 and next XBox whatever it is called.

Edited by Stargate, 11 December 2012 - 10:52 PM.

[Illein]

The issue with Blizzard is - they never did realistic graphics and probably can't. I rather have no proper Sci-Fi MMORPG than one that looks like some crazy cartoon utopia.

It'd have to have that certain dystopian grit to it, that just isn't Blizzard's target audience's taste I fear But well, if I win the lottery (if I ever play) I'll fund it myself

[Shamadamun]

I really don't have high hopes at all for the Elder Scrolls MMO, but if it feels anything like the previous Elder Scrolls games then I'll play it for a long time. It better have readable books or I WILL RAGE SO HARD

[Juanele]

The only reason to look forward to Titan is brand loyalty. We know nothing about the game other than conjecture. Whatever the game will be about it will certainly have stylized graphics. Probably something similar to Firefall or Borderlands if it is a Sci-Fi mmo.

Edited by Juanele, 12 December 2012 - 07:44 AM.

[Illein]

Juanele, on 12 December 2012 - 07:43 AM, said:

The only reason to look forward to Titan is brand loyalty. We know nothing about the game other than conjecture. Whatever the game will be about it will certainly have stylized graphics. Probably something similar to Firefall or Borderlands if it is a Sci-Fi mmo.

Yeah, which is exactly what I dread in that regard And the brand loyalty is crumbling for a while - so the "next big thing" might as well not come as is! ;D

[Stargate]

Illein, on 12 December 2012 - 07:33 AM, said:

The issue with Blizzard is - they never did realistic graphics and probably can't. I rather have no proper Sci-Fi MMORPG than one that looks like some crazy cartoon utopia.

It'd have to have that certain dystopian grit to it, that just isn't Blizzard's target audience's taste I fear But well, if I win the lottery (if I ever play) I'll fund it myself

I am not so sure about that claim. WOW is not realistic graphics, but WOW graphics(not talking about Pandas or cute minipets) has certain cool style that both me and my brother liked. Both me and my brother don't play WOW anymore, but it has nothing to do with WOW graphics.

Example of cool graphics? Icecrown Citadel(ICC Raid):
http://www.wowwiki.c...adel_(instance)
ICC Raid was HUGE! 12 Epic bosses and when you 10th time run as ghost after being slaughtered by the same Epic boss the death penalty felt enough hardcore indeed! In addition your gear took damage though not permanent you could repair gear for low cost of ingame money.

ICC was released at December 2009 and during 2010 WOW reached its top glory of 12 million active players which is still World record!

Anyway Titan is still far in future and they mentioned current Xbox and playstation 3 is simply not good enough. I would assume(best guess) Titan supports Direct X 11 graphics at release. None of us(including me) has seen any screenshots of Titan so speculating about Titan graphics in more detail feels pretty useless. Hopefully they finally show something at Blizzcon 2013 about Titan, but that remains to be seen what information they choose to share.

Edited by Stargate, 13 December 2012 - 12:14 AM.

[Heart Collector]

Stargate, on 12 December 2012 - 11:35 PM, said:

I am not so sure about that claim. WOW is not realistic graphics, but WOW graphics(not talking about Pandas or cute minipets) has certain cool style that both me and my brother liked. Both me and my brother don't play WOW anymore, but it has nothing to do with WOW graphics.

Example of cool graphics? Icecrown Citadel(ICC Raid):
http://www.wowwiki.c...adel_(instance)
ICC Raid was HUGE! 12 Epic bosses and when you 10th time run as ghost after being slaughtered by the same Epic boss the death penalty felt enough hardcore indeed! In addition your gear took damage though not permanent you could repair gear for low cost of ingame money.

ICC was released at December 2009 and during 2010 WOW reached its top glory of 12 million active players which is still World record!

Anyway Titan is still far in future and they mentioned current Xbox and playstation 3 is simply not good enough. I would assume(best guess) Titan supports Direct X 11 graphics at release. None of us(including me) has seen any screenshots of Titan so speculating about Titan graphics in more detail feels pretty useless. Hopefully they finally show something at Blizzcon 2013 about Titan, but that remains to be seen what information they choose to share.

I'm generally quite lax about graphics - heck I still play pixel games out of the 90s - but I personally tend to prefer sci-fi to be more "realistic". The cartoony WoW style just doesn't sit too well with me. However that doesn't mean that more "stylized" (ugh this word is so overused!) approach is necessarily bad for sci fi. Faster Than Light has a delightful old-school feel to it, and TBH I'd pay good money to play a sci fi game with graphics like those in Starcraft 2 - and specifically I mean the Wing Commander-esque "base" between missions! I really LOVED that

[NELiXERY]

I would go to Tera if that was B2P or Planetside 2 if I had the computer/laptop for it. Unfortunately neither is the case so I'll stick with GW2 because it's good enough anyways. I'm levelling a couple of levels a night so I think I'm going at it a pretty good pace.

[asbasb]

I was interested in TSW after it went B2P, but reading through their forums tells me they pretty much went the same way as GW2 with their VP. Star Citizen seemed really awesome until I learned that you can't 100% opt out of PvP, even in the safe zones.

I guess repairing turrets and trucks in PS2 as close I can get to a non-treadmill, PvE-like MMO experience.

[Stargate]

Heart Collector, on 13 December 2012 - 02:28 PM, said:

I'm generally quite lax about graphics - heck I still play pixel games out of the 90s - but I personally tend to prefer sci-fi to be more "realistic". The cartoony WoW style just doesn't sit too well with me. However that doesn't mean that more "stylized" (ugh this word is so overused!) approach is necessarily bad for sci fi. Faster Than Light has a delightful old-school feel to it, and TBH I'd pay good money to play a sci fi game with graphics like those in Starcraft 2 - and specifically I mean the Wing Commander-esque "base" between missions! I really LOVED that

In me it does not sit well that GW2 has HUGE system requirements in Mist PvP and if you reduce graphics to low in GW2 then it will not help so much if CPU is bottleneck. With low graphics GW2 looks much worse then WOW. Of course with best graphics GW2 looks better then WOW. That said I have not been really impressed by graphics in a MMO since Age of Conan MMO which still beats GW2 in graphics.

At the end of the day what really interest us is not the best graphics only though graphics has to be good enough. From the free game Neverwinter there are videos and screenshots. From what I have seen Neverwinter does not look super good, but it is good enough so I can play it. Most free games do not have even near so good graphics that I would even consider playing them.

Anyway Titan will be released far in future(2015 maybe), but the MMO Neverwinter should be released during the year 2013.

I have been very patient with computer upgrading, but likely I'll buy a super Haswell CPU desktop computer in late 2013. There is really not much performance difference between a Sandybridge or IVY generation CPU, but when Haswell comes out we have a crystal clear winner though it will not be some groundbreaking shocking improvement.

Edited by Stargate, 14 December 2012 - 03:58 AM.

[Heart Collector]

Stargate, on 14 December 2012 - 03:44 AM, said:

In me it does not sit well that GW2 has HUGE system requirements in Mist PvP and if you reduce graphics to low in GW2 then it will not help so much if CPU is bottleneck. With low graphics GW2 looks much worse then WOW. Of course with best graphics GW2 looks better then WOW. That said I have not been really impressed by graphics in a MMO since Age of Conan MMO which still beats GW2 in graphics.

At the end of the day what really interest us is not the best graphics only though graphics has to be good enough. From the free game Neverwinter there are videos and screenshots. From what I have seen Neverwinter does not look super good, but it is good enough so I can play it. Most free games do not have even near so good graphics that I would even consider playing them.

Anyway Titan will be released far in future(2015 maybe), but the MMO Neverwinter should be released during the year 2013.

I have been very patient with computer upgrading, but likely I'll buy a super Haswell CPU desktop computer in late 2013. There is really not much performance difference between a Sandybridge or IVY generation CPU, but when Haswell comes out we have a crystal clear winner though it will not be some groundbreaking shocking improvement.

I think I read on the boards that GW2 benefits a great deal from the processor, moreso than many other games.

And yeah as long as the graphics are passable, the animations smooth and most importantly the ambiance and atmosphere is good (that is something WoW still has going strong despite the dated graphics), I'm happy!

[Illein]

Saw the Star Citizen campaign video on Kickstarter a while back and oh man - while it looks neatly, the way the characters moves is a big turn off - looks so very unnatural, bit like he shat his space suit

What's so hard about proper animation, I mean - I see people who are doing it for a HOBBY doing a quite decent job at motion capturing with budgets of what...10.000 €? I am quite sure they (Game Industry in particular) have a little more money to invest.

Beats me.


PS.: I am usually not graphic-obsessed, but I think for a sci-fi/dystopia MMORPG it's crucial to invest in these things, because the LOOK is a major draw for a lot of people when it comes to these things. It doesn't need to look like an Unreal 10 Engine demo or something. Take Deus Ex: Human Revolution i.e. it's not the best graphic out there, but it's got massive atmosphere and an art-direction that simply makes it work. Now polish up the polygon faces on the PC/NPC models and you've got something AAA in your hand.

Edited by Illein, 14 December 2012 - 07:43 AM.

[GoLolaGo]

I think Rift looks interesting

[Gecko]

I will play something called Guild Wars 2. It looks amazing and the developers seems to reinvent how an MMO is made. The only bad thing is that some of the players tend to be rather aggresive, negative and vocal on different forums, but I can cope with that.

[Heart Collector]

Illein, on 14 December 2012 - 07:39 AM, said:

Saw the Star Citizen campaign video on Kickstarter a while back and oh man - while it looks neatly, the way the characters moves is a big turn off - looks so very unnatural, bit like he shat his space suit

What's so hard about proper animation, I mean - I see people who are doing it for a HOBBY doing a quite decent job at motion capturing with budgets of what...10.000 €? I am quite sure they (Game Industry in particular) have a little more money to invest.

Beats me.

It's not even in alpha yet, hell it'll be at least a year until then (the game will release November 2014 earliest). Chris Roberts was just showing off the assets of the game in making. All he wanted I think was a serviceable animation to show that in this game, unlike others, you can actually walk around freely in the carrier. Animation smoothing and tweaking will be done much later, it's still really early.

Edited by Heart Collector, 14 December 2012 - 02:59 PM.

[Illein]

Heart Collector, on 14 December 2012 - 02:58 PM, said:

It's not even in alpha yet, hell it'll be at least a year until then (the game will release November 2014 earliest). Chris Roberts was just showing off the assets of the game in making. All he wanted I think was a serviceable animation to show that in this game, unlike others, you can actually walk around freely in the carrier. Animation smoothing and tweaking will be done much later, it's still really early.

Here's to hope

[Heart Collector]

Illein, on 14 December 2012 - 03:00 PM, said:

Here's to hope

I'm certain it will improve Though I don't think it will be as good and smooth as in other (character driven) games simply because it's a space sim first and foremost and this is not as critical a feature - but I don't think they will leave it at its current state. And they have a lot of time to polish stuff up and (I hope!) complete control over the project without an EA, Activision or Microsoft breathing down their necks.

[Illein]

Heart Collector, on 14 December 2012 - 03:06 PM, said:

I'm certain it will improve Though I don't think it will be as good and smooth as in other (character driven) games simply because it's a space sim first and foremost and this is not as critical a feature - but I don't think they will leave it at its current state. And they have a lot of time to polish stuff up and (I hope!) complete control over the project without an EA, Activision or Microsoft breathing down their necks.

I wondered - they cumulated a grand total of 2.000.000 $ as far as I saw - which is AMAZING for crowd funding, don't get me wrong. But HOW the hell do you create a game with that sum. I mean, if they pull it off - I wonder what EA investors think about it after their I don't know 94 fantastrillion disaster with SWTOR...

[Perm Shadow Form]

GW1 was something original.
GW2 is more WoW like than GW1.

Currently playing MC MMO server, and, hell, even it is more social and fun than soloing 24/7 in GW2.

[Heart Collector]

Illein, on 14 December 2012 - 03:58 PM, said:

I wondered - they cumulated a grand total of 2.000.000 $ as far as I saw - which is AMAZING for crowd funding, don't get me wrong. But HOW the hell do you create a game with that sum. I mean, if they pull it off - I wonder what EA investors think about it after their I don't know 94 fantastrillion disaster with SWTOR...

They've accumulated more than 7 million, with 2 million being their base and 6 million their loftier goal for the 30-45 days the crowdfunding was up (both of which they achieved). That been said, I don't know for sure so take this with a grain of salt but I think that they did have potential investors who were willing to pour money into the project upon seeing an adequate response (which the crowdfunding proved true). They're just not using a publisher/distributor like NCSoft or EA.

[Killyox]

Bloodtau, on 25 November 2012 - 12:16 AM, said:

myself, I think I will lay off the genre for a little while, the whole thing has become a bit stale and cookie cut.

Planetside 2 looks interesting though. That and Elder Scrolls online. Will be watching those.

How about the rest of you?

Why should i move anywhere? I enjoy GW2 and sometimes play other games inbetween. Currently waiting for COH2 beta.

[Ragnadaam]

Maybe, MAYBE if Archeage is good, and isn't just a huge Korean grind with pretty graphics, I'll try that out. Also, if somehow by a miracle, SoE doesn't make "Everquest Next" a complete pile, I might check that out. Otherwise, GW2 is it for me, as the genre has become so stagnant and played out.

[cyclopsje]

i stay wit GW2 however will play TSW once in a while now since its without sub now