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Quarterly Producer Letter for Q2 2024 ×

Where's the innovation?


GOCOLTS

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I'm pretty sure that people didn't say wow would fail within its first 2 months. The reason was, that **** was new and different. Most people were on the forums talking about how they can't get into the game, and the 5,000 queues, and the 5,000 ping... I never saw a "this game is fail, and it's exactly like (insert game name here)." which is what you get from every MMO since.

 

WoW was not "different" when it came out. It was a LOT like Everquest. Check your history brah.

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I was with you until this point. Innovation or not, games need to evolve. Even if that means revisiting older ideas and tweaking them. What BioWare did was take many standard ideas and actually backtrack. I'm not going to get into everything they did since it's been said thousands of times already, but they really took a few steps back with this game.

 

I don't see where they've gone backward. Are they missing some features? Sure. But suspect those are coming. But that's different than deliberately designing an antiquated system.

 

Going backward would be something like bringing back Corpse Runs from EQ (horrible idea), or making you master 6 classes in order to unlock your Jedi class, haha.

 

I know you don't want to go into details. But name one thing where they've gone backward?

 

Now don't get me wrong. I think games need to innovate. But a AAA title isn't that arena. AAA titles will take the most successful innovations that other have and incorporate them. That's what Apple does, that's what many major Corporations do.

 

The developer that innovated with Minecraft made waves, and people have taken notice. It will be ported to console now, given a bigger budget, and likely include a lot of popular mods from the community.

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WoW was not "different" when it came out. It was a LOT like Everquest. Check your history brah.

 

 

Well to give GOCOLTS credit where credit is due, the ease of access to questing in WoW was quite a stellar jump forward. Everquest was hardly 'ever' guesting, lol. Finding quests was a chore and not a little bit of luck. Most people relied on spoiler sites to get any questing done. And then you couldn't really level purely by questing. It was a near endless grind of killing mob after mob after mob.

 

WoW changed all of that.

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I don't see where they've gone backward. Are they missing some features? Sure. But suspect those are coming. But that's different than deliberately designing an antiquated system.

 

Going backward would be something like bringing back Corpse Runs from EQ (horrible idea), or making you master 6 classes in order to unlock your Jedi class, haha.

 

I know you don't want to go into details. But name one thing where they've gone backward?

 

Now don't get me wrong. I think games need to innovate. But a AAA title isn't that arena. AAA titles will take the most successful innovations that other have and incorporate them. That's what Apple does, that's what many major Corporations do.

 

The developer that innovated with Minecraft made waves, and people have taken notice. It will be ported to console now, given a bigger budget, and likely include a lot of popular mods from the community.

 

I would consider the talent trees the way they currently are to be a step backward. It's a flawed system that future games are either improving on or removing completely. Even Blizzard is getting away from it in their future expansion. It's just little stuff like this that I was referring to.

 

Personally, I'd like to see more games getting away from the "trinity" system (tank, healer, dps), much like GW2. Whether it actually works or not remains to be seen, though it is exciting nonetheless.

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I would consider the talent trees the way they currently are to be a step backward. It's a flawed system that future games are either improving on or removing completely. Even Blizzard is getting away from it in their future expansion. It's just little stuff like this that I was referring to.

 

Personally, I'd like to see more games getting away from the "trinity" system (tank, healer, dps), much like GW2. Whether it actually works or not remains to be seen, though it is exciting nonetheless.

 

well, in the interest of keeping more on topic, I won't belabor the point. We'll have to agree to disagree on the talent trees (didn't mind them in Rift, nor other games I've played).

 

I agree that I'd love to see less reliance on the Trinity. But this pervasive mechanic (heck, even EVE has this, and there you fly ships, lol) is a bedrock mechanic of the MMO genre--rpgs any way. You have games like Second Life, or WWII Online (possibly Planetside?) that have done away with the Trinity. But there also not RPGs per se. MMOs? Yes.

 

To that end, I hope GW2 does succeed. When I heard that there might not be Raiding gameplay in GW2, I began to take notice of that game.

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There are plenty of innovative features in TOR.

 

There are no other MMOs in which pets have strong personalities with dialogue, stories, and offer quests. That's a new addition to the MMO market. By definition, that's innovative.

 

No other MMO has 100% voice-overs for quest givers, for side quests and class quests, focusing on a cinematic experience.

 

No other MMO allows you to send your pet off on missions and to craft while you continue to quest.

 

No other MMO allows you to converse in group dialogue from anywhere across the world, via a holoprojector, as well as compete with other players on how to respond to the npc, even winning rolls that determine the direction of the story from that quest.

 

Now, there are 4 things that are - by definition - innovative. Now, look at the general tone of most replies in regards to any of these innovations and I think you'll see why the MMO market avoids innovation for the most part.

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How many people waited for years for this game to come out, just so we can read the posts about all of the negative things about this game two months after it is released. I have played many MMO's when they were first released, and guess what; They ere not flawless at release!! And there was the group of " They didn't have this, so I quit!!" winers on their forums, and the "experts" who pick apart every aspect of the game, and compare it to others they played. Guess what folks, Bioware is a successful, innovative company and will continue to improve upon their product. And I will predict you will never see a ewok with wings in this game! If this game does not appeal to you, there are many other MMO's out there, please play those, and save room on the forums for fans of the game we are paying for!
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If this game does not appeal to you, there are many other MMO's out there, please play those, and save room on the forums for fans of the game we are paying for!

 

These forums would be a ghost town then.

 

There are certainly more unhappy people than happy people playing this game in its current state and the happy ones wouldnt be here saying how awesome the game is. They would be too busy playing it!!

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These forums would be a ghost town then.

 

There are certainly more unhappy people than happy people playing this game in its current state and the happy ones wouldnt be here saying how awesome the game is. They would be too busy playing it!!

 

Any proof of this at all? Or can we acknowledge it for what it is. Subjective hyperbole based on very little. Given that they had 1.7 million subs that would mean the forums have what? 1 million unhappy people posting? 800,000? You tell me. More people are unhappy and yet the forums don't get anywhere near that much traffic.

Edited by TonyIommi
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These forums would be a ghost town then.

 

There are certainly more unhappy people than happy people playing this game in its current state and the happy ones wouldnt be here saying how awesome the game is. They would be too busy playing it!!

 

That's a rhetorical fallacy. On top of that, you have no evidence that there are truly more unhappy players than happy. A hundred thousand unhappy players can create quite a ***** storm on forums, while 800k happy players rarely or never visit the forums.

Edited by Cerion
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The reason no one takes that chance and makes something new is because of investors, if you want folks to back you with their money you have to show them a proven way to make their investment pay off, as in the WoW clone.

 

The only way you will ever get a top developer like Bioware to develop an MMO with inovation is if they go back to before they were owned by EA, then they might have had the intestinal fortitude to advance the MMO and make the gameplay a lot more inovative then what we see now.

 

Bioware did add story to the MMO and that is an advancement, beyond that I don't see this game getting very inovative.

Edited by Rahl_Windsong
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