The Stagnation of MMO industry/genre and why

[twinionx]

Well I have bit of professional insight in this problem so I would like to share my thoughts on the matter.

 

Level up!

Well the problem is, in many ways, simple. Everything you do is driven by motivation. Levels are the easiest way of distinguishing between players. It is a way of rewarding accomplishments. You did this much, your power grows and you can do cool new stuff. This system has a goal and a reward.

 

There are other systems of course! Skill-based and even more imaginative. Most of this field already is explored by indie pen and paper RPG's which even have much less burden of technology upon itself. Problem is that reward is less rewarding. Somehow... getting /one handed increased to 75!/ is not as much fun as Ding! I'm lvl 30!. The main goals of level system are recognition of someone's "work" and distinction between the players and their power. Level system also gives you one thing - practice. You can give lvl.1 Jedi knight 4 abilities and he will be entirely happy because he knows it will change as he will progresses throughout the game. He will learn how to use them effectively and when you add two more it wont be a problem. He just learn them up. Give player 30 abilities and talent tree from the beginning and he will be frustrated by the sheer amount of things he must to know. Give him 4 and he will be disappointed by that amount. Even EVE is not entirely a sandbox - you have to learn your skills to drive bigger ships and use their equipment etc.

 

Be Classy!

Why divide players into classes and factions? It divides community. Yes.. but it also give you a colour. In RPG generally if you don't divide classes and their abilities you get, sooner or later, a grey mishmash. It happened to me even with LARP. We took classes from the system and people just learned a bit from everything making game somehow less fun. It's great on paper and in mind... but in reality?

Just imagine how you have a fierce discussion about whether you have bigger impact in a PVP with an AOE Inquisitor or single target nuke - Sniper. And now take both classes out. Leave their skills to be learned the way mastery points are spent. How will it look like? "My character is cooler than yours because I learned this AOE heal" ... no, it just don't do the trick.

And this whole imaginary discussion is just a symptom of one thing - passion. Passion for character, for its style and uniqueness from graphics to playstyle and lore. Without passion, there is no bond. Without bond, there is only the indifference. Through indifference you shall reach freedom... and go play something else.

 

Come for a heal big boy!

Character role differentiation. Well that is a bloody difficult question. "All DMG" means that any "epic encounter" is a problem in one way - you can't have "glass cannon" style champions who deals immense amount of dmg but die under slightest pressure, you also have no or minimal sustain. All that combined means - fight can't be challenging and pushing you to the limits or it became waiting for who will be the last one standing. An "army" with a miniboss could do the trick... but that would not be much distinctive, standing out of regular, and certainly not epic.

Yes I believe there could be diversification - and I think War had it right. With its close combat healer who had to be in the middle of the fight to be able to heal, tank-buffer who's positioning was making the whole group much stronger. Nuker who could raise his dmg output but if he pushed it too far he could kill himself. So yes, there are some tweaks to the system. Also - when we reach for EVE... there are classes as well. Someone is a "master of wealth" digging up minerals and building gigantic ships. Someone else is charging the battle... there are roles just stretched over the game. Guy building ships is a healer... he gives the fighter prolonged ability to fight his war when his space ship is destroyed or needs repairs.

 

Yes.. you can have this in SWTOR too.. but that will take time before space battles are multi-player.. not to mention PVP. Before guilds will have really access to capital ships as was rumoured.

 

Gear Up!

Yes, tiers of gear enabling you to do something is kind of unfortunate. It is a way of progressing the characters when the levels are reached to maximum. I respect that and I don't have problem with that part. You know... getting these epic sets is cool. BUT, and that is a big but, you should not stop there. What about social status, economic? I am a rich smuggler, decorated war hero or even a Sith lord. Why can't you built yourself a mansion. Buy a mine where lower lvl smuglers could make some profit running goods to my army friend who might build our guild a capital ship. Why can't master Jedi or old Major teach kids new tricks if they came along and ask?

 

They are telling us story, creating relationships with our companions, making legacy over the characters... but it feels cut off. There is one thing that Never Winter Nights online have perfectly done. On most servers, or worlds more likely as each one was unique with story and geographics and stuff, you could have get that far that you bought a house, fill it with furniture and stuff, you could get into a city council... in other words - possessions beyond tools of profession, pets and vehicles. Social status too! And (most important) player made content. I remember a city build by players, brick by brick. DM told them in the long quest that this placed is rich of minerals... and they started to build mines, creating houses for workers, bakery for food, etc... It took two years but after that... it was one of the most epic things they ever lived. Well maybe Bioware could let us be a little of Lando Calrissian as well. Putting our blasters aside for later needs and becoming a "respected businessman".

 

I believe this is a way to go with a game. Adding new bosses, operations, items and a moving level cap higher is not adding new content, new depth to the game. It's just copying what is already inside. Shallow and cheap.

And many things are easy to do. Like item customization - not changing colours but to have crafter able to design his own new stuff. If Never winter could do it, why not TOR?

 

Firstly, thank you for your insight. However, I have to rebut some of your points. And I will use SWTOR as example.

 

Leveling. Look at speeders. I can get a regular tier 3 speeder the moment I hit level 50. Why do I still want to get those spiffy looking HUGE looking ones? After all, their function is the same as the basic tier 3 speeder, they all move at the speed of 110%. The very example of speeder itself is a non-powered reward. Imagine level 1 and level 50 has roughly the same power level. But the level 50 player can ride, say a 300% FLYING speeder while a level 1 can only run with his two legs.

 

I am not talking about class. I am talking about roles. Whether having class or classless design to me is immaterial, although I am leaning heavily towards having class for the same reasons you mentioned : differentiation. However, why must a class be tied to a role? SWTOR has shown us that a heavy armor wearing bounty hunter can potentially be tank, dps or healer. By that logic, any class should be able to be any role.

 

And again, there is no NEED for trinity if the dungeon being designed does not cater to this. Not possible? Look at normal mode Esseles or Black Talon. 1000% more fun than say Hammer Station/Athiss/Mando/Cade which NEED the trinity. BT/Ess NM wasn't designed with trinity in mind and they were a BLAST. In fact, I was almost WOWed the first time I run Esseles. So why can't we have more of such flashpoints were any 4 players can jusy hook up and have a blast?

 

Gear, again, back to the orange gear. To me, looks is everything. As long as you LOOK epic, I think players will want a particular gear. Of course looks is subjective so some players would want to have this look and that. SWTOR answered with orange (and latest adaptive gears).

 

The rest, I agree with you but those are what I call core game designs that should have been there in the first place. These things like story, good gameplay etc... are not unique to MMO and frankly, to me, should be a given and not need to be mentioned.

[twinionx]

Technically money is the issue. You have to approve and satisfy investors (or even a CEO) of taking a risk change. Steve Jobb, Richard Garriot and George Lucas were able to take these risk because they dominated company shares or owned the company itself.

 

Yes.

 

(Richard or George, are you reading this?)

[twinionx]

First off, no MMO will ever be as popular for WoW. .

 

I'm sorry to say I disagree with this statement.

 

I strongly believe an MMOG will surpass WoW in terms of profits and player base. Which year is what I do not know.

 

I humbly think that if they can consider what I said + good gameplay + good story/world building, many player will flock to it.

[-psychonaut-]

I just want to know how did SWTOR copy WoW?

 

SWTOR has: space combat, companions that gather and tradeskill for you, social ranks along with social gear, voice acting on every NPC, comms you can use to buy stuff, bonus quests, gear you can get for being either light or dark side, a legacy system, class storylines, advanced classes and the list goes on.

 

The only things I can think of are the group finder and the warzones. Everything else was either done before WoW or a SWTOR orginial.

[twinionx]

I just want to know how did SWTOR copy WoW?

 

SWTOR has: space combat, companions that gather and tradeskill for you, social ranks along with social gear, voice acting on every NPC, comms you can use to buy stuff, bonus quests, gear you can get for being either light or dark side, a legacy system, class storylines, advanced classes and the list goes on.

 

The only things I can think of are the group finder and the warzones. Everything else was either done before WoW or a SWTOR orginial.

 

If you think this thread is about SWTOR copying WOW, I'm afraid you have misread. I said very clearly, sharding is from UO, trinity is from EQ (I think, may be earlier), factions is from WOW and leveling is from PnP/SRPG.

 

And by "from", I don't necessarily mean they are the first to do it but they sure solidify the concept.

[twinionx]

I too thought single shard is not possible. Then I read this today.

 

http://thesecretworld.com/news/blog_single_server_technology_in_the_secret_world

 

Kudos to the secret world.

 

However, casting a critical eye, it is essentially a highly efficient (assumption) cross-server technology. As long as it bakes the cookies, who cares?

 

So if we cannot have single shard world, a cross-server to all the shards with phasing technology is the next best thing.

[Puppypickles]

The Stagnation of MMO industry/genre and why

......

TLDR version

 

1. Get rid of sharding, have one single world

2. Get rid of trinity, everyone is DPS OR invent new fun roles

3. Get rid of static factionalism. Everyone is same faction with the ability to form their own rival groups or have dynamic factions.

4. Get rid of levels and grinds. Introduce fun in the journey and forget about the destination. Introduce vanity, quality-of-life and title rewards for the achievement oriented players.

5. Do all the above and the MMOG industry becomes less stagnant, more vibrant

6. Profit. [<--- investors, please see this, if you see nothing else]

 

What you've just described above is already catered for in Eve which is a fantastic game. Apologies if this has been mentioned before - only read the first post.

[davidpop]

To me MMOs dosent feel like MMOs anymore, i want to "live" in the world in a MMO, but mmo is getting away from open world play and pretty much all of them is taking the road of having the players stand in a "lobby" waiting to be teleported to a dungeon/battleground.

 

I dont know why mmo devs even borther with making anything but the lobby and the dungeons, the big worlds they make are only used for people to rush lvl through, and once you are maxed lvl you dont need to go out into the world again, so all that work just sits there unused.

 

You might as well play a console co-op game or games like LoL, MMOs are prety much the same as those games now.

[Liokae]

What you've just described above is already catered for in Eve which is a fantastic game. Apologies if this has been mentioned before - only read the first post.

 

EVE is the grindfest in it's purest, distilled form.

 

To the point where it will automate your grinding for you.

[Andryah]

TLDR version

 

1. Get rid of sharding, have one single world

2. Get rid of trinity, everyone is DPS OR invent new fun roles

3. Get rid of static factionalism. Everyone is same faction with the ability to form their own rival groups or have dynamic factions.

4. Get rid of levels and grinds. Introduce fun in the journey and forget about the destination. Introduce vanity, quality-of-life and title rewards for the achievement oriented players.

5. Do all the above and the MMOG industry becomes less stagnant, more vibrant

6. Profit. [<--- investors, please see this, if you see nothing else]

 

Actually, Funcom just did all of the above (except for #3) with the launch of TSW. Seriously, they went outside the box and met almost all of your criteria, though bad players can still misuse their implementation model and distort intended play design. It won't garner mass quantities of MMO players spoon fed on a decade of WoW and WoW clones, but it will very much give the more mindful MMO players an actual new type of play experience. It's a much more mature approach to an MMO design, and as such will attract the more mature MMO player and will actually repel the ADD MMO population raised on the WoW farm over the last decade.

 

Point being, there are alternatives entering the market for you. And in reality, the long version of your general analysis is more an embodiment of distorted behaviors within the player base (largely bred into the playerbase by WoW) then what MMO developers are doing. MMO companies generally must give the masses what the masses think they want (which generally is not what they actually want, just what their numb mindedness thinks it wants).

[CosmicKat]

TLDR version

 

1. Get rid of sharding, have one single world

2. Get rid of trinity, everyone is DPS OR invent new fun roles

3. Get rid of static factionalism. Everyone is same faction with the ability to form their own rival groups or have dynamic factions.

4. Get rid of levels and grinds. Introduce fun in the journey and forget about the destination. Introduce vanity, quality-of-life and title rewards for the achievement oriented players.

5. Do all the above and the MMOG industry becomes less stagnant, more vibrant

6. Profit. [<--- investors, please see this, if you see nothing else]

 

1) Sharding is impossible to avoid. It's not possible to design a gameworld that can function equally well with 100 or 1 million people. Instancing is the current solution to that but it is a community killer. An MMO without a community is doomed.

 

2) The variety of classes nowadays is basically what you are asking for. All classes in all new games are essentially DPS or tank capable. This is because people insist that every class must always be able to solo. The holy trinity is an RPG staple dating back to before computers. It is all about "forcing" players via game mechanic to cooperate. You lose the trinity (or some other form of it) and you lose variety, uniqueness, tactical options (for players and AI), flavor, and essentially turn everyone into a clone of everyone else. This is a major problem for MMO's today, making classes more generic would make it worse.

 

3) Back to the future. EQ essentially had this. While you belonged to a faction, it was possible to 'switch' by your actions (ie. killing what made the opposite faction happy).

 

4) Levelling, exploring, and adventuring IS the game! This has been the core mechanic of RPG's since before computers existed. Endgame was always the end of the game, hence the name. Remove character progression and we may as well just make it First Person Shooter:The MMO.

 

5) Unlikely. MMO's are being reborn as instant-gratification console games, whether we like it or not. It's all focus-group driven nonsense. They think if we like MMO and we like FPS, we would love an MMO that plays like a FPS. I like steak and I like ice cream. I don't want ice cream on my steak.

 

6) Longterm profit and sustainability are the true keys to success. Unfortunately the captilalist system only looks at growth and immediate return on investment. They don't care about the longterm. If something isn't an immediate success it is considered a failure and money will stop flowing to it.

[Arnan]

1) Sharding is impossible to avoid. It's not possible to design a gameworld that can function equally well with 100 or 1 million people. Instancing is the current solution to that but it is a community killer. An MMO without a community is doomed.

 

2) The variety of classes nowadays is basically what you are asking for. All classes in all new games are essentially DPS or tank capable. This is because people insist that every class must always be able to solo. The holy trinity is an RPG staple dating back to before computers. It is all about "forcing" players via game mechanic to cooperate. You lose the trinity (or some other form of it) and you lose variety, uniqueness, tactical options (for players and AI), flavor, and essentially turn everyone into a clone of everyone else. This is a major problem for MMO's today, making classes more generic would make it worse.

 

1. Look are Secret Worlds one server technology. I play am on one server, but I still can play with US friends any time on any playfield. Doesent matter if my server is empty. I can just load into a zone from the other servers and it works without lag.

 

2. I totally disagree. Its the trinity system that destroys all the variety, uniqueness and tactics from every fight. Simply because with trinity there will be only one way to defeat the boss. Tank on boss, healer heals and dps kill the boss. No room for experiment! Without trinity you can self choose what ways are best to defeat the boss. Best example I can give:

Have you played Mass Effect 3 multiplayer? That is the best example I can give with having a perfect class based system without holy trinity. In that game you use halo like regain system and everyone is responsible for their health. Now there are different DPS classes with different abilities. I usually play sniper class. As a sniper I can stay at range and easily kill off the flamethrower guys. As someone who uses shotgun and have to get close range, he has very had time killing the flamethrower guy. So when we are doing a map, each class is better for their own types of enemies. But you can surely go with full group of shotgunners if you know how to play.

Now in Mass Effect 3 different classes co exists with each other. One class has mass AoE that freezes enemies. Another class has a grenade with mass AoE. So when one guy freezes all enemies around me, I throw a grenade and suddenly all enemies just explodes.

Also as a sniper, I have really hard time killing a ninja that attacks me always at close range. There is a class that has very good CCs. Once he uses his CC ability at the ninja, I can finally fire off my sniper.

Then as I have stealth, my role in the game is to stealth around the battlefield and revive people as they die since mobs cant see me. But even though I am a sniper class, I can experiment with other weapons. Since I can stealth, one other way to play is to spec full mitigation and use shotgun. With stealth I can pop anywhere I like and blast mobs out with shotgun.

 

This system works! It gives far more variety to the fights. But why it hasnt been implemented in MMO, I dont know?

[DiabloDoom]

I stopped reading at grand daddy of MMOs.

 

If you dont know who the grand daddy is, how can you form a accurate opinion!

 

But Ill save people the reading (even if it doesnt say this)

 

The genre is stagnated because it got to dumbed down

 

People that leave WOW are not looking to play WOW again, and those that didnt leave WOW are not your customers!

 

So stop copying all the dumbing down and add challenge and duration back into the games. Simple as that!

 

Anyone tells you other stuff and they simply dont have a foot to stand on.

 

And again, if you want grand daddy of MMOs, look back to 1991.

UO was # 7 or #8 if you want to be totally honest about the discussion.

I think he meant MMORPG because it was the creator of UO that coined the abbreviated phrase MMORPG of which MMO is a common general derivative of.

[WoodChipper]

The main thing i agree with the OP on is the tv series type storyline.

[Alphasgimaone]

Why not put each planet on it's own shard?

 

Everything is completely segregated anyway, and judging by the transfers, their technology for shard-jumping is almost instantaneous--at least well within the time it takes for the planets to load. Then just have many instances on each planet instead of one or two.

 

I would even take it one step further to get everyone on the same super-shard: allocate 1+n instances for both pve, and pvp.

 

What I mean is, instead of "choosing" a pvp server, you check a box when you first make a character (a permanent choice) to select PvP. By doing so, you are automatically put into the first available pvp instance each time you load a planetary shard.

 

If you're a PvEer who flags himself, you are just placed in the first available PvP instance. When you un-flag, you're put back into the first available PvE instance. This would eliminate accidental flaging and (forced) AoE griefs.

 

I don't think there's a need for separate RP instances. RPers have a knack for finding each other. And I think people tend to ignore them (live and let live) and just leave them alone. Certainly there are some obnoxious trolls who try to antagonize RPers, but I've seen those on RP servers anyway.

[Synxos]

I too thought single shard is not possible. Then I read this today.

 

http://thesecretworld.com/news/blog_single_server_technology_in_the_secret_world

 

Kudos to the secret world.

 

However, casting a critical eye, it is essentially a highly efficient (assumption) cross-server technology. As long as it bakes the cookies, who cares?

 

So if we cannot have single shard world, a cross-server to all the shards with phasing technology is the next best thing.

It's multiple servers with free character transfers....

 

Plus TSW has a cash shop on top of subscriptions....pretty shady if you ask me. At least wait til you go f2p to do that. now I probably won't even try it when it goes f2p, on principle.

[Valkirus]

It's multiple servers with free character transfers....

 

Plus TSW has a cash shop on top of subscriptions....pretty shady if you ask me. At least wait til you go f2p to do that. now I probably won't even try it when it goes f2p, on principle.

 

What type of cash shop? What can you buy besides pets and vanity items?

[Psiwuff]

On the subject of sharding, the entire mechanism is handled wrong by SWTOR and many other games. Most games act like this:

 

Realm

- Server 1

- Server 2

- ...

- Server 50

 

Where servers are seperate systems with their own playerbase and whatnot. How should it be handled instead?

 

Realm

- Instance1

- Instance2

-...

- However many are needed

 

These instances run in parallel, and are created/shut down dynamically based on how many players are in an area. SWTOR already does it on a server level, there are usually multiple active instances of the home fleets active in order to keep lag down. Why people don't do this on a realm scale is beyond me.

I believe Champions Online was good about this, it even allowed duplicate character names, since your characters were unique and your account name was used as unique identifier. SWTOR could've done the same with it's legacy system. Make a unique legacy, and allow duplicate first names within that legacy. That would also keep confusion out.

The major benefit of all this is that the game will never feel empty, as long as the realm itself is populated enough. So a ghost-town disaster like in SWTOR can be avoided, and hardware can be added and removed in the background without anyone noticing, since everyone plays on the same realm from their PoV.

 

 

On the other subjects, I believe Guild Wars 2 is trying hard to break the norm, and form the brief stress-test gaming I did, they do quite well so far. They do away with most of the normal quest progression, and soften up the holy trinity a good bit. They have a ways to go, but I think they do well with laying the groundwork for a new set of games. Now if only someone combined the GW2 quest/class system, SWTOR's story/legacy, EQ2s housing, and WoW's sheer immenseness of things to do and minigames, as well as Rift's invasion system and made a game out of that. Oh well, one can dream

[ZudetGambeous]

So basically the OP wants GW2

 

I hope more games in the future follow the format of GW2, everything i've played of it so far is vastly superior to SWTOR except it's lacking the Star Wars license.

[Andryah]

It's multiple servers with free character transfers....

 

Plus TSW has a cash shop on top of subscriptions....pretty shady if you ask me. At least wait til you go f2p to do that. now I probably won't even try it when it goes f2p, on principle.

 

Actually, it's single server, with multiple dimensions.

 

Dimensions are "psudeo servers" (for the purposes of persistent instancing, by dimension, of specific PvP content). That is a community PvP building decision on their part and I agree with it. Other then dimension instanced PvP content (not all PvP is dimension instanced btw), all other content is accessible to every single character in every dimension on demand. You can group across servers, join Cabals (guilds) across servers, mail, etc. etc. etc. No cross faction allowed for Cabals though.

 

As for it's cash shop..... it's outfits and pets. That said, outfits are a BIG deal in TSW but while the shop offers them, you also can buy many in game with Pax and you get them from achievements as well as other in game rewards. So unless you really have to have those bunny slippers and cowboy hat for your character, you don't ever need to enter the cash shop, except to claim account rewards (that's how they deliver them, rather then by mail) issued to you by Funcom. Absolutely nothing shady about it, and you cannot purchase anything in the shop that adds to your combat effectiveness in any way.

Edited July 12, 2012 by Andryah

[Intarabus]

 

Alas, on top of this, the real meat and potatoes of the gameplay is none the less pure grind. I understand that is a staple of mmo gaming, but thats also whats at the heart of the problem.

 

Why dont we have RTS quests next to fps quests, next to rpg quests, next to puzzle quests? Why is it always go here grind 50 mobs, click 3 blue switches, pop back...?

Theres a pure lack of vision at the heart of MMOs. Theyre too quick to think its the gameplay we enjoy. The gameplay though is the means to the end. Its the playerbase and our standing within it we enjoy i would think, but the hamster wheel actually sucks for the most part. But there are ways to keep the cover from slipping.

 

Best post in this interesting thread. TOR is my first MMO. And since I am a big Star Wars fan, I like the class stories and the atmosphere. But I hate the all-time-grinding, and you cannot avoid it, to move along. And its a pity, that TOR has put some tiny elements in the missions, which show, that they could have avoided it more. There are actually one or two riddles in quests (remember one on Balmorra, where you have to switch power stations, in the right order). The dialogue system should already be able, to achieve different things from NPCs, if you act clever. There are a few missions, where you protect NPCs against mobs. There are some enemies, who you can beat, when you observe their patterns. But, it is too few...

Edited July 12, 2012 by Intarabus

[Vicen]

If I wanted puzzles in an mmo I go play Portal....Keep puzzles out of mmos!

[Blackardin]

I've already given my opinion that it the players and not the industry that are the problem. This entire thread is a fine example. The people posting here are a very small minority that have anointed themselves experts in the video game industry to the point that they are debating the future of such.

 

People don't just log on and play games anymore, they have to dissect them and bloviate on and on ad nauseum about how it should be done. Its as if the inception of facebook and message boards have given people the idea that they know far more then they do, simply because they have a vehicle in which to express themselves.

 

I just thought I'd remind you all that you don't know squat about jack and are just voicing arm chair opinion based on your personal desire or tiny bubble of knowledge....not something that can, in any way, be considered a valid, knowledge based argument. You represent only yourself and may as well be giving your opinion on national politics. ;p

[twinionx]

On the subject of sharding, the entire mechanism is handled wrong by SWTOR and many other games. Most games act like this:

 

Realm

- Server 1

- Server 2

- ...

- Server 50

 

Where servers are seperate systems with their own playerbase and whatnot. How should it be handled instead?

 

Realm

- Instance1

- Instance2

-...

- However many are needed

 

These instances run in parallel, and are created/shut down dynamically based on how many players are in an area. SWTOR already does it on a server level, there are usually multiple active instances of the home fleets active in order to keep lag down. Why people don't do this on a realm scale is beyond me.

I believe Champions Online was good about this, it even allowed duplicate character names, since your characters were unique and your account name was used as unique identifier. SWTOR could've done the same with it's legacy system. Make a unique legacy, and allow duplicate first names within that legacy. That would also keep confusion out.

The major benefit of all this is that the game will never feel empty, as long as the realm itself is populated enough. So a ghost-town disaster like in SWTOR can be avoided, and hardware can be added and removed in the background without anyone noticing, since everyone plays on the same realm from their PoV.

 

 

On the other subjects, I believe Guild Wars 2 is trying hard to break the norm, and form the brief stress-test gaming I did, they do quite well so far. They do away with most of the normal quest progression, and soften up the holy trinity a good bit. They have a ways to go, but I think they do well with laying the groundwork for a new set of games. Now if only someone combined the GW2 quest/class system, SWTOR's story/legacy, EQ2s housing, and WoW's sheer immenseness of things to do and minigames, as well as Rift's invasion system and made a game out of that. Oh well, one can dream

 

I too think SWTOR can do this to achieve the "single shard" concept.

[twinionx]

I've already given my opinion that it the players and not the industry that are the problem. This entire thread is a fine example. The people posting here are a very small minority that have anointed themselves experts in the video game industry to the point that they are debating the future of such.

 

People don't just log on and play games anymore, they have to dissect them and bloviate on and on ad nauseum about how it should be done. Its as if the inception of facebook and message boards have given people the idea that they know far more then they do, simply because they have a vehicle in which to express themselves.

 

I just thought I'd remind you all that you don't know squat about jack and are just voicing arm chair opinion based on your personal desire or tiny bubble of knowledge....not something that can, in any way, be considered a valid, knowledge based argument. You represent only yourself and may as well be giving your opinion on national politics. ;p

 

First thing first, no one said they are authority figures on this. Ultimately, its each and everyone's opinion.

 

Might I remind you that some time in history, someone probably has the "opinion" that we should fly, and after hundreds of years later, the Wright Brothers made that opinion a reality.

 

Secondly, blaming the player base is just a convenient excuse. Any designers who do that is just being mentally lazy.

 

A good designer would think how to attract gamers, as many as possible, because ultimately, the gamers are your paymasters. Blaming your paymasters in an industry that is profit driven is just conducting commercial suicide.