(05-09-2014, 11:07 AM)Naunet Wrote: It depends on the lore of the sword-and-sorcery fantasy. Just because something fits into the fantasy genre doesn't mean it has to reuse the same tropes over and over again. Marrying someone who makes his living (meager as it is) writing science fiction and fantasy has confirmed that to me.
But a Mega Man MMORPG? How is that original? It would just take existing characters and story and stick them in an MMORPG.
Well, a few things we'd have to consider. Â First being setting, that the universe that the Mega Man games takes place in is not only in the less-heavily used sci-fi genre for MMORPGs, but isn't really in the morally ambiguous setting that all sci-fi games are set in. Â There are definitely evil scientists, people living peaceful and joyous lives in the future, and decent individuals trying to help them out. Â That doesn't exist that I've seen in any current MMORPGs, so it would be nice to have at least one game that doesn't think the future is going to be a sloppy grey mess. Â It's like people tripped over Neuromancer and never got up again.
Second, as opposed to pretty much every other game I've ever played, Mega Man's growth is almost entirely lateral. Â In the RPG, you actually get little bits that change the way your buster operates, but most often you're fine tuning the beam into something that feels comfortable, as opposed to always upgrading it. Â Even in the original games, the entire nature of progression is that you can go through the levels in any order and none of the weapons are "keys" to unlock progression. Â I remember that being weird as a kid, since you get so used to doing levels in order.
If you've ever played the series, it features all kinds of things you'd probably never see in a game meant for our aging male demographic and the sorts of things more "mature" studio games turn their noses up at. Â Things like dogs turning into springboards, futuristic cities that aren't vile corporate cesspits, and Gemini Man (seriously, Gemini man!)
The games industry simply doesn't have anything like this now. Â Hell, Capcom can't even seem to get it's feet out from behind its ears to make use of their IPs. Â My brother in law has a theory that Capcom execs hate Mega Man because it's too far out of line with their Street Fighter, Resident Evil, and Monster Hunter series. Â I kind of disagreed, but after seeing what they did to the Mega Man Legends franchise lately, it doesn't seem that far out of the ballpark.
I mean, you can say it's unoriginal, but it's radically different than any MMORPGs we have out there (I'd say the closest thing to it would be Sega's Phantasy Star series, if you'd call any of those MMORPGs). Â That's why I picked everything on the list that I picked; they're existing IPs that don't have a direct corollary. Â What do we have that's really original in games design? Â They may not have to use the same tropes, but they do. Â Every fantasy MMORPG seems to have a fetish for Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings (if there's one genre that is stuck in a rut more than anything, it's probably the fantasy genre's inability to think outside Tolkein's box) and if I see one more castle siege CGI trailer again I feel like I'm going to put my head through a wall. Â It's almost mind-numbing. Â One of the reasons I felt bored with ESO was it seemed to drain all the fun out of the fantasy genre and one of my major complaints about EVE is that it spends so much time mired in moral ambiguity that I absolutely lose all drive to complete anything.
So why not suggest IPs that exist but that we don't have. Â If someone can make a game like Mega Man into an MMORPG and make it completely original, then fine, I'd be happy to see it. Â But considering you'd be playing a robot you design yourself and the game isn't already set in a very dedicated universe where you'll see a lot of recurring characters, I wouldn't see why the original IP wouldn't be fresh here. Â It isn't like we've had a Mega Man RPG in over a decade, so it isn't like we're being swamped with Mega Man games and all its hundreds of clones.