Future MMO Prospects

[Clover]

My impressions about Blade & Soul are actually the opposite. Combat didn't impress me at all (I prefer Mabinogi:Heroes and Tera). The world feels quite dead and uninteresting, and thus the only attention to detail I've seen is on female character models *laughs*. I didn't feel that towns were alive, I couldn't interact with anything. All I could do was kill stuff, for there's nothing else going on in the maps I've visited. The fashion system is also non existent.

 

Perhaps I just didn't play it enough, but as far as I know, later gameplay is more of the same: kill stuff in maps where nothing else is going on. I have followed this game's updates, and every new update seems to be related to... new bosses you can kill. Exactly like Tera, and there's a reason why Tera isn't my favourite game, amazing as its combat system and character designs are.

 

The only thing I really like about B&S is the RP I've been having in a Spanish RP forum, and the very good character creation. The game itself is very meh for me. I'd give it another try if it was released in English, but I doubt I'd last much.

[synaesthetic]

I've been playing Guild Wars 2 a bit again recently and with the April update coming and all the changes that have been made so far it feels a lot more solid and entertaining than it did back when I bought it. It's so different from other themepark MMOs that I find it a nice second game to play here and there.

 

The two main MMOs I'm looking forward to are ArcheAge and WildStar.

 

ArcheAge is gorgeous. It looks just as pretty as GW2, if not more so, and it's a sandbox (!) game, so it has a totally different paradigm to it than games like XIV. Trion Worlds is handling the localization, so that should mean a quality product.

 

Wildstar's just great. I don't get the hate on the art style. It's like playing a Don Bluth animated film, it's just fantastic. And the dark, violent humor is delicious, but what I'm most excited about is the link between player housing and PvP, the so-called "War Plots."

 

I think that these days it's not possible to get everything from one MMO. Really it never was, these games have always been quite different in a lot of ways, and to really experience what they have to offer it's better to not get too tied to one game. That's kind of hard because MMOs are such massive timesinks, not to mention the subscription fee for those that aren't F2P, but I think that people should really consider trying to target each games' strengths and play them based on that.

 

I like XIV for what it is, but the PvP is balls and I'm definitely looking at Wildstar to scratch my murderous itches (even though I'll likely not touch raiding due to the focus on 40-player endgame dungeons). I like GW2 for wandering around in a huge and vibrant open world. ArcheAge may end up filling both the PvP and open-world itches due to the sandbox nature and the presence of naval combat (!!!), but that remains to be seen.

[Alanth]

So I suppose this thread is as good a place as any to explain where I've been and why I've been absent from the game since a little past a month from launch (with particular apologies to my LS for just disappearing for awhile).

 

So what have I been playing since I dropped FFXIV from my repertoire?

 

Weellll... I've been playing a lot of stuff, but most of that time's been dominated by a single game:

 

Blade & Soul

Yes, that's right, the Chinese version. Now, I apologize if I sound like a complete, unabashed fanboy/girl in this post, but bear with me, for I am being entirely genuine here: [fanboymode] This is the best MMORPG I have ever played, and I've played tons. Everquest, Everquest II, City of Heroes/Villains, Champions Online, EVE Online, Aion, TERA, APB, Vanguard, Guild Wars 2, and tons of others that I can't be bothered to remember for obvious reasons.

 

Mind you, it has yet to eclipse my highest playtime-of-all-time game, Aion (clocking at over 2000 hours to date), but I still feel that from a standpoint of sheer quality, nothing touches Blade & Soul. The whole game simply reeks of polish - EVERYTHING has had excessive amounts of attention laid on it, from the sound effects to the animation the the character models to the combat system to the environments, you name it, it's had some work done. It's extremely obvious where all that time (8 years! 8 years of development!) and money went to, unlike other games I can name where I can't for the life of me understand where all the money disappeared to.

 

In fact, it's pretty much the sole reason I dropped FFXIV even after paying for 3 months of subscription of time (lolwut). The game just grabbed me, hook and sinker, and pulled me along with it, despite the fact that, goddammit, playing with a bunch of Chinese people when you don't know a lick of Chinese and dealing with the latency of connecting to a server on the other side of the goddamn planet is painful. If that's not a strong indicator of quality, I don't know what is.

 

You may be even more shocked to learn that the story is actually really good. No, it's not particularly innovative or challenging, but it is incredibly fun and well-executed in a manner that eclipses pretty much all other MMOs - and yes, I'm including SWTOR in that count. The thing is, while SWTOR gives you the illusion of choice, the actual story itself is bland and uninteresting, and was not anywhere near strong enough to get me to overlook the game's many, many faults. Speaking of SWTOR, Blade & Soul is also the only other MMO I know of besides SWTOR to have full voice over for every NPC (minus a few minor ones, probably for scheduling or budget reasons). The story itself is quite engaging and, most importantly, is full of memorable characters who you can cheer for or want to see get their comeuppance, in stark contrast to SWTOR or, gods forbid, Guild Wars 2 (where I literally could not possibly care any less about any of the NPCs involved - the writing just failed to make any of them seem genuine).

 

And the combat! My gawd, the combat. There is literally no other MMORPG on the market that can hold a candle to it. TERA is fun but dreadfully slow-paced in comparison. GW2 tries but completely fails to get rid of the trinity even half as well as B&S does. The feedback is perfect. The animation is gorgeous and over-the-top. It's so damn good that it makes it difficult for me to play other games that aren't Platinum games.

 

And then there's the character creation. Like they say... a picture is worth a thousand words. (And that's just one race! Of four!)

 

Now, mind you, for all that I love about it, it obviously has some issues of its own. It IS a theme park MMO, with all that entails, so you should expect you're going to run the same dungeons many times over when you hit the level cap (same as every other theme park MMO including FFXIV), so nothing shocking there. The PvP balance is kind of shoddy for a game with so much emphasis on one-on-one combat - but to be fair, I don't know a single MMORPG with good 1v1 balance. Despite letting you wear whatever costume you want with no penalty to stats, for some reason weapon skinning is completely omitted from the game.

 

Despite these quibbles, however, the game itself is ridiculously solid, and it's a crying shame that they still haven't come out with an NA/EU version after all this time (BUT, to be fair again, even the Japanese haven't received their version yet, despite being a big, big market for this kind of game). I'm certain that many people - at least, those who manage to get past the stylized visuals and eastern oriental setting - will find plenty of entertainment when this game reaches our shores. In the meantime, I'm going to keep dealing with the language barrier and the lag because it's just that damn fun.

[/fanboymode]

 

So. In case anyone's still reading this runaway monstrosity of a post, here's what I think about what's coming up:

 

The Elder Scrolls Online

Garbage.

 

I could probably just leave it at that, but that would be mean and unprofessional. Simply put, I feel that it is one of the blandest, most soulless, designed-by-committee cynical corporate cash-grabs I have ever played. There is literally nothing that I could say is a redeeming feature. Even the character creation is marred by the character models being ugly as sin half the time (and merely adequate the other half). And what the hell is with this industry's obsession with boob plate?!

 

I really wanted to like it, I really hoped my first impressions were wrong and that the game would actually at least play well, but no, none of that. It's just bad. I'm afraid I'm just going to have to pass on it entirely. Not my thing.

 

Wildstar

I have been so completely disinterested in this game that I haven't even signed up for the beta (yes, even when I managed to at least muster up enough will to sign up for TESO). The reason for that is simple: the art is atrocious. I can't stand it. It would be nice if it were at least visually attractive the way Blade & Soul is but instead they go for this ridiculous Saturday-morning-cartoon look that absolutely repulses me.

 

Oh, and the character creation is horrible. No body sliders? IN 2014?! It's like I took a time machine back to 2006, except Blizzard decided to make a sci-fantasy game with a new IP instead of a Warcraft or Starcraft spin-off. Thanks, guys, but no thanks. I have standards. At least try to meet them, yeah?

 

And of course, of the footage I've seen absolutely nothing else actually screams "PLAY ME! PLAY MEEEE!", which is highly unfortunate. The combat is playing catch-up with its Eastern contemporaries, though it at least admittedly looks better than TESO's absolute joke for "combat". The questing is also shallow and lacks the kind of direction or overarching story it needs to actually be interesting.

 

Anyway, yeah. That's the deal. Apologies to those who are actually looking forward to those games, but you can still enjoy them without me. These are just my feelings on them. I wish I had more games to actually look forward to on the horizon, but right now I'm just sticking with more Blade & Soul.

 

Goddamn I want an NA release right about now...

I never could understand how someone could knock on a game's questing mechanics or combat without, you know, playing the game.  

 

I mean art style, yeah.  It's COMPLETELY love it or hate it.  I obviously love it.  Hyper-stylized games last much much longer than anything going for even semi-realism and the environments have more personality than a lot of games out there.  But you've never quested in the game or fought anything so how can you comment on combat or questing?

[Aysun]

So I suppose this thread is as good a place as any to explain where I've been and why I've been absent from the game since a little past a month from launch (with particular apologies to my LS for just disappearing for awhile).

 

So what have I been playing since I dropped FFXIV from my repertoire?

 

Weellll... I've been playing a lot of stuff, but most of that time's been dominated by a single game:

 

Blade & Soul

Yes, that's right, the Chinese version. Now, I apologize if I sound like a complete, unabashed fanboy/girl in this post, but bear with me, for I am being entirely genuine here: [fanboymode] This is the best MMORPG I have ever played, and I've played tons. Everquest, Everquest II, City of Heroes/Villains, Champions Online, EVE Online, Aion, TERA, APB, Vanguard, Guild Wars 2, and tons of others that I can't be bothered to remember for obvious reasons.

 

Mind you, it has yet to eclipse my highest playtime-of-all-time game, Aion (clocking at over 2000 hours to date), but I still feel that from a standpoint of sheer quality, nothing touches Blade & Soul. The whole game simply reeks of polish - EVERYTHING has had excessive amounts of attention laid on it, from the sound effects to the animation the the character models to the combat system to the environments, you name it, it's had some work done. It's extremely obvious where all that time (8 years! 8 years of development!) and money went to, unlike other games I can name where I can't for the life of me understand where all the money disappeared to.

 

In fact, it's pretty much the sole reason I dropped FFXIV even after paying for 3 months of subscription of time (lolwut). The game just grabbed me, hook and sinker, and pulled me along with it, despite the fact that, goddammit, playing with a bunch of Chinese people when you don't know a lick of Chinese and dealing with the latency of connecting to a server on the other side of the goddamn planet is painful. If that's not a strong indicator of quality, I don't know what is.

 

You may be even more shocked to learn that the story is actually really good. No, it's not particularly innovative or challenging, but it is incredibly fun and well-executed in a manner that eclipses pretty much all other MMOs - and yes, I'm including SWTOR in that count. The thing is, while SWTOR gives you the illusion of choice, the actual story itself is bland and uninteresting, and was not anywhere near strong enough to get me to overlook the game's many, many faults. Speaking of SWTOR, Blade & Soul is also the only other MMO I know of besides SWTOR to have full voice over for every NPC (minus a few minor ones, probably for scheduling or budget reasons). The story itself is quite engaging and, most importantly, is full of memorable characters who you can cheer for or want to see get their comeuppance, in stark contrast to SWTOR or, gods forbid, Guild Wars 2 (where I literally could not possibly care any less about any of the NPCs involved - the writing just failed to make any of them seem genuine).

 

And the combat! My gawd, the combat. There is literally no other MMORPG on the market that can hold a candle to it. TERA is fun but dreadfully slow-paced in comparison. GW2 tries but completely fails to get rid of the trinity even half as well as B&S does. The feedback is perfect. The animation is gorgeous and over-the-top. It's so damn good that it makes it difficult for me to play other games that aren't Platinum games.

 

And then there's the character creation. Like they say... a picture is worth a thousand words. (And that's just one race! Of four!)

 

Now, mind you, for all that I love about it, it obviously has some issues of its own. It IS a theme park MMO, with all that entails, so you should expect you're going to run the same dungeons many times over when you hit the level cap (same as every other theme park MMO including FFXIV), so nothing shocking there. The PvP balance is kind of shoddy for a game with so much emphasis on one-on-one combat - but to be fair, I don't know a single MMORPG with good 1v1 balance. Despite letting you wear whatever costume you want with no penalty to stats, for some reason weapon skinning is completely omitted from the game.

 

Despite these quibbles, however, the game itself is ridiculously solid, and it's a crying shame that they still haven't come out with an NA/EU version after all this time (BUT, to be fair again, even the Japanese haven't received their version yet, despite being a big, big market for this kind of game). I'm certain that many people - at least, those who manage to get past the stylized visuals and eastern oriental setting - will find plenty of entertainment when this game reaches our shores. In the meantime, I'm going to keep dealing with the language barrier and the lag because it's just that damn fun.

[/fanboymode]

 

So. In case anyone's still reading this runaway monstrosity of a post, here's what I think about what's coming up:

 

The Elder Scrolls Online

Garbage.

 

I could probably just leave it at that, but that would be mean and unprofessional. Simply put, I feel that it is one of the blandest, most soulless, designed-by-committee cynical corporate cash-grabs I have ever played. There is literally nothing that I could say is a redeeming feature. Even the character creation is marred by the character models being ugly as sin half the time (and merely adequate the other half). And what the hell is with this industry's obsession with boob plate?!

 

I really wanted to like it, I really hoped my first impressions were wrong and that the game would actually at least play well, but no, none of that. It's just bad. I'm afraid I'm just going to have to pass on it entirely. Not my thing.

 

Wildstar

I have been so completely disinterested in this game that I haven't even signed up for the beta (yes, even when I managed to at least muster up enough will to sign up for TESO). The reason for that is simple: the art is atrocious. I can't stand it. It would be nice if it were at least visually attractive the way Blade & Soul is but instead they go for this ridiculous Saturday-morning-cartoon look that absolutely repulses me.

 

Oh, and the character creation is horrible. No body sliders? IN 2014?! It's like I took a time machine back to 2006, except Blizzard decided to make a sci-fantasy game with a new IP instead of a Warcraft or Starcraft spin-off. Thanks, guys, but no thanks. I have standards. At least try to meet them, yeah?

 

And of course, of the footage I've seen absolutely nothing else actually screams "PLAY ME! PLAY MEEEE!", which is highly unfortunate. The combat is playing catch-up with its Eastern contemporaries, though it at least admittedly looks better than TESO's absolute joke for "combat". The questing is also shallow and lacks the kind of direction or overarching story it needs to actually be interesting.

 

Anyway, yeah. That's the deal. Apologies to those who are actually looking forward to those games, but you can still enjoy them without me. These are just my feelings on them. I wish I had more games to actually look forward to on the horizon, but right now I'm just sticking with more Blade & Soul.

 

Goddamn I want an NA release right about now...

"A picture is worth a thousand words." My words in response to those pictures are: 'wtf is that,' 'augh so toony' and 'icky game-breaker'! It's interesting to see everyone's varying preferences around here.

[Lost River]

I'm looking forward to TESO due to RL friends to play with. Yay friendship!

 

As for Wildstar, that'll be my next big game. I want Archeage but that is a whenever. I also want to try Blade & Soul, but that is also whenever it comes.

 

I don't care much for Wildstar's art style, but after playing it for a while; it ends up growing on you, it also contrasts with the world's dark setting; yep, Wildstar's setting is quite dark, almost Warhammer 40K style dark; to be so vivid and in your face to have such a horrible background; it excites me! Sure, it has no body sliders, but I can survive with that. 

 

So far, aside from Second Life, Aion, and Perfect World International, no MMORPG gave I've played had detailed character creation than those games; of course if APB wasn't garbage (fixed, but still terrible now that its FTP with the new cash shop grabs), I'd mess with that. I spent hundreds of hours on that game's creation system in just its short month's span before it went away.

[Ildur]

Wildstar's greatest sin is the character creation. It's pretty limited, even with face sliders. It's like you are twaking Carbine's characters rather than making your own unique individual. It's...well, it's pretty bad in that department. The only reason I liked the characters I liked was because I settled with one and she grew on me after 10 or so levels.

 

Oh, and the female running and walking animations are horrid.

 

Despite of that, though, I had a lot of fun during their last Beta. I don't think I have any complains about it besides what I mentioned. I'm sure that will change once I get to play it for more than a weekend, of course.

[Zyrusticae]

My impressions about Blade & Soul are actually the opposite. Combat didn't impress me at all (I prefer Mabinogi:Heroes and Tera). The world feels quite dead and uninteresting, and thus the only attention to detail I've seen is on female character models *laughs*. I didn't feel that towns were alive, I couldn't interact with anything. All I could do was kill stuff, for there's nothing else going on in the maps I've visited. The fashion system is also non existent.

 

Perhaps I just didn't play it enough, but as far as I know, later gameplay is more of the same: kill stuff in maps where nothing else is going on. I have followed this game's updates, and every new update seems to be related to... new bosses you can kill. Exactly like Tera, and there's a reason why Tera isn't my favourite game, amazing as its combat system and character designs are.

 

The only thing I really like about B&S is the RP I've been having in a Spanish RP forum, and the very good character creation. The game itself is very meh for me. I'd give it another try if it was released in English, but I doubt I'd last much.

It's worth noting that it's a game that changes immensely based on which class you play, since they all have very different mechanics (summoner hardly plays anything like kung-fu master which hardly plays anything like assassin, etc.). And yeah, at low levels the small moveset is limiting, but that's not much different from most other MMOs at this point in time.

 

And the world feeling 'dead' is, again, a theme park MMO issue. FFXIV isn't any better in this regard, nor is any other theme park MMO I've played in recent memory. The amusing thing is that GW2 tries so hard with its "dynamic events" but it just ends up making the facade even more obvious when the same shit happens over and over and over and over and over and over and over...

 

The closest thing to a game world that feels "alive" to me has been EVE Online, and that's a sandbox MMO, so not even in the same ballpark.

 

Of course I have high hopes for EQNext, but that's a long way off still.

 

I never could understand how someone could knock on a game's questing mechanics or combat without, you know, playing the game.  

 

I mean art style, yeah.  It's COMPLETELY love it or hate it.  I obviously love it.  Hyper-stylized games last much much longer than anything going for even semi-realism and the environments have more personality than a lot of games out there.  But you've never quested in the game or fought anything so how can you comment on combat or questing?

Watching videos and reading impressions is enough. Perhaps a bit of a knee-jerk reaction on my part, but many of the impressions I've been reading do not paint a pretty picture.

 

"A picture is worth a thousand words." My words in response to those pictures are: 'wtf is that,' 'augh so toony' and 'icky game-breaker'! It's interesting to see everyone's varying preferences around here.

Fortunately, there are three other less-cartoony races in the game. But the point was to illustrate the range of the character creation more than anything else.

 

Also, Lyn >>> Lalafell. Sorry, I just can't get past the rotundness. They're cute, but I'd never want to play as one.

 

So far, aside from Second Life, Aion, and Perfect World International, no MMORPG gave I've played had detailed character creation than those games; of course if APB wasn't garbage (fixed, but still terrible now that its FTP with the new cash shop grabs), I'd mess with that. I spent hundreds of hours on that game's creation system in just its short month's span before it went away.

Believe it or not, Blade & Soul's character creation is even more detailed than Aion's. With four unique races (though they are all variants on human, like most eastern MMOs). It's pretty crazy.

 

Between that, Aion, Dragon's Dogma, Soul Calibur V, Champions Online, and more besides, I've been pretty spoiled on the character creation front lately. It's really, REALLY hard for me to go back to games with weaksauce character creation now, especially since I prefer to play gender-ambiguous characters, which is really quite difficult in games where the gender-binary is enforced and there are no body sliders.

 

Speaking of APB... it was great, except for the enforced minimum breast size. I probably would have spent more time with that game if they actually let me make a flat-chested female character. Feels like a waste to have all those options, and then this one option is so limited that it may as well not be there...

[Clover]

It's worth noting that it's a game that changes immensely based on which class you play, since they all have very different mechanics (summoner hardly plays anything like kung-fu master which hardly plays anything like assassin, etc.). And yeah, at low levels the small moveset is limiting, but that's not much different from most other MMOs at this point in time.

 

And the world feeling 'dead' is, again, a theme park MMO issue. FFXIV isn't any better in this regard, nor is any other theme park MMO I've played in recent memory. The amusing thing is that GW2 tries so hard with its "dynamic events" but it just ends up making the facade even more obvious when the same shit happens over and over and over and over and over and over and over...

Um, my problem wasn't that the skills were limited at low levels. I was simply not very impressed, as I prefer Tera's combat style because it requires teamwork. Also, if I simply want action combat without teamwork, I find Mabinogi:Heroes superior as well (that combat system is just too good and brutal).

 

As for the world, I do find FFXIV's world alive. Not only because NPCs are very well animated, but also because you can find many interesting things and spots in your travels. The fact you can sit at any tavern, restaurant or bench is wonderful (you can even choose between different sitting poses and emotes while doing so!). So it's not just the NPCs but mostly the player characters what make the world feel so alive. To that, add the best emote system I've ever seen in a game, adorable things like house system, mounts that can help you fight, and many other genius ideas SE keeps throwing into the equation with every update, and you get a game that's very, very different than B&S. After playing FFXIV, I just can't find B&S detailed at all ;;;. It feels extremely empty to me, and every new update feels the same as the previous one.

 

It's just a matter of tastes, of course. I guess I've become very picky (blame SE for it).

[Zyrusticae]

Um, my problem wasn't that the skills were limited at low levels. I was simply not very impressed, as I prefer Tera's combat style because it requires teamwork. Also, if I simply want action combat without teamwork, I find Mabinogi:Heroes superior as well (that combat system is just too good and brutal).

But Blade & Soul also requires teamwork, though this isn't apparent until you hit the level cap and run the blue and purple-rated dungeons. It's worth noting that this is in spite of the fact that they deliberately killed the holy trinity for the game (because, let's face it, healers just don't make sense for a martial-arts focused setting). GW2 tried the same thing and utterly failed at it.

 

But yeah, if you want the kind of class-based interdependency the trinity thrives on, Blade & Soul definitely is not for you. Most of the group interactions consist of managing AoE, coordinating CC effects (easier said than done), and helping downed teammates recover from defeat. The game puts a bigger emphasis on individual skill than a traditional MMO like FFXIV or even a hybrid like TERA does. Things like team-wide buffs, big life-saving heals, and heavy aggro management simply do not exist in B&S.

As for the world, I do find FFXIV's world alive. Not only because NPCs are very well animated, but also because you can find many interesting things and spots in your travels. The fact you can sit at any tavern, restaurant or bench is wonderful (you can even choose between different sitting poses and emotes while doing so!). So it's not just the NPCs but mostly the player characters what make the world feel so alive. To that, add the best emote system I've ever seen in a game, adorable things like house system, mounts that can help you fight, and many other genius ideas SE keeps throwing into the equation with every update, and you get a game that's very, very different than B&S. After playing FFXIV, I just can't find B&S detailed at all ;;;. It feels extremely empty to me, and every new update feels the same as the previous one.

 

It's just a matter of tastes, of course. I guess I've become very picky (blame SE for it).

I suppose I will just have to agree to disagree on this point. No amount of extra detail or random NPC dialogue will ever change the fact that the world is static and unchanging, with the exception of the big patches every three months that only add new stuff rather than changing old things. I just choose to suspend my disbelief knowing that the level of interactivity I desire simply isn't happening in video games any time soon (with EQNext being the closest thing to a big step forward I've seen in a long, LONG time).

[Clover]

Zyrusticae, I don't know if you've played Mabinogi:Heroes (the NA server is http://vindictus.nexon.net/), but if you like action that doesn't depend on the holy trinity, you might enjoy it.

 

It's dungeon based, not open world, but there's something about that game that made me play it for two years straight as my main. I haven't seen a better action combat system, at least to my tastes.

I eventually left the game because it's too luck based. I happened to have no luck whatsoever, no matter how hardcore I farmed *sweatdrops* (and I swear I haven't been as hardcore in my whole gaming life).

[Ignacius]

I think maybe new MMO developers are thinking on a higher level than most players.  Specifically, players like to say things like, "I want an interactive world where the decisions I make matter and affect the game!"

 

On the other hand, that means all the other players can also make decisions and affect the game.  And we know what other players are like.  So do game developers.  I think that, and the EVE experiment, is kind of why so many big name developers of games know better than to give the players that kind of interventionalist power.  They know gamers, particularly the ones who are apt to pour days at a time into playing for the tiniest statistical boost, have a high dick-to-mentor level.  Essentially, if it's possible for someone to ruin someone else's gaming experience, it's going to happen.

 

What they should probably go for is something that seems to live and breathe without players, something that makes us part of the food chain instead of its sole top layer.  It's just hard to do because that takes a lot of development and a very old-school approach to design.  It just isn't something that's been done (or seems to be in development) in the current crop of MMORPGs.

 

I'm not sure it's the lack of technology at this point as much as it's just a market that doesn't really get tapped.  I can think of a few ways off the top of my head that an MMORPG could be much more entertaining by not focusing on progression PVE or PVP.  Unfortunately, I design health care facilities for a living.

 

It just seems like modern developers are caught in a rut and missing the obvious and intelligent solutions.

[Zyrusticae]

I'm still very much looking forward to EQNext for those innovations. The Story Bricks system and the more reactive AI seem like they could open the door to new possibilities (not to mention Landmark giving the devs a veritable smorgasbord of content to pull from to rapidly iterate on the game world itself). The problem of players affecting the world in a negative fashion is at least partly negated if the world itself is too large for a single player or group of players to really put a dent in it.

 

I am, however, concerned that they seem to be cribbing liberally from Guild Wars 2 for their combat design... and as you can probably tell, I am not a fan of GW2 combat design.

Zyrusticae, I don't know if you've played Mabinogi:Heroes (the NA server is http://vindictus.nexon.net/), but if you like action that doesn't depend on the holy trinity, you might enjoy it.

 

It's dungeon based, not open world, but there's something about that game that made me play it for two years straight as my main. I haven't seen a better action combat system, at least to my tastes.

I eventually left the game because it's too luck based. I happened to have no luck whatsoever, no matter how hardcore I farmed *sweatdrops* (and I swear I haven't been as hardcore in my whole gaming life).

I've played it, actually, and it's indeed a fun game, but the lacking character customization made me drop it for PSO2 (which is almost an unfair comparison just looking at the differences between the two, but them's the breaks). Of course I then dropped PSO2 for, um, less horrifically-balanced games. Seriously, when one entire class is basically completely irrelevant, you know you've got issues.

 

I should note that I don't have anything against the trinity itself. After playing GW2 I realized that the trinity helps create a nice, simple structure for players to follow and makes it easier for the devs to keep the classes balanced against each other. Of course B&S then made me realize that a lot of it was just because Arenanet's combat designers are kind of incompetent, but that was much later.

[Naunet]

I should note that I don't have anything against the trinity itself. After playing GW2 I realized that the trinity helps create a nice, simple structure for players to follow and makes it easier for the devs to keep the classes balanced against each other. Of course B&S then made me realize that a lot of it was just because Arenanet's combat designers are kind of incompetent, but that was much later.

 

There's also the fact that a lot of people just like the holy trinity (or quadrinity, if you throw in support). I enjoy playing the role of tank and the role of healer and don't really feel all that fulfilled in combat when I can't.

 

GW2 lost me more on the "you have the same skills forever, the end" bit, alongside the cheating "we're tab-target but not but really we're not tab target but actually yea, we mostly are lol" thing. Too half-assed for me. WildStar's combat goes well beyond GW2 and is as close to TERA's action combat I've seen yet in western MMOs.

 

Blade & Soul loses for the simple fact of being NCSoft and eastern and thus doomed to grind and inevitable F2P shittiness. I learned from TERA that no amount of beautiful graphics or even fun combat can counter the insidious nature of Korean f2p models.

[Ildur]

I stopped playing Vindictus because my country, Moleland, is IP blocked by Nexon. I managed to play for a few months using proxies and pretty much soloed all my way to level 61. It was a very fun game. But they recycled enviorements almost as bad as Bioware in Dragon Age 2. So when they upgraded their IP blocks, I couldn't bother to find a workaround.

 

Incidentally, I can't play GW2 after having played Wildstar's beta. I logged in GW2 to play a bit and I got immediately smashed by a bunch of mobs and a trebuchet that had nothing better to do than lob rocks at a single man. And then I was knocked down two or three times in a row.

 

So I logged out and played Terraria. Yay!

[Ignacius]

I should note that I don't have anything against the trinity itself. After playing GW2 I realized that the trinity helps create a nice, simple structure for players to follow and makes it easier for the devs to keep the classes balanced against each other. Of course B&S then made me realize that a lot of it was just because Arenanet's combat designers are kind of incompetent, but that was much later.

 

There's also the fact that a lot of people just like the holy trinity (or quadrinity, if you throw in support). I enjoy playing the role of tank and the role of healer and don't really feel all that fulfilled in combat when I can't.

 

GW2 lost me more on the "you have the same skills forever, the end" bit, alongside the cheating "we're tab-target but not but really we're not tab target but actually yea, we mostly are lol" thing. Too half-assed for me. WildStar's combat goes well beyond GW2 and is as close to TERA's action combat I've seen yet in western MMOs.

 

Blade & Soul loses for the simple fact of being NCSoft and eastern and thus doomed to grind and inevitable F2P shittiness. I learned from TERA that no amount of beautiful graphics or even fun combat can counter the insidious nature of Korean f2p models.

 

I'm waiting for the game so unforgiving that there are no more healers or tanks, just players.  And you don't get to refill your health until after the fight is over.  There's just no economy in HP in the trinity system forcing you to adapt and make hard choices, sometimes putting you at a severe disadvantage.  If anything, games these days refill my HP so quickly that I don't even notice it.

[synaesthetic]

Such a game would simply be tuned so that you take considerably less damage from enemies. I've played many tabletop and computer RPGs where healing takes too long to be used during combat, so you're stuck with the HP you have while fighting.

 

It's not really any different, you just get hit for far less. If they took healing during combat away with the current enemy DPS, it would not work out.

 

It's all relative. If you're not noticing your HP dropping, either you're only playing easy content or you've got some really good healers.

[Ignacius]

Such a game would simply be tuned so that you take considerably less damage from enemies. I've played many tabletop and computer RPGs where healing takes too long to be used during combat, so you're stuck with the HP you have while fighting.

 

It's not really any different, you just get hit for far less. If they took healing during combat away with the current enemy DPS, it would not work out.

 

It's all relative. If you're not noticing your HP dropping, either you're only playing easy content or you've got some really good healers.

Or they just make it less forgiving.  Or make your armor durability into a sort of HP.  What I'm saying is that we've gotten a bit too used to games that coddle us and give us ways out.  I'm saying you could make a game where you fight a dragon and you would have to go into it knowing that a mistake doesn't get fixed, it can only be overcome, and your mistakes are limited.

 

I think a "healer" is sort of a facet of game design that's been with us without question for so long, especially in fantasy games.  It's not strictly necessary, though.  It could be that you only have a limited amount of health and take injuries as in real life, so you need to know how to avoid attacks and manage your own health.

 

It isn't in the current crop of MMOs not because of viability, but because of creativity.  The answer game developers come to in the race to erase the class system is to simply homogenize the classes, I.E. make everyone their own healer and tank, not to simply reorganize the structure of the gameplay to make class a non-issue.  One game that comes to mind, oddly, is Bushido Blade, a PSOne fighting game developed by Light Weight (and ironically published by Squaresoft).  Unlike all other fighting games, there was no life bar and no health pool.  They structured the game so that any single hit to a vital area of your body would kill you, and any strike to another part of your body would be debilitating.  You certainly paid a LOT more attention to what was going on, and the UI was totally clean.

 

It was ingenious.  Nobody would have thought to make a fighting game without the traditional health bar and light-medium-heavy attack at that point, but I'd say that Bushido Blade was my favorite fighting game of all time.  Not only was it idiosyncratic, but it was genuinely more thrilling.  Most of all, it was intuitive; it wasn't just a fighting game with no HP, it was a completely different animal.

 

MMO developers, I daresay even modern developers in general, just don't develop that way anymore.  Originality, today, is to set the same FPS game they released last year in the wild west instead of World War 2 Belgium.  The problem with MMO design is that everyone's gotten stuck in a rut and essentially tried solving some of the player disaffection with band-aid solutions, e.g. giving us FATE-style quests to keep us from falling into the paragraph-chapter style of leveling or giving us a more "active" style of combat by removing cooldowns or the auto-attack.

 

As much as I've complained about EVE, it is, to its credit, something different.  I'm not sure it's necessarily better and certainly not carried to its full potential, but it is structurally and organically different from the rest of the MMO market.  And it isn't like other companies aren't capable of making something structurally different from the ground up; lots of the old companies that made genre-bending and idiosyncratic games are still around even if the new batch wasn't able to come up with something.

 

It's just disappointing seeing the new crop and knowing I'll still be playing World of Warcraft when its next expansion comes out.  I sometimes wonder if I play it not because it's, in and of itself, a great game, but because of all the games trying to do what it does, it is simply the best, and everyone shouldering in to try to take their market share is doing so by adding and subtracting from what WoW did well (though not first, even it wasn't the original).

 

I guess it's just being in a design profession myself.  Game design is very similar to architectural design, they just seem to have become somewhat complacent, even with the almost unlimited resources that modern technology gives them.  Or maybe their failings are like ours, and pedestrian video game design is like pedestrian architecture, generally dictated and organized by business minds that don't understand how design actually works, just what they saw in their hometown.

 

Reminds me of a project we were working on where a Christian television station in Atlanta asked us to design a new studio in the southern antebellum style from an abandoned grocery store.  They even gave us a picture of EXACTLY what they wanted it to look like.  It's the ugliest thing I've ever put together in Revit, and largely because people who don't have any idea how a building will actually work or look in real life are dictating architectural decisions.

 

Who knows.  I know CAPCOM hasn't exactly benefited from its horrible business analysts and administration, despite still having a game design studio that can intermittently churn out an amazing game.

[Zyrusticae]

Blade & Soul loses for the simple fact of being NCSoft and eastern and thus doomed to grind and inevitable F2P shittiness. I learned from TERA that no amount of beautiful graphics or even fun combat can counter the insidious nature of Korean f2p models.

Okay.

 

What?

 

Besides the fact that Blade & Soul is not the same game as TERA (or Aion for that matter), even Tera is an extremely tame game relative to old stalwarts like Lineage or, gods forbid, Lineage II (which, I should remind you, are still two of the most popular MMOs on the world stage to this day). We're talking years to hit the level cap in those games. Years of regular play. Tera has some shittiness in its model but most of the shittiness comes in the form of straight-up RNG bullshit, which is something every MMO ever made has in spades - just look at the Atma grind in FFXIV for a very recent example.

 

Speaking of Blade & Soul specifically, you're talking out of your ass and making an assumption based purely on the location the game was made at (lolwut?). For the record, Blade & Soul NEVER reaches the level of sheer RNG-related asshattery a game like TERA or Aion does. At most you'll get several weapon evo fails at level cap, but those utterly pale in comparison to the absurdity of weapon enchanting in the aforementioned games.

 

The thing is, Team Bloodlust is remarkably smart about their approach in this - regular weapon leveling cannot fail, except at two break points: the "breakthrough" going from weapon level 5 -> 6, and the "fusion" when going from one tier of weapon to the next. This limits your exposure to the constant and unending "fail fail fail PASS fail fail fail fail fail fail fail PASS" grind you see in other games. They also don't consume your materials on failure and instead merely require you to grind more gold, mitigating the frustration element considerably. I still remember trying to enchant weapons in Aion where you go through tons of evolution stones before finally hitting +10 on a single weapon - and that's assuming you don't also buy the powder to increase the chances of success (shudder).

 

I'm playing Blade & Soul right now and I don't see any of this "grind" or "inevitable F2P shittiness" you seem so certain is coming - and for that matter, this is the Chinese version, with Tencent as the publisher. Certainly, my progress slows down considerably once when I reach "endgame" status, but that goes for all themepark MMOs - it's an intrinsic element of the genre, and until the genre itself changes that's just something you're going to have to accept and deal with when it comes.

 

I'm waiting for the game so unforgiving that there are no more healers or tanks, just players.  And you don't get to refill your health until after the fight is over.  There's just no economy in HP in the trinity system forcing you to adapt and make hard choices, sometimes putting you at a severe disadvantage.  If anything, games these days refill my HP so quickly that I don't even notice it.

Funny that you should say this, because this is pretty much how Blade & Soul works. There are no healers. There are healing potions but those have 30-second (special potions) or 60-second (normal potions) cooldowns, so you can't rely on them except to help you recover from an occasional mistake. There are lifesteal gems but those only account for a very insignificant fraction of your HP pool. There are lifesteal attacks but they're either really weak or have really long cooldowns like the healing pots.

 

I quite enjoy it. Actually, it all feels remarkably intuitive. You're responsible for your own well-being, and while your teammates can help mitigate for you with some support abilities and CC effects, there's no situation in the game's later dungeons where you can just sit there, take aggro, and let the healers cover the rest. You have to move, block, dodge, or otherwise avoid taking damage if you want to survive.

 

Also, the fact that everyone can revive others is something I sincerely miss when playing other games now. As it is, in FFXIV, when the healer goes down, you're fucked, pure and simple. Letting other players get the healer back up would do a lot to mitigate that harsh dependency.

[Naunet]

There's no need to take my comments regarding my thoughts on B&S personally.

 

I simply do not trust Korean developers to maintain the integrity of a subscription MMO. Their business model is almost uniformly "milk box sales and subscriptions for a year or two and then dump it to f2p to work on the next cash cow, where we'll do the same," repeat cycle ad nauseum. It usually comes with extremely underhanded cash shop tactics that I simply cannot support.

 

I'm glad you're enjoying Blade & Soul. No need to jump down my throat because I decided to express my own opinion in a forum thread talking about MMOs.

[Zyrusticae]

Sorry, but the constant and unending "Korean MMOs are ALL grinders" bullshit that gets tossed around all over the internet just straight-up pisses me off. So much of it is based entirely on the reputation of the Lineage series and nothing else. It's stupid, it's uninformed, and it needs to stop. Like right now.

 

It especially pisses me off because it intrinsically excludes western MMOs for some unfathomable reason, despite the fact that western MMOs are pretty much exactly the same. It's absurd. Please don't do that.

 

Now, if you want to talk about business models... that's a whole 'nother ball of wax. There are plenty of arguments to be had both for and against subscription and F2P models. I do not believe for a second that one is intrinsically superior to the other. For that matter, I daresay that a lot of what determines a game's quality is completely irrelevant to the business model. If a game sucks, it'll suck regardless of whether or not it's subscription or F2P, and if a game's developer fails to give good support, how they get their funding is immaterial when their support is lackluster to begin with (just look at World of Warcraft for cryin' out loud, they get no content updates between expansions)!

[Zhavi]

(just look at World of Warcraft for cryin' out loud, they get no content updates between expansions)!

 

Errr... I think you might need to define 'content' before making that claim. I think your definition might be different from mine!

[synaesthetic]

It's a difference of business models. The Korean MMO market is incredibly competitive and lucrative. It's all about extracting as much money from the players as quickly as possible before moving on to the next big title. As a result, the developers tend to throw things together in a very slapdash haphazard fashion that looks quite nice and glitzy on the surface, but has very little depth (not to mention lots of bugs that never get fixed).

 

Most Korean MMOs rarely receive content updates, especially if they are F2P. When they do get them they tend to be in the form of either cash shop additions, typically with those RNG boxes where you have a very low chance of getting what you want, or they add the minimum amount of new areas, enemies and the like just to keep the players going for a little longer. These updates generally bring with them a host of new bugs and glitches that don't ever get fixed, while older bugs are ignored.

 

Korean MMOs are developed quickly, QA'd without much care and shoved out to market as fast as possible in order to compete with the hundreds of other MMOs they're facing up against. These games are not intended to last longer than a year or two at the most, whereupon they are placed in "maintenance mode" and left with a skeleton crew to keep the lights on and keep the cash shop stocked, while the bulk of the development team moves on to the company's next title.

 

Korean MMOs rarely have public test servers. They rarely interact with their playerbase directly. They generally prioritize fast profit above all else, because that is the market they exist in. If a Korean MMO developer attempted to create an MMO by Western MMO rules--that is, to create a long-term service with a loyal playerbase that plays for years, even up to a decade or more--they would go out of business instantly. In Korea, it's all about mass-production, bashing out the shiniest, sparkliest costume-jewelry bauble in as little time as possible, get it on the chopping block and start pulling in revenue before their competitors can. 

 

The Korean playerbase has very, very different habits than the Western MMO player. They don't care about lore, about roleplaying, about long-term enjoyment of the game. Part of this is due to their internet-cafe gaming culture versus the West's home-entertainment gaming culture, but most of it is the fault of the industry itself. In their haste to make as much money as fast as possible they've created an incredibly volatile market full of low-budget shovelware. This couldn't possibly be more different than the Western MMO market, where only big-budget titles using well-known intellectual properties are ever very successful.

 

The idea that Korean MMOs are "grinders" is borne out by historical evidence. It's not just Lineage. It's Ragnarok Online. It's TERA. It's Aion. It's Bless Online. Pick any random Korean MMO and count how many layers of random dice rolling is involved in endgame gearing. We'll use TERA as an example because it's the most recent one I've played.

 

In TERA, for endgame gear, you have these levels of RNG:

 

- The boss has to drop the correct item. Many bosses are not guaranteed to drop any useful loot at all. The chance to drop the actually useful items is very, very low.

- Once you obtain the item, you use an expensive consumable to upgrade it to masterwork. This has a 2% chance of success; this is compounded by the masterwork quality bonus, which can either be +1%, +2% or +3%. The chance of successfully masterworking and getting a +3% quality bonus is incredibly small.

- Once you've masterworked your item, you have to use a combination of expensive consumables to randomly re-roll the bonuses on said item. Most of the bonuses are useless. The probability of getting all the useful bonuses on one item in one attempt is <1%.

- Once you've got useful bonuses, then you have to enchant the item. Each level of enchantment has a different chance of succeeding. Once you reach +8, +9 or higher, the success rate drops so incredibly low that it's completely possible to fail hundreds of times before successfully raising the item's level.

 

Contrast to FFXIV's endgame gearing:

 

- The boss has to drop the item. Coil bosses drop two items every time, guaranteed. Primals drop one item, guaranteed, every time.

 

+ There are alternatives to boss drops that have absolutely no chance of failure (EX primal weapons, raid token gear, relic weapons). These alternatives are equivalent or better than the raid drops from Coil/primals.

 

There's really no contest here. In XIV, no matter how unlucky you might be in Coil, you can still gear. You can still get i100, eventually i110 if you buy and upgrade weathered gear. Will you be exactly as optimal as if you were lucky with drops? No, but you can be close enough. In TERA, on the other hand, there have been players who have been completely stalled progression-wise because the Random Number God will not smile upon them (I was one of them). Since each attempt to upgrade costs a considerable amount of in-game currency, an unlucky player will be forced to spend an absurd amount of time grinding--and I did. I spent hours and hours and hours, countless hours, grinding the same open-world mobs for money, only to fail again and again and again.

 

You say that Korean MMOs are not grinders, but by and large they are. It's possible that Blade & Soul isn't, as I haven't been able to play it yet. If that's true, then B&S is a freakish anomaly.

 

FFXIV may be made by Square-Enix, a Japanese company, but it is a Western MMO. Even FFXI was a Western MMO, as it was essentially an EverQuest clone with Final Fantasy flavor and lore on top. Western MMOs can be grinders, too--they aren't immune. However, since Blizzard instigated a sea change in the MMO industry with World of Warcraft, Western MMOs have focused on accessibility ever since, with a strong development focus on reducing, limiting or hiding the grind, or simply making the grind more fun. The Korean MMO industry was not affected by this; WoW was not quite so transformative in South Korea.

[Naunet]

(just look at World of Warcraft for cryin' out loud, they get no content updates between expansions)!

 

Wat. That's about as factually incorrect as one can get.

 

Incidentally, I've never played Lineage. My own perception of Korean MMOs is based entirely around my own experiences with... Korean MMOs. Don't tell me how to think, thanks. ^^ It's my decision to avoid Korean MMOs based on these experiences, and I'm not damning anyone who enjoys them. They are simply not something I am willing to touch anymore.

[Ignacius]

I'm waiting for the game so unforgiving that there are no more healers or tanks, just players.  And you don't get to refill your health until after the fight is over.  There's just no economy in HP in the trinity system forcing you to adapt and make hard choices, sometimes putting you at a severe disadvantage.  If anything, games these days refill my HP so quickly that I don't even notice it.

Funny that you should say this, because this is pretty much how Blade & Soul works. There are no healers. There are healing potions but those have 30-second (special potions) or 60-second (normal potions) cooldowns, so you can't rely on them except to help you recover from an occasional mistake. There are lifesteal gems but those only account for a very insignificant fraction of your HP pool. There are lifesteal attacks but they're either really weak or have really long cooldowns like the healing pots.

 

I quite enjoy it. Actually, it all feels remarkably intuitive. You're responsible for your own well-being, and while your teammates can help mitigate for you with some support abilities and CC effects, there's no situation in the game's later dungeons where you can just sit there, take aggro, and let the healers cover the rest. You have to move, block, dodge, or otherwise avoid taking damage if you want to survive.

 

Also, the fact that everyone can revive others is something I sincerely miss when playing other games now. As it is, in FFXIV, when the healer goes down, you're fucked, pure and simple. Letting other players get the healer back up would do a lot to mitigate that harsh dependency.

 

Actually, that's also how Diablo works.  It's just not harsh enough for me.  I mean, complete harshness.  Get hit too hard and you'll lose movement speed or attack power, as you'll be injured.  And when I say slowly coming back, I mean your health only will regenerate after a day, so you may have to think about whether you want to risk going somewhere while injured, knowing you are risking becoming more injured.  It just seems more realistic that way, to have armor actually mitigate damage normally and injury works how it does in real life (-ish).  So you can only have so much damage you can absorb without retreating from the danger of the game world to town (or whatever).

 

We just don't have the danger of being low on health.  It's a temporary warning circumstance.  We just never have to really make long-term decisions based on our well being.  It would be nice if that was combined with a game where travel times are significant, so what actually keeps you from traveling isn't that creatures just have arbitrarily larger "level" numbers (or that you don't meet them; you could probably not have a level at all at that point), but that you don't have the skills or equipment necessary to undertake the danger of a long voyage, and a trek deep into the wilderness for people who have no survival or combat skills is essentially suicide.

 

Just saying that it is a model that would work, but doesn't seem to be explored.  Most MMOs have you as a globetrotter rather than being at the mercy of a hostile world.

[synaesthetic]

The problem I have with the removal of the trinity and making every player "responsible" for themselves basically removes the cooperative aspect of the game entirely and severely limits the interesting mechanics a raid boss can have.

 

Your dream game would work fine in a PvP-only context. I just don't see it working very well in a PvE raiding context, not without becoming a mindless, mechanicless zerg.

 

Actually, you should play DayZ. I think it'd be right up your alley. Permadeath, no healers, a focus on travel and exploration and methodical planning and survival.