What do you think is the Best MMO Innovation of the last Few Years?

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Hariken

Cash Shops

SEANMCAD

I think the entire your offline playing single player but your actions still affect the overall universe that Elite is doing is very good.

In fact, they also make the game respond to real life events by players. 

Example: They let a space station shut down because enough players were bringing toxic materials to said space station in hopes it would shut down the station.

Froniter either programmatically foresaw that or they watch players actions and respond.

Lord.Bachus

-Voice acting
-Steps away from the typical tab targetting of WoW clones
-More dynamic worlds 

The genre is still figuring out what way to walk... but atleast we are seeing some orriginallity in the latest games.

OfficerFriendlyEQ2

When the graphics stop looking like mine craft to more detailed surroundings and toon features

nomotag

Official private servers. You have mmo games (or mmo like games) they have offical servers, but your allowed your own unofficial servers to change settings and add mods. It's a throw back to the early early days when you could make your own MUD.

It's a win win as the dev doesn't have to pay for servers you the players have more control to change and tweek things.

cameltosis

To be honest, whilst there are a lot of things being done in the MMORPG genre to help it evolve, there hasn't really been much to help it evolve in the direction I would prefer. Combat is getting dumber, worlds are getting smaller and more linear, quests are just as boring but voice acting makes it take longer just to accept quests, pvp tends to get forgotten etc. 

The improvements I've seen since I started MMOs in 2003 that I have liked:

• Cosmetic outfits - a big part of MMOs for me is feeling attached and proud of my character. Cosmetic outfits go a long way to making this a reality, rather than using mismatched armour pieces for the stats. 
• Better PvP battlegrounds - sure, a lot are simple deathmatch / king of the hill but the designs are getting better. Despite swtor being a pile of turd, the battlegrounds were actually quite fun and interesting. 
• Solo Specs / Multispecs for Classes - I guess these have been around a while, but it now seems mandatory for every class to have a "solo" spec, i.e. DPS spec. This has removed a lot of the ballache of leveling group-focused classes, and as I hate leveling in modern mmos, this is very much appreciated!

There are a lot of innovations that LotRO introduced / used that I felt were great, but I haven't seen anywhere else so can't really say they've evolved the genre, but LotRO specific features that I feel were an improvement:

• In built voice chat - I credit this as the best thing to happen to pugs in lotro. Group content can be hard, trying to co-ordinate by typing is a nightmare. In built voice chat made leading groups soooo much easier and lotro, at least for the first few years, had a very healthy grouping scene. 
• Scaling Content - Skirmishes scale to level and group size. It is my belief that scalable content is the future and skirmishes were a good step forwards. Sure, the actual content of skirmishes wasn't that great, but it scaled well!
• Legacy Weapons - A weapon that earns XP, has skill modifiers, levels with you etc yeh, great concept. Became very grindy but I loved the personalisation. Before legacy weapons, my captain pretty much had to use halberds, but afterwards I could use 2h swords, halberds, 2h axes or go sword and board without many penalties. 

nariusseldon

stop being massively multiplayer, and become better, more convenient, instanced games. 

kjempff

Dynamic Events. GW2 did a good first attempt, but it can be done much better.
That is about the only "new" and "good" Innovation I can think off.

Kilrain

nariusseldon said:

stop being massively multiplayer, and become better, more convenient, instanced games. 

[mod edit] Different genres for different people. Why do people insist on changing a genre when they can create their own? Just silly.

kikoodutroa8

XP potions.

Phaserlight

Your question seems to be framed in terms of game design; I don't feel that I'm qualified to answer this, as my sample size is limited.  However, I will say that I greatly enjoy playing my MMORPG of choice over mobile, and look forward to playing it on a Virtual Reality deck.

nariusseldon

Kilrain said:

nariusseldon said:

stop being massively multiplayer, and become better, more convenient, instanced games. 

[mod edit] Different genres for different people. Why do people insist on changing a genre when they can create their own? Just silly.

You should ask website owners who do the classification, and the devs who change the design of the genre. I am not the one changing the labels here.

May be it is just convenience? If few gamers care about the strict definition of a genre, isn't it easy to just evolve into a broadened definition?

May be it is money? If the old design is not that popular, may be devs want a bigger audience, so they change the designs.

There may be a thousand reasons. But .. are you disputing that the genre is less massively MP, more convenient, and more like games in the recent years?

Mikeha

Action Combat is the only thing I can think of.

Dynamic Events need to be used in more games. 

Kilrain

nariusseldon said:

Kilrain said:

nariusseldon said:

stop being massively multiplayer, and become better, more convenient, instanced games. 

[mod edit] Different genres for different people. Why do people insist on changing a genre when they can create their own? Just silly.

You should ask website owners who do the classification, and the devs who change the design of the genre. I am not the one changing the labels here.

May be it is just convenience? If few gamers care about the strict definition of a genre, isn't it easy to just evolve into a broadened definition?

May be it is money? If the old design is not that popular, may be devs want a bigger audience, so they change the designs.

There may be a thousand reasons. But .. are you disputing that the genre is less massively MP, more convenient, and more like games in the recent years?

There are games that claim to be in the genre that are fogging people's minds about what an MMO is or should be, yes. 

Octagon7711

Elimination of kill stealing, I'm still surprised when I see it in a game now a days.

prizm1234

changing stats on your gear, i am probably one of the few that likes the mod system in SWTOR

Caffynated

I like that a lot of games are including large scale open world events that anyone can enjoy without having to organize a 50 man guild raid (though there still needs to be a place for that content). The ability to be solo leveling and suddenly be swept up in a huge event with random people is great. It could obviously be done better, but these sort of events were the high points for Rift (zone wide invasions) and Guild Wars 2 (world bosses) PvE.

laserit

I'm not sure I'd call this an innovation.

But I like how in ESO, I can get my crafting materials by deconstructing things instead of having to fully rely on farming nodes.

Just make some little things seem more plausible which in turn helps with my immersion.

rodingo

I'm glad to see B2P starting to get more traction recently.  Some games were just simply not worth a sub and F2P was just to sketchy in the past.  Of course now, F2P is starting to be done a little more decently in some games such as Rift, Path of Exile, and Tera but those games aren't really my bag.  Well Path of Exile kinda is.

nariusseldon

Kilrain said:

There are games that claim to be in the genre that are fogging people's minds about what an MMO is or should be, yes. 

Sometimes it is not the games that are doing the claiming. I remember some website was defending their decision to call Destiny a MMO while the devs of Destiny don't want to have anything to do with MMO.

Kyleran

MisterZebub said:

Since it seems anything I would have added has already been mentioned ... hmmm ... Jiggle Physics?

You know, that's a pretty good one.

  

I am Phenomenal

halldorr

I was thinking stuff like costumes slots and characters that let you be all the classes as opposed to alts (see FFXIV) but these aren't necessarily new but being used more. I couldn't think of any but there were some good ideas over on the Massivelyop article about this same thing this morning. I guess for me it would have to be crowdfunding. It works sometimes and it doesn't other times but it at least lets us see some different things from time to time.

Kyleran

Cash Shops, or more specifically, better ways to monetize games.

From the early days to just pay a sub, then came the cash shop, and now there are so many alternate payment models out there.

Pure Subs are largely gone, except for EVE and a few others, but we now have B2P, (a way to monetize cash shops up front) and a plethora of F2Try models that then offer patron subs, buying everything from gear slots, slot bars for your in game skills and abilities to so much more.

Now Dev's sell things such as SP boosters, gambling boxes, costumes, mounts, exp and healing potions, and of course, services such as server transfers, additional character slots etc.

I can't think of a single feature that has so thoroughly impacted the MMO landscape, you have preorders, early access, alpha access, kickstarters, (cmon, SC anyone, a legend in the making)  they even get people paying subs before there's ever a game. 

Clearly Devs have become very adept at monetization and they seem to find ever new ways every day.

True brilliance really, shows what you can do when you've got the right incentive.

Forgrimm

http://massivelyop.com/2016/02/23/the-daily-grind-whats-the-greatest-mmo-innovation-of-the-last-few-years/

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