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Has this genre lost creativity?
Angier2758
Member UncommonPosts: 1,026
I started playing MMORPGs when I was 16 back in 2000. Heck my first paycheck went to UO.. then a month later it went to EQ.
Want to know the saddest thing? The genre really hasn't gone anywhere. Nothing all that creative or original has happened. The worst part? MMOs that have came out recently have offered LESS. I see all the classic MMORPG arguements still floating around and really they are all pointless.
That's the bottom line on why WoW is so successful. Not only is the competition just bad or in a niche, but really nothing has changed much since EQ.
Comments
It's easy to forget that games that came out 5-10 years ago have had 5-10 years of polish and content piled onto them (and sometimes a few wrecking balls swung through them).
A game coming out today is starting from year 0 - it hasn't had time to accumulate the same worn texture.
I'd have to say yes it has big time. The main issues as to why it has lost creativity have to do with how hard it has become to pull off a successful MMO due to the development and cash cycles between concept idea and a launched title, actual success rate needed to achieve a solid pool of subscribers to continue to gain sufficient additional development funding of a MMO, and also the limits of technology itself on both the server side and client side of the gaming table. So in the end innovation and creativity in the MMO genre is basically a high risk venture which usually ends badly in many cases due to many variables which effect success so in the end most publishers and developers usually stick with what "works" to cut down on risk.
Games I've played/tried out:WAR, LOTRO, Tabula Rasa, AoC, EQ1, EQ2, WoW, Vangaurd, FFXI, D&DO, Lineage 2, Saga Of Ryzom, EvE Online, DAoC, Guild Wars,Star Wars Galaxies, Hell Gate London, Auto Assault, Grando Espada ( AKA SoTNW ), Archlord, CoV/H, Star Trek Online, APB, Champions Online, FFXIV, Rift Online, GW2.
Game(s) I Am Currently Playing:
GW2 (+LoL and BF3)
Complicated question. ^A lot to do with the above post and the market forces and development costs. MMORPGs are probably at the front line of those additionally exacerabates the issue for this genre. That said I still see a lot of small things in most mmorpgs that make me think the devs did a good piece of work there. I just think pulling ALL those into one game is the big hurdle and it's probably a compound problem hence to solve.
http://www.gdcvault.com/play/1014633/Classic-Game-Postmortem
Its even easier to forget that games are, in essence, a product in a market.
What you say is the same as saying
"well yeah, Im a new car manufacturer and I have made a car like the Ford model T, that goes for the same price as current cars. You cant pretend me to offer an up tp date car right? all cars started like Model T 100 years ago. so give me 105 years to catch up while you buy my car now".
The market is there, noone forces new companies to step in. But if they do, they are supposed to offer a product that at the very least can compete with the current at launch.
unfair? sure. not my problem.
For some reason I'll never understand, people agrees that the guy trying to sell the Model T should go bankrupt, yet when it comes to games they defend that the market should work differently...
The gaming genre in general is bland and lacking creativity. When a developer produces something that is unique and fun people respond and buy it. A good example of this is the game Portal. Portal did not have the greatest graphics. Portal had no big voice actors. Portal had no multi-player capabilities.... yet people picked up this game in hordes.
How about Minecraft. It's only in beta right now but it's already proving to be one of the most popular games on the market.
If you want to find the really uncreative genre look at first person shooters. The last innovative FPS was Modern Warfare (which people responded to and bought in waves). There is no good reason to get another FPS right now if you already have MW2. The same can be said for MMOs. If you have one there really isn't much a point in getting a new one.... unless you run out of content and need a filler.
Website: http://www.thegameguru.me / YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/users/thetroublmaker
Well some eg's of "innovation" or just good old "quality":
eg Shadow Cities: Uses GPS-location maps as the "mmo world" ~ have not checked if the combat/cash shop are any good but the design is very clever idea.
eg Dust 514: Joining a separate game to an mmorpg game Eve: Again it's a great idea of worlds crossing over
eg Guild Wars 2: I like the match-making between instanced gameplay and persistence as it solves the issue the other runs into and reinforces the 2 types of experiences so solo is improved and massively is improved, so solid story is improved and flexible world is improved.
eg Pocket Legends: Producing a mmo experience similar to diablo but with mmorpg elements for short bursts of gameplay on a small device and high performance is at least intellectually interesting even if you are not entertained by the game itself.
eg Wizardry Online: Perma-death rpg.
As for lack, that's easy to find with the tons of titles to pick which make it difficult to single out a concrete feature in anyone of these that says "I'm different this way" and not just gimmicky/marketing/token/visually different. So from that point of view it's a depressed market for creativity - yes.
http://www.gdcvault.com/play/1014633/Classic-Game-Postmortem
They nust be getting bad, because I would rather read these posts, instead of playing any of the games, sigh...
To put the boot on the other foot this time, games that seem to be making the same old game design choices or not taking golden opportunities:
WH40K: Dark Millenium: Going with 2 Factions (again) instead of eg multi-factions of >3 or 5, 7 etc...
SWTOR: Going with Trinity combat (less shooter inspired) and lack of dual avatar manifestations between PC and Spaceship
Perhaps these will turn out just fine, but a big name IP that tries to radicalize the vision of the world would be refreshing too?
Perhaps a small sandbox mmorpg will come along one day and surprise everyone in terms of what creativity can be done and done successfully?
http://www.gdcvault.com/play/1014633/Classic-Game-Postmortem
I don't know that the creativity is lost just the will to be creative compounded by the fear of lost money. Plus the insane demands that we the mmo consumer require. Creates a perfect storm of typical mmo design.
That's an interesting example of a product cycle to think about (it dominated its market for almost 2 decades before competitors finally forced the industry to move on ... but if you replace "Ford model T" with "Internal Combustion Engine" and you have a good example of what I'm talking about. There are other engine technologies which are more efficient and less polluting in the long run, but they have a hard time overcoming a hundred years of accumulated performance tweaks and manufacturing efficiencies of the design that emerged victorious in the early years.
lol, I hear ya
That would be nice, but I don't think so. I'm afraid that the MMO is a dying genre. They take too long & too much money to develop & they have a very low success rate. by the time they go live the tech they are based on is already starting to show it age. sooner or later (prolly sooner) the investers are going to stop putting money into them. its kind of inevitable. if SWTOR fails I think that may be the final straw, it's a very popular IP thats being developed by one of the best studios in the business and tons of money has been sunk into it. it that can't make it then what can? but if you go into any forum discussion about SWTOR you'll find muhc more negative than you will positive & that's not a good sign.
sorry for my doom & gloom but its just how I see it, if it continues the way it has been going, they will stop making them
No, they are slightly evolving as much as the proven market will allow.
Are there development teams out there with incredible, cutting-edge, new ideas? Absolutely. Can they get funded? No. Because we have shown what we will buy, in turn, that's what they make.
Happens all the time. "Give us something different from WoW!!" and then a company does just that. The response, "They should add more of these features like WoW has!!!" /cancel. At this point in the MMO market, no way in hell a producer/investor with any desire to make their money back is going to deviate from what has been proven to work. If people were really that sick of WoW, they would cancel their subs, and buy games that don't fit that mold. People aren't doing that.
MMORPG is a genre like any other genre of games. All the games within the genre will be strikingly siminlar. We just whine more about it because we devote more time to MMORPGs and want them to be everchanging. If you pick up an FPS, you expect that, an FPS. Same with the marketers idea of an MMO.
Have they lost creativity? No. Have they lost a pair of balls? Yes.
"sorry for my doom & gloom but its just how I see it, if it continues the way it has been going, they will stop making them"
Spin that wheel all you want, bottom line is that the MMO industry is bigger now than it ever has been. You'd have to be blind to not see that. Many, many forum types are significally detached from reality, however, paying waaay to much heed to the uniformed posts they read all day.
Perhaps this is the key point to focus on: a way to find a lower entry point.
I can see the basics of how to do this, a database structure of how to grow a world as a platform for minigames rather than as a standalone game that has to be released all at once in one engine - I'm just not quite energetic enough to take my ideas to the next level.
Spin that wheel all you want, bottom line is that the MMO industry is bigger now than it ever has been. You'd have to be blind to not see that.
sure its a big industry but its not particularly successful. in the last 10 years how many MMO's were released? how many of them even recouped thier investment? I can only count 3 WoW, EQ2, & COH/V, ok 4 if u want to include GW but thats only because it doesnt charge a sub. it remains a big industry because the few successes has show them that it is possble if they can just put together the right features but so far it hasn't worked out that way. How long do you think they can keep pumping money into something that fails more often than not?
Many, many forum types are significally detached from reality, however, paying waaay to much heed to the uniformed posts they read all day.
I agree with you. I'll reserve judgment till I get some playtime in. but the naysayers are very vocal and have proven to be able to poison a release in the past. just look at DCUO. that game was DOA & that was largly due to all the negative forum posts beforehand. I'm currently subbing on both the PC & PS3, I bought the PC version during the PSN crash only to have SOE go down the next morning, lol. the PS3 version is doing better than the PC version but thats not saying much. the PC version is a ghost town. total fail. the game is fun to play but who wants to solo an MMO? the same thing is happening to SWTOR plus you have the SWG factor. Star Wars & SOE just brings up too many bitter memories for some
ok, having said that, maybe what the industry needs is to crash. let it become a hobby horse genre again made by ppl who enjoy the games instead of all these businesses trying to make a buck.
Coloured the part I disagree with.
The whole MMo scene looks a little stale at the moment, certainly, but SWTOR isn't the only game around the corner. I think the reason people are getting down about it is because they are worried about the context of its release. If it was coming out in isolation, having a fully voiced world, and sci fi setting which is Star Wars, for crying out loud, there would be no problem. Combat a bit reminiscent of other games? Pah, no biggie. It's an MMO, that's the deal. The storyline and IP would more than make up for it.
However, this isn't the case. I think a lot of the problem is that people are looking at TOR, and then comparing it to other games, and finding areas where it doesn't quite match up. Not across the board, but in key enough areas (such as combat - a subjective one, admittedly) that the die-hard fans are getting a bit defensive, which only sparks off fears that it will tank because of hearsay that it will tank, based on rumours of speculation... argh. I can't honestly say that I expect to play TOR when it releases, but I don't wish the game or its fans any ill, and I think it will probably have at worst a solid release. But rumour begets rumour, you know?
I think, overall, people across the different game communities are getting a bit worked up. (Moreso since ther are a large cluster of MMOs which have just come out or are imminent.) There seems to be an assumption now that unless an MMO topples all other games from the market and makes them close, it has failed. In that scenario, games which have a niche following are dismissed as failures, and the things they excell at glossed over. In this way, a lot of creativity is bypassed by other games developers walking that fine line between not wanting to clone other games, and not wanting to take too many risks.
Then again, I say that as a somewhat avid GW fan, eagerly anticipating GW2. I can't claim to be unbiased, because ArenaNet's company purpose is to focus on innovation and creativity in the genre. There seems to be a heck of a lot of innovation coming with GW2. <shrug>
Reality Bites. I'm only Barking
I feel a lot like the OP
in fact i recently started playing EQ again as one last hurrah into the mmo genre..
The only game that really has any sort of hype factor for me atm is the game company RA salvatore created a few years ago.
I keep hoping for an epic forgotten realms style MMO.
From the way I see it, the whole industry has lost much of it's creativity, not just MMOs. 11 million people play WoW, so instead of trying to offer something new, all the people with money to invest are trying to emulate it's success, they don't dare make any major investment in anything too different.
The FPS genre is the same. Military style FPS games became popular, millions playing counterstrike, then Call of Duty, and suddenly almost all FPS games use a similar model, with only carrying two guns, real world weapons and realistic settings and all that. Nobody really dares inovate, because rehashing the old stuff is selling too well, and nobody wants to see if something different might just sell more.
It's a sad thing for those few who are looking for something different, and certainly some niche titles spring up in every area of the industry. The money goes into the clones though, so it's going to take an extraordinary niche title to break that mold.
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Currently playing: Rift
former player of: DAoC, Everquest 2, Guild Wars, SWG (pre-NGE), WoW, Warhammer online, LotR:O
The MMO industry is really just operating, or playing out, like any other type of business would. Take, for example, fast-food restaurants. Decades ago, they didn't really exist - until McDonalds came along. McDonalds wasn't a huge thing at first, but it quickly grew across the country and became a household name. The popularity and success of this restaurant sparked a wave of interest in similar types of restaurants - cheaply made food at cheap costs that can be ordered quickly. People who remember McDonalds from before they began changing will talk about how great the restaurant was when there was one size fry, one size drink - you get the picture. With the rise of competition, fast food restaurants drastically have changed since their beginnings.
The same goes for MMOs - they started out small, with only a small niche of players in the entire industry. They have now grown to include millions upon millions of players with literally hundreds of choices. Looking back, the industry has changed immensely in the past 5 years alone. Games such as WoW or EQ2 launched with a few handfuls of competitors; games launched now are pressured to compete with so much more right off the bat. Looking at the market, I would say there is probably an insanely higher level of stress involved in both the design and financial aspects of MMOs today.
But, to the point - I don't think MMOs are necessarily losing their creativity. There have been some truly great ideas released in the past few years across the genre. The market has just become much more competitive and strict in the past few years that developers are often faced with some hard decisions and rigid schedules.
Perhaps we'll see a rise of a new type of MMO in the next few years - sort of like the 'classier' fast food restaurants that have started popping up over the past decade or so.
MMO's have changed just as much if not more than any other gaming genre.
What has FPS gained in the last decade? Better graphics, better physics. FPS still have very little interactions with the surrounding world. Games like brink and dead island seem to be going in the right direction, but even then, the last 10 years have just been... better graphics or better physics. Hardly has there been innovation in the last decade. Think of how you play the newer "Call of Duty" series. It's nearly identical to the first "Counter Strike." Even "Bad Company 2" plays just like "Battlefield 2." Heck, some even prefer BF2 to BC2...
Sports games haven't changed much either. Better graphics, better physics. Customization and tuning are the only real features that have been polished up in the recent years.
MMO's have gained a few new features. Story mode, which to me hardly, existed within the last 2 decades of MMO's. Things are becoming much more dynamic, more so than in other gaming genres. The MMO genre is one of the few genres that is actually adding god networking to their games. Battles have gone from 5 players, to 60, and now in the hundreds... perhaps even thousands in a year or two.
I think tha main problem is just game motivation. FPS games have amazing stories and their skill level is nearly limitless. The more you play, the better you are. Not true with MMO's. They are generally capped somewhere pretty low. My younger sisters play end-game MMO's better than FPS games. Same goes with sports games. Learning a racing game or a sports game is much harder than learning to play an MMO, when it comes to skill.
When MMO's evolve into a genre that requires a high amount of skill to play, they won't seem so boring. To me at least. If WoW was re-cloned and based 80% on skill and tactics, it would probably be a revolution. Maybe...
Yes, it sure has lost it ever since WOW came out and other dev chasing it like fools. The next big thorn in the side for MMO's and gaming in general is the pathetic micro payment. Now you even get single player titles where once they'd put everything they'd done in, now you get some of it and rest inf download extra for small fee. I long for the day of Pc gaming where games came out and they were fresh and new ideas. At least we still have indie for some creativity. TOR not going work long term, that's one game that should have beem kept a single player experience. Bioware RPG making methods won't make for a full deep MMO you'll want to play for 5 years.
1. No housing - you put a bit of your own ideas into housing hence housing = immersion.
2. No real cultural immersion - which means for the newer players that when you pick a race, you should have an entire continent that ranges from your start level to completion that is all you people/faction, etc. Today, races are cosmetic. You pick the elf or human, etc., and then by level 15, for example, you are already cross questing against faction #2. This saves the developers lots of space and time. Sadly though? Dark age of Camelot had 3 realms - levels 1-50 each that were culturally unique. PvP was never me grinding down the road from town to see some max level arse hat pk'ing me - though I did have the option to go out into the frontiers and pvp or NON instanced battle grounds...which leads to 3.
3. Non instanced battlegrounds means that you have something to fight for in a particular zone (a center castle or keep for example)...and that battleground is NOT capped on players and does NOT end after a basic objective is completed. It's real warfare, complete with siege weaponry and the like ala Rome Total War. Non-instancing thusly equals immersion as opposed to say the video-game-esque' appeal of Rift (who's not in Azeroth?), and WoW - the instanced BG masters.
4. A reason to fight. Again, and this is more so a 3.b., most pvp games involve personal benefits. No one really cares if Bob's Rift or WoW guild is doing well in pvp - makes ZERO difference for the entire faction. Heck, no one even knows what you're doing unless they are with you or reading leading boards. In an immersive mmorpg - pvp should effect everyone. This means that if my realm holds more territory/castles, etc., that all of the people of that realm should benefit. This could be coin drop increase, more mana pool, more dps, etc. for the entire realm. And, as in Dark Age, there should be announcements when something important occurs - such as a castle being taken by a guild. They should be honored.
But hey, listen, I've been typing this exact same thing on forums over the years - and to no avail. Vanguard Saga of Heroes - they just didn't care - then they died. Age of Conan? Didn't care about all this immersion stuff - and now they are free to play in order to maintain, Warhammer? Made by some SOME of the people who worke on Dark Age - but mostly made up of people who had no idea what was going on - nearly dead. What a dreadfully boring game btw. Rifts had a thread that asked, "If you want RvR post here.." (in so many words that is)...875 pages later - there was still no rvr. Just instanced BGs.
Anyway, point is, developers only care as much as the players do. We aren't vocal enough as a majority, and we have been abused by developers and poorly made games for so long that we don't even know how much better it could be. The standard mmorpg rule should be: multiple factions, dozens of races and classes that are UNIQUE to those factions. So you if want the samurai realm and I want the viking realm - then it's ok. None of this "we have to have tauren paladins and dwarf shamans so everyone is happy" b.s. That's just vanilla - and the complete opposite of immersion.
/beating a dead horse.
Yes it clearly have lost it, but simply because RG was a master mind, and only because of this. He have brought almost more new ideas to the computer rpg genre than all the coders put togethers. And since the first really successfull mmo is based on his ideas, yes sure the genre lost his creativity. And not a small amount of it sadly. But really its just because creativity is missing all together, and when it happen it usually does in an explosive way. That how life is made mostly, richness is usually explosive for our loss and goodness. It probably wouldn't be as cherished if it wasn't that explosive.
These days it seems majority only want little cute big eyes child looking character mmo's everyday you see bunch of them and new ones comming everyday like a endless tsunami of mmo's on many sites bah:(
Soon in US and EU we only know asian made mmo's lol.
Or we get super easy instance themepark crap from US or EU bah:(
The traditional mmo's like uo-ac are less and less:(
And when its made, its made by small indie company who released a bugged or not complete game and its development go slow becouse no funds:(
Story isn't the only thing in the game, maybe you should read up on something before talking bad about it.
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