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Which MMO(s) (conceptually) had the most potential to you?
Aeander
Member LegendaryPosts: 8,028
Title should be pretty self-explanatory, but this thread is essentially a thread of ideas. Which MMOs - in their marketing phase - had the most appeal to you? Which ones brought some cool concepts to the table? Which ones would you still use as a good example if you were to design an MMO yourself? Which MMOs, with more talented developers, would push the genre in ways that you'd like to see.
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My answer will probably be a bit of a surprise to most who know me. I believe The Secret World to be the MMO that made the best attempt to bring my personal design concepts and game desires forward.
No other MMO has ever shown such brilliant writing. NPC's are lovable, interesting characters. The story quickly shapes up to pack a serious punch. The only unfortunate quality here is that the player character is a typical silent turd, but the game almost redeems itself in how gloriously self-aware it is in making NPC reactions towards the player character downright bizarre and awkward.
Its approach to questing was rather unique and refreshing. Sure, it had a large number of generic MMO style quests, but it also had a great number of quests involve website-based research, stealth based quests, quests that were made interesting by environmental effects like darkness, and some downright difficult knowledge-based puzzles.
Its skill system of equipping actives and passives in a free-form two-weapon setup is brilliant and flexible, while bringing that rare combination of simplicity and depth. With more skills and more diverse and specialized lines, this would have been a real treat.
Its approach to separating aesthetics from performance is good, though the selection of skins was shockingly lackluster.
The key failing of the game was of course its developer, Funcom. Had a similar concept been pushed out with better funding and a more skilled team, this could have been an amazing title. With more skills, better update support, better PvP (and meaningful factions), some dynamic events to liven up the world, and a Bioware-style player dialogue system, I think this would have shined.
Comments
I agree with you on the Secret World. I was on the old forums WAY before the game was really officially announced. I think everyone there imagined a more sandbox world we could hang out in and explore... an interesting home away from home. While the game is pretty cool, it could have been a game people played daily for years, had it been built the way the people on the forums envisioned it.
My other choice is one most of you haven't even heard of because it was dead on arrival. SEED. I loved the cooperative and political ideas behind SEED, and the potential for amazing role play, and future exploration. Sadly, the devs just didn't have the ability to pull it off.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seed_%28video_game%29
TSW, ESO and GW2....
all ended up as good games, however they could have been great or awesome games...
TSW lacks in the Combat department
ESO should have been player faction based it should never had 3 set PC factions, .... (the rest of my gripes are slowly being repaired)
GW2 lacks any form of progression at max level, no gear progression, no character progression and no story progression (At release)
Best MMO experiences : EQ(PvE), DAoC(PvP), WoW(total package) LOTRO (worldfeel) GW2 (Artstyle and animations and worlddesign) SWTOR (Story immersion) TSW (story) ESO (character advancement)
Fallen Earth.
The setting is interesting, heavy emphasis on crafting, vast areas to explore, and faction based PvP. Unfortunately the technical quality was lacking in this game, including animations, combat, UI, etc.
In right hands this game could have been awesome.
TES:O for me. So much potential, so little variation from what we already have.
When I read the title announced, I was super excited. When I read more about what they wanted to create, I was quickly disappointed. I literally asked excited fans if this game took place in Azeroth instead Tamriel, could you tell it was based on TES games? None could answer.
What I enjoy about TES single player games is not found in this MMO. Basically, the "RPG" part.
- Al
Personally the only modern MMORPG trend that annoys me is the idea that MMOs need to be designed in a way to attract people who don't actually like MMOs. Which to me makes about as much sense as someone trying to figure out a way to get vegetarians to eat at their steakhouse.- FARGIN_WAR
i agree with TSW
for GW2, although what you say it is true and valid, i kinda like that there is one mmo at least, this way ... i personally like this aspect of GW2 ..... my thing with GW2, is the living story and temp conent updates they do .... although they are very good quality, i think what this game needs, is WoW like expansions with new zones, races, classes, weapons
Champions online is a game that had great potential for me, that sadly got wasted.....
All-time fave : City of Heroes/Villains
Played and returning from time to time : GW2, Tera, CO
Played: Aion, Archeage, DCUO, FXIV:ARR, Rift, SWTOR, TSW, Vindictus, Wildstar
Playing atm : WoW, Hearthstone, Tera, GW2
Yea Fallen earth was a decent game. Massive sandbox. I almost got to the point where I could craft a interceptor and I wasn't even halfway through the game. The UI was kind of simple with no combat animations, I agree with that. It need some type of player housing also. There was plenty of room for it, like a bunker or something. It had forts to defend in pvp areas, but that's it. Vehicular combat would have been sweet too.
Played:SWG(pre NGE/CU sucked)Yep its true, anyone who quit SWG because of the NGE/CU missed out on a much better combat system. DCUO, Fallen Earth, STO, The Secret World. Battlefield series. Planetside 2. Still playing SWG.
Trying hard to give my personal answer. After all we have hundreds of mmos on the list and I played every mainstream one of them except TSW.
I'll have to be honest with myself....Not one of them......My main attribute would be community. The only real community driven mmos were old school. I would still play them but THEY ALL WENT F2P. So basically I'm stuck with Vanilla WOW.
ESO: Hands down the most disappointing of all MMO's that I've ever played. I've played sooo many all the way back to Asherons Call, Underlight...etc.
I am a HUGE Elder Scrolls fan, I've owed every game, played them all the way through, and when this game was announced I pre-ordered the Imperial version as soon as it was available. I bought into the promise and the hype, and then when I started playing the Beta, I was so disappointed with the gameplay, graphics, and grouping. I told myself, well it's Beta, they'll fix it.
....they never did.
It's an average game, that could have exploded and been Amazing. Such a disappointment.
I thought Guild Wars had a lot of potential until I actually played it. The short skill list killed that game for me - quickly, and hard. Short skill lists equal absolute boredom for me now. And the game world was also horrible - unless you had a party, you would be completely alone in the game world.
I guess maybe its possible to work with realitive short skill lists and still make a complex combat system. All you need is make the skills change in what they're doing, depending upon the situation. For example a certain sequence of attacks might
Well the most potential, for me, was in Vanguard. It was a classic MMO "done right".
- It had static classes, and fully exploited the possibilities of having them. Meaning if you played a different class, you indeed had a very different character. Things that are important on one class would be completely irrelevant on another.
- It had a very complex combat system that offered many variables to consider. Like for example the weaknesses and exploits, though they never did as much as they originally planned with that one. Or, in another example, Rangers had series of attacks they would execute for special effects. Disciples had to do this all the time. Many classes had point systems of some sort for special abilities; some classes would have to think about them all the time (Monk, Disciple, Blood Mage), while for others it was really just some special useage they had to master additional to their standard attacks (Paladin, Druid). In case of Cleric, it was merely a limit to their turn undead ability. Another part was the stances - many classes would not use these at all, while others would constantly stance dance (Shaman). And so on and so forth. Of course there was also the standard stuff, like resistances to certain damage types, or critical chains, reactions, special abilities had prolonged cooldown timers etc. Mastering a class wasnt easy, I had improvements to my gameplay all the time.
- And then there was the dungeons and questlines, many of them very wellmade.
- And there was crafting, harvesting, and diplomacy.- Mounts, housing, ships, flying mounts.
- Excellent raiding.
- Huge gameworld.
Ah, I just miss this game.
Strange, I would call the Guild Wars 2 world one of its few standout strong points. Tyria is certainly among the most beautiful, well-crafted fantasy settings in the genre. Playing alone has a lot less to do with that than it does rewards distribution, at any rate. Most players are carrot-chasers, which means that, outside of dungeons and popular farming spots, the world can get lonely. That's no fault of Tyria's, but rather a failure on Anet's part to address reward issues.
only , EVE Online true open world sand box mmo focused on players interactions
I love TSW world setting but dislike cutt scenes,i agree they are awesome but it is mmo there is no place for it,just as story driven mmo is something what dislike in that genre.It is all for SP games not for mmo's.
You have a point there, but there are only two types of storytelling that actually fit the MMO genre - ambient / area dialogue (voiced) and observational storytelling (the act of uncovering story details through environmental details and watching events unfold).
Unfortunately neither of those storytelling forms have really been experimented with in depth. Quest text and cutscenes are more traditional storytelling forms, and thus see more use by the developers, but both break the flow. As bad as cutscenes are, however, they at least allow for a large degree of quality in a personal storyline experience, whereas quest text is nothing more than a chore that slows down gameplay to a crawl (often for no substance whatsoever) should a player decide to read them.
SWG - huge 'world' with equally huge amount of writings/movies/comics to draw lore and stories from. Great open ended game play. Managed, IMO, to create a very good mix of freedom of play style, risk vs reward, exploration, and the ability to actively change world events; while maintaining a fair (but not great, like Eve) player run economy with deep and meaningful crafting/business model.
Hugest dissapointment for me is Neverwinter. No other fantasy 'realm' I can think of can challenge Forgotten Realms for scope, diversity, or background lore. PWE made a closed in, instanced mockery of it, that makes me feel boxed in and not in any way a part of the realms.
I guess my dream MMO would be a game with play style and development philosophy of SWG, set in Faerun. Star Wars is great, for sure; but I just feel more attuned to fantasy settings.
I would have to say Archage was the one game that had a ton of potential completely squandered.
-Heavy emphasis on crafting
-Heavy emphasis on open world
-Heavy emphasis on meaningful pvp
-Heavy emphasis on GvG combat
This game had it all. A open sandbox world for folks to live in and enjoy. After patches bringing in linear questing as well as the multiple issues with hacking, botting and mismanagement of the game it's now a shadow of what it once was and could have been. In reading about this game years before hand I was extremely excited and felt that it was almost a return of a Shadowbane style MMO. Maybe even a combination of Shadowbane and UO in a modern MMO.
That dream has since sailed. I played the game for a couple levels and it just wasn't anything that it seemed it could be. Everything was blocked by patron status or the cash shop. Which wouldn't be an issue but with the issues they seem to have had with the cash shop and the P2W element creeping in, I don't have much hope at all for it. Maybe some things will be fixed in time but comparing this games conceptual phase to it's released phase, it is a stark distinction between the two.
Reading your first paragraph, my immediate and only response is TSW.
The marketing phase completely enthralled me, and still does. I still have all the trailers bookmarked, as well as some of Simon's music clips (Bitter Earth is amazing), and binge on TSW media every couple of weeks.
I'd never heard a whisper about the game until the marketing blitz just a couple months before launch. The game wasn't on my radar at all but I was so excited that I bought the Grandmaster pack. I've never regretted it.
There are only a couple things I thought Funcom did wrong with the game:
1. Character creation was incredibly bad in beta and wasn't improved until the week before launch. This turned off a lot of folks who never bothered to play.
2. Similarly, character graphics are wincingly poor in the cutscenes. While I love the voice acting and the stories, I mostly had to close my eyes so as to not be distracted by the poor graphics.
Unlike many others, I never had a problem with the combat and had a blast with the game. I also really like the way they converted to B2P. I wish content came out more often but am largely satisfied. There's so much potential with this game and where the stories could go!
YES! So sad...
I had high hopes for that one. As silly as it sounds, I was really hoping to go "shielding" down a snow covered mountain, along with all the other conceptually great ideas. Sadly things are the way they are.
No required quests! And if I decide I want to be an assassin-cartographer-dancer-pastry chef who lives only to stalk and kill interior decorators, then that's who I want to be, even if it takes me four years to max all the skills and everyone else thinks I'm freaking nuts. -Madimorga-
Archeage and Warhammer Online come to mind for me.
Archeage was such a breath of fresh air when it first got going, then Trion happened. Yes I know a ton of people give Trion a pass, but they mismanaged the hell out of that game, it is all cash shop. Never mind all of the ridiculous hacking and bugs, even without it the game would have imploded due to the cash shop.
Warhammer Online was a love hate relationship with me. The campaign system was a great concept and I put a lot of great times into it. Mythic happened to this one. Had a rocky release but then was fixed, then Mythic decided they knew better than everyone once again (hello Daoc) and revamped everything in a bad way. The game soon died after that.
Yeah, I agree with this too. If the game had been fully sandbox with better animations and combat it would have been a much better game. EVE in a post-apocalyptic world.
I emphasized the bits that I strongly agree with. In a MMORPG you make your own story.
Age of Conan. Easily.
That game had the lore, the characters, everything it needed to be so fucking badass. But man, it was so bad, SO SO bad.
"The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently."
- Friedrich Nietzsche
For me it was/is Gods & Heroes: Rome Rising.
I was part of the core tester group, before Heatwave bought it.
I really like the idea of having minions do your biddings, and you just stay behind with an overview of the battle. (was playing as a priest, so not mch damage for me to do).
And the idea of having 6-8 minions under your command in raids, and not to forget players would bring their own minions also, was very new to me.
Running around in the open landscape with 4 minions that all were different, some in their heritage other in their classes, was a huge success for me.
The last game that had something like that, was Kingdom Heroes(Commander or general could have 6 minions), but that was shutdown some years ago, ever since there have been nothing like it, which is sad.
This sums up my feelings on the genre quite perfectly.
Probably Vanguard.
Ironically it was also the worst MMO I've ever played. Funny how that works.