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What Cryptic can achieve where Arenanet missed
stormdrag0n
Member Posts: 3,222 Arc User
I was given a copy of GW 2 a few weeks back and asked to give my general impressions about the dynamic content, I was a casual player of the original game and was naturally interested to see where Anet would take the IP, especially given the MMO manifesto video which made some pretty grandiose claims.
Suffice it to say as usual the claims were just that, especially where the so called dynamic gameplay is concerned however I did come away with what I think Cryptic should try to avoid when trying to make an area dynamic and I thought it would be good to share those here.
First off busy Farmville type work isn't dynamic, it's Facebook game ported into a MMO and it really fosters loathing in the community, I wish I had a nickel each time I heard someone say:
"If I have to gather one more crop for a farmer I'm going to scream!"
Also, sending Zerg hordes and asking the masses to defend a windmill isn't dynamic content, it's tower defense game ported to a MMO. No one really cares what they are doing or why they are doing it, they just want it to end so they can get the reward, which kinda gives a vending machine process to something that was supposed to be fresh exciting and dare I say "dynamic."
No you might ask me why I say these aren't dynamic, well, because they are auto triggered when you step into an area which if you think about it is really not much different than clicking on an exclamation mark. True dynamic content would take multiple factors into account and it certainly wouldn't be enter this area and the event (the same boring HAMSTER event every time) begins.
When I gave my feedback my first question was, are we not quite there technologically where a developer can't make the so called dynamic content non-static? And I was told no, it was quite feasible but they felt that it would annoy the completionist and confuse some people.
Now maybe I'm off base here but , honestly isn't that a small price to pay for fostering the illusion of least of having a living breathing world? I mean here we are twelve years later and Fippy Darkpaw is still charging the Qeynos gate every ten minutes...it's just dressed up a bit different.
I think Cryptic really has an opportunity here to set themselves apart by setting content that seeks you out instead of you seeking it out and having at least some of that content based on who and what you are along with your previous decisions in past play sessions and while that may not be truly dynamic either it is emergent and I honestly think that is where more developers need to aim for.
Suffice it to say as usual the claims were just that, especially where the so called dynamic gameplay is concerned however I did come away with what I think Cryptic should try to avoid when trying to make an area dynamic and I thought it would be good to share those here.
First off busy Farmville type work isn't dynamic, it's Facebook game ported into a MMO and it really fosters loathing in the community, I wish I had a nickel each time I heard someone say:
"If I have to gather one more crop for a farmer I'm going to scream!"
Also, sending Zerg hordes and asking the masses to defend a windmill isn't dynamic content, it's tower defense game ported to a MMO. No one really cares what they are doing or why they are doing it, they just want it to end so they can get the reward, which kinda gives a vending machine process to something that was supposed to be fresh exciting and dare I say "dynamic."
No you might ask me why I say these aren't dynamic, well, because they are auto triggered when you step into an area which if you think about it is really not much different than clicking on an exclamation mark. True dynamic content would take multiple factors into account and it certainly wouldn't be enter this area and the event (the same boring HAMSTER event every time) begins.
When I gave my feedback my first question was, are we not quite there technologically where a developer can't make the so called dynamic content non-static? And I was told no, it was quite feasible but they felt that it would annoy the completionist and confuse some people.
Now maybe I'm off base here but , honestly isn't that a small price to pay for fostering the illusion of least of having a living breathing world? I mean here we are twelve years later and Fippy Darkpaw is still charging the Qeynos gate every ten minutes...it's just dressed up a bit different.
I think Cryptic really has an opportunity here to set themselves apart by setting content that seeks you out instead of you seeking it out and having at least some of that content based on who and what you are along with your previous decisions in past play sessions and while that may not be truly dynamic either it is emergent and I honestly think that is where more developers need to aim for.
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Neverwinter Thieves Guild
Himmelville - Are you easily frightened?
Click Here
On one side of the mountain, there were bones...
Touche Bro, i bought this also, with 3 day head start, which started yesterday 5pm ( i had this grand plan that beta would start tomorrow here at 5pm), i logged in, created a silvari Ranger, and logged out again, ive played the last couple of open beta runs, and i cant get into it, yeah a guildie was talking it up for me, i guess he was behind it as much as i am with this.
Agreed with everything you saidb:victory
I don't think it would take re-coding, but there could be adding elements like I mentioned, where the quest giver would seek you out or say you entered a tavern and randomly it would queue an event that may or may not be parsed....just small emergent events that could have huge payoffs.
An yes narratives and DM flavor text would go so very far, spot on with that.
I can understand that sandbox style game play in the vast wilderness of the MMO market would be hard to code. Frankly, I am bewildered that everyone keeps copying Everquest over and over again, but have yet to actually try and copy UO once. Now while I won't doubt that GW2 will bring in mass of people, after all, free is free and something as touted as GW2, despite NCSoft's very shady practices, will undoubtely draw a mass market appeal, especially since people seem to fancy sword and sorcery fantasy over any other type of genre when it concerns MMOs.
But I still can't, for the life of me, understand why no one has tried to repeat the success of UO? And I don't mean UO as it currently is, since they tried (and utterly destroyed themselves) to start copying the dynamic of Everquest, so I am left wondering exactly what it is about a true sandbox experience that really scares devs, to offer ever changing dynamic content in a living, breathing world. I can understand that sandbox games have way more permutations to deal with, but people seem to crave those make your own story type games more and more than having the story written for them lately.
I know I crave a game that is just like how UO was back in its hey day, maybe with a few more rules to keep certain play styles in check, but I am honestly sick of game worlds being built around me stepping on rides, as it were, and just waiting for it to end before I move on for a reward that is not unique because everyone else can get it to.
Interesting points, but honestly I think emergent and sandbox are by there very nature diametric, sandbox basically is making your own adventures with nothing more than the props and your community, emergent (or dynamic) game play throws you curve balls and those are usually of a scripted or AI nature, not that I'm dismissing sandbox both EVE Online and SWG (before the dreaded CU/NGE ) showed us those elements can be quite viable.
I think the very near future really goes beyond both the sandbox and the theme park to a virtual space where you just can't look up a quest walk through because you are never quite sure what is going to happen and until that happens the developers are going to be tasked with dealing with a very jaded audience that is sick of the same old vending machine concepts that are decades old.
Well, if nobody else is doing it, find a group of like minded others with the skills needed to do it yourself. Maybe as early as a year ago, I'd say funding would be hard, but with options like Kickstarter, even this is possible.
Respectfully to this community of course, if you get something going, let me know and Ill see if I can contribute! Just make sure you copy the POSITIVE things ONLY from UO, M'kay?
Failure (1): Both of those games are still available.
Failure (2): they almost always try to charge the same price.
Failure (3): the playerbase that is looking for a new game arent playing those gamesfor a reason
Failure (4): If you are going to copy a game make it better or free.
Failure (5): true innovation is generally overshadowed with bad gameplay.
Failure (6): Dynamic content is generally more than a gimmick.
Failure (7): Lack of content,eq/wow has been out for years they have content to offer.
To expand upon these 7 failures that mmo companies face ill start with the first one, why would anyone play a subpar copy of a game if the original is still available and the same price? they wouldnt. runes of magic has proven by numbers if you are going to try and copy another game make it free. a good example of gimmicky dynamic content is Rift, at first it seemed dynamic until you played for a month or so and noticed they always spawned on a timer and always in the same places, always the same rewards and difficulty. rift did ok for the first 4 months and then they went the way of wow catering to the casuals and started nerfing content to make it available to every player, thats when i quit. Tera failed due to a lack of content and huge publisher blunders like double charging alot of players and cancelling player accounts on accident. the secret world is already at the cusp of failure 2 months after launch due to much the same problem, lack of content and being pay to play. Omer from mmohut said it best years ago. free to play is the future of online gaming lets just hope cryptic can do this the right way. i want to see NWO succeed because frankly theres nothing on the mmo market that looks remotely interesting.
to me GW2 isnt worth playing simply because NCSOFT is involved and they have burned me twice already so i wont be touching their products.
so in closing i say this, until developers fix alot of the problems stated above they will continue to launch and fall flat on their face. players level much faster than developers plan for them to and easy solution is to hold your launch for another year and have atleast enough content to hold them over till you can get the next update out or do like Vanilla wow did and make the endgame so challenging it takes months to clear it the first time do what you must to give yourself time to add content before they can complete what you already have thats the biggest thing about keeping a player base, so long as you have content they have yet to beat they will remain interested. im sure i have missed quite a few other things that cause mmos problems these are just the reasons they have failed for me.
SAME
Too Right
While I agree with most of what you're saying, one unfortunate sound byte that a lot of gamers use is the very tired.
"Catering to casuals" (It sounds like a really bad indy band)
This has turned into the gamers version of "The man" it's such a nebulous term and is usually used a an admonishment or veiled insult. Yeah developers have opened up their games to be accessible by 90% of people with money who don't spend eight to twelve hours in Ninja Gaiden Sigma 2...the fact that these people have money is a big clue as to why they are doing that.
The industry as a whole is struggling and they are not struggling because they have turned their backs on the hardcores, that is popular perception but if you sit in on meetings and actually look at the metrics the issues are saturation and tacking on F2P after the game has failed it's original business model.
Ask any developers worth his paycheck and they will tell you Hardcore MMO players are like the Marines, they go in own everything call you weak then move on, in the past four years the so called casuals are the ones that stay the longest (because it takes them way way longer to complete the content) and spends the most money be it through subscription model because they haven't owned everything even a year later or through the cash shop because they can't resist that sparkle pony.
I think it's difficult to tell folks who are scared shirtless that they are going to be asking if you want fries with that next weekend that is bad to cater to a group of people that doesn't spend all their time ******** how wrong they are and wants to desperately shove money in their pockets.
For good or bad we are just not going to go back to the days where MMO's are hardcore centric. But honestly Lore from Tankspot said all of this better than I ever could.
So I really agree with you when you talk about developers making the same game over and over and using "Dynamic" as a catch phrase and really can't keep up with the content (no matter how old and tired it is) with established games, but all those good points are cheapened when you trot out "Catering to Casuals" Developers are going to code to the group of people that keeps them employed, it would be silly not to.
Those are all salient points, are you looking forward to Blizzard's next MMO too? I do remember reading an article by Blizz awhile back stating that from the beginning they were not trying to cater to the hardcore, meaning the people that race through the content in a week. Simply because the percentage of the playerbase that does that is so small. Most of Vanilla WOW players never saw the endgame you describe. To them the game never ends.
HAMSTER now I have to make a squatters rights mission in the foundry.
If your walking into a game expecting true dynamic experience then you are going to get disappointed every time. No game has ever been curtailed to a character... ever nor is it feasible I think. The only situation would be a live DM session which is not going to happen in an MMO. One will have to seek out quest or events. Also GW2 does have NPCs seek you out btw, but it's just a cry for help to any player in the vicinity.
It seems like your basing the entirety of the game off the most basic of basic DEs and that you never got past the first map. They are plenty of complicated events and the most top noch PvE questing out there and no one has seen the higher or even mid lvl events which they get more complicated as they go up. Sure it's pretty generic, but all things are generic as we've pretty much seen them all already in one game or another and only a fool would think that Neverwinter will be any different in terms of quest objectives. And in GW2 it does change over time, different BWE provided different events (some are repeating but also new ones and some gone). Yes there are zerg like events but that will be in any situation where there is a HAMSTER load of players around, it impossible not to turn to a zerg with encounters that scale.
You have expectations of a small group experience that is curtailed to that group individually and comparing to to something on a whole different level/scale. And I find GW2 the most leaving breathing world experience yet as events are happening and can impact the area. Some are static with no impact while others have ramifications which is seen a lot more later in levels.
My worry for Neverwinter is the content. With the Foundry I worry that Cryptic will do their campaign quests (which will be the same story no matter how it was player or what class plays it) that will not be substantial and really rely on the players to make the content which is a mixed bag as you'll have some great authors while I would expect a lot of mediocre authors.
But really the playstyles of these games are completely different and really DEs is not something that is applicable to Neverwinter. Neverwinter is user generated instanced content while GW2 is non isntanced content that pulls players together that reinforces teamwork and the MM in MMO whie Neverwinter is still an OMG like most "MMOs."
Wow....
Okay you are defending GW2 like I'm bashing it, which isn't the case, what I am saying what is being called dynamic these days really isn't they are just public quests; that doesn't mean that GW2 is fail or wrong or bad, heck from last report over two million people are playing it, so you really don't need to defend your game.
And yes it is feasible, I'm currently working with a developer that has actually developed a object oriented system that adds a whole new level of dynamism by encapsulating data and logic neatly within many objects. This can allow for tracking of personal and group quest and add in events depending on a set number of variables and while it isn't completely dynamic it is a huge step in the right direction and I really feel that Neverwinter is a great candidate such a mechanic given the foundry and small group questing philosophy.
So yes it is applicable.