Post by Morreion on Jun 23, 2010 7:50:41 GMT -5
Justin Webb: The Top 5 Most Awesome MMO Thingies at E3
MMORPG.com columnist Justin Webb attended this year's E3 and sets his column's sights on the five best things that he saw last week in terms of MMOs.
Justin however had this caveat:
MMORPG.com columnist Justin Webb attended this year's E3 and sets his column's sights on the five best things that he saw last week in terms of MMOs.
Warhammer 40K's Costumes
Tera's Group Play
...Combat here isn't about switching on auto-attack and hitting your rotations. Instead it's about moving and dodging away from your foes. All the monsters in Tera have "tells" - animations that signpost when a big mega attack is about to happen. The key to success is to dodge out of the way and set up flanking or rear-guard attacks. Adding in dodges makes combat feel really dynamic; it makes you feel like you are actually doing something, like you are involved and important. It makes it feel like individual skill is important - a feeling that has been severely missing from MMOs of late.
The game play feels like something new. It's a fundamentally different way of playing an MMO. In a genre that is crying out for innovations, Tera's action-based positional skirmishing is startlingly fun to play and a breath of fresh air in the otherwise crowded TAB-to-Target MMO landscape.
...Combat here isn't about switching on auto-attack and hitting your rotations. Instead it's about moving and dodging away from your foes. All the monsters in Tera have "tells" - animations that signpost when a big mega attack is about to happen. The key to success is to dodge out of the way and set up flanking or rear-guard attacks. Adding in dodges makes combat feel really dynamic; it makes you feel like you are actually doing something, like you are involved and important. It makes it feel like individual skill is important - a feeling that has been severely missing from MMOs of late.
The game play feels like something new. It's a fundamentally different way of playing an MMO. In a genre that is crying out for innovations, Tera's action-based positional skirmishing is startlingly fun to play and a breath of fresh air in the otherwise crowded TAB-to-Target MMO landscape.
Rift's Rifts
...Yep. Rifts are Public Quests. However, they are public quests with all the "suck" removed. The rifts in Rift can occur virtually anywhere in the world. And, since they are dynamically generated, and not statically triggered or persistent world events (like WAR's PQs), they can be scaled and their frequencies increased or lowered. Rift's rifts aren't hard coded so they can have semi-random scripting variations, based on any number of variables. According to my handler, rifts can also modify the nearby environment if they are not closed quickly, changing the visual nature of the landscape. He also hinted that any game action that a player can fail (a crafting attempt, say) could trigger a mini-rift event using this dynamic system. So, fail in crafting your enchanted sword and accidentally summon an angry demon. I like it.
The secret of dynamic intelligent content creation is the Holy Grail for MMO developers. It looks like Trion may have solved it. Will the rest of the game be any good? Shrug. However, the rifts in Rift are a very-cleverly-done modification to an already good idea from another game - it's the first better iteration of PQs that I can think of. Linking this pervasive dynamic way of creating content directly into the world IP is genius ... and they haven't resorted to "phasing".
...Yep. Rifts are Public Quests. However, they are public quests with all the "suck" removed. The rifts in Rift can occur virtually anywhere in the world. And, since they are dynamically generated, and not statically triggered or persistent world events (like WAR's PQs), they can be scaled and their frequencies increased or lowered. Rift's rifts aren't hard coded so they can have semi-random scripting variations, based on any number of variables. According to my handler, rifts can also modify the nearby environment if they are not closed quickly, changing the visual nature of the landscape. He also hinted that any game action that a player can fail (a crafting attempt, say) could trigger a mini-rift event using this dynamic system. So, fail in crafting your enchanted sword and accidentally summon an angry demon. I like it.
The secret of dynamic intelligent content creation is the Holy Grail for MMO developers. It looks like Trion may have solved it. Will the rest of the game be any good? Shrug. However, the rifts in Rift are a very-cleverly-done modification to an already good idea from another game - it's the first better iteration of PQs that I can think of. Linking this pervasive dynamic way of creating content directly into the world IP is genius ... and they haven't resorted to "phasing".
The Agency's Gadgets
...Instead of having each class having a large amount of core abilities to choose from, The Agency has player's modifying their class's play style through the use of gadget items. Gadgets are class specific, and have abilities built into them. Equip the gadget and you get the ability - it appears directly on your character's hotbar. Many of these gadget abilities are particularly powerful.
While I won't go into too much detail here (Alan's article talks about gadgets in more depth), what is particularly fascinating to me is that, in The Agency, gear = talents. Of course, this could result in the game being a loot grind, where players try to complete uber builds by obtaining specific hard-to-find items. With little detail on how PvE operates, and the various mechanisms in which players accumulate loot, it's hard to say how this will pan out. What is interesting though is how you can dramatically change the play style of a particular class by the addition of certain equipped items. This certainly alleviates the problem some games have with their classes, in that they always play the same way. This kind of variety will certainly appeal to many gamers. However, we'll have to wait and see how SOE implements gadget itemization to know whether their game is a broken loot-acquisition grind mill or a joyous item-based progression of near-infinite play-style choices.
...Instead of having each class having a large amount of core abilities to choose from, The Agency has player's modifying their class's play style through the use of gadget items. Gadgets are class specific, and have abilities built into them. Equip the gadget and you get the ability - it appears directly on your character's hotbar. Many of these gadget abilities are particularly powerful.
While I won't go into too much detail here (Alan's article talks about gadgets in more depth), what is particularly fascinating to me is that, in The Agency, gear = talents. Of course, this could result in the game being a loot grind, where players try to complete uber builds by obtaining specific hard-to-find items. With little detail on how PvE operates, and the various mechanisms in which players accumulate loot, it's hard to say how this will pan out. What is interesting though is how you can dramatically change the play style of a particular class by the addition of certain equipped items. This certainly alleviates the problem some games have with their classes, in that they always play the same way. This kind of variety will certainly appeal to many gamers. However, we'll have to wait and see how SOE implements gadget itemization to know whether their game is a broken loot-acquisition grind mill or a joyous item-based progression of near-infinite play-style choices.
Justin however had this caveat:
Those of you paying attention will notice that this Top-5 list only has four things in it. I played a lot of MMOs at E3 this year and I've been really scratching my head trying to come up with a fifth thingie to add to the list. Overall, it was a very bad E3 for MMOs. Many of the games I played were absolute dogs. And while the games mentioned above might not themselves end up being super awesome, they do each contain a nifty feature or two that made them stand out from the other dross on display.
