Well, now what?

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Jackie Treehorn

<Gold Donor>
2,906
7,478
Titan is the only thing I'm even remotely excited about. I tinker with wow now and then but get bored quickly. I don't know if my gaming days are coming to and end or if its a result of getting older or what.
It's been an interesting year for me and gaming.

I've probably played less than 30 hours of games since December. Not that I've ever been super addicted to games, but that's certainly the least amount I've played in a long time. I uninstalled Steam some time ago. I played WoW briefly last year when MoP came out (super casual, couldn't even take doing the LFRs more than a handful of times) and I played around with the EQ guild on test briefly. I don't even know WTF Titan is, I barely read the game sections here anymore.

The only thing I'm looking forward to is GTA V.
 

Rhuobhe

N00b
242
1
GTA 4 was such a disappointment. I don't see how 5 will be any better.

They should just give us a solid remake of Vice City and call it a day.
 

Caliane

Avatar of War Slayer
15,318
11,606
TITAN.

It will set us free, hopefully. Probably : /
rrr_img_24152.jpg


rrr_img_24152.jpg
 

Kharza-kzad_sl

shitlord
1,080
0
BTW, the next consoles are likely using this new shared memory architecture that AMD is making. The GPU will start becoming really useful for doing more general heavy lifting work without having to copy memory around all over the place. This is especially critical on mmos where almost everything now is limited by the number of individual draw calls (not necessarily scene complexity).

My concern is that it is so different from today's stuff that you'll almost need to require the new hardware, or do some sort of hacky legacy support. I've also no idea how a pc coder will make it all go. It might end up being like the old days with an ati set of code and an nvidia set of code.
 

Seananigans

Honorary Shit-PhD
<Gold Donor>
13,682
34,157
I don't have a clue how any of you can be optimistic about Titan at this point in time. There's basically zero information about what it even is, and when all you have to go off of is the state of modern day Acti-Blizzard... haha yeah right.
 

Itzena_sl

shitlord
4,609
6
I don't have a clue how any of you can be optimistic about Titan at this point in time. There's basically zero information about what it even is, and when all you have to go off of is the state of modern day Acti-Blizzard... haha yeah right.
Because every other "WoW-killer" to date has cratered they turn to Blizzard themselves to kill WoW.
 

Neranja

<Bronze Donator>
2,628
4,192
Because every other "WoW-killer" to date has cratered they turn to Blizzard themselves to kill WoW.
At this point it looks like Blizzard are doing their hardest to kill WoW themselves - with just WoW. I don't even understand why Blizzard, the king of copying and refining game systems hasn't incorporated some sort of dynamic scripted events and public quests like WAR, Rift oder GW2. Bonus points if they actually require some sort of player cooperation. Instead you get some rare spawns and a random selection of dailies for the current faction. That would spice the otherwise static world a bit up so you never know what to expect when heading out there.

For example, the war in the southern part of pandaria could have been some event like the centauren attacks in queensdale, when they take over certain strongholds on the map if you don't drive them back, with random attack and counter-attack waves that play out even when no players are helping/defending. Something like a mix of Arathi Basin and Alterac Vallay in the open world, giving VP/Honor if you kill the stronghold boss and take it over. With NPC battles.
 

Zanaver_sl

shitlord
12
0
I don't even understand why Blizzard, the king of copying and refining game systems hasn't incorporated some sort of dynamic scripted events and public quests like WAR, Rift oder GW2.
because warcraft's community isn't about open world gaming, its about quick instances and quick loot.
 

kitsune

Golden Knight of the Realm
624
35
because warcraft's community isn't about open world gaming, its about quick instances and quick loot.
all about filling that valor cap as quick as possible. Just look at chapter 2: a test of valor. Grind 6 weeks straight for a quest
 

xzi

Mouthbreather
7,526
6,763
I would probably resub to WoW (for about a month) if they added in public quests/scripted events like that. But like the two above said, people just want their loot as fast as they can get it, they won't give a shit about any of that unless it's got shinies that out-shiny their shinies that they just obtained 3 days ago.
 

Mahulk_sl

shitlord
37
0
For years now the MMO community has been talking about a "next-gen" MMO. A game that will bring that gaming genre to a new level. Game promoters even use the term in their marketing pitch. People have different opinion about what makes a game "next-gen", a core feature, a subscription model, a new technology. My vision is about the game model.

I have been playing MMOs since 1999 and have played a lot of different games. All those games were similar in their game model; a company creates a game and all the tools to manage content creation, buy or rent a bunch of servers to run the game on and offer gamers a few generic rulesets of their game. Then a few years later, small communities unlock the mysterious black box that is the server of a game through reverse engineering and begin to offer gamers with various niche versions of the original game. Now, depending of a vast amount of factors (success of emulated servers, code availability, health of the original game, philosophy of the comany behind the game, etc.) the company will fight, or not, those small communities of gamers.

I asked myself; what if? What if a company would embrace those small communities and help them flourish instead of fighting against them. What if they would give those armchair developpers some insight of their game, tools and support to better understand the beast they are trying to tame.

One of the argument for user-created content always have been the amount of content it generates. Of couse, the first counter argument was always about the quality of that content, but people have very different taste and having a lot of choice can only be a good thing. If you are somewhat familiar with emulated servers in the MMO world, you know that a bunch of them are really bad, but you probably also know that some of them are incredible gems with a really good small team of programmers, DBAs and tech-savy people with a working brain. They create small communities that sometimes rival the original game with barely any money or help. They are on their own and successfully developped a modded game of their own.

The phenomenon is pretty old, but is still largely marginal especially in the MMO genre where the game is so vast and the engine under it so complex... but what if a gaming company would came up with the idea of teaming up with those small communities to offer a pletora of niche rulesets servers that no other company could rival... could we talk about "next-gen" then?
 

TecKnoe

Molten Core Raider
3,182
51
I don't have a clue how any of you can be optimistic about Titan at this point in time. There's basically zero information about what it even is, and when all you have to go off of is the state of modern day Acti-Blizzard... haha yeah right.
i tried talking to my gfs brother and friend about this, they are all "OMG TITEN = NO LIFE OR GURLFRIEND" and i point out diablo 3 how bad sc 2 was, how bad WoW is doing now etc, and they just blindly defend blizzard, "diablo 3 wasnt blizzards main focus" "starcraft 2 wasnt blizzards main focus" "Titan is blizzards main focus now after WoW" are the generic arguments i get.

They are also younger than me and to this day still play WoW so maybe its a mindset thing that i wont blindly go for a blizzard tittle anymore or be outward optimistic about it ever again, after the disaster that was diablo 3. One of their main arguments is that blizzard has been working on this for like 7 years, so then i insert D3 was in production for almost 12-13 years and look how that came out, and i get the same response "wasnt blizzards main priority"
 

DMK_sl

shitlord
1,600
0
For years now the MMO community has been talking about a "next-gen" MMO. A game that will bring that gaming genre to a new level. Game promoters even use the term in their marketing pitch. People have different opinion about what makes a game "next-gen", a core feature, a subscription model, a new technology. My vision is about the game model.
?
An MMO that bases itself around minecraft as it's foundation will be the 'next generation' MMO. Give people the tools which enable creative freedom with enough restrictions to keep a small amount of structure.

In my opinion devs have been giving the player less and less freedom over the years and any MMO that tries to offer freedom doesn't give you the tools needed to use that freedom. I agree 100 percent with you. Devs should focus on nurturing a communities growth instead of trying to control it. Instead of thinking huge numbers makes community focus on small pockets. IE Servers of 300-400. The catalyst in completely destroying community in WoW was cross-server LFD. I'm not saying LFD isn't a good feature simply saying that it ruined community.
 

Flight

Molten Core Raider
1,230
288
I don't know if my gaming days are coming to and end or if its a result of getting older or what.
Diablo 3 and Sim City have killed a part of me after waiting for them for so long.

On the bright side they were so bad that it can only get better. I hope ......
 

Aaron

Goonsquad Officer
<Bronze Donator>
8,733
20,464
For years now the MMO community has been talking about a "next-gen" MMO. A game that will bring that gaming genre to a new level. Game promoters even use the term in their marketing pitch. People have different opinion about what makes a game "next-gen", a core feature, a subscription model, a new technology. My vision is about the game model.

I have been playing MMOs since 1999 and have played a lot of different games. All those games were similar in their game model; a company creates a game and all the tools to manage content creation, buy or rent a bunch of servers to run the game on and offer gamers a few generic rulesets of their game. Then a few years later, small communities unlock the mysterious black box that is the server of a game through reverse engineering and begin to offer gamers with various niche versions of the original game. Now, depending of a vast amount of factors (success of emulated servers, code availability, health of the original game, philosophy of the comany behind the game, etc.) the company will fight, or not, those small communities of gamers.

I asked myself; what if? What if a company would embrace those small communities and help them flourish instead of fighting against them. What if they would give those armchair developpers some insight of their game, tools and support to better understand the beast they are trying to tame.

One of the argument for user-created content always have been the amount of content it generates. Of couse, the first counter argument was always about the quality of that content, but people have very different taste and having a lot of choice can only be a good thing. If you are somewhat familiar with emulated servers in the MMO world, you know that a bunch of them are really bad, but you probably also know that some of them are incredible gems with a really good small team of programmers, DBAs and tech-savy people with a working brain. They create small communities that sometimes rival the original game with barely any money or help. They are on their own and successfully developped a modded game of their own.

The phenomenon is pretty old, but is still largely marginal especially in the MMO genre where the game is so vast and the engine under it so complex... but what if a gaming company would came up with the idea of teaming up with those small communities to offer a pletora of niche rulesets servers that no other company could rival... could we talk about "next-gen" then?
I like this concept, and to some extent this is what you see in games like Minecraft (though they technically aren't MMOs). The only problem really would be how the original creator would make money off this, as I have a feeling this is what is the main driving force AGAINST this sort of thing now. Take WoW server clones that keep being shut down. I think the only reason is so that the real WoW has no competition that may draw subs away.

A slightly different model (and still technically not an MMO) is Path of the Exile which has lots of different modes to play (normal, hardcore, elimination, whatever). They are quite open and it wouldn't surprise me if they tried out new modes that the community suggested, though they may not actually allow 3rd party servers to do this.

Again, the main things that I see limiting the desire for *developers* to do this is 1. how to monetize it and 2. how to retain some sort of control of it. By control I mean turning a game into something totally obscene, or even illegal (as in WoW turning gnomes into childeren that you can kill, or some shit like that).

If you can find a way to solve those two items you could probably pull something like what you describe off.
 

Gecko_sl

shitlord
1,482
0
An MMO that bases itself around minecraft as it's foundation will be the 'next generation' MMO. Give people the tools which enable creative freedom with enough restrictions to keep a small amount of structure.

In my opinion devs have been giving the player less and less freedom over the years and any MMO that tries to offer freedom doesn't give you the tools needed to use that freedom. I agree 100 percent with you. Devs should focus on nurturing a communities growth instead of trying to control it. Instead of thinking huge numbers makes community focus on small pockets. IE Servers of 300-400. The catalyst in completely destroying community in WoW was cross-server LFD. I'm not saying LFD isn't a good feature simply saying that it ruined community.
Freedom means less control which means less capability to sell stuff or lock down things.

I think Neverwinter is a great step in the direction of freeing players and having them add content. It certainly isn't a completely open dynamic world, but it's allowing for player content.

The problem with MMOs becomes one of revenue, and return on investment. We want these giant dynamic server based worlds with tons of features, and we want to be empowered, but at the same time we want the normals to be able to play and not have these areas devolve into the cesspools of the Zeks or the Dreds. There also needs to be some way to recoup money and sell content, which is difficult to design when ones players are essentially doing all the lifting.