Well it's hard to blame Bioware for sticking to the leveling system, since they've basically done d20 ports in most of their games. It's a system that has worked for a long time in DnD and still hasn't changed. That's not to say that innovation should be shunned, but rather that Bioware isn't looking for a revolutionary format of character development that some of the more respected names in RPGs have stuck to: Wizards, Blizzard, Bethesda, to name a few.
What they ARE looking to revolutionize is how an MMO is going to FEEL. I'm kind of like you, actually. The reasons that I became jaded with MMOs in general was because there was little beyond the gameplay aspect, be it combat, character development, or PvP. Menial tasks (I'm thinking primarily killing monsters and dispatch quests) to obtain experience to improve your character were give such shallow context that it was equivalent to no context at all. I won't even touch the subject of grinding. Granted, there were some inventive quests that I played in WoW, but they all seemed so insular and insignificant in the grand scheme of things. Indeed, they were, because there really WAS no grand scheme. It all boiled down to: Arthas left the world in chaos...let's muck around in the chaos and kill things for people to make them happy. And it was only slightly different on either side, much less the races. Correct me if I'm wrong, but the Burning Crusade didn't add much, and the Wrath of the Lich King comes too late (for me at least) to add a coherent storyline if it does at all.
So you have to ask yourself: is the reason that people rushed to endgame with alternate characters (or even their first ones) due to the leveling system, or because there really wasn't much to the game beyond getting better stuff with high-level characters so you can look all shiny and kill people/things better? And as a result, much of the interest in the endgame is going and killing high-level stuff with other high-level characters, preferably in guilds to make it easier to find people. And thus we have the beginning of guild drama, almost a necessary resort when endgamers don't have much else to do.
I really think that's the area that Bioware is trying to bring to the MMO arena. They've had experience with creating games that have focused on stories and context. If you need convincing (I hope you don't), just try Knights of the Old Republic or Baldur's Gate 1 or 2, if medieval's more your style. By creating a game that is so content-oriented such that every class on either faction and each moral path will get different stories, there is a HUGE number of possibilities that can be explored. Not to mention, when things you do or say before or after a quest have an effect on what happens to you, characters are being developed in the process. People replaying the game with alternate characters won't have to rush through the game to level up because, although the places they see won't necessarily be new (although I suspect there will be new places for you to explore if you follow a different path - it would only make sense), they'll be basically playing an entirely new game with the same game mechanics they were used to.
I expect that they'll probably keep some of the endgame aspects of WoW, just because that IS one of attractions of continuing with the game: you get to feel extra special and extra powerful. You can go conquer big nasties, see lots of cool special effects, overcome a difficult boss, and get even shinier stuff, as gamers are so wont to do. But what Bioware doesn't depend on is just adding more and more stuff for the endgamers to do just to keep people interested, or higher levels for people to achieve. They assume that people will want to explore more of the game world by playing other classes, and thus other stories. And even better: guilds and groups will consist of multiple people, each with their own special story based upon their decisions in the past, playing together to do bigger things (I assume there will be an over-arching story of the Sith v
Hmm...in retrospect my statement about '"ordinary" talk' is confusing. By that I mean the everyday chatter you hear on the streets, the lines Niko yells out when he hits a pedestrian, etc.
Agreed. While in some sense video game voice acting is similar to animated films (especially with all the "ordinary" talk that is on GTA4), it's not exactly the centerpiece of the game. It's the animators, the game designers, and the programmers that create the bulk of the rest of the game, since games are interactive, rather than the almost half-half split that you see in movies: half acting, half animating. So for the amount of work he does and for the part that he plays in the creation of the game, Hollick gets paid pretty well compared to the other people working on it.
Maybe actors and programmers could broker a deal that if a game breaks a certain threshold of sales, they would start getting small percentages of the profits above threshold?
The July 20, 2007 edition of Time magazine ran a 10 question interview with Miyamoto. The questions came from various specific people wanting to get an answer from the head honcho himself. I'm just listing two of the relevant ones.
"Q:What do you say to the gamers who accuse Nintendo of catering to the casual gamer and not the hardcore gamer?
A: At E3, I was a little concerned about defining people as a hardcore gamer vs. a casual gamer. But there are hardcore gamers who play a lot of casual games. Nintendo's focus is to break down the barriers between those two groups and consider everyone just gamers.
Q: Many criticize the reuse of franchises like Mario. Do you prefer to create new characters or work with old ones?
A: I try not so much to create new characters and worlds but to create new gameplay experiences. If a new experience is better suited to a new type of character or world than one of our existing franchises, then we might create a new character or world around it."
Hmmm...maybe it's just my luck, or maybe it's my compulsive must-get-everything-done-and-pwnzors-everything-in -RPG syndrome, but I've found Oblivion to be quite satisfactory in terms of monster auto-scale (weapon enchantments = good). I think it was kind of a daring move by Bethseda, departing from the usual standard of RPGs being area-based with the "newbie areas" to the "super-hard bosses areas." And, looking at their goals to be "realistic" you would expect to be fighting some things that are slightly difficult and some that are relatively easy in a fantasy-type world. It's not like at level 20 you stop finding rats and wolves out in the wild.
But I agree. Porting Morrowind to the 360 is a great idea. Morrowind was *almost* Bethseda's claim to fame, and it's great to be able to play a classic on a newer system.
I'd rather not take a good looking game (albeit with a theme that seems rather pertinent to our times) and extrapolate that to Christian vs. Muslim or US vs. Iraq. Playing an assassin is a relatively popular concept among gamers, and this is only a translation in time...forwards or backwards remains to be seen.
And before we assume, let's research the Encyclopedia of Nearly Everything. Wikipedia says about the Hashshashin, the group that Altair in the game is affiliated with: "The Hashshashin (also Hashishin, Hashashiyyin or Assassins) was a religious sect of Ismaili Muslims from the Nizari sub-sect. They had a militant basis which was employed in various political or religious purposes. They were thought to be active from 1090 to 1272. This mystic secret society was known to specialize in terrorising the crusaders with fearlessly executed, politically motivated assassinations. Bernard Lewis however states that unlike the popular belief, their efforts were not primarily directed at crusades but against Muslim rulers whom they saw as impious usurpers."
Plus, I believe I read somewhere that Ubisoft is taking great pains not to make this a religiously explosive or controversial. Now, if your choice is to avoid playing the game due to discomfort of the setting, that is perfectly fine (if you happen to not like being a Muslim killing Crusade leaders - which is only one part of the game that we know about...there may be more). But it's not alright to jump to the "Hashshashin in the 1191 equals Al Quaeda or Shiite" train of thought. Just like it's not alright to think "Crusaders in 1191 equals Southern Baptist or Methodist."
I don't think Blizzard is looking to revamp Starcraft's game structure or type. Starcraft was always build your base(s) at the right time, upgrade your units at the right time, mass the right units to counter your enemy (that you have checked out at the right time), and manipulate your troops into the right locations to have the upper hand. It was the epic battle on a specific location: the battlefield. There was no multiple-galaxy army building, no economy or taxes or keeping the civilians happy, etc. And that's the feeling that Blizzard wants to keep, with better, smoother graphics, some balance tweaks, new troops to play with for new strategies, and some nice lookin' explosions.
Thus, Starcraft II is incomparable to Total War (with turn-based continental strategy...only some battlefield tactics, which can be skipped) and EVE (an MMO...enough said). There are a lot of types of strategy games, and even the real-time ones have different quirks. There's not enough from the screenshots to tell what these quirks in the new Starcraft may be, so I'd say: play it before you nay it.
Nicely put, mostly. Although the last replier did bring up a decent point about how O'Connor was trying to add a bit of humor in.
Mostly, Miyamoto's statement in summary was: "Hey, I make whatever I want to make, because I think that's cool and creative. I don't want to make another FPS."
O'Connor's response was: "We don't want to make a plumber platformer."
Quite legitimate comments on both sides, although out of context, they may seem a bit harsh and petty.
And, really, Nintendo does extend their franchise. How many Mario games/sequels are there? Not that that's bad: that's just business.
And all those copies-sold comparisons: How do you expect Halo (which has been on the market for only about 6 years) to compete with Mario, who has existed since 1981? That's just a silly comparison. They're both excellent franchises in their own rights, and they don't really NEED to compete.
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Well it's hard to blame Bioware for sticking to the leveling system, since they've basically done d20 ports in most of their games. It's a system that has worked for a long time in DnD and still hasn't changed. That's not to say that innovation should be shunned, but rather that Bioware isn't looking for a revolutionary format of character development that some of the more respected names in RPGs have stuck to: Wizards, Blizzard, Bethesda, to name a few.
What they ARE looking to revolutionize is how an MMO is going to FEEL. I'm kind of like you, actually. The reasons that I became jaded with MMOs in general was because there was little beyond the gameplay aspect, be it combat, character development, or PvP. Menial tasks (I'm thinking primarily killing monsters and dispatch quests) to obtain experience to improve your character were give such shallow context that it was equivalent to no context at all. I won't even touch the subject of grinding. Granted, there were some inventive quests that I played in WoW, but they all seemed so insular and insignificant in the grand scheme of things. Indeed, they were, because there really WAS no grand scheme. It all boiled down to: Arthas left the world in chaos...let's muck around in the chaos and kill things for people to make them happy. And it was only slightly different on either side, much less the races. Correct me if I'm wrong, but the Burning Crusade didn't add much, and the Wrath of the Lich King comes too late (for me at least) to add a coherent storyline if it does at all.
So you have to ask yourself: is the reason that people rushed to endgame with alternate characters (or even their first ones) due to the leveling system, or because there really wasn't much to the game beyond getting better stuff with high-level characters so you can look all shiny and kill people/things better? And as a result, much of the interest in the endgame is going and killing high-level stuff with other high-level characters, preferably in guilds to make it easier to find people. And thus we have the beginning of guild drama, almost a necessary resort when endgamers don't have much else to do.
I really think that's the area that Bioware is trying to bring to the MMO arena. They've had experience with creating games that have focused on stories and context. If you need convincing (I hope you don't), just try Knights of the Old Republic or Baldur's Gate 1 or 2, if medieval's more your style. By creating a game that is so content-oriented such that every class on either faction and each moral path will get different stories, there is a HUGE number of possibilities that can be explored. Not to mention, when things you do or say before or after a quest have an effect on what happens to you, characters are being developed in the process. People replaying the game with alternate characters won't have to rush through the game to level up because, although the places they see won't necessarily be new (although I suspect there will be new places for you to explore if you follow a different path - it would only make sense), they'll be basically playing an entirely new game with the same game mechanics they were used to.
I expect that they'll probably keep some of the endgame aspects of WoW, just because that IS one of attractions of continuing with the game: you get to feel extra special and extra powerful. You can go conquer big nasties, see lots of cool special effects, overcome a difficult boss, and get even shinier stuff, as gamers are so wont to do. But what Bioware doesn't depend on is just adding more and more stuff for the endgamers to do just to keep people interested, or higher levels for people to achieve. They assume that people will want to explore more of the game world by playing other classes, and thus other stories. And even better: guilds and groups will consist of multiple people, each with their own special story based upon their decisions in the past, playing together to do bigger things (I assume there will be an over-arching story of the Sith v
Hmm...in retrospect my statement about '"ordinary" talk' is confusing. By that I mean the everyday chatter you hear on the streets, the lines Niko yells out when he hits a pedestrian, etc.
Agreed. While in some sense video game voice acting is similar to animated films (especially with all the "ordinary" talk that is on GTA4), it's not exactly the centerpiece of the game. It's the animators, the game designers, and the programmers that create the bulk of the rest of the game, since games are interactive, rather than the almost half-half split that you see in movies: half acting, half animating. So for the amount of work he does and for the part that he plays in the creation of the game, Hollick gets paid pretty well compared to the other people working on it. Maybe actors and programmers could broker a deal that if a game breaks a certain threshold of sales, they would start getting small percentages of the profits above threshold?
The July 20, 2007 edition of Time magazine ran a 10 question interview with Miyamoto. The questions came from various specific people wanting to get an answer from the head honcho himself. I'm just listing two of the relevant ones.
"Q:What do you say to the gamers who accuse Nintendo of catering to the casual gamer and not the hardcore gamer?
A: At E3, I was a little concerned about defining people as a hardcore gamer vs. a casual gamer. But there are hardcore gamers who play a lot of casual games. Nintendo's focus is to break down the barriers between those two groups and consider everyone just gamers.
Q: Many criticize the reuse of franchises like Mario. Do you prefer to create new characters or work with old ones?
A: I try not so much to create new characters and worlds but to create new gameplay experiences. If a new experience is better suited to a new type of character or world than one of our existing franchises, then we might create a new character or world around it."
Hmmm...maybe it's just my luck, or maybe it's my compulsive must-get-everything-done-and-pwnzors-everything-in -RPG syndrome, but I've found Oblivion to be quite satisfactory in terms of monster auto-scale (weapon enchantments = good). I think it was kind of a daring move by Bethseda, departing from the usual standard of RPGs being area-based with the "newbie areas" to the "super-hard bosses areas." And, looking at their goals to be "realistic" you would expect to be fighting some things that are slightly difficult and some that are relatively easy in a fantasy-type world. It's not like at level 20 you stop finding rats and wolves out in the wild.
But I agree. Porting Morrowind to the 360 is a great idea. Morrowind was *almost* Bethseda's claim to fame, and it's great to be able to play a classic on a newer system.
Go Wii! Go Wii! XD
Really, it's part inventiveness and part price that has made Nintendo successful...
I'd rather not take a good looking game (albeit with a theme that seems rather pertinent to our times) and extrapolate that to Christian vs. Muslim or US vs. Iraq. Playing an assassin is a relatively popular concept among gamers, and this is only a translation in time...forwards or backwards remains to be seen.
And before we assume, let's research the Encyclopedia of Nearly Everything. Wikipedia says about the Hashshashin, the group that Altair in the game is affiliated with: "The Hashshashin (also Hashishin, Hashashiyyin or Assassins) was a religious sect of Ismaili Muslims from the Nizari sub-sect. They had a militant basis which was employed in various political or religious purposes. They were thought to be active from 1090 to 1272. This mystic secret society was known to specialize in terrorising the crusaders with fearlessly executed, politically motivated assassinations. Bernard Lewis however states that unlike the popular belief, their efforts were not primarily directed at crusades but against Muslim rulers whom they saw as impious usurpers."
Plus, I believe I read somewhere that Ubisoft is taking great pains not to make this a religiously explosive or controversial. Now, if your choice is to avoid playing the game due to discomfort of the setting, that is perfectly fine (if you happen to not like being a Muslim killing Crusade leaders - which is only one part of the game that we know about...there may be more). But it's not alright to jump to the "Hashshashin in the 1191 equals Al Quaeda or Shiite" train of thought. Just like it's not alright to think "Crusaders in 1191 equals Southern Baptist or Methodist."
I don't think Blizzard is looking to revamp Starcraft's game structure or type. Starcraft was always build your base(s) at the right time, upgrade your units at the right time, mass the right units to counter your enemy (that you have checked out at the right time), and manipulate your troops into the right locations to have the upper hand. It was the epic battle on a specific location: the battlefield. There was no multiple-galaxy army building, no economy or taxes or keeping the civilians happy, etc. And that's the feeling that Blizzard wants to keep, with better, smoother graphics, some balance tweaks, new troops to play with for new strategies, and some nice lookin' explosions.
Thus, Starcraft II is incomparable to Total War (with turn-based continental strategy...only some battlefield tactics, which can be skipped) and EVE (an MMO...enough said). There are a lot of types of strategy games, and even the real-time ones have different quirks. There's not enough from the screenshots to tell what these quirks in the new Starcraft may be, so I'd say: play it before you nay it.
Nicely put, mostly. Although the last replier did bring up a decent point about how O'Connor was trying to add a bit of humor in. Mostly, Miyamoto's statement in summary was: "Hey, I make whatever I want to make, because I think that's cool and creative. I don't want to make another FPS." O'Connor's response was: "We don't want to make a plumber platformer." Quite legitimate comments on both sides, although out of context, they may seem a bit harsh and petty. And, really, Nintendo does extend their franchise. How many Mario games/sequels are there? Not that that's bad: that's just business. And all those copies-sold comparisons: How do you expect Halo (which has been on the market for only about 6 years) to compete with Mario, who has existed since 1981? That's just a silly comparison. They're both excellent franchises in their own rights, and they don't really NEED to compete.