MurFalad wrote:
The question could as well have been "What aspects of WoW" since apart from the rifts every other feature of that game has been slavishly copied from WoW with the intention of attracting WoW players, even their latest campaign aludes to WoW again.
gourdon wrote:
Undoubtedly, some of the developers have played RIFT and have their opinions about how to make Norrath more dynamic, but our input might help them.
Well I think Smedley did check it out since in a January 18th Interview he said
"One thing that we've learned over our company's history is that it takes time to make great games. And we're not trying to make cookie-cutter MMOs. There's some stuff coming out in the next two or three months, MMO-wise, and a lot of it is generic copycats of other games. That's not what we want to do."
gourdon wrote:
Good:
When the invaders show up, they are all over the place and kill all of the other mobs in the area. This disrupts the ability to do quests, but is an important part of the event. The battles in Storm Gorge could use a little more of an open ended flavor with a less focused battle occurring with less focus on winning the battle and more on defeating objectives to help the Cold Dain (or the Rime). This would require going to tokens instead of equipment for rewards.
Since there is only one new feature in that MMO (the multi class system I believe is bad for future playability and the RPG core of a MMO) and that's rifts I'll throw in my comments.
1) They're not really dynamic, because like every other MMO out there the players do not direct the action, instead they respond to it. I'm not saying that's a bad thing, that sort of gameplay is clearly fun as EQ2, WoW etc shows, but if someone wanted to do something new and interesting then having the players direct how events and the world changes would be exciting.
2) Which leads me onto my second point, the world doesn't change. In essence they are no more then slightly more complex ring events, something happens (this time not activated by a player), the player responds, the event ends, nothing changes.
Why not have towns switch allegance depending on how the battle goes? This could open up and close down questing/dungeon options, a more dynamic world.
Why not have towns and buildings destroyed meaning that the world changes, and then have the ability for crafters to come in and rebuild, maybe in their own image in a little way (e.g. touches of Fae architecture)?
In essence I'd like to see something where the players direct the storyline with every action effecting the world (even if in only a tiny way), in a way this happens in Planetside, there are no need for quests to be given out, but simply capturing/upgrading/combat engineering and resupplying buildings does alter the map at least a little, although this is of course for PVP only.
The storytelling that can be done by then adding in NPCs to fight against and alongside I think would be good fun.
As for the graphics engine, I think Eve is the inspiration of how things could be done with EQ2, there they have revamped it a few times and even phased out support for shader 1 and shader 2 since they are too old now.
My undoubtedly comment comes from the fact that I don't pay attention to Smed, but it is predicatable that he has played RIFT.
When something changes, it is dynamic. The events in RIFT are dynamic. There is no permanent world change, but that isn't necessary to be dynamic. They are just a fancy ring event that kicks off based upon timing and player proximity factors rather than the death of a static mob. I was suggesting baby steps like crude environmental status ratings because we aren't going to get player directed storyline in the near future. Further, I'm not sure player directed anything belongs in an MMO, but rather in a single player CRPG.