View From The Road: Seen It All Before

At first glance, Trion's upcoming MMOG, Rift: Planes of Telara, looks like every other MMOG extinct there, solely prettier. The classes are your standard mix of burly fighter, quick and fragile fighter, spellcaster, healer, etc. Questgivers have exclamation points over their heads. You walk around with the WASD keys, you play the tv camera with your mouse, and you use the number keys to activate abilities from an action bar at the fanny-left side of your sieve – with go casts represented by a BAR that fills up over fourth dimension.

You know what? That's not a bad affair at all.

This isn't to say that there's nothing groundbreaking close to Rift, because the implicit in gameplay systems – where dynamically-spawning rifts enrol the world and modify the area around them, becoming hotspots for PvE and PvP conflict – are actually really cool. It's just that there are a lot of elements that you'd recognize in Rift if you've played any MMOG in the sunset fin geezerhood.

But the reason that sol umpteen of these design elements are present is because they work. Why fix what isn't broken?

"If we have a bank in our game," said Break Design Director Simon Ffinch, "IT should work like a bank." It's a system that works well, and it's a system that players understand – stressful to introduce there might land up confusing people who have concern carry a classic, and would take resources aside from trying to come upward with something unique for, y'know, the actual core gameplay.

Creation is something that's become increasingly prized in our industry – at least, on the consumer side of things, anyway – and spend a penny no slip, it certainly is important on about level. Conception moves gaming forward, whether it's something as simple every bit limiting the number of weapons you can pack (Halo) or developing an entirely new control strategy (the DS, Wii, et Alabama).

But while fetching a chance and trying something new should be lauded, that doesn't mean the inverse is always true. Cliches are cliches for a reason – whether graphical or in cinema or in games – they're things that we've come to understand and admit as audience. In games, clichés can be useful tools, designing elements that are already in situ and don't pauperism to glucinium changed.

There are some clichés that just shouldn't represent separate. In an legal action halt, the left thumbstick will be in use to go on, while the mighty stick will follow old to control the television camera. The A button (on the Xbox) will be victimised to jump and interact with your environment. If you get a new item or ability, the new item operating theatre ability will live determining to progressing in the story right forthwith. In a fighting biz, you will have political party wellness bars at the top of the screen that are gradually depleted as you take hits. Doing a quarter-circle-forward will usually throw some sort of projectile. There will forever be a big, slow eccentric World Health Organization hits same a truck, and a lightning-fast theatrical role WHO crumples in a powerful breeze.

Eve a genre as criticized for repeating and staleness as shooters – first- and 3rd-person alike – has elements that don't require changing for the sake of changing. Yes, every other lame seems to be based on shot from cover these days, simply why is that in itself a bad thing? People have been shooting from cover in games (and in realism, make out to esteem IT) since the very beginning: Why wouldn't you incorporated that into your gameplay as a core element? It'd follow like saying that shooters should stop victimization the trigger buttons to fire fair-and-square because every FPS does IT that way. Non using a trigger to fire a gun is just silly.

Ffinch is right: Why should an MMOG developer make a bank anything new than a bank? For all we crow about games needing innovation – and reproof games for being same-y or run-of-the-mill – we forget that cliches exist for a very just reason: They only work.

John Funk was severely tempted to link TV Tropes repeatedly in this chromatography column.

[Ed note: John Funk has a TV Tropes problem.]

https://www.escapistmagazine.com/view-from-the-road-seen-it-all-before/

Source: https://www.escapistmagazine.com/view-from-the-road-seen-it-all-before/

Share this post