[Marchosias]

(Big wall coming, I apologize. Not my biggest, though, so don't worry)

Well, to first address the topic at hand I would say that there are games that are trying to break the mold. Some others have mentioned CoH/V being very different from the traditional brand. Another one that's just different in Tabula Rasa. Unfortunately, I haven't really liked the different style either of these games has taken. I didn't think the combat in CoH/V was very engaging (my experience with it wasn't of reactive combat at all... what the other player was doing didn't affect what you should be doing in the least), and Tabula Rasa's world just didn't hit the right spot for me, so I never really had the interest to give it a fair play through. Overall I would argue that there are even mainstream games that are trying to be different, it's just that they might not have the best result in the end, at least not to your own (or my) personal tastes.

Originally Posted by Terpsichore

The worst part are the tries to make MMOs "casual", aka dumbing down everything to the point where you don't feel like archieving something.

This is something I've been hearing a lot from the "hardcore" crowd over the last few years. Even my friends in WoW complain that the game is "too casual" and how nothing seems like an achievement because "everyone can do it." I can't honestly tell you that this isn't true. If you fight your way through the idiocy of the general population in the game and find a group of smart players, pretty much all the content I've experienced is fairly easy to learn.

All that said, I don't think any PvE or PvP content should be reserved for those few people that are willing and able to through 5+ hours a day into a video game. Don't get me wrong, I actually am one of those people, at least until school starts back up this summer and I have to juggle that with work, gaming, and a meaningful social life. However, I don't think that your willingness to throw that much time into the game should automatically qualify you for an all-access pass that the "casual" players are refused. In any game, every player should be able to experience all the content of the game. They're paying the same subscription, they're paying the same up front cost for the game, so they're paying for access to the same content.

Now, the real, fundamental issue I have with quoted statement here, is that it's confusing "casual" players with "bad" players. It's assuming that because someone spends less time playing the game they're worse players and that the game needs to be dumbed down for them. Furthermore, it's saying that requiring you to spend a lot of time on something makes it feel like an achievement when you finish it. This might be true to an extent, but honestly I feel more like I've completed a chore at that point that achieved some great task.

So, the question then becomes, "How do we insert a task that isn't based on time, but on difficulty, that both casual and hardcore players can complete, while still ensuring that the hardcore players will have enough content to keep them coming back for years?" See, it's not about casual players being stupid and hardcore being awesome. I mean, look at WoW. I play that game and I see person after person running around in their full wellfare set (the term intelligent players have created for the PvP armor, which can be obtained by sitting AFK in battlegrounds for hours and hours... it takes some time to get, but you can spend that time afk watching movies and the like, so it's the definition of achievement based on time vs. achievement based on skill). The problem is that in an ideal situation, where a player's skill, and not their time played, determined what kind of tasks they could complete and rewards they could get, the hardcore players would run out of content relatively quickly.

I'm not going to claim I have the perfect answer to that question, how to make a game that's based on player skill rather than time played, where a smart casual player can complete anything task a smart hardcore player can (although a hardcore player would obviously be completing more of these tasks), but where there is still enough content to keep hardcore players coming for years. However, I do fully believe that if such a game was made, it would truly be one to break the mold of traditional MMORPGs, even if the combat system was more or less the same.

Originally Posted by Calindor

Look harder, because you obviously put next to no effort in.

I dunno. I've looked at Aion a lot, and while there seems to be a lot about it that's unique visually, I haven't seen a whole lot about it that tells me it's really going to be that different from traditional MMORPGs. Yes, there's the flight, but the combat looks fairly generic from everything I've seen, the questing seems fairly generic, I haven't seen much of the PvE raid content, but what I have seen hasn't suggested that it'll really be more than the "get lots of people to fight big monster" formula that WoW and so many other games use... I mean, the abyss is intriguing, but castle sieges are far from a new idea. Which brings it back to flight, but even WoW, the game everyone is so quick to point the "generic" finger at, is allegedly adding in-flight combat with its new expansion, which will probably release around the same time as Aion. That's not to say I don't think the game will be fun, I just don't think it's really breaking any molds.