Quote Originally Posted by gifthorse View Post
That's terrible advice LOL. Developers should pretend that no other games exist and then develop their dreams from there, only looking to other games as pragmatists to see how certain things were implemented. They shouldn't look to other games first and then blatantly rip off ideas that they were too unimaginative to think of themselves.

The reason for this is because when developers think of an idea - that's if they think of an idea at all - they are usually limited by the technology at their disposal when implementing it. The first MMOs ever released didn't have the tools that todays developers have, and yet Ultima Online (for example) implemented player-made housing, mount-taming, and many other novel features. They had nothing to look to for inspiration, and that helped them make a good game, based solely on their own imaginations. But their ideas were limited to the technology of the era, and so the idead that implementated were limited. Nowadays, developers have the ability to do better. But they will never be able to do better if they look only at the implementation of the idea and then imitate it rather than reimagine it.
In that case rip off UO.

Innovation can be good like the DS or it can be junk like the virtual boy. It's a double edged sword and it can help you or it can hurt you if you decide to innovate in the wrong direction.

Likewise there's times when other games are doing it wrong and times where you shouldn't reinvent the wheel. If you want markets, eve's market system was really nice and it allowed things like trading from one town to the next to be a real profession. If you want a dye system for armor, I've really love what GW2 is doing.

Finally new ideas are difficult to do and make popular. ATITD is an innovative idea for an MMO, but I haven't played it. I've heard of new games being developed to revolutionize MMOs but they tend to either be gutted or turned into vaporware. Also people who are fans of one idea will hate anything that's different than what they are used to. For example, I've suggested on the forums to get rid of skills designed mostly to manage hate: ie to make group combat about kiting and proper positioning... it didn't get much traction. Yet for just about every MMO I can think of, there is a tank class and he's got a skill that draws AI attention. The thing is, those skills were originally developed before sophisticated 3d interfaces, and despite it being nearly 30 years later, a same old cliche design is still in there... which is an example of ripping off a bad idea.