Quote Originally Posted by Winterclaw View Post
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.
Yeah exactly.

Just look at Final Fantasy games in general. The whole battle system is heavily reliant on stats. But sats don't reflect reality. Stats were originally the best that game designers could do though if they wanted to reflect reality and progression. And yet even though nowadays game developers are able to reflect reality in more reality-reflecting ways, instead they fall back to the stat-based systems. Enmity-controlling skills are a perfect example of that.