In an interview with Gamasutra, Dave Georgeson explains how SOE wants to break the standards of the traditional MMO.
Indeed, he finds that the MMOs of recent years are all of the same style: a gigantic world, a slow level system, hundreds of quests to complete, monsters always reappearing in the same place, a sluggish game mechanic oriented. skills. In these games, monsters are managed by state tables. They then always have the same logic, going through the same pattern each time they are attacked. The quests are also very linear and similar: we go to a place, we kill 10 rats, we collect our reward and we continue without really paying attention to the world around us.
They want to sweep all this away in their games and especially thanks to the'artificial intelligence emerging where the monsters will take our actions into consideration and react accordingly. Some, not very intelligent, will just try to survive but others will be able to go beyond and build a real parry against the attacks of the players. When engaging a monster, a dynamic modifier is applied depending on the situation. The monsters will take different factors into consideration: our movements, other players or monsters, our attitude, our activated defensive skills ... The threat is not classic either and is constantly reassessed.
It should also be remembered that the world is also destructible, allowing to add a new layer of unexpectedness in the fights with the possibility of blocking a door to stop the arrival of monsters or to create a hole to bring down the attackers.
Beyond the combat system, the game allows you to explore with a single character many ways to play thanks to the multi-classes. You can play any class at any time and combine them to create new classes. Progression will not be based on levels, but more on equipment within a class, allowing you to play with all your friends, even if they are just starting out. Vertical progression is not completely abandoned however, depending mainly on how you want to play.
The game will incorporate content created by players, via Player Studio, an online store where you can make your creations available and potentially sell them to other players, a bit like VALVe's Steam Workshop. Georgeson admits it without complex, he is a good model and his creator is a very intelligent person. But for him, they go further by creating a virtual world with a virtual community. This social component is unique and valuable. In order to encourage creation, it is important that all players derive some benefit from it and that creators are in contact with consumers.
I've said this many times, but we're really serious about allowing thousands of players to work with us to build this new virtual world. Player Studio is already designed to allow these groups to talk to each other and create better things for their world.
