refinement
Latest
The Repopulation introduces new event systems in its August updates
One of the major design goals of The Repopulation is a sense of a world in motion, shaped by players but also influencing player actions. August's updates to the game included the implementation of the Area and World Event systems, facilitating just that sort of gameplay. According to the most recent development blog, these systems track what's going on in the world, direct players to unexpected happenings, and then start to chain new events based off of those metrics. There are also NPCs in place to direct players toward hotbeds of activity. The game's other mechanics have also received further tuning. Cities can now benefit from new happiness-increasing structures and more flexible placement options, combat values have been tweaked, and new engagements have been added for siege warfare. There is also a variety of bugfixes and general balance tweaks, which can be found in the full patch notes included with the development blog.
Why we don't get more innovative games
Innovation is as often as not used as a blank check when asked why MMOs aren't as good as they could be. While the sentiment isn't constant, it's recurring: a vague sense that something isn't there that ought to be. Often, the answer thrown around is that we need innovative games -- but when the people hollering for them are asked to explain what they mean, usually they shuffle, stare at their feet, and reply "well, these would go to 11." We want something new, but we're not sure what, and we're not sure why we aren't getting it. Brian "Psychochild" Green recently wrote up a post on the problems of innovation in MMOs, as well as several reasons we don't tend to get a great deal of it. In short, there are two main reasons. Innovation is risky, which makes a company more and more wary of investing money in a game that might not make any of it back. It also goes directly against another virtue that we look for in our games: polish. By its very definition, an innovative game can't be polished, since there's not as much precedent for refining systems. It's hard to summarize the full essay in a few sentences, however, as it covers a lot of ground and a wide variety of games. If you're interested in why it seems like there's little new under the MMO sun, you could do worse than reading the full thing through.
