Trove, new Minecraft-like MMO from Trion

[Ginaz]

What's that?  You say you want more voxel based games like Minecraft?  And you want it to be yet another f2p MMO?  Well, Trion is making one just for you.  It looks a lot like Cube World to me. 

http://massively.joystiq.com/2013/11/15/trion-officially-reveals-trove-endless-adventures-through-endle/

[Malakili]

I'm perfectly happy with these kind of games NOT being MMOs.  So uh, pass.

[Margalis]

How did they manage to make a worse-looking Minecraft?

[Malakili]

How did they manage to make a worse-looking Minecraft?

They went for a cel-shading look, and I don't think it really works very well.

I would have thought they would have gone for a more 3d dot heroes type of look.

3d dot heroes, for people who haven't seen forgot:

[Stormwaltz]

That's, um, nice?

Why would I play it over Minecraft, though? I'm not seeing a clear answer to that very obvious and critical question.

[Ingmar]

I generally like cel shading but it *really* does not work for me here.

[HaemishM]

It doesn't work for you here because it looks like monkey ass. 

[Sky]

Why is this an mmo? Because Trion?

If Scott Hartsman wanted to send me an alpha invite I'd accept, though 

[Numtini]

This looks pretty terrible to me. I can see the EQ thing being attractive because it doesn't look like Minecraft. It looks like professional developed models. I think Minecraft has a geeky charm to its simplicity. This seems to have neither.

[Mrbloodworth]

It looks like cube world, just with an edge shader. Same vertex coloring, nearly the same cube scale ETC..

[ezrast]

I don't want to care but I am such a sucker for procedural content, I just might.

[Venkman]

Reminds me more of this one.

They need to separate this from Minecraft as much as possible, do things that vanilla can't in order for it to have a reason to exist. Makes sense to try a new art style.

Minecraft itself is still extremely ugly to people who've never played it but still talk about it.

[Margalis]

I think the problem with cel shading here (I mean why it looks so ugly) is that cel shading is used to give the impression of hand-drawn stuff and procedurally generated cubes is about as far from hand drawn as you can get.

[Draegan]

I think it looks pretty good, but I'm not a Minecraft guy.

[Yegolev]

Hartsman.  Listen, man.  There needs to be a grid.  Either a repeating texture as in Minecraft, or a literal grid as in 3D Dot Heroes.

I know you read this site sometimes.  I've never asked anything else of you.  Even if I had, this is for your own good.  Did you see what happened to Pirates of the Burning Sea when they ignored me (and others?).

[Malakili]

Hartsman.  Listen, man.  There needs to be a grid.  Either a repeating texture as in Minecraft, or a literal grid as in 3D Dot Heroes.

I know you read this site sometimes.  I've never asked anything else of you.  Even if I had, this is for your own good.  Did you see what happened to Pirates of the Burning Sea when they ignored me (and others?).

You can make it look good without it, Cube World manages.  But I would have to agree with the idea that a grid is the way to go. At least get rid of the black Champions Online style outlines.

Cube World:

[HaemishM]

It's the thin stroke outlines that really make it look terrible.

[kaid]

This game looks like a marketing plan to get people to buy eqlandmark.

[Threash]

It's just making me miss the super adventure box from GW2.

[Goreschach]

How did they manage to make a worse-looking Minecraft?

They went for a cel-shading look, and I don't think it really works very well.

I generally like cel shading but it *really* does not work for me here.

I think the problem with cel shading here (I mean why it looks so ugly) is that cel shading is used to give the impression of hand-drawn stuff and procedurally generated cubes is about as far from hand drawn as you can get.

That's because this isn't cel shading. Cel shading typically has some degree of invariance or granularity with respect to the angle of illumination. It's what gives it the flat-cartoon or rotoscoped-layers effect. This basically looks like late 90's gourad shading with some kind of edge/AO shader tacked on.

[Malakili]

How did they manage to make a worse-looking Minecraft?

They went for a cel-shading look, and I don't think it really works very well.

I generally like cel shading but it *really* does not work for me here.

I think the problem with cel shading here (I mean why it looks so ugly) is that cel shading is used to give the impression of hand-drawn stuff and procedurally generated cubes is about as far from hand drawn as you can get.

That's because this isn't cel shading. Cel shading typically has some degree of invariance or granularity with respect to the angle of illumination. It's what gives it the flat-cartoon or rotoscoped-layers effect. This basically looks like late 90's gourad shading with some kind of edge/AO shader tacked on.

I knew someone was going to say this, and it is why I said "cel shading look" in the first place instead of just cel shading.

In any event, it looks like garbage.

EDIT: It looks slightly better in motion, but not a lot:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bB0utUwgweI

[Paelos]

You knew somebody was going to say that? I didn't even know how to describe cel-shading any better than pornography. I know it when I see it.

[schild]

Cube World is an indie thing that had a low bar to clear to make money.

This is like, just some strange thing and I can't quite understand how it made it through any number of pitch sessions.

I'm confused.

[Malakili]

You knew somebody was going to say that? I didn't even know how to describe cel-shading any better than pornography. I know it when I see it.

Literally every time this style of graphics comes up there is always someone that brings up it isn't real cel shading because x, y and z.

Edit: Examples, Champions Online, Borderlands.  There's always some debate about what techniques constitute actual cel shading, what is just comic-book outlining, etc.  I'm not educated in drawing/graphics enough to have a good grasp on it, but pretty much every time I say the word cel shading someone comes and tells me I didn't use it exactly right.

[Venkman]

And really, that's not even the discussion that Trove needs. There's already cel/"cel" shaded MC.

Trove cannot just be because some developers figured they could make their on Minecraft tech. There's been years of me-too MC games, so that's the easy part now, in every graphic style there is.

So what's going to make this worth looking at?

[LC]

They could have come up with a better name. Something like "Minecraft Derivative #39: Give Us Money Too!" might work.

[KallDrexx]

LOL, I love the part of the video where they are like "what set's us apart from the competition.  For one thing we are free to play".

How in the hell in this age does that set you apart from the competition?

[Draegan]

EQ Landmark costs money for alpha? 

[tazelbain]

These are collector editions that include alpha. Obviously YMMV if the extras in this CE are worth the price.  Selling extras is the business model of F2P.  I pre-purchaced beta with my CE for GW2.

I can't help but be jealous of how good eq next alpha looks compared to the shit sandwich of Hex alpha.

EDIT: Thought I was in EQ Next thread. OOPS

[Rokal]

LOL, I love the part of the video where they are like "what set's us apart from the competition.  For one thing we are free to play".

How in the hell in this age does that set you apart from the competition?

I think Minecraft still costs money on every platform and that is what this is competing with.

Honestly, you can look at this and say "How does making another Minecraft-style game in 2013 make any sense?" but it's not like making another MMO or MOBA in 2013 would make any more sense. If a competent F2P version of Minecraft hasn't been released yet, Trove seems like a much smarter investment than anything else Trion has worked on since Rift (which was arguably also not a great investment).

Not a fan of the art style either though. The 3D Dot Heroes style people mentioned earlier in the thread is much more appealing.

[Venkman]

but it's not like making another MMO or MOBA in 2013 would make any more sense. If a competent F2P version of Minecraft hasn't been released yet, Trove seems like a much smarter investment than anything else Trion has worked on since Rift (which was arguably also not a great investment).

Kinda, but there's some differences.

MMOs are largely singular experiences where content and abilities evolves according to the arms race between designers and gamers and the push/pull between market forces and development realities, all within a comparatively narrow set of conditions. Only a few MMOs tried to radically reinvent themselves midstream, and most of those are no longer with us. So in this context, one can imagine MMOs are more just games that can get sequels and competitors can steal players to.

Minecraft meanwhile is more a platform than a game. It's very easy to outgrow if you only think there's vanilla adventure mode or the freebie public shared-space creative mode they host. But if you get past that, you quickly realize it isn't really a "game" per se. Rather, it's the quintessential sandbox, at all layers from end users building whatever the hell they want, through people who swap skins all the way onto through mod users to mod creators. This isn't the old UO player economy vs EQ contrivances debate. UO has more in common to EQ than either does to MC.

This is why Trove can't just be positioned as a free MC. The price is so low they've got everyone who wants a MC like experience. And they can't peddle it on its look because anyone who wants a cel-shaded MC can download a texturepack for it.

So instead, they need features that differentiate, things that the base game can do that anything short of a heavily-modded MC can't. Because as easy as it is to mod MC, not nearly everyone is comfortable doing it, and that's not available to the ever-control MC console/tablet players.

[Rokal]

This is why Trove can't just be positioned as a free MC. The price is so low they've got everyone who wants a MC like experience.

I think this is where you are wrong. MC may not be expensive, but any cost at all is a large barrier to entry. $5-20 may not be much for you, but it's an insurmountable cost for someone that doesn't easily have a way to make credit card purchases online. This includes younger kids/teenagers in the US/EU and huge portions of the population everywhere else.

If League of Legends had cost $5 for the client, a pretty trivial value, it wouldn't have taken off the way it did outside of the US/EU. A F2P Minecraft clone that is solid could definitely do well.

[Mrbloodworth]

This doesn't look like a Minecraft clone, it looks like a Cube world clone.

[Nebu]

This doesn't look like a Minecraft clone, it looks like a Cube world clone.

This.  Cube world also gets old VERY quickly.  I don't see how this will have any 'stick' to it at all.

[Malakili]

This doesn't look like a Minecraft clone, it looks like a Cube world clone.

This.  Cube world also gets old VERY quickly.  I don't see how this will have any 'stick' to it at all.

If I understand properly this does actually have building stuff in it, right?