Current model of 6v1 isn't heroic. Even tough fights are just continuing what worked for the first 10s over and over. AE fights are harder just by pure chaos factors.
1v6 or 6v30 is much more interesting since you are tracking lots of mobs and not just one on a looping script. Or to put it in SW terms... Vader soloing imperial captains one at a time for errors wasn't terribly heroic for him =P Making Luke's entire team look like noobs... more so.
Hopefully the game doesn't have some sort of Sleep spell.
Many vs many isn't really many vs many if you can sleep rest of the mobs and kill 'em one by one =P.
Bind/Root would be okay though.
Using LOL is like saying "my argument sucks but I still want to disagree".
A many-vs-one fight CAN be heroic, but not always. 5 Jedi vs one Sith isn't heroic. 5 Jedi vs a big honking war machine such as a 20m+ tall AT-AT is considerably more so.
Yup. Good example.
As I understand the TOR concept, it's a personal storyline that is unique to each class and (can be) unique to each player as it changes due to choices made. If that's true, you'll never end up at a different stage to your friends because the vast majority of them won't have the same quest chain.
That will isolate you even more. It sounds like you are either going to have most players soloing, or class-specific groups. All bounty hunters, all trooper, etc. Don't the Classes even start on different worlds?
My objection to pie-delivery rabbit-killing quests isn't in their mechanics. I agree that TOR will likely have "take x to y" and "kill x enemies" quests but given the emphasis that Bioware is placing on the story aspect of the game, I anticipate that they will be meaningfully integrated into the backbone of the story instead of being disconnected chores that give you XP.
Could be completely wrong, but at this stage pretty much everything is speculation.
Hey, that's why we're here, right?
I understand the concern about trivialising enemy threats. I guess it depends on how they're presented. I think that LOTRO did quite well with this, I remember having run-ins with Ringwraiths in the tutorial and they were handled in a way that didn't detract from their menace.
How was that?
"" Voice acting isn't an RPG element....it's just a production value." - grumpymel2
Well, i agree with both sides: one alone fighting against a lot of npcs can be really heroic (if the mobs are hard to deal with and make us use everything to survive); but a really big team fighing against 1 npc can be heroic too (if the mob is really hard to deal with, like we can see now in Vindictus/Mabinogui: Heroes where the team is using all their effort with chains and everything against 1 single spider, every player is doing something heroic that others see as a "well played" action).
We must not forgot about other games and PVP. Just a though of mine here. If there was someway of doing TOR gameplay like Star Wars Jedi Academy, but in an mmorpg, it would be even better. Where can we see a player using the same lvl skills as any other player but his actions make him be so good that, sometimes, the other team needs 2-3 guys against him alone to be in a equal fight without using cheats, leaving his other teammates free to do what they need to do in order to win (good times xD).
I dont know if TOR will be successfull with the gameplay it has because we haven seen that much yet, but imo, beeing able to dodge, jump high, run on the wall and using skills while doing all those movement abilities just to win a fight, is the key for mmorpgs, especcially for Star Wars, no matter if a player fights alone against many or many players against one, no matter if the others are mobs or other players. The key is how engaging it is to fight and feel heroic.
Of course, i agree with you, socialization in games is decreasing and leading towards disputes all the time, and that doesnt help a bit. The devs need to work on that one.
Of course, i agree with you, socialization in games is decreasing and leading towards disputes all the time, and that doesnt help a bit. The devs need to work on that one.
The average player doesn't want to co-operate. If the game allows progress without teamwork, then we end up with a game full of hermits.
"" Voice acting isn't an RPG element....it's just a production value." - grumpymel2
As I understand the TOR concept, it's a personal storyline that is unique to each class and (can be) unique to each player as it changes due to choices made. If that's true, you'll never end up at a different stage to your friends because the vast majority of them won't have the same quest chain.
That will isolate you even more. It sounds like you are either going to have most players soloing, or class-specific groups. All bounty hunters, all trooper, etc. Don't the Classes even start on different worlds?
I understand the concern about trivialising enemy threats. I guess it depends on how they're presented. I think that LOTRO did quite well with this, I remember having run-ins with Ringwraiths in the tutorial and they were handled in a way that didn't detract from their menace.
How was that?
I think the classes do start on different worlds, yes. From what I've read, every class can group with every other class in order to join in their personal quests. My Jedi friend could invite my Trooper along to help out on a stage of his personal quest.
One unresolved questions is: what's my incentive? .. I'm guessing XP/Loot/Alignment Points.
Regarding LOTRO; there is a part of the hobbit tutorial that has you being part of a Ringwraith encounter without fighting it. Just seeing it gives you that "argharghnazgulargh" feeling without the disappointment of your puny level 1 hobbit defeating it in combat.
I'd rather kill 5-6 mobs at once than kill one while his friends, standing only a few feet away, watch him die (or turn their backs in random walking patterns, completely oblivious). Guess it's just me, though.
I think the classes do start on different worlds, yes. From what I've read, every class can group with every other class in order to join in their personal quests. My Jedi friend could invite my Trooper along to help out on a stage of his personal quest.
One unresolved questions is: what's my incentive? .. I'm guessing XP/Loot/Alignment Points.
Good question.
Regarding LOTRO; there is a part of the hobbit tutorial that has you being part of a Ringwraith encounter without fighting it. Just seeing it gives you that "argharghnazgulargh" feeling without the disappointment of your puny level 1 hobbit defeating it in combat.
Yes. Running away from them creates the right mood. I have been thinking of trying LOTR.
"" Voice acting isn't an RPG element....it's just a production value." - grumpymel2
In WoW I played a rogue for most of my time with that game. I was a little squishy leveling alone and because I wanted to level alone I learned that it was going to take patience to level. Once I decided to start leveling a DK, well then I felt heroic. I loved running into the middle of a group and desimating it. Having the option to group is a benefit but I don't want it to be a nessesity for leveling so I'm more than happy knowing that I can be heroic if i want and that I can do it all by myself.
Only stating my opinion, truly not to offend others here, but if you want to "feel heroic", join a military branch or participate in volunteer fire-fighting. Sitting at a table pushing buttons with a net effect of status in an online game... isn't very heroic, ever.
Only stating my opinion, truly not to offend others here, but if you want to "feel heroic", join a military branch or participate in volunteer fire-fighting. Sitting at a table pushing buttons with a net effect of status in an online game... isn't very heroic, ever.
Sorry.
There is no denying that there's nothing heroic about playing a video in comparison to real life hero's but way I read the original post it looks to me like he's talking about feeling heroic in a video game. I don't see any comparison to real life hero's there.
One player or a small group of players fighting a larger group of mobs can be great--if, as others have said, the mobs are not total pushovers. If I go up against ten mobs all at once but I can walk all over them, wackity wackity wack, and kill them all without any trouble then it's not very interesting.
The key to making this sort of thing satisfying is to require the player to really pay attention and use all the tools at his disposal to survive. Make the mobs dangerous but give the player abilities which, if he uses them in the right way at the right times, will allow him to win. Make it chaotic and hectic and unpredictable and it'll be even more interesting. The more the player is required to "be on the ball", paying attention and reacting appropriatly and quickly the more interesting and satisfying it will be. Throw in a stinging death penalty so the player has something at stake and it just got even more interesting.
The problem with this is that the more demanding the fights are on players the more players there are who will have trouble with it. So then you get people who are upset because it's too hard. Have a death penalty which stings and you get complaints from all the people who don't want there to be any consequences for their mistakes.
So, ultimately, it's a safer bet to make the mobs pushovers and to have no consequences for mistakes. It might make for a bland and uninteresting game but you can always try to keep people interested by throwing lots of story at them.
Only stating my opinion, truly not to offend others here, but if you want to "feel heroic", join a military branch or participate in volunteer fire-fighting. Sitting at a table pushing buttons with a net effect of status in an online game... isn't very heroic, ever.
Sorry.
/yawn
Damn, you're cool.
I think we were talking in gaming terms.
"" Voice acting isn't an RPG element....it's just a production value." - grumpymel2
One player or a small group of players fighting a larger group of mobs can be great--if, as others have said, the mobs are not total pushovers. If I go up against ten mobs all at once but I can walk all over them, wackity wackity wack, and kill them all without any trouble then it's not very interesting.
The key to making this sort of thing satisfying is to require the player to really pay attention and use all the tools at his disposal to survive. Make the mobs dangerous but give the player abilities which, if he uses them in the right way at the right times, will allow him to win. Make it chaotic and hectic and unpredictable and it'll be even more interesting. The more the player is required to "be on the ball", paying attention and reacting appropriatly and quickly the more interesting and satisfying it will be. Throw in a stinging death penalty so the player has something at stake and it just got even more interesting.
The problem with this is that the more demanding the fights are on players the more players there are who will have trouble with it. So then you get people who are upset because it's too hard. Have a death penalty which stings and you get complaints from all the people who don't want there to be any consequences for their mistakes.
So, ultimately, it's a safer bet to make the mobs pushovers and to have no consequences for mistakes. It might make for a bland and uninteresting game but you can always try to keep people interested by throwing lots of story at them.
I'm sure you want 10 minute downtimes inbetween groups as well. Then you can run away after every fight and stand around for 10 minutes waiting for your health/mana to regenerate. But you can't go AFK, of course, because one roaming mob and BAM! You just lost that last hour of XP, or all your items, or whatever you define as a "stinging" death penalty.
Difficult or story-related mobs should be as you describe. Trash mobs for quests or grinding should not.
I don't see any difference in fighting off 10 easy mobs or one badass mob in terms of heroism or epicness. If the devs want us to fight a solo mob and be challenged they can. In order for us to feel the same level of challenge against multiple mobs, they either have to increase our power or decrease the NPCs power. The end result will be the same though.
Only stating my opinion, truly not to offend others here, but if you want to "feel heroic", join a military branch or participate in volunteer fire-fighting. Sitting at a table pushing buttons with a net effect of status in an online game... isn't very heroic, ever.
Sorry.
Lol you have a point. But youre forgetting something: players look for the feeling and not for what is heroic for society and getting the feeling doesn't mean having to do the extreme, thats why games were created, to have the feelings doing something easy and enjoyable to do for everyone. you almost said like "Wanna feel heroic, go to war." and a war isnt a good thing to do irl, but playing an epic war where no one gets hurt gives players the same feeling. Ppl could do sports too, but is not as enjoyable and easy for a lot of ppl as games are (and this is a problem with the education from parents and societies). But games could do something more that would bring the enjoyment of play a game for some hours a week instead of doing something over and over again for hours each day in order to have the feeling of accomplishment.
I'm sure you want 10 minute downtimes inbetween groups as well. Then you can run away after every fight and stand around for 10 minutes waiting for your health/mana to regenerate. But you can't go AFK, of course, because one roaming mob and BAM! You just lost that last hour of XP, or all your items, or whatever you define as a "stinging" death penalty.
Difficult or story-related mobs should be as you describe. Trash mobs for quests or grinding should not.
I still think that the game devs should implement the "Pause" feature we see in singleplay games, but for mmorpgs the "pause" would mean not gaining Exp (no leecher) nor dying while afk. And i dont like the "rest" feature very much too because its a necessary need for most games. I like Death penalties too, because you have to be carefull of what you do in order to dont lose exp or other things, and if u dont have death penalty, well, then there isnt a point for "figthing to survive" or "kill or be killed", and without those theres no heroic feeling, imo.
The problem with this is that the more demanding the fights are on players the more players there are who will have trouble with it. So then you get people who are upset because it's too hard. Have a death penalty which stings and you get complaints from all the people who don't want there to be any consequences for their mistakes.
So, ultimately, it's a safer bet to make the mobs pushovers and to have no consequences for mistakes. It might make for a bland and uninteresting game but you can always try to keep people interested by throwing lots of story at them.
A very good asessment of the quandry of challenge in MMOs.
I especially enjoyed the cyncism.
I wonder if we will see any MMOs that actually challenge players in any way other than trying to stay awake or empty their wallets.
"" Voice acting isn't an RPG element....it's just a production value." - grumpymel2
Only stating my opinion, truly not to offend others here, but if you want to "feel heroic", join a military branch or participate in volunteer fire-fighting. Sitting at a table pushing buttons with a net effect of status in an online game... isn't very heroic, ever.
Sorry.
I think you're looking at the "feel heroic" argument wrong.
It's not about you (the player) feeling heroic, it's about you getting the sense that the character you're controlling is heroic. Few people would choose to play a cowardly wimp over a badass hero.
Only stating my opinion, truly not to offend others here, but if you want to "feel heroic", join a military branch or participate in volunteer fire-fighting. Sitting at a table pushing buttons with a net effect of status in an online game... isn't very heroic, ever.
Sorry.
I think you're looking at the "feel heroic" argument wrong.
It's not about you (the player) feeling heroic, it's about you getting the sense that the character you're controlling is heroic. Few people would choose to play a cowardly wimp over a badass hero.
For many of us it is actually more fun to kick Mr badass heroes ass with the cowardly wimp toon. I love playing the underdog where my abilities as a player make an impact over playing an unbeatable character where my actions mean little to nothing.
It isn't so much the feeling of being heroic that I care about. It's the adrenaline rush you get from taking on a large number of evenly matched NPCs, not knowing if you will walk away alive or get pummeled to death.
Fighting one NPC at a time, even if they are a bit stronger than yourself, just doesn't give the same rush because you are both just trading hits and you can pretty easily feel out the situation and adapt.
Having several NPCs attacking you at the same time give you the rush because while you are knocking one down you have to worry about the others.
There are 3 types of people in the world. 1.) Those who make things happen 2.) Those who watch things happen 3.) And those who wonder "What the %#*& just happened?!"
And that doesn't mean "lots of mobs that are however so easy to beat that you never even have any sense of danger".
Just because there are more mobs than you doesn't make it heroic.
Hopefully Bioware knows this.
That would mean they'd actually have to make the game difficult though...
So, if I recall correctly, I heard at some point in the videos about combat that, once you do take down a group, your character is at the point of almost being killed and finishing them off with a nice finishing blow in the nick of time to give you that great sense of accomplishment. I could be wrong, but for some reason I remember hearing something along these lines.
For many of us it is actually more fun to kick Mr badass heroes ass with the cowardly wimp toon. I love playing the underdog where my abilities as a player make an impact over playing an unbeatable character where my actions mean little to nothing.
Isn't playing the underdog against overwhelming odds being heroic too?
It isn't so much the feeling of being heroic that I care about. It's the adrenaline rush you get from taking on a large number of evenly matched NPCs, not knowing if you will walk away alive or get pummeled to death.
Fighting one NPC at a time, even if they are a bit stronger than yourself, just doesn't give the same rush because you are both just trading hits and you can pretty easily feel out the situation and adapt.
Having several NPCs attacking you at the same time give you the rush because while you are knocking one down you have to worry about the others.
If the large number of NPCs were truly evenly matched, then yes that would be a fight worthy of an adenaline rush. The problem is no game company is going to make a game where you are fighting solo against large packs of evenly matched NPCs. They will most likely have fewer abilities, reduced stats, and a very simple AI or else everyone is going to be screaming that the game is too hard.
Comments
Hopefully the game doesn't have some sort of Sleep spell.
Many vs many isn't really many vs many if you can sleep rest of the mobs and kill 'em one by one =P.
Bind/Root would be okay though.
How was that?
"" Voice acting isn't an RPG element....it's just a production value." - grumpymel2
Well, i agree with both sides: one alone fighting against a lot of npcs can be really heroic (if the mobs are hard to deal with and make us use everything to survive); but a really big team fighing against 1 npc can be heroic too (if the mob is really hard to deal with, like we can see now in Vindictus/Mabinogui: Heroes where the team is using all their effort with chains and everything against 1 single spider, every player is doing something heroic that others see as a "well played" action).
We must not forgot about other games and PVP. Just a though of mine here. If there was someway of doing TOR gameplay like Star Wars Jedi Academy, but in an mmorpg, it would be even better. Where can we see a player using the same lvl skills as any other player but his actions make him be so good that, sometimes, the other team needs 2-3 guys against him alone to be in a equal fight without using cheats, leaving his other teammates free to do what they need to do in order to win (good times xD).
I dont know if TOR will be successfull with the gameplay it has because we haven seen that much yet, but imo, beeing able to dodge, jump high, run on the wall and using skills while doing all those movement abilities just to win a fight, is the key for mmorpgs, especcially for Star Wars, no matter if a player fights alone against many or many players against one, no matter if the others are mobs or other players. The key is how engaging it is to fight and feel heroic.
Of course, i agree with you, socialization in games is decreasing and leading towards disputes all the time, and that doesnt help a bit. The devs need to work on that one.
The average player doesn't want to co-operate. If the game allows progress without teamwork, then we end up with a game full of hermits.
"" Voice acting isn't an RPG element....it's just a production value." - grumpymel2
I think the classes do start on different worlds, yes. From what I've read, every class can group with every other class in order to join in their personal quests. My Jedi friend could invite my Trooper along to help out on a stage of his personal quest.
One unresolved questions is: what's my incentive? .. I'm guessing XP/Loot/Alignment Points.
Regarding LOTRO; there is a part of the hobbit tutorial that has you being part of a Ringwraith encounter without fighting it. Just seeing it gives you that "argharghnazgulargh" feeling without the disappointment of your puny level 1 hobbit defeating it in combat.
I'd rather kill 5-6 mobs at once than kill one while his friends, standing only a few feet away, watch him die (or turn their backs in random walking patterns, completely oblivious). Guess it's just me, though.
Agree. But i wont talk about this now although i wanted too, but its not what this thread is about eheh
Yes. Running away from them creates the right mood. I have been thinking of trying LOTR.
"" Voice acting isn't an RPG element....it's just a production value." - grumpymel2
In WoW I played a rogue for most of my time with that game. I was a little squishy leveling alone and because I wanted to level alone I learned that it was going to take patience to level. Once I decided to start leveling a DK, well then I felt heroic. I loved running into the middle of a group and desimating it. Having the option to group is a benefit but I don't want it to be a nessesity for leveling so I'm more than happy knowing that I can be heroic if i want and that I can do it all by myself.
I've seen the "feel heroic" argument before.
Only stating my opinion, truly not to offend others here, but if you want to "feel heroic", join a military branch or participate in volunteer fire-fighting. Sitting at a table pushing buttons with a net effect of status in an online game... isn't very heroic, ever.
Sorry.
There is no denying that there's nothing heroic about playing a video in comparison to real life hero's but way I read the original post it looks to me like he's talking about feeling heroic in a video game. I don't see any comparison to real life hero's there.
One player or a small group of players fighting a larger group of mobs can be great--if, as others have said, the mobs are not total pushovers. If I go up against ten mobs all at once but I can walk all over them, wackity wackity wack, and kill them all without any trouble then it's not very interesting.
The key to making this sort of thing satisfying is to require the player to really pay attention and use all the tools at his disposal to survive. Make the mobs dangerous but give the player abilities which, if he uses them in the right way at the right times, will allow him to win. Make it chaotic and hectic and unpredictable and it'll be even more interesting. The more the player is required to "be on the ball", paying attention and reacting appropriatly and quickly the more interesting and satisfying it will be. Throw in a stinging death penalty so the player has something at stake and it just got even more interesting.
The problem with this is that the more demanding the fights are on players the more players there are who will have trouble with it. So then you get people who are upset because it's too hard. Have a death penalty which stings and you get complaints from all the people who don't want there to be any consequences for their mistakes.
So, ultimately, it's a safer bet to make the mobs pushovers and to have no consequences for mistakes. It might make for a bland and uninteresting game but you can always try to keep people interested by throwing lots of story at them.
/yawn
Damn, you're cool.
I think we were talking in gaming terms.
"" Voice acting isn't an RPG element....it's just a production value." - grumpymel2
I'm sure you want 10 minute downtimes inbetween groups as well. Then you can run away after every fight and stand around for 10 minutes waiting for your health/mana to regenerate. But you can't go AFK, of course, because one roaming mob and BAM! You just lost that last hour of XP, or all your items, or whatever you define as a "stinging" death penalty.
Difficult or story-related mobs should be as you describe. Trash mobs for quests or grinding should not.
Yes, I have. Not 2 shot cheesepuff WoW mobs. But in games where NPCs can be hard, fighting lots of them is a challenge.
EQ1, EQ2, SWG, SWTOR, GW, GW2 CoH, CoV, FFXI, WoW, CO, War,TSW and a slew of free trials and beta tests
I don't see any difference in fighting off 10 easy mobs or one badass mob in terms of heroism or epicness. If the devs want us to fight a solo mob and be challenged they can. In order for us to feel the same level of challenge against multiple mobs, they either have to increase our power or decrease the NPCs power. The end result will be the same though.
Lol you have a point. But youre forgetting something: players look for the feeling and not for what is heroic for society and getting the feeling doesn't mean having to do the extreme, thats why games were created, to have the feelings doing something easy and enjoyable to do for everyone. you almost said like "Wanna feel heroic, go to war." and a war isnt a good thing to do irl, but playing an epic war where no one gets hurt gives players the same feeling. Ppl could do sports too, but is not as enjoyable and easy for a lot of ppl as games are (and this is a problem with the education from parents and societies). But games could do something more that would bring the enjoyment of play a game for some hours a week instead of doing something over and over again for hours each day in order to have the feeling of accomplishment.
I still think that the game devs should implement the "Pause" feature we see in singleplay games, but for mmorpgs the "pause" would mean not gaining Exp (no leecher) nor dying while afk. And i dont like the "rest" feature very much too because its a necessary need for most games. I like Death penalties too, because you have to be carefull of what you do in order to dont lose exp or other things, and if u dont have death penalty, well, then there isnt a point for "figthing to survive" or "kill or be killed", and without those theres no heroic feeling, imo.
A very good asessment of the quandry of challenge in MMOs.
I especially enjoyed the cyncism.
I wonder if we will see any MMOs that actually challenge players in any way other than trying to stay awake or empty their wallets.
"" Voice acting isn't an RPG element....it's just a production value." - grumpymel2
I think you're looking at the "feel heroic" argument wrong.
It's not about you (the player) feeling heroic, it's about you getting the sense that the character you're controlling is heroic. Few people would choose to play a cowardly wimp over a badass hero.
For many of us it is actually more fun to kick Mr badass heroes ass with the cowardly wimp toon. I love playing the underdog where my abilities as a player make an impact over playing an unbeatable character where my actions mean little to nothing.
It isn't so much the feeling of being heroic that I care about. It's the adrenaline rush you get from taking on a large number of evenly matched NPCs, not knowing if you will walk away alive or get pummeled to death.
Fighting one NPC at a time, even if they are a bit stronger than yourself, just doesn't give the same rush because you are both just trading hits and you can pretty easily feel out the situation and adapt.
Having several NPCs attacking you at the same time give you the rush because while you are knocking one down you have to worry about the others.
There are 3 types of people in the world.
1.) Those who make things happen
2.) Those who watch things happen
3.) And those who wonder "What the %#*& just happened?!"
So, if I recall correctly, I heard at some point in the videos about combat that, once you do take down a group, your character is at the point of almost being killed and finishing them off with a nice finishing blow in the nick of time to give you that great sense of accomplishment. I could be wrong, but for some reason I remember hearing something along these lines.
Isn't playing the underdog against overwhelming odds being heroic too?
If the large number of NPCs were truly evenly matched, then yes that would be a fight worthy of an adenaline rush. The problem is no game company is going to make a game where you are fighting solo against large packs of evenly matched NPCs. They will most likely have fewer abilities, reduced stats, and a very simple AI or else everyone is going to be screaming that the game is too hard.