I don't want FPS style combat in my online RPGs, in an RPG it should be about my characters abilities, not mine.
I know tab-targetting hot-key based combat systems are so mind-numbingly simple and repetitive that they feel like the player really has no control over the flow of battle, but I have actually been in groups that show that at some fundamental level the player's ability to do things does influence the outcome of an encounter. And thus I must question the basis for your opinion.
-------- "Chemistry: 'We do stuff in lab that would be a felony in your garage.'"
The most awesomest after school special T-shirt: Front: UNO Chemistry Club Back: /\OH --> Bad Decisions
One thing I found impossible to implement smoothly with aimed targeting is healing. It could work as a touch spell where you have to be close to your target and facing it when the heal fires. It could also work as AOE where it radiates around the caster. But neither gives a typical back-row healer experience.
What I opted for is F-key target healing. Everyone in the group has an F-key assigned, hitting the correct key targets that party member then the heal fires the same as in a normal tab-target environment from action bar or hot-key. An option to this is click to target which I also have working. That can get clunky if there is a large number of people or the players are running around frantic.
Buffs work the same way except when it's a full-party buff, since there is no target needed.
edit: pet commands to attack target need a clicked enemy if done manually, but they will auto-assist if a player is hit.
Other than those, the third person shooter for server-side ranged projectiles, weapon attack swing for melee (no target needed), and caster AOE (no target needed) all seem to do quite well. Most of it is loosely patterned after TES and to a lesser extent Darkfall although I prefer a faster projectile than what they use.
Ken Fisher - Semi retired old fart Network Administrator, now working in Network Security. I don't Forum PVP. If you feel I've attacked you, it was probably by accident. When I don't understand, I ask. Such is not intended as criticism.
One thing I found impossible to implement smoothly with aimed targeting is healing. It could work as a touch spell where you have to be close to your target and facing it when the heal fires. It could also work as AOE where it radiates around the caster. But neither gives a typical back-row healer experience.
What I opted for is F-key target healing. Everyone in the group has an F-key assigned, hitting the correct key targets that party member then the heal fires the same as in a normal tab-target environment from action bar or hot-key. An option to this is click to target which I also have working. That can get clunky if there is a large number of people or the players are running around frantic.
Buffs work the same way except when it's a full-party buff, since there is no target needed.
edit: pet commands to attack target need a clicked enemy if done manually, but they will auto-assist if a player is hit.
Other than those, the third person shooter for server-side ranged projectiles, weapon attack swing for melee (no target needed), and caster AOE (no target needed) all seem to do quite well. Most of it is loosely patterned after TES and to a lesser extent Darkfall although I prefer a faster projectile than what they use.
Ever play TF2?
The medic uses aim in that game and it isn't a problem at all, that is due to the medics healing gun being a sort of target lock gun that can follow a target even if they move.
I don't want FPS style combat in my online RPGs, in an RPG it should be about my characters abilities, not mine.
Well, FPS styled combat is really just one of the mechanics you can use.
AoCs melee work as any other game, except that you need to face your opponent (for most but not all attacks) and be in range, it will swing even if the oponent is out of range.
Then you could also use a more beat them up mechanics, this works best on a console MMO but you can have combat alá Tekken and Soul calibur with combos and so on.
Or you could use some kind of movement sensor, like a kinect or a Wii contoller.
That makes FPS 1 of 4 possibilities (that I can think of right now, might be more).
I personally think that your skills and your characters skills should matter. I am against that clicking faster should be important but to outsmart your opponent should and that is your skills as well.
Aiming is not really a problem in melee either. Download Ao0C, it is F2P, actually hitting your opponent works fine there. Of course is AoCs movement keys not neccesary in all aim based games. But "stand within the range and face your opponent" ain't exactly hard twitched based personal skills.
Ranged based combat is a lot harder because it is actually hard to aim when your opponent is far away. There are multiple solutions to that as well including doing what AoC did and use auto targetting for just that part. Or you could have the game helping you with the aim so just aiming near the target will move the sight, or something else.
I don't want FPS style combat in my online RPGs, in an RPG it should be about my characters abilities, not mine.
I know tab-targetting hot-key based combat systems are so mind-numbingly simple and repetitive that they feel like the player really has no control over the flow of battle, but I have actually been in groups that show that at some fundamental level the player's ability to do things does influence the outcome of an encounter. And thus I must question the basis for your opinion.
I am pretty sure you could teach a chimp to play DPS in most holy triad MMOs so he is not that far from the truth.
But, yes. In certain harder instances player skills actually matters. particularly for the healer.
can you have these interesting abilities in a aim based MMORPG?
If so, which MMO has done it?
My theory is that, any game, I mean ANY game, can be great if the design is great. Systems or mechanics, in the end, doesn't matter much. Everyone can have the greatest systems, every game developers can use the greatest and latest graphical engines with the physics systems, they are merely tools, it is the design behind the game that makes it great.
But on that note, I want to add that every game is different, they can be great because of different reasons. Tab targetting can be great, so can aim based combat systems. Elder Scrolls and Fallout had aim based combat system, do they require much skill to use? No, and if you think they require huge amount of player skill, you should try a fps game then.
Even tho games like DCUO sucked, I enjoyed the moments of fun from its combat, is it great? No, the design is mostly horrible, but the system showed that the potential of what it could acheive. Gamers, especially MMORPG players, are so confined and holding onto "What has worked" and "What has not worked", just because one game made an aim based game horridly, does not show any indication that hte next game is just as horrible. Same as tab targetting, with success like WoW, did that mean all tab targetting combat is great or successful? in fact, I will say 85 to 90% of them were medicore to down right horrible.
Design is what matters, system are merely tools to help the designers.
How much WoW could a WoWhater hate, if a WoWhater could hate WoW? As much WoW as a WoWhater would, if a WoWhater could hate WoW.
Mmoexposed - Yes of course it can have the same level of complexity. The link in wowhead is quite a drag though because moft of those skills/spells are either things you wont even see in game or skills of enemies/pets or just different ranks of the same skill or even just fluff skills.
Heck i bet if you look hard enough, youll find the tonk skills an the bombs effects in those random minigames.
Now which mmo? Id have to say this can be quite a weird thing because you dont really see much change in the mmo combat systems. One would be mabinogi which doesnt use an autotargetting feature but you do have to click enemies to attack them n stuff.
Another one is LOCO where its a third person shooter and there may only be 10 skilld per char type but there are several differebt skills totalling to about 100 or so skills. But since you brought up wowheads daa mining, we must not forget item effects and npc skills so maybe add about 50 more to that number.
As for the comment on "mass effect isnt an mmo" it shouldnt be really fixed that way. The tech IS there to be able to create ME system for an mmo. And the pausing thing i only remember using it when ordering my npcs around o.o
Also, you can play co in fps mode. It works fine that way and a lot of the ppl i played that game with uses that system. O.o
''/\/\'' Posted using Iphone bunni ( o.o) (")(") **This bunny was cloned from bunnies belonging to Gobla and is part of the Quizzical Fanclub and the The Marvelously Meowhead Fan Club**
Mouse wheel can scroll through a dozen different skills without much effort.
Problem with doing anything in real time is lag. You can either limit the number of people in an area (TF2, COD, etc) or design a game for people with insane bandwidth (Nothing, its commercial suicide.)
Interesting that the mechanics of healing in the context of aiming were brought up... as this is basically the opposite of aiming to hurt a target. I've noticed that if I have an emotional connection to the game I play I am likely to spend far longer in that game, over time (not necessarily per session). In my current OG of choice you have a repair gun that needs to be charged while it is aimed and then the shot has to hit the target. This creates an interesting dynamic where if a friendly player is under fire and you are trying to heal them you have to get them to hold still for a second while you charge up and fire, which of course makes them vulnerable to taking hits from the enemy. This is what I mean by simple systems creating emergent complexity. This liminal moment of saving a teammate from death does create an emotional spark, for me at least.
On the topic of player skill versus character skill, I think this argument strongly affects endgame. If you look at time spent with a game as a history of choices then two possible reward structures are A) I have developed my character to the point where s/he is strong enough to defeat most opponents because of choices made revolving around character ability (read: 'skill tree') or I have developed my online presence to the point where I am able to interact with sufficient effecience to defeat most opponents because of practice. I see the difference in these viewpoints as the relative importance placed on game fundaments which are presented early on. In other words, should a newbie be able to defeat me because although I've spent 8 years in a game for whatever reason they have greater aptitude? In a compelling world, yes. This means that you should be able to grasp 90% of a game in the first 15 minutes, but to get that last 10% it may well take a decade. In order to do this elegantly you need to translate real world skills into the game, so Action Is Mandatory.
"The simple is the seal of the true and beauty is the splendor of truth" -Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar Authored 139 missions in VendettaOnline and 6 tracks in Distance
I would love to see a feature like this in an MMO. I'm so tired of click and wait. Not to mention how fun using a bow would be.
With spells though, yes, Mass Effect-life physics could work well, not really an auto target, but kind of like it's helping you with it. I think of Oblivion too, though, how horrible aiming target spells was, but that could be fixed. Also imagine 'burst' spells, like, close range aoe, or such. It could be doable, but would require thinking.
Gamers had a chance to support such a MMO with this system a few years ago but no one seemed interested,now all of a sudden they are.
Nightangell that video looked kind of cool, up until the halfway point when he started talking about buffs. I prefer no invisible dice rolling; every object has a relationship to every other object in the universe. I have been playing and supporting this type of MMO since its release, here is my reply:
The video is gameplay during a mission I designed using the webitor (that's web editor) in Vendetta Online. You can see that the basic gameplay follows some laws of Newtonian Mechanics, including chain reactions. Even if you miss you can still hit something else by complexity.
The aiming is computer assisted; As long as your target is within a certain cone of fire your weapon is likely to hit. You can also turn this off and fight using the force, so to speak... which indeed has certain advantages in particular situations.
"The simple is the seal of the true and beauty is the splendor of truth" -Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar Authored 139 missions in VendettaOnline and 6 tracks in Distance
Fundamentally many skills players use are perumatations of attack combinations and techniques for most classes.
All physical combat skills would easily pan out to their traditional forms in aimed combat by mapping back out to chains of actions and use of particular items you could hotswap to.
Like an archer being able to quickly scroll through their collection of arrows, laying down different kinds in combination with throwing a few things like a jar of oil before plunking whatever they hit with a fire arrow, or changing their tactic to firing like holding longer for a single strong shot versus a quick volley, etc.
Magic follows a similar condition that many spells can very easily be brought to a reticule and location based system, being able to not only swap through spells but again use them in different combinations to get differing results or changing the way you use a specific skill to achieve an entirely different effect.
Healing and support isn't that hard. Healing itself being done by direct target high volume heals like the traditional go-to spell in tab targetting games can effectively be replaced with more effective heal over time and area effects if aiming a reticule at a person to pop off a one shot major heal proves too hard. And many support abilities are area of effect to begin with. To which those could go different routes because they can use the same combination and multifunctional traits as other power sets, but they can also take on more mini-game aspects when you aren't in the same kind of threat of being mutilated to make things like playing different quick tunes (like in ocarina of time) to bring about different abilities.
"The knowledge of the theory of logic has no tendency whatever to make men good reasoners." - Thomas B. Macaulay
"The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge." - Daniel J. Boorstin
Comments
I know tab-targetting hot-key based combat systems are so mind-numbingly simple and repetitive that they feel like the player really has no control over the flow of battle, but I have actually been in groups that show that at some fundamental level the player's ability to do things does influence the outcome of an encounter. And thus I must question the basis for your opinion.
--------
"Chemistry: 'We do stuff in lab that would be a felony in your garage.'"
The most awesomest after school special T-shirt:
Front: UNO Chemistry Club
Back: /\OH --> Bad Decisions
One thing I found impossible to implement smoothly with aimed targeting is healing. It could work as a touch spell where you have to be close to your target and facing it when the heal fires. It could also work as AOE where it radiates around the caster. But neither gives a typical back-row healer experience.
What I opted for is F-key target healing. Everyone in the group has an F-key assigned, hitting the correct key targets that party member then the heal fires the same as in a normal tab-target environment from action bar or hot-key. An option to this is click to target which I also have working. That can get clunky if there is a large number of people or the players are running around frantic.
Buffs work the same way except when it's a full-party buff, since there is no target needed.
edit: pet commands to attack target need a clicked enemy if done manually, but they will auto-assist if a player is hit.
Other than those, the third person shooter for server-side ranged projectiles, weapon attack swing for melee (no target needed), and caster AOE (no target needed) all seem to do quite well. Most of it is loosely patterned after TES and to a lesser extent Darkfall although I prefer a faster projectile than what they use.
Ever play TF2?
The medic uses aim in that game and it isn't a problem at all, that is due to the medics healing gun being a sort of target lock gun that can follow a target even if they move.
TF2 Medic gameplay
All men think they're fascinating. In my case, it's justified
Well, FPS styled combat is really just one of the mechanics you can use.
AoCs melee work as any other game, except that you need to face your opponent (for most but not all attacks) and be in range, it will swing even if the oponent is out of range.
Then you could also use a more beat them up mechanics, this works best on a console MMO but you can have combat alá Tekken and Soul calibur with combos and so on.
Or you could use some kind of movement sensor, like a kinect or a Wii contoller.
That makes FPS 1 of 4 possibilities (that I can think of right now, might be more).
I personally think that your skills and your characters skills should matter. I am against that clicking faster should be important but to outsmart your opponent should and that is your skills as well.
Aiming is not really a problem in melee either. Download Ao0C, it is F2P, actually hitting your opponent works fine there. Of course is AoCs movement keys not neccesary in all aim based games. But "stand within the range and face your opponent" ain't exactly hard twitched based personal skills.
Ranged based combat is a lot harder because it is actually hard to aim when your opponent is far away. There are multiple solutions to that as well including doing what AoC did and use auto targetting for just that part. Or you could have the game helping you with the aim so just aiming near the target will move the sight, or something else.
I am pretty sure you could teach a chimp to play DPS in most holy triad MMOs so he is not that far from the truth.
But, yes. In certain harder instances player skills actually matters. particularly for the healer.
My theory is that, any game, I mean ANY game, can be great if the design is great. Systems or mechanics, in the end, doesn't matter much. Everyone can have the greatest systems, every game developers can use the greatest and latest graphical engines with the physics systems, they are merely tools, it is the design behind the game that makes it great.
But on that note, I want to add that every game is different, they can be great because of different reasons. Tab targetting can be great, so can aim based combat systems. Elder Scrolls and Fallout had aim based combat system, do they require much skill to use? No, and if you think they require huge amount of player skill, you should try a fps game then.
Even tho games like DCUO sucked, I enjoyed the moments of fun from its combat, is it great? No, the design is mostly horrible, but the system showed that the potential of what it could acheive. Gamers, especially MMORPG players, are so confined and holding onto "What has worked" and "What has not worked", just because one game made an aim based game horridly, does not show any indication that hte next game is just as horrible. Same as tab targetting, with success like WoW, did that mean all tab targetting combat is great or successful? in fact, I will say 85 to 90% of them were medicore to down right horrible.
Design is what matters, system are merely tools to help the designers.
How much WoW could a WoWhater hate, if a WoWhater could hate WoW?
As much WoW as a WoWhater would, if a WoWhater could hate WoW.
Yes of course it can have the same level of complexity. The link in wowhead is quite a drag though because moft of those skills/spells are either things you wont even see in game or skills of enemies/pets or just different ranks of the same skill or even just fluff skills.
Heck i bet if you look hard enough, youll find the tonk skills an the bombs effects in those random minigames.
Now which mmo? Id have to say this can be quite a weird thing because you dont really see much change in the mmo combat systems. One would be mabinogi which doesnt use an autotargetting feature but you do have to click enemies to attack them n stuff.
Another one is LOCO where its a third person shooter and there may only be 10 skilld per char type but there are several differebt skills totalling to about 100 or so skills. But since you brought up wowheads daa mining, we must not forget item effects and npc skills so maybe add about 50 more to that number.
As for the comment on "mass effect isnt an mmo" it shouldnt be really fixed that way. The tech IS there to be able to create ME system for an mmo. And the pausing thing i only remember using it when ordering my npcs around o.o
Also, you can play co in fps mode. It works fine that way and a lot of the ppl i played that game with uses that system. O.o
''/\/\'' Posted using Iphone bunni
( o.o)
(")(")
**This bunny was cloned from bunnies belonging to Gobla and is part of the Quizzical Fanclub and the The Marvelously Meowhead Fan Club**
Mouse wheel can scroll through a dozen different skills without much effort.
Problem with doing anything in real time is lag. You can either limit the number of people in an area (TF2, COD, etc) or design a game for people with insane bandwidth (Nothing, its commercial suicide.)
Interesting that the mechanics of healing in the context of aiming were brought up... as this is basically the opposite of aiming to hurt a target. I've noticed that if I have an emotional connection to the game I play I am likely to spend far longer in that game, over time (not necessarily per session). In my current OG of choice you have a repair gun that needs to be charged while it is aimed and then the shot has to hit the target. This creates an interesting dynamic where if a friendly player is under fire and you are trying to heal them you have to get them to hold still for a second while you charge up and fire, which of course makes them vulnerable to taking hits from the enemy. This is what I mean by simple systems creating emergent complexity. This liminal moment of saving a teammate from death does create an emotional spark, for me at least.
On the topic of player skill versus character skill, I think this argument strongly affects endgame. If you look at time spent with a game as a history of choices then two possible reward structures are A) I have developed my character to the point where s/he is strong enough to defeat most opponents because of choices made revolving around character ability (read: 'skill tree') or
I have developed my online presence to the point where I am able to interact with sufficient effecience to defeat most opponents because of practice. I see the difference in these viewpoints as the relative importance placed on game fundaments which are presented early on. In other words, should a newbie be able to defeat me because although I've spent 8 years in a game for whatever reason they have greater aptitude? In a compelling world, yes. This means that you should be able to grasp 90% of a game in the first 15 minutes, but to get that last 10% it may well take a decade. In order to do this elegantly you need to translate real world skills into the game, so Action Is Mandatory.
"The simple is the seal of the true and beauty is the splendor of truth" -Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar
Authored 139 missions in Vendetta Online and 6 tracks in Distance
Gamers had a chance to support such a MMO with this system a few years ago but no one seemed interested,now all of a sudden they are.
The MMO cummunity needs to make it's mind up..
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Prr5dFIK2-Y&feature=related
Nightangell that video looked kind of cool, up until the halfway point when he started talking about buffs. I prefer no invisible dice rolling; every object has a relationship to every other object in the universe. I have been playing and supporting this type of MMO since its release, here is my reply:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WY-QlXa2Q8c
The video is gameplay during a mission I designed using the webitor (that's web editor) in Vendetta Online. You can see that the basic gameplay follows some laws of Newtonian Mechanics, including chain reactions. Even if you miss you can still hit something else by complexity.
The aiming is computer assisted; As long as your target is within a certain cone of fire your weapon is likely to hit. You can also turn this off and fight using the force, so to speak... which indeed has certain advantages in particular situations.
"The simple is the seal of the true and beauty is the splendor of truth" -Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar
Authored 139 missions in Vendetta Online and 6 tracks in Distance
To the OP put very simply, yes it can be done.
Fundamentally many skills players use are perumatations of attack combinations and techniques for most classes.
All physical combat skills would easily pan out to their traditional forms in aimed combat by mapping back out to chains of actions and use of particular items you could hotswap to.
Like an archer being able to quickly scroll through their collection of arrows, laying down different kinds in combination with throwing a few things like a jar of oil before plunking whatever they hit with a fire arrow, or changing their tactic to firing like holding longer for a single strong shot versus a quick volley, etc.
Magic follows a similar condition that many spells can very easily be brought to a reticule and location based system, being able to not only swap through spells but again use them in different combinations to get differing results or changing the way you use a specific skill to achieve an entirely different effect.
Healing and support isn't that hard. Healing itself being done by direct target high volume heals like the traditional go-to spell in tab targetting games can effectively be replaced with more effective heal over time and area effects if aiming a reticule at a person to pop off a one shot major heal proves too hard. And many support abilities are area of effect to begin with. To which those could go different routes because they can use the same combination and multifunctional traits as other power sets, but they can also take on more mini-game aspects when you aren't in the same kind of threat of being mutilated to make things like playing different quick tunes (like in ocarina of time) to bring about different abilities.
"The knowledge of the theory of logic has no tendency whatever to make men good reasoners." - Thomas B. Macaulay
"The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge." - Daniel J. Boorstin