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Combat mechanic: POLL
jazz.be
Member UncommonPosts: 962
Active vs passive
Technical vs tactical
GW2 vs WoW
TERA vs Rift
Whatever you want to call it, it's a fact that combat seems to be one of the most evolving aspects in the MMO genre.
Not sure if there has been a poll around this subject, but I sure am curious about what people really think about this. It's almost widely accepted that the old tactical approach is outdated. But is it really the opinion of most people? Or only of the loud ones?So here it goes, it's very simple. The simpler the better.
What combat mechanic do you prefer? And you should only take into account the experience that starts from the moment you open a fight, till the death of either one of you. Do not confuse other aspects like PVP/PVE or bounties or raid tactics or politics or whatever into this. It's only about the combat mechanics.
whether it's PVE or PVP shouldn't matter since there are no games that offer different mechanics for PVE and PVP, not that I know of.
Is the myth true? Is majority of people really tired of the classical approach? Or are the revolutionaries just loud and gameless, which gives them more time to be on boards...which is actually ironic...it would mean that most answers comes from people who are not currently playing an MMO and so their opinion may be slightly revolutionary.
Anyway, just for fun and curiosity. Cheers.
Comments
Just put dodge/block behind the term.
Active dodge = Player controlled dodge, reactive movement required from player
Passive dodge = Some form of stat based dodge ability. Player controls this through ability points, talent, action points...whatever.
This may be the simplest way of looking at the difference.
But let's not get to deep into this, I'm sure there are flaws but I think most people get the difference.
I'm sorry that was your question right? English is not my native language.
There's one thing I noticed that is very important when it comes to Active/Technical vs Passive/Tactical.
Active/Technical combat may be much more exciting in small fights like 1v1, 2v2. But as soon as your fight gets larger this type of combat becomes a mess, dodging and blocking is hardly a matter of skill any more... It gets chaotic. But that's where Passive/Tactical combat shines - Larger battles.
So I couldn't really answer what kind of combat I like more... If I had to go with 1... I would probably pick passive/tactical since I like Arena play - (4v4,5v5,...), even tho Active/Technical seemed like a way to go for some time, I just grew tierd of it because larger battles always turned out lame, zergfestish...
Yup that was my question. Just wanted to know before threw my two cents in.
That's actually a very tough question to answer. Games where you have to push a button for everything become far more exilerating and skill based (think any FPS) and reward players for time and effort to practice. Games where most things are automated reward players for knowledge, and tend to make you feel good because you took the time to figure out something difficult. These both heavily reward players for time investments which makes both styles very fun because we walk away knowing that at the end of the day, we accomplished something that made us stand out.
The downsides though are that in a Active game, you can't have too many buttons or things become exponentially hectic, and at some point most people become overwhelmed. FPS games, fighting games, all games where everything you do is controlled by your buttons use limited buttons for this exact reason (well that and they are console games). They typically don't stray far from this formula because most people find that having a button to dodge, parry, block, move, do attack a,b,c,d,e,f,g , aim, and so on to be too much of a problem considering this is all decision making in a matter of a second.
The downside to a Passive game is that it becomes far more automated. Your character dodges, parries, and blocks automatically, and your attacks are more or less automatic save special attacks. Without special attacks, most every Tactical game becomes a snorefest, and when your special attacks have long cooldowns, this becomes increasingly evident. FFXI was a perfect example of this problem for any melee character who was waiting for copious amounts of time to do a weapon skill.
Both are good in their own right but the game needs to cater too it. A game that's Active cannot have so many different things to do so that people become overloaded, and a game that is Passive needs to have enough buttons so that people don't become bored
Talk about push polling.
Active/Technical very positive language
Passive/Tactical first term very negative, second term neutral.
Your bias is showing.
Don't get to excited please :-)
Passive is the opposite of active, nothing more. What is more positive, an active war or a passive war?
Tactical is a strange definition I agree. It mostly stand for the high amount of abilities passive/tactical combat offers. While technical stands for the reflexes.
I have a bias, but it's not what you think. I'm more of a tactical/passive kind of fighter. I prefer not to actively do the fight, I prefer to control the fight in other ways, while still enjoying the visuals and thrills. There you go.
Passive,that means basically automated combat,no such thing that i know of exists.
I am also lost on technical-tactical,idk maybe it's early and i am tired.
I like a thinking combat and one with lots of depth,meaning lots of built in AI and options from your class.
I cannot stand that MOST games now have you pressing 2-4 hot bar icons and that is it.
You need longer combat to make it intriguing,other wise there is no other result than 1-4-3-2-1-3 rinse repeat.Mobs simply do not have enough AI,1-3 choices at best makes for very dull combat.Also most games have you utilizing 1 type of weapon with no other factors than your gear,again cheap ,lazy,boring design.
FFXI easily by a VERY long way has the most in depth combat system,all other games are doing it lazy and cheap.Even tohugh FFXI does it ther best,there is a ton of room for improvement,which shows how far behind the eight ball the system designers are ,that work for these developers.
This is why i lol when i hear people talk about Trinity being dead,well ya if you have these rank amateur system designers.There is so much room to improve the Trinity design it is not funny,it is far from dead.I would fire all of the combat designers if they worked for me,i would pay a kid right out of college/university and get a better effort.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
KBishop and Vort3x, you had great comments and I totally agree.
But it shouldn't stop you from voting. The poll is solely about the combat mechanic.
And just assume that it's well implemented in the game.
The difference between both styles is so big (at least for the moment) that it shouldn't be to confusing. Maybe both styles will grow closer to each other in the future but I don't think we're there (yet?).
Personally I hope they just keep releasing games with the classical approach to combat. In my opinion, technical/active combat takes away to much focus.
"If I offended you, you needed it" -Corey Taylor
Nope it is push polling. Now you suggested that English is your second language but to any English speaker you are putting positive values on one choice and negative values on the other.
OK before I start the insults...
How do you describe something passive, in a positive way?
I disagree, in fact I feel its the exact opposite. Mass fights feel more skillful and more fun the more enemies you are facing.
I'll most likely never play a Tab Target, stand still and trade blows style of combat system again. GW2 and Neverwinter showed me just how fun active combat can be. Not only that it is more immersive, more fluid, more skillful and downright more fun.
Sandbox means open world, non-linear gaming PERIOD!
Subscription Gaming, especially MMO gaming is a Cash grab bigger then the most P2W cash shop!
Bring Back Exploration and lengthy progression times. RPG's have always been about the Journey not the destination!!!
truly don't care.
The poll is not useful.
It is about whether combat is fun and deep and usually that means lots of skills that does different things (as opposed to one point here or there to increase power), and interesting combo.
i have see interesting and fun action combat, tactical combat and even turn-based combat. it is all in the details of the mechanics.
I see that the terms tactical and technical aren't received well.
I was afraid it was going to be over analyzed that's why I gave 4 well known games to rely on.
In WoW you have longer fights than in GW2 and much much more variety in terms of abilities. I call WoW tactical because it's slower and there are many ways to change the fight in your favor (with defensive abilities for example), and I call GW2 technical because the fight is a rush, and when whatever you do is a rush, it requires you to be fast and so also technical. You can play WoW with mouse clicks if you want. I don't think many people do that in GW2.
From that perspective, TERA may be more tactical than GW2 because it has more abilities, but combat is still build around the reactive responses from the player (dodge tanks for example!)
In the other hand there is a better synergy between classes in GW2 than in TERA, and making use of that synergy could also be called tactical.
But it's just a way to describe it really, it's not that important. It's just important to differentiate one style from the other.
Games devs feel challenged to create some new combat feeling. And they do that by adding action in the fight, more player interaction such as dodge, block etc. But do we really want that? Is that what we want them to invest time in? Isn't the classical approach to combat just fine?
That's what the poll essentially is about.
How about fast paced vs slow paced. I don't think there are slow paced fights which requires constant player interaction and vice versa, so maybe this is also a way of describing it for now.
Good combat needs a strategical layer (planning ahead)
It needs a tactical layer (choosing the right skills at the right time)
.... this is how it use to be....
But the newer games also introduced an active skill level, which add things like positioning, real time dodging and real time aiming to the MMO genre
In my opinion a good combat system requires all 3 of these..
In many of the games that added the 3rd layer, they neglected the 2nd (tactical layer) which removed much of the fun from these games for the hardcore MMo players.... they blamed however the addition of the new active combat.
In my opinion a new game would require to be balanced in all these 3 layers...
Best MMO experiences : EQ(PvE), DAoC(PvP), WoW(total package) LOTRO (worldfeel) GW2 (Artstyle and animations and worlddesign) SWTOR (Story immersion) TSW (story) ESO (character advancement)