Could a MMO completely redesign its combat?

monochrome19

Would it be possible for an MMO to completely redesign its combat or is it set in stone forever? Lets use WoW as an example. WoW is a traditional tab-targeting game, but for whatever reason Blizzard decides they no longer like tab-targeting and feel its outdated. So they decide to go with action combat instead. Could WoW -- or any MMO in general -- make an overhaul like this? I've never seen anything like this done before so I'm curious. Within the realm of reason, taking into account hardware limitations and budget. Would the WoW engine be too old? Or would it be too much of a financial impossibility and bankrupt the company?

VengeSunsoar

Swg.

They could but history tells us there is a good chance it will destroy their game.

Gdemami

monochrome19 said:

Would it be possible for an MMO to completely redesign its combat or is it set in stone forever?

Definitely possible but likely non-feasible.

Aelious

It would probably only happen to a title that was shut down and then rereleased later with the new system. Reason being if done "live" it could have the effect of turning away your current players but not attract enough new ones. It's bad business.

To just "spice up" a combat system, like WoW did, is much more doable because it's not completely foreign to current players. Another idea for doing this is to take a title with a sea of abilities, like EQ2, and shift a portion of them to situationally activated or state dependent. 

4507

Runescape tried in 2012 and lost more than half their players, which forced them to open an original combat 2007 server to attract them back (search "Evolution of Combat Runescape").

Since combat is such a major piece of MMOs, I don't think it's possible to do that short of completely redesigning the game around it (and with the cost of doing that, why not just put out a sequel with the new combat?).

sunandshadow

Combat and gear are kind of intertwined, as are combat and the world map's collision detection.  So some changes would be much harder to make, if they required minor changes to the whole world or substantial changes to the gear.  Further, a game that has instanced or turn-based combat would probably be a lot easier to convert to a different instanced or turn-based combat system than any real-time open-world system would be to any other.

Quizzical

The problem with making a major overhaul after launch is that you've attracted a playerbase who likes the game the way it was.  Completely redoing combat would alienate your current playerbase so that most of them would leave, but it probably wouldn't attract most of the players who would have liked your game if it had launched with the new style combat.  Furthermore, the former players that the overhaul drives away will likely be bitter at having the rug pulled out from under them and tell anyone who will listen that your game is terrible and your company is terrible, making it harder to recruit players who will like the revamped game.

The notable exception is if combat isn't a major portion of your game so that people weren't playing it primarily for the combat.  WoW could completely redo its fishing system without chasing away very many players, for example, and a game where combat is a similarly minor portion of the game could likewise redo its combat system without destroying the game.

ApexTKM

Yea first thought comes to mind is SWG unfortunately, that screwed up the game.

kartool

I'd love to see SWTOR re-design their combat so the game could be fun. 

Wizardry

It would take a lot of serious thought to see if it were possible because there are important factors.

One of the most important factors that most seem to forget is exploitation.Little things that players want like jumping can lead to exploiting or even flying.Every single object in the world has to be taken into account,like a rock you might hop up onto and mobs can't,or perhaps a line of trees the mobs can't seem to navigate well etc etc.
What would likely happen is a system that gets dumbed down long before it is improved.SOE is/was pretty famous for that.Most every game i see coming out now a days are games that look like simple easy systems that work well for the developer,so they can make content easily.

Yes it is doable but if the team was not smart enough to do it well in the first place,i doubt they have the capacity to improve it.

wanderica

Using your example, it would be a monumental failure.  However, from a technical standpoint, it could certainly be done, and it could be done well.  The real problem is what to do about the existing game.  Literally every single encounter in the game would need to be redone.  WoW is known for its raiding scene above all, and this would disappear overnight.  A game would lose far more players than it attracted by doing this.  Not every game would work with action combat, for example.  WoW is one of these games.  A dev team that could pull off this type of change wouldn't have been stupid enough to implement a combat system so mismatched in the first place.

So, the short answer to your question is yes, but the longer answer is not without changing the identity of the game itself.

gervaise1

Maybe over time it could be changed.

Little by little. WoW has changed aspects of its combat over the years for example as have other games. How much small change would you have to do though before it became major.

If Blizzard, say, wanted to add action combat to WoW what they might do is add action combat as well as tab targeting in some PvP instances say. And if it caught roll it out further on the PvP servers - again as an alternative. And if that went OK maybe they roll it out further. 

Righteous_Rock

Wow would not overhaul it's combat. World of Warcraft is the top dog when it comes to Fluidity and Response Movement - it is the bar setter and people love it just as it is. The only way they would alter combat is to come out with a new game, either WoW2 or World of Warcraft single player first person/third person rpg.