I've had my fill of action combat- can I get the RPG put back in the MMORPG?

MadFrenchie

I've come to the realization today that action combat MMORPGs have run their course for me.  Active dodge/block aside, I'm ready to get back to the RPG part of the MMORPG.  Action combat seemed like an objective improvement in the beginning, but it's become limiting in terms of the RPG aspect of MMORPGs.  With action combat, we've seen a decline in skills being used that aren't "attacks"; control mechanics are largely an afterthought, tacked onto damage-dealing attacks, or almost completely gutted due to the prevalence of AoE in these action combat games.  Similarly, debuffing/buffing has been hit hard, being almost completely rolled into attacks of some sort in many action combat MMORPGs.

This has contributed to the homogenization of classes.  Now, everyone gets to be DPS, because DPS is so ubiquitous in action combat MMORPGs (due to the aforementioned almost complete focus on damaging attacks and very little to no focus on alternative combat skill usage) that not being able to DPS efficiently means not realistically playable.

As I was playing Deadfire, something struck me: I enjoyed combat much more when I had a multitude of tactical choices available, not just: DPS with some debuffs, DPS with some buffs, DPS with more DPS, DPS that heals when it hits, DPS that prevents healing when hit, DPS that increases subsequent DPS, and finally, DPS that's just regular old DPS.

This may be why I find WoW's current combat system even more satisfying as a decades old tab-target system than I find any of the newer "action combat" titles.  My Pally, for example, has numerous non-damage attack options, despite being a Ret (DPS) Paladin.

With action combat, buff durations have been decimated.  Now, it's a 10s buff/debuff attached to an attack you spam every 10 seconds to keep the buff/debuff up.  GW2 is one of the worst offenders here, going so far as to create an entire meta around stacking these short-duration buffs/debuffs to make entire builds work.  However, they aren't the only offender, merely the easiest example for this point.

How do you guys feel?  Do you think action combat has been a strict gain for the genre, or do you feel there's been a detrimental trade-off that's fundamentally affected the entire philosophy behind MMORPG combat systems to achieve "action combat"?



Disclaimer: this is obviously an opinion piece.  Posts that indicate one thinks I'm speaking in concrete, universal truths will be laughed at and/or trolled.

grimvalor

You might want to have a look at Pantheon. It is still in pre alpha, but every time they show the game it makes marked improvements. I pledged years ago and was lucky to get alpha acess very cheap, I can not wait until alpha starts, it is everything that I want from an mmo, and nothing like the games that are out now.

Quizzical

Sure.  Have action combat with Rocket Propelled Grenades as one of the weapon options.  </sarcasm>  (Yes, I realize that that isn't the real meaning of the RPG acronym for the weapon.)

More seriously, the problem with a lot of non-action combat games is that, while they don't try to make the combat interesting by making it active, they don't try to make the combat interesting in any other way, either.

You cite WoW, which I haven't played since Vanilla, but it was a pretty bad offender back then.  WoW combat then was basically, pull a mob (or group of mobs), go through some fixed skill rotation until the mob dies, then rinse and repeat.  Grouping could involve healing and tanking, but that created the problems that it was very hard to get groups because there weren't enough healers, and most tank classes had no clue about the notion of tanking.

Yes, WoW had a lot of skills with other effects.  The problem is that those other effects scarcely mattered.  Take on foes a little too low for your level/gear and you win, even if you're flagrantly bad at the game.  Take on foes a little to high for your level/gear and you lose, no matter how good you are.  So just about anytime you wanted to group, people would always want to bring in someone too strong for the area so that victory would be assured even if their fellow group members were awful.

MadFrenchie

grimvalor said:

You might want to have a look at Pantheon. It is still in pre alpha, but every time they show the game it makes marked improvements. I pledged years ago and was lucky to get alpha acess very cheap, I can not wait until alpha starts, it is everything that I want from an mmo, and nothing like the games that are out now.

I'm keeping my eye on Pantheon, despite my misgivings about crowdfunding in general!  I take a very cautious wait-and-see approach with crowdfunded development.

I agree though, Pantheon appears to be diving headfirst back into the more traditional combat system.  I do hope that will result in a wide range of unique abilities, not all revolving directly around doing damage to a mob!

Iselin

I feel exactly the opposite lol.

I wish I could get back into WOW because they have the most honest and least sleazy monetization system in MMOs these days but I just can't go back to that slow ass, tab target system after having played several MMOs in a row (GW2, ESO and BDO) with more active combat systems.

I think I'm spoiled for life.

gervaise1

WoW. One of the first poster children for dps monitor add-ons! Didn't have enough dps (or healing) forget serious grouping.

There are other - "old" - games around (the DaoC, LotR, EQ2) that may provide what you need along with new "old style" games e.g. Pantheon.

There are also non-dps games - some of which have been around forever. For example A Tale in the Desert which has pretty much zero combat, let alone action combat. https://wiki.desert-nomad.com/index.php?title=Main_Page

All depends what you want. I wouldn't suggest that all games have gone a particular way though. Maybe just the ones that took your fancy but now no longer do. We all change.

MadFrenchie

Quizzical said:

Sure.  Have action combat with Rocket Propelled Grenades as one of the weapon options.  </sarcasm>  (Yes, I realize that that isn't the real meaning of the RPG acronym for the weapon.)

More seriously, the problem with a lot of non-action combat games is that, while they don't try to make the combat interesting by making it active, they don't try to make the combat interesting in any other way, either.

You cite WoW, which I haven't played since Vanilla, but it was a pretty bad offender back then.  WoW combat then was basically, pull a mob (or group of mobs), go through some fixed skill rotation until the mob dies, then rinse and repeat.  Grouping could involve healing and tanking, but that created the problems that it was very hard to get groups because there weren't enough healers, and most tank classes had no clue about the notion of tanking.

Yes, WoW had a lot of skills with other effects.  The problem is that those other effects scarcely mattered.  Take on foes a little too low for your level/gear and you win, even if you're flagrantly bad at the game.  Take on foes a little to high for your level/gear and you lose, no matter how good you are.  So just about anytime you wanted to group, people would always want to bring in someone too strong for the area so that victory would be assured even if their fellow group members were awful.

Good points.  WoW has evolved in good ways in that regard.  I mentioned elsewhere recently that I've found usefulness in all my Ret Pally's skils throughout the game.  Things like the Blessing of Freedom are eternally useful for helping healers kite mobs, or helping allies in PvP escape.  That skill does nothing but release the target from movement-impairing effects and give them a speed buff, yet it's immensely useful in situations like PvP, where positioning is important.  Stack that on top of damage shields, self-buffs, interrupt skills, stun skills, etc..  All of those skills don't include a damage component, but are eternally useful in combat.  Had they gutted the combat system and added the "action combat" philosophy of plucking out numerous skills and combining many others to fit an 8-10 slot skillbar, they would've utterly destroyed a lot of tactical options their players enjoy today.  For all the whining about Blizzard taking out skills, WoW still gives players one of the largest skillsets available in the genre without the skills feeling like they're all just copy/pasta of one another.



Many of the effects of "action combat" come from its tendency to drastically reduce the total number of usable skills in the first place.  When you have to reduce your entire skill pool down to a handful of options on short cooldowns, it's only natural that you will err towards options that do multiple things.  In fact, for combat to be workable without being a straightforward snoozefest, devs pretty much have to roll multiple combat goals into each individual skill.


As for the tank portion, playing Deadfire has got me thinking that Engagement could work in an MMORPG quite well.  Obsidian was genius to tie accuracy directly to crit chance, as disengagement causes a heavy deflection debuff without slotting skills to mitigate it.  It doesn't artificially force opponents to attack the tank, but it ensures that ignoring the tank results in such a heavy penalty that trying to run from the tank proves impractical without support skills to assist you in peeling.  MMORPGs could benefit from that.  It's much more organic than taunt skills, and tanks don't have to be borderline DPS to ensure enemies can't just ignore them.

MadFrenchie

gervaise1 said:

WoW. One of the first poster children for dps monitor add-ons! Didn't have enough dps (or healing) forget serious grouping.

There are other - "old" - games around (the DaoC, LotR, EQ2) that may provide what you need along with new "old style" games e.g. Pantheon.

There are also non-dps games - some of which have been around forever. For example A Tale in the Desert which has pretty much zero combat, let alone action combat. https://wiki.desert-nomad.com/index.php?title=Main_Page

All depends what you want. I wouldn't suggest that all games have gone a particular way though. Maybe just the ones that took your fancy but now no longer do. We all change.

Sorry, could've been clearer, because you're right, not all have gone the way of action combat.  Specifically many older titles seem to be holding onto the tab target (likely because at this point converting to action combat is impossible for the engine).

I have found that I'm going back to precisely those old-school games for this reason.  

@Iselin I thought you might feel that way.   I enjoyed playing the action combat for a while, but I find myself pining for that tab-target system these days.  It's generally more conducive to the idea of a "thinking man's combat system," though I'm not saying that to imply action combat systems can't require tactical thinking or those that prefer them don't think.  However, the slower pace of tab-target combat simply leaves more time for tactical decision-making within the combat itself, as using off-rotation skills becomes less costly.

Quizzical

MadFrenchie said:

Quizzical said:

Sure.  Have action combat with Rocket Propelled Grenades as one of the weapon options.  </sarcasm>  (Yes, I realize that that isn't the real meaning of the RPG acronym for the weapon.)

More seriously, the problem with a lot of non-action combat games is that, while they don't try to make the combat interesting by making it active, they don't try to make the combat interesting in any other way, either.

You cite WoW, which I haven't played since Vanilla, but it was a pretty bad offender back then.  WoW combat then was basically, pull a mob (or group of mobs), go through some fixed skill rotation until the mob dies, then rinse and repeat.  Grouping could involve healing and tanking, but that created the problems that it was very hard to get groups because there weren't enough healers, and most tank classes had no clue about the notion of tanking.

Yes, WoW had a lot of skills with other effects.  The problem is that those other effects scarcely mattered.  Take on foes a little too low for your level/gear and you win, even if you're flagrantly bad at the game.  Take on foes a little to high for your level/gear and you lose, no matter how good you are.  So just about anytime you wanted to group, people would always want to bring in someone too strong for the area so that victory would be assured even if their fellow group members were awful.

Good points.  WoW has evolved in good ways in that regard.  I mentioned elsewhere recently that I've found usefulness in all my Ret Pally's skils throughout the game.  Things like the Blessing of Freedom are eternally useful for helping healers kite mobs, or helping allies in PvP escape.  That skill does nothing but release the target from movement-impairing effects and give them a speed buff, yet it's immensely useful in situations like PvP, where positioning is important.  Stack that on top of damage shields, self-buffs, interrupt skills, stun skills, etc..  All of those skills don't include a damage component, but are eternally useful in combat.  Had they gutted the combat system and added the "action combat" philosophy of plucking out numerous skills and combining many others to fit an 8-10 slot skillbar, they would've utterly destroyed a lot of tactical options their players enjoy today.  For all the whining about Blizzard taking out skills, WoW still gives players one of the largest skillsets available in the genre without the skills feeling like they're all just copy/pasta of one another.



Many of the effects of "action combat" come from its tendency to drastically reduce the total number of usable skills in the first place.  When you have to reduce your entire skill pool down to a handful of options on short cooldowns, it's only natural that you will err towards options that do multiple things.  In fact, for combat to be workable without being a straightforward snoozefest, devs pretty much have to roll multiple combat goals into each individual skill.


As for the tank portion, playing Deadfire has got me thinking that Engagement could work in an MMORPG quite well.  Obsidian was genius to tie accuracy directly to crit chance, as disengagement causes a heavy deflection debuff without slotting skills to mitigate it.  It doesn't artificially force opponents to attack the tank, but it ensures that ignoring the tank results in such a heavy penalty that trying to run from the tank proves impractical without support skills to assist you in peeling.  MMORPGs could benefit from that.  It's much more organic than taunt skills, and tanks don't have to be borderline DPS to ensure enemies can't just ignore them.

Certainly, I could believe that WoW has a number of skills that would be very useful in situations where the skill of the player (as opposed to level and gear) are the difference between success and failure.  WoW had that in Vanilla, too.  The fundamental problem in Vanilla was that, at least for PVE, WoW was tuned to strongly discourage players from attempting anything where the skill of the player could be the difference between success and failure.  Instead, you'd progress much faster if you assume that everyone is terrible at the game and choose to go do content where you'll win anyway.

Guild Wars 1 did a very good job of providing a wide variety of gadget skills.  Hardly any skills in the game were pure damage skills.  Rather, it was commonly, do damage plus this other effect, or damage plus that other effect, and so forth.  And, of course, there were a lot of useful utility skills that didn't do damage directly.

Don't blame the size of the skillbar.  Guild Wars 1 had only eight slots on your skillbar, but still did a much better job of encouraging relying on non-damage effects than WoW (at least in Vanilla) did with 50.  Or at least it did before they added the "PVE-only" skills that were insanely overpowered to ensure that players who were terrible at the game could still easily beat everything.  Such skills were unusable in PVP because they'd unbalance it horribly--and they unbalanced PVE horribly for exactly the same reasons.

l2avism2

We need turn based combat in MMOs.
Then I can finally drive and PVP at the same time.

MadFrenchie

Quizzical said:

MadFrenchie said:

Quizzical said:

Sure.  Have action combat with Rocket Propelled Grenades as one of the weapon options.  </sarcasm>  (Yes, I realize that that isn't the real meaning of the RPG acronym for the weapon.)

More seriously, the problem with a lot of non-action combat games is that, while they don't try to make the combat interesting by making it active, they don't try to make the combat interesting in any other way, either.

You cite WoW, which I haven't played since Vanilla, but it was a pretty bad offender back then.  WoW combat then was basically, pull a mob (or group of mobs), go through some fixed skill rotation until the mob dies, then rinse and repeat.  Grouping could involve healing and tanking, but that created the problems that it was very hard to get groups because there weren't enough healers, and most tank classes had no clue about the notion of tanking.

Yes, WoW had a lot of skills with other effects.  The problem is that those other effects scarcely mattered.  Take on foes a little too low for your level/gear and you win, even if you're flagrantly bad at the game.  Take on foes a little to high for your level/gear and you lose, no matter how good you are.  So just about anytime you wanted to group, people would always want to bring in someone too strong for the area so that victory would be assured even if their fellow group members were awful.

Good points.  WoW has evolved in good ways in that regard.  I mentioned elsewhere recently that I've found usefulness in all my Ret Pally's skils throughout the game.  Things like the Blessing of Freedom are eternally useful for helping healers kite mobs, or helping allies in PvP escape.  That skill does nothing but release the target from movement-impairing effects and give them a speed buff, yet it's immensely useful in situations like PvP, where positioning is important.  Stack that on top of damage shields, self-buffs, interrupt skills, stun skills, etc..  All of those skills don't include a damage component, but are eternally useful in combat.  Had they gutted the combat system and added the "action combat" philosophy of plucking out numerous skills and combining many others to fit an 8-10 slot skillbar, they would've utterly destroyed a lot of tactical options their players enjoy today.  For all the whining about Blizzard taking out skills, WoW still gives players one of the largest skillsets available in the genre without the skills feeling like they're all just copy/pasta of one another.



Many of the effects of "action combat" come from its tendency to drastically reduce the total number of usable skills in the first place.  When you have to reduce your entire skill pool down to a handful of options on short cooldowns, it's only natural that you will err towards options that do multiple things.  In fact, for combat to be workable without being a straightforward snoozefest, devs pretty much have to roll multiple combat goals into each individual skill.


As for the tank portion, playing Deadfire has got me thinking that Engagement could work in an MMORPG quite well.  Obsidian was genius to tie accuracy directly to crit chance, as disengagement causes a heavy deflection debuff without slotting skills to mitigate it.  It doesn't artificially force opponents to attack the tank, but it ensures that ignoring the tank results in such a heavy penalty that trying to run from the tank proves impractical without support skills to assist you in peeling.  MMORPGs could benefit from that.  It's much more organic than taunt skills, and tanks don't have to be borderline DPS to ensure enemies can't just ignore them.

Certainly, I could believe that WoW has a number of skills that would be very useful in situations where the skill of the player (as opposed to level and gear) are the difference between success and failure.  WoW had that in Vanilla, too.  The fundamental problem in Vanilla was that, at least for PVE, WoW was tuned to strongly discourage players from attempting anything where the skill of the player could be the difference between success and failure.  Instead, you'd progress much faster if you assume that everyone is terrible at the game and choose to go do content where you'll win anyway.

Guild Wars 1 did a very good job of providing a wide variety of gadget skills.  Hardly any skills in the game were pure damage skills.  Rather, it was commonly, do damage plus this other effect, or damage plus that other effect, and so forth.  And, of course, there were a lot of useful utility skills that didn't do damage directly.

Don't blame the size of the skillbar.  Guild Wars 1 had only eight slots on your skillbar, but still did a much better job of encouraging relying on non-damage effects than WoW (at least in Vanilla) did with 50.  Or at least it did before they added the "PVE-only" skills that were insanely overpowered to ensure that players who were terrible at the game could still easily beat everything.  Such skills were unusable in PVP because they'd unbalance it horribly--and they unbalanced PVE horribly for exactly the same reasons.

I feel like we may be conflating issues here, though, with regards to players not trying anything challenging.  Tempting players into challenges is all about making sure the reward is worth the risk.  Without the reward being sufficient, players won't take the risk no matter the combat system.

Devs have gotten that wrong for a long time now.  Convenience is the name of the game, and if the players can't farm mobs with one finger, it's time to nerf the content.  Opting for more challenging content largely yields no rewards worth mentioning prior to end-game.  In extreme cases, there's not even quality options for more challenging content until end-game.  For the leveling game, the bootleg method is still far and away the most popular: artificially pursuing content ahead of your level.  That's an issue in and of itself.

I do blame the skillbar, because even if GW1 had a great system, WoW can (and I would submit today, likely does) easily surpass this due to the fact that they can add more tools to the player's toolbelt.  The ceiling is objectively higher there for tactical options, even if it isn't always utilized effectively.

Quizzical

MadFrenchie said:

Quizzical said:

Certainly, I could believe that WoW has a number of skills that would be very useful in situations where the skill of the player (as opposed to level and gear) are the difference between success and failure.  WoW had that in Vanilla, too.  The fundamental problem in Vanilla was that, at least for PVE, WoW was tuned to strongly discourage players from attempting anything where the skill of the player could be the difference between success and failure.  Instead, you'd progress much faster if you assume that everyone is terrible at the game and choose to go do content where you'll win anyway.

Guild Wars 1 did a very good job of providing a wide variety of gadget skills.  Hardly any skills in the game were pure damage skills.  Rather, it was commonly, do damage plus this other effect, or damage plus that other effect, and so forth.  And, of course, there were a lot of useful utility skills that didn't do damage directly.

Don't blame the size of the skillbar.  Guild Wars 1 had only eight slots on your skillbar, but still did a much better job of encouraging relying on non-damage effects than WoW (at least in Vanilla) did with 50.  Or at least it did before they added the "PVE-only" skills that were insanely overpowered to ensure that players who were terrible at the game could still easily beat everything.  Such skills were unusable in PVP because they'd unbalance it horribly--and they unbalanced PVE horribly for exactly the same reasons.

I feel like we may be conflating issues here, though, with regards to players not trying anything challenging.  Tempting players into challenges is all about making sure the reward is worth the risk.  Without the reward being sufficient, players won't take the risk no matter the combat system.

Devs have gotten that wrong for a long time now.  Convenience is the name of the game, and if the players can't farm mobs with one finger, it's time to nerf the content.  Opting for more challenging content largely yields no rewards worth mentioning prior to end-game.  In extreme cases, there's not even quality options for more challenging content until end-game.  For the leveling game, the bootleg method is still far and away the most popular: artificially pursuing content ahead of your level.  That's an issue in and of itself.

I do blame the skillbar, because even if GW1 had a great system, WoW can (and I would submit today, likely does) easily surpass this due to the fact that they can add more tools to the player's toolbelt.  The ceiling is objectively higher there for tactical options, even if it isn't always utilized effectively.

In Vanilla WoW, if you were good, you could kill mobs three levels above you.  If you were terrible, you could skill kill mobs three levels below you.  And killing the higher level mobs did offer greater rewards on a per-mob basis.  The problem was that in the time it took to kill one mob three levels above you and then heal after the battle, you might be able to kill five mobs three levels below you.

Kritika demonstrated that you can incentivize trying higher skill levels by offering much larger rewards for it.  You can breeze through everything on easy.  Or you can get 4x experience on normal, 6x on hard, or 8x on insane.  That makes it so that, if you're good enough to beat it ("hard" isn't very hard), playing on hard probably gives you better rewards on a per time unit than playing on easy.

You can do things like that if you go heavy on instancing, so that you can spin up an instance of whatever difficulty is requested on demand.  That's harder to do in an open-world game.

maskedweasel

I love action combat. Love it. But I like games with more ..traditional combat as well, and Pantheon seems to be the game to watch in that regard.  Everything screams updated old school.  Definitely check out what Visionary Realms is doing.

I think the issue with action combat is a lot of games feel too similar with action combat. I think GW2 has a good mix of some traditional abilities but with a heavy action feel.  It's why it's my goto MMO for now.

Sephiroso

Quizzical said:

MadFrenchie said:

Quizzical said:

Certainly, I could believe that WoW has a number of skills that would be very useful in situations where the skill of the player (as opposed to level and gear) are the difference between success and failure.  WoW had that in Vanilla, too.  The fundamental problem in Vanilla was that, at least for PVE, WoW was tuned to strongly discourage players from attempting anything where the skill of the player could be the difference between success and failure.  Instead, you'd progress much faster if you assume that everyone is terrible at the game and choose to go do content where you'll win anyway.

Guild Wars 1 did a very good job of providing a wide variety of gadget skills.  Hardly any skills in the game were pure damage skills.  Rather, it was commonly, do damage plus this other effect, or damage plus that other effect, and so forth.  And, of course, there were a lot of useful utility skills that didn't do damage directly.

Don't blame the size of the skillbar.  Guild Wars 1 had only eight slots on your skillbar, but still did a much better job of encouraging relying on non-damage effects than WoW (at least in Vanilla) did with 50.  Or at least it did before they added the "PVE-only" skills that were insanely overpowered to ensure that players who were terrible at the game could still easily beat everything.  Such skills were unusable in PVP because they'd unbalance it horribly--and they unbalanced PVE horribly for exactly the same reasons.

I feel like we may be conflating issues here, though, with regards to players not trying anything challenging.  Tempting players into challenges is all about making sure the reward is worth the risk.  Without the reward being sufficient, players won't take the risk no matter the combat system.

Devs have gotten that wrong for a long time now.  Convenience is the name of the game, and if the players can't farm mobs with one finger, it's time to nerf the content.  Opting for more challenging content largely yields no rewards worth mentioning prior to end-game.  In extreme cases, there's not even quality options for more challenging content until end-game.  For the leveling game, the bootleg method is still far and away the most popular: artificially pursuing content ahead of your level.  That's an issue in and of itself.

I do blame the skillbar, because even if GW1 had a great system, WoW can (and I would submit today, likely does) easily surpass this due to the fact that they can add more tools to the player's toolbelt.  The ceiling is objectively higher there for tactical options, even if it isn't always utilized effectively.

In Vanilla WoW, if you were good, you could kill mobs three levels above you.  If you were terrible, you could skill kill mobs three levels below you.  And killing the higher level mobs did offer greater rewards on a per-mob basis.  The problem was that in the time it took to kill one mob three levels above you and then heal after the battle, you might be able to kill five mobs three levels below you.

Kritika demonstrated that you can incentivize trying higher skill levels by offering much larger rewards for it.  You can breeze through everything on easy.  Or you can get 4x experience on normal, 6x on hard, or 8x on insane.  That makes it so that, if you're good enough to beat it ("hard" isn't very hard), playing on hard probably gives you better rewards on a per time unit than playing on easy.

You can do things like that if you go heavy on instancing, so that you can spin up an instance of whatever difficulty is requested on demand.  That's harder to do in an open-world game.

In Vanilla WoW if you were good you could kill mobs 10 lvls higher than you. I remember going into Scarlet Monastery and soloing the trash mob in the dungeons on my frost mage with blizzard kiting.

MadFrenchie

Quizzical said:

MadFrenchie said:

Quizzical said:

Certainly, I could believe that WoW has a number of skills that would be very useful in situations where the skill of the player (as opposed to level and gear) are the difference between success and failure.  WoW had that in Vanilla, too.  The fundamental problem in Vanilla was that, at least for PVE, WoW was tuned to strongly discourage players from attempting anything where the skill of the player could be the difference between success and failure.  Instead, you'd progress much faster if you assume that everyone is terrible at the game and choose to go do content where you'll win anyway.

Guild Wars 1 did a very good job of providing a wide variety of gadget skills.  Hardly any skills in the game were pure damage skills.  Rather, it was commonly, do damage plus this other effect, or damage plus that other effect, and so forth.  And, of course, there were a lot of useful utility skills that didn't do damage directly.

Don't blame the size of the skillbar.  Guild Wars 1 had only eight slots on your skillbar, but still did a much better job of encouraging relying on non-damage effects than WoW (at least in Vanilla) did with 50.  Or at least it did before they added the "PVE-only" skills that were insanely overpowered to ensure that players who were terrible at the game could still easily beat everything.  Such skills were unusable in PVP because they'd unbalance it horribly--and they unbalanced PVE horribly for exactly the same reasons.

I feel like we may be conflating issues here, though, with regards to players not trying anything challenging.  Tempting players into challenges is all about making sure the reward is worth the risk.  Without the reward being sufficient, players won't take the risk no matter the combat system.

Devs have gotten that wrong for a long time now.  Convenience is the name of the game, and if the players can't farm mobs with one finger, it's time to nerf the content.  Opting for more challenging content largely yields no rewards worth mentioning prior to end-game.  In extreme cases, there's not even quality options for more challenging content until end-game.  For the leveling game, the bootleg method is still far and away the most popular: artificially pursuing content ahead of your level.  That's an issue in and of itself.

I do blame the skillbar, because even if GW1 had a great system, WoW can (and I would submit today, likely does) easily surpass this due to the fact that they can add more tools to the player's toolbelt.  The ceiling is objectively higher there for tactical options, even if it isn't always utilized effectively.

In Vanilla WoW, if you were good, you could kill mobs three levels above you.  If you were terrible, you could skill kill mobs three levels below you.  And killing the higher level mobs did offer greater rewards on a per-mob basis.  The problem was that in the time it took to kill one mob three levels above you and then heal after the battle, you might be able to kill five mobs three levels below you.

Kritika demonstrated that you can incentivize trying higher skill levels by offering much larger rewards for it.  You can breeze through everything on easy.  Or you can get 4x experience on normal, 6x on hard, or 8x on insane.  That makes it so that, if you're good enough to beat it ("hard" isn't very hard), playing on hard probably gives you better rewards on a per time unit than playing on easy.

You can do things like that if you go heavy on instancing, so that you can spin up an instance of whatever difficulty is requested on demand.  That's harder to do in an open-world game.

I agree with your example in vanilla WoW.  But again, I see that as a failing of the devs to attempt to line up average TTK for those extra hard mobs with reward.  If, averaging over the entirety of a grind session (say, 2 hours), yields significantly better progress tackling the tougher mobs, then the risk and reward becomes more balanced.  And even that is only speaking to XP, which still leaves the player doing the more challenging mobs twisting in the wind in terms of drops.  Less mobs killed = less RNG dice rolls for loot.  I don't think I've seen a single dev even attempt to address that disparity in an attempt to encourage players to participate in challenging PvE.

Devs have a hard time these days even grasping how they can encourage certain activities using this.  Old school MMORPGs largely added benefit to groups in how quickly you could farm mobs, but these days the most efficient route to go in almost all MMORPGs is solo.  Devs don't afford any attention to the logistics of grouping and what's needed to make grouping an attractive avenue throughout the game.  I believe this lack of any dependency between players for the vast majority of the game is one of the largest reasons MMORPGs have bred more toxic communities these days.  Humans are generally much nicer to one another when they need to work together or face failure.

MadFrenchie

Btw, shout out to folks for chiming in.  I don't make many threads, generally because I prefer a prompt to get me to think critically before I post, so I appreciate folks jumping in, and (so far) no flaming/bickering!  +1 for us!

Quizzical

Sephiroso said:

Quizzical said:

MadFrenchie said:

Quizzical said:

Certainly, I could believe that WoW has a number of skills that would be very useful in situations where the skill of the player (as opposed to level and gear) are the difference between success and failure.  WoW had that in Vanilla, too.  The fundamental problem in Vanilla was that, at least for PVE, WoW was tuned to strongly discourage players from attempting anything where the skill of the player could be the difference between success and failure.  Instead, you'd progress much faster if you assume that everyone is terrible at the game and choose to go do content where you'll win anyway.

Guild Wars 1 did a very good job of providing a wide variety of gadget skills.  Hardly any skills in the game were pure damage skills.  Rather, it was commonly, do damage plus this other effect, or damage plus that other effect, and so forth.  And, of course, there were a lot of useful utility skills that didn't do damage directly.

Don't blame the size of the skillbar.  Guild Wars 1 had only eight slots on your skillbar, but still did a much better job of encouraging relying on non-damage effects than WoW (at least in Vanilla) did with 50.  Or at least it did before they added the "PVE-only" skills that were insanely overpowered to ensure that players who were terrible at the game could still easily beat everything.  Such skills were unusable in PVP because they'd unbalance it horribly--and they unbalanced PVE horribly for exactly the same reasons.

I feel like we may be conflating issues here, though, with regards to players not trying anything challenging.  Tempting players into challenges is all about making sure the reward is worth the risk.  Without the reward being sufficient, players won't take the risk no matter the combat system.

Devs have gotten that wrong for a long time now.  Convenience is the name of the game, and if the players can't farm mobs with one finger, it's time to nerf the content.  Opting for more challenging content largely yields no rewards worth mentioning prior to end-game.  In extreme cases, there's not even quality options for more challenging content until end-game.  For the leveling game, the bootleg method is still far and away the most popular: artificially pursuing content ahead of your level.  That's an issue in and of itself.

I do blame the skillbar, because even if GW1 had a great system, WoW can (and I would submit today, likely does) easily surpass this due to the fact that they can add more tools to the player's toolbelt.  The ceiling is objectively higher there for tactical options, even if it isn't always utilized effectively.

In Vanilla WoW, if you were good, you could kill mobs three levels above you.  If you were terrible, you could skill kill mobs three levels below you.  And killing the higher level mobs did offer greater rewards on a per-mob basis.  The problem was that in the time it took to kill one mob three levels above you and then heal after the battle, you might be able to kill five mobs three levels below you.

Kritika demonstrated that you can incentivize trying higher skill levels by offering much larger rewards for it.  You can breeze through everything on easy.  Or you can get 4x experience on normal, 6x on hard, or 8x on insane.  That makes it so that, if you're good enough to beat it ("hard" isn't very hard), playing on hard probably gives you better rewards on a per time unit than playing on easy.

You can do things like that if you go heavy on instancing, so that you can spin up an instance of whatever difficulty is requested on demand.  That's harder to do in an open-world game.

In Vanilla WoW if you were good you could kill mobs 10 lvls higher than you. I remember going into Scarlet Monastery and soloing the trash mob in the dungeons on my frost mage with blizzard kiting.

Your memory is faulty.  It's possible that you soloed the mobs in Scarlet Monastery, but not while they were ten levels above you.

Once in Vanilla WoW, I decided to see how far above my level of mobs I could kill.  I used my paladin with excellent gear for its level and a heavy focus on healing and high spirit to ensure that I could survive for a long period of time.  I cherry-picked mobs that were pretty weak for their level, and in an isolated place where I could fight just one at a time in peace.

I successfully killed a mob seven levels above my own.  It took about seven minutes to wear it down.  I tried killing a mob eight levels above my own.  I think that I could have killed it, but if you pro-rate my damage rate, it would have taken around seventeen minutes.  Several minutes into the battle, a much higher level player came by and quickly killed it, probably thinking that he was helping me out by making it so that I couldn't truly solo it.

The only way I could kill mobs that far above my level was with a strong healer with considerable mana regeneration to ensure that I could survive indefinitely.  A mage wouldn't be able to survive several minutes of the mob pounding away with the greatly increased damage that mobs well above your level did.  Nor would a mage be able to kite for long before running out of mana, especially with the much higher level mobs resisting a large fraction of your spells.

MadFrenchie

Quiz, you and Seph's post got me thinking about something else: do you guys think vanilla WoW would've benefitted from a shallower curve with regards to relative mob power?  I.e., mobs 10 levels higher would only resist 80% of spells as opposed to, say 95% and, conversely, mobs equally lower would still resist 20% of spells as opposed to, say, 2%?

H0urg1ass

I would kill for an MMO with the Shadow of Mordor/Batman style combat.  It would be even better if it was an Old Republic style Star Wars MMO with this style of combat.

Can you imagine having actual lightsaber battles with other Jedi/Sith using this style of combat?  Parrying, dodging, riposting, using quick force powers between swings to try to knock them off balance and land a blow...

One of the things I dislike about MMO combat is that you run up to an NPC and they're going through their motions, you're rotating through your abilities but neither of you is having an actual fight.  There's no blocking, there's no parrying, there's no looking for an opening and making an attack.  It's just like two people practicing in the air against an invisible opponent, even though they're standing in front of each other.

MadFrenchie

H0urg1ass said:

I would kill for an MMO with the Shadow of Mordor/Batman style combat.  It would be even better if it was an Old Republic style Star Wars MMO with this style of combat.

Can you imagine having actual lightsaber battles with other Jedi/Sith using this style of combat?  Parrying, dodging, riposting, using quick force powers between swings to try to knock them off balance and land a blow...

One of the things I dislike about MMO combat is that you run up to an NPC and they're going through their motions, you're rotating through your abilities but neither of you is having an actual fight.  There's no blocking, there's no parrying, there's no looking for an opening and making an attack.  It's just like two people practicing in the air against an invisible opponent, even though they're standing in front of each other.

Honestly, I would settle for a Rocksteady Ninja Turtles game I could play just regular ole coop in.  Can you imagine the possibilities?  Combo-counters with multiple Turtles, you and 3 of your buds kicking Shredder ass with that combat system?  It's even a natural fit for the gadgets things, as the turtles can utilize all kinds of ninja weapon accessories!

Quizzical

MadFrenchie said:

Quiz, you and Seph's post got me thinking about something else: do you guys think vanilla WoW would've benefitted from a shallower curve with regards to relative mob power?  I.e., mobs 10 levels higher would only resist 80% of spells as opposed to, say 95% and, conversely, mobs equally lower would still resist 20% of spells as opposed to, say, 2%?

While I think that I would personally have enjoyed the game more with less dependence on level and gear, it would have undermined what the game was about.

In designing WoW, Blizzard basically set out to make sure that players couldn't get stuck.  You spend time playing, you get stronger--even if you're awful at the game.  Especially if you're awful at the game, as unskilled players pay good money, too.  You don't lose experience or gear or whatever because you died that day or because the server crashed.  (Vanilla WoW had the worst server stability of any game I've played this millennium.)  No content will be hard enough that you get stuck, and even if you think you're stuck, a high level or stronger geared player can easily carry you through it.  Quests will naturally take you from one area to the next so that you'll feel like you're making progress rather than grinding something stupid on a treadmill.

The sharp level curve was intended to make it feel like you were progressing faster.  Before, this mob was really hard.  You gain one level, and now it's not very hard.  Another level and you don't even have to pay attention to kill it.  One more level and you can take on two at a time and still win.  That makes it feel like you're making progress and getting stronger really fast, more so than just gaining a level but it not seeming to make you much stronger.  That was what WoW set out to do, and it was successful in bringing in a lot of players who hadn't previously played MMORPGs.

MadFrenchie

Quizzical said:

MadFrenchie said:

Quiz, you and Seph's post got me thinking about something else: do you guys think vanilla WoW would've benefitted from a shallower curve with regards to relative mob power?  I.e., mobs 10 levels higher would only resist 80% of spells as opposed to, say 95% and, conversely, mobs equally lower would still resist 20% of spells as opposed to, say, 2%?

While I think that I would personally have enjoyed the game more with less dependence on level and gear, it would have undermined what the game was about.

In designing WoW, Blizzard basically set out to make sure that players couldn't get stuck.  You spend time playing, you get stronger--even if you're awful at the game.  Especially if you're awful at the game, as unskilled players pay good money, too.  You don't lose experience or gear or whatever because you died that day or because the server crashed.  (Vanilla WoW had the worst server stability of any game I've played this millennium.)  No content will be hard enough that you get stuck, and even if you think you're stuck, a high level or stronger geared player can easily carry you through it.  Quests will naturally take you from one area to the next so that you'll feel like you're making progress rather than grinding something stupid on a treadmill.

The sharp level curve was intended to make it feel like you were progressing faster.  Before, this mob was really hard.  You gain one level, and now it's not very hard.  Another level and you don't even have to pay attention to kill it.  One more level and you can take on two at a time and still win.  That makes it feel like you're making progress and getting stronger really fast, more so than just gaining a level but it not seeming to make you much stronger.  That was what WoW set out to do, and it was successful in bringing in a lot of players who hadn't previously played MMORPGs.

Again, good points.  The natural follow up question is do you think that requirement for the facade (maybe not the right word, but failing to find another at the moment) of progress still stands today?  Or could a shallow curve tab-target game do well in today's market?

Sephiroso

Quizzical said:

Sephiroso said:

Quizzical said:

MadFrenchie said:

Quizzical said:

Certainly, I could believe that WoW has a number of skills that would be very useful in situations where the skill of the player (as opposed to level and gear) are the difference between success and failure.  WoW had that in Vanilla, too.  The fundamental problem in Vanilla was that, at least for PVE, WoW was tuned to strongly discourage players from attempting anything where the skill of the player could be the difference between success and failure.  Instead, you'd progress much faster if you assume that everyone is terrible at the game and choose to go do content where you'll win anyway.

Guild Wars 1 did a very good job of providing a wide variety of gadget skills.  Hardly any skills in the game were pure damage skills.  Rather, it was commonly, do damage plus this other effect, or damage plus that other effect, and so forth.  And, of course, there were a lot of useful utility skills that didn't do damage directly.

Don't blame the size of the skillbar.  Guild Wars 1 had only eight slots on your skillbar, but still did a much better job of encouraging relying on non-damage effects than WoW (at least in Vanilla) did with 50.  Or at least it did before they added the "PVE-only" skills that were insanely overpowered to ensure that players who were terrible at the game could still easily beat everything.  Such skills were unusable in PVP because they'd unbalance it horribly--and they unbalanced PVE horribly for exactly the same reasons.

I feel like we may be conflating issues here, though, with regards to players not trying anything challenging.  Tempting players into challenges is all about making sure the reward is worth the risk.  Without the reward being sufficient, players won't take the risk no matter the combat system.

Devs have gotten that wrong for a long time now.  Convenience is the name of the game, and if the players can't farm mobs with one finger, it's time to nerf the content.  Opting for more challenging content largely yields no rewards worth mentioning prior to end-game.  In extreme cases, there's not even quality options for more challenging content until end-game.  For the leveling game, the bootleg method is still far and away the most popular: artificially pursuing content ahead of your level.  That's an issue in and of itself.

I do blame the skillbar, because even if GW1 had a great system, WoW can (and I would submit today, likely does) easily surpass this due to the fact that they can add more tools to the player's toolbelt.  The ceiling is objectively higher there for tactical options, even if it isn't always utilized effectively.

In Vanilla WoW, if you were good, you could kill mobs three levels above you.  If you were terrible, you could skill kill mobs three levels below you.  And killing the higher level mobs did offer greater rewards on a per-mob basis.  The problem was that in the time it took to kill one mob three levels above you and then heal after the battle, you might be able to kill five mobs three levels below you.

Kritika demonstrated that you can incentivize trying higher skill levels by offering much larger rewards for it.  You can breeze through everything on easy.  Or you can get 4x experience on normal, 6x on hard, or 8x on insane.  That makes it so that, if you're good enough to beat it ("hard" isn't very hard), playing on hard probably gives you better rewards on a per time unit than playing on easy.

You can do things like that if you go heavy on instancing, so that you can spin up an instance of whatever difficulty is requested on demand.  That's harder to do in an open-world game.

In Vanilla WoW if you were good you could kill mobs 10 lvls higher than you. I remember going into Scarlet Monastery and soloing the trash mob in the dungeons on my frost mage with blizzard kiting.

Your memory is faulty.  It's possible that you soloed the mobs in Scarlet Monastery, but not while they were ten levels above you.

Once in Vanilla WoW, I decided to see how far above my level of mobs I could kill.  I used my paladin with excellent gear for its level and a heavy focus on healing and high spirit to ensure that I could survive for a long period of time.  I cherry-picked mobs that were pretty weak for their level, and in an isolated place where I could fight just one at a time in peace.

I successfully killed a mob seven levels above my own.  It took about seven minutes to wear it down.  I tried killing a mob eight levels above my own.  I think that I could have killed it, but if you pro-rate my damage rate, it would have taken around seventeen minutes.  Several minutes into the battle, a much higher level player came by and quickly killed it, probably thinking that he was helping me out by making it so that I couldn't truly solo it.

The only way I could kill mobs that far above my level was with a strong healer with considerable mana regeneration to ensure that I could survive indefinitely.  A mage wouldn't be able to survive several minutes of the mob pounding away with the greatly increased damage that mobs well above your level did.  Nor would a mage be able to kite for long before running out of mana, especially with the much higher level mobs resisting a large fraction of your spells.

My memory was not faulty at all. You comparing a paladin to a frost mage for soloing ability is pretty laughable though. Frost mages had ice armor, blink, frost nova, blizzard(which not only dealt damage and slowed mobs, had a chance to freeze them with a talent point). You also had cone of cold, solid damage and yet again slowed mobs down. It was OP. Mages were the reason blizzard patched the game eventually and lowered the cap of mobs you could hit at one time.

It was as simple as gathering a bunch of mobs, frost novaing, blinking away and blizzard at max range and rinse and repeat till they get close, cone of cold and blink away again saving frost nova for emergencies. You only took max a hit or two once you mastered the kiting method.

Quizzical

MadFrenchie said:

Quizzical said:

MadFrenchie said:

Quiz, you and Seph's post got me thinking about something else: do you guys think vanilla WoW would've benefitted from a shallower curve with regards to relative mob power?  I.e., mobs 10 levels higher would only resist 80% of spells as opposed to, say 95% and, conversely, mobs equally lower would still resist 20% of spells as opposed to, say, 2%?

While I think that I would personally have enjoyed the game more with less dependence on level and gear, it would have undermined what the game was about.

In designing WoW, Blizzard basically set out to make sure that players couldn't get stuck.  You spend time playing, you get stronger--even if you're awful at the game.  Especially if you're awful at the game, as unskilled players pay good money, too.  You don't lose experience or gear or whatever because you died that day or because the server crashed.  (Vanilla WoW had the worst server stability of any game I've played this millennium.)  No content will be hard enough that you get stuck, and even if you think you're stuck, a high level or stronger geared player can easily carry you through it.  Quests will naturally take you from one area to the next so that you'll feel like you're making progress rather than grinding something stupid on a treadmill.

The sharp level curve was intended to make it feel like you were progressing faster.  Before, this mob was really hard.  You gain one level, and now it's not very hard.  Another level and you don't even have to pay attention to kill it.  One more level and you can take on two at a time and still win.  That makes it feel like you're making progress and getting stronger really fast, more so than just gaining a level but it not seeming to make you much stronger.  That was what WoW set out to do, and it was successful in bringing in a lot of players who hadn't previously played MMORPGs.

Again, good points.  The natural follow up question is do you think that requirement for the facade (maybe not the right word, but failing to find another at the moment) of progress still stands today?  Or could a shallow curve tab-target game do well in today's market?

It all depends on how good the game is.  Going back to the era around when WoW launched, Guild Wars 1 did pretty well for itself as a tab-target game with minimal progression.  I'm of the view that there's always room in the market for another great game, and never a need for another bad one.

It would be a mistake to think of it as a few headline features being all or even primarily what determines a game's success.  If that were so, then we'd see knock-off games be far more successful.  How good a game is depends more on the many thousands of small touches than on a few headline features.

Quizzical

Sephiroso said:

Quizzical said:

Sephiroso said:

In Vanilla WoW if you were good you could kill mobs 10 lvls higher than you. I remember going into Scarlet Monastery and soloing the trash mob in the dungeons on my frost mage with blizzard kiting.

Your memory is faulty.  It's possible that you soloed the mobs in Scarlet Monastery, but not while they were ten levels above you.

Once in Vanilla WoW, I decided to see how far above my level of mobs I could kill.  I used my paladin with excellent gear for its level and a heavy focus on healing and high spirit to ensure that I could survive for a long period of time.  I cherry-picked mobs that were pretty weak for their level, and in an isolated place where I could fight just one at a time in peace.

I successfully killed a mob seven levels above my own.  It took about seven minutes to wear it down.  I tried killing a mob eight levels above my own.  I think that I could have killed it, but if you pro-rate my damage rate, it would have taken around seventeen minutes.  Several minutes into the battle, a much higher level player came by and quickly killed it, probably thinking that he was helping me out by making it so that I couldn't truly solo it.

The only way I could kill mobs that far above my level was with a strong healer with considerable mana regeneration to ensure that I could survive indefinitely.  A mage wouldn't be able to survive several minutes of the mob pounding away with the greatly increased damage that mobs well above your level did.  Nor would a mage be able to kite for long before running out of mana, especially with the much higher level mobs resisting a large fraction of your spells.

My memory was not faulty at all. You comparing a paladin to a frost mage for soloing ability is pretty laughable though. Frost mages had ice armor, blink, frost nova, blizzard(which not only dealt damage and slowed mobs, had a chance to freeze them with a talent point). You also had cone of cold, solid damage and yet again slowed mobs down. It was OP. Mages were the reason blizzard patched the game eventually and lowered the cap of mobs you could hit at one time.

It was as simple as gathering a bunch of mobs, frost novaing, blinking away and blizzard at max range and rinse and repeat till they get close, cone of cold and blink away again saving frost nova for emergencies. You only took max a hit or two once you mastered the kiting method.

You could do that to kill groups of mobs at or near your own level, and you probably did.  But it didn't work against mobs that had 10 levels on you.  You wouldn't be able to keep casting the skills necessary for the hour or so that it would take to wear them down without running out of mana.  Especially since spells being resisted would mean that most of your attempts at slowing the mobs failed.

I had a mage that I played all the way to the level cap in Vanilla WoW.  I didn't use it for that experiment because the lack of ability to regenerate and survive a very long battle meant that it might well have been the worst class in the game for taking on mobs far above your level.

Sephiroso

I don't know what to tell you. I did it. And not just me, there were numerous posts/guides about it. Was the reason i made a mage tobeginwith. I even sold SM plvl runs because it was the fastest way to lvl 30-40 which enabled a lot of classes to get their beloved lvl 40 talent(shadow form for priests for instance was a game changer)

I'd find proof of it but as we all know it isn't easy finding video evidence given youtube wasn't created till 2005 and didn't really make it big till 2006.

If Blizzard ever delivers on vanilla WoW coming back, i'm sure you'll see plenty of videos of it pop up. It was the single best way to grind for money, mages were the kings of it. Until blizzard nerfed target cap and blizzard at least but that didn't happen till after BC if i'm not mistaken.