But, doing something like just waiting.. like in other games like GW2, where you can stand around out of combat and just get all HP/SP back.. that does not happen in DDO.
Thanks for the clarification. I was going off of my time playing during beta. One reason I didn't like DDO was the regenerating Mana. I'm glad they changed that
I have never heard about that. Must have been before my time. When I started playing, you got your mana back by Rest Shrines, unless you could get Pots, or have some really rare raid gear that could restore mana.
Egotism is the anesthetic that dullens the pain of stupidity, this is why when I try to beat my head against the stupidity of other people, I only hurt myself.
yeah. right now, and for as long as i've played the game (11 years now) under normal circumstances mana users don't just regenerate their spell points natively.
mnemonic potions and a few different clicky gear items can restore spell points (SP)... certain gear (only 3 items that i know of) restore a tiny amount of SP when you are struck in combat, which can be a risky endeavour to allow yourself to be hit for the sake of restoring SPs, and 2 class abilities, clerical divine vitality and bards (specifically spellsinger T5 ability) song restore SP in small chunks in a limited fashion.
it's still very easy to run out of SPs if you aren't careful.
D&D has been mentioned many times here. What people forget is that D&D was a very simplified game.
A good fight would take anywhere from 30 minutes to 2 hours, depending on the rolls. Imagine what it would have been like had they used a more intricate combat system!
Hit Points was not health, in the early days. It was a "symbol" of how your character was getting better at fighting. To Hit AC0 (THAC0) was not any indication of your manual dexterity, it was a broad indicator of your more familiarization with the weapon(s) your character used. Your weapon made little difference if it was made of iron, steel, or butter. Your character never improved their starting stats, unless with magic.
These simplified systems did not translate well into video games. Hit Points became health. Armor class became actual armor. Developers tried to translate what they experienced in D&D and failed. They wanted levels. They wanted those levels to mean something. In addition to skills, spells, and abilities they started adding in Health and Ability increases. They started dividing up, specifying what D&D simplified.
I still like levels in my RPGs, but they are certainly not a necessity
This is very accurate, and Gygax even talked about this in the Dungeon's Master Guide, where he explained that having more HP did not mean your character was inherently tougher, it was to indicate that they sidestepped the blow, or moved in such a way to make it a glancing blow as opposed to a direct hit like they would at the early levels. This is why a 1st level fighter had on average like 6 hp, and could be killed by a dagger, because they didn't know how to move or deflect the blows, and would take the dagger straight into them, and a 10th level fighter had around 60 hp, and would glance off blows all the time.
Now, again, AC was the same way, it was not a test of your armor directly, or even if you got hit, it was a question of if you could defect the blow, or dodge it, or the many various ways you can avoid taking the damage directly.
Now, MMO's could incorporate all these things into them. in fact, DDO, works in this direction with a lot of HomeBrew revisions to how things like AC and HP work, and this gives players a LOT to think about.
... yah.. giving players a LOT to think about is not always a good thing in an MMO where players want to just jump in and play.
I am not even going to get into what kind of shit show it would become if the game gave the illusion of something like horizontal level progression, but in reality was working on a gear/skill base, that would allow players to be exponential more powerful than other players, under the disguise of being the same "level"
In fact games like GW2 are crushing under this exact problem with their max level characters, so much so, that the Devs themselves have come out and even admitted the game suffers under disparity of meta builds and rotations being able to dish out 10X the damage of what would be an average build or even something simple less than optimal.
This making it exceedingly hard to design and judge encounters, and making any semblance of balance in their PvP a laughing stock.
Now ideally, the game could just work out all the numbers behind the scenes, but again, it would need to be some kind of system, as even in real, take someone who has been fencing for 20 years, while the chance might exist that the novice could beat them, the expected and often assured outcome is the more experienced fencer wins.
And this is something that MMO's need to address, and the answer is not simply the skill of the player themselves, as that eliminates any advantage of investing any real time into the game, and you might as well focus on making a lobby shooter.
I really don't see the difference between hit points in D&D and hit points/health in a typical mmo.
The explanation of what hit points means in D&D can also be applied to mmos/rpgs. It doesn't change the fact that 60hp is 10x more than 6hp.
My apologies.
I neglected to talk about the important part of D&D combat: The round. 6 seconds where multiple attacks, parries, ripostes, dodges, and blocks occur. When a player rolls their "to hit die", it is an abstract to see if any of their multiple attacks got through.
MMOs have made each swing a button press. Each block and dodge, too. Combat is no longer an abstract portrayed in 6 second increments, but rather a real time visualization of a fight or battle. So what worked on the tabletop translated poorly to video games in general.
MMORPGs have made hit points=life. You level up you get more life. Because of the real time combat, hit points are no longer an abstract indicator of a player's increase in battle skills. It is literally life. That improvement is now shown by button presses.
I hope that helps in clarifying what we're talking about
D&D was very much like that back in the day, though if I recall correctly the time abstracted was said by Gygax to be a good deal longer. I believe it was said to be about a minute. Regardless, that abstraction died a painful death with the clogging minutia of the 3.5 rules. I have paid virtually no attention to D&D editions subsequent to that, but I heard there was an intent to streamline the game.
Despite how hit points are imaginatively described in D&D, in practice they function pretty much exactly as the do in MMORPGs. In both, when you level up you can take more damage. In both, the additional amount of damage you can take due to leveling far exceeds whatever could be considered from natural physical improvement. The remainder is abstracted in to make the character more survivable than what reality would allow for.
Though in one it was imaginatively described and made note of and the other not, the hit points in D&D and many MMORPGs are functionally virtually identical.
But, doing something like just waiting.. like in other games like GW2, where you can stand around out of combat and just get all HP/SP back.. that does not happen in DDO.
Thanks for the clarification. I was going off of my time playing during beta. One reason I didn't like DDO was the regenerating Mana. I'm glad they changed that
I have never heard about that. Must have been before my time. When I started playing, you got your mana back by Rest Shrines, unless you could get Pots, or have some really rare raid gear that could restore mana.
Well, to be honest, that was 25 years ago (1995). My memory could be faulty and I could be confusing DDO with the Dungeon Lords demo I also played at the time. I just recall playing DDO and thinking, "This is not the D&D I know..."
- Al
Personally the only modern MMORPG trend that annoys me is the idea that MMOs need to be designed in a way to attract people who don't actually like MMOs. Which to me makes about as much sense as someone trying to figure out a way to get vegetarians to eat at their steakhouse. - FARGIN_WAR
But, doing something like just waiting.. like in other games like GW2, where you can stand around out of combat and just get all HP/SP back.. that does not happen in DDO.
Thanks for the clarification. I was going off of my time playing during beta. One reason I didn't like DDO was the regenerating Mana. I'm glad they changed that
I have never heard about that. Must have been before my time. When I started playing, you got your mana back by Rest Shrines, unless you could get Pots, or have some really rare raid gear that could restore mana.
Well, to be honest, that was 25 years ago (1995). My memory could be faulty and I could be confusing DDO with the Dungeon Lords demo I also played at the time. I just recall playing DDO and thinking, "This is not the D&D I know..."
DDO came out in 2006. So, if this was back in the 90's, then it must have been some other game.
Which is kinda funny, while over the years, DDO has had a lot of "House Rules" added to it, so it no longer really feels like a AD&D game, when I first started, it really did feel like playing the game in MMO form, right down to the campy dungeon narrator.
Egotism is the anesthetic that dullens the pain of stupidity, this is why when I try to beat my head against the stupidity of other people, I only hurt myself.
DDO came out in 2006. So, if this was back in the 90's, then it must have been some other game.
Thanks for the correction! Faulty memory... I just love getting old!
- Al
Personally the only modern MMORPG trend that annoys me is the idea that MMOs need to be designed in a way to attract people who don't actually like MMOs. Which to me makes about as much sense as someone trying to figure out a way to get vegetarians to eat at their steakhouse. - FARGIN_WAR
Anyway, when we talk about levels, it is for the same reason why MMO's use systems like HP and AC and the like.
It provides a simple, easy t understand way for players to grasp upward progress. 20 Hp is better than 10. Level 2 is better than level 1, and so forth.
Nuanced, horizontal, or situational progress and skills simply do not have that mass appeal as "You leveled up, here is more HP and AC"
While MMO's could be made very complex, where progress was in fact more nuanced, more situational, more horizontal... they don't because, I wager for the same reason why so many of us want to see a HP bar.
We have become accustomed to the simplicity, and we like it that way.
Egotism is the anesthetic that dullens the pain of stupidity, this is why when I try to beat my head against the stupidity of other people, I only hurt myself.
Comments
mnemonic potions and a few different clicky gear items can restore spell points (SP)... certain gear (only 3 items that i know of) restore a tiny amount of SP when you are struck in combat, which can be a risky endeavour to allow yourself to be hit for the sake of restoring SPs, and 2 class abilities, clerical divine vitality and bards (specifically spellsinger T5 ability) song restore SP in small chunks in a limited fashion.
it's still very easy to run out of SPs if you aren't careful.
D&D was very much like that back in the day, though if I recall correctly the time abstracted was said by Gygax to be a good deal longer. I believe it was said to be about a minute. Regardless, that abstraction died a painful death with the clogging minutia of the 3.5 rules. I have paid virtually no attention to D&D editions subsequent to that, but I heard there was an intent to streamline the game.
Despite how hit points are imaginatively described in D&D, in practice they function pretty much exactly as the do in MMORPGs. In both, when you level up you can take more damage. In both, the additional amount of damage you can take due to leveling far exceeds whatever could be considered from natural physical improvement. The remainder is abstracted in to make the character more survivable than what reality would allow for.
Though in one it was imaginatively described and made note of and the other not, the hit points in D&D and many MMORPGs are functionally virtually identical.
Well, to be honest, that was 25 years ago (1995). My memory could be faulty and I could be confusing DDO with the Dungeon Lords demo I also played at the time. I just recall playing DDO and thinking, "This is not the D&D I know..."
- Al
Personally the only modern MMORPG trend that annoys me is the idea that MMOs need to be designed in a way to attract people who don't actually like MMOs. Which to me makes about as much sense as someone trying to figure out a way to get vegetarians to eat at their steakhouse.- FARGIN_WAR
Which is kinda funny, while over the years, DDO has had a lot of "House Rules" added to it, so it no longer really feels like a AD&D game, when I first started, it really did feel like playing the game in MMO form, right down to the campy dungeon narrator.
- Al
Personally the only modern MMORPG trend that annoys me is the idea that MMOs need to be designed in a way to attract people who don't actually like MMOs. Which to me makes about as much sense as someone trying to figure out a way to get vegetarians to eat at their steakhouse.- FARGIN_WAR
It provides a simple, easy t understand way for players to grasp upward progress. 20 Hp is better than 10. Level 2 is better than level 1, and so forth.
Nuanced, horizontal, or situational progress and skills simply do not have that mass appeal as "You leveled up, here is more HP and AC"
While MMO's could be made very complex, where progress was in fact more nuanced, more situational, more horizontal... they don't because, I wager for the same reason why so many of us want to see a HP bar.
We have become accustomed to the simplicity, and we like it that way.