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Why oh why can't we have a stat based char creation MMO again.
Symone
Member Posts: 277
Every hyped MMO coming out is going to be skill/talent/spell etc based, put points into this or that pre defined skill.
I sorrily miss the char creation back in old AC 1 where everyone had to make their own choices on where to put their stats, and it was possible to completely gimp your character. Sure there were cookie cutter builds of the week going on, but someone was always trying something new to improve and become the next best thing! I loved that!
I wish one of these games would just take the risk, sure I realise balancing these games would be hard, but in the end I think players would find balance themselves by figuring out what works for them.
Give us a stew of stats, skills, powers, etc to use to build our characters! I also enjoyed AO because it let me do this to some extent, and twinking out your character was half the fun of the game.
I am just so sick of skill based talent point crap thats out and will be coming out. it bores me to tears to gain a point every level and put it into this or that. Why is every freaking new MMO game going tis way?
Comments
Well you see.... The new generation of MMORPG gamers are extremely stupid and they like their games on easy mode. Even though the Asheron's Call character creation is simple, i'm sure the tards who play WoW wouldn't be able to figure it out anyway.
if runescape can do it then anyone can...not sure why they dont though
Have no fear, its coming!
If you do this everyone complains about balance.
The two major names coming out are PvP titles so its not that surprising they went for classes.
However I will say I think they are kind of copping out. Although Guild Wars probably is a game that you do not believe fits your archetype. It actually does do so even though there are classes. GW has over 1000 abilites each with their own stats and you can cusomize your abilites with each one via your attributes, which are essentially analogous to skill points. Each class has on average over 100 abilities and everyone can have 2 classes so you can have somewhere between 200-300 abilities to choose from. There are no restrictions in class combinations.
GW lets you build a character in a very similar way to the systems you describe. Whether people like the progression model is irrelevant for this disucssion. The point is that you do not need a UO skill style game to accomplish roughly the same thing. Afterall putting points into skill just gives you abilities anyway.
The reason i mention this is because of the balance thing. GW is a very well balanced PvP game. This is because they came up with a meta-system then created all their abilities to make the real system. They have interrupts and enchantments and enchantment removal and hexes and each type is designed to perform a certain way.
When GW creates a class the only balance concern they need to worry about is whether the abilities do what is intended for that class and that certain undesirable phenomenon like tank-mages are either not possible or have a weakness (like relying on enchantments).
So in other words you won't see this type of system start to pop up again until games start balancing the way Guild Wars, via a comprehensive ability design using a meta system, does instead of the way WoW does, via class and role.
This won't happen anytime soon. Most designers do not have the ability for elegance that Anet or CCP do. Its much easier for them to cobble things together into classes and call it done.
Its the same reason many programmers use iterative Loops instead of recursion even though sometimes the recursion is a far more elegant solution. Its just easier to think about and grab a hold of with your mind. The funny thing is they convince themselves this makes class based balanced easier to do, because its a simple model. But actually its a model with many unseen holes and is thus much harder to balance than Guild War's style balancing.
The class balance model requires a complete reanalysis of everything everytime any change is made. The Guild Wars system does not. That is one of the reasons it is superior for an MMORPG. However this fact is not generally fully understood or taken into consideration and usually the apparent simplness of of the class based model wins people over. Its a sort of misidentification of the KISS principle. They are keeping the wrong part simple.
They think by keeping the classes simple balance will be simple, but then they just keeping running into the problems of cascading changes and strange interactions because they did not actually design systematically.
So you are screwed until this becomes obvious to the slacker monkey part of their brains. I don't say that pejoratively, laziness is important for designers. It is your motivation for doing things right. But at the same time it can be very simplistic and its not until you get hit of the head enough with the problems of the two approaches that you sort of begrudingly say "OK lets try it this way, because that other way was too much of a night mare."
Right now the skilled based people are the victim of completely awful balance, well really complete lack of balance, that existed in games like UO. The designers saw this knew it was bad, heard the complaints and knew it hurt their bottom line. They then looked at how to control those system better and just saw a complete mess and ran as fast as they could to what appears to be the easy solution: classes.
They are now in the process of realizing class balance, while offering some improvments over no balance at all, is in fact a big hairball of wires that you have to untangle every frigging time. So while you can set up decent balance maintaining it is a gigantic pain. And you will need to do some maintainence because there is no way you do it perfect the first time and things change anyway.
The next step will be getting past the idea that class are a necessary evil and there is no other solution. Over the next few you will see that mantra repeated over and over. It already is. Then a few attentive designers will realize the whole thing is already solved in GW and that emulating them will actually give them and the players more freedom and make balance easier to maintain.
So you are screwed for I dunno like 5 years or until Guild Wars 2 comes out. Or you can play Eve. Or maybe that World of Darkness MMO CCP is supposedly making. Otherwise you are screwed for a while because it will take them a while to move to a more comprehensive and elegant balance system and that is what drives all this. Well also the robot like reliance on class roles messes with their thinking too. But in the end they actually need to do the original design with no classes and put classes on top if they want roles, other wise they go back to their hairball.
I miss the AC1 style of building a character. You got to put XP directly into attributes and skills. Attributes -affected- your skills. So it was a dual way to build a character, not to mention skill points which allowed you to train new ones and later on in the games life even specialize them.
I think the more accurate way of putting this is that the new generation of gamers think of these games as "games".
They don't want to invest their lives into them because they are...
games.
They are diversions, entertainment, something where they don't want to spend all of their time only to find out they have "gimped" their characters.
They could be former gamers who have grown up, gotten jobs, started businesses, families, and enjoy other pursuits other than to sit in front of a computer screen all day in order to gather and sell items and and work on their characters.
sigh. I suppose that there is something to be said about a game where one can lose themselves but quite frankly, it should never (in my opinion) be someplace that they have no control of being lost.
It is more than just a skill based game though. Ryzom was a skill based game and where were the people? Now it's gone.
No, it's creating games using large budgets because gamers demand more and more only to have them fail.
These types of games fail too many times and you won't have any more of them. And I will mention this again, isn't there a new game, looks kind of like diabalo, that is vampire based? I think that has a skill based system.
Wonder how long it will last.
No, you can't create games that only appeal to a small amount of people with a high failure rate. No one is going to go for it.
And if players really feel that strongly about it, find someone who is making a stat based game and invest your own money in it. Really.
Now I wonder how many players are going to take 5 or 10 k out of their savings in order to do this.
I've always been a money where your mouth is sort of person. I have no doubt that there are small private game makers who are making games who need funding.
Go for it.
edit: now that I think of it, find a small game that is in development that you believe in, do a fund raiser of sorts... get somethign like 5 dollars from everyone. Hype it on every game site you can find. Put the money in some sort of interest bearing account until you get like 60 thousand people (this is the internet, there aren't 60 thousand people who aren't willing to invest 5 dollars for a skill based game?
Heck, I offered $200.00 to that player group that wanted to purchase Ryzom and I didn't even play it.
That would be quite a lot of money for a small game that wasn't heavy on graphics. Make it happen.
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WELL Online, linkrealms, earthrise, Champions Online (cryptic studios), etc all will be open skill system
Some of these titles are well into closed testing (I know I'm in one)
So it is coming
IMO the main key to this type of gameplay (Sandbox, skillsystems, player content, open pvp etc) is indy developers. SUPPORT indy devs.
big corporations and such are 9 out of 10 times going to go with the sure things. Sandbox and skill based systems are not "sure things".
Its going to take a few smaller companys making good shows of the concepts before we start seeing a resurgence of that style of play.
So again... I say support your indy devs.
so very true.
arguing with a corporate fanboi is like teaching special education.
even if you teach him something...at the end of the day he's still retarded.
EVE Online is pretty well balanced I think people over-exaggerate balance issues with skill-based systems.
Skill based games offer more customization. This is ALWAYS a good thing... Players want more control over their characters which is why the population dispersal of SWG vet's really have no place to go....
Agree with OP
Sadly, MMORPGs are going the wrong direction and there is no hope for anything GOOD to come out any time soon...
: (
I actually just wrote a blog entry about just this subject, take a look and give me your thoughts.
As long as you can change the stats later I would do that. I really dont get a kick out of having stats then realizing im 1 point short of something and it will make my character useless.That and games like this create nothing but cookie cutter builds as any slight deviation from something would make you potentially weaker then someone else.
That and games like this create nothing but cookie cutter builds as any slight deviation from something would make you potentially weaker then someone else.
Only if the game is set with 1 or 2 "best" builds. if you balanced the skills to where there were several different effective skill sets then you wont have the 1 or 2 best. Now granted as Bob does good with spec A folks will flock to set A, but as long as B and C and D can compete with A your fine.
Moving this to a different thread this one can be removed.
I could only wish. In today's PvP oriented games balance is most important. The old AC system for character creation made YOU make the choice. Developers didnt have to worry about "balancing a class" instead if your class was gimped then it was your fault.
There were never any 2 characters alike. even in the cookie cutter builds you had to alocate your own points to raise the skill. everyone did this differently depending on what area they wanted to eccel in more or evenly to use all equally.
I honestly miss those days and would give alot to see another game try this out. But as one poster put it "The new generation of MMO players want an EZ mode game" basicly where most of the decisions are left to the developers and not to the players so if anything goes wrong the players dont have to take the responsibility upon themselves.
But imagine a game world where your character is truely YOUR character. your complete decisions make this character, you can run into a simalar character and still know that your unique. Do you want ot be a offensive caster that can use stealth? its your decision, how about a tank that can heal/buff himself? you can do it. but the balance comes into play when you decide which skills to level. As in the first example you may want to make your stealth more viable, but to do so you will have to sacrifice raising your magic ability. or vice verse you will have more powerfull magic at the cost of your stealth being weak and inviable...Or of course you can just blance the two out and not be really strong in one area etc...
Anyway ( I'm rambling now) I really hope to see this system eventually make its way into a Game. Preferably a game with PvP in it. Of course having the ability to "respec" you character is alwayse there. Im tired of having to Raid for days/months to get decent gear to make my character stronger. I want to make my character strong by making the right decisions with a slight boost from gear.
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What usualy screws up most skill based games,and actually just most games, is balance and pvp.95% of the time you see the word ,balance, it's while referencing pvp.There is basicaly only one one way to truly balance pvp.Have only one char per person,pre-made,maxed out with exactly the same stats,same weapons,and same gear,with computer controled speed and reflex actions,any devation and it isn't "balanced"..what fun
DDO is exactly the character creation your talking about, because it's basically PVP-light.
hm, think I misread this one
Yeah I agree I think a lot of developers are trying to get access to the non-RPG crowd (mainstream) as you said here. I dont think they are overly concerned with balance per se but rather want to keep things simple for the masses. I've noticed a lot of these newer rpgs are taking no chances at all. You have markings on your map where to go during a quest, etc. It's really amazing how user friendly these mmorpgs are....
Wanna know why they dont do this anymore... .Whats the fun in doing all this stat crap if you dont understand what stats to up on a certain kind of class and all you do is gimp yourself.... how is that any fun... its not plain and simple
Even if I am ABLE to figure it out, it does not mean that I *want* to spend the time to do so. Playing a game should not be like doing work. It should be fun & easy.
I don't see a problem in making it easy enough so people can ENJOY the process, rather than stressing about it.
Playing a game is about consuming content. And anything in between the player and the content is a barrier.
Even if I am ABLE to figure it out, it does not mean that I *want* to spend the time to do so. Playing a game should not be like doing work. It should be fun & easy.
I don't see a problem in making it easy enough so people can ENJOY the process, rather than stressing about it.
Playing a game is about consuming content. And anything in between the player and the content is a barrier.
You dont have to stress about a stats/skill based game. The game is for fun as you stated so why stress? Ok you messed up and have 100 more hp than bob, who has 100 more mana than you? Whats the big deal? Oh... you want to min max? Well that would be counter intuitive to your post...Stats and Skills doesnt mean over complicated...
Wanna know why they dont do this anymore... .Whats the fun in doing all this stat crap if you dont understand what stats to up on a certain kind of class and all you do is gimp yourself.... how is that any fun... its not plain and simple
Well number one stats and skills systems dont usually have classes, and as for what they do... well, usually holding your mouse over said stat clearly says what it does.If your a mage and dump all your stats into endurance for more hp, while another guy dumps his into int for mana... your not gimped over him, he just can cast more spells, you can take more hits.
I play WOW and I loved the stat system in EQ, and you calling me a tard? Maybe you should take a look in the mirror.