I'm afraid the "Holy Trinity" is a function of how MMOs deal with combat.
MMO combat is ritualized combat...much like sparring in martial arts is ritualized. In a real fight, it's over fast. It is not prolonged. MMO combat has to be ritualistic in nature.
It would be nice to find another formula besides tank/DPS/heals, but the entire genre is built on that basic trinity from D&D onwards, and honestly, if you do something different nowadays, you'd better be perfect the first time or the marketplace will stomp you.
I think if we ever get a game world that accurately replicates real terrain, you'll see a change, but taking cover behind a rock just does not work in MMOs right now...the virtual environment can't be that realistic yet.
So you've got ritualized combat...nothing at all like the real world, where it's more often than not one shot and you're out of it, dead or unable to continue to fight. Which, after all, is NOT FUN.
CH, Jedi, Commando, Smuggler, BH, Scout, Doctor, Chef, BE...yeah, lots of SWG time invested.
I'm afraid the "Holy Trinity" is a function of how MMOs deal with combat.
MMO combat is ritualized combat...much like sparring in martial arts is ritualized. In a real fight, it's over fast. It is not prolonged. MMO combat has to be ritualistic in nature.
It would be nice to find another formula besides tank/DPS/heals, but the entire genre is built on that basic trinity from D&D onwards, and honestly, if you do something different nowadays, you'd better be perfect the first time or the marketplace will stomp you.
I think if we ever get a game world that accurately replicates real terrain, you'll see a change, but taking cover behind a rock just does not work in MMOs right now...the virtual environment can't be that realistic yet.
So you've got ritualized combat...nothing at all like the real world, where it's more often than not one shot and you're out of it, dead or unable to continue to fight. Which, after all, is NOT FUN.
I like the DDO idea of post-heal fights. I also like the idea of "dodge fights", with players relying on manually dodging the mob's attack. Just don't make it QTE based.
I hate WoW because it made my plush hamster kill himself, created twin clones of Hitler, punched Superboy Prime in reality, stared my dog down, spoiled my grandmother, assimilated me into the Borg, then made me into a real boy, just to make me a woman again.
The whole "only-one-person-gets-a-coin-good-for-a-radiance-gear-piece" thing on Lord of the Rings Online. The fellowship doing a radiance quest wins or loses as a team and should be rewarded as such, not the person with the luckiest roll.
Finding players to do other things than radiance gear quests? Forget it. It's gotten so bad that they're revamping the book quests so you can do them solo. As much as I like the game, the current setup for radiance gear is idiotic.
Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood. - Marie Curie
Lack of harsh death penalties. followed by a close second, instances.
By all means. Impose a harsh death penalty on yourself.
Reroll your toon. I dare you.
You will of course not do this.
Or I can play an MMO with a harsh death penalty which I do.
which is? i seek a game with adrenaline too, share your pleasure
and as for subject, penalty for pk ij Last Chaos was retarded idea: u got your stats lowered for killing ppl
Playing: Rohan Played (from best to worst): Shadowbane, Guild Wars, Shayia, Age of Conan, Warhammer, Runes of Magic, Rappelz, Archlord, Knight online, King of Kings, Kal online, Last chaos
The whole "only-one-person-gets-a-coin-good-for-a-radiance-gear-piece" thing on Lord of the Rings Online. The fellowship doing a radiance quest wins or loses as a team and should be rewarded as such, not the person with the luckiest roll. Finding players to do other things than radiance gear quests? Forget it. It's gotten so bad that they're revamping the book quests so you can do them solo. As much as I like the game, the current setup for radiance gear is idiotic.
And thats why its getting a complete revamp next week
If WoW = The Beatles and WAR = Led Zeppelin Then LotrO = Pink Floyd
The Quest Grind.. IMO quests should be few but long, interesting and hard to complete. I would be down for a game where it like takes multiple game sessions to complete a single quest. But I guess that is just me.
Harsh death penalties. Slap a penalty on me at death? Fine. Kick me in the gonads and eradicate hours of effort? Uh, yeah, I think I'll go play a game that wants me to play it, thanks...
What do you consider a reasonable death penalty?
Basically the death penalty used in the vast majority of fun games throughout videogame history: restarting the "level" (which in MMORPGs terms is restarting the current dungeon or quest you're on.) Castlevania, Left 4 Dead, etc. There's a long list of games that immediately put you back into the fun of playing the game but reset you back a reasonable length of time (which is almost never more than 30 minutes, and usually quite a bit shorter than that.)
Basically:
The majority of rewards are at the end of a quest or dungeon.
Dying puts you back to the start of the quest or dungeon.
An individual quest/dungeon shouldn't take longer than 60 minutes.
This would go hand-in-hand with varied difficulty too, but that starts to diverge from purely talking about death penalty Basically you want to have some quests as easy as typical MMORPG quests, and some quests which are genuinely hard - so to get that hard mode reward you have to make it through a lengthy series of tough challenges without dying (again: just like the challenges found in normal games.)
From this I have to also assume that you'd think it'd be better to have a single, more difficult, yet more rewarding quest, than running around a town to pick up 25 quests to do at once?
Yes, that would be a necessity for this approach to death/content design.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
--Why even bother with PVP in WoW when 90% of everyone else is a twinked out alt of a level 80 character who can kill you in two hits?
Voice chat
--Because I hate being required to listen to some chick wih a thick North Dakota accent blabber all day about her Wiccan religion. Not to mention the announce that is just trying to understand people half the time. Lag spikes prevent messages from coming across, some people don't know how to configure their mics, and sometimes turning off push to talk is obviously a mjaor mistake.
EQ's Crafting System
--I used to view EQ2's crafting system as one of the best in the genre until I actually started doing it. I mean, if your idea of fun is sitting in one spot clicking specific buttons over and over again, then by all means, go ahead. In my view, crafting could still be deeply involving yet the actual item making process should be something that doesn't require a whole lot of attention, so that it could be done when a player doesn't have time to fully devote his attention to the game. The way EQ does it, crafting is just as demanding as fighting mobs.
Raiding
--There's a reason why it's such a struggle to find a casual family guild in today's MMORPGs. Everyone wants "teh uber gear," and there simply isn't room for guilds devoted entirely to casual play with no means of raiding. In my view, a guild as a whole shouldn't be the main means of progression in a mainstream MMORPG like WoW, but instead progression should be done largely via a group or by the individual so that everyone has the same chance to progress no matter what sort of guild you are in.
The Quest Grind.. IMO quests should be few but long, interesting and hard to complete. I would be down for a game where it like takes multiple game sessions to complete a single quest. But I guess that is just me.
Earlier in this thread there was a guy who wanted meaningful quests. I agree with both of you. Almost all quests now in mmo's are just grinds with a small reward attached to it. Have all of the quests actually have meaning.
Also I have to agree about appropriate loot drops. If I kill a bear don't have it drop some chainmail armor.
WoW's phasing as applied in the Death Knight starting area. One minute you and your buddy are talking, next thing (after a quest turn-in) he's off your radar and there's no way back to him to help him catch up. Sorry Joe, tough-luck... WoW won't let me help you drop that elite.
Ken
Phasing, period in WotLK has a lot of drawbacks.
Especially given the solo nature of quest chains up to the climax, which then switches over to the "you need a partner or two" to take out the elite.
CH, Jedi, Commando, Smuggler, BH, Scout, Doctor, Chef, BE...yeah, lots of SWG time invested.
Best game mechanic of all time? Probably the Jedi system in SWG. Destroyed that game.
Fixed.
Taking them out and changing the game to suit people like you killed that game........... true story. 250,000 out of 500,000 (or so) subs lost in 4 months. To date, the biggest MMO Exodus in history. There is no way possible that you can even begin to dispute or deny that.
Jedis were OP, but those people spent ALOT of time making them OP. They didn't just roll a Jedi and go "ok, I'm OP now" ala WoW Paladin. They put alot of research, alot of game play, and alot of dedication into making what they wanted. That was BY FAR the best game feature ever developed. The Bounty Hunters who went after them were very able to take them down if they planned their attacks right and brought friends. Probably the most fun I've ever had in an MMO ever.
Best game mechanic of all time? Probably the Jedi system in SWG. Destroyed that game.
Fixed.
Taking them out and changing the game to suit people like you killed that game........... true story. 250,000 out of 500,000 (or so) subs lost in 4 months. To date, the biggest MMO Exodus in history.
You must have a foggy memory. Here's what the Jedi mechanic in SWG was.
You grind for months to get these really really rare drops off these really really rare mobs. These drops then tell you what profession you have to max out. You max out that profession by (guess what) grinding at your skills for another month or so, then you go back to grinding for those rare drops, then they give you the next profession you had to master, another few months of grinding.
Finally, after all this horrible grinding, you get a Jedi, yay! Oh wait... there are literally HUNDREDS of other Jedi now? Oh good, so the game is just BountyHunter vs Jedi online! Great game! Weren't Jedi supposed to be uh.. rare?
Best game mechanic of all time? Probably the Jedi system in SWG. Destroyed that game.
Fixed.
Taking them out and changing the game to suit people like you killed that game........... true story. 250,000 out of 500,000 (or so) subs lost in 4 months. To date, the biggest MMO Exodus in history.
Odd, since SWG probably never had more than 300K at its height.
AoC and WAR each lost more subs than SWG in only three month's time.
But I agree, the changes to the jedi in SWG were a travesty.
I actually like achievements...just not in the way we normally see them. I think they should be tied INTO the lore. Like, killing 5 mega zombies alone unlocks an achievement associated with the local league of paladins, impressing them into opening their storehouses to sell you some of their holy-themed weapons.
Attacking a town guard and surviving the ensuing clash that comes afterward for 10 minutes opens an achievement that allows you to gain faction with enemies.
Killing 100 players while on a boat unlocks an achievement that opens a hidden cove deep in the sea granting you access to a small band of pirates that sell you ships and equipment.
There are also other ways to bring achievements into the game in a neat way. Perhaps after falling a total of 10K meters ingame, you get an achievement that grants you a passive ability that cuts falling damage by 25%
You get teh idea....I like them. I just want better ways to use them.
Comments
I'm afraid the "Holy Trinity" is a function of how MMOs deal with combat.
MMO combat is ritualized combat...much like sparring in martial arts is ritualized. In a real fight, it's over fast. It is not prolonged. MMO combat has to be ritualistic in nature.
It would be nice to find another formula besides tank/DPS/heals, but the entire genre is built on that basic trinity from D&D onwards, and honestly, if you do something different nowadays, you'd better be perfect the first time or the marketplace will stomp you.
I think if we ever get a game world that accurately replicates real terrain, you'll see a change, but taking cover behind a rock just does not work in MMOs right now...the virtual environment can't be that realistic yet.
So you've got ritualized combat...nothing at all like the real world, where it's more often than not one shot and you're out of it, dead or unable to continue to fight. Which, after all, is NOT FUN.
CH, Jedi, Commando, Smuggler, BH, Scout, Doctor, Chef, BE...yeah, lots of SWG time invested.
Once a denizen of Ahazi
I hate both of those especially WoW's version of "stealth"...it's a guy crouching...how could anyone not be able to see that?
IMO DAoC had the best version of stealth...a stealthed person looks like a transparent grey shadow.
I'm afraid the "Holy Trinity" is a function of how MMOs deal with combat.
MMO combat is ritualized combat...much like sparring in martial arts is ritualized. In a real fight, it's over fast. It is not prolonged. MMO combat has to be ritualistic in nature.
It would be nice to find another formula besides tank/DPS/heals, but the entire genre is built on that basic trinity from D&D onwards, and honestly, if you do something different nowadays, you'd better be perfect the first time or the marketplace will stomp you.
I think if we ever get a game world that accurately replicates real terrain, you'll see a change, but taking cover behind a rock just does not work in MMOs right now...the virtual environment can't be that realistic yet.
So you've got ritualized combat...nothing at all like the real world, where it's more often than not one shot and you're out of it, dead or unable to continue to fight. Which, after all, is NOT FUN.
I like the DDO idea of post-heal fights. I also like the idea of "dodge fights", with players relying on manually dodging the mob's attack. Just don't make it QTE based.
I hate WoW because it made my plush hamster kill himself, created twin clones of Hitler, punched Superboy Prime in reality, stared my dog down, spoiled my grandmother, assimilated me into the Borg, then made me into a real boy, just to make me a woman again.
Simply put BOP or how to transform a game into a job.
Classes.
The whole "only-one-person-gets-a-coin-good-for-a-radiance-gear-piece" thing on Lord of the Rings Online. The fellowship doing a radiance quest wins or loses as a team and should be rewarded as such, not the person with the luckiest roll.
Finding players to do other things than radiance gear quests? Forget it. It's gotten so bad that they're revamping the book quests so you can do them solo. As much as I like the game, the current setup for radiance gear is idiotic.
Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood. - Marie Curie
By all means. Impose a harsh death penalty on yourself.
Reroll your toon. I dare you.
You will of course not do this.
Or I can play an MMO with a harsh death penalty which I do.
which is? i seek a game with adrenaline too, share your pleasure
and as for subject, penalty for pk ij Last Chaos was retarded idea: u got your stats lowered for killing ppl
Playing: Rohan
Played (from best to worst): Shadowbane, Guild Wars, Shayia, Age of Conan, Warhammer, Runes of Magic, Rappelz, Archlord, Knight online, King of Kings, Kal online, Last chaos
bind on pickup
And thats why its getting a complete revamp next week
If WoW = The Beatles
and WAR = Led Zeppelin
Then LotrO = Pink Floyd
autoattack
Full loot
The Quest Grind.. IMO quests should be few but long, interesting and hard to complete. I would be down for a game where it like takes multiple game sessions to complete a single quest. But I guess that is just me.
Grind. Much worse than the Quest grind.
1 + 1 = 2... Unless it CRITS!
What do you consider a reasonable death penalty?
Basically the death penalty used in the vast majority of fun games throughout videogame history: restarting the "level" (which in MMORPGs terms is restarting the current dungeon or quest you're on.) Castlevania, Left 4 Dead, etc. There's a long list of games that immediately put you back into the fun of playing the game but reset you back a reasonable length of time (which is almost never more than 30 minutes, and usually quite a bit shorter than that.)
Basically:
This would go hand-in-hand with varied difficulty too, but that starts to diverge from purely talking about death penalty
Basically you want to have some quests as easy as typical MMORPG quests, and some quests which are genuinely hard - so to get that hard mode reward you have to make it through a lengthy series of tough challenges without dying (again: just like the challenges found in normal games.)
From this I have to also assume that you'd think it'd be better to have a single, more difficult, yet more rewarding quest, than running around a town to pick up 25 quests to do at once?
Yes, that would be a necessity for this approach to death/content design.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
I 2nd that one.
Heirloom gear
--Why even bother with PVP in WoW when 90% of everyone else is a twinked out alt of a level 80 character who can kill you in two hits?
Voice chat
--Because I hate being required to listen to some chick wih a thick North Dakota accent blabber all day about her Wiccan religion. Not to mention the announce that is just trying to understand people half the time. Lag spikes prevent messages from coming across, some people don't know how to configure their mics, and sometimes turning off push to talk is obviously a mjaor mistake.
EQ's Crafting System
--I used to view EQ2's crafting system as one of the best in the genre until I actually started doing it. I mean, if your idea of fun is sitting in one spot clicking specific buttons over and over again, then by all means, go ahead. In my view, crafting could still be deeply involving yet the actual item making process should be something that doesn't require a whole lot of attention, so that it could be done when a player doesn't have time to fully devote his attention to the game. The way EQ does it, crafting is just as demanding as fighting mobs.
Raiding
--There's a reason why it's such a struggle to find a casual family guild in today's MMORPGs. Everyone wants "teh uber gear," and there simply isn't room for guilds devoted entirely to casual play with no means of raiding. In my view, a guild as a whole shouldn't be the main means of progression in a mainstream MMORPG like WoW, but instead progression should be done largely via a group or by the individual so that everyone has the same chance to progress no matter what sort of guild you are in.
Earlier in this thread there was a guy who wanted meaningful quests. I agree with both of you. Almost all quests now in mmo's are just grinds with a small reward attached to it. Have all of the quests actually have meaning.
Also I have to agree about appropriate loot drops. If I kill a bear don't have it drop some chainmail armor.
Phasing, period in WotLK has a lot of drawbacks.
Especially given the solo nature of quest chains up to the climax, which then switches over to the "you need a partner or two" to take out the elite.
CH, Jedi, Commando, Smuggler, BH, Scout, Doctor, Chef, BE...yeah, lots of SWG time invested.
Once a denizen of Ahazi
Instant Auction Houses (in games where they make no sense)
Instant Mail
EvE's time-based skill progression system (I hate to admit it, because I really like EvE)
Hell hath no fury like an MMORPG player scorned.
Worst game mechanic of all time? Probably the Jedi system in SWG. Destroyed that game.
Instances are a pretty close second, followed by Auction Houses, and then quest grinding.
Darkfall Travelogues!
raid dungeons
levels
Fixed.
Taking them out and changing the game to suit people like you killed that game........... true story. 250,000 out of 500,000 (or so) subs lost in 4 months. To date, the biggest MMO Exodus in history. There is no way possible that you can even begin to dispute or deny that.
Jedis were OP, but those people spent ALOT of time making them OP. They didn't just roll a Jedi and go "ok, I'm OP now" ala WoW Paladin. They put alot of research, alot of game play, and alot of dedication into making what they wanted. That was BY FAR the best game feature ever developed. The Bounty Hunters who went after them were very able to take them down if they planned their attacks right and brought friends. Probably the most fun I've ever had in an MMO ever.
Like Trading Card Games? Click Here.
Fixed.
Taking them out and changing the game to suit people like you killed that game........... true story. 250,000 out of 500,000 (or so) subs lost in 4 months. To date, the biggest MMO Exodus in history.
You must have a foggy memory. Here's what the Jedi mechanic in SWG was.
You grind for months to get these really really rare drops off these really really rare mobs. These drops then tell you what profession you have to max out. You max out that profession by (guess what) grinding at your skills for another month or so, then you go back to grinding for those rare drops, then they give you the next profession you had to master, another few months of grinding.
Finally, after all this horrible grinding, you get a Jedi, yay! Oh wait... there are literally HUNDREDS of other Jedi now? Oh good, so the game is just BountyHunter vs Jedi online! Great game! Weren't Jedi supposed to be uh.. rare?
Darkfall Travelogues!
Fixed.
Taking them out and changing the game to suit people like you killed that game........... true story. 250,000 out of 500,000 (or so) subs lost in 4 months. To date, the biggest MMO Exodus in history.
Odd, since SWG probably never had more than 300K at its height.
AoC and WAR each lost more subs than SWG in only three month's time.
But I agree, the changes to the jedi in SWG were a travesty.
Hell hath no fury like an MMORPG player scorned.
I actually like achievements...just not in the way we normally see them. I think they should be tied INTO the lore. Like, killing 5 mega zombies alone unlocks an achievement associated with the local league of paladins, impressing them into opening their storehouses to sell you some of their holy-themed weapons.
Attacking a town guard and surviving the ensuing clash that comes afterward for 10 minutes opens an achievement that allows you to gain faction with enemies.
Killing 100 players while on a boat unlocks an achievement that opens a hidden cove deep in the sea granting you access to a small band of pirates that sell you ships and equipment.
There are also other ways to bring achievements into the game in a neat way. Perhaps after falling a total of 10K meters ingame, you get an achievement that grants you a passive ability that cuts falling damage by 25%
You get teh idea....I like them. I just want better ways to use them.