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Why is combat in MMOs always a chore ?
Lobotomist
Member EpicPosts: 5,981
You know it as well as i do , almost every single MMO combat you played could be summed to this :
press 5 , 2 , 1 , 2 , 1 , 2 , 3 , 3 , 3 , meditate ... repeat.
This for example is combat sequence my mage uses in Allods. All the MMOs have those sequences for every class.
Now think , you might have to use this 1000 times to level. Here and there a new shortcut comes to sequence , a new skill.
And you do this over and over and over again. No risk , no thinking , no reflexes, suprises or strategy.... not really a game
its a chore.
What do you think ?
Would you like to see MMOs that are challeniging your reflexes, where every fight is interesting. Or are you just happy with repeating the patterns ?
Do you think we will see MMOs that are more like action games , and will they be sucessful ?
Comments
Mabinogi
that game the fights are more reaction based you use skills to counter the enemy skill if you fail more the just a few times your character dies.
The fights are easy - hard just based on your reaction
Repetition.
Next question?
Writer / Musician / Game Designer
Now Playing: Skyrim, Wurm Online, Tropico 4
Waiting On: GW2, TSW, Archeage, The Rapture
TERA is also shifting to an action based combat system, where you have to actively dodge and maneuver around the monster and still be in range to kill it, and all the hits depend on if you're actually making contact.
I think it is difficult to get passed. Considering that any command we give to our computer game has to be given via pushing a button on the keyboard and/or mouse. Therefore, you will always develop a unique pattern of pushing buttons in any game you play.
So we may be able to get passed the 2, 1, 2, 2, 3, 5, 3,3,3 but you would only replace it with a ctrl, numlock, F11, F11, c, c, c.
If you are saying that we need to develop AI in such a way that every mob has to be taken down with its own unique pattern of button pushing.....well it is possible, but how long would it take to program that? And in addition why would one have to push a unique series of buttons to kill Wolf #1, but Wolf #2 somehow takes a different pattern. Once you know how to kill a dog, you should be able to kill all dogs the same way. And this is the reality. Although there are similarities, I take down certain types of casters with one button pattern, certain types of melee with a different set, etc.
But back to the original point, as long as we push buttons on a keyboard to give our characters commands, we will see patterns develop in the way we choose to push our buttons. That's just human nature. We like patterns.
Because every MMOs combat mimics each other. They don't even try to be original or innovative.
Things are fun when they're new and exciting. Things are a chore when you do it the 100th time, different game or not.
I prefer games like WoW with reactive and/or situational skills.
Enemy casting a pyroblast at me? .. time to hit Spell Reflection.
I blocked an attack? .. time to use Revenge.
Mob fleeing towards potential adds? .. time to switch to Zerker and use Intercept.
Enemy healing? .. time to use Shield Bash.
"Sword and Board" talent proc? .. time to use Shield Slam.
Taking a beating? .. time to use a cooldown, or can I manage without it?
That's the stuff that keeps MMO combat fresh; combat rotations are mind-numbing.
Playing: EVE, Final Fantasy 13, Uncharted 2, Need for Speed: Shift
Yeah, but it still turns into a patter of pushing buttons. You push a button to stun, another to strafe away, another to maneuver behind the mob and a last to backstab. You will likely use this same pattern with slight variations every time you kill that same type of mob. Maybe you will have to strafe an extra time here or there, but that's just like having to click that dd button a second time every once in awhile.
Unless you program an infinate possibility AI for each mob, then you will end up with button pushing patterns every time you kill that type of mob. Just because you are pushing a button to avoid an attack instead of releasing a power, you are still pushing a button, and youll do it the same way the next time you encounter that type of mob.
It doesn't have to be just about skills that make the combat fresh. There's more things in combat than just your skill list.
Although those kind of reactive actions do make it more exciting too, of course.
OP may have meant why more MMORPGS are not like Age of Conan style. Did opponent jump behind you? Do something fast or you die. Got unexpected CC in the middle of your most powerful combo? Time to change plan. Not like key sequences like WoW, where you stand in front of opponent and play poker game with him.
Yep , MMO Combat is certainly mind numbingly easy.
I think a big part of the reason for MMO combat simplicity is simply the bandwidth required to provide an interactive, variable fight when hundreds of people are concerned. FPS's can do more, because they know they aren't going to have to manage hundreds of shooters in the same instance. And even then, too many people can lead to problems.
I remember back when Iplayed PotBS - the ship-ship combat attacks were handled by instantly calculating damage inflicted. There was no cannonball flight times, no real-time dodging possible. Many people expressed a desire for combat more like Sid Meier's Pirates!, but the logistics of providing that sort of thing were prohibitive, to the point where it would have inflated connection costs and reduced potential player-base.
That said, there's still lots of room for MMO's to provide that sort of thing, and there are more than a few that do to some extent. You look at games like Dragonica or Latale, which are basically action/platform scrollers with an MMO framework stretched overtop, and you can see that the potential is clearly there.
A Modest Proposal for MMORPGs:
That the means of progression would not be mutually exclusive from the means of enjoyment.
If you want good combat that isn't a chore check out Guild Wars or WoW.
Both are very reaction based. The problem with other systes (IE, most MMOs) is that they are too damage centered, by which I mean combat concists of 2 things spamming damage attacks until one dies before the other. Games need to adopt more of a "my enemy is doing this, i need to do this to counter it."
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the new mmo coming out DC universe looks like it will require alot of thinking and skill. least by what i could see in pvp gameplay. like having to work with the group to throw the bus while another torches it creating massive fireball. there should be mmo's like that where you press more then 1,7,4,2 everytime but instead you use 1-9 in random use and use you mind as well as skill to defeat. but in the age of has to be casual and easy we won't see that anytime soon.
As long as the input devices are a mouse and keyboard there will be a very limited way of designing combat.
--John Ruskin
Are you insinuating that all combat systems are the same if they involve pressing buttons?
I mean, the diversity of potential game systems that can be executed with mouse+keyboard is staggeringly large. The major genres out there don't even scratch the surface of the ways we can use them (they're simply the most logical of the ways.)
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
Bit of an overgeneralization. As much as I was lukewarm/negative on Darkfall and Fallen Earth, they both have combat which is considerably different than typical lock-targeting.
Lock-targeting just happens to be one of the more user-friendly implementations. I seem to recall that Wizard 101 uses a slightly different combat system too.
Personally I don't play games where I feel the most common activity is boring. If it's boring, the entire game is boring.
Also it's an oversimplification to assume that ability choice is the only choice the player makes. If that were the case, WOW's combat wouldn't be all that great. But instead, the warrior tank I'm leveling constantly has to jockey for position relative to the mobs he pulls. Facing matters a lot, and my cooldowns cause me to dynamically alter how many mobs I pull at once. If the good cooldowns are up, I can pull a ridiculously large chunk of guys at once -- and this is a great dynamic element to the game because effectively the rate of rewards from a dungeon are controlled by how quickly you're able to clear mobs.
To be fair, I would slightly criticize WOW for putting so much of this dynamic killing-rate control in the hands of one player (the tank). I'm not against different roles varying in how much "control" they exert over the group: healers, for example, are completely reliant on DPS and Tank quality to determine how fast things go, and it'd be neat if they found a way to have at least one healer (or one healer's spec) be capable of improving that rate. I suppose glimmers of this already exist (at least in WOW, where my Disc priest ends up dealing some DPS in groups, and also has a fairly potent buff for caster DPS.)
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
Because you keep playing mmos with that sort of combat system?
They aren't all like that, although most are.
Are we talking about PVP or PVE here?
Give me liberty or give me lasers
I'm glad that those games try to be something new, but only difference I've found between the combat in those games and WoW, is that there's no lock-targeting.
Which is a difference in itself, but to me it's more of a gimmick because at the end of the day, the combat feels all the same to me. Same goes with AIon's combat. Some gimmicky features here and there, but it's annoyingly obvious that it's still the normal WoW combat structure running behind the scenes.
To me, the answer is simple:
The whole RPG combat system is made to be played in a strategic manner, hence the turn-based structure. When you try to fit that into real-time play, the whole system becomes a hybrid and has to be "toned down" to a less strategic, more simple yet faster and more instinctive one that strives to feel "second-nature" - like an action game.
What we have in MMOs today is the result: The remains of a "once-strategic" combat system that is no longer strategic, and still not twitchy enough. This is why the combat system we've seen in almost every MMO up until now feels inferior to those in single player games.
Here's how classic RPG logic works: You invest time in your characters, they grow strong, and you make *intelligent choices* while you're playing them so that they will not end up falling to their death, get owned by a Black Dragon or be victim to some base mob assault. Mind: Nothing in here necessitates you be nimble with your fingers. That's because classic RPG combat is not the instant adrenalin rush of Fencing (which I absolutely love, by the way), it's more like the controlled thrill of a chess game.
Yes, Deus Ex was great as a single player, story-based game, but frankly I don't see it not being repetitive (in terms of combat) when applied to an MMO environment where quick brutal efficiency matters.
Oh, and Khelben's Warding Whip for the win!
well all games will have key input, no matter if its a speedpad, keyboard or controller, there is no getting around it.
What the OP is talking about is how the input command is delivered. and alot of the games today are the same (skillbar = number pushing) and you can throw in click to move and tab to lock target.
If they would just move beyond the click to move and lock on target it will be a step in the right direction at least.
Velika: City of Wheels: Among the mortal races, the humans were the only one that never built cities or great empires; a curse laid upon them by their creator, Gidd, forced them to wander as nomads for twenty centuries...
Uh.
If you hate pressing one and the same sequence of attacks again and again, then, I dunno, MAYBE DONT PLAY DPS CHARACTERS ??!?
Just a suggestion.
Tanks and Healers have to think about much more than just pressing the same buttons again and again, thank you very much.
Also, this is what I loved about Vanguard: Saga of Heroes. Classes where very diverse and a challenge to play. You always learned more about playing your class. Even the Cleric, that I settled for in the end, mainly because they where the hard to kill healers and played relatively simple compared to the other healer classes, was full of things to learn.
Btw, I once nearly died from laughter when a WoW ranger posted a movie on YouTube showing how he pariticipated in a WoW raid: he pressed ONE AND THE SAME BUTTON OVER AND OVER AND OVER AGAIN !!! ROTFL
No way he would have pulled this trick in Vanguard. Yeah, there where the people who made a "superbutton" and pressed it over and over again. But the dps you got this way was inferior.
OP's right. I want to be a Phantom-Ninja-Bomber that can fly up a hundred feet in the air, dodge or phase through bullets, arrows, and spells, and drop nuclear bombs on everything beneath me while slicing through enemy flying elephants, blood fairies, aircraft, and DECIMASTROYER Troops with those awesome helicopter hats... with my katana.
Of course, doing all that would require split-second reflexes and concentration, because I'd have to drop a nuke while using my sword. Would be fun, though, right?
On second thought, maybe what's tried-and-true is not so bad after all. We may see more action MMOs, maybe some MMOFPSs, but I doubt they'll do any better than AoC.
And, well, developers should design challenging encounters to spice things up a bit. If you're complaining about grinding, you should try to make your job more interesting first. It's the same thing.
I like FPS games, and RPG games.
Why turn every RPG into an FPS? If you like an FPS, play one. If you get tired of that, you might want to play an RPG.
You could apply this in just the opposite way.
Do you get tired of constant twitch play? Just shoot, shoot, shoot, aim, and shoot, shoot, shoot, aim, shoot, shoot, shoot, in an FPS?
What if instead of all this twitch play, it was more strategic, and there were different abilities that were applied, and your character rose in strength, rather than just shoot, shoot, shoot, aim, shoot, shoot, shoot, shoot, aim, shooot......
Dont be fooled; those numbers are code for WoW. It's a trick,