personally i think questing should be the no1 priority. I love single player RPG's because they have a lot more diversity in quests than MMO's (there are still kill X rats quests but they aren't as common as they are in MMO's).
The other aspects of MMO's are fine currently, just the quests that need a real shake up.
That's a vast oversimplification. Single player RPGs (typically) have a story line that develops characters and plotlines, with a single emphasis on the character alone. Single player RPGs have a beginning, middle, and end.
6) World....We need innovation in "world". Interaction, exploration, mystery, discovery, lore/history, and meaning to it all.
7) Artificial Intelligence....Why do MOBs just stand there where we expect to find them, and die for us if we do predictable things? NPCs should make decisions based on what they see happening around them, and they should not "see" everything. They should have wants and desires and goals. UO had a basic form of this, where creatures had things they went for (gold, food, etc.) They even had a goal to seek out other creatures of their own type. Why has this not been expanded, rather than just dropped? Once critters are gathering, why do they not "elect" a leader? Why do leaders not lead? Why do they not seek out habitation and all the other things a social cell might do? There's a lot that could be done with AI, and it could make a world much more interesting to "live" in.
We've got Massively figured out. We've got Multi-player beaten (except on launch and patch days). Online has been around since the genre was born and game is everything is a game. But why hasn't anyone ever figured out the Role-Playing part?
Single player games don't even do it all that well. But why is there always a point where I must turn left in order to follow YOUR story. Why can't I turn right and follow mine?
Sandbox games come kind of close, EVE springing to mind.
But real innovation has to be made in the ability of players to Role-Play. What we need is:
A way to make a lasting impact on the game as a whole. That impact creates the roles people want to play (whether they actually change their personality or act is irrelevant). Why does Farmer Frank always need 10 rats killed. Why not 5 or 15? Why can't I buy him a cat to solve the same quest? Why can't I convince a different player to do the quest for me then split the rewards? Why can't I lie to Farmer Bob and say I killed them (when I didn't), it's not like he'd notice cause the rats repop every 8 seconds? Why are guilds and their administration so flat? Why can't I hire an NPC to stand in my guild hall and offer up quests for resources or items the guild needs? Why can't I set up my own barony / dukedom / kingdom?
The next WoW is going to do all the stuff the others have done before (like WoW), but it's going to let the Players create content. Think about how amazingly HUGE WoW would be if every guild leader could (if they wanted), walk to the edge of a zone and "create" a single kingdom with their choice of mountains, plains, whatever. NPCs would flock to player cities based on taxes, alignment decisions, law choices. NPCs would be hired to guard castles, treasure rooms, caravan routes, whatever.
What do low level guild members do? They quest in YOUR kingdom. They kill the goblins attacking YOUR villagers. If they fail then your villages burn and people start fleeing your kingdom. Then you have to hire outside players to come take care of your problems. But the mercs have a spy from the neighboring player kingdom that wants the silver surplus your mountain realm has. That spy assassinates the NPC responsible for your trade income.
Kingdom not your thing? Why can't I buy that crappy bar in the newbie zone and fix it up? I know Bartender Bob hasn't ever seen a gold peice ... why the hell wouldn't he sell me his whole craptastic life for 25 of them?
Give the players a world they can shape (for the better or worse) and they'll have a stake in its survival.
Yes, PLEASE....I want this full meal deal described here! Every point you made....imo....precisely what I'd love to see.
And while we're at it....I also want highly customizable housing (at least as good as that of EQ2) and a medium deep crafting system (something akin to Vanguard or EQ2 with some kind of mini game that at least gives me the illusion of doing more than just hitting one button and out pops a crafted item). OR....innovation in housing and crafting that makes them both even BETTER than those example from present day games.
Great article...and I truly agree with it 100 percent.
Couldn't agree more on quests. The whole click this NPC, collect me my random items, and go do this same thing for someone else grew old the moment it started. TBH i never understood hy this has ALWAYS been used, surely someone out there has to have a better idea for 'disguising' our grind.
Instances are on my sh** list. You got companies who believe thats all tehre should be. Cryptic, Lotro. Yes they belive its the only way to do things, when if fact its the cheep way our.
Instances are on my sh** list. You got companies who believe thats all tehre should be. Cryptic, Lotro. Yes they belive its the only way to do things, when if fact its the cheep way our.
It takes WAY more time to build an instance, place mobs w/ pathing, set scripted events and trigger volumes, as well as balance out the difficulty of the encounter, than it is to make an open zone and let people go nuts. No sir, the old ways were the cheep way 'our'.
Writer / Musician / Game Designer
Now Playing: Skyrim, Wurm Online, Tropico 4 Waiting On: GW2, TSW, Archeage, The Rapture
I feel the best combat is still Darkfall, it is the most unique combat out there that I have played. You don't highlight a mob or player and then start mashing buttons, you fight like a First Person Shooter, using tactics, cover, coordination.
Instances are on my sh** list. You got companies who believe thats all tehre should be. Cryptic, Lotro. Yes they belive its the only way to do things, when if fact its the cheep way our.
It takes WAY more time to build an instance, place mobs w/ pathing, set scripted events and trigger volumes, as well as balance out the difficulty of the encounter, than it is to make an open zone and let people go nuts. No sir, the old ways were the cheep way 'our'.
LOTRO has instances, but it also has open area. I would not compare STO only games to LOTRO.
parrotpholk-Because we all know the miracle patch fairy shows up the night before release and sprinkles magic dust on the server to make it allllll better.
Instances are on my sh** list. You got companies who believe thats all tehre should be. Cryptic, Lotro. Yes they belive its the only way to do things, when if fact its the cheep way our.
It takes WAY more time to build an instance, place mobs w/ pathing, set scripted events and trigger volumes, as well as balance out the difficulty of the encounter, than it is to make an open zone and let people go nuts. No sir, the old ways were the cheep way 'our'.
LOTRO has instances, but it also has open area. I would not compare STO only games to LOTRO.
I will add this back in the day we had a a few instances and tons of open area then we got mom it was about a 40/60 split 60 % instanced. Then we got SOM and almost ever thing is instanced now for instance all the skimishes. After all now they want to add more raid skimishes. Not to mention ddo. It is one of the hot debates on the forums about how the instancing with skimishes is killing the game off by segregating the comunity.
There is a pretty large problem that iks holding back the combat system of MMO's. the internet. I play games like fifa and CoD on my X-Box, and while you don't notice the slight lag you can get with 4 players taking part, although if you have just played a single player game just do notice the difference, with 10 players, you certainly notice. Anyone who has ever took part in a large raid or event with a couple of hundred people taking part will tell you that a game gets unplayable, so the hotbar mechanics are the best way of dealing with the slight lag.
I'm not quite sure how you innovate combat when no matter what system you are playing on, you are still pressing keys to attack.
MMOs on one of those sit-inside arcade machines with only levers and/or steering wheel!
Seriously though, I don't think there's any way to really make mmo combat "visceral," like the author wants, unless mmos are designed to be played with a game controller; possibly including rumble capabilities.
Still, there are some things that can be done, like design combat animations so that attacks seem to have more visible impact on the characters (i.e. you slap mob across the jaw with a mace, they react accordingly - don't just stand there and stoicly take it to the face; or if some 5-story tall raid boss hits your character, they go flying as they realistically would). Add better animations and physics basically.
Players are always talking about how they want to make an impact on the game world, yet even the lowliest rodent is completely unphased by the most powerful attacks we can muster until it suddenly falls over dead. It's no wonder we start to feel like nothing we do matters. This is one area I think TERA has pegged out of all the new generation MMOs coming out.
Seriously though, I don't think there's any way to really make mmo combat "visceral," like the author wants, unless mmos are designed to be played with a game controller; possibly including rumble capabilities.
Here comes the Wii sword, the Wii staff, and the Wii bow!
A fanatic is one who can't change his mind and won't change the subject. -Winston Churchill
I'm a great fan of solo questing - but that's only because of the time required in organising a bunch of strangers via IMs to get a group going. Then you have to watch as the highest leveled characters get all the XP as they drag you through the dungeon - and you get to exchange the experience of being a Polish Mine Detector for a few choice items and little or no XP.
They could fix this by getting rid of solo quests, stop XP accumulation being so closely locked into level disparity (you could instead let the loot/drops be spread between players based on amount of damage done and then leave it up to roleplay and player generosity to see who gets what...), and then institute a few choice genre stereotypes like the Adventurer's Inn or the Briefing Room to get players together for each quest.
I would love a lively open world where NPC's interact with their enviroment. Like on Red Dead Redemption, I will see bandits robbing people and such. Sometimes a guy comes up to me and asks for help, so I help him without reading a thing. Just spontaneous quests that provide variety would be great, just something to keep you going and having fun.
This is one thing that irks me more than anything, combat. If you want FPS combat, play an FPS game, the more they put this stuff into a rpg it takes away the fact that it is a rpg. I play FPS games, but I sure as heck don't want my MMORPG to be MMOFPS! We need to call these games what they are and stop calling everything MMO. The combat in WoW is just fine, the people that have a problem with it are the arena and dueling junkies that like to compete with themselves more than anything else. If you make combat in an MMORPG like an FPS, you will take away one very big thing that exists with MMORPG"S which is the whole point of MMORPG's, and that social gaming. I would love to see some uber skilled player fight with his character and have to actually type his message in order to communicate, it doesn't happen and it won't. Which is why so many people are spoiled with 3rd party programs like Teamspeak. Without those programs we wouldn't see the amount of people in MMO's like we do.
People want everything to be easier, but if you want to play and FPS game, then you need to be asking for a MMOFPS game, and leave the MMORPG"s to the people who actually like to read and immerse themselves in the story. Its the whole point of rpg. Learn the difference!
I would agree for the most part. With nearly everything here.
1. We need to bring back a lot of the "open world" back to MMOs, and we SHOULD have the technology now with ever faster computers and network connections. I think we have gone too far in the "pretty graphics" direction and as such lost a lot on our way. Still, use of instances can have positive effect if done right. I think WoW has really started on the right track with their "phasing" technology, but we just have to make sure it doesn't go too far.
2. Story. Story is very subjective. I don't care about the world's story or history, i care about MY story. This is a MMORPG not a single player RPG. give me the old school UO story - there was none - just what actions players do effects the story of the game and the devs keep up. EvE Online is the only MMO that currently comes close.
3. Levels - I am with you get rid of them. Go back to skill based progression, but NOT horrible skill grind progression ala SWG or some such. No jumping or swimming skills or anything ridiculous like that, no afk macro'ing or attacking walls or any of that nonsense. A quality, AAA designed skill system.
4. Quests - get RID of solo personal quests entirely. Make everything open world dynamic public quests. A quest is only solo if you are the only one doing it at the time. GW2 ideas on crack please.
5. Combat - I won't be satisfied with MMO combat till we have Legends of Zelda or God of War or Devil May Cry style combat in a massively multiplayer online world that doesn't sacrifice 1-4 to do so. Guess I'll be waiting a while.
You've basically summed up exactly how i feel! Glad to know there are others like me out there!
I'll take it a litlle further! #5) Combat: Lets see some Project Natal or some sort of real body interaction with lifelike game movement. I want to swing my arms / sword and have it acurately displayed in game. It would def make combat much more realistic and much more random and therefor continuously interesting. We need a Hiro Protagonist for our age to help write the swordfighting code.
(even the weird looking wands for the PS3 are a move in the right direction!)
Its so sad and pathetic to think the MMO genre has been dead in the water for 6 years. 6 years!!! Look at the innovation we got just from EQ to DAoC. Then the jump from DAoC to WoW. It was a wonderous time, but its like we haven't progressed one iota from November 23, 2004. Sad. Very sad.
This is one thing that irks me more than anything, combat. If you want FPS combat, play an FPS game, the more they put this stuff into a rpg it takes away the fact that it is a rpg. I play FPS games, but I sure as heck don't want my MMORPG to be MMOFPS! We need to call these games what they are and stop calling everything MMO. The combat in WoW is just fine, the people that have a problem with it are the arena and dueling junkies that like to compete with themselves more than anything else. If you make combat in an MMORPG like an FPS, you will take away one very big thing that exists with MMORPG"S which is the whole point of MMORPG's, and that social gaming. I would love to see some uber skilled player fight with his character and have to actually type his message in order to communicate, it doesn't happen and it won't. Which is why so many people are spoiled with 3rd party programs like Teamspeak. Without those programs we wouldn't see the amount of people in MMO's like we do.
People want everything to be easier, but if you want to play and FPS game, then you need to be asking for a MMOFPS game, and leave the MMORPG"s to the people who actually like to read and immerse themselves in the story. Its the whole point of rpg. Learn the difference!
I completely disagree with you. Why does DnD mechanics (essentially MMO combat is hitting a hotkey to use the RNG - equivalent of rolling dice) equate to RPG gaming? Because we've been doing it for 25+ years? It had to be done back then because there wasn't the technology around back then to translate any other type of combat.
If you are playing the role of an archer wouldn't aiming a bow be more immersive - more like an RPG? Would swinging a sword and having to parry blows yourself be more immersive than pressing 1 and having the computer calculate if you parried or not based off the computer's random number generators? Do fencers roll dice during a match to decide who wins? Do archers roll dice and calculate if you they are going to hit a target or not based on their previous hit rates during an archery tournament? If you LARP, do you sit there and roll dice while you are doing it?
Why do all forms of social interactions have to be through typing (or the alternative voice chat you mentioned if typing isn't available)? Just because it's that way now, doesn't mean it needs to be in the future. Prehaps we'll have voice modulator programs where you can talk and stay in character in the future while playing these "twitch" based games (and just because we have these types of combat systems in place does not mean they have to be twitch, aim assistance and long reload and swing times would slow combat down significantly and require less skill, but be far more immersive than the current systems in place). Not all social interaction has to be through reading text.
I personally love to read, so don't take shots at people who want a new type of combat system that we just don't want to read and "immerse" ourselves in the story. How is reading EVERYTHING more immersive? If I pick up a scroll, I want to physically read it, but if someone is talking to me wouldn't it be more immersive if I actually heard their character speaking it?
1. Combat, you should try Spellborn. I hate the static number key pushing of WoW, GW(boring). Having to aim and hit a target, position, dodge attacks is what FPS do well. Spellborn's unique combat system makes for highly skill combat and those "God" like moments are of you own doing. The carousel once you max the rows and columns (lvl34) also means you have to think about linking attacks, cooldowns, starter attacks and combo finishes. Throw into the mix, backstabs(melee and ranged), AoE, cone attacks, behind attacks (yes I am not joking some warriors can hit you whilst facing away).
Combat is also defined by the creature AI, the agro system of WoW may suit the tank/dps but any intelligent creature would know when to run and hide, kill the weakest and have some unique and even random response.
I love Ninja Gadien on the xbox, I enjoy console games and don't believe the keyboard and mouse is a hindrance to unique Combat.
The biggest issue is users/players and the WoWfrackness of expecting every game to play in one way.
EivilSar, Deathhand of International Spellborn PvP
MMORPG.com's Bill Murphy examines five MMO facets that could stand to be spiced up a bit in this week's list.
The current main use of instancing is for dungeons as a way for developers to control the complexity and difficulty of specific epic encounters.
No... The current main use of instancing (main as defined by what many of the lastest round of MMO releases has done) is to instance the entire game in the desperate hope of bringing lag and requirements down so that their game might successfully be ported to a console.
I have no problem with instancing when it comes to specific quest objectives/dungeons, for the sake of gameplay, but to instance an entire MMO is just ridiculous.
Comments
That's a vast oversimplification. Single player RPGs (typically) have a story line that develops characters and plotlines, with a single emphasis on the character alone. Single player RPGs have a beginning, middle, and end.
MikeB, good post. I agree all the way through.
I'd add two more, a number 6 and 7:
6) World....We need innovation in "world". Interaction, exploration, mystery, discovery, lore/history, and meaning to it all.
7) Artificial Intelligence....Why do MOBs just stand there where we expect to find them, and die for us if we do predictable things? NPCs should make decisions based on what they see happening around them, and they should not "see" everything. They should have wants and desires and goals. UO had a basic form of this, where creatures had things they went for (gold, food, etc.) They even had a goal to seek out other creatures of their own type. Why has this not been expanded, rather than just dropped? Once critters are gathering, why do they not "elect" a leader? Why do leaders not lead? Why do they not seek out habitation and all the other things a social cell might do? There's a lot that could be done with AI, and it could make a world much more interesting to "live" in.
Once upon a time....
We've got Massively figured out. We've got Multi-player beaten (except on launch and patch days). Online has been around since the genre was born and game is everything is a game. But why hasn't anyone ever figured out the Role-Playing part?
Single player games don't even do it all that well. But why is there always a point where I must turn left in order to follow YOUR story. Why can't I turn right and follow mine?
Sandbox games come kind of close, EVE springing to mind.
But real innovation has to be made in the ability of players to Role-Play. What we need is:
A way to make a lasting impact on the game as a whole. That impact creates the roles people want to play (whether they actually change their personality or act is irrelevant). Why does Farmer Frank always need 10 rats killed. Why not 5 or 15? Why can't I buy him a cat to solve the same quest? Why can't I convince a different player to do the quest for me then split the rewards? Why can't I lie to Farmer Bob and say I killed them (when I didn't), it's not like he'd notice cause the rats repop every 8 seconds? Why are guilds and their administration so flat? Why can't I hire an NPC to stand in my guild hall and offer up quests for resources or items the guild needs? Why can't I set up my own barony / dukedom / kingdom?
The next WoW is going to do all the stuff the others have done before (like WoW), but it's going to let the Players create content. Think about how amazingly HUGE WoW would be if every guild leader could (if they wanted), walk to the edge of a zone and "create" a single kingdom with their choice of mountains, plains, whatever. NPCs would flock to player cities based on taxes, alignment decisions, law choices. NPCs would be hired to guard castles, treasure rooms, caravan routes, whatever.
What do low level guild members do? They quest in YOUR kingdom. They kill the goblins attacking YOUR villagers. If they fail then your villages burn and people start fleeing your kingdom. Then you have to hire outside players to come take care of your problems. But the mercs have a spy from the neighboring player kingdom that wants the silver surplus your mountain realm has. That spy assassinates the NPC responsible for your trade income.
Kingdom not your thing? Why can't I buy that crappy bar in the newbie zone and fix it up? I know Bartender Bob hasn't ever seen a gold peice ... why the hell wouldn't he sell me his whole craptastic life for 25 of them?
Give the players a world they can shape (for the better or worse) and they'll have a stake in its survival.
Yes, PLEASE....I want this full meal deal described here! Every point you made....imo....precisely what I'd love to see.
And while we're at it....I also want highly customizable housing (at least as good as that of EQ2) and a medium deep crafting system (something akin to Vanguard or EQ2 with some kind of mini game that at least gives me the illusion of doing more than just hitting one button and out pops a crafted item). OR....innovation in housing and crafting that makes them both even BETTER than those example from present day games.
Great article...and I truly agree with it 100 percent.
President of The Marvelously Meowhead Fan Club
Couldn't agree more on quests. The whole click this NPC, collect me my random items, and go do this same thing for someone else grew old the moment it started. TBH i never understood hy this has ALWAYS been used, surely someone out there has to have a better idea for 'disguising' our grind.
Instances are on my sh** list. You got companies who believe thats all tehre should be. Cryptic, Lotro. Yes they belive its the only way to do things, when if fact its the cheep way our.
You know what would be truly innovative? Releasing a game that's actually finished and worth paying for in it's first month.
It takes WAY more time to build an instance, place mobs w/ pathing, set scripted events and trigger volumes, as well as balance out the difficulty of the encounter, than it is to make an open zone and let people go nuts. No sir, the old ways were the cheep way 'our'.
Writer / Musician / Game Designer
Now Playing: Skyrim, Wurm Online, Tropico 4
Waiting On: GW2, TSW, Archeage, The Rapture
Yikes, don't push for innovation in combat; otherwise they might do something like FFXIII with easymode hp and NO mp!
And the biggest instanced game of all WOW.. dont forget, even the cities are still handled by blizzards instance manager
I feel the best combat is still Darkfall, it is the most unique combat out there that I have played. You don't highlight a mob or player and then start mashing buttons, you fight like a First Person Shooter, using tactics, cover, coordination.
LOTRO has instances, but it also has open area. I would not compare STO only games to LOTRO.
parrotpholk-Because we all know the miracle patch fairy shows up the night before release and sprinkles magic dust on the server to make it allllll better.
I will add this back in the day we had a a few instances and tons of open area then we got mom it was about a 40/60 split 60 % instanced. Then we got SOM and almost ever thing is instanced now for instance all the skimishes. After all now they want to add more raid skimishes. Not to mention ddo. It is one of the hot debates on the forums about how the instancing with skimishes is killing the game off by segregating the comunity.
There is a pretty large problem that iks holding back the combat system of MMO's. the internet. I play games like fifa and CoD on my X-Box, and while you don't notice the slight lag you can get with 4 players taking part, although if you have just played a single player game just do notice the difference, with 10 players, you certainly notice. Anyone who has ever took part in a large raid or event with a couple of hundred people taking part will tell you that a game gets unplayable, so the hotbar mechanics are the best way of dealing with the slight lag.
MMOs on one of those sit-inside arcade machines with only levers and/or steering wheel!
Seriously though, I don't think there's any way to really make mmo combat "visceral," like the author wants, unless mmos are designed to be played with a game controller; possibly including rumble capabilities.
Still, there are some things that can be done, like design combat animations so that attacks seem to have more visible impact on the characters (i.e. you slap mob across the jaw with a mace, they react accordingly - don't just stand there and stoicly take it to the face; or if some 5-story tall raid boss hits your character, they go flying as they realistically would). Add better animations and physics basically.
Players are always talking about how they want to make an impact on the game world, yet even the lowliest rodent is completely unphased by the most powerful attacks we can muster until it suddenly falls over dead. It's no wonder we start to feel like nothing we do matters. This is one area I think TERA has pegged out of all the new generation MMOs coming out.
Here comes the Wii sword, the Wii staff, and the Wii bow!
Girlgeek, have you checked out Wurm for a fun crafting system?
Questing
I'm a great fan of solo questing - but that's only because of the time required in organising a bunch of strangers via IMs to get a group going. Then you have to watch as the highest leveled characters get all the XP as they drag you through the dungeon - and you get to exchange the experience of being a Polish Mine Detector for a few choice items and little or no XP.
They could fix this by getting rid of solo quests, stop XP accumulation being so closely locked into level disparity (you could instead let the loot/drops be spread between players based on amount of damage done and then leave it up to roleplay and player generosity to see who gets what...), and then institute a few choice genre stereotypes like the Adventurer's Inn or the Briefing Room to get players together for each quest.
I would love a lively open world where NPC's interact with their enviroment. Like on Red Dead Redemption, I will see bandits robbing people and such. Sometimes a guy comes up to me and asks for help, so I help him without reading a thing. Just spontaneous quests that provide variety would be great, just something to keep you going and having fun.
Pepsi1028
PEPSI!!!!!
Get out of your box already...
This is one thing that irks me more than anything, combat. If you want FPS combat, play an FPS game, the more they put this stuff into a rpg it takes away the fact that it is a rpg. I play FPS games, but I sure as heck don't want my MMORPG to be MMOFPS! We need to call these games what they are and stop calling everything MMO. The combat in WoW is just fine, the people that have a problem with it are the arena and dueling junkies that like to compete with themselves more than anything else. If you make combat in an MMORPG like an FPS, you will take away one very big thing that exists with MMORPG"S which is the whole point of MMORPG's, and that social gaming. I would love to see some uber skilled player fight with his character and have to actually type his message in order to communicate, it doesn't happen and it won't. Which is why so many people are spoiled with 3rd party programs like Teamspeak. Without those programs we wouldn't see the amount of people in MMO's like we do.
People want everything to be easier, but if you want to play and FPS game, then you need to be asking for a MMOFPS game, and leave the MMORPG"s to the people who actually like to read and immerse themselves in the story. Its the whole point of rpg. Learn the difference!
You've basically summed up exactly how i feel! Glad to know there are others like me out there!
I'll take it a litlle further! #5) Combat: Lets see some Project Natal or some sort of real body interaction with lifelike game movement. I want to swing my arms / sword and have it acurately displayed in game. It would def make combat much more realistic and much more random and therefor continuously interesting. We need a Hiro Protagonist for our age to help write the swordfighting code.
(even the weird looking wands for the PS3 are a move in the right direction!)
Bill, you hit the nail on the head.
Its so sad and pathetic to think the MMO genre has been dead in the water for 6 years. 6 years!!! Look at the innovation we got just from EQ to DAoC. Then the jump from DAoC to WoW. It was a wonderous time, but its like we haven't progressed one iota from November 23, 2004. Sad. Very sad.
I completely disagree with you. Why does DnD mechanics (essentially MMO combat is hitting a hotkey to use the RNG - equivalent of rolling dice) equate to RPG gaming? Because we've been doing it for 25+ years? It had to be done back then because there wasn't the technology around back then to translate any other type of combat.
If you are playing the role of an archer wouldn't aiming a bow be more immersive - more like an RPG? Would swinging a sword and having to parry blows yourself be more immersive than pressing 1 and having the computer calculate if you parried or not based off the computer's random number generators? Do fencers roll dice during a match to decide who wins? Do archers roll dice and calculate if you they are going to hit a target or not based on their previous hit rates during an archery tournament? If you LARP, do you sit there and roll dice while you are doing it?
Why do all forms of social interactions have to be through typing (or the alternative voice chat you mentioned if typing isn't available)? Just because it's that way now, doesn't mean it needs to be in the future. Prehaps we'll have voice modulator programs where you can talk and stay in character in the future while playing these "twitch" based games (and just because we have these types of combat systems in place does not mean they have to be twitch, aim assistance and long reload and swing times would slow combat down significantly and require less skill, but be far more immersive than the current systems in place). Not all social interaction has to be through reading text.
I personally love to read, so don't take shots at people who want a new type of combat system that we just don't want to read and "immerse" ourselves in the story. How is reading EVERYTHING more immersive? If I pick up a scroll, I want to physically read it, but if someone is talking to me wouldn't it be more immersive if I actually heard their character speaking it?
Heerobya,
1. Combat, you should try Spellborn. I hate the static number key pushing of WoW, GW(boring). Having to aim and hit a target, position, dodge attacks is what FPS do well. Spellborn's unique combat system makes for highly skill combat and those "God" like moments are of you own doing. The carousel once you max the rows and columns (lvl34) also means you have to think about linking attacks, cooldowns, starter attacks and combo finishes. Throw into the mix, backstabs(melee and ranged), AoE, cone attacks, behind attacks (yes I am not joking some warriors can hit you whilst facing away).
Combat is also defined by the creature AI, the agro system of WoW may suit the tank/dps but any intelligent creature would know when to run and hide, kill the weakest and have some unique and even random response.
I love Ninja Gadien on the xbox, I enjoy console games and don't believe the keyboard and mouse is a hindrance to unique Combat.
The biggest issue is users/players and the WoWfrackness of expecting every game to play in one way.
EivilSar, Deathhand of International
Spellborn PvP
No... The current main use of instancing (main as defined by what many of the lastest round of MMO releases has done) is to instance the entire game in the desperate hope of bringing lag and requirements down so that their game might successfully be ported to a console.
I have no problem with instancing when it comes to specific quest objectives/dungeons, for the sake of gameplay, but to instance an entire MMO is just ridiculous.