I've always felt that combat in MMOs is pretty crappy. Definitely not a strong point. However, I will agree with some in this thread and go with Darkfall. That game certainly stands out from the rest.
"Mr. Rothstein, your people never will understand... the way it works out here. You're all just our guests. But you act like you're at home. Let me tell you something, partner. You ain't home. But that's where we're gonna send you if it harelips the governor." - Pat Webb
EQ1 - great example of slow combat rounds done right, it fit the slow pace of the game perfectly allowing plenty of social interaction
DAOC - one of the few games that got melee combat right with positional attacks and Tanks felt really tank with active shield block
I completely agree with the comments about EQ1. It was about the perfect combat speed, without the reliance on multiple 'skill buttons'. The slow combat matched the game well, and gave players other than the tank and healer time to chat and provide the 'running commentary'.
DAoC did exceptional with tank classes, and is still my favorite implementation of shields. It relied heavily on sound cues to alert the player of an opportunity to use a special attack. I couldn't stream a radio broadcast while playing, not that I could have then, anyway. Where I disagree with @DMKano is the other classes, especially in RvR. All pets were entirely too stupid and slow. The Cabalist pet served only to tell the enemy stealth characters where the caster was. A stealth mechanism where the character isn't rendered on the opponents system was completely unbalanced. The oft-rumored 'chance to detect invisible' was always an urban myth, and the initial mez locks were intolerable. But sword and board tanks were wonderful.
The other games he mentioned, I didn't really play all that much.
Logic, my dear, merely enables one to be wrong with great authority.
I rly loved Everquest combat. Epic fights that took a ton of tactical and strategic planning and fights that could last 15 20 mins... Also my favorite was in EQ2 pvp server with their Epic raid content/contested mobs and long battles. A raid/contested mob spawns and a guildy lets the leader know, who then sends out a max txt (batphone) to everyone if not enough people are on at that moment, then the race begins to get to the mob and kill it fast but then suddenly the opposite faction shows up with numbers trying to take you down before you get the kill.For hours having EPIC battles for the raid/contested mob till one guild/faction is victorious. It really felt good getting that kill after such a long battle.I wish they still had eq2 pvp.
Axehilt said: Uh, no. My 21 hits did ~10% damage. Meaning I would've had to have landed 210 hits to kill him.
I was objectively more skilled than my opponent (21 hits vs. 3) and lost by a landslide.
So in the vast majority of combat, population and progression end up being what carries players to victory (even if they're less skilled by a significant margin, as was the case in my example). Perhaps this balance has shifted since DF's original launch when I played, but I doubt it's shifted much.
Either way, games like Overwatch exist with just as much combat skill but zero non-skill factors (population is always balanced, and progression offers no advantages). So there's no reason to waste time in games like Darkfall, because superior (skill-centric) PVP exists.
So made up statistics about combat ratios creating a big slanted example, check. Claim about objectivity where there is none, check. Non sequitur jump in logic, check Counterexample that has glaring flaws, check.
Lets address some of it then.
So you start off with purely anecdotal evidence and a claim about the rate at which one is doing damage and make up some fudged numbers to go with it. On top of that, you use those fudged numbers to then try and imply yourself a skilled player, yet we can see by the fact that you engaged another combatant that you are claiming you supposedly had no chance of winning and were supposedly at least skilled enough to land 21 hits in the time it took him to land 3, that you are obviously not objectively good. Why you ask?
Because if you are that good at dodging then you would have been able to kite him and either escape death altogether or lured him into somewhere with more advantage. Neither of those events happened, instead you engaged in a fight you apparently knew you were losing and you subsequently got yourself killed. We call that a lack of skill traditionally. It lends itself well to other suppositions too like the probability of you using a quick weapon where your enemy used a slow one, meaning that bragging about how many hits you made is pointless.
So, objectively, not skilled.
And then we have that leap in logic where the supposition that because an unskilled player in your position couldn't beat a stronger player, that the subsequent answer is that everyone zergs. Your second point of "progression" isn't itself much of a complaint when the bulk of the genre is subjected to the flawed reality of vertical progression, including the likes of WoW. Now, we can say that when players can obtain a numbers advantage, they are generally very likely to do so. It happens in all games including the likes of Overwatch and LoL as much as it does anywhere else, as players will perpetually stack up to rush or gank at any opportunity.
If you mean to say that you'd prefer a game where it's dominantly horizontal progression and players are regulated in some manner to mitigate the threat of numeric imbalance, you could have simply said that. Granted we know from other recent threads you apparently believe horizontal progression is bad...
And then your proposed example of Overwatch, which is odd considering the presence of many low to no skill required abilities in that game coupled with the exaggerated hit-boxes and server setup that favors the shooters. If you're going to demand skill from games, don't pick the one where you can one-shot people by only having to hit near them or press a button that takes your aim and technique out of the equation entirely.
Post edited by Deivos on
"The knowledge of the theory of logic has no tendency whatever to make men good reasoners." - Thomas B. Macaulay
"The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge." - Daniel J. Boorstin
For me, at the moment, the best combat in a game is Eve Online, its not fast paced, requires a high degree of situational awareness but without the need for 'twitch combat' reflexes, it is however the most challenging combat i've ever encountered in an MMO. I would also add Planetside 1, because when your hot dropping out of a galaxy with the rest of your Outfit, theres nothing like it, adrenaline rush all the way.
How the hell is Wildstar not mentioned here? Their combat system is top notch, especially with an MMO mouse. Amazingly good.
Wildstar's combat was awful. It usually felt like I was fighting more against a wonky control system than against the mobs that were my nominal opponents. Who decided that the same keys could mean either strafe or turn depending on exactly how many seconds it has been since you last attacked?
Wot? I don't recall that ever being a thing but then again I tend to redo all the keybinds anyway. There is a setting, double-tap-to-dash, that I feel is cancer. Maybe that's what you ran into?
Obviously I'm a fan of Wildstar's combat due to its high mobility and aimed attacks. SW:TOR's fake physics feels absolutely wooden in comparison. I'll never forgive Blizzard for making my warlock a plant-caster (ugh).
Age of Wulin / Wushu before the pay to win started. Best example of fairly traditional hotkey combat being developed into something unique which fit the setting perfectly.
The game had it's "rock scissors paper" combat that every other game has, but in every other game you're locked into being either paper or scissors in a single fight. In AoW you could freely be both rock, scissors or paper as long as you gathered the right skill sets and played mindgames with your opponent.
The only MMO combat aside from FPS titles where skill would decide anything in a fair fight. Sadly they had to go full on pay 2 win.
Feel free to use my referral link for SW:TOR if you want to test out the game. You'll get some special unlocks!
I might have to just go with SWG here, I'll admit that I don't play many mmos because I believe an mmo is a game you stick to long-term. TKM was fun af and so was jedi. In NGE, spy was fun
As a whole I think it was great, all about buff stacking etc.
The acronym MMORPG use to mean Massive Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game.
But the acronym MMMORPG now currently means Microscopic Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game. Kappa.
I'm going to have to give my vote to Planetside2. It might not be an MMORPG, but it's an MMO none the less.
Reason being is that every player has approximately the same kill potential. A fresh spawned new player with no upgrades can kill a rank 100 veteran all the same, as long as they know how to aim and shoot. That and it's a skill-based combat system instead of a purely stat based one.
Comments
"Mr. Rothstein, your people never will understand... the way it works out here. You're all just our guests. But you act like you're at home. Let me tell you something, partner. You ain't home. But that's where we're gonna send you if it harelips the governor." - Pat Webb
DAoC did exceptional with tank classes, and is still my favorite implementation of shields. It relied heavily on sound cues to alert the player of an opportunity to use a special attack. I couldn't stream a radio broadcast while playing, not that I could have then, anyway. Where I disagree with @DMKano is the other classes, especially in RvR. All pets were entirely too stupid and slow. The Cabalist pet served only to tell the enemy stealth characters where the caster was. A stealth mechanism where the character isn't rendered on the opponents system was completely unbalanced. The oft-rumored 'chance to detect invisible' was always an urban myth, and the initial mez locks were intolerable. But sword and board tanks were wonderful.
The other games he mentioned, I didn't really play all that much.
Logic, my dear, merely enables one to be wrong with great authority.
Worst I've tried recently is Planetside 2 (PS4)....feels clunky, unresponsive and like the combat was designed in the late 90s.
Claim about objectivity where there is none, check.
Non sequitur jump in logic, check
Counterexample that has glaring flaws, check.
Lets address some of it then.
So you start off with purely anecdotal evidence and a claim about the rate at which one is doing damage and make up some fudged numbers to go with it. On top of that, you use those fudged numbers to then try and imply yourself a skilled player, yet we can see by the fact that you engaged another combatant that you are claiming you supposedly had no chance of winning and were supposedly at least skilled enough to land 21 hits in the time it took him to land 3, that you are obviously not objectively good. Why you ask?
Because if you are that good at dodging then you would have been able to kite him and either escape death altogether or lured him into somewhere with more advantage. Neither of those events happened, instead you engaged in a fight you apparently knew you were losing and you subsequently got yourself killed. We call that a lack of skill traditionally. It lends itself well to other suppositions too like the probability of you using a quick weapon where your enemy used a slow one, meaning that bragging about how many hits you made is pointless.
So, objectively, not skilled.
And then we have that leap in logic where the supposition that because an unskilled player in your position couldn't beat a stronger player, that the subsequent answer is that everyone zergs. Your second point of "progression" isn't itself much of a complaint when the bulk of the genre is subjected to the flawed reality of vertical progression, including the likes of WoW. Now, we can say that when players can obtain a numbers advantage, they are generally very likely to do so. It happens in all games including the likes of Overwatch and LoL as much as it does anywhere else, as players will perpetually stack up to rush or gank at any opportunity.
If you mean to say that you'd prefer a game where it's dominantly horizontal progression and players are regulated in some manner to mitigate the threat of numeric imbalance, you could have simply said that. Granted we know from other recent threads you apparently believe horizontal progression is bad...
And then your proposed example of Overwatch, which is odd considering the presence of many low to no skill required abilities in that game coupled with the exaggerated hit-boxes and server setup that favors the shooters. If you're going to demand skill from games, don't pick the one where you can one-shot people by only having to hit near them or press a button that takes your aim and technique out of the equation entirely.
"The knowledge of the theory of logic has no tendency whatever to make men good reasoners." - Thomas B. Macaulay
"The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge." - Daniel J. Boorstin
I would also add Planetside 1, because when your hot dropping out of a galaxy with the rest of your Outfit, theres nothing like it, adrenaline rush all the way.
Obviously I'm a fan of Wildstar's combat due to its high mobility and aimed attacks. SW:TOR's fake physics feels absolutely wooden in comparison. I'll never forgive Blizzard for making my warlock a plant-caster (ugh).
The game had it's "rock scissors paper" combat that every other game has, but in every other game you're locked into being either paper or scissors in a single fight. In AoW you could freely be both rock, scissors or paper as long as you gathered the right skill sets and played mindgames with your opponent.
The only MMO combat aside from FPS titles where skill would decide anything in a fair fight. Sadly they had to go full on pay 2 win.
Feel free to use my referral link for SW:TOR if you want to test out the game. You'll get some special unlocks!
As a whole I think it was great, all about buff stacking etc.
But the acronym MMMORPG now currently means Microscopic Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game. Kappa.
Reason being is that every player has approximately the same kill potential. A fresh spawned new player with no upgrades can kill a rank 100 veteran all the same, as long as they know how to aim and shoot. That and it's a skill-based combat system instead of a purely stat based one.