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Why is the tab targetting combat system so popular?
Question2
Member UncommonPosts: 43
The kind that you see in WoW and similar games. You have tons of hotkey bars for skills, you usually use tab to cycle through enemies, and its mostly about cycling through skills in a certain, efficient, order, depending on the situation. Usually comes with the "holy trinity" package (tank / dps / healer) and quest based leveling in the form of "kill x monsters".
Ive tried a couple of games that used tab targetting, could never get into them. I found it a huge snore fest. Unless im playing the healer, I can setup a macro to do my skill rotation and just watch 95% of the time, while occasionally using pots or moving my character to the next enemy. I don't feel like im actually playing the game...I just feel like im playing a rhythm game and hitting hotkeys in the correct order.
But obviously, tab targetting is very, very popular. Although I think that just might be people "settling" for tab targetting because they like other aspects of the game.
Is it just because WoW popularized it and most people haven't tried any other combat systems that are significantly different?
I remember all the BDO hype, that it was going to be a WoW killer, etc. Obviously it never got that far, but BDO does seem to be fairly popular while having a combat system that is somewhat better than WoW. Maybe instead of "WoW clones" we are going to see a lot of "BDO clones" popup in the next couple of years and it will encourage more MMOs with a more interactive combat system...
Ive tried a couple of games that used tab targetting, could never get into them. I found it a huge snore fest. Unless im playing the healer, I can setup a macro to do my skill rotation and just watch 95% of the time, while occasionally using pots or moving my character to the next enemy. I don't feel like im actually playing the game...I just feel like im playing a rhythm game and hitting hotkeys in the correct order.
But obviously, tab targetting is very, very popular. Although I think that just might be people "settling" for tab targetting because they like other aspects of the game.
Is it just because WoW popularized it and most people haven't tried any other combat systems that are significantly different?
I remember all the BDO hype, that it was going to be a WoW killer, etc. Obviously it never got that far, but BDO does seem to be fairly popular while having a combat system that is somewhat better than WoW. Maybe instead of "WoW clones" we are going to see a lot of "BDO clones" popup in the next couple of years and it will encourage more MMOs with a more interactive combat system...
Comments
I like tab target+sub and no i dont play wow i think its the best gameplay style and business model
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Pretty much this, i do not like the "action combat" games at all. I always feel like i am having to work at a game that is supposed to be fun.
I like the slower paced combat. Same reason i do not like PVP and raiding. Always ends up feeling like a job to me, and i do not game, to feel that way.
I've seen this claim made any number of times, but the only game I've ever played where you could macro an even halfway decent rotation was Rift, and I've heard even that was fixed at some point after I quit the game.
If anything action games generally friendlier towards macroing than tab-target, given the generally small number of available skills and that often combat comes down to "Use whatever is off cooldown".
So what tab-target games are out there where you can macro a competitive rotation? Because honestly the claim itself reminds me far too much of people claiming Game-X is easy when they haven't done any high-level content whatsoever.
I suspect the origins of tab-targeting probably has more to do with most of the early MMOs using a modified die roll-system behind the curtain, and that the overhead of hit-detection, not to mention issues caused by latency (which still exist, really), would have made any form of "action combat" unthinkable at the time.
Even today many action combat systems have a 'soft lock', to one degree or another.
I got Styx Master of Shadows thinking I might be able to play it and even that game I cannot move fast enough or hide well enough even on easy to manage the game after getting killed in the part where I am still basically at the tutorial so many times I lost count I uninstalled it. It was 7 Euros so the sting was less but still....
So you see not everyone likes action combat and the more the game requires me to utilize reflexes I do not have the more I fail. So tab target is the game I enjoy I can also play without tab target and manually target but action is very bad for me and the best I can manage is having everything mapped to my 12 button mouse and use that to play .
Edit: I think I found out after watching some youtube vids on Styx I had neglected to use my cover key will try the game again am reinstalling. Not giving up just yet.
~~ postlarval ~~
I personally prefer the latter for reasons....
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Action + voice coms is a much more realistic simulation of the pace and chaos of fighting. Tab-target + text chat is a more realistic simulation of table top games.
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People did not say that.
Back when the game was getting ready to come out here everybody said it would fail here because it failed in Korea.
They were wrong about here and Korea.
People do not say WoW Killer anymore because nobody cares about WoW anymore.
tab target is popular as i would asume its easyere to make games that way or was and the games that used em (wow.....) got alot of it right the first time and it kinda got stuck there not willing to move on, and as it makes so much $$$ others tend to follow the money.
some games have tryed free target combat and some have made good money i am sure of it but the once i played seem to lack where it counted for me.
As you get past your 20s twitch reflexes tend to take a big hit, and you don't feel like playing games where you are always beaten by quicker clickers.
Tab targeting games are much more forgiving than twitch games, so everyone can feel like a decent player.
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Come on, you and i both know that until wow either is killed or at least maimed badly there will always be people asking if some new mmo is the one!
Action combat depends on your personal reflexes. With tab targeting systems, you can play a character that doesn't fully depend on your personal reaction speed. I prefer it for systems that are more steeped in role playing.
But I'd happily throw the trinity stuff right out. And have voice optional. But then, I can type reasonably fast.
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@DMKano It did indeed.
Was that because they felt it would enhance social play or because of technical limitations though? Internet speed in particular?
Which could be why tab targeting - and target lock on (which is a form of tab targeting after all) is still around.
I don't know btw I simply "wonder" how much was the result of limitations that were forced on them.
Now days it is just spam away with no thought really.