I miss the importance of abilities

delete5230 · July 2022

Other than a hand full of nostalgia mmos, abilities have no meaning at all. In fact in modern mmorpgs you can get away with spamming your left mouse and fly through all the content in open world. Even dungeons, NOTHING MATTERS. No more reasion to use the appropriate ability or use them appropriately in conjunction with the group you are playing with.

I actually liked playing healer, but in these "soft games" it's actually hard because the groups run so fast through the content you can miss that ONE IMPORTANT HEAL. I actually become lazy because no one needs healing.

I remember back in the day, if I got a new ability I would go off and practice with it because often it would change my rotation and my style of play, that's how important an ability could be !.....People would post YouTubes on classes and they would be entertaining I may even learn something.

I'm playing ESO, what a joke, it has such a boring open world. I left click my mouse and ignore all my abilities or sometimes I'll press 1,2,3,4 just to watch the flash....... Honest to God it's no more than that !

Now I know what many would say, you didn't get to the hard stuff........ Bullshit, this is a joke. And for most of you, why are you not playing these "soft games" your self ?

It's amazing how this is never a topic..... Many here are not playing anything. No one talks about why.

Kyleran · July 2022

"The hard stuff" is in the dungeons for ESO, Lost Ark and almost any modern MMO.

You will not find such in the open world, that ship sailed long ago and won't likely ever be coming back.

I've played both of the above and you definitely need to use your characters full range of abilities in their dungeons especially if played on level in terms of gear or experience.

I have to ask, you did play Elden Ring and beat everything yes? If not that might give you the challenge you seek, but not the MMO experience of course.

Otherwise, you'll have to hope the couple of small indies manage to pull off a miracle else you're probably going to have to learn to run dungeon content with randos, something I no longer do btw.

Scot · July 2022

This is a real problem with the "Easyworld" approach, once the MMO reaches a certain point on the road to every easier, do you even need to know you have abilities, stances and so on? I think this puts too much of an onus on dungeon like gameplay to teach you why you need to use them.

Players don't need to be running up that hill for the entire game but they have become walkovers by and large.

Amaranthar · July 2022

Queue all the gamers who support big power gaps.
Also, as a secondary aspect, all the gamers who don't want random damage rolls.
And lets throw in all the gamers who want boredom because they don't want to lose nothin'.

AlBQuirky · July 2022

I miss "the differences" the old MMORPGs had. Racial differences, class differences, and <gasp> female/male differences. I think some may call that "diversity" LOL

MMOs today seem to be a mile wide (lots of surface area) but only an inch deep (don't look too hard that wide surface). Interconnecting factions are gone. Different languages are gone. Discovery is mostly gone.

Why are these features no longer here? WE (the gamers) complained constantly that we wanted what others had so the developers listened and gave as bland, vanilla flavored, soups where everyone can be everything. Final Fantasy is the culmination of this: just "switch your job!"

Sorry, Delete. I kinda went off on a tangent there

delete5230 · July 2022

Amaranthar said:

Queue all the gamers who support big power gaps.
Also, as a secondary aspect, all the gamers who don't want random damage rolls.
And lets throw in all the gamers who want boredom because they don't want to lose nothin'.

What your describing is a game for a spoiled 7 year old.
If a game is designed for that age, should adults like it ?

Mendel · July 2022

Abilities used to bring different tactical choices together -- move and kick, duck and defend, or cut and run. It felt more situational. These days, it seems that abilities only tinker with HP/Damage.

Dattelis · July 2022

Its probably like this because of the obsession with 'balance.' Every class has to be able to do every piece of content regardless of what it is, as well as being 'viable' solo in pvp by today's standards. I'd say there's nothing truly wrong with that, but the problem really comes down to that being 'the only option' as a opposed to just have a 'balanced' and 'unbalanced' version of games. Unfortunately, that will probably never happen (outside of 'classic' versions of games), due to it being cost inefficient. 'Classic' games are fine until people realize that some time in, there wont be anything 'new' added, really just some form of modifier on rerunning the same content or something like that, no new expansion or actual new content being developed for it.

cameltosis · July 2022

What you are talking about is a combat system with depth. Depth is incompatible with action combat, which is why you haven't seen or played any games recently where your choice of abilities is important: MMORPGs simply aren't built that way anymore.

[im obviously generalising here, it is possible to have depth in combat mechanics AND action combat. however, they target two different audiences, by having both within the same system you end up with something that fewer players will enjoy]

TiamatRoar · July 2022

AlBQuirky said:

I miss "the differences" the old MMORPGs had. Racial differences, class differences, and <gasp> female/male differences. I think some may call that "diversity" LOL

Others would call that gender locking, and most people hate that. Even if its within the same class, it still causes some gender lock issues where some people would prefer the female's traits for that class but want to play as a male.

Andemnon · July 2022

I have to preface this with saying i actually really like BDO, however, combat, its about the gear you have, if you have upgraded your boss gear to PEN with the best magic crystals, then you are a god in the game. It is a shame, but a lot of games seem to be more along those lines these days. When a game devolves to whatever is BIS or whatever, rather than a players real abilities, i think we all lose.

[Deleted User] · July 2022

The user and all related content has been deleted.

Scot · July 2022

delete5230 said:

Amaranthar said:

Queue all the gamers who support big power gaps.
Also, as a secondary aspect, all the gamers who don't want random damage rolls.
And lets throw in all the gamers who want boredom because they don't want to lose nothin'.

What your describing is a game for a spoiled 7 year old.
If a game is designed for that age, should adults like it ?

Adults have been trained to like it, gaming ethos has been slowly replaced with shopping ethos. NFT's are the next next step in that, after all do studios think it more important that we play or buy? That's the problem.

Amaranthar · July 2022

delete5230 said:

Amaranthar said:

Queue all the gamers who support big power gaps.
Also, as a secondary aspect, all the gamers who don't want random damage rolls.
And lets throw in all the gamers who want boredom because they don't want to lose nothin'.

What your describing is a game for a spoiled 7 year old.
If a game is designed for that age, should adults like it ?

Well, how many games since EQ (inclusive) have been made without those big power gaps? I can't think, off hand, of even one. Maybe Eve?
Even with scaling, ESO and others are still made to be easy and hard to lose anything worth mentioning.
And yet, many adults play them.

And on these forums, it's almost impossible to find more than a few at any given time who agree that big power gaps are what's wrong with MMORPG designs.
How many of you all are adults again?

I've said it many times, you people (mostly) are your own worst enemy when it comes to MMORPGs.
(But I still like you guys. I mean, games aren't the "be all and end all", ya know?)

The_Korrigan · July 2022

I miss the time when more people knowing about what they were talking about posted on forums... seems like nowadays, more of those posting don't even play the games they are talking about, nor any game at all.

And @Amaranthar ... Delete has a big ego problem, he feels the need to find ways to be superior to others all the time, his post about 7 years olds is just another drip in an already huge ocean.

delete5230 · July 2022

The_Korrigan said:

I miss the time when more people knowing about what they were talking about posted on forums... seems like nowadays, more of those posting don't even play the games they are talking about, nor any game at all.

And @Amaranthar ... Delete has a big ego problem, he feels the need to find ways to be superior to others all the time, his post about 7 years olds is just another drip in an already huge ocean.

I think Korrigan is trying again to tell on me, he's waiting for my response

Here's my response

Amaranthar · July 2022

The_Korrigan said:

I miss the time when more people knowing about what they were talking about posted on forums... seems like nowadays, more of those posting don't even play the games they are talking about, nor any game at all.

And @Amaranthar ... Delete has a big ego problem, he feels the need to find ways to be superior to others all the time, his post about 7 years olds is just another drip in an already huge ocean.

You don't have to play these games to know. You can take a quick look at their level based gear and the numbers to see.
Logic should be able to tell you what it all means for a MMORPG. But that's a barrier that many of you simply refuse to breach.

Mainly because the scripts this design is built for is too important to many of you and your beer money, I presume.

Iselin · July 2022

Amaranthar said:
You don't have to play these games to know.

You actually do.

Tiller · July 2022

Someone get this guy a time machine; please!

The_Korrigan · July 2022

Amaranthar said:

The_Korrigan said:

I miss the time when more people knowing about what they were talking about posted on forums... seems like nowadays, more of those posting don't even play the games they are talking about, nor any game at all.

And @Amaranthar ... Delete has a big ego problem, he feels the need to find ways to be superior to others all the time, his post about 7 years olds is just another drip in an already huge ocean.

You don't have to play these games to know. You can take a quick look at their level based gear and the numbers to see.
Logic should be able to tell you what it all means for a MMORPG. But that's a barrier that many of you simply refuse to breach.

Mainly because the scripts this design is built for is too important to many of you and your beer money, I presume.

If you like games where the "power gap" in PvP isn't important, try ESO for instance.

In New World too, once max level, the power gap between item level 500 and 625 is not huge, and you get there pretty fast anyway. You can get 550 as soon as you hit 60 anyway. It's not like WoW, where gear plays a bigger role than skill.

I wouldn't be doing World PvP in a game where I get steamrolled because I didn't grind for months before. I do World PvP in ESO and NW.

The combat type and character development is also a big part of why PvP is more fun and balanced in some games than others. More "action" oriented combat tends to rely more on the skill of the player behind the keyboard than the gear of the character inside the computer.

And yes, you actually have to play those games to know. Otherwise you're just another of those guys who are like "Hey, I didn't see that movie, but I heard is sucks". How many good movies would I have missed with such an attitude.

AlBQuirky · July 2022

Iselin said:

Amaranthar said:
You don't have to play these games to know.

You actually do.

Don't people have a brain? I KNOW the stove is hot. I don't HAVE to touch it to KNOW. That analogy is because I KNOW "hot garbage" (for me) when I see it. I don't HAVE to roll around in it to find out.

But if you feel the need, go ahead. It doesn't "negate" opinions you disagree with

Iselin · July 2022

AlBQuirky said:

Iselin said:

Amaranthar said:
You don't have to play these games to know.

You actually do.

Don't people have a brain? I KNOW the stove is hot. I don't HAVE to touch it to KNOW. That analogy is because I KNOW "hot garbage" (for me) when I see it. I don't HAVE to roll around in it to find out.

But if you feel the need, go ahead. It doesn't "negate" opinions you disagree with

Yeah shit stinks and we can predict that it stinks.

Now go be a game or movie reviewer and review games or movies without playing them or watching the movies.

I'll get some popcorn and watch everyone's reactions to your reviews.

We can guess whether we will like a game based on previous experience or what we have heard or seen about it but only a moron thinks that he KNOWS the game without playing it.

Utinni · July 2022

Just play the games where abilities are important.

achesoma · July 2022

I haven't played ESO in 6 years or more but that certainly wasn't the case back then. Did you get past the starter area?

I've been playing mmos for over 20 years and I can't think of a one, new or old, where abilities don't matter.

olepi · July 2022

I have a similar complaint, or maybe it's the same one. MMORPG's have become action games, like an arcade game. That ties in with playing games on a console with a controller.

Games like ESO and NW have a very limited set of abilities. Usually 4 or 5 at any one time. I'm playing LoTRO right now, and I have about 30 abilities slotted. And yes, I use most of them frequently.

Count the buttons on your controller, and then count the keys on your keyboard. The difference is where all those abilities went.

Today's gamers don't want complicated power setups, they don't want to have to think about what they are doing. Instead, they want "action combat", where how fast you push the two buttons you have is what counts.

Take a look at an old game character, like the Cabalist in DAOC. You have three spec lines, and each one plays differently. There is probably as much diversity just in that one character as in all of NW and ESO. That means lots of development time, and more effort to try to balance them. Much easier to just say everybody can do anything, and everybody is about the same as everybody else.

The_Korrigan · July 2022

achesoma said:

I haven't played ESO in 6 years or more but that certainly wasn't the case back then. Did you get past the starter area?

I've been playing mmos for over 20 years and I can't think of a one, new or old, where abilities don't matter.

Yeah, I can't wait for him to get into a dungeon, or even some delves, and getting his ass handed to him because he "press 1,2,3,4 just to watch the flash".

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I miss the importance of abilities

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Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV