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'Skill' in MMOs
Distortion0
Member Posts: 668
The buzword on these boards lately has been 'skill', or at least that's what I've been seeing. I figured I'd start a discusion on it. Personaly, I don't think there are any MMO games on the American market that currently require player skill. I was kind of shocked and appauled to see people say that EVE and World of Warcraft are games that require skill. I guess a good place to start in the arguement would be to define the term so:
According to the Oxford University Press(IE. The free dictionary that comes with my word processer) Skill, as a noun is defined as "The ability to do something well, expertise or dexterity." It can also be used as a verb meaning "to train to due a particular task." (Ie. To skill a worker.) To be thorough, the word comes from Old Norse, it ment decernment or knowlege.
Now, to start, I'd like to discuss EVE. Now, don't get me wrong. I do not mean to flame, demean, or insult the game or it's fanboys but currect me if I'm wrong. EVE's combat system consist of two basic steps: First, you orbit the target and next you set your weapons to auto-attack. Am I wrong? If not, how on earth does this require skill?
Next is WoW. Now, I hate to admit it but WoW PvP does require a minut amount of skill. It's true that Level owns PvP, and it's true that gear gives an advantage to those without lives over those that do, and it's even true that everyone has similar skills which prevents tactical manuvors but when de-skillifying their game Blizzard definitely forgot one thing: Their players could still move. This means a small amount of skill slips through. I didn't play WoW long however, so if I'm wrong, please say so.
Guild Wars is supposedly the most skill requiring game on the MMO market, personaly I could endure the PvE to get to the PvP. So I can't give an opinion.
So anyway, discuss the nature of skill and it's involvment in MMOs.
PS: I of course don't mean manual dexterity as skill! There's a reason I kept it last! FPSs aren't the only games that require skill. What about Finaly Fantasy Tactics? What about Kingdom Hearts? There are varias RPGs that require tactical skill.
Also, for those of you defending Guild Wars, I said I never got through the PvE.
Also, prepairation is not part of skill. A well feed army is not more skilled than a starving one. Equiping certian weapons, in current MMOs, is not skill either because it does not require you to change tactics. When equiping troops with weapons, their leaders don't say "Oh yeah, use this because it's good against terrorists but not nazies." Different Weapons require not mental planning to use, you just luck out because your enemy has Shield A which you automaticly pwn or Shield B which you have to run away from. In real life leaders say "We're going to be encountering alot of enemies, if we use this, it will overheat. We better use the other one."
Comments
Planetside is the most skill involved game out there.
Levels only give you points (1 per level) that you use to buy packages of what you can do. For example, you can spend 5 points and be able to drive all the scout type vehicles.
Everyone has the same HP and everyone of the same type (light inf. heavy inf, etc.) has the same armor (basically a set of buffer hp).
So basically, its all in how well you can drive/fly your vehicle and dodge/manuver around the enemies.
Expertise and Knowledge.
See, if you mean skill as in dexterity (the main definition of it), MMOs require very little of it and those who require it are unpopular (DDO for example).
But, even in your definition, you have the terms expertise and knowledge.
To run efficiently a character in a MMO is certainly an expertise, as to what to developp and what to not developp depending on your goals and objectives. So according to your definition, it is an expertise and expertises are skills.
- "If I understand you well, you are telling me until next time. " - Ren
No RPG, MMO or otherwise, has the type of skill an FPS requires. There is no aiming or anything like that (well some RPG like Auto Assault or maybe Eve do require some driving or flying skill ). Although the "R" technically stands for "Role", we all know it also stands for "Roll".
However it is possible for an RPG to require good planning/tactics and the timing to executes such things.
For example a a Mesmer in Guild Wars requires what people often call skill. The mesmer is a counter specialist and in Guild Wars this can require split second decicsion making and quick reflexes to execute. In addition you need to pay attetnion to what the opponent so that you can time your stuff right etc. This defintely takes mental acuuity and fast recations. It also requires smart decisions. Is this skill? Well yes this all comes under what is often termed skill. One of the highest levels of "skill" in the Martial Arts is being able to read your opponent. But it is not physical skill. I may know everything my opponent is going to do and still be an awful shot.
In the end there are aspects to skill. MMORPG are some physical skill (reflexes almost eclusively) and alot mental skill. FPS are alot more physical skills, just how much mental skill compared to an MMORPG is up for debate. However RPG's in general tend to have complex skill/power/loot systems that add another layer of complexity to the mental skill. But FPS usually offer a more realistic world that offers other consideration such as real cover, real high ground etc. So I think it is up the in air which requires for mental skill.
We can probably all agree that RPG's tend to focus much more heavily on certain aspect of mental skill. This generally boils down to the counter of a counter of a counter + positioning fast paced chess match that is best exemplified by GvG in Guild Wars.
Im going to have to jump in here.I wil never expect a player that didnt play vary much to understand how deep the pre fight preperation is in eve.Its much more then a click, orbit, fire,.
But Guilds wars!? it has boat loads of player side skill.its got twich based/prefight prep/teamwork paper/rock/sissors/and tactics like any other.But you need to get hard into the pvp to see it.In randoms some players see right away how in depth the pvp can be,.but most players dont see it till end game when they join 8 on 8's.
I think prefight prep takes skill,. Eve and GW have alot of it.Guilds wars pvp feels like a sport on a playing field,.and sports take lots of skill.
This is an aged debate.
Key to the concept of a MMOG is that they started as MMORPGs. Most roleplaying games, especially cRPGs (computer RPGs) and P&P RPGs (pen and paper RPGs) build first from character statistics and then extend into imagination and storyline.
The entire concept at play here is this: who you are as a person is irrelevent. What matters is your avatar. So while you may be a poor FPSer because you have bad hand-eye coordination, are handicapped, or are just plain bad at ait...you can be a superb warrior because you're playing the role. Thus, the mechanics of the game are built entirely around the character, not the player.
There is a huge world of games out there that are build upon the skill of the player. RTS and FPS games hinge on these elements. RPGs do not.
I think you must add the concept of time to call something an exercise of skill, either mental or physical it must be under time constraints. In order to be termed "skill" it should be the case that the execution of it is important. Its the difference between a coach and a player.
http://www.TheGamersAssociation.com
As was posted above though one must first come up with a strategy. Its your foundation and buildings with bad foundations crumble. However it is not skill it is the idea behind the skill.
strategy-> train that strategy->execute that strategy->be able to improvise strategies
This is the way it goes. A real-time RPG, in general, has made the execution of the strategy step very simple. Just a minor amount of dexterity and good timing. However you still need significant training and improvising of strategies. And it therefore comes down to what is generally called skill, but it is distilled to emphasize certain parts of the process.
Just a thought I'd lke to toss in...
Skill, whether mental or physical, doesn't mean a hill of beans if your system doesn't have the "skill" to play the game well...
So, some players not only have to have the skills to play well, but also have to have the skills to overcome their system to accomplish what other players can do fairly easily...
I personally prefer a game that makes me think, over a twitch-fest, duck and weave FPS... but that's just me.
Anyway, I guess my point is to consider what "skills" the game requires, as well as what the SYSTEM requirements are, then we can talk about what's what.
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Vagabond Spirit in search of a home...
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Which FF Character Are You?
Time invested = Skill
Fighting against other players is considerably more involved. Positional awareness in terms of range and velocities of opponants is crucial, as is manually flying your ship in a way that takes advantage of that awareness. With larger ships, the skill componant of combat is mainly evaluating threats and responding accordingly, but the survival of smaller ships in PvP is totally dependant on evading incoming fire to the greatest extent possible.
I wonder why...Most of the people who bring this silly argument up are the ones who lack "Skill" im willing to bet.
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You see, every mammal on this planet instinctively develops a natural equilibrium with their surrounding environment, but you humans do not. You spread to an area, and you multiply, and you multiply, until every natural resource is consumed. The only way you can survive is to spread to another area. There is another organism on this planet that follows the same pattern. Do you know what it is? A virus. Human beings are a disease, a cancer of this planet.-Mr.Smith
Absolutely, but the majority of them require little other than familiarity.
I know that RPG shouldn't really have twitch based combat involved; although in a few mmo's it would be cool. But there are still other ways to integrate skill into an mmo, like tacticioning and strategy. Realistically the only strategy I have seen is "I have 10 times more people I win" or "I am a class that was built to defeat your class, I win"
Hopefully with the new crop of mmo's we will see more strategy involved because a few of them had the design for an immense amount of strategy to be involved.
well, i correct you. you are wrong, very wrong. even before pressing the orbit icon, you have to think about speed, transversal, optimal range, falloff, resistances, weapon damage type, opponent size vs guns size, capacitor, electronic war... and then, you have to look at your opponents ship, and try to guess if he will be fitted for long range, for shield or armour tanking, if he will have electronic war, or warp scramblers, if he will be using nosferatus, webbers, stabilizers, microwarpdrive... if you are using missiles or drones, you can use those you think will damage more your opponent, if you are using guns, then you have to think at what range you think the fight will be, and load the appropiate ammo.
and after all that, then you can decide at what distance to orbit, or warp away, or probably, you cant decide either because the other ship is faster than you, so he is the one orbiting you, and you miss all your shots because he is way too fast for your guns to track.
after 18 years of playing computers, i can say that EVE requires skill. not the same kind of skill as PES or Tekken, but it definitly needs skill. you could say that tekken and PES, or CS require hand-eye coordination skill, while EVE requires a more subtile skill, like comparing soccer to chess, both require skill, but a different one.
That underlying assumption is this: "skill" = manual dexterity.
That's a big assumption. Someone in the thread above said that being able to do calculus well is not a "skill". Excuse me? Not a skill? I completely and 100% disagree. Skill does not equal manual dexterity. Skill also includes mental acuity, being able to plan and plot well and execute against that plan, mental quickness and being able to change that plan, mental vision in devising a long-term plan to build an economic or political empire ...
The problem, as I see it, is that the mentality cultivated by console gaming and the large console gaming market encourages one to equate manual dexterity with player skill, which in my view is simply bollocks. The person in EVE who has planned a better set up than you have and beats you because of it OUTFOXED YOU. He had MORE MENTAL SKILL than you did in setting up your ship. Just because you choose to not see that as a skill, doesn't mean it isn't one. And the guy who beat you because he was keeping his fast ship on a certain transversal veolicty to avoid being hit, manually clicking around rather than "orbit at 10km", and keeping you in his web and nos range at the same time ... he also OUTFOXED YOU, not because he clicks faster than you do (as if that's a skill to be considered the almighty skill of them all), but because he planned his fight better than you did, and executed against it better than you did.
The console market is big enough as it is. There are plenty of console games that test the kind of "skill" being touted by some here as lacking in MMOs. Let's not drag that watered-down sense of what a "player skill" is into the much richer world of MMOs ... those of you who want that kind of gaming experience have ample ways to access it through a seemingly endless supply of console twitch-based games. Go and play those, and leave the MMO genre alone, thanks.
Time Invested + Knowledge of the game + friends in game + other things I forget = skill.
I agree with you
Updated with clairifications.
Also, well put normanian. You can't really call it skill if no one fails.
The OP of this post Had put this in,.This is our basic guide line,and with out just reading it took it and broke it down to see if anything he typed here can relate to MMO's we may have played.
"The ability to do something well,Expertise or Dexterity"
I guess this can meen Knowing everything about the game and exploiting the weakness of others.Or Twich based Hand eye cordination.
"To Train to do a particular task"
I Guess this can meen pvp it self,and how much you do it and how tailored you are to it.Or Team leadership/Tactics/stratigy.
One thing I can say is pvp in MMORPG's in alot of ways has lots of stratigy to it and tactics.And in my books that takes skill to get good at.Theres no reason to say one may have skill and one may not,.That said it is clear as to why some may say a game like WOW dont have any skill,thats easy to see as its mainly loot based,and this can kill all hopes of a fair fight.But as a team or large group that changes.But it lacks big time in solo pvp,and more or less gets called lame.
Then theres some that say Guildwars has tons of skill,This againe "for me" is easy to see,It has allmost endless options to make hybrid/combos of characters,and has alot of hand eye cordination.and againe large teams = tactics and stratigy,.but a poor team with nothing effective to stop a good monk will make it seem inbalanced.
not sure what the big deal is and why we gota see a post like this every few days,.its not that the game you say has no skill its just a game you dont like,or you dont want to adapt to it cus it sucks in your eyes.and adapting may meen unlocking all skills and items (guildwars) or spending months getting your Ubber set of pvp loot (wow),.
No, he's right and it's sad that he's right. You could plan and stratagise all you want but that level 1 isn't going to beat that level 60. Not even if you get a big team together, go up to the cliffs and drop a rock on him because U KINT MOV ROX NOOB!!