In another entry that is probably largely redundant, I just wanted to take a quick look at the role that a customizable skill-based character mechanic might have in breaking the stagnant Tank/Healer/Damage Dealer triangle in most modern MMO combat.
Firstly, I see the mechanics of healing, protection/mitigation and damage dealing as being key functions of combat. I don’t dispute that. You need a way to kill the enemy, not be killed in return, and heal up when things go sour. Throughout “real world” history, that has meant a weapon, armor, and some sort of medical support. Notably, the real world doesn’t really have “instant heals” or even “heals over time” that function over the span of a few seconds, but we do get to make concessions to make the game fun. So, ignoring that healing was something usually done after combat was over, and often over the span of days if not longer, we’re back to kill/defend/heal.
Question #1: Why do those functions need to be filled by different people?
The cheap answer is “because it’s an MMO, stoopid, you need other people”. As a staunch solo player, with a strong aversion to forced grouping, I find this rationale to be shallow. Champions Online seems to think along similar lines, with every ability available to every player. The efficiency of abilities will change as the player customizes their hero, but it would be perfectly possible to build a serviceable “jack of all trades” under such a system. Of course such a generalized character wouldn’t be as apt with any of the roles as a specialized character would be, but that tradeoff is the point of making choices. (And why Guild Wars has a great idea in their “respec in any town for free” idea; change for the situation instead of approaching every problem with a hammer.)
To be fair, games like WoW have a bit of this in the “hybrid” classes, the Paladin, Druid and Shaman. I’m a Druid fan, myself, precisely because the gameplay is fairly malleable depending on what I feel like doing. I can tank, DPS or heal. The trouble is that I can’t “respec” to be a Warrior or Rogue. I can fill a similar role (Bear or Cat forms), but I don’t get the same toys as the dedicated classes.
That’s not really bad design. It’s smart to force tradeoffs and make consequences for choices. The trouble I have with the current class-based system is that those choices are made at character creation, and only a grueling grind with altitis can fix them. Respecs are a bandaid, but a Warrior will never be a healer, for instance.
I love that a top notch healer can’t also simultaneously be a super tank. Rewarding specialization is a good thing. I’d just also like to reward generalization, and to my mind, a truly classless system would be the best way to do that. Let players choose their own roles and change their character to match, and let them change over time if htey feel like it, without forcing them to make a new character.
Question #2: Are there other roles in combat?
The easiest example to look at here is the “support” roles in combat. Sometimes that’s intelligence, sometimes that’s distraction, sometimes it’s more tactical, with resource denial, environmental effects, spatial control, and morale manipulation.
Guild Wars has Mesmers, WAR has collision detection and tanks that take advantage of it, and EQ2 apparently has buff/debuff classes. (I’ve not played it, so feel free to correct me.) I’d like to see even more of these tactical roles in games. I’d love to see a “cloaked” character role that provides intel for their team, resulting in map advantages or even bonuses to hit. Yes, a WoW Rogue can go behind enemy lines and get in a backstab or two, but I’m thinking more along the lines of a Protoss Probe; a perpetually cloaked unit that doesn’t really do damage itself, but if it can manage to be in the right place at the right time, would nevertheless be a great boon to its team. It would be largely tactical, but likewise fragile, to balance the advantages it offers. (Maybe a role for ghosts? Dearly departed teammates in a pitched Battleground can either jump back into the fray or take on the Ghost role? These Ghosts would be defeatable, of course, which would then force a traditional “rebirth”. Or something like that.)
Strangely, this question has me going further down the “teamwork” rabbit hole. Just because I personally want to be a jack of all trades, though, it doesn’t mean that I don’t want specialists. I want both, and I want the option to play whatever I feel like at the moment.
To me, that’s the point of customization. Allow me to play my character in an MMO, and allow me to tailor the experience to what I want at the moment. Champions Online has potential, and apparently, Ultima Online and Star Wars Galaxies did the same thing. My loss; I never played those games. (They are still sub games, which I refuse to play.)
In a fully customizable classless system, characters may still settle into the Tank/Healer/Damage Dealer triangle out of habit or focus, but at least that would be a natural consequence of how players want to play. I’d much rather that be the case than try to artificially shoehorn people into roles according to class, especially if the only way to switch classes is to raise another character through old content. My complaint is less with the Triangle itself, and more with the artificial constraints that arise when creating classes around it.
Speaking of artificial constraints, I should note that is implemented in WoW, the Triangle is largely based on the Threat mechanic. That’s the most artificial part of the whole thing. Stepping beyond that mechanic into truly dangerous and adaptive AI would almost necessitate a level of generalization for everyone, as Tank taunts could no longer be relied upon to save the back row “squishies” from canny foes. Poorly defended healers would have to function further from the front lines, and be able to keep themselves alive in a pinch. The loss of the “main tank” or the primary healer wouldn’t result in a punishing “wipe” because everyone would be more self-sufficient; the team as a whole could absorb changes in combat easier. Perhaps they might not dance through a raid with a surgeon’s precision and speed, but they would be better equipped to handle a more dynamic bit of content.
That team flexibility might just be one key to extending the life of the “raiding endgame” by providing more variable experiences. As it is, one mistake by the main tank or anchor healer can cause an expensive wipe, so raids wind up highly choreographed and puzzle-like. A more “fuzzy” experience would keep players on their toes, making the experience more skill-intensive and interesting. Mistakes would be temporary setbacks allowing for adaptation, rather than a “go to jail” punishing mechanic for the whole team. Each player could pull their weight, rather than play second fiddle in a DPS choir while the main tank goes operatic.
So yes, this is just some thoughts that I wanted to get down. I’m pretty sure little of this is new, but it helps me to get things down in text so that I can focus my thinking. If this offers some insight to those of you who are more knowledegable and/or experienced, that’s a bonus. If some of you have favorite articles to point to regarding a classless combat system or Breaking the Triangle, I’d love to hear of them.
Tish Tosh Tesh 
Gah, stop making interesting posts when I’m too brain-battered to respond sensibly! I’m reading & enjoying, but head hurts, so no more. Hopefully I’ll remember to come back to these.
I find it amusing when players call themselves (or others) “tanks” simply because they’re warriors.
Guild Wars doesn’t have a “taunt” ability to artificially force aggro on anyone, yet all the time you’ll see warriors claiming to be “tanks” when there’s really no “tanking” in the game. Tanking is an art form that is far more than merely being able to wear heavy armor and a shield.
DDO does have some sort of taunt-type skill but I have no idea how it works or if anyone uses it much. I’ll click it every once in awhile but I can’t tell if it’s working, unlike the WoW-style taunts where it’s quite obvious if it worked. But then “tanking” didn’t exist in D&D either until the WoW-inspired 4.0 rolled around.
Back in my WoW days my primary main (how’s that for a concept? haha!) was also a druid because I have difficulty focusing on just one thing. I actually did work up a protection warrior for tanking though after I got some tanking experience with my druid but was dismayed that there was extremely little “tanking gear” in the game back then (pre-TBC days). But overall I prefer hybrid classes so I don’t necessarily *need* an alt if I’m in the mood for a particular playstyle at the time.
My main in LOTRO is a Lore-master, whose role is crowd control first and foremost, then debuffs (both my group and mobs), followed by some light dps and a backup spot heal. A complex class to play well, with hybrid abilities depending how I “spec” and which pet I use, and for the most part it falls outside the Holy Trinity which to me is an additional bonus.
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Oh and by the way, you keep mentioning SWG… Everything in your recent articles (or your curiosity towards it) stems from the original game a long time ago on servers far, far away whose codebase was destroyed when SOE demonstrated the power of their Death Star… The current game is based on class, levels, and gear just like WoW, etc.
[Disclaimer: despite my snarkiness about the NGE I am not one of the disgruntled SWG vets. It was a glorious social experiment with great community, crafting, etc. but as a *game* it was bug-ridden, poorly conceptualized, poorly executed and just plain boring and not fun.]
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I find the grouping dichotomy interesting, though, even within myself. While I *prefer* group content in my MMOs I normally solo because I usually play at off-peak times. But if I get the chance to group, either with my guild, with friends, or with a PUG, I’ll normally jump at the chance. Put me in a shooter though and I’m looking for the servers with the most players. You’re automatically “grouped” to a “faction” in a shooter, and some modern shooters even let players get into smaller “squads.” It could (and always is for me) be a PUG, some players still go off and “solo” doing their own thing rather than working as a team. Fewer players means more of a challenge, but it just doesn’t do it for me; I’d rather have more massive battles where various squads and individuals come together on foot, in vehicles or aircraft to try and conquer the objective. Which is ironically what we dream of in MMORPGs but never actually happens…
This is actually something I looked at while picking at glaring things to go over for the design of the game we’re working on and I’ll tell you what we came up with.
#1: Healing in an MMO nowadays consists of staring at a list of people in your group / raid and watching their lifebars. That’s all you get to see. I was a priest until WotLK (and a short while after) and until I rolled my DK, I had never seen what certain fights ACTUALLY looked like when you get to watch them unfold.
#2: Healing by a specific class doesn’t have to be necessary if incoming damage can be curtailed in some manner. CoH did this pretty well to the point where as long as you had good debuffers / buffers, you didn’t need a healer in your group.
#3: Tanking can be done by ANYONE. All it is is keeping the aggression of an enemy on you.
I’m sure there were other tidbits, but they all basically led to a design concept that almost totally forgoes healing in the contemporary sense. There are no pure heals in our world. No one casts “Greater Heal” or “Rejuvenation.” What you have is people with skills in damage control; people who can stop bleeding with salves or bandages or the like. Armor, deflection, movement, parries, all these things play a huge roll as our player don’t really have a lot of HP, but their armor may.
There are NPCs that can be hired called Hospitalers that you bring with you on your raid and set in various strategic locations where your fight is going to take place. When the fight is engaged, if you take too much damage and wish to be healed, you either call to a Hospitaler to come to you, where you then play a mini-game of sorts to “fix” whatever’s wrong (gushing wound, broken bone, serious trauma, etc) or you run to the Hospitalers and allow them to fix you in the same manner so you’re both out of danger.
In this manner, with damage being controlled properly, anyone can tank really. A very annoying rogue who is dexterous and quick enough can keep the attention of a dragon as long as he keeps clear of the claws by bouncing around everywhere, climbing up its back and poking it in the head, etc.
Being that there’s 3 methods of magic in our game (read: 3 different systems) there’s 3 schools of thought for healing people, but each one focuses on one key ability: regeneration. Natural regeneration is the main method of healing in our game.
Anywho, since our game is skill based, this lends the ability to the character of being able to do all these things, so I believe it promotes soloing in the proper manner and for those times where you may need an extra person or 2, there’s always an NPC to hire.
Sorry, Ysh. The last two weeks have been a bit of a brain dump for me; I’m never quite sure if I’m making sense or just plumbing after the White Rabbit. I can only hope that I’m providing something of value in some way.
Scott, aye, “tanking” is a bit more than wearing Plate. Reading BBB has taught me a fair bit about how it works, and I actually like the tactical implications of “tanking”, but I really don’t see them applied very well, even with the artificial Threat mechanic. Infantry and “meat shields” throughout history have been deciding factors in war, and the role of protector is an interesting one to me. I just find the current implementations to be a bit… shallow. *shrug*
Aye, I’ve suspected that my interest in SWG, largely based on Raph Koster’s comment a few posts back, is in the pre-NGE game. Would a fixed implementation of that game’s ideas and ideals make sense in today’s market?
The grouping dichotomy in me is largely based on game design, I think. When the “rubber hits the road”, I play solo. I still want to give interesting content to those who would rather group, and I can envision being a team player on occasion, but for the most part, group dynamics are interesting to me in abstract, not so much because it’s something that I really want to do. Or maybe, deep down, I really do want to do these things, but with friends and family in the game, rather than random internet players. I do keep thinking that it would be fun to play games with my wife, but so far, Wii Tennis is about all we’ve been able to get in. I think the “shared experience” is still appealing to some degree, even to me, but in the games I’ve played, I’m often happier playing solo.
I keep thinking of the “private server” idea that Chris floated. If I could control who I play with much more efficiently, I’d probably be happier grouping. Then again, this “real life” schedule does preclude a fair bit of that. *shrug*
Wiqd, interesting ideas. It looks a bit like GW with a twist of lemon. I like it. There’s definitely a call for something for “healers” to do other than play “whack a mole” with health bars. I’m a huge fan of tactics and strategy, and it just seems that much of what passes for “endgame” or solid grouping content these days is so bereft of the need to think that it just doesn’t do much for me. I know that sounds terribly elitist, but I really do wish there were more to multiplayer combat than the Triangle.
Tish:
Yea tactics and strategy is what we’re going for more than just button mashing and not standing in the fire.
I want to include use of collision detection so in the event our tank IS wearing plate with a huge tower shield and advancing a group down a dreary hallway, he can basically fill the hallway with himself to keep attackers off the squishies while fights and people cast.
I’d like to make use of formations like a simple phalanx where people in a raid have to follow a commander’s orders and get into formation for a particular wave of enemies or a boss.
I’d like to use the environment so if say (building on my crafting ideas from Stylish Corpse) we bring a grandmaster stonemason with us into a stone fortress, he can identify gaps or weaknesses in construction so a solid blow can bring down support structures or the like. Perhaps an alchemist to place an explosive concoction in a glaring gap in a wall to reveal a hidden passageway.
I’d like to have raids be able to split people up so you have an espionage / black arts group sneaking around and achieving objectives like opening locks so the main assault party can progress, or trapping doors in the barracks before infantry is alerted so they can’t get out of their doors.
Things like that to alleviate the exploded trifecta idea of tank / heal / dps = win! in the right ratios.
What about friendly fire and line of sight?
I’m definitely liking the black ops group idea. Coordinating remote activities like that can make for some great timing and tactics exploration.
Making crafting relevant to gameplay is another fun idea. WoW did a little bit of that with perks for high level crafting, but I’d like something more organic and pervasive.
Line of sight is one of those tricky things that I’ve always just seen used as a “Oh crap someone found a way to attack this guy w/o looking” kind of reaction in games.
In my previous example of a huge plate wearing warrior guarding a passage way, yea there probably wouldn’t be much room for ranged attacks or even melee for that matter, aside from the tank himself. Casters can take a chance by casting at the ground where the enemies are, or using AOEs, but then you have to decide whether or not you want people to take friendly fire, as you put it.
Should I be able to shoot my own group mate in the back with an arrow if he’s blocking the way? Should my spells be able to hurt the tank if he’s standing too close.
I think if you say yes to these, you have to design a game where AOEs aren’t just your standard AOEs and being any type of ranged class actually takes skill (not a bad thing, mind you). But now you get into aiming and the nuances that go along with that (first person focusing, third person over the shoulder, which is better? etc).
One thing I do not EVER want to see … EVER … is a system that’s popular amongst console gaming where you have to hit the buttons at the right time to complete a sequence for something. I’m sure you know what I’m talking about. It works ok for console (most of the time) but I don’t think it’d work for an MMO. I could be wrong though.
Since I’m pretty much guaranteed to go off on tangents anyway, I’ll just start with one…
Regarding your (seemingly) adamant refusal to group with anyone you don’t know personally coupled with your definite refusal to play a subscription game, your options are drastically limited to start with.
If you are *only* willing to group with friends and family, is an MMORPG really the way to go? I mean… Guild Wars is a multi-player (not massively multi-player) action RPG, perfect for you situation. But then so would a shooter (or even shooter-RPG like Hellgate London) or Diablo action RPG, etc.
(And I seriously don’t mean this in the same vein as the guys who say “omg you solo in an MMO? Go play Oblivion, blahblahblah…”)
I forget if you’ve said how chatty you are in general but I’m just wondering if you’d be more suited to multi-player since the “massively multi-player” doesn’t seem to be attractive at all to you? Or perhaps I’m getting my blog-reading wires crossed? (That does happen, I have the attention span of a… oooh shiny! *wanders off*)
@Wiqd: Those context-sensitive action sequences (I believe that’s the technical phrase for them) aren’t exactly “popular” among console gamers either, nor are they widely used. I can think of two recently that use them: the newer Tomb Raider games, which give an indication that it’s switching to that perspective and gives you plenty of time to react and it’s more of a cinematic action sequence that can’t be duplicated with the normal game actions, and a shooter (yes, a shooter!) I just got Clive Barker’s Jericho. Jericho also uses them for cinematic sequences (which are very cool) that cannot be done within the normal first-person shooter format BUT it gives no warning whatsoever that it’s coming and you have about 0.5 nanoseconds to react which is just ridiculous.
Heh, I’m a bit like Saylah, if you’ve read her posts on soloing MMOs. Yes, multiplayer games are great, but you just don’t get the same economies or even social dynamics as you see in persistent world MMOs. I’ve also actually had some fun grouping with random people (or at least, acting in tandem) in the WoW trial, so I know there are good compatriots out there. I suspect that I’d probably join BBB’s guild or COW if I were a subber. (Which I might be, if I were single with lots of free time, admittedly. My strong objection to the sub model is that it doesn’t offer sufficient value per dollar to my very disjointed schedule.)
I’ve even enjoyed random acts of buffing and such wandering the WoW world, or the occasional helper in Wizard101. I’m not against grouping as an option, I’m just against forced grouping and random internet idiots. I’d even give a PUG a shot once in a while, as I do on occasion in Puzzle Pirates. (Jobbing for a random crew.) It’s just that my gaming time is so constrained that I want to make the most of it, and dealing with stupid players is disproportionately painful for me compared to a guy who plays WoW 40 hours a week.
As for chattiness, I try to maintain a good sense of humor. I type quickly, so I can often slip quips in (in English!) when others might still be finding the “yo” to formulate a proper insult. I have good fun and pull my weight or more when I’m grouping… but I don’t like being obligated to do so. If I have a three hour block to play (which is pretty much never these days), I’m more likely to group up. If I only have a half hour or even an hour, I just do my own thing.
I guess that I’m willing to give people a chance, even though I talk a hard line. I’m not terribly forgiving of stupidity, though, so I’ll leave a group as soon as I can if they bother me. I have enough obligations living life in the rat race; I don’t need that stress in my gaming. As I’ve noted before, people are the worst thing in MMOs, but they are also the best thing in MMOs. I’m interested in both enough to want to suss out the game design aspects. *shrug*
Oh, and Wiqd, aye, context-sensitive console-style button presses wouldn’t be desirable to my little mind. I think that line of sight and friendly fire would indeed make some things more interesting, and AoE would definitely require a revamp. I’m not sure that the increased tactical considerations would be more “fun” in that respect… but perhaps a low level implementation, with bonuses for smart tactics, would be a good way to make smart play more rewarding while not nerfing mindless zerging and ability spamming.
We’re probably fairly similar in our gaming habits per session then.
Many times I’m reminded of an idiom I heard once: These multi-player games would be great if it weren’t for all the damned players.
I do put time into finding a good guild in each MMO however. Even if I end up mostly soloing, the ability to choose a new online “family” to fit into is, for me, one of the most attractive features of MMOGs over a “mere” multi-player game or single-player game. I don’t have, or choose to take, the time for dedicated raiding or dedicated… whatever… in MMOGs anymore but there are plenty of people with that same mindset who make up the more casual guilds. I prefer that social environment over the all business all the time dedicated raid guilds. If my casual guild has skilled players who want to raid (or more commonly I just make acquaintances outside my own casual guild so I can dungeon, raid, etc.) all the better. I like to raid but I dislike raiding, if you know what I mean by that.
Line of sight is another one of those double-edged swords. It always sounds better on paper than it is in reality. We use it for cheesy tactics like LoS pulling or to force a boss to not use his special attack because we’re out of his LoS. On the flip side, how many times has someone died or the group wiped because whomever the healer was trying to get to was out of LoS? Maybe it’s just LoS + RPG mechanics such as targeting which presents issues. LoS is perfectly fine in a shooter because I’m not tab-locking onto anyone, and I can toss a grenade near the person to either frag them or try to force them out of hiding. We can’t attack “nothing” in an RPG to use tactics like that.
But you SHOULD be able to attack like that in an RPG … If you have some type of weapon or spell that can do that 😛 And usually if you can, there are methods available to allow you to do so, like the little cast rings you aim before you click an AOE or something like that.
As far as your “multi-player” comments, I remember when Phantasy Star Online came out and I had more fun with that game just playing through it w/o anyone else than I did even playing it 2 player. Never tried online for that very reason. It was supposed to be like a console MMO, but I could do everything solo and so I did. Never got to true EQ Legends? I think it was … which was also the same type of deal.
Anyway, the concept of DDO pulled me in but the game was graphically distasteful to me so I didn’t play long. Kinda wish I had in some respects, but it scared me to the point that I was afraid I’d lose interest in the actual table-top RPGing, which I love 😛
Yeah but as soon as you start letting people attack “anything” or “nothing” in an RPG (especially a MMORPG, and doubly so with the fantasy MMORPG) all the “zomg they’re trying to disguise an FPS as an RPG” idiots start swarming out of the woodwork.
Which brings me to yet another tangent (think I’m bad in print, you should see me do it live LOL): the MMORPG elitists who think they know everything about every other genre and severely underestimate their own abilities. Look at Tobold who recently was trying some shooters like COD4. He was amazed that he was able to do pretty well in the game as well as not get “video game motion sickness.” Well, DUH… Years of running around landscapes and dungeons desensitizes you to the motion sickness — it comes from the “world” moving as opposed to the older platform games where the world was largely stationary screens or scrolled horizontally while Mario/Sonic/etc. had a relatively small portion of the screen they were always located in. First-person vs. third-person camera doesn’t have *too much* to do with it. As for “waaah waaah I’m older, I can’t do twitch games” what is raiding? Especially in WoW? Do *THIS* and do it *NOW* then run over here and do *THIS* and then… That’s also very twitchy gameplay in my opinion. If you can twitch in your RPG you can twitch anywhere else. Hell, after a few rounds I’d even call Tetris and Bejeweled twitch games!
Minor tangent from me: There are two different “twitch” factors that I see… mental twitch and physical twitch. As you age, both deteriorate, but the physical tends to do so quicker and earlier. Games based on mental twitch, like the combat in Atlantica Online, are less prone to age decay as a typical FPS.
Targeting “anything” or “nothing” to me are just more tactics of combat, and a very welcome expansion of the toolset. I don’t see that as a FPS only mechanic. Honestly, that’s the first I’ve heard that argument, Scott. I guess I should prowl the MMO whining forums more. Not that I really want to…
I just think of FFTA2, which I’m in the middle of playing. There, I can’t really attack “nothing”, but in the original FFT (if memory serves), you could target anywhere, and time counted down before an attack (usually magic) actually happened. The attack would fire off, whether or not anyone was there, whether they were friendly or not. It lent a great depth to the tactics, as you would effectively have to plan ahead and accurately gauge opponents… or force their hand. That’s the sort of tactical depth that I would love to see in an MMO; a reason to exercise that mental twitch (as well as the long fiber, long range mental muscles), not just the physical twitch.
In my muddled mind, that would introduce a greater component of player skill to the game. That’s something that I think is very desirable. I know, the typical WoW grub won’t like it, but to me, player skill is one of the missing ingredients that would make modern MMO design much better.
Unfortunately I do hang out on a handful of forums, especially MMORPG.com and the instant anyone mentions “aiming” in any form whatsoever, the “FPS/twitch nooooooo!!1!” guys begin their inane yammering.
I suppose something like, say aiming an AoE attack (genre agnostic) could be like aiming a grenade or tactical attack in some shooters where you get a special reticule to target that attack to a specific area rather than only being able to lock onto a specific target like we do now. But it’s still manual aiming… ZOMG!!1!
I’d like to challenge one of your initial assumptions Tesh. I don’t think healing is a ‘key function’ of combat. Healing during combat only really became prevalent since MMO’s became popular. Traditional (DnD) style RPG’s made healing during combat fairly useless (due to touch range / interruptibility / occupying an entire turn’s worth of spell casting).
The reason I think healing isn’t necessary is because it acts as your margin of error. If you let people go and restore it cheaply during combat (as MMO’s are wont to do), you get rid of the margin for error and so combat becomes fairly brainless. Additionally, you have to scale monster HP accordingly to make them any sort of challenge, making fights take longer for no good reason (imo).
This is not to discount the appeal of good casters to keep the team alive. Monks in Guild Wars use protection prayers primarily to stop damage in the first place, which require a lot of skill in reading the battlefield etc. There’s still healing involved to top up damage that gets through, but it’s not nearly as prevalent as in some other games.
Re: a ‘cloaked character that provides intel’ – I started playing TF2 recently. The spy is a heap of fun in this game, able to turn invisible and disguise as the enemy as well, often able to root out a defensive formation by appearing out of nowhere and backstabbing them all before they know what hits them. Adapt this to an MMO and I’d be a happy chappy.
Secondly, I’m not a fan of totally customizable systems like the one you and lots of other people hold in their hearts for a future MMO. I appreciate all the theoretical arguments, but at the end of the day I know I’m going to sit down to a game like that, realize I have a ridiculous number of options, most of which are quite sub-par, and will promptly uninstall.
Don’t get me wrong, I love depth in a game I’ve been into for a while, and I used to launch head first into forums and guides for every new RPG I played, but I’m over it now. I’ve played some crap RPG’s in my time, and I’m not willing to go through the process of learning the new ‘language’ only to discover that the game sucks.
I know others differ, but I think the majority of players (not necessarily the majority of bloggers) prefer to be guided in some way or another.
@ Scott: warriors in PvE in Guild Wars ARE tanks. They have high armor and a bunch of skills to improve that armor, and the enemies all pretty much go for the first guy they see (which is invariably the ‘tank’). They have no damage. Other characters can’t stand up to the damage. It’s pretty much the definition of a tank, so not quite sure what you were meaning with that one.
Other points:
– Line of sight yes for some abilities (where it makes sense, i.e. where you’re shooting a projectile)
– Friendly fire no, have to promote gameplay over realism on that one
– There are different types of ‘context-sensitive’. For example in Hellgate (yes, sucky game, but this was a cool feature), there were a couple of ‘context sensitive’ controls. I could map a healing skill to my emergency button, but if I was in close-quarters combat I could make it instead use an evasion skill, etc. This kind of thing is actually really nice, and is often used in console games also, due to their limited buttons. When done well it can reduce the learning curve nicely.
Hmmm longest reply ever? :p
Melf, the “Tank” idea in Guild Wars is often debated, the point is that the other players have to make sure that the designated tank gets the aggro first. But the classic “taunt” function and aggro management of EQ-style games is not there.
PvP players would argue that Warriors ARE the damage dealers, Warriors are not taken in Guild vs Guild because they can tank, but because they can constantly do high damage due to adrenaline and by default strong attacks.
If you want someone to tank in GW, it is more of a party effort and use of chokepoints, e.g. blocking mobs at corners. This is way people say there is no tanking and no tanks in Guild Wars. Warriors have high armor rating, but tanking is indeed about protecting the soft targets and making them attack you instead. The paradox was that for quite some time the targets with the least max health had extremely high priority for the AI, making well armored high hp tanks the least attractive target, which often even positioning could not prevent. This is better by now, before the changes the guy that got a death penalty was likely to become the ass for the remainder of the run…^^
For hard mode, rangers with throw dirt and evasive stances + pets and a Minion Master provide the meat shields.
OK, GW babble nobody besides GW players might be interested in… 🙂
More back on topic, modern games are mostly real time based. Especially MMOs, making them turn based would be quite difficult as everyone would have to act in this combat scheme. You cannot go into a round based combat mode if the players around you explore the world in real time. Of course this “could” be done, but it would be very odd.
We cannot prevent twitch reflexes to become more important in such an environment.
About healing: Healers are dominant because they exist. They prolong the life of the tank and other party members. They are vital.
But we could make do without them, indeed! And it would dramatically change gameplay.
We could also drop the role of the “tank” completely. It is artificial to boot, originating from the ideal that a warrior/frontline fighter protects his comrades, it turned into an extremely artifical concept that plays silly: Tank, hold aggro, everyone else, do not grab aggro.
To make things more interesting, now and then there is an aggro reset… yawn!
Age of Conan introduced healing through combat, making priests participate actively in combat and healing at the same time. The tank concept still exists somewhat.
Classes should retain their strengths and weaknesses, even if we could break down classes to skills and forget the class concept, too. People would have to specialize in areas they like. This would boil down to certain archetypes, the resilient tanks being one of them.
The whole group should have to heal and fight, some better at fighting the enemy and others better at helping their friends, of course.
But we have to destroy the holy trinity concept. It is a dead end that lead to over-specialization. It is also a dead end for our imagination IMO.
Yeah, warriors being tanks in GW is a complete myth, especially when you have elementalists working up a “TerraTank” build or assassins doing the “Shadow Tank” thing. Even with my monk I can pop up enough Protection to “tank” even though I’m really not tanking. If I really want to challenge myself I can switch up to the “55 Monk” build where I only have 55 health but use a particular set of enchantments that only let me lose 5 health. Just looking at numbers, yes Warriors have the highest armor rating but GW doesn’t use a normal aggro system. They’ll aggro onto the first character they see but as soon as anyone else is within their aggro radius it’s a crap shoot who gets the aggro. And as a monk, if I so much as move my finger towards a heal button, the lot of them are on me.
Oh, and all our MMOs are round-based by the way, not real-time. They’re not turn-based, that would be like Wizard101, though. Most try to “mask” the rounds and make it seem super-responsive and real-time (WoW did the best job of this so far) while others like LOTRO embrace the round system and let players queue a few skills which will fire upon the next combat round. It’s just like the old tabletop RPG days in that sense, just no initiative rolls. WoW and AoC have probably the quickest rounds, which makes for faster combat and in turn helps promote the illusion of real-time. LOTRO and Vanguard are two off the top of my head which have noticeably slower combat rounds. The difference *seems* to be that the rounds are on a per-character basis, not on the battle as a whole — which would be more turn-based anyway.
Melf, challenging assumptions is a good thing, thanks! Let me take a stab at it… I wasn’t sufficiently clear initially, and with further prodding, it should be noted that there are two distinct times for healing; in combat and out of combat. Yes, it’s obvious, but I do think that it’s a critical distinction.
Healing in combat is indeed something that is largely a margin of error mechanism. I’d argue that having such a margin of error is a good thing to keep the game from being unforgiving, but that’s something that would probably be a variable throughout the game anyway, as a handle to tweak difficulty. Too easy and too hard are both troublesome.
Also, noting that the desired effect is “margin for error”, such could equitably be provided by damage mitigation and evasion effects, especially if they are skill based, like tactical positioning of a shield, positioning or timing. Combat healing isn’t the only way to provide that margin, in other words, and in that, yes, it’s not really necessary, so long as that margin is provided some other way.
Healing out of combat is a bit of a different animal. The primary purpose of that is to minimize downtime. It’s annoying to be waiting around for health to regenerate or a snack to be eaten. Guild Wars manages this fairly well, as natural regeneration is vastly accelerated out of combat. (Ignoring for the moment that that regeneration rate can be tweaked in combat as well by spells and abilities, of course; I’m talking about innate healing.)
It could be argued that to maintain a “sense of the world” or “proper respect for injuries”, downtime serves a good purpose, but more often than not, I just find it annoying. Also, making out of combat healing require consumables is one way to make a currency sink, but again, if it takes too long or gets too onerous in either cost or limited inventory space, it’s just another burdensome mechanic. It’s in that grey zone of “realism” that can easily go too far in the simulation direction and stop being fun.
As far as the depth of customization, I’m well aware that it won’t be for everyone. Openedge1 has a great post up about actually liking games on rails. I like such at times, too, and I’m all for some relatively mindless “plug and play” gaming. The questions then become:
Would such a variable game be sufficiently well designed to be fun to play?
Would enough people find it fun enough to make the game profitable?
Is an MMO a good venue for such customizability?
I’d give the first a yes, noting that it would indeed have to take some work to avoid the “suck” factor. The second is a bit fuzzier, but I do believe that there is a sufficient niche for such a design to make a game profitable in that space. It wouldn’t be a WoW killer, certainly, but that’s not the point. The third is mostly what I’m offering as a premise for the article. I believe that MMOs, as “keeplayable” games, are an especially good venue for such a high degree of customization. Yes, care would have to be taken to keep information overload down (pace the learning curve), and to make sure there’s not a “golden path” that everyone takes *coughBeastmasterHunterpre-3.0.8cough*, but that’s a matter of balance. I think the premise is sound, even if it does mean more careful implementation than a strict class system.
Long and Scott, Aggro and Threat are artificial systems that I’d like to see give way for some smarter AI promoting tactics and spatial awareness. They are streamlined, and as Melf notes, can mean for less taxing gaming, which is probably why WoW is so popular. Making combat more demanding may well make it more interesting (that’s my hope), but it would also mean a new barrier to fun for some people. I don’t think there’s any way around that; it’s the natural tradeoff between audiences that comes with alterations in design. I think it’s worth doing, but I harbor no delusions that such would supplant WoW’s relatively mindless combat. It would be fun in its own right, and done well, could scale better than just pegging it as a “hardcore” mechanic, but again, that would mean careful design. (Clean learning curve, tactics giving bonuses rather than mistakes being brutally penalizing, that sort of thing.)
I think the only way to make combat not be “turn based” in one way or another is to make it dependent on player skill. That starts to wander into the “FPS whining” and twitch gaming, though. I actually like both at different times; I love Atlantica Online’s combat, but I’m a fan of FPS combat sometimes too. I think that turn based combat, based on avatar and gear speed and such variables, is a handy system for devs to keep control of combat. I waffle a bit on whether such is desirable for an MMO, since I see PvP as the point of an MMO, and I see skill as being the point of PvP… but that view isn’t universal, and may be unique enough to force my ideal designs even further into Darkfall niche territory. That’s definitely not what I’m aiming for.
Maybe it’s just me, but maybe the rudimentary mechanics that go along with an MMO are due to control interface? Bear with me on this one.
If you look at console games, there’s a lot of movement, many times fast paced and even in non-FPS … maybe third person shooters or over-the-shoulder / third person action games like … I dunno, Heavenly Sword or something. Since you’re holding the controller instead of sitting at a keyboard, to me, it seems like I’m more into the game. The problem is that there’s very few ways to control the camera most of the time (in a way that’s as granular as camera control on a PC).
I just think that MMOs may benefit from a more interactive method to execute abilities or even explore as MMOs rarely have a reason to use the jump function aside from the random Thaddius or Kaeristrasza encounters 😉
Control interface and UI definitely have a bearing on how games are designed. I’m very curious how Champions Online will function, since it’s meant to be on both a console and the PC. How did FFXI fare when it came to that, by the way?
It’s funny you mention jumping. One of the “big” complaints I heard about GW while I was researching it before I bought it was the lack of jumping. I always thought that was one of the dumbest and most superficial reasons to dismiss a game. If jumping doesn’t add significantly to a game, it doesn’t need to be there. Was Chrono Trigger any less a masterpiece because it didn’t have Secret of Mana-style gap jumping? How silly.
To be completely honest, even when I load up FFXI on the PC I plug in a USB controller styled after a PS2 controller. I’ve played it with the keyboard (neat since it can be played and is designed to be played completely with the keyboard) but it feels much more interactive with the controller. I never actually played it on Ps2 or Xbox360, but I’d assume it’s the same, minus the ease of typing in chat.
Tesh, people had issues with GW Jumping because in other MMOs, jumping made movement easier and neater – in GW you would walk around fence, in WoW you would jump over it.
Which is subset of problem that GW maps have – they restrict movement a fair bit.
Invisible walls, for example, are prevalent making most of “commonsense” jump-down shortcuts impossible.
Their issue is with map design, not mere inability to merrily jump. Luckily, map travel feature remedies this a lot by making up for time lost by navigating terrain with instantaneous player movement.
Oh, I certainly see jumping as a subset of the “habitrail” effect that GW has. Thing is, jumping in itself doesn’t appreciably add to the gameplay, especially since they went with the constrained paths. I see the lack of jumping as a symptom, not a problem in itself. Complaining about it just misses the point; the constrained travel. (Which you rightfully latch on to, but most of the complainers I read just whined about not being able to jump.) Thanks for clarifying that, Zweistein, and welcome!
Whether or not the habitrail effect is a good thing is debatable, certainly. I’m not a huge fan of it, but neither has it wrecked my enjoyment of the game.
I would just like to see gameplay in MMO’s more like the movies. Take LoTRO for example. 300. Battle scenes with lots of enemies that die when hit.
Instead of using healing as the “buffer” by x number of swings at y number of damage points with z number of heals coming in, that is where you should up evades, parries, misses – and hey, good old Armor.
Swords clash, armor is broken, and when a true hit happens that is when death occurs. Right now I put my sword squarely through the mobs torso 100 times before he finally falls over.
Of course, I don’t think the tech is there to match up parries and evades properly so it would probably look silly (no more so than impaling a mob 40 times before death, mind you)
Threat/Aggro is a terrible mechanic. Players know to kill the squishies first, why don’t Demi Gods? Intelligent Demons? Animals, okay, will give you that one, but the whole setup of combat is a farce.
I am ILLIDAN! I WILL KILL YOU ALL! well, after I somehow manage to kill this tin can in front of me, that those 10 healers are chain healing, and ow, those 14 guys stabbing me in the back in cloth sure hurt, but DAMN! I MUST KILL THE TIN CAN FIRST!
It’s proposterous.
Have armor have hit points, and at the end of a battle instead of “healing”, repair the armor. Have that as a subset everyone can skillup in. Those who have fallen in combat can be revived by clerics (the old, front of the line warrior types) and the group recovers and moves on. Let everyone be able to hold their own through a combination of armor, dexterity, weapon skill and constitution so it’s fun.
Irony is, as much as I loathe the healing mechanic in MMO’s, I have always played one. Partly because no one else wanted to (so, always easy to get a group) but also I was pretty good at it. I didn’t see most “boss” fights, just health bars and mana meters =)
Did you ever play Bushido Blade? I never did, but I respect its approach to the fighting genre; samurai fought without life bars, and one good whack to the jugular and your opponent is down. No squishy healers, no tin can, just good old swordplay. You screw up, you die.
…I might just have to appropriate the “KILL THE TIN CAN” mantra. Nicely stated. 😀
You guys have to stop replying to this stuff so fast :p
Re: the GW tank thing – yes it’s not always the warrior who’s the tank (I didn’t PvE much when I played Guild Wars, but I know there were several areas where a warrior with obsidian flesh and grasping earth was the ONLY tank that would be accepted into any serious group), but SOMEbody is the tank. I’m not really sure why we’re arguing about it though to tell you the truth (I just like to get the last word in :p).
Re: healing out of combat, and whether it should be limited (consumables or power-ups findable in the level) or unlimited (health regens, or spells from a mana pool which regens) – I think a mixture between the two types is good from a game design point of view. Take Halo for instance – you have temporary ‘buffer’ HP in the form of a shield, and then your actual, much harder to replace HP which only is sacrificed when your shield is removed (hence the whole ‘combat evolved’ thing, because it meant that surviving a fight by the skin of your teeth would still punish you, but not ridiculously so, making for great gameplay).
The analogous thing in Guild Wars (kind of) is DP (more permanent) and HP (quite temporary).
In Left 4 Dead it leans closer towards the more permanent side of things. Each character gets 1, maybe 2 medkits per level which completely reverse all damage done to them so far. But they are practical out of combat only (very long ‘cast time’), and are quite limited. To make up for this a little, if your HP does go to zero, you are only ‘incapacitated’, and can be helped back up by a team-mate, which gives you some more HP to play around with. So again there’s a mixture of more permanent and temporary effects.
Whichever solution is implemented, I agree 100% that you need to minimize downtime as much as possible. The game should be designed so that players need their entire pool of resources to navigate the *whole level*, not just *one encounter*.
Re: the classes vs no classes thing… speaking of balance, the game becomes a lot harder to design well because there are so many combinations possible. I really could not imaging myself bothering with PvP in a game like that, though I could definitely see the PvE being interesting.
Although, I am reminded of my short-lived experience playing Morrowind on the XBox. I read the marketing-hype about the open-ended skill system and decided, you know what, I’ll believe it, I’m not going to research my character, I’m just going to play it in a cool sounding way. So I came up with this concept of a ‘spellsword’ type who would have part conjuration (or some such) magic to enchant his weapons, and the other part martial might.
I got beaten. Horribly. By mostly everything. Note that this may be because games in which you have to melee in first person without a targeting system (like in MMO’s) are retarded. At any rate, I’m not a retard, yet I was able to put together a build of quite epic failure with their skill system.
A lot of work would need to be done to ensure that sort of thing wouldn’t happen… I’d suggest unlimited respecs whenever in town as a start.
Re: MMO UI and keyboard vs gamepad. I think you’ve got cause/effect mixed up re: why MMO UI’s are the way they are. I think the combat system used has caused UI’s to be developed in a certain way. Now, as for the cause of the combat system to be the way it is, I’d say it’s primarily a combination of
a) It’s hard to melee in traditional FPS games coz you can’t see what’s going on (hence a targeting system and 3rd person view)…
b) This is especially true with lag
c) Following the formula established by prior games (not a good thing imo)
I agree about the jumping thing. Jumping is only useful to a) overcome pathing issues and b) climb over mountains and stuff. Designing the game a little differently could avoid the need for jumping. Personally, I’d still put it into any game I was making to shut the whiners up though 😉
“Have armor have hit points, and at the end of a battle instead of “healing”, repair the armor.”
What’s the difference? HP is an abstract concept. All you have to do is think of current MMO’s as being this way, and you’re there. You have not changed the fucntionality of HP at all with this argument if you think about it ^^
“Of course, I don’t think the tech is there to match up parries and evades properly so it would probably look silly (no more so than impaling a mob 40 times before death, mind you)”
The tech is there. I played through a bit of Assassin’s Creed recently. They have a lovely target-based combat system that matches up various animated attack combinations quite nicely (I don’t like it that much, for example it seems rather easy, but as far as twitched-based melee *without requiring rote memorization of button pressing for combo execution* goes, it was pretty neat.
I don’t see why it would be computationally intensive… you’d just have to have a whole bunch of animation combinations pre-programmed in, instead of just one animation where people whack at ‘each other’ (but really are hitting the air around 20 cm away from the other person repeatedly).
Re: the tank thing again. Tanking is not that bad when you think about it. A big strong dude should be able to get into the enemy’s face, use his sword to intercept their strikes, etc. However MMO’s implement it as such an abstract concept (with artificial taunt buttons that force mobs to do things) that it doesn’t make sense. If it was changed to become more active it wouldn’t be (quite) so retarded.
Unlimited respecs indeed. That’s a must as far as I’m concerned in a system where mistakes are likely, even encouraged as part of the learning process. That’s the trick; make experimentation interesting, and don’t punish it. I can see limiting it to town to keep abuses down, but other than that, I strongly lean to the freedom principle. I did play Morrowind (on PC), and wasn’t impressed. You almost needed to plan your character out far in advance and do stupid grindy stuff to get the skills to roll your way at leveling time, and there were no respecs. Bleh.
Agree… agree… agree…
Aye, Tanking as a concept, that of a meat shield to protect the softer targets and harry the foe, is a solid tactical consideration. It’s mostly the artificial Threat that just seems so lame. Take the Illidan example; certainly he’s smart enough to go for the soft targets, but it should be the tank(s) job to prevent that. That’s part of why I think the collision detection of WAR is interesting; it’s possible to actually get up in the bad guy’s face and get in the way. (OK, Illidan can fly, scratch that… bring some traps to stick his flighty demon rear in place?) I love the idea of tanking, inasmuch as it’s tactically interesting… but the way it’s mechanically implemented in MMOs to date is less than satisfying.
[…] camera pans from a burning torch, and settles in on a group of weary adventurers. Their swords blood-stained, their armor indented with sword swings from fallen foes. Zoom in on a […]
@Melf: My trackback post is sort of in response to using armor as the buffer instead of healing. It has been something that has always bothered me as a core mechanic (and I always played a healer to boot, heh.)
I just didn’t want to clutter up Tesh’s nice and clean site with my rabble =)
@Melf: I have not really played Oblivion so far. My system could not handle it, my new one does for sure, but what really stopped me was…
… that it has the same totally silly “skill” system with minor and major skills like Morrowind.
This is probably why I like Fallout 3. Bethesda used Fallout’s GURPS-copy skill system named “SPECIAL” (GURPS can be easily adapted for many game worlds and is a rather simple yet effective skill system that puts the focus on the game rather than the mechanics, which i believe is its main strength besides being simple).
In their own games, they had a totally inane skill system that a person who reads up a lot about the mechanics simply must hate, because it rewards stupid actions and doing silly things to “maximize the multiplier”. Besides that, the world was gigantic, but every house and person and every village looked the same.
So I am definitely not a Bethesda/Morrowind Fan. And Oblivion added the “levelling for mobs” idea to that, which was also often harshly criticized.
I will give Oblivion another shot after Fallout 3.
Very late to the game & comments here…
My main thought about the Class vs Classless thing is that given the way the current landscape is laid out, if you’re restricted to a single class, then there’s all this content and gameplay that you’re not allowed to do, because “you’re just one more DPS” and we need a tank/healer.
So perhaps that’s yet another alternative to “breaking the holy trinity”? Let encounters be winnable even if you don’t have a perfect mix of the 3 archetypes?
This is similar to the talk about the healing & margin of error discussion that is in the above comments. And yes, it’s about balance against a boss, etc.
sdg, sorry, my spam filter ate your comments; it’s hungry again.
Thinking about your comment, that’s probably one of the reasons that we have classes still; as gates to content. You have to play an alt to see everything, so once again, your play time is extended. 😦
I agree with the sentiment that encounters should be winnable with just about any group composition. Make them about tactics and strategy, not gear/class checks. Yes, that may mean some wipes, or a temporary margin for error boost to let people adapt to the particulars of a fight, but it could allow for a much more fulfilling experience, since it’s players winning their way, rather than by following a canned recipe.
Besides; imagine the bragging rights: “My guild of self-styled bardish characters took down the Black Dragon! Sure, it took us five hours, and we all had to mute the game because we got tired of the songs, but hey, we did it!”
[…] I’ve written about this sort of thing before. Long story short, I’m highly in favor of breaking the trinity affording greater player customization and flexibility, hopefully making for more interesting combat. […]
[…] ranted magnificently on it not so long ago. I’ve written about the trinity before, here and there. I agree with these fine authors, that the trinity is functional, but I want something […]