Rift: Planes of Telara

[Ashamanchill]

My apologies.

Getting back to the holy trinity argument: essentially there is only one job in a dungeon, and that is dps. The tank and healer work together to be the 'life' of the dps. The only game I've played that doesn't have this is (early) DDO, where there was no tank, only tougher dps. I like sound of GW2's everyone is responsible for healing themselves system, but there is going to be two stress points on that system:

1. Either a character's self healing is enough to survive bosses, in which case pvp is going to SUCK.
2. Or the heals are tiny to not destroy pvp, and the bosses are joke to compensate for that.

Oooooooor, GW2 and Rift are smart, and say 'This move does X in pve, and Y in pvp'.

[trias_e]

Why not abolish agro, or at least make it irrelevent, and have damage be dealt to the group through other means.

[Kageru]

You had a bit of flexibility for non-traditional parties in CoH as well which let control / kiting be viable tactics. But variability in party composition is always going to make the concept of "challenging" content virtually impossible to balance for these varied groups. Likewise in CO where going into "block" mode effectively made anyone a tank.

You can get rid of roles of course, no tanking and no healing, but then how do you make the gameplay varied and encourage group dynamics. What you get when you have no class roles is a DPS zerg.

[Rendakor]

Oooooooor, GW2 and Rift are smart, and say 'This move does X in pve, and Y in pvp'.

EQ2 tried this, with the theory that it'd make balance easier. Not sure how well it worked, since I hated EQ2 pvp.

[Ashamanchill]

I was also not a fan of it, but that was because of super twinks. I thought the core of it was good. I also like how I could taunt someone, and they had to focus me for a few secs. Not only did it make me useful as a tank in pvp, but it was soft crowd control, the person was in control of their character as with the only caveat being they had to attack me.

[Rendakor]

I liked a lot of their ideas as well. My complaint was a combination of snares and evac ruining my fun at every turn. But let's not derail this thread with ANOTHER game discussion, eh? 

[Sheepherder]

Quite aside from the fact that I really do not understand how anyone could view Heroics as onerously hard the material difference in gear available and the fact that the purple loot hose is limited to one heroic a day is the reason you're seeing such shit queues.

I'm sure the vast majority of tanks, who would skip every single optional boss, including the ones that they literally walked within projective weapon range of, were all farming T9 gear.  Obviously they just didn't understand that Svala Sorrowgrave dropped badges.

Again, Blizzard fucked up bad when the one heroic/day crew aren't even doing their thing.  Trion can capitalize on this.

[Spiff]

I like sound of GW2's everyone is responsible for healing themselves system

To me it sounded more like everyone is responsible for healing each other in GW2.

That's sort of why I like the bard in Rift, his heals are a bit weaker than most, but they hit everyone in the team/raid (provided they're in range). Mostly HoT's as well, giving him time to stack buffs and even do a bit of dps.

Of course the game isn't balanced for that in any way, so they'll most likely always be backup/off-healers (although in end game raiding it's quite possible they'll outheal any other class, if there's some AoE damage going on).

The key to this is more challenging aggro imo (and balancing the game accordingly), but that's basically asking for far more advanced AI I s'pose so meh ... let's see what GW does  .

[Modern Angel]

I'm sure the vast majority of tanks, who would skip every single optional boss, including the ones that they literally walked within projective weapon range of, were all farming T9 gear.  Obviously they just didn't understand that Svala Sorrowgrave dropped badges.

This is boring even me and it should be folded into the Cataclysm thread if it goes any further but it was worked out very, very early in the LFD systems life that the fastest way to get badges was to FINISH heroics as fast as you could. This was common knowledge to everyone. To the Cataclysm thread for more moaning about how not sleepwalking through a game and having to activate even a small portion of your brain is the end of the world.

[WindupAtheist]

Oh shut up already MA. Everyone knows that an active tank isn't fucking queueing (or not queueing) two months into a patch cycle because of what's on the lower-tier vendor.

[Ratama]

WoW would have to take a much larger dump on its subscribers to be vulnerable to a clone with no real edge; something like the Facebook fiasco forced live, combined with this sort of revert to a more elitist endgame.

[Ashamanchill]

Yeah I'm not under any sort of illusions about WoW tottering over because my friends and I are unsubbing. That being said, this game is being given a very rare window of vulnerability that others have not been so fortunate to see.

[Threash]

Wow is not going to be threatened by anything that runs on the computers of at best 10% of their sub base.

[Modern Angel]

Don't underestimate just how well Rift runs on lower end machines. Nothing approaching WoW but on max(ish) settings in both games I get better performance in Rift on my past its prime machine. It's not going to compete with WoW's lowest settings but it does better than I expected.

[Ratama]

That being said, this game is being given a very rare window of vulnerability that others have not been so fortunate to see.

I dunno about that; personally, I think WoW has been overly elitist to one degree or another since the EQ catasses took over as lead devs (ie, before release).

I just can't stand what these newer games do (or don't do).  

Some of the same people that got RvR right with 3 factions in DAoC, witnessed firsthand the comparative fuckup of 2 factions in WAR... do 2 factions again (even just for BG/Scenario/Warfront PvP, 3 factions would greatly help balance que times)?  50% MS effects, after watching Blizz finally learn their lessons with over/underbalanced PvP healing.  Mandatory PvP talent trees/talents/builds (especially with a game trying to market char customization)?

Unfuckingbelievable PvP design fuckups.

Typical Diku PvE stuff (meh).   Character customization = awesome, but considering how poorly they learned PvP lessons, not optimistic about their PvE endgame.

*Shittons* of little things to like, but geez, the big picture sure is fucked up compared to what it should be (wait for PvE miracle beta phase/patch, I guess?).

[WindupAtheist]

This is old, but I just wanted to get at it.

Don't these games rely on interdependence at their core to maintain a need for the social structure that provides long-term subs?

Diablo 2 multiplayer. No real interdependence, but people played the shit out of it. I'd really like to see a game try to create a social structure out of something besides "everything good takes 3 jobs and 2 of them suck".

[Rasix]

People played the hell out of Diablo 2 multiplayer for free.  I'm sure there are some psychological angles you have to play when attempting to charge people for the right to play a game they already bought.

[Ratama]

I've often wondered why WoW (and every other MMO I've ever played) don't use instancing as a change-of-pace tool; why not have instances that played like Diablo levels, no tanking/healing required?  Hand out roughly the same amount of gear/unit of time played.

If people really love healing/tanking, then they could do other instances that required it.

[Sheepherder]

People played the hell out of Diablo 2 multiplayer for free.  I'm sure there are some psychological angles you have to play when attempting to charge people for the right to play a game they already bought.

Do you really think that people wouldn't pay a sub fee to play MMO Diablo?

I'm not certain we would ever see Schild again.

[Rasix]

People played the hell out of Diablo 2 multiplayer for free.  I'm sure there are some psychological angles you have to play when attempting to charge people for the right to play a game they already bought.

Do you really think that people wouldn't pay a sub fee to play MMO Diablo?

I'm not certain we would ever see Schild again.

I'm always skeptical when someone tries to charge subscription fees for services they've provided for free in the past.  Micropayments.. perhaps. Death of a thousand cuts is probably a lot easier to pull off.

I've often wondered why WoW (and every other MMO I've ever played) don't use instancing as a change-of-pace tool; why not have instances that played like Diablo levels, no tanking/healing required?  Hand out roughly the same amount of gear/unit of time played.

I don't know, that would be ideal for someone like myself.  I've been pining for solo (more accurately scalable) instances since my life made it impossible to raid. I don't give a crap if it's slower progression or provides worse rewards.  For all of its faults, AoC had some nice solo instances that were pretty enjoyable when they weren't buggy as all hell.

[WindupAtheist]

Subscription as the MMO business model of choice is on borrowed time as it is. Diablo-style zergfest combat, plus all the usual MMO shit like crafting and houses and quests, free to play with cash shop. Isn't Blizzard's next MMO supposed to be FPS? Plainly they're willing to bet you can get people to pay to play something that isn't the same old tank/healer faggotry.

[Shatter]

I'm all for the cash shops but I have yet to see 1 game that has really done it well.  For me to play a F2P MMO and spend money in the shop each month means they should constantly be updating and adding cool stuff to it, not shit like pets and gay skins and recolored mount X.  Im waiting for the first MMO to be F2P with a kick ass cash shop that has lots of stuff you might...and I know this is pushing it a bit...WANT TO BUY!  I want a cash shop that has so much cool shit I run for my wallet so I can blow my CC load all over the order screen.  I want a happy ending that comes with my recepit rather then that feeling I just bought a fucking mount cause my dam toon is designed to run too dam slow. 

[Malakili]

I just bought a fucking mount cause my dam toon is designed to run too dam slow. 

This seems to be the issue really.  Games make you run into cockblocks or just generally annoyances that are avoided through cash shop use.  Thats the exact way to get me to quit your game and never consider playing again.  If a game is good on its own merit I'll buy things like new content or something, for instance, if WoW went f2p I'd hypothetically (if I still played it) spend 15 bucks to access the dungeons associated with some patch.  Or maybe they could make it even more fine grained that that.   Instead the normal F2P model seems to be release the dungeon "for free" but then make you need some consumable sold at the cash shop to be able to effectively play there.

In the end, its purely psychological, but I'd rather pay for MORE of something I like, rather than paying so I can like something, even if at the end of both scenarios I end up with more or less the same thing (the ability to do a bunch of new dungeons).

[Draegan]

I'm all for the cash shops but I have yet to see 1 game that has really done it well. 

DDO.

[Mrbloodworth]

I'm all for the cash shops but I have yet to see 1 game that has really done it well. 

DDO.

LOTRO.

[Draegan]

They're a bunch of copycats.  DDO works better.

[Malakili]

I'm tempted to try to pursue this conversation further, but I feel like it might be better suited for the game design forum.  I'm not inherently opposed to the idea of a F2P shop game, but almost every single implementation I've seen bugs the hell out of me.

[Lantyssa]

It might help if there were a game released that was fun on its own merits.  Regardless of payment model we haven't really had many successes in that area of late.

[kaid]

You had a bit of flexibility for non-traditional parties in CoH as well which let control / kiting be viable tactics. But variability in party composition is always going to make the concept of "challenging" content virtually impossible to balance for these varied groups. Likewise in CO where going into "block" mode effectively made anyone a tank.

You can get rid of roles of course, no tanking and no healing, but then how do you make the gameplay varied and encourage group dynamics. What you get when you have no class roles is a DPS zerg.

COH did some very interesting things that other games have not yet been able to match. One is the way they did their "healers" I love in COH that you did not really need a person with actual heals. You could take people who could debuff the opponents enough or buff your team up enough that it was not necessary.

This gave a lot of variety for those who like helping their team mates without being locked into watch the green bar wack a mole. With my old force field/rad defender I could buff my tank up so the amount of damage they were taking was easily managed with use of inspirations now and then.

I would love to see a fantasy game be able to pull something like this off.

[Lantyssa]

Defenders were a great concept.  It sounds like the Bard might have been the closest they have to that, though I never played with one to see.

[Modern Angel]

Bard's pretty cool, it's just not my chosen playstyle. There's a bit of EQ twisting and group wide buffs which don't require targeting involved. Unsure of targeted heals but I don't think they're meant to be full on solo healers, anyway.

[kaid]

Bards seemed pretty good but not something that could take the place of a healer though but they did seem to have a good mix of heals and buffs enough so that I will likely play one come live.

[Simond]

YOGScast on Rift beta: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K_9oiBivg-g

[Ashamanchill]

I don't know, that would be ideal for someone like myself.  I've been pining for solo (more accurately scalable) instances since my life made it impossible to raid. I don't give a crap if it's slower progression or provides worse rewards.  For all of its faults, AoC had some nice solo instances that were pretty enjoyable when they weren't buggy as all hell.

Holy shit! I was thinking to myself just the other day about this. I was even gonna start a thread about it. People can say what they want about taking one of the M's out of MMO, but that is exactly what I have wanted to do recently, what with the new WoW dungeon system punishing the whole group when someone a)acts like a tard b) doesn't know their class inside and out c) the healer accidentily blinks d) general lack of group cohesion. It really emphasized how sick I am of the group paradigm. I mean, I liked the instances, but I am sick of failing for some shit that isn't my responsibility.

Obviously Rifts could never do something like this, but I wonder if WoW could have solo instances based around your class. For example, you are a prot paladin, it gives you one tuned to them, a combat rogue, tuned to them, et al. It wouldn't have to reward wicked gear, maybe a pittance of justice points, and a shot at a mount or a pet or an achievement or something.






Get out of my head Rasix, you demonic fiend!

[Sky]

Why can't it have wicked gear? Fuck those grouptard and raidtard assholes. Either make grouping a fun exercise in its own right or gtfo.

I've been wanting scaled dungeons since forever. Have a popup asking which instance you want to enter 1) Public (contested, old school) 2) Solo 3)Group 4)Raid. You could even break it into Solo - Easy/Med/Hard, Group - Duo/Trio/or just scale it to the group, whatever. Static content ftl.

But ultimately, I love mmo developers because they consistently show me how much they don't want my money. Good show, chaps.