Darkfall "Released"

[WindupAtheist]

The original UO tank mages went away when they added the meditation skill for mana regen, and prevented it from working with heavy armor. What's more, the game has never had "tanks" in the diku sense and everyone is/was expected to be able to heal themselves by way of magic, bandages, or whatever. Anymore high-end crafted leather armor, which is what mages wear, can give as much protection as plate or anything else and it's not really an issue. Different flavors of melee can do as much damage as mages, just in different ways.

Having casters, even offensive casters, in armor isn't neccessarily a big deal balance-wise. It's certainly the LEAST of Darkfall's forthcoming problems.

[DLRiley]

Oh yes, did someone mention how skills deteriorate in level over time? so much for the skill based system.

[WindupAtheist]

Jesus, they're having skills atrophy? It really IS a "dumbest shit they patched out of UO" revival.

[ezrast]

the balance doesn't all go to pieces when the paladin gets access to Fist of the Heavens

Currently there are nonstop baal runs, all day, every day, run by bots. 99% of the bots making and running are hammerdins (paladins with blessed hammers). The consummate magetank of high armor high damage plus it's AOE. There is no need for any other class. There is only dealing mass damage and moving forward opening a portal. Take enough damage do the equivalent of a "heal" and port home, rinse repeat. So easy a bot can do it.

What's your point? The fact that a bot can play a paladin better than any other class doesn't mean that the paladin is better than any other class. Paladins are powerful, sure, but so are sorceresses, whirlybarbs, necromancers who know how to curse well, and... anything that's played right, really.

There's a really easy way to balance armor and dps -- the more heavily armored on is, the less damage you do with weapons or spells.  The less protected, the more your dps, healing, or whatever goes up.  It can get a little tricky to balance if someone can do all things, but overall it's just not that hard.

Of course as long as we're stuck with class-based systems with a huge reliance on gear instead of innate character traits, we're unlikely to see this change.  The entire point of items is to raise those traits without lowering the corresponding ones.

The thing is, being in the middle of the continuum is best for soloing, while being on the extremes is best for grouping. It's impossible to have a character that's great at both in a system like this, and in an MMO, every character needs to be able to do both. Anyway, survivability and dps aren't the only two things characters do; most games give players varying amounts of group support, crowd control, utility, etc. The easiest way to balance is to give everybody the same survivability and DPS, and let them achieve that in different ways - the hunter gets to boss a pet around, the mage is powerful but has to spend a lot of time running around or freezing opponents, the dps warrior does less damage per hit but can spend all her time attacking. This is why class-based systems are so prominent. It's easy to come up with one or two quirks for each class and call it good, and you don't have to worry about what happens when somebody learns the skills to tame a pet and dual wield greatswords and be stealthy and cast cure light wounds.

Personally, I think the happiest medium is just to allow multi-classing. Did Guild Wars ever have serious balance issues?

[Yoru]

Jesus, they're having skills atrophy? It really IS a "dumbest shit they patched out of UO" revival.

I, too, look forward to once again macroing anatomy by staring at my leader's butt.

[K9]

[Yoru]

Uh, isn't the game still under ?

[K9]

I nabbed that from thenoob, which I assumed counted as release footage.

[Yoru]

That particular guy appears to be under a very specific NDA lift. Cool. Just making sure.

[kildorn]

Hmmmm, I'd love to make everyone a mage. Then have different schools of magic equate to different combat styles / archetypes. Kill the preconceived notions of Tank / DPS / Healer and how Fighter / Mage / Cleric are always matched up to them. You open up a lot of design room, but sacrifice familiarity. Personally, I hate familiarity.

So you'd keep the system, but change the names?

Someone with an earth casting school who casts spells that give him high armor/hp and keeps threat during an encounter is functionally equivalent to someone who does it via a sword and plate. Sure, you messed with the graphics a bit, but isn't this just being different for the sake of being different, not actually trying to change something to a better system?

Sadly, as long as there's threat/aggro in a game system, it'll always be stupid. Because players are smart enough to kill the damned healer, but apparently NPCs think some big dude with a sword yelling about their mother is a higher priority.

[K9]

This is why collision detection needs to be implemented well into MMOs.

[tmp]

This is why collision detection needs to be implemented well into MMOs.

Didn't seem to help WAR much... more of yet another source of annoyance, if anything.

Hell, Fallout 3 can drive me bonkers with its collisions sometimes, and there i'm just trying to navigate around one stupid dog.

[K9]

I never played WAR, so I can't comment there. In principle though, well applied collision detection removes the needs for tanking systems based around threat/aggro/taunts; since these are effectively crutches designed to circumvent the problem of player characters really having no good means of keeping NPCs in a certain place.

[IainC]

Sadly, as long as there's threat/aggro in a game system, it'll always be stupid. Because players are smart enough to kill the damned healer, but apparently NPCs think some big dude with a sword yelling about their mother is a higher priority.

You don't engage mobs on the same terms as you engage players.
PvP fights usually assume roughly equivalent power levels for all involved. If your party meets a party of enemy players you should be able to kill the guys who are trying to bag your healer before he dies. Monsters tend to be more powerful than players because otherwise they are little challenge for a group so if they zero in on the healer every time and act like a player does it's going to be no fun playing a healer and there's little point in playing a defensive tank either. Many MMO AI systems do increment aggro from healing but, to make it fair, they also give defensive tanks taunt abilities and detaunts to squishies. It's not because the monsters are 'stupid' or that game designers don't understand how to make monsters behave but because otherwise it simply isn't fair on the players.

[tmp]

http://www.thenoobcomic.com/index.php?pos=329

[Hindenburg]

This is why collision detection needs to be implemented well into MMOs.

Didn't seem to help WAR much... more of yet another source of annoyance, if anything.

Partially because it's worthless in pugs, partially because it's turned off after about 3 secs of constant contact.

[DLRiley]

This is why collision detection needs to be implemented well into MMOs.

No this is why actual AI needs to be implemented well into MMOs.

[K9]

For the reasons IanC gave above, no.

[Venkman]

IainC described why we have what is. And what is is entirely based on the one type of game play that was deemed popular enough to iterate to a degree that it's now unarguably the "only" way to do things.
 
No, you don't put smart AI in a game about content gates, because to do otherwise would break the system. And even with this strategy, the system already has problems (what I said before: the usual lack of tank and healer roles players want to perform, which is an advancement gate unto itself... but that's another thread).

What hasn't happened yet is a game that truly experiments with the all-things-equal model, the one where you have no idea if a target in your reticle is a player or a mob. EQ1 experimented with this for about a month on the test server only, and even LoTRO's Player vs Monster Play system is consensual (needs to be because LoTRO is basically just another diku).

Basically, imagine a full-time PvP game where you didn't know if the target was a mob or player character. Obviously, as soon as you start there, everything else needs to change. The concept of advancement based on kills probably needs to be tossed in favor of a skills system. Then you can't have the usual variety of Kill 10 Rats stuff, or at least not have it so often because it'll take longer to complete. And finally, you're probably talking about a completely different combat model because the current systems only work when your abilities and surroundings are compartmentalized into a PvP-only encounter, and the rewards are geared towards it (imagine having a PvP fight while a Raid Boss is involved  )

But unfortunately for this and any new idea, 11mil+ people are paying for a game that was figured out 10 years ago.

[DLRiley]

Sadly, as long as there's threat/aggro in a game system, it'll always be stupid. Because players are smart enough to kill the damned healer, but apparently NPCs think some big dude with a sword yelling about their mother is a higher priority.

You don't engage mobs on the same terms as you engage players.
PvP fights usually assume roughly equivalent power levels for all involved. If your party meets a party of enemy players you should be able to kill the guys who are trying to bag your healer before he dies. Monsters tend to be more powerful than players because otherwise they are little challenge for a group so if they zero in on the healer every time and act like a player does it's going to be no fun playing a healer and there's little point in playing a defensive tank either. Many MMO AI systems do increment aggro from healing but, to make it fair, they also give defensive tanks taunt abilities and detaunts to squishies. It's not because the monsters are 'stupid' or that game designers don't understand how to make monsters behave but because otherwise it simply isn't fair on the players.

We can't really have move forward with the genre if we keep under the assumption that players can't handle increased difficulty or a varied challenge. Hate to mention Guild Wars again, but look at Guild Wars monster AI. It scatters when AoE's are dropped, targets the player with the lowest health in the party and even makes a pass at the healer at times. All this while being 5-10 levels in power above what level cap. It even has a hard mode on top of that. Are the players who play Guild Wars uber skilled koreans? No. The game simple demanded more from the players and the players responded.

The defensive tank just needs to die, I hate to sing that song again, but that's the truth. The whole concept is based on faulty logic that has no applications in PvP whats so ever. Its just bad design to design a class that specifically only useful against dumb players, or in this case near retarded mobs. Its flawed to assume that the defensive tank is the sole source of damage mitigation for the entire team. The whole team should be actively protecting their healer, and I don't just mean pushing the healers red bar up. Snaring, interrupting, body blocking (ok melee can do that but it doesn't have to be a tank), etc. can be done. Its kinda sad what passes as combat in typical mmo's.

Darn your point is funny because I always believe that FFA/world/RVR pvp makes the distinctions between monsters and players almost non-existent. I wonder if players would truly know the difference between ganking a player vs ganking an AI if the character models were the same. Imagine WarHammer Online but instead of 10 guys huddling at the keep lord waiting for 2 guys of the opposite faction to show up and see if the keep is empty or not, you have 20 Npc of Order faction defending a keep and 30 Npc of Destro coming in to attack. If the character models of the Order Npcs and Desto NPC were no different from players would you know the difference? Would it matter? Would you not jump in and try to protect or take over the keep if a big mindless fight was happening? These things I like to see myself if I ever get around to designing an mmo.

[Hindenburg]

What hasn't happened yet is a game that truly experiments with the all-things-equal model, the one where you have no idea if a target in your reticle is a player or a mob.

Oh, you mean Unreal Tournament FFA servers?

[Venkman]

Yes, exactly that type of effect, just in an MMO. That's why I said earlier we're not in the realm of the new here. We just need more outsiders to bring this type of thinking into the establishment.

If the character models of the Order Npcs and Desto NPC were no different from players would you know the difference? Would it matter? Would you not jump in and try to protect or take over the keep if a big mindless fight was happening? These things I like to see myself if I ever get around to designing an mmo.

I think players would immediately notice the difference unless some robust AI was programmed. But I also think players would jump in if there were a clear reason to do so.

I think about the quests in some games where you're teamed up with a bunch of NPCs. Yea, you may not emotionally care if an NPC teammate dies, but you'll be pissed anyway if that prevents your own ability to finish it. As such, you do end up caring. Now imagine that team was up against another similarly configured team (like UT matches with bots and players). But also imagine that this wasn't for some grindathon reason where the only way you enjoy it is if you win.

[IainC]

We can't really have move forward with the genre if we keep under the assumption that players can't handle increased difficulty or a varied challenge. Hate to mention Guild Wars again, but look at Guild Wars monster AI. It scatters when AoE's are dropped, targets the player with the lowest health in the party and even makes a pass at the healer at times. All this while being 5-10 levels in power above what level cap. It even has a hard mode on top of that. Are the players who play Guild Wars uber skilled koreans? No. The game simple demanded more from the players and the players responded.

No-one is making that assumption. The behaviour you describe is not particularly difficult to do - I wrote monsters for DAoC events that did most of those things and more. That's all beside the point I was making. Players can control the difficulty of any encounter by bringing more characters to defeat it so wizzy AI will only help so far. Monsters generally have more HPs and better DPS than players to offset that fact and so they pose any challenge at all. If on top of that they also assist nuked your healer and then trained down the rest of the party, your players would simply bring enough characters to make it trivial again. It's not fun, it's not good design and it doesn't add anything to your game.

Players want PvE that is more interesting and more varied, which is cool and you can do that via improved AI and various gating or scaling mechanisms to more closely control the level of challenge. No-one is saying that PvE has to suck but PvE fills a different design need to PvP and the motivations and systems behind each are different.

Finally, I'm going to refute your assertion that defensive tanks have no application for PvP. There are plenty of tools you can give to a defensive tank so that he is useful in PvP, even against skilled players. No-one is making the assumptions that you mention in your post, mitigation can and does come from a large number of sources including CC abilities, kiting, and other things. Saying defensive tanks need to die simply shows a lack of imagination.

[IainC]

[Imagine WarHammer Online but instead of 10 guys huddling at the keep lord waiting for 2 guys of the opposite faction to show up and see if the keep is empty or not, you have 20 Npc of Order faction defending a keep and 30 Npc of Destro coming in to attack. If the character models of the Order Npcs and Desto NPC were no different from players would you know the difference? Would it matter? Would you not jump in and try to protect or take over the keep if a big mindless fight was happening? These things I like to see myself if I ever get around to designing an mmo.

What have you gained from this though? if you have NPCs taking over keeps from other NPCs then players will stop feeling that their contribution to a persistant world is important. If you want players to care about keep taking then you want the players to be the ones that make it happen, you also don't want the efforts of players to be undone a short while later by an NPC force while the players are off doing something else. Empower players to make things happen, don't relegate them to the status of supporting NPCs.

[tmp]

if you have NPCs taking over keeps from other NPCs then you get Tabula Rasa.

fixed.

[FatuousTwat]

That particular guy appears to be under a very specific NDA lift. Cool. Just making sure.

I guess it's a woman, not a dude.

[Sophismata]

So you'd keep the system, but change the names?

No, I'd ditch the system entirely. Making everyone a mage is an excuse to provide 'strange' fundamental rules to combat that guide players away from typical game-isms, like focusfire. It opens up some conceptual space for the tools and abilities given to players, as well.

Ideally, each school or style of play comes with methods for both attack and defense, in order to avoid Rock-Paper-Scissors matchups. The overarching rules of 'magic' serve to focus gameplay into the desired space, in this case small, squad-based or personal fights.

[Koyochi]

What have you gained from this though? if you have NPCs taking over keeps from other NPCs then players will stop feeling that their contribution to a persistant world is important.

If every NPC turns into a statue as soon as not a single player is looking in their direction, then it wouldn't feel like it's a believable world to me. NPC's should be able to do such things in the background so that the world can change on its own, altough NPC's should do all that with lesser efficiency then players. And perhaps only when players are getting lazy and think it's ok to leave an undefended keep with nobody looking after it for weeks on a row.

[WindupAtheist]

Get rid of dedicated tanks and healers completely. Throw away diku combat entirely and replace it with combat from virtually any other multiplayer action game. It's not like "small number of players vs AI" combat is the exclusive domain of MMO gaming. The genre is just polluted with developers who can't think outside of their own little MUD/MMO rut.

[ezrast]

Thank you.

If nothing else, aggro mechanics need to die in a fire.

[eldaec]

Thank you.

If nothing else, aggro mechanics need to die in a fire.

Aggro mechanics exist everywhere in the same form.

NPCs in FPS co-op games operate in almost exactly the same way.

If you want to change this, you need to change combat mechanics, not arggo mechanics.

What WUA said.

[Venkman]

Players can control the difficulty of any encounter by bringing more characters to defeat it so wizzy AI will only help so far.

In public-spaces, sure. But the real boss action is in instances, where you can control the variables. For PvE games anyway. WAR of course is different by trying to overlay both. And in terms of ideas, PQs and public-space RvR with fences are good methods to explore further.

The problem isn't the boss HP or mana. It's the fact that they are pretty much not adaptive. Once the best method for killing it has been documented, that method will continue to work until patched. This is entirely because of aggro systems, itself based on tank/healer/DPS. And that arguably is based on the needs of guaranteed-outcome encounters with content gates to move along the diku advancement curve. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy. As long as this genre continues to rely on these three archetypes, the idea of "good AI" will be Arthas' 11mil HPs. Woohoo.

But again, in order to get rid of this, you'd need to change the foundation of the experience from one of character optimization through XP and gear to something else. You don't need to toss XP and gear, but as long as they remain the central design premise, nothing else can radically change.

[Simond]

Sadly, as long as there's threat/aggro in a game system, it'll always be stupid. Because players are smart enough to kill the damned healer, but apparently NPCs think some big dude with a sword yelling about their mother is a higher priority.

Lord Victor Nefarius: "Foolsss...Kill the one in the dress!"

[Cadaverine]

Because players are smart enough to kill the damned healer, but apparently NPCs think some big dude with a sword yelling about their mother is a higher priority.

It's been my experience that 9 times out of 10, the players don't bother to attack the enemy healers.  Well, with PUG's anyway.  And conversely, if their healers are being targeted, they won't bother to protect them, but they sure will bitch that they're not getting any healing once you're dead. 

Frankly, for the great unwashed masses, the AI is about on par.

[Sophismata]

Get rid of dedicated tanks and healers completely. Throw away diku combat entirely and replace it with combat from virtually any other multiplayer action game. It's not like "small number of players vs AI" combat is the exclusive domain of MMO gaming. The genre is just polluted with developers who can't think outside of their own little MUD/MMO rut.

Bingo.


I'd also like to see advancement curtailed somewhat; a move away from individual advancement and towards group advancement. The player avatar reaches maximum potential relatively quickly - further advancement is primarily cosmetic. The player can put his or her efforts towards a cause (guild, realm, clan, whatever) that has a greater advancement scheme (that doesn't serve as a gate for content as much as a gauge for power / territory / etc).