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Author Topic: The Elder Scrolls Online  (Read 755880 times)
Sheepherder
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Reply #805 on: November 24, 2012, 11:19:31 AM

Seriously or for a single session?

I was at my fathers a few weeks ago and tried my hands on a monk.  What's the point though?

Just wondering what your point of reference was.  "Games are trending more simplistic in basic fight design" sounds very insane unless you've been living in a cave for the last five years and not seen random world mobs in many games get more than one ability to use on the player.
« Last Edit: November 24, 2012, 11:28:11 AM by Sheepherder »
Margalis
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Reply #806 on: November 25, 2012, 06:33:44 PM

More than one ability? Amazing!

Kind of like...basically every single enemy in FFXI, a game from 2004 or so?

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Sheepherder
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Reply #807 on: November 26, 2012, 12:57:19 AM

An outlier does not a pattern make.  I forget, weren't there some other games that launched in 2004?
eldaec
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Reply #808 on: November 26, 2012, 01:23:09 AM

Eq, daoc, AC, eq2, cox, ac2 all had multiple abilities on npcs. I don't understand what you people are talking about.

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Draegan
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Reply #809 on: November 26, 2012, 07:42:34 AM

Seriously or for a single session?

I was at my fathers a few weeks ago and tried my hands on a monk.  What's the point though?

Just wondering what your point of reference was.  "Games are trending more simplistic in basic fight design" sounds very insane unless you've been living in a cave for the last five years and not seen random world mobs in many games get more than one ability to use on the player.

I'm not talking about comparing an NPC that has only a single target attacks and a heal vs. an NPC that has a ST attack, a heal, a frontal AOE and a summong spell.  I was talking about taking that and then adding movement and dodging into the equations.  That only really comes into play if you have a combat system that supports positioning and dodging though.
Sheepherder
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Reply #810 on: November 26, 2012, 04:11:51 PM

Eq, daoc, AC, eq2, cox, ac2 all had multiple abilities on npcs. I don't understand what you people are talking about.
A little bit of hyperbole on my part.  The argument of Margalis and Draegan seems to be that NPC and encounter design are getting dumber, because early MMO's were such paragons of tightly programmed mob AI.

They might be on to something though.  The mobs in World of Tanks are retarded.
« Last Edit: November 26, 2012, 04:15:26 PM by Sheepherder »
Malakili
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Reply #811 on: November 26, 2012, 04:20:57 PM

I honestly think a huge part of it is that with the earlier MMOs it was all pretty new and the pure novelty value of having this huge world to explore, monsters to find and fight, dungeons to clear, et, etc, the mechanics just didn't matter as much to us.  The "experience" of playing the game was great because of what it was.  Nowadays, a lot of us are "over" that feeling and the big fantasy themed game world just isn't enough on its own.  We want more engaging gameplay - however that is defined on the individual level.  We can argue all day over which combat system we remember the most fondly, but I have a feeling that those memories are shaded by the context of being an early-MMO player.  What matters is what will engage us now.
eldaec
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Reply #812 on: November 26, 2012, 04:41:09 PM

Eq, daoc, AC, eq2, cox, ac2 all had multiple abilities on npcs. I don't understand what you people are talking about.
A little bit of hyperbole on my part.  The argument of Margalis and Draegan seems to be that NPC and encounter design are getting dumber, because early MMO's were such paragons of tightly programmed mob AI.

They might be on to something though.  The mobs in World of Tanks are retarded.

Pretty sure their actual point was that combat mechanics and PC abilities were more complex, and carried a higher player skill cap as a consequence.

I'd say boss abilities were roughly similar though not telegraphed as clearly as they are now. Took about a year for people to work out the mechanics on a daoc dragon.

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Ingmar
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Reply #813 on: November 26, 2012, 04:56:55 PM

Combat mechanics and PC abilities weren't more complex, IMO, unless we're comparing them to GW2/TSW. At best they were more obscured because of shitty and/or false documentation, which made it harder to be a good player, perhaps, but not in any kind of way that should ever be emulated again.

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Merusk
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Reply #814 on: November 26, 2012, 06:38:55 PM

Yeah, mechanics on EQ bosses were nothing.  DAOC dragons weren't any more advanced, we just didn't have the tools or the exact mechanics were obscured from us in the name of lord knows what.   The fights took trial and error and tons of wipes because nobody knew what they were doing.  You'd start to figure things out then *WHAM* new and unexpected phase you had to work through with new mechanics.

http://www.classesofcamelot.com/misc/ClassGuides/mid_dragon.asp
That is not a tough fight once it's all spelled out for you.  There's 2 abilities and a team swap, you get harder fights in today's one-group dungeons in any other DIKU.

People forget the hue and cry over Blizzard giving us actual numbers now that it's 8 years later.  The hardcore raid crowd said it would be the death of all things and make games too easy.   Instead it's meant they have to actually design shit instead of throwing things up and saying, "Figure it out, ha ha."


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Margalis
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Reply #815 on: November 26, 2012, 06:40:58 PM

A little bit of hyperbole on my part.  The argument of Margalis and Draegan seems to be that NPC and encounter design are getting dumber, because early MMO's were such paragons of tightly programmed mob AI.

They might be on to something though.  The mobs in World of Tanks are retarded.

I don't remember claiming encounter design was getting dumber, rather that it started dumb and stayed dumb. But that said it does feel to me that MMOs today are generally easier. (Even if the "difficulty" in older games was not really strategy and more stuff like not having a map, needing to level a lot, etc)

Quote from: Merusk
Yeah, mechanics on EQ bosses were nothing.  DAOC dragons weren't any more advanced, we just didn't have the tools or the exact mechanics were obscured from us in the name of lord knows what.   The fights took trial and error and tons of wipes because nobody knew what they were doing.  You'd start to figure things out then *WHAM* new and unexpected phase you had to work through with new mechanics.
...
People forget the hue and cry over Blizzard giving us actual numbers now that it's 8 years later.  The hardcore raid crowd said it would be the death of all things and make games too easy.   Instead it's meant they have to actually design shit instead of throwing things up and saying, "Figure it out, ha ha."

I don't understand how having to figure stuff out is a bad thing, especially in games that are ostensibly about exploration, discovery and fantasy. Isn't learning how systems work rewarding? Would Megaman be better if the game told you what order to do the bosses in and what weapons to use on them?

Instead of having a threat meter can't you just learn what generates threat? It seems to me that the WoW attitude is basically that the game should play itself - tell you how much threat everyone has, tell you which spells to cast, tell you exactly where to go for each quest. What does "playing" WoW actually consist of? A slightly more elaborate Simon Says?

I'm not arguing that fundamental mechanics should be inscrutable and that things like minimaps shouldn't exist, but there is a point at which you are giving the player information they could intuit or learn if their brain hadn't atrophied. The idea that learning through "trial and error" - aka experimentation - is a bad thing is just unfathomable to me.

In a game where you have to learn through experimentation what generates how much threat managing threat is a legitimate skill. In game with a threat meter managing threat means what? You stop attacking when your mod plays a warning whistle?

Every game has a million variables under the surface. The idea that they should all be exposed to the player and that anything else is somehow bad design is silly. Especially things like threat which logically should be hidden information given that they exist in the mind of the enemy.

The history of WoW seems to be removing things that take player knowledge and judgement and replacing them with automation.

Edit: To me the game that WoW players are looking for is basically not a game. It's almost invalid to talk about skill or strategy in WoW combat - that seems to be completely missing the point of what WoW is about. It's like talking about the skill and strategy required in platforming in Uncharted - it's just fundamentally not about that. If you want platforming with skill you play a different game.

Which is fine I guess, but personally I am not a fan of "press X to win" "experiential" games. With a few exceptions I want a lot of game in my game. If I'm going to play a game that is 90% combat my personal desire is for combat to be challenging and rewarding, not just a way to get items and increase a meter while eating a sandwich.

Regardless of my personal opinion I think WoW has the "cast heal when the game tells you to cast heal" sub-genre market wrapped up.
« Last Edit: November 26, 2012, 07:16:55 PM by Margalis »

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Paelos
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Reply #816 on: November 26, 2012, 08:01:00 PM

And despite everything you wrote about WoW information/mods telling you how to play and when to do what, people do not. Consistently.

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Rendakor
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Reply #817 on: November 26, 2012, 08:13:40 PM

What Paelos said. If you were to intentionally obfuscate more information in WoW, you would need to also make the game much easier in order to avoid alienating a good deal of the playerbase.

Also, a lot of the information that is provided in the default UI in WoW today is only there because player-made addons provided that info for years. Which means that a substantial amount of WoW players want that info; things like threat meters and DPS parsers make it much easier for semi-hardcore guilds to break into high end raiding. Without knowing who did what wrong, it is difficult to improve. In a single player game, trial and error is fine. But when you're playing with 9-24 other people, it's helpful to know which of them stood in the fire or whatever.

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Ingmar
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Reply #818 on: November 26, 2012, 08:19:44 PM

And despite everything you wrote about WoW information/mods telling you how to play and when to do what, people do not. Consistently.

And moreover, the amount of useful information you get from those mods is always overstated. (In-combat. The amount of useful information you get for mulling over in your off-time is usually understated.)
« Last Edit: November 26, 2012, 08:21:18 PM by Ingmar »

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Merusk
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Reply #819 on: November 26, 2012, 08:27:32 PM

Obfuscation of core mechanics only helps small people think they lead accomplished lives through meaningless successes.   If figuring out a boss took 10-15 minutes like any other game, sure, hide it.  That's never going to be the case in a game with 9-25 other moving parts on top of whatever difficulty switch you're on.


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Margalis
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Reply #820 on: November 26, 2012, 08:46:03 PM

And despite everything you wrote about WoW information/mods telling you how to play and when to do what, people do not. Consistently.

That's both a cause and effect of how WoW is designed. The game does a lot to help lazy bad players but also encourages players to be lazy and bad. People tend to play up or down to expectations and WoW expects very little of players.

This is sort of a modern game design thing, like players playing a game with a map that tells them exactly where to go and still getting lost. A lot of games implicitly tell the player to shut their brains off, so they do, so they perform somewhat poorly at tasks they shouldn't have problems with.

Quote from: Merusk
Obfuscation of core mechanics only helps small people think they lead accomplished lives through meaningless successes.

Defensive much? I could just as easily say that people who need everything spelled out for them, even things their own brains should be able to figure out with a small expenditure of actual effort, are either morons or incredibly lazy and want to feel like they are accomplishing something while performing at a level that would make a trained seal embarrassed.

Hidden information is an important and very valid aspect of game design, and there is a difference between information and mechanics that are genuinely obfuscated and information and mechanics that require player exploration to understand.

Quote
If figuring out a boss took 10-15 minutes like any other game, sure, hide it.  That's never going to be the case in a game with 9-25 other moving parts on top of whatever difficulty switch you're on.

What is the actual game in WoW? It's not figuring stuff out, it's not being good - is it just the willingness to grind rep and dailies and dungeons over and over? It seems that the skill of WoW is willingness to spend time playing WoW.

So let's say you do a boss for an hour, wipe to a new attack, then have to do it again. Ok, the alternative is what? Beat the boss on your first try then do the boss 500 more times anyway? What's the difference?

Quote from: Rendakor
What Paelos said. If you were to intentionally obfuscate more information in WoW, you would need to also make the game much easier in order to avoid alienating a good deal of the playerbase.

Sure. So then let's not pretend that WoW is a skillful strategically complex game. I'm not arguing that WoW should require more skill - that's not the game it is. Unfortunately that also applies to most MMOs, which is what this discussion is about. I'm arguing that there is a large untapped space for MMOs that do have game systems that require real skill and strategy.

Quote
Which means that a substantial amount of WoW players want that info; things like threat meters and DPS parsers make it much easier for semi-hardcore guilds to break into high end raiding.

DPS parsers and threat meters are fundamentally very different.

In a typical MMO you can see how much damage you are doing and how much damage your allies are doing. That information is not in any way obfuscated nor should it be. A DPS parser just collects and organizes that data. It's a different view of information you already have. In theory a player could mentally keep track of that data themselves and tally it afterwards - however being able to do that is probably not a skill the game should reward.

Threat is something that you can not see in the game, nor is there any reason you should be able to see it, any more than you should be able to see the million other variables that govern NPC behavior. You see the expression of threat in terms of who the AI is attacking, not the raw numbers. In addition players managing threat via experience, knowledge and intuition probably is a good skill to reward, as it's one of the few genuine skills in a game like WoW.
« Last Edit: November 26, 2012, 09:04:49 PM by Margalis »

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Ingmar
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Reply #821 on: November 26, 2012, 08:52:31 PM

In any case threat mechanics/meters are a shitty example to pick, regardless of which side is right in the argument overall.

Threat meters in WoW exist primarily because of raid fights where it was important for a specific character to maintain a #2 position in terms of threat output. This is information that is effectively impossible for players to determine for themselves through trial and error alone, especially when there are 40 people in a raid creating their own little variables, like the interactions between debuffs from one class and damage type from another and the maximum debuff cap (very low in the early days of WoW), etc.

I mean, it could be done, but not on the sort of time scale where you are dealing with a real world situation of trying to keep 40 people entertained, not for any but the most singleminded, odd people. And spending time on those people has always been a fairly foolish use of dev time.
« Last Edit: November 26, 2012, 08:54:46 PM by Ingmar »

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Margalis
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Reply #822 on: November 26, 2012, 09:10:01 PM

In any case threat mechanics/meters are a shitty example to pick, regardless of which side is right in the argument overall.

Threat meters in WoW exist primarily because of raid fights where it was important for a specific character to maintain a #2 position in terms of threat output. This is information that is effectively impossible for players to determine for themselves through trial and error alone, especially when there are 40 people in a raid creating their own little variables, like the interactions between debuffs from one class and damage type from another and the maximum debuff cap (very low in the early days of WoW), etc.

Isn't this just bad design then?

I thought the argument was that by not "obfuscating" mechanics Blizzard was forced to rely on good design instead of gimmick design, but you seem to be arguing that threat meters were needed to counteract bad design.

Why would you make a 40-person raid where a specific individual has to have the second-most amount of threat? Instead of mitigating that with "why don't we just explicitly tell you how much threat everyone has" it seems it would be better to just scrap that design entirely.

Edit: The reason I'm picking on threat meters is that managing threat is one of the most fundamental skills in a genre that doesn't require much skill. Making threat meter explicit means that rather than rewarding people for an accurate mental model of threat you are rewarding them for herding cats properly.

A lot of this argument seems to boil down to "when you are grouped with 39 morons herding cats is the only relevant skill." In that case maybe 40 (or 15, or 10, or 5) people is too many or too many for the game systems and encounter design. As a design philosophy if you are going to make a raid that takes 40 people it's better to balance it so that the 10 best largely determine success rather than that the 10 worst can sabotage the entire group.

Edit: To circle around to the original argument again there is IMO a lot of room for an MMO game that has a lot more meat in terms of combat mechanics. That could be turn-based combat, real-time combat, FPS combat, Dark Souls combat, whatever. We're getting bogged down in how meaty WoW combat is, at this point I'm willing to agree to disagree with anyone who thinks WoW combat takes a lot of skill and strategy. (At least of the right kind)
« Last Edit: November 26, 2012, 09:27:04 PM by Margalis »

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Kail
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Reply #823 on: November 26, 2012, 09:34:40 PM

Hidden information is an important and very valid aspect of game design, and there is a difference between information and mechanics that are genuinely obfuscated and information and mechanics that require player exploration to understand.

Could you clarify this a bit?  I'm kind of fuzzy on the distinctions being used here.
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Reply #824 on: November 26, 2012, 10:42:15 PM

WoW doesn't take a lot of skill and strategy; that's not why I play it. When I was playing WoW a lot (WotLK era) it was for the shared social experience; my guild consisted of some RL friends and work buddies, and we got to sit on Ventrilo bullshitting while we killed internet dragons. Now, some of the people in the guild were serious gamers, but others were our girlfriends, friends, etc. that had heard of World of Warcraft and wanted to give it a shot. If (or perhaps, when) it was more challenging, those non-gamers would never have turned into long term subscribers and it's largely this casual, non-gamer market that made WoW so successful. Arguing for more challenging, skill-based gameplay seems to be arguing for a smaller, niche title (like Darkfall maybe); however, listening to those clamoring for greater difficulty is what fucked up WoW so bad in Cata.

Also, things like threat meters haven't really been relevant since BC days so that kind of a silly argument. Threat management isn't a skill in WoW anymore beyond the first few seconds of a fight.

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Margalis
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Reply #825 on: November 26, 2012, 10:55:51 PM

Hidden information is information that is not available to the player but is available to another player or the system. For example opponent hands in poker, position of units in a fog of war, etc. Revealing hidden information can fundamentally break a game.

Obfuscation is deliberately muddying something that should be understandable. It's spending effort to make things less understandable. (As opposed to not putting effort in in the first place) I can't think of many legitimate examples of this in video games. Maybe something like the crap that gets smeared over your screen in a shooter when you take damage. That's a literal obfuscation of the screen, though I don't think that's necessarily negative. (Even though I generally hate that screen-smearing crap)

There's a third category of sort of UI stuff like DPS parsers, listing the DPS of a weapon, etc. Stuff that does work for the player that they could do on their own with some busy work. If you want to know the DPS of a weapon you can multiply attack speed by damage yourself. It's not hidden information, but on the other hand I wouldn't consider not listing DPS as obfuscation either. I'm ambivalent towards things like that - for example DPS doesn't measure overkill and by presenting it as a stat it can seem more important than it really is. In an RTS two units with the exact same DPS can vary a lot in effectiveness due to overkill, so to me presenting DPS as a stat can be both misleading and encourage players to not think carefully.

There are no hard and fast rules of game design. Is it important for a game to accurately describe all it's systems? It depends on the game. That's the only real answer.

I don't like the idea that if games don't give players the exact info that WoW gives them that game is "obfuscating" something. It's just a different game. What people are calling "obfuscation" is just a game not making data or rules explicit - which is fine for some games. And there is a ton of data that WoW doesn't make explicit either. Figuring out core mechanics can be a core mechanic in itself.

Quote from: Rendakor
WoW doesn't take a lot of skill and strategy; that's not why I play it.

Well..yeah. The broader point I am making is that the continuum for MMOs is pretty narrow where even game much "harder" and more skill intensive than WoW aren't much to write home about.

Quote
Arguing for more challenging, skill-based gameplay seems to be arguing for a smaller, niche title (like Darkfall maybe); however, listening to those clamoring for greater difficulty is what fucked up WoW so bad in Cata.

It fucked up WoW because WoW is fundamentally not that game and it's too late to change it. But to circle back to the original argument again, League of Legends is skill based, Call of Duty is skill based. Monster Hunter is skill based.  A lot of skill-based games find broad audiences and a lot of low-skill players have fun playing them. I don't see any reason to believe that an MMO with meatier skill-based combat would necessarily be niche unless it went hand-in-hand with crazy shit like terrible graphics and perma-death.

Give me a Monster Hunter MMO!
« Last Edit: November 26, 2012, 11:02:30 PM by Margalis »

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Reply #826 on: November 27, 2012, 12:21:07 AM

Creating cooperative content designed to be tackled by groups of varying skill-level players is not easy. I'm not even sure it's possible without some hidden stat* that gave buffs to "bad" players so that they could kill bosses or whatever with their skilled friends. In things like LoL and CoD the content is all PVP, so while you might have some noobs/bads on your team, the other team should have some too and the result is a fair fight.

In a PVE game, how do you solve the problem of not being able to invite your baddie friend to the raid because he just isn't good enough at the game? If you don't solve that problem, than you're limiting your audience to only people who are very good at games (and also have good hardware, low latency, etc.) and you end up with a niche title.

*which would be datamined by the community before the game's release, and exploited to hell as guilds spend hours suiciding before taking on a new boss.

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Reply #827 on: November 27, 2012, 03:06:58 AM

The WoW challenge, and most MMO raiding (because it all ends up on spoiler sites) is about multiple people executing a complex strategy without screwing up / being skilled enough to cover when someone inevitably does screw up. It's hard because there's generally lots going on and lots of information to be tracking so you need to work out your personal variation on strategy and practice. That and talking shit on teamspeak before and after.

Unless things have changed a lot since Wrath.

What is the actual game in WoW? It's not figuring stuff out, it's not being good - is it just the willingness to grind rep and dailies and dungeons over and over? It seems that the skill of WoW is willingness to spend time playing WoW.

I think it's fair to say you are either an exceptional player or have no clue. The percentage of the player base that could do hard mode challenges in Wrath was extremely small. Indeed they only made sense expending development effort on because they represented an unachievable target for the majority and bragging rights for the capable.

Why you are arguing about threat meters I have no clue. Threat meters were included because guessing threat wasn't the challenge blizzard wanted to project, it forced DPS to take responsibility for threat management and it allowed them to increase the challenge encounters because it tightened the gap between the extremely skilled (who could intuitively calculate threat caps) and the mortals.

(once again, this is relative to wrath where I stopped playing, WoW is dead to me cause Cata exploded my guild).
« Last Edit: November 27, 2012, 03:09:02 AM by Kageru »

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Reply #828 on: November 27, 2012, 04:19:05 AM

I think GW2's fractals of the mist with their increasing difficulty (and reward) might be "the next thing" in dungeons if it catches on. Also the fact that the individual fractals are relatively short you (meaning the developer) can add or remove them from the rotation easily making content updates more frequent (in theory atleast).
« Last Edit: November 27, 2012, 04:22:09 AM by satael »
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Reply #829 on: November 27, 2012, 04:27:20 AM

The percentage of the player base that could do hard mode challenges in Wrath was extremely small.

Isn't that a matter of having catassed long enough to have all the needed equipment, and having memorized like a human machine the routines you have to perform over and over and and the patterns to whack the moles in a timely fashion, more than a matter of skill?

This sounds snarky, but it's a honest question. MMORPGs where movement and aiming are non-factors keep feeling to me like exercises in becoming a better human macro, as there's no real room for talent or improvisation.

A possible counter-argument would be that that's a skill too, after all.

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Reply #830 on: November 27, 2012, 04:38:54 AM

If swtor had threat meters then Jedi Knights would have realised that taunts work when you have aggro way back in January. Everyone would have ended up happier.

I'm not a big fan of obfuscating anything about character abilities. Though some degree of obfuscation on NPC abilities is cool. I really don't mind looking up boss strategies and it gives the community something to figure out in downtime.

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Reply #831 on: November 27, 2012, 04:48:54 AM

I feel the same. Because so far I've been only bashing on MMORPG hotbar combat, I feel the need to state that even though I don't love it, and I don't think it requires any special skill, I've enjoyed it for a long time in many games, and I think (as I stated so many times) it makes perfect sense that they'll keep developing games with such system, improving it or not, cause it's a valid bridge between turn-based combat (which is immortal) and skill-based action combat.

But nothing annoys me more than people, or even friends, going straight on Youtube as soon as you wipe in an instance to look up the walkthrough for the boss. That happens now all.the.time. And it makes me wonder what is their point, why do they even bother playing.



Edit to add more frustration:

Next step is probably a big red button integrated in the game UI that says "Show walkthrough" and just shows you how to beat the boss, with nifty ghost characters and big blinky markers on the ground and on the skills you have to activate in the right order. Nothing will be obfuscated, all you'll have to do will be focusing on performing perfectly (as a musician without any creativity), and players will start moaning and complaining about all the other games that don't have the "SOLVE ENCOUNTER" big red button integrated. Same way everyone now complains when there isn't a big huge tutorial telling you "GET GUN, SHOOT STUFF, ENEMIES ARE RED" because maaaan that's hard why should I even bother with this when there are other games that tell me that?
« Last Edit: November 27, 2012, 05:44:07 AM by Falconeer »

Kageru
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Reply #832 on: November 27, 2012, 04:50:14 AM

For an MMO WoW was relatively forgiving in gearing. The difference between extreme cat-ass and moderate was not that great compared to the difference in execution.

Your question doesn't work though. Skill is by definition memorization, optimisation and mastery gained through repetition / practice. Being able to do the top level WoW raids required skill.

But nothing annoys me more than people, or even friends, going straight on Youtube as soon as you wipe in an instance to look up the walkthrough for the boss. That happens now all.the.time. And it makes me wonder what is their point, why do they even bother playing.

Because for most people the fun is in execution and perfecting that rather than the trial and error of discovering how the encounter works. But that's a personal choice. Same reason I want to know the actual weapon numbers in planetside I guess.

For the purposes of discussion here's a WoW Wrath hard mode raid Firefighter Mimiron. This is a demonstration so it's a near optimal takedown and it looks a lot easier than it is when you're in the game. There's hundreds of ways this can go wrong and a group of average gamers trying to master the encounter are going to face-plant in all of them for a long time. The feeling when you get it down, for the first time and on a repeatable basis, is a feeling of achievement which is what MMO's can offer.
« Last Edit: November 27, 2012, 05:00:56 AM by Kageru »

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Falconeer
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Reply #833 on: November 27, 2012, 05:43:24 AM

But nothing annoys me more than people, or even friends, going straight on Youtube as soon as you wipe in an instance to look up the walkthrough for the boss. That happens now all.the.time. And it makes me wonder what is their point, why do they even bother playing.

Because for most people the fun is in execution and perfecting that rather than the trial and error of discovering how the encounter works. But that's a personal choice.

So we kind of agree that everything can be considered a skill. Playing the piano requires skill, so do crossword puzzles, or skeet shooting. But we also agree that when you put it like that then it's obvious that these games (or WoW) are somewhat deceiving about what it takes to be good at them, as they give you the illusion that you have lots of options, abilities, powers, freedom of movement, and eventually it all boils down to reading the script and executing it as a machine. Again, no room for improvisation, no room for creativity. "Skill is by definition memorization, optimisation and mastery gained through repetition / practice." you say, and I think that matches with what I said: WoW (and clones) is about training people in becoming human-macros, as the lack of "resolution" in the way actions are performed (like the million ways you can hit or miss a target in skeet shooting, or the million differences in the intensity you can push the key of a piano) doesn't leave any room for much other than "remember the script/don't remember the script", followed by attempts at perfectly executing it using a very simple non-analog instrument.

Now that I think about it, it makes sense. Rock Band is nothing but WoW with a different theme. Does that requires skill? Yeah. Does that require group coordination? Absolutely. Does that require memorizing a score? It's the whole point. Does that require whacking moles flawlessly as soon as they appear according to the score? You bet.

Conversely, hotbar MMORPGs are nothing but the computerized rendition of playing in a band, but only with super-ultra-very dumbed down musical instruments, and you are only allowed to play covers.

That definitely involves skill! At the same time, it wouldn't be bad to admit that it's more a fantasy-themed skill-based exercise, or a challenge, in routinization than any kind of skill-based combat. It takes a higher resolution for that, it takes more unpredictability, and it takes more possible outcomes to any given action in any given millisecond.

satael
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Reply #834 on: November 27, 2012, 05:48:21 AM

For an MMO WoW was relatively forgiving in gearing.

the line quoted is in past tense so somewhat relevant: I would not call vanilla WOW that forgiving when you had to get the +resist sets (which weren't really useful elsewhere) for the raids. Luckily they got rid of that mentality relatively fast.
Merusk
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Reply #835 on: November 27, 2012, 06:08:28 AM

You guys are arguing that Yo-yo Ma is less skilled than John Williams and any one can become Yo-yo Ma with enough practice, so his skill is worthless.  It's hilarious.  He needs things spelled out, there's no skill there.  swamp poop

Not all people are creators and not all who practice can execute.

Quote from: Merusk
Obfuscation of core mechanics only helps small people think they lead accomplished lives through meaningless successes.

Defensive much? I could just as easily say that people who need everything spelled out for them, even things their own brains should be able to figure out with a small expenditure of actual effort, are either morons or incredibly lazy and want to feel like they are accomplishing something while performing at a level that would make a trained seal embarrassed.

Hidden information is an important and very valid aspect of game design, and there is a difference between information and mechanics that are genuinely obfuscated and information and mechanics that require player exploration to understand.

No, I'm not.  I stand behind the statement for what was being discussed at the time - hiding important information from the players that they just had to figure out for themselves.   You appear to be arguing something completely different.  The obfuscation that was being discussed was akin to pulling a person in to a stakes poker game and expecting them to "just figure it out."  That's not good for anyone but the people fleecing them.   

Yes, hidden information is important to the game of poker, but hiding the rules is not.  Raid mechanics are the rules of the game.  Execution and understanding of how to adapt your particular character to those rules.  Just because you read something doesn't mean you're an expert at it any more than memorizing the numerous systems to Blackjack means you're going to always walk away from the table a winner.  It takes practice and experience to get better at it and know how to apply it.

By your definition there's no skill to musicians, singers, carpentry, engineering, coding and a host of other things.  It's all simple rule systems you just have to apply like 'a trained seal' once you know the basics.

The past cannot be changed. The future is yet within your power.
Draegan
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Reply #836 on: November 27, 2012, 06:29:49 AM

Oh good, a retarded argument that MMOs do/do not require "skill" to play.  Next someone is going to break out the McDonalds of MMOs argument and then someone is going to bring up Fallen Earth.
apocrypha
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Reply #837 on: November 27, 2012, 06:31:20 AM

Who gives a shit if MMOs require skill of any kind to play. What matters is are they fun.

If TESO is fun then it'll do OK, if it isn't then it won't.

"Bourgeois society stands at the crossroads, either transition to socialism or regression into barbarism" - Rosa Luxemburg, 1915.
Malakili
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Reply #838 on: November 27, 2012, 06:33:25 AM

Who gives a shit if MMOs require skill of any kind to play. What matters is are they fun.

If TESO is fun then it'll do OK, if it isn't then it won't.

Generally speaking (with some exceptions), the skill part is what keeps me interested. Almost anything is fun for a little while due to its novelty factor, but I just don't have it in me anymore to buy a new MMO just for the novelty factor.
Falconeer
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Reply #839 on: November 27, 2012, 06:46:41 AM

For clarity,

The argument is not if MMORPGs require skill or not. They obviously require skill, pretty much everything requires skill.

The argument was about hotbar combat and other forms of combat, and what kind of skill(s) they require.
Then it branched into obfuscating or not obfuscating things, and what kind of skill(s) and fun those two approaches enable.

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