SWTOR

[luckton]

Fighting the urge to link progress quest.

Also, are you those people who hate multiplayer games in which you have to choose between more than 3 abilities?

If you remove cat herding from a cat herding simulator MMOG I don't really understand what is left?

I'm cool with managing multiple abilities, as long as those abilities have a purpose to be on my hotbar.  I think WoW has a good balance of abilities and such for each class right now, though I fail to see what else they could add to the classes at this point, short of overhauling all base abilities like they did with talents (fewer abilities, but the abilities you have do/mean more.)  Unless they just start adding parallel skills to each class with each expansions (i.e. in Pandaria, Druids will get some sort of Feral Thunderclap   ).

Rift takes ability counts to extremes...if they took out macroing, that game would fall flat on it's face in the wake of the mass exodus.

[sam, an eggplant]

Did they happen to hire some SOE raid designers recently? That sounds like the kind of shit they had us doing in EQ2 for years. It was especially nice when someone did something or failed to do something that caused a wipe and it got announced in huge red letters in the middle of the screen so everyone knew who to rage at 

That is awesome.

And yes, that's one of Rift's main failings, requiring macros to be play the game effectively. It's one of the few spots where they chose not to copy WoW, to their detriment.

[eldaec]

Rift takes ability counts to extremes...if they took out macroing, that game would fall flat on it's face in the wake of the mass exodus.

What? I haven't had time to get into rift, but afaik it only has about 40 per class and you can't even have them all at once?

This is what a spell list should look like:

http://www.tentonhammer.com/node/54755

[01101010]

What? I haven't had time to get into rift, but afaik it only has about 40 per class and you can't even have them all at once?

This is what a spell list should look like:

http://www.tentonhammer.com/node/54755

TLDR; 

[luckton]

Rift takes ability counts to extremes...if they took out macroing, that game would fall flat on it's face in the wake of the mass exodus.

What? I haven't had time to get into rift, but afaik it only has about 40 per class and you can't even have them all at once?

This is what a spell list should look like:

http://www.tentonhammer.com/node/54755

Now take away the ranks.

[eldaec]

To be fair, last time I checked there were only something like 50 or 60 once you do that - though it was a few years ago so I imagine there are more by now.

[Nebu]

EQ2 is deceptive in that 20 of those abilities are nearly identical, just on separate cooldowns.  They could easily maintain the same functionality of classes without having to keep managing 6 hotbars worth of crap. 

[Threash]

Rift doesn't have as many abilities as wow, even without macroing.  My WoW rogue had three full bars of regularly used abilities, in Rift i can't fill two and most of the second is once an hour buffs.

[Velorath]

Fighting the urge to link progress quest.

Also, are you those people who hate multiplayer games in which you have to choose between more than 3 abilities?

If you remove cat herding from a cat herding simulator MMOG I don't really understand what is left?

I think I'd still like the Left 4 Dead games, even if they had more abilities.  Which was odd for me to think about at first because to go through a whole campaign in L4D probably takes around the same time as to get through a raid and I could probably play through the same L4D campaign multiple times and still have it be fun.  Maybe part of that is the fact that I know that if I'm persistent, I'll probably be able to finish the content.  Each screw up is maybe a 15 minute setback at most (the individual levels that make up a campaign aren't really that long), so if somebody fucks up or the AI director is particularly aggressive one round, it's not a huge deal (in fact a really bad loss is usually more entertaining than victory).  Raiding to me seems more like an old NES game I'd have to slowly power my way through over the course of a few months, having to start over each time I play, and trying to get further each time.  Maybe there's something fulfilling about that, bud I don't have that kind of time and patience anymore.

[Malakili]

Fighting the urge to link progress quest.

Also, are you those people who hate multiplayer games in which you have to choose between more than 3 abilities?

If you remove cat herding from a cat herding simulator MMOG I don't really understand what is left?

I think I'd still like the Left 4 Dead games, even if they had more abilities.  Which was odd for me to think about at first because to go through a whole campaign in L4D probably takes around the same time as to get through a raid and I could probably play through the same L4D campaign multiple times and still have it be fun.  Maybe part of that is the fact that I know that if I'm persistent, I'll probably be able to finish the content.  Each screw up is maybe a 15 minute setback at most (the individual levels that make up a campaign aren't really that long), so if somebody fucks up or the AI director is particularly aggressive one round, it's not a huge deal (in fact a really bad loss is usually more entertaining than victory).  Raiding to me seems more like an old NES game I'd have to slowly power my way through over the course of a few months, having to start over each time I play, and trying to get further each time.  Maybe there's something fulfilling about that, bud I don't have that kind of time and patience anymore.

I think its a lot easier to have fun losing in L4D too.  If you don't like learning raids for the sake of learning, the "glass chewing" part of learning a new boss...can have an appropriate moniker.   Meanwhile, if you get over run by zombies, well it can still be pretty damned awesome.  I hardcore raided before, and enjoyed it.  But there is something to be said for game mechanics/gameplay that are good enough in their own right without the meta game to prop them up to make them "fun."

[caladein]

Compare to the second boss of Firelands: He has 9 abilities. He has two phases. He creates volcanos that explode. He creates lava streams that chase players. He has an AE blast. He summons adds that increase in damage the longer they are left alive. He immolates players for 8000 per second in phase 2, and he shoots a beam at them. WTF?!?!

Did they happen to hire some SOE raid designers recently? That sounds like the kind of shit they had us doing in EQ2 for years. It was especially nice when someone did something or failed to do something that caused a wipe and it got announced in huge red letters in the middle of the screen so everyone knew who to rage at 

That was much more true on Vaelastrasz (the first boss he described) than on Lord Rhyolith because even though Vael was "simpler" it was much more difficult in terms of execution, both in terms of handling those simple mechanics and in executing your personal role (he was a massive gear/throughput check).  Which was Paelos's point, simple doesn't have to mean easy.  And in preferring that, I agree with him.

I much prefer focused, short, and tightly tuned fights to the usual end-boss recipe of a ten minute fight with eight phases and loads of adds.

[Sjofn]

Rift takes ability counts to extremes...if they took out macroing, that game would fall flat on it's face in the wake of the mass exodus.

What? I haven't had time to get into rift, but afaik it only has about 40 per class and you can't even have them all at once?

This is what a spell list should look like:

http://www.tentonhammer.com/node/54755

You are fucked in the head, dude.

[Ingmar]

I just realized I'm kind of schizophrenic about the giant ability list thing. I look at eldaec's EQ2 list and am filled with revulsion, and generally like my MMO characters to have fewer buttons than that (15ish seems like a good spot for 'frequently used abilities to me' as an upper end), but in thinking about that I realized I'm OK with the giant number of things a spellcaster in DDO could have. Probably partly because I have 30 years of "I know what shit in D&D does" (oh god it will actually be 30 years next year) and probably partly because I get to pick my own loadout and that reduces the number of buttons I can actually use at one time.

[Dark_MadMax]

You know how about a novel idea. 4 abilities? or 7 tops? it would be total fail inoright? Just like LoL or Guild Wars -totally bland and boring characters with no flavor!

MOAR<> better

My RIFT macros were laundry lists of  15 abilties or so. Still all macroed to 2 or 3 buttons.

[Sjofn]

The Guild Wars method where you pick what you'll be using and it's a meaningful choice is cool with me. Have a zillion abilities then! But don't make me juggle 50+ abilities, many of which basically do the same fucking thing, just on different cooldowns, but I have to use them or I am a gimp. Moosh those all into one fucking repeatable ability, assholes. Simplify, simplify, simplify!

[Malakili]

You know how about a novel idea. 4 abilities? or 7 tops? it would be total fail inoright? Just like LoL or Guild Wars -totally bland and boring characters with no flavor!

MOAR<> better

My RIFT macros were laundry lists of  15 abilties or so. Still all macroed to 2 or 3 buttons.

Well Diablo 3 will give us the chance to try this out.  You get all your class skills (no more skill trees ala D2), but you can only have 6 active at a time (you can switch which six as a "respec" the details of which aren't really known.  I think it'll work out fine, and I think a similar approach could work in an MMO.  However, with tab targeting and hotkey based combat, I think its you need more abilities to keep things mildly interesting.  If things moved towards a more actiony combat, you could get away with fewer and still have fun gameplay.

[Lantyssa]

Diablo 3 looks to be an interesting evolution on GW's method.  Limited pick of a list of skills, and talent selections actually change the properties of those selections.

Those are ideas SWTOR could learn from.  But instead they're probably going to be carbon copies of existing WoW skills.

[Kirth]

My eq2 Dirge has a 10 ability rotation for combat, not counting cooldowns for group dps or healer thruput or other tricks I could do like battle res or mob debuffs I had to put out, this is just normal combat flow type stuff. maybe it was unique to that class i'm not sure as I never had any alts.

My wow shadow priest had a 5 button rotation for max dps, keep up 2 dots, 2 nukes to use on cd and mindflay, its been about 8 months so forgive me if I'm fuzzy on that one, and a shadow priest was considered one of the more complicated rotations.

This goes with the raid mechanic argument, if your going to design around having 2 second reaction times to get out of the fire or wipe then keep the abilities that people need to manage minimal.

[palmer_eldritch]

I actually quite liked building my macros in EQ2. It was a little game in itself, deciding the order of precedence the abilities should take.

[March]

I actually quite liked building my macros in EQ2. It was a little game in itself, deciding the order of precedence the abilities should take.

I like it in Rift too... except (even?) when I get an idea in my head to try a new build and realize that I've just dedicated an evening to rebuilding my macros and hotbars.  I'm finding that naming conventions for storing what I've previously built > the actual macros.  The first Add-on I will get for Rift will be some sort of Macro sorting thing.  Regarding abilities?  I have a pretty firm rule that if I can't use the number pad for all my in-combat buttons, the game is broken.  (Except healing, which I now only do with mouse clicks).  Wait, are we talking about SWTOR?  Are we at 300?

[Der Helm]

It was especially nice when someone did something or failed to do something that caused a wipe and it got announced in huge red letters in the middle of the screen so everyone knew who to rage at 

I'd resub if WoW had that feature. 

[fuser]

Seems like emails are still going out because now....  

Resubbed to WoW

[ezrast]

You can go the "fuck everything" route like Diablo in which everything can be soloed and added players just jack up the HP and every man for themselves more or less.  Which is fine really, but if you actually want the multiplayer part to matter beyond just friends killing shit for fun, you've got to do SOMETHING to make the group matter.

Trust me, I've done raids with people who you think this "fuck the trinity, fuck optimal raid builds" shit would help, and the worst possible fucking thing would be to make it impossible to "optimize" because the encounter is random. The danger would NOT be "someone might get an easier encounter" the problem would be "oh shit, it decided to give us Oz for opera and we don't have a warlock today and we have about TEN SECONDS to figure out how to do it with this group or we'll wipe."

As long as the only way of defeating a mob is to reduce their HP to zero, you will have the Trinity.

There isn't anything to replace the Trinity with under the above situation, nor would SWOR be the one to try.

The problem I see with GW2 is that it makes everyone responsible for there own survival, something foreign to every mmo pve'er I know who ever considers an encounter anything more than a non solo experience. This will make the game extremely difficult by default with anet putting on the training wheels up to level 80 and hoping you "get it".

Compare to the second boss of Firelands: He has 9 abilities. He has two phases. He creates volcanos that explode. He creates lava streams that chase players. He has an AE blast. He summons adds that increase in damage the longer they are left alive. He immolates players for 8000 per second in phase 2, and he shoots a beam at them. WTF?!?!

You people are starting to disgust me. That boss fight would be entirely awesome in Devil May Cry or any context where you don't reify broken-ass MMO design, i.e. not this thread.

Schild is right.

[Rendakor]

It was especially nice when someone did something or failed to do something that caused a wipe and it got announced in huge red letters in the middle of the screen so everyone knew who to rage at 

I'd resub if WoW had that feature. 

There's an app addon for that.

[eldaec]

By the way, the "trinity" is an old school term referring to warrior/tank, cleric/healer, and enchanter/cc, which you need to start a group (a group of 8 goddamnit). DPS doesn't come into it because it is assumed that there is always a freely available and infinitely deep pool of DPS meatheads to use as filler.

My lawn, you should get off it.

[Malakili]

You people are starting to disgust me. That boss fight would be entirely awesome in Devil May Cry or any context where you don't reify broken-ass MMO design, i.e. not this thread.

Schild is right.

I actually agree with that.  But that implies changing MMO combat mechanics whole sale, not just changing boss fights.  I'm ALL for that, but I think its almost an entirely different discussion because it implies changing SO much more than just how many abilities a boss uses and/or when they use them.

[luckton]

Compare to the second boss of Firelands: He has 9 abilities. He has two phases. He creates volcanos that explode. He creates lava streams that chase players. He has an AE blast. He summons adds that increase in damage the longer they are left alive. He immolates players for 8000 per second in phase 2, and he shoots a beam at them. WTF?!?!

You people are starting to disgust me. That boss fight would be entirely awesome in Devil May Cry or any context where you don't reify broken-ass MMO design, i.e. not this thread.

Schild is right.

All I can say is that a boss fight like that should be saved for the hard-modes.  Sure you can do such things in offline single-player games because you can do things like pause, reduce/increase difficulty, etc.  This is an MMO we're talking about.  It has to have broad appeal in order to stay successful.  Making content that only the top 5% of the best players will ever be able to overcome is silly, esp. when you tie that content to the story/lore progression of the game.  Bliz learned that the hard way throughout vanilla, tried to rectify it in BC, and IMO met success in Wrath.  By that point though, WoW had already cycled out a fair chunk of it's player-base, meaning to say that a good chunk of the base playing during Wrath wasn't playing during vanilla, and would have no recollection of how things 'used' to be.  So when they hit Wrath and said it was too easy with facerolling dungeons and so-so fight mechanics, they wanted the bar raised.  So Bliz raised it back to vanilla. 

Now that we've come full circle, and that Bliz seems to actually care about story/lorelol now, they could have easily appealed to both casuals and hardcores through the normal/hard-mode system.  Hard-mode should be HARD.  It should involve juggling multiple boss mechanics and gameplay innovations to keep you on your toes and earn that kill.  Make the normal-modes facerollable...allow your casual peeps to see all this stuff your team put hard work into and the continuation of the end-game.   When those people are ready for a challenge, and want to play the game 'for real', throw all that development in the hard-mode.

From what I've read, BW seems to 'get' that concept with their Operations, and plan on executing as such. 

[Amaron]

There isn't much that is more simple than "don't stand in the god damned motherfucking fire." The problem is that people can't get out of the fire AND think about rotation, or looking at the health of someone else, or whatever.  I guess you could have cooldowns explicitly stated on the screen somewhere "HEY FIRE COMING IN 10,9,8...."  but I think people would still miss it.  Its not a matter of reflexes, or hand speed, or something, I think it is a problem of multi tasking.  I think the people that can get of the fire have made it reflexive, they don't think about it any more.

You just said it was simple but you gave a lot of reasons for why it's not actually simple.  I don't think we can just say it's easy so if they can't do it they can't do anything else either.   People find different things more or less difficult.   They might have trouble getting out of the fire and still clobber you in chess.

Also on a previous statement about random in encounters.  No.  Just no.

Proof that random in encounters would be the best thing ever. 

[eldaec]

Imagine if there was a game or activity where not everyone was as good at playing it.

[Nebu]

Imagine if there was a game or activity where not everyone was as good at playing it.

Gamers are like drivers.  Everyone thinks that they're good at it. 

This is a reflection of life.  Exceedingly few people in this world are well-calibrated.   

[Amaron]

Imagine if there was a game or activity where not everyone was as good at playing it.

Even tic-tac-toe falls into that definition.

[Malakili]

You just said it was simple but you gave a lot of reasons for why it's not actually simple.  I don't think we can just say it's easy so if they can't do it they can't do anything else either.   People find different things more or less difficult.   They might have trouble getting out of the fire and still clobber you in chess.

Its simple BY ITSELF, its not in the context of 7 different things going on.   Which is why I've stressed multitasking in general, rather than specific mechanics, as the real "problem."  Yes, some are more difficult than others, but I don't think there are very many mechanics I've seen that most people couldn't do if it was isolated.

[Amaron]

Which is why I've stressed multitasking in general, rather than specific mechanics, as the real "problem."  Yes, some are more difficult than others, but I don't think there are very many mechanics I've seen that most people couldn't do if it was isolated.

Ok I guess I just got turned around somewhere.   That was what I meant by slowing things down as well.   Once you slow things down you can add more interesting mechanics because you have less stuff thrown at you.   I'm still not sure I'd call getting out of the fire simple even when isolated though.   Stone core for instance you had to get out of the way pretty fast or you instantly died.   Most of them could do that if it were completely isolated but they wouldn't call it easy.

[tmp]

You people are starting to disgust me. That boss fight would be entirely awesome in Devil May Cry or any context where you don't reify broken-ass MMO design, i.e. not this thread.

What may feel entirely awesome in single player game (where you have to only rely on yourself and only have yourself to blame for screwups) can feel quite different when you fail the experience for the 20th time because of yet another random mistake made by one of your group of four/five.

[Nevermore]

By the way, the "trinity" is an old school term referring to warrior/tank, cleric/healer, and enchanter/cc, which you need to start a group (a group of 8 goddamnit). DPS doesn't come into it because it is assumed that there is always a freely available and infinitely deep pool of DPS meatheads to use as filler.

My lawn, you should get off it.

If we're being pedantic, 'trinity' is an older school term for onions, celery and bell peppers.