EQ 'Next'

[Simond]

Funnily enough, the classes with more abilities were more fun to play.

[Goreschach]

Honestly, I'd prefer EQ's 'hit a for combat' over most mmo's 'hit 1234 repeatedly for combat'. Very few MMO's have any combat depth whatsoever, so any input involved is nothing more than tedium. Videogame controls are used for input. Player input is fundamentally decision making. If the player isn't actually making decisions, then they shouldn't be pressing buttons. The day someone makes an MMO that actually plays like a fucking videogame is the day they're fina


Oh fuck it, we all know that's never going to happen.

[Bzalthek]

In EQ, though, when you had abilities mapped out on the number keys, most of the time you didn't need to use the "high end" of the keys while moving and strafing.  There was not a lot of need to move around while fighting shit.  But I have a very hard time coordinating my WASD movement and utilizing those keys since my other hand is usually controlling the mouse with mouselook and whatnot.  This is not a "must return to the days of yore" comment, just an observation. 

It's obviously not a problem for everyone, but I wonder if there is an easier way.  Suppose you had 1-5 programmed with abilities, but they can be modified each five different ways.  Hitting 1 will do ability A. hitting tilde-2-1 will modify ability A with ability *.  After that hitting 1 will do ability A*.  A little while later hit tilde-5-1 to modify A with %.  Then 1 casts A%.

Your 5 slotted abilities are basic and usually different.  Each ability can be modified 5 different ways (say 1 is punch A, A* is firepunch with dot, A% is icepunch with slow, etc).  They can be modified on the fly, but generally speaking you'd set them up early in the fight and wouldn't normally need to change them. 

Meh, I'm rambling.  I like entertaining fights, but keybloat is kinda irritating. 

[Malakili]

In EQ, though, when you had abilities mapped out on the number keys, most of the time you didn't need to use the "high end" of the keys while moving and strafing.  There was not a lot of need to move around while fighting shit.  But I have a very hard time coordinating my WASD movement and utilizing those keys since my other hand is usually controlling the mouse with mouselook and whatnot.  This is not a "must return to the days of yore" comment, just an observation.  

It's obviously not a problem for everyone, but I wonder if there is an easier way.  Suppose you had 1-5 programmed with abilities, but they can be modified each five different ways.  Hitting 1 will do ability A. hitting tilde-2-1 will modify ability A with ability *.  After that hitting 1 will do ability A*.  A little while later hit tilde-5-1 to modify A with %.  Then 1 casts A%.

Your 5 slotted abilities are basic and usually different.  Each ability can be modified 5 different ways (say 1 is punch A, A* is firepunch with dot, A% is icepunch with slow, etc).  They can be modified on the fly, but generally speaking you'd set them up early in the fight and wouldn't normally need to change them.  

Meh, I'm rambling.  I like entertaining fights, but keybloat is kinda irritating.  

What about something like fighting games where you have different "moves" that are accomplished with different sets of keystrokes.  Of course, things opens up the possibility of failing to execute your abilities (which would actually be interesting potentially, but probably frustrating to a lot of people)

[Surlyboi]

That would actually be awesome for almost everyone but the hardcore raiders. It would probably frustrate them to no end. Which would also be a plus in my book.

[Bzalthek]

Those would actually be pretty cool.  And mmo where fights were like the 3D fighting games with multiple opponents.  I would buy a controller for computer for that.

[Paelos]

That would actually be awesome for almost everyone but the hardcore raiders. It would probably frustrate them to no end. Which would also be a plus in my book.

We could polish epics with their tears. I agree.

[Simond]

In EQ, though, when you had abilities mapped out on the number keys, most of the time you didn't need to use the "high end" of the keys while moving and strafing.  There was not a lot of need to move around while fighting shit.  But I have a very hard time coordinating my WASD movement and utilizing those keys since my other hand is usually controlling the mouse with mouselook and whatnot.  This is not a "must return to the days of yore" comment, just an observation.  

It's obviously not a problem for everyone, but I wonder if there is an easier way.  Suppose you had 1-5 programmed with abilities, but they can be modified each five different ways.  Hitting 1 will do ability A. hitting tilde-2-1 will modify ability A with ability *.  After that hitting 1 will do ability A*.  A little while later hit tilde-5-1 to modify A with %.  Then 1 casts A%.

Your 5 slotted abilities are basic and usually different.  Each ability can be modified 5 different ways (say 1 is punch A, A* is firepunch with dot, A% is icepunch with slow, etc).  They can be modified on the fly, but generally speaking you'd set them up early in the fight and wouldn't normally need to change them.  

Meh, I'm rambling.  I like entertaining fights, but keybloat is kinda irritating.  

What about something like fighting games where you have different "moves" that are accomplished with different sets of keystrokes.  Of course, things opens up the possibility of failing to execute your abilities (which would actually be interesting potentially, but probably frustrating to a lot of people)

Tera does that. Go have fun!

[Threash]

That would actually be awesome for almost everyone but the hardcore raiders. It would probably frustrate them to no end. Which would also be a plus in my book.

Complete opposite, this would suck for anyone but the most hardcore.  People are a lot worse at this games than you think and anything even approaching skill based gameplay is not going to be embraced by anyone but the very top players. 95% of the playerbase would quit in frustration if they had to do anything as complicated as a showryuken to pull off a move.

[Hoax]

Yeah the thing you would want to crib from fighting games is not execution by button memorization but instead the idea that the game itself changes what a button does based on the situation.

So for a MMO abilities could work differently based on:
-distance from the target
-position (behind versus in front say)
-life the opponent
-life of your character
-status effects on opponent
-number of opponents in range

and so on. Giving you the need for less button but both more character knowledge and more strategic positioning and whatnot.

As for Tera being mentioned here, it is quite difficult for the moms and dads playing WoW who never touched any fps games to play but its still proven to be plenty popular since its f2p conversion. As have things like DCUO that use a right click / left click "combo" system.

[Numtini]

Counterpoint: EQ only had a couple of abilities for the melee classes and that was dull as fuck.

Auto-attack, taunt, kick.

[Phred]

Obviously none of you ever played  a warden in LoTRO. This character used 3 basic moves which could be combined to do a ton of different finishing moves, like a shout,kick,shout giving you a move that taunted and added temporary defence.  I really liked this system as it played into my RSI quite nicely as I have limited movement left in my fingers other than index and forefinger however they screwed it up royally by making the "elite" skills be combinations that played like kick/punch or  punch/shout, thus tripling the number of keys you had to reach to be able to use the new moves. Still, until 50 or so the character was fun to play, though a lot of people didn't like it because you had to keep all the combos in memory.

[Pennilenko]

Age of Conan had a refrshing combat system.

[Falconeer]

Yes, it was easy to hate Age of Conan at the time, but it laid the foundation for lots of the targetless action combat we have now in MMOs, including healing in a cone area in front of the caster. Exectution was poor in so many aspects of that game, but combat wasn't one of these. It was just ahead of its time, especially considering what all these games are trying to do these days, from Tera to Wildstar.

[Surlyboi]

That would actually be awesome for almost everyone but the hardcore raiders. It would probably frustrate them to no end. Which would also be a plus in my book.

Complete opposite, this would suck for anyone but the most hardcore.  People are a lot worse at this games than you think and anything even approaching skill based gameplay is not going to be embraced by anyone but the very top players. 95% of the playerbase would quit in frustration if they had to do anything as complicated as a showryuken to pull off a move.

Beg to differ. I said the hardcore raiders. Those that inevitably equate repetitive attempts at the same group of static encounters and acquisition of the right uber gear with actual skill. Fuck those guys. I want somebody wearing the shittiest gear possible to be able to solo that boss mob because he's got the skills to hit all the right combos. It would make most of the MMO raider set apoplectic.

[Pennilenko]

I would love to see a removal of  old "time = success" paradigm.

[Paelos]

I would love to see a removal of  old "time = success" paradigm.

I think if they remove the idea of sub=revenue, then you'll see less of that paradigm. If you make it about releasing content that people pay for in iterations, you put the emphasis on people paying for good stuff, not gating them with busywork.

[Ingmar]

In EQ, though, when you had abilities mapped out on the number keys, most of the time you didn't need to use the "high end" of the keys while moving and strafing.  There was not a lot of need to move around while fighting shit.  But I have a very hard time coordinating my WASD movement and utilizing those keys since my other hand is usually controlling the mouse with mouselook and whatnot.  This is not a "must return to the days of yore" comment, just an observation.  

It's obviously not a problem for everyone, but I wonder if there is an easier way.  Suppose you had 1-5 programmed with abilities, but they can be modified each five different ways.  Hitting 1 will do ability A. hitting tilde-2-1 will modify ability A with ability *.  After that hitting 1 will do ability A*.  A little while later hit tilde-5-1 to modify A with %.  Then 1 casts A%.

Your 5 slotted abilities are basic and usually different.  Each ability can be modified 5 different ways (say 1 is punch A, A* is firepunch with dot, A% is icepunch with slow, etc).  They can be modified on the fly, but generally speaking you'd set them up early in the fight and wouldn't normally need to change them.  

Meh, I'm rambling.  I like entertaining fights, but keybloat is kinda irritating.  

What about something like fighting games where you have different "moves" that are accomplished with different sets of keystrokes.  Of course, things opens up the possibility of failing to execute your abilities (which would actually be interesting potentially, but probably frustrating to a lot of people)

LotRO wardens already are like that.

[Venkman]

I would love to see a removal of  old "time = success" paradigm.

I think if they remove the idea of sub=revenue, then you'll see less of that paradigm. If you make it about releasing content that people pay for in iterations, you put the emphasis on people paying for good stuff, not gating them with busywork.

I want to care about MMOs long enough to see them stop chasing business models as the primary goal and get back to focusing on entertaining groups of people from dozens of hours. I swear all this f2p shit feels like chasing more quarters into arcade machines. And they will NEVER win that argument in an age when all the non-experienced screwballs in marketing have written off PCs and consoles for tablet and mobile apps.

Yes, it was easy to hate Age of Conan at the time, but it laid the foundation for lots of the targetless action combat we have now in MMOs, including healing in a cone area in front of the caster. Exectution was poor in so many aspects of that game, but combat wasn't one of these. It was just ahead of its time, especially considering what all these games are trying to do these days, from Tera to Wildstar.

It was ahead of its time and incomplete, but I totally agree with you. It's a shame because AoC falls into the same category as SWG and CoH for me: games that had a LOT of great stuff companies should knock the hell off but which were never successful enough to require such knockoff.

[Kageru]

Tera gives players with a high ping an unavoidable DPS penalty, for an MMO that's a negative.

I like the wow model of resources. Such that some moves build and others consume a resource which changes the effects of the power. Also GW2 has the option with some powers to allow the effect to run to duration or hit the button again to cancel it for some alternate effect.

Really I don't think there's one answer. An action game will favor fewer buttons and fast responses. A more tactical game you want a bit more but can be clever in how you present them and make sure they're not just a false appearance of game-play depth. I do think the trend is going to be towards few abilities as online game chase the broadest possible market.

I dread more games like DCUO where I pretty much could tape down the attack button and let the game play itself.

[Paelos]

I want to care about MMOs long enough to see them stop chasing business models as the primary goal and get back to focusing on entertaining groups of people from dozens of hours. I swear all this f2p shit feels like chasing more quarters into arcade machines. And they will NEVER win that argument in an age when all the non-experienced screwballs in marketing have written off PCs and consoles for tablet and mobile apps.

I don't think what you want them to "get back to" ever actually existed. You can either choose to be involved in the business as a developer, or you can have those decisions hoisted on you.

[tmp]

Tera gives players with a high ping an unavoidable DPS penalty, for an MMO that's a negative.

It doesn't seem to be really the case in my experience. The attack pace is limited by length of individual animations, so you can press the attack keys slightly in advance to account for latency, while previous attack is being executed, and the server will perform the move without any delay as soon as the previous one finishes.

High latency can mess up the moves which override others and force execution "now", like dodges or blocks, but that's a different issue.

[Kageru]

It seems to be an issue looking at videos like this one. But then PvP in general is sorta terrible with lag in terms of positional accuracy.

[tmp]

That's a borderline case, imo -- it's very short basic attack animation, and nearly half second ping is absolutely terrible to play with even in a 'normal' MMO. But yes, in this particular situation I can see how it'd affect things, as the player's latency is actually larger than the duration of the attack animation. Playing normally though -- by which I mean using actual class skills and with ping of 50-200 msec -- i'm not really experiencing this.

[Zetor]

That's a borderline case, imo -- it's very short basic attack animation, and nearly half second ping is absolutely terrible to play with even in a 'normal' MMO. But yes, in this particular situation I can see how it'd affect things, as the player's latency is actually larger than the duration of the attack animation. Playing normally though -- by which I mean using actual class skills and with ping of 50-200 msec -- i'm not really experiencing this.

I think Kageru is referring to typical Australian pings (400-600 ms). This is also somewhat relevant to my interests, as I'm a European playing on US servers (international guild). And yeah, when you have a 500+ms ping, it tends to make pvp horribly frustrating. GW1 was probably the worst in this regard (until they made it possible to switch between US and EU servers at will) in my experience with all its 0.5sec and 0.25sec casts, but COH was also pretty bad. SWTOR and LOTRO also felt pretty bad to play with high latency. GW2 is neither here or there -- even though it's "twitchy", I do fairly well as long as I stick to ranged classes... but I've had some latency-related "fuck this noise" moments in the racing minigame they introduced with the latest patch.

Amusingly enough, I never really had a problem with high pings in WOW (as long as I stuck to caster types), even though I play on a US west coast server from eastern europe. Well ok, competitive arena pvp was kind of annoying, but that's not the main reason why people would play WOW. 

[Bzalthek]

Soooooo, I've been reading a lot of forums where they've gone nuclear about the art piece...  If I were sony I'd be keeping really quiet about this.  I'd let them fester and boycott because these are people I wouldn't want in my playerbase.  They are fucking toxic.

[Tyrnan]

Soooooo, I've been reading a lot of forums where they've gone nuclear about the art piece...  If I were sony I'd be keeping really quiet about this.  I'd let them fester and boycott because these are people I wouldn't want in my playerbase.  They are fucking toxic.

The vast majority of them won't boycott though.  They'll bitch and moan about how the devs are destroying their beloved franchise, yet they'll still be there on day 1 of the head start sporting their shiny collectors editions.  Still bitchin though, naturally.

Personally, I'm just mildly curious to see what they come out with.  I missed the whole EQ thing as I didn't get into MMOs until CoH and despite playing EQ2 off and on over the years don't have that much attachment to the franchise.  About the only good thing to come out of my time in EQ2 was it totally killed my desire to ever raid again after doing it for about a year as an Illusionist.  Topping the DPS charts because procs were broken was fun but it felt like you were playing a fucking symphony to achieve it.  Also fuck Venril Sathir!

[Hawkbit]

Reminds me of: http://www.theonion.com/articles/facebook-we-will-make-our-product-worse-you-will-b,33074/?utm_source=Facebook&utm_medium=SocialMarketing&utm_campaign=Status:2:Default

[Miasma]

I am honestly looking forward to whatever EQ Next winds up being.  I have never bothered to live stream SOE whateverthehell but I will this time.  Based on Smed's statements while playing Planetside I actually kinda like him now.  Planetside is great and the only reason I stopped playing is that I'm just too old to be that excited by an fps nowadays.  It angry's up the blood!

[Scold]

The interesting thing to me is that MMOs are a rich and varied enough bunch these days that people constantly say things like "Man, if only MMOs would do _________", and almost always there are several MMOs that do, in fact, do _______ that the person's just never tried.

[Malakili]

The interesting thing to me is that MMOs are a rich and varied enough bunch these days that people constantly say things like "Man, if only MMOs would do _________", and almost always there are several MMOs that do, in fact, do _______ that the person's just never tried.

Just because a game, especially an MMO, does one thing I want doesn't mean I'm going to bother playing a game.  MMOs at this point have the "problem" (for me) that I expect to basically be able to play them endlessly.  If an MMO looks fun, but only fun for a month or two, I probably don't want to bother putting that time into it.  The payoff for these games has always been a long term thing for me, if I just want short term fun I already have a dozen games installed.

[Margalis]

The interesting thing to me is that MMOs are a rich and varied enough bunch these days that people constantly say things like "Man, if only MMOs would do _________", and almost always there are several MMOs that do, in fact, do _______ that the person's just never tried.

The implication there is that they want a game that not only does X but is also good overall.

I tried to play Tera. Is the combat cool? I don't know, because I stopped after about 10 minutes, because of how bad the initial area / starting quests were and how bad the general chat was.

[HaemishM]

Soooooo, I've been reading a lot of forums where they've gone nuclear about the art piece...  If I were sony I'd be keeping really quiet about this.  I'd let them fester and boycott because these are people I wouldn't want in my playerbase.  They are fucking toxic.

Forum people for unreleased MMOG's are absolutely a pox upon the entire MMOG medium. They will NEVER be satisfied and can all go scratch as far as I am concerned.

Though I will say, that piece of art... it looks like utter dogshit.

[Numtini]

Forum people for unreleased MMOG's are absolutely a pox upon the entire MMOG medium. They will NEVER be satisfied and can all go scratch as far as I am concerned.

Oh come on. They're so much fun to troll. Now that I got kicked off of AbsoluteWrite, they're all I have!

[Bzalthek]

Yeah, the art is pretty bad.  Don't get me wrong.