Unfortunately even with all this stuff here, you have stated what I'm assuming the devs already know. They know combat is important, why else do they want to get it right and they tried that dumb quick time thing. The point of this criticism here, is you didn't offer a solution. We know the devs need to get it right, and the devs know they need to. Supporting the claim that combat should be complex doesn't help because we all know it needs to be complex.
Making a deep (not complex) combat system, is actually a very difficult thing to do. So unless they want to hire me to consult them in game design, then I can't help them much.. All I can do is layout the principles, and point them in the right direction. It's on them to walk the path, and I truly wish them the best of luck.
I think I am the only one who mentioned DS III, and I never said it was too hard but you can read that however you want to.
If flow can exist in simple turn based strategy games, as you mention chess, even though you might not be able to maintain a flow in Ashes, that doesn't mean others couldn't.
Super Mario Bros. resulted in many hours of me obtaining said flow, all that encompassed was timing jumps. Yes, I am very familiar with being "in the zone" with both physical and mental activities, and I find it hard to imagine anyone in these forums have never reached that point in their life. Mine is mostly with Billiards and Mathalons.
I am glad you found Dark Souls III easy, I read on the Steam forum for the game once someone's 3 year old beat it without much trouble too. I guess my point is on the internet I am only as good as I tell you I am.
I am sorry Ashes doesn't seem like it might challenge you. I wish you the best of luck in being challenged in the future by the upcoming titles you mention. Were any of those RPG's?
I think I am the only one who mentioned DS III, and I never said it was too hard but you can read that however you want to.
If flow can exist in simple turn based strategy games, as you mention chess, even though you might not be able to maintain a flow in Ashes, that doesn't mean others couldn't.
Super Mario Bros. resulted in many hours of me obtaining said flow, all that encompassed was timing jumps. Yes, I am very familiar with being "in the zone" with both physical and mental activities, and I find it hard to imagine anyone in these forums have never reached that point in their life. Mine is mostly with Billiards and Mathalons.
I am glad you found Dark Souls III easy, I read on the Steam forum for the game once someone's 3 year old beat it without much trouble too. I guess my point is on the internet I am only as good as I tell you I am.
I am sorry Ashes doesn't seem like it might challenge you. I wish you the best of luck in being challenged in the future by the upcoming titles you mention. Were any of those RPG's?
Hey there Azathoth.
Sorry if that came off as putting you down. That was definitely not my intention. I never put someone down for trying something that's difficult, even it's only difficult for them. I want to everyone to strive to improve themselves in anything they do in life.
The only reason why I brought it up, was that from what I read, it sounded like dark souls was difficult for you, and that you wouldn't want Ashes Of Creation to be as difficult. Souls games, are not really that difficult, because once you become fairly competent with the combat system. Which granted can take more time for some than others. Then the boss fights basically come down to route memorization, and once you realize that, every boss is the same. Because now if you die to an attack from a boss, it's often because the boss did an attack that the only way you could have avoided, was if you memorized it's attack patterns. At that point, it basically becomes die enough times until you memorize the boss, or if you don't ever want to die, play it super-super safe and just stay way out of the bosses attack range and watch all of it's attack patterns play out. Both options I find boring..
Dark soul 2 pvp was really-really good though, I very much enjoyed it and got very good at it.
Regarding flow state, I made sure to specifically say 'Deep' flow state. It might sound contrived, but there's honestly quite a big difference between the two. I also made sure to mention that the more challenging the system, and more skillful you are at the system, the deeper the state of flow you can achieve. If the game is shallow, then maybe you might experience a bit of it, but after a short amount of time, depending on how fast you learn, the game will no longer be challenging to you and as such, there's no more flow.
As I mentioned before, I play a lot of difficult games, eventually your brain starts to get better at learning these games. To the point that it takes deeper and deeper systems to actually pique your interest. And because most games can't provide that, It means I can't really enjoy most games anymore.. A friend of mine who's even more skilled than I am in many games told me she unfortunately feels the same way. She basically only plays a couple of niche games and chess for the same reason.
Exanima soon to be Sui Generis is an RPG. It's probably the most unique and deep combat system i've ever come across. It's entirely physics based. The name of the game Sui Generis, actually stands for the word 'Unique'.
Honestly, even though this game is difficult, and unique. I really do think most people would very much enjoy a game like this. As it's a breath of fresh air, and after playing it. It could be difficult for people to go back to the traditional more static systems that are normally presented in games.
I think people want games like this, but don't really realize they do. So they don't know it until they try it. These are the types of games that cause the gaming industry to advance.
The players might look a bit drunk, but that's due to player input, the more skilled the player, the more control they will have over their characters movements. Kind of like learning how to walk.
Here are some gif's showing what skill can look like once you get better at controlling your character. The game is planned to have co-op and pvp. I'm mostly going to focus on pvp, but this is one of those rare games where pve is actually interesting to me.
Again, I don't think Ashes will achieve the level of required input and skill from a user to determine how well they do in battle to meet our standards. There will obviously be some skill required, but not enough to match your high skill level and time investment.
As I said before, I hope that the titles you mention live up to your standards and provide you with a complex experience that challenges your skill level.
Again, I don't think Ashes will achieve the level of required input and skill from a user to determine how well they do in battle to meet our standards. There will obviously be some skill required, but not enough to match your high skill level and time investment.
As I said before, I hope that the titles you mention live up to your standards and provide you with a complex experience that challenges your skill level.
I doubt it will to, but i figured it was worth a try. I really want AoC to be the best game ever made. And i thoroughly believe for that to be the case. It needs to have the deepest possible combat system they can make.
Well one of the elements that devs put into a game is the gear grind and acheivement grind among others to keep players busy. But gear and acheivements are not so different from one MMORPG to another. But there is something called a skill grind(journey of playing your toon near max potential)
One example I would like to not is a fighting game called tekken. It takes a while to get the timing right. Plus learning all the moves (90 average) And then learning which moves to use against which opponents plus learning very specific counters. So after hours and hours of practice you actually see a great improvement in your abilities.
It is important to have a sense of progressioin with their toon. The opposite is making the rotation cycle of a class to boring with almost no chioce or options.
Think there should be some challenge to playing every class some more than others. Class that have a higher skill cap. (hard to play) should have a higher reward. Versus a class that is difficult to play but it just better to play an easy class cause it is just better for the team to play the easy class.(better dps better heals better tank)
Well one of the elements that devs put into a game is the gear grind and acheivement grind among others to keep players busy. But gear and acheivements are not so different from one MMORPG to another. But there is something called a skill grind(journey of playing your toon near max potential)
One example I would like to not is a fighting game called tekken. It takes a while to get the timing right. Plus learning all the moves (90 average) And then learning which moves to use against which opponents plus learning very specific counters. So after hours and hours of practice you actually see a great improvement in your abilities.
It is important to have a sense of progressioin with their toon. The opposite is making the rotation cycle of a class to boring with almost no chioce or options.
Think there should be some challenge to playing every class some more than others. Class that have a higher skill cap. (hard to play) should have a higher reward. Versus a class that is difficult to play but it just better to play an easy class cause it is just better for the team to play the easy class.(better dps better heals better tank)
The problem is that people think a number on their character getting bigger = progress. When in reality it's quite shallow and meaningless.
I do agree though that it could be nice if people were able to choose different classes with different skill ceilings.
It seems like there are enough MMO veterans out there that a high skill ceiling should be the goal. I know for me personally, I could never go all in on another MMO unless the combat system is very deep and unique/customizable.
You will probably hate me for bringing this up but I think what we are ultimately talking about are the things which bring down all great MMO's in my personal experience. In my opinion WoW for me died as the result of two main contributing factors. Everything was made oversimplified. Everything. It all became to easy and therefore boring and uninteresting. The second and just as important is that the tight-nit feeling of community was completely decimated with stuff like LFG, LFR, mixing all the servers together etc..etc...
Now, I'd like to bring up an example but preface it with making it clear I'm am not trying to make a dig at anyone at all. I like all the developers and they seem like good people working hard on a great project.
I was watching a recent stream last night in which the lead game designer(?) was playing what appeared to be a light armor/ranged/magic type of class. He kept running into melee NPC/monsters and getting bashed over and over again. For the game to succeed you absolutely cannot cater the game around this kind of interaction. He kept saying something like, "there to high level". Well, I'm not so sure they were. You are a ranged class, maybe slightly lower level and you were doing plenty of damage. You just can't stand there and let them beat on you. You have to kite, run, avoid attracting agro from surrounding beasts, etc..etc... Remember that freeze spell you were using? Use that, get distance and then unload. Rinse repeat. This is a staple of MMO's which has somehow been perverted into people thinking they should just be able to stand around press buttons to win.
These are the kinds of things I'm waiting to see evolve before I help fund the project. To me there is no point in playing unless there is a great challenge and sense of community. On the community end, aoc seems to be on the right path.
The more difficult you make the gameplay the more players you will alienate, I understand the feeling of accomplishment from being able to play a difficult class at the highest level but that type of system really doesn't have a place in a game that is trying to attract a large player base.
@Roshawnterrell So I thought about your argument and I have to ask, what mmo's do you consider to offer "positive psychology" flow?
Just about all mmo's are balanced around group play hence the massively multiplayer online and every game you mentioned is built for small groups in a controlled competitive environment. If anything I feel like you don't understand that there is going to be complexity and depth built into the game, but not at your level (solo). The complexity/depth is going to come from massive groups doing pvp with each other and this is going to incorporate calculation on group optimization.
Example, we have a 100 people that you will need to fill roles with using the 64 supposed classes that Ashes will be offering. So how will you build your group comp? Will you go a mix of 30 fighters/tanks, 30 rogues/rangers, 20 mages, and rest random supports? Out of the 20 different mages which would be the best for dps or cc? What kind of supports we should be putting into out group for buffing or debuffing? But the world is not perfect and so you are forced to work with a comp of (same order) 15, 40, 15, and 30, so maybe we should look for supports that can debuff by making players take extra bleed damage because of our high number of rogues. Then take our 15 mages and get them to specialize more into CC instead of dps so we can utilize the rogues movement speed and do hit and run?
The game (correct me if I am wrong) is balancing around group play. The real question is not the combat per say aka QTE bar or being able to dodge as being complex/deep, but in my opinion how diverse and deep the class system is going to be. I like to think of it as Dota, but with more people and you can have them run specific classes/builds to win 30 vs 60 or 50 vs 100, since I am going to assume most of the guilds will go casual so any coordination with a small tight knit group will carry the day. Reminds me of the Rooks and Kings video's which on youtube the Clarion Call series if you are trying to get an idea of where I am coming from as my English is not the best.
@Roshawnterrell So I thought about your argument and I have to ask, what mmo's do you consider to offer "positive psychology" flow?
There are currently none that can sustain it for prolonged periods of time. Hence the reason why the industry is in it's current state of decay. Hence the reason why there is so much demand for something like what Ashes Of Creation promises. Which is a world that feels truly alive and immersive.
Regarding your description of balancing around group play. That's not depth, that's just playing with numbers, I would even argue that it's bad game design that actually over complicates the system. The best games are ones with very simple rules, that allow for a lot depth.
Lastly, the system you describe, is already how most MMO's currently work, and this is where it's got us..
The reason why most games I've mentioned are smaller games, is probably because all of those games actually trying something new. It's hard to get funding and resources to do new things, and MMO's require a lot of money and resources to make. Most companies just pump out the same thing every year.
I'm familiar with Rook's and King's and Eve online. I think Eve is currently the most 'Alive' MMO out there. This is due to the fact that Eve's world is essentially entirely generated by the players themselves. The worlds story unfolds uniquely due to the accumulative actions of all the players. It's also one of the longest surviving MMO's out there with probably the most dedicated group of players out of any MMO. Eve's world system is a shining example of what good game design is.
The only problem I find with Eve, is the shallowness of it's combat system. I realized the 1 v 1 ship encounters didn't allow for much skill. But I was fine with that as long as the larger battles were interesting. I was hoping the battles be like playing a high skill RTS like age of empires or starcraft, but instead of commanding npc units, you were commanding people. The problem is that Eve's combat is nothing like that, most of the tactics come down to the commander telling everyone to aim at one specific target to maximize dps until it pops. Rinse and repeat. Rook's and King's try to add some skill to it, but their attempts though admirable, are largely futile. They don't actually own any large amounts of territory or have much influence on the world of Eve, because tactics and strategy largely does not matter.
If tactics and strategy did matter, you wouldn't see it in such a isolated case like with Rook's and King's. You would see it in nearly every battle. The commanders leading large wars would be like top Esport starcraft players guiding their armies to victory. Just like in real life, great commanders that were smart and had the highest knowledge and skill dominated. They nearly took over the world, multiple times. But that's not what you see at all in Eve, unfortunately.
The best game I think, would be something like Eve, with a very deep combat system on all levels. To the point where a single warrior can be greatly skilled taking on multiple people with ease. And a commander can be greatly skilled, effectively commanding armies, and being able to take over the world. No game like this exists (yet), unfortunately.
DEVS! PLEASE LISTEN TO THIS PERSON!!!! TRUMPET THIS OVER AND OVER!!! Kitzi said:
One of the things that attracted me to this game is (forgive me I forget the name of it) the little bar that appears on the screen to time your attacks. This adds a degree of skill to the game while deliberately taking away from the fast paced spam the button as fast as you can gameplay that is in every other MMO I have played. I like this a lot.
I play BDO and I absolutely hate the combat system. It's all memorized twitch responses and switching between characters is so hard for someone like me who only has a few hours to play a week it's not even worth it. The learning curve is way too steep. Yeah, it's more interesting than click a button - cast a spell. But more interesting and better are two different things.
In an MMO, the things that have made combat fun for me are
Monitoring resource spending. Having to decide between casting a big spell and burn through my mana or a small spell to last longer in the fight. It can be annoying at times, especially when the system is too restrictive, but having this resource have meaning is important.
Group dynamics. Beyond the tank/healer/damage, when games have mechanics that make you rely on cooporation and communication with each other to succeed. Tank swap coordination, classes that provide buffs that help other classes, etc. Some MMOs even have combos that one class can set up and then another class follows through with.
The need for crowd control and strategy. Running through and easily smashing everything without thought or care is fun to start, but gets really old after a while.
Threat control. Not only as a tank, but all roles. When threat is a nonissue it makes for fairly boring gameplay.
Needing a healer. I love playing a healer. It's probably my favorite role, but so many games either eliminate this role all together or make self-healing so easy for every class that it's a nonissue. Have players depend on each other!
This video confirms my suspicion, that the devs haven't put as much thought into their combat as they should. As mentioned in the video, i admire the devs passion. But they need to understand the depth of the combat system, is one of the most integral aspects to making a world feel truly alive and immersive. They need to get this right, if they want any chance of achieving their dreams.
It seems like there are enough MMO veterans out there that a high skill ceiling should be the goal. I know for me personally, I could never go all in on another MMO unless the combat system is very deep and unique/customizable.
You will probably hate me for bringing this up but I think what we are ultimately talking about are the things which bring down all great MMO's in my personal experience. In my opinion WoW for me died as the result of two main contributing factors. Everything was made oversimplified. Everything. It all became to easy and therefore boring and uninteresting. The second and just as important is that the tight-nit feeling of community was completely decimated with stuff like LFG, LFR, mixing all the servers together etc..etc...
Now, I'd like to bring up an example but preface it with making it clear I'm am not trying to make a dig at anyone at all. I like all the developers and they seem like good people working hard on a great project.
I was watching a recent stream last night in which the lead game designer(?) was playing what appeared to be a light armor/ranged/magic type of class. He kept running into melee NPC/monsters and getting bashed over and over again. For the game to succeed you absolutely cannot cater the game around this kind of interaction. He kept saying something like, "there to high level". Well, I'm not so sure they were. You are a ranged class, maybe slightly lower level and you were doing plenty of damage. You just can't stand there and let them beat on you. You have to kite, run, avoid attracting agro from surrounding beasts, etc..etc... Remember that freeze spell you were using? Use that, get distance and then unload. Rinse repeat. This is a staple of MMO's which has somehow been perverted into people thinking they should just be able to stand around press buttons to win.
These are the kinds of things I'm waiting to see evolve before I help fund the project. To me there is no point in playing unless there is a great challenge and sense of community. On the community end, aoc seems to be on the right path.
I'm glad to see that other people like you and sussuro, see and agree with my perspective as well.
@Roshawnterrell, trust me, I've experienced MMOs at this stage of developement before and what they've shown was a tried and true method for an Alpha technical combat build (that is; relatively easy/fast to put together for the purposes of testing).
Once the first Beta drops I have no doubts that they will give us a combat system that will be satisfying and push the iterative process in the right direction.
@Sternzy, Steven seemed to be role playing as "the inept leader"; honestly, doing something you know you shouldn't be able to do and making sure you can't can be a great form of testing.
Despite what I've said I encourage both of you to continue being critical. Cheers!!!
It comes down to what people prefer, the devs will ultimately decide whether the combat will be 'deep' or not, there needs to be some complexity in game mechanics or it will get boring but if it's too complex then others won't even bother to understand how it works. We just have to wait and see
It comes down to what people prefer, the devs will ultimately decide whether the combat will be 'deep' or not, there needs to be some complexity in game mechanics or it will get boring but if it's too complex then others won't even bother to understand how it works. We just have to wait and see
The most deep games i've played have had very simple core mechanics.
Comments
If flow can exist in simple turn based strategy games, as you mention chess, even though you might not be able to maintain a flow in Ashes, that doesn't mean others couldn't.
Super Mario Bros. resulted in many hours of me obtaining said flow, all that encompassed was timing jumps. Yes, I am very familiar with being "in the zone" with both physical and mental activities, and I find it hard to imagine anyone in these forums have never reached that point in their life. Mine is mostly with Billiards and Mathalons.
I am glad you found Dark Souls III easy, I read on the Steam forum for the game once someone's 3 year old beat it without much trouble too. I guess my point is on the internet I am only as good as I tell you I am.
I am sorry Ashes doesn't seem like it might challenge you. I wish you the best of luck in being challenged in the future by the upcoming titles you mention. Were any of those RPG's?
Sorry if that came off as putting you down. That was definitely not my intention. I never put someone down for trying something that's difficult, even it's only difficult for them. I want to everyone to strive to improve themselves in anything they do in life.
The only reason why I brought it up, was that from what I read, it sounded like dark souls was difficult for you, and that you wouldn't want Ashes Of Creation to be as difficult. Souls games, are not really that difficult, because once you become fairly competent with the combat system. Which granted can take more time for some than others. Then the boss fights basically come down to route memorization, and once you realize that, every boss is the same. Because now if you die to an attack from a boss, it's often because the boss did an attack that the only way you could have avoided, was if you memorized it's attack patterns. At that point, it basically becomes die enough times until you memorize the boss, or if you don't ever want to die, play it super-super safe and just stay way out of the bosses attack range and watch all of it's attack patterns play out. Both options I find boring..
Dark soul 2 pvp was really-really good though, I very much enjoyed it and got very good at it.
Regarding flow state, I made sure to specifically say 'Deep' flow state. It might sound contrived, but there's honestly quite a big difference between the two. I also made sure to mention that the more challenging the system, and more skillful you are at the system, the deeper the state of flow you can achieve. If the game is shallow, then maybe you might experience a bit of it, but after a short amount of time, depending on how fast you learn, the game will no longer be challenging to you and as such, there's no more flow.
As I mentioned before, I play a lot of difficult games, eventually your brain starts to get better at learning these games. To the point that it takes deeper and deeper systems to actually pique your interest. And because most games can't provide that, It means I can't really enjoy most games anymore.. A friend of mine who's even more skilled than I am in many games told me she unfortunately feels the same way. She basically only plays a couple of niche games and chess for the same reason.
Exanima soon to be Sui Generis is an RPG. It's probably the most unique and deep combat system i've ever come across. It's entirely physics based. The name of the game Sui Generis, actually stands for the word 'Unique'.
Here's a video showing some of it's really cool and unique gameplay: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WqaRqih7Cuw
Honestly, even though this game is difficult, and unique. I really do think most people would very much enjoy a game like this. As it's a breath of fresh air, and after playing it. It could be difficult for people to go back to the traditional more static systems that are normally presented in games.
I think people want games like this, but don't really realize they do. So they don't know it until they try it. These are the types of games that cause the gaming industry to advance.
The players might look a bit drunk, but that's due to player input, the more skilled the player, the more control they will have over their characters movements. Kind of like learning how to walk.
Here are some gif's showing what skill can look like once you get better at controlling your character. The game is planned to have co-op and pvp. I'm mostly going to focus on pvp, but this is one of those rare games where pve is actually interesting to me.
As I said before, I hope that the titles you mention live up to your standards and provide you with a complex experience that challenges your skill level.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qNgjMwwUoUg
https://youtu.be/D-aiFhS2DQQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bvoum82yJa4
Details:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FWPy65WA2aA
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=436694425
One example I would like to not is a fighting game called tekken. It takes a while to get the timing right. Plus learning all the moves (90 average) And then learning which moves to use against which opponents plus learning very specific counters. So after hours and hours of practice you actually see a great improvement in your abilities.
It is important to have a sense of progressioin with their toon. The opposite is making the rotation cycle of a class to boring with almost no chioce or options.
Think there should be some challenge to playing every class some more than others.
Class that have a higher skill cap. (hard to play) should have a higher reward. Versus a class that is difficult to play but it just better to play an easy class cause it is just better for the team to play the easy class.(better dps better heals better tank)
I do agree though that it could be nice if people were able to choose different classes with different skill ceilings.
You will probably hate me for bringing this up but I think what we are ultimately talking about are the things which bring down all great MMO's in my personal experience. In my opinion WoW for me died as the result of two main contributing factors. Everything was made oversimplified. Everything. It all became to easy and therefore boring and uninteresting. The second and just as important is that the tight-nit feeling of community was completely decimated with stuff like LFG, LFR, mixing all the servers together etc..etc...
Now, I'd like to bring up an example but preface it with making it clear I'm am not trying to make a dig at anyone at all. I like all the developers and they seem like good people working hard on a great project.
I was watching a recent stream last night in which the lead game designer(?) was playing what appeared to be a light armor/ranged/magic type of class. He kept running into melee NPC/monsters and getting bashed over and over again. For the game to succeed you absolutely cannot cater the game around this kind of interaction. He kept saying something like, "there to high level". Well, I'm not so sure they were. You are a ranged class, maybe slightly lower level and you were doing plenty of damage. You just can't stand there and let them beat on you. You have to kite, run, avoid attracting agro from surrounding beasts, etc..etc... Remember that freeze spell you were using? Use that, get distance and then unload. Rinse repeat. This is a staple of MMO's which has somehow been perverted into people thinking they should just be able to stand around press buttons to win.
These are the kinds of things I'm waiting to see evolve before I help fund the project. To me there is no point in playing unless there is a great challenge and sense of community. On the community end, aoc seems to be on the right path.
Just about all mmo's are balanced around group play hence the massively multiplayer online and every game you mentioned is built for small groups in a controlled competitive environment. If anything I feel like you don't understand that there is going to be complexity and depth built into the game, but not at your level (solo). The complexity/depth is going to come from massive groups doing pvp with each other and this is going to incorporate calculation on group optimization.
Example, we have a 100 people that you will need to fill roles with using the 64 supposed classes that Ashes will be offering. So how will you build your group comp? Will you go a mix of 30 fighters/tanks, 30 rogues/rangers, 20 mages, and rest random supports? Out of the 20 different mages which would be the best for dps or cc? What kind of supports we should be putting into out group for buffing or debuffing? But the world is not perfect and so you are forced to work with a comp of (same order) 15, 40, 15, and 30, so maybe we should look for supports that can debuff by making players take extra bleed damage because of our high number of rogues. Then take our 15 mages and get them to specialize more into CC instead of dps so we can utilize the rogues movement speed and do hit and run?
The game (correct me if I am wrong) is balancing around group play. The real question is not the combat per say aka QTE bar or being able to dodge as being complex/deep, but in my opinion how diverse and deep the class system is going to be. I like to think of it as Dota, but with more people and you can have them run specific classes/builds to win 30 vs 60 or 50 vs 100, since I am going to assume most of the guilds will go casual so any coordination with a small tight knit group will carry the day. Reminds me of the Rooks and Kings video's which on youtube the Clarion Call series if you are trying to get an idea of where I am coming from as my English is not the best.
Regarding your description of balancing around group play. That's not depth, that's just playing with numbers, I would even argue that it's bad game design that actually over complicates the system. The best games are ones with very simple rules, that allow for a lot depth.
Lastly, the system you describe, is already how most MMO's currently work, and this is where it's got us..
The reason why most games I've mentioned are smaller games, is probably because all of those games actually trying something new. It's hard to get funding and resources to do new things, and MMO's require a lot of money and resources to make. Most companies just pump out the same thing every year.
I'm familiar with Rook's and King's and Eve online. I think Eve is currently the most 'Alive' MMO out there. This is due to the fact that Eve's world is essentially entirely generated by the players themselves. The worlds story unfolds uniquely due to the accumulative actions of all the players. It's also one of the longest surviving MMO's out there with probably the most dedicated group of players out of any MMO. Eve's world system is a shining example of what good game design is.
The only problem I find with Eve, is the shallowness of it's combat system. I realized the 1 v 1 ship encounters didn't allow for much skill. But I was fine with that as long as the larger battles were interesting. I was hoping the battles be like playing a high skill RTS like age of empires or starcraft, but instead of commanding npc units, you were commanding people. The problem is that Eve's combat is nothing like that, most of the tactics come down to the commander telling everyone to aim at one specific target to maximize dps until it pops. Rinse and repeat. Rook's and King's try to add some skill to it, but their attempts though admirable, are largely futile. They don't actually own any large amounts of territory or have much influence on the world of Eve, because tactics and strategy largely does not matter.
If tactics and strategy did matter, you wouldn't see it in such a isolated case like with Rook's and King's. You would see it in nearly every battle. The commanders leading large wars would be like top Esport starcraft players guiding their armies to victory. Just like in real life, great commanders that were smart and had the highest knowledge and skill dominated. They nearly took over the world, multiple times. But that's not what you see at all in Eve, unfortunately.
The best game I think, would be something like Eve, with a very deep combat system on all levels. To the point where a single warrior can be greatly skilled taking on multiple people with ease. And a commander can be greatly skilled, effectively commanding armies, and being able to take over the world. No game like this exists (yet), unfortunately.
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I'm glad to see that other people like you and sussuro, see and agree with my perspective as well.
Once the first Beta drops I have no doubts that they will give us a combat system that will be satisfying and push the iterative process in the right direction.
@Sternzy, Steven seemed to be role playing as "the inept leader"; honestly, doing something you know you shouldn't be able to do and making sure you can't can be a great form of testing.
Despite what I've said I encourage both of you to continue being critical. Cheers!!!