Types of skill (WARNING - RANT)

Wandering Mist

DISCLAIMER: I am writing this as my own personal opinion, not as a moderator or part of any group.

This has been something that has bothered me for a long time, and that is people's narrowminded view when it comes to skill. This comes up most often in the endless "tab vs action combat" debate but is my no means limited to it.

Here is the oxford dictionary definition of Skill - The ability to do something well.

Now that ability to do something can be anything, from reading to speaking to solving problems to doing acrobatics. In order to do something well you need skill. So with that in mind there are 2 main types of skill found in most games:

1. mechanical skill - the ability to push the correct buttons at the correct time
2. Problem solving skill - the ability to decide what to do in any given moment

Some games rely on one more than the other, for example a turn-based game like Chess requires more problem solving skill, whereas an RTS like StarCraft 2 requires more mechanical skill. That doesn't mean that StarCraft 2 requires more skill to play than Chess does, just a different kind of skill. If that wasn't the case then everyone would be a chess grandmaster after playing a handful of matches.

So please, let's move away from this ridiculous notion that just being able to press lots of buttons very quickly automatically equals high skill. IT DOESN'T!

Thanks for reading my little rant.

EDIT (12th March 21): I didn't intend for this to become another Tab Target vs Action Combat debate, so here's an example of what I'm talking about:

You have 2 classes, a Ranger and a Mage. Both classes deal the same dps, have the exact same stats and are both fully Tab Target. The Ranger needs to do 1 button press every second, whereas the Mage needs to do 1 button press every 2 seconds.

Does the Ranger require more skill to play than the Mage just because you have to press a button twice as much? I would argue no, neither one is harder than the other, they are just different playstyles.

Dreoh

Cypher wrote: »

Dreoh wrote: »

And Vindictus does not have large-scale battles. People keep bringing up examples of action combat in games that do not do Massively Multiplayer. The biggest issue (not a unsolveable one mind you) with Action combat is getting it to work in a "more than 10-person battle" setting. I personally think Action combat in a Massively Multiplayer Online game CAN work if done well, but it requires a very good system and the rest of the game needs to also suit it.

My other example I like to use is Black Desert Online. Which does in fact have true action combat in a “Massively Multiplayer” setting. Hundreds of players can and do participate at once in large battles. The place where BDO falls short is everything else besides combat. There’s not really a PvE experience outside of mob grinding, and the life skills are bland to say the least. It’s a shallow game. But it can’t be argued that the combat system is anything but excellent. All I’m wanting is for AoC to give a tab style of combat for the tab crowd and give us action players actual action combat. That’s what I backed for and that was the interpretation I think a lot of others also had when they backed.

Splitting up combat in an attempt to please both parties will only end in failure. It's either lean in one direction, or make them hybrid target. Having some TT and some Action Target abilities will be confusing and unintuitive.

Because we're forced to have at least 25% of either, we're essentially going to be forced to switch back and forth between action camera mode and tab target camera. I'm sure you can see how that's not ideal.