In terms of 'games that are not necessarily otherwise great proper MMOs', Blade and Soul is among the best as far as I know, and Onigiri is a specific type of thing that works decently due to being very spacing dependent, but isn't necessarily 'not tab targeted' either.
All these games are relatively lower mobility games, which I feel is somewhat required for the RPG part of MMORPG to happen. Even in voice chat, you can't really roleplay (not necessarily heavy RP, just sometimes 'basically any') if you can't rely on spacing or make predictions about situations.
The 'problem' with Tab Targeting in my opinion is that it often takes the 'spacing' aspect out of the game too, which feels to me to be a meaningful downgrade to the experience. Building in any type of 'tab targeting works but your spacing determines your damage or effectiveness' essentially makes the 'tab target' mode useless for difficult content, and refusing to build that in leads to the 'action target' mode useless for medium content.
Overall, Neverwinter does it best, even if you don't like the abilities in the game, you can sort of imagine what the game would feel like with more satisfying abilities, so maybe try that if you haven't.
You might be delighted to hear Intrepid´s combat designer Douglas Miller worked at cryptic, the studio behind neverwinter
Although he did not seem to be part of the inital combat dev/design crew, he had his hands on class balancing, designing new classes and PvE encounters.
I hope he does a good job at bringing over the action part to AoC, but still adapting to AoC´s requirements of slower methodical and tactical gameplay, especially for large scale PvP.
To me the foundations of an online game are pretty basic, challenge players via other players and if devs engineer things within that, that are addictive and enjoyable then you'll have a product that people will keep on coming back to (most days, not every year or so "xxx expansion is coming out, I'll play again then!").
The thing is, I fully agree with this as the foundation for a non-persistent online game.
It is that persistency of MMORPG's that alters the paradigm.
An online FPS game where you cant attack other players would suck. As would an online RTS, BR, MOBA, 4X, racing game, fighting game, almost anything.
The only two genres I can think of where there is no inherent need for player confrontation in order to make an online aspect work are RPG's, and flight sims. Both of these games *can* have that PvP aspect, but neither *need* it.
You're more than welcome to say you prefer PvP. However, objective data (the fact that PvP in MMORPG's is still a niche within a niche) should prove to you that what you consider a foundation for an online game is not what the bulk consider the foundation.
Ashes absolutely will have PvP as a foundation to the game - but that doesnt mean it is a requirement of the genre. If anything, that PvP foundation is going to knock 10 years off the life of this game.
The game will die without pvp. It will be like all other mmos under pve players. No siege wars, no guild wars, no end game and no corruption.
I must work within the framework because pve people want corruption, pvp players do not want corruption.
Therefore, you can keep repeating we are pvp focussed but we are not at all. If all pvp was bad all mobas would fail and all competitive simulators would fail.
Most people think an open world withactive pvp is true pvp when really it is the laziest, blandest and depravic pvp in the world.
If they removed PvP now it would, without a doubt.
However, don't expect Ashes to have a lifespan even close to that of WoW or EQ2 - let alone the original EQ, all of which are still going strong (well, still going).
Therefore, you can keep repeating we are pvp focussed but we are not at all. If all pvp was bad all mobas would fail and all competitive simulators would fail.
The major difference between MOBA and MMORG PvP is that in a MOBA, everything resets constantly. Lose a match and it doesn't matter, you just go in to the next one in the same state you started the last. In an MMORPG, if you lose, you lose something that you can no longer take in to the next fight, but the person that just beat you is able to take in to their next fight.
This is a massive advantage to the person that wins - especially people that have a >50% win rate. However, someone has to have a <50% win rate, and eventually these people realize that they simply aren't making it in said MMORPG, and so leave. Since in order for someone to have a >50% win rate, someone else needs to have a <50% win rate (basic math), and since people with <50% win rates just left, there will then be a new group of people that have to start having a <50% win rate, and the cycle will start all over again.
This is why all PvP MMO's have a history of starting out with a large (or even massive) population, but before long end up with only the few hardcore PvP players left - and there aren't really enough of them to support more than two AAA MMO's at a time.
I'm not sure what you reference. I love the conversations we have but there is no pvp xp. It makes no difference if u die in pve or pvp in Ashes.
There is no progression for pvp only leader boards. There is no pve progression only leader boards.
When I can buy any gear and also boost to max, I do not even need to pve.
I do not understand how you can counter the concepts with wow and eq.
Swg was very popular and very pvx until cu2 which made it like eq and wow and the playerbase died.
You will always back end game. I will always back gameplay.
I take your input and I do try to give your pve players enough areas but of course our pvp areas will have a lot of extra resources and sources which pvp players will sell to pvd players.
If I could count on all players to give a good game I would not need to separate the game modes to ensure a decent experience for all parties.
I'm not sure what you reference. I love the conversations we have but there is no pvp xp. It makes no difference if u die in pve or pvp in Ashes.
There is no progression for pvp only leader boards. There is no pve progression only leader boards.
Yeah, but players still stand to lose a lot in PvP in Ashes.
Caravans , nodes, freeholds. Not to mention the fact that a loss in PvP alters the content you have access to.
There are a LOT of players that are not even going to stick it out though one node loss. In Ashes - especially if a player sticks to smaller nodes - there is a real possibility that players could lose 3 or 4 nodes in a year.
Hell, a lot of people will just quit the game if they lose two or three caravans in a row.
I'm not saying Ashes should change any of this - Intrepid will never recover from that.
All I am saying is that players need to look at the game in a realistic fashion - which is that the games life as a multi-server game of the scale Intrepid wants it to be is likely to be limited to five years. After that, there will probably only be one server per region, and some of the smaller regions (Oceania, specifically) will likely be merged in to NA servers.
Compare that to a game like EQ that still has 10 servers running after 23 years, and yeah, that is a shorter life than an MMO could (should) have.
Yes. I understand. I have done my best but there is a lot of work to do. I have smuggled other games into my zones but I do not feel confident changing kickstarter parts because I do not want is or myself sued.
At the end of the day, I must build the game promised by Steven. Hell, I have to suffer the worst kind of open development at the moment lol. It is not easy making changes when you have to fight the same idiots day after day just to instill a single concept.
Yes. I understand. I have done my best but there is a lot of work to do. I have smuggled other games into my zones but I do not feel confident changing kickstarter parts because I do not want is or myself sued.
At the end of the day, I must build the game promised by Steven. Hell, I have to suffer the worst kind of open development at the moment lol. It is not easy making changes when you have to fight the same idiots day after day just to instill a single concept.
Just curious here @Neurath , but I have seen several times you write posts like you are somehow part of the development team. Calling it "my game" etc. Are you actually hired by Intrepid, or did you just plonk down the $500 like the rest of us in A1? I am pretty sure it's the latter, so I am mostly interested if it's just your peculiar (to me) way of referencing the game, or if you are really so invested in this game succeeding that you feel like you are actually part of the development team?
I mean no offense at all - you do you - but the curiosity is killing me here.
You will always back end game. I will always back gameplay.
This is it! great line.
Most mmo addicts will always quickly look to the overview of an mmo by looking at how they fall within it at its conclusion of content "end game" but what is that really a sign of...Narcissism.
The gameplay and deep/interesting/diverse systems are always 2nd to these people, they're just after the status, to appear on or near the top after all the conquest.
The mmorpg genre...cheated onto the scene, other genres besides RTS games weren't polished enough or graphically ready to have a chance to compete, WoW came into an open field and had that "fine and ready" harvester to sweep up every single boy and man lucky enough to have internet before 2005-2010.
The mmo genre has, essentially, been a victim of WoW's massive popularity and success, it's a game made in the very early 2000's, it does not have any real groundwork or needed harsh and experienced criticism for gameplay entertainment for a 3d game and open world game and there was barely any competition against it due to costs and work involved.
The mmorpg genre, at its foundation, is screaming to get the gameplay that other genre's possess, once it's there, will see the genre jump onto the scene again in a big way!
When you look at how a very simple mmo system like FF14 has leaped into first place of the mmorpgs, with solo story content, instanced areas and 5 man max or so dungeon'ing, mmorpg's aren't anywhere close to a real game you'd spend most days on, tame PvE only content.... it's nothing more than a very casual experience, a chat zone, a sub game to your main game ( LoL / Fifa / FPS game ).
MAKE MMO GAMEPLAY GREAT AGAIN! PvX is the best! ( copium inhale ).
@Noaani the MMO is the main focus, nothing else, it's needed, more players need more players, not to be cuddled by the RPG element being the number 1 focus! As long as there are passionate RPG/Fantasy devs, it will remain as an rpg regardless of focus on player vs player entertainment!
Just look at league of legends, we need casuals happy to earn "gold rank" and dedicated players happy and proud to earn a little bit more with platinum and beyond, not this quit and wait mentality, waiting for the next expansion and not taking it as their main gaming experience!
Most mmo addicts will always quickly look to the overview of an mmo by looking at how they fall within it at its conclusion of content "end game" but what is that really a sign of...Narcissism.
No, it is realism.
In most MMORPG's, 90% of all online time from all characters is spent at the level cap.
If you are looking at playing a new game, would you look at what you are doing 10% of the time, or what you are doing 90% of the time?
At absolute best, Ashes will be 85/15. The stated desire to have a longer leveling experience is still miniscule in comparison to the time players will spend at the level cap. The point isn't to spread out the leveling process to make it so long that players never get there, because all this does is segregate players in a manner where many simply will not ever catch up - people tend to give up if leveling is too hard.
The mmo genre has, essentially, been a victim of WoW's massive popularity and success, it's a game made in the very early 2000's, it does not have any real groundwork or needed harsh and experienced criticism for gameplay entertainment for a 3d game and open world game and there was barely any competition against it due to costs and work involved.
This is something I agree with - but only sort of.
WoW had a LOT of criticism when it launched - but that was from experienced MMORPG players. Blizzard basically just said "but this game isn't for you, you should play EQ or EQ2, SWG, EVE or L2. We made WoW for Warcraft 3 fans".
To say WoW never received criticism is to say you weren't looking around much in 2004/2005.
I do agree that WoW doesn't have any real groundwork, but that is not because the genre didn't have it. EQ laid a fantastic foundation for the MMO genre (taking note of the mistakes of the games that came before it, rather than building on said games), and EQ2, SWG and L2 all built upon that. WoW built beside that foundation - they were aware of it, but they ignored most of it.
That foundation that EQ laid saw players have enough content - that was the key. Early EQ developers kept content up their sleeve - if players completed all the content in the game, they always had something new ready to release. There was almost never a point where a dozen guilds in early EQ had completed the top end encounter in the game before the next encounter was released.
EQ2 also did this - I was at the top end in EQ2, and literally never had more than a week or two before a new content drop where we were out of things we wanted to take on.
This is where the genre is a victim of WoW - a dearth of content. The foundation of the genre does not have this - WoW introduced it.
When you look at how a very simple mmo system like FF14 has leaped into first place of the mmorpgs, with solo story content, instanced areas and 5 man max or so dungeon'ing, mmorpg's aren't anywhere close to a real game you'd spend most days on, tame PvE only content.... it's nothing more than a very casual experience, a chat zone, a sub game to your main game ( LoL / Fifa / FPS game ).
I agree with your assessment of FFXIV here, but I disagree with it in regards to you assuming that is the PvE aspect of MMORPG's as a whole. FFXIV is - at it's core - a casual game. Complaining that it is a casual game is obviously unproductive.
I'll translate what you are saying in to cars - because why not?
You are looking at a VW Golf, and saying sure, it's a fine car to get you from point A to point B, but as soon as you take it on to Nürburgring, it doesn't hold up to other cars at all!
The thing with a PvP game is that they burn bright, but burn fast. A game like FFXIV is designed to burn low and slow - you don't get to complain about that when that is what it's design is. All you get to do is the same thing as me - chose to not play it.
Where you are making the mistake here though, is in assuming that FFXIV - that burning low and slow - is all a PvE MMORPG can be.
Pointing you again to my above point about EQ and EQ2 always adding new content (seriously, coming up to 29 expansions for EQ - when L2 has had the equivalent of 4 in it's entire life). What this does is take a game that burns bright - and would thus burn fast - and gives it more fuel. This results in a game that burns bright, but also burns long.
In a PvP MMO' you simply can't do this. You can add actual new things to a game when you add PvE. Actual new experiences that players have never come across. In a PvP game, the main thing people are doing is still fighting other players. After a while on any given server, you get to know the people on said server well enough that they are no different to a games AI - they have no surprises left to throw at you (at least, this is what I saw in Archeage after a few years). When your main enemy is inherently the same, there is no real way to add new fuel to that fast burning game.
Sure, you may well get sick of fighting the same PvE encounter in a PvE focused MMO - but the developers can always add a new one, with new abilities - or even with old abilities that it uses in a different way. The thing with PvP though, is that in order to introduce a new enemy, they need to attract a new player, and have that player level and gear up to be on par with you.
Noaani the MMO is the main focus, nothing else, it's needed, more players need more players, not to be cuddled by the RPG element being the number 1 focus! As long as there are passionate RPG/Fantasy devs, it will remain as an rpg regardless of focus on player vs player entertainment!
Just look at league of legends, we need casuals happy to earn "gold rank" and dedicated players happy and proud earn a little bit more with platinum and beyond, not this quit and wait mentality, waiting for the next expansion and not taking it as their main gaming experience!
Not sure where I ever said that the MMO was not the main focus, nor that we don't need more and more players.
I'm also not asking for RPG elements - I don't give a shit about playing a role, you have me mixed up with someone else, I think.
Perhaps you are just using PvE and RPG synonymously here, in which case all I can do is point out how massively mislead you are.
If anything, PvP cuddles you more than top end PvE. In PvP, a player will win 100% of the time. The only question is exactly which player wins. In top end PvE, that could be as low as literally 1% of the time (I have come up against PvE encounters where my guild had a total of less than one successful kill per 100 serious attempts - good PvE gets that hard). Sure, if you are only fighting low end content you will never see this - but if you have never seen this you also shouldn't be talking generalizations about PvE content.
I do agree with your last point about needing players that don't just leave the game and wait for the next expansion. However, my experience tells me that this is almost entirely exclusive to WoW (or at least much more common with WoW). This was simply not a 'thing' in EQ2 in the decade I played it.
So, rather than saying "we need players that don't leave the game when they feel they have nothing left to do in said game" (which is why players leave a game with the intention of coming back with an expansion), what you should be asking for is developers that release new content before players are finished with the existing content.
Basically, you are taking a failing of a specific developer mindset, looking at player reaction to that (seriously, are you begrudging players that leave a game when they are no longer having fun in that game?), and you are then blaming the players rather than the developers that put those players in that situation.
There is a simple fact of life. If people are not having fun in a leisure activity, they will not carry on with said activity. This is why PvP in a persistent world has caused more harm than good in most MMO's to date. It causes more people to not have fun more often, leading to them leaving the game because of course they will leave the game if they are not having fun.
You may be upset with that because those players are needed for YOU to have fun, but again, that is a failing of PvP in a persistent world - without those players that lose to you, YOU aren't having fun any more. Those other players are your content, and when they leave because they are not having fun being your content, you suddenly find yourself with less content.
The big issue with PvP in a persistent game is that you need to reward the winners, but you also need to find a way to retain the losers, and also find a way to keep those losers competitive with the winners that keep getting rewards for winning.
This is why games like LoL or basically any BR of FPS game works. They reset.
Sure, a game could hope to be like L2 and retain a miniscule population for a good amount of time - but most of L2's current population play it for nostalgia (generated at a time when players playing the game didn't know any better in regards to an MMORPG). Nostalgia is something a new game simply doesn't have, so you can't really rely on it for a new game.
Just look at league of legends, we need casuals happy to earn "gold rank" and dedicated players happy and proud earn a little bit more with platinum and beyond, not this quit and wait mentality, waiting for the next expansion and not taking it as their main gaming experience!
Just look at league of legends, we need casuals happy to earn "gold rank" and dedicated players happy and proud earn a little bit more with platinum and beyond, not this quit and wait mentality, waiting for the next expansion and not taking it as their main gaming experience!
/ epic rant "completed!"
I can really appreciate that approach
So, maybe you can help me out here.
Are you suggesting players should stick with the game even if they are not enjoying it, or are you saying the developers should do what they can to ensure people continue to enjoy the game?
One of these I absolutely agree with, the other I can't see how anyone could think.
Pointing you again to my above point about EQ and EQ2 always adding new content (seriously, coming up to 29 expansions for EQ - when L2 has had the equivalent of 4 in it's entire life). What this does is take a game that burns bright - and would thus burn fast - and gives it more fuel. This results in a game that burns bright, but also burns long.
You keep dismissing L2's updates, but each of them added new mechanics, new gear, new mobs, new bosses, new locations (which brought new castles and fortresses in the older updates), new skills and rebalance to old ones, with some updates changing the world completely or adding new races and classes.
I'm sure that EQ's expansions are cool and big too, but if you combine 2 L2 updates (that came out ~every 6 months) into one yearly update, I bet they'd be close to EQ's in size and in quantity, even though L2 came out several years later.
There's also this small article that tells even more detail about a group of updates, just to show the approximate size of them better.
In a PvP MMO' you simply can't do this. You can add actual new things to a game when you add PvE. Actual new experiences that players have never come across. In a PvP game, the main thing people are doing is still fighting other players. After a while on any given server, you get to know the people on said server well enough that they are no different to a games AI - they have no surprises left to throw at you (at least, this is what I saw in Archeage after a few years). When your main enemy is inherently the same, there is no real way to add new fuel to that fast burning game.
I dunno how fast AA got its updates, but in L2 you could fight the same person across several updates and get different results because of the class rebalances or new gear that either of you acquired or new people that either of your parties got (cause usually you'd be pvping in parties instead of 1v1).
If anything, PvP cuddles you more than top end PvE. In PvP, a player will win 100% of the time. The only question is exactly which player wins. In top end PvE, that could be as low as literally 1% of the time (I have come up against PvE encounters where my guild had a total of less than one successful kill per 100 serious attempts - good PvE gets that hard). Sure, if you are only fighting low end content you will never see this - but if you have never seen this you also shouldn't be talking generalizations about PvE content.
Why would I, as a pvp player, care about the other player winning though? If I lost - I still lost, no matter if I lost in pvp or pve. Your example of 1% of wins in pve is literally the same as some newb only winning once against a better/more geared pvper out of 100 fights. Except for some reason people leave when that happens, while they continue bashing their heads against a dumb mob for 100 more times.
Why is that? Maybe cause the PvErs are the ones who're getting cuddled by easier pve? But, just as you said, if you only clear easy pve then you'll never get to hardcore stuff that only a few can clear. Then why wouldn't that apply to pvp too? If you're a casual, you don't go fighting lvl50 mobs at lvl25. So why would you go fighting lvl50 players when you're at lvl25? And Ashes will have a system that prevents those lvl50s from fighting you, so that part of the pvp gameplay won't even touch you. At which point, the pvp game is no different than a pve game.
So, rather than saying "we need players that don't leave the game when they feel they have nothing left to do in said game" (which is why players leave a game with the intention of coming back with an expansion), what you should be asking for is developers that release new content before players are finished with the existing content.
Except it takes way more time to create content than to consume it. And if devs make content that takes months to clear, people complain that it's too difficult/grindy/etc. Which is why most companies these days just make fast content and are ok with people leaving the game until the next batch of content comes online.
There is a simple fact of life. If people are not having fun in a leisure activity, they will not carry on with said activity. This is why PvP in a persistent world has caused more harm than good in most MMO's to date. It causes more people to not have fun more often, leading to them leaving the game because of course they will leave the game if they are not having fun.
And how many of those games were faction-based and had free PKing of the opposite side? From what I've heard, not that many people complain about BDO's pvp system because it's way closer to L2's/AoC's karma/corruption one, so people can't just freely genocide others which allows casuals to enjoy their game w/o worry, while hardcores enjoy their own fights. Though maybe I just missed those complains, so if you have any source for them - I'd love to see it.
The big issue with PvP in a persistent game is that you need to reward the winners, but you also need to find a way to retain the losers, and also find a way to keep those losers competitive with the winners that keep getting rewards for winning.
What is the reward for those who fail to clear an instanced super difficult boss 100 times in a row? What keeps them coming back each time? They're losers for a 100 consecutive times, so why don't they just leave the game, just how pvp losers do (at least you claim they do)? Is it the potential reward? The dim light at the end of the loser tunnel?
Why not have the same reward for pvp? If anything, that's exactly what Ashes is trying to do. The reward is caravan, castle, node, loot, pvp-event-based rewards, etc etc. You can lose 99 times in a pvp battle, but get the reward on the 100th time. Except what's different, from you doing the same thing in pve, is that you're fighting against people rather than a mob.
And if the problem is "one side wins and gets stronger, while the other loses and has to catch up even more", then it's on Intrepid to balance the system in such a way that the winning side has diminishing returns, while the losers don't get set back by days because of a loss. I definitely agree that there should be snowball-preventing mechanics in the game, mainly in the form of good gear tier balance and higher costs of upkeep/progress for those at the top. And I've even proposed systems that would support this here and here.
This is why games like LoL or basically any BR of FPS game works. They reset.
Sure, a game could hope to be like L2 and retain a miniscule population for a good amount of time - but most of L2's current population play it for nostalgia (generated at a time when players playing the game didn't know any better in regards to an MMORPG). Nostalgia is something a new game simply doesn't have, so you can't really rely on it for a new game.
You know what the funny thing is. Most people who still play L2 usually hop between new servers every few weeks or a month. So in a way, L2 went the way of the sessional games. Yes, there's a few big private servers that have been up for years at this point and they have quite a few thousand players there, but those are usually a rarity because it takes a lot of money and time to properly set up a server that would support thousands of people playing it for that long.
And obviously Intrepid should aim for the latter situation, though I would be interested in seeing a month-long mmo that resets characters and the world every month while giving them some sort of slow overall progress. Maybe some "generational mmorpg" where your character "dies" after some period of time, but your "family" continues. And you could have some cataclysmic events here and there that would wipe all the oldies and their gear, while introducing some new progress mechanic. This way you'd have the feeling of constant progress/leveling w/o having it all be at max lvl.
If anything, PvP cuddles you more than top end PvE. In PvP, a player will win 100% of the time. The only question is exactly which player wins. In top end PvE, that could be as low as literally 1% of the time (I have come up against PvE encounters where my guild had a total of less than one successful kill per 100 serious attempts - good PvE gets that hard). Sure, if you are only fighting low end content you will never see this - but if you have never seen this you also shouldn't be talking generalizations about PvE content.
Why would I, as a pvp player, care about the other player winning though? If I lost - I still lost, no matter if I lost in pvp or pve. Your example of 1% of wins in pve is literally the same as some newb only winning once against a better/more geared pvper out of 100 fights. Except for some reason people leave when that happens, while they continue bashing their heads against a dumb mob for 100 more times.
Why is that? Maybe cause the PvErs are the ones who're getting cuddled by easier pve? But, just as you said, if you only clear easy pve then you'll never get to hardcore stuff that only a few can clear. Then why wouldn't that apply to pvp too? If you're a casual, you don't go fighting lvl50 mobs at lvl25. So why would you go fighting lvl50 players when you're at lvl25? And Ashes will have a system that prevents those lvl50s from fighting you, so that part of the pvp gameplay won't even touch you. At which point, the pvp game is no different than a pve game.
I can give you a massive pile of reasons why Noaani is entirely right here, but I won't derail the overall thread with it if you don't care (technically, after all, we are still discussing good reasons to have Action vs Tab Combat even if it is shifting into PvP vs PvE reasonings). Here are the most important 3, and since they have entirely to do with the psychology of players, you can just dismiss them all as 'traits of people you don't consider important'.
1. Because players adapt and bosses don't, people who lose to bosses feel like they are unraveling a puzzle, and that 'because someone can do it, and it was designed by a person, it must be possible', so they are more willing to keep trying. PvP does not have this property.
2. Because players can look at a situation, know that in order to participate in an enjoyable and successful way in that situation means needing to defeat another player of potentially superior skill and investment, and then choose to avoid that situation. The problem arises when most of the game is 'that situation' for a player.
3. Because players are mostly 'regular human beings' and the 'regular human being' response to 'being defeated by a mob over and over is 'this sucks but I can deal with it on my terms' (see #1 and #2) whereas losing to other players tends to trigger feelings of bullying and social demotion which our species is conditioned to avoid, sometimes at extreme cost.
Yeah, I guess I'm just built different, cause I see none of those as good reasons But yes, this has gone too far from the og topic.
Though I think I might tie it back in. In yall's opinion, what's better for casual pvp players: an action combat system where the player has to be very mechanically good to even come close to the better players, or a tab/hybrid system where you can take your time learning about bot/all classes and come up with strategical ways of overcoming power differences (alternatively you could just look up a guide)?
Imo tab is way better for the pvp casuals because the floor is way lower and allows them to "take it at their own pace", while if a casual player doesn't know how to noscope360fromabackflip - they ain't winning in pvp. Well, that is, if the game is even a step above the usual "action combat is just aoes".
Yeah, I guess I'm just built different, cause I see none of those as good reasons But yes, this has gone too far from the og topic.
Though I think I might tie it back in. In yall's opinion, what's better for casual pvp players: an action combat system where the player has to be very mechanically good to even come close to the better players, or a tab/hybrid system where you can take your time learning about bot/all classes and come up with strategical ways of overcoming power differences (alternatively you could just look up a guide)?
Imo tab is way better for the pvp casuals because the floor is way lower and allows them to "take it at their own pace", while if a casual player doesn't know how to noscope360fromabackflip - they ain't winning in pvp. Well, that is, if the game is even a step above the usual "action combat is just aoes".
I believe that the optimal method for a wholistic game where people want to continue playing and are willing to play it in addition to, or more than, a different genre, is that the game must have Action-Lite combat. The design of such a system could be easily determined from the principles of the desired experience for the game. I certainly believe that if the overall community or Director can define exactly what the psychological goals of PvP situations are, someone like the aforementioned Douglas Miller (hi!) could do this.
Heavy Action style combat has too many performance flaws and too high a learning curve while not mechanically adding much that is useful to the Genre, imo. BDO fits in here.
I as usual don't believe in 'Hybrid' in the way it is discussed by most posters, because the word does not have a meaning, but as usual I will not hold Steven to 'the meanings of old terms used', and it's a good buzzword.
The precise system needed to please the maximum number of players is 'Spacing matters for attack abilities, defensive buffs matter, defensive skills are tab targeted, offensive debuffs can be tab targeted but have a range limit (usually short)'.
Pure Tab is bad because it removes 'Spacing Matters for Attack Abilities'. Note that I refer to positional spacing, not range. MOBAs perfected this system so hard that even FFXIV's newest 'PvP arena' is literally just a gear-homogenized MOBA. They know what people want, so they do it.
Pure Tab is bad because it removes 'Spacing Matters for Attack Abilities'. Note that I refer to positional spacing, not range. MOBAs perfected this system so hard that even FFXIV's newest 'PvP arena' is literally just a gear-homogenized MOBA. They know what people want, so they do it.
Could you extrapolate on this? Cause I'm not sure if I completely understand what you mean, if you're not talking about range-based spacing.
Do you mean smth like "I stand here, my enemy is at the front and does X amount of damage, but if they're at the back then it's Y dmg, and Z dmg from the sides"?
Pure Tab is bad because it removes 'Spacing Matters for Attack Abilities'. Note that I refer to positional spacing, not range. MOBAs perfected this system so hard that even FFXIV's newest 'PvP arena' is literally just a gear-homogenized MOBA. They know what people want, so they do it.
Could you extrapolate on this? Cause I'm not sure if I completely understand what you mean, if you're not talking about range-based spacing.
Do you mean smth like "I stand here, my enemy is at the front and does X amount of damage, but if they're at the back then it's Y dmg, and Z dmg from the sides"?
That's basically correct, yes. Sometimes this means that the ability will feel exactly like Action, sometimes it doesn't. Let's take a 'draw in' Javelin style ability. We assume an attack cone in front of the player. If the enemy is within the cone, they are hit and pulled in. The enemy knows 'If I want to avoid being in range of this attack I can move backward or to the side'.
Similarly a leaping downstrike shockwave with a weapon doing damage in a circle, with damage being reduced when the enemy hurtbox is toward the edges of the circle. The Attacker wants to kill the Healer, they have to target the ability so that the Healer is in the center of the attack, the healer can react by repositioning. They all end up being what most people call 'ground target', though it isn't usually quite that simple if the game is trying to be complex, because the requirement of movement creates interplay.
All I'm saying is that Tab in some games makes it so that the player can't 'see the position of their opponent and make a decision' unless the ability is limited in basically the same way, which frustrates people because they don't 'know the range'. In the case of the leaping downstrike, you'd get more of a 'I am targeting the Healer, this ability will hit the Healer as the center even if they move, and the only aspect of the shockwave damage is who was standing closer to the Healer'. The attacker no longer needs to have the skill to threaten, reposition, feint, or anticipate the enemy, so all the related interactions are lost.
Sorry, my native language is Erlang.
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DygzMember, Braver of Worlds, Kickstarter, Alpha One
For an MMORPG, I enjoy the speed of action combat up to Neverwinter Online speed.
That is fast enough to feel somewhat realistic and responsive, but also slow enough to respond to what others in my group are doing and synergize my abilities with theirs as they make tactical decisions.
To me, this really has nothing to do with casual v hardcore and everything to do with being an RPG rather than a Hack & Slash or MOBA. Where, really the focus is on defeating enemies as fast as possile and moving on to the next combat encounter.
Action Combat should not be so fast that we are just racing through rotations as fast as cooldowns will allow.
It needs to be slow enough that we have time to adjust our tactics to support the momnt-to-moment tactics of our allies.
With regard to player twitch skills - RPGs are supposed to be about the skills of the character more than the skills of the player. Which is why features like Tab-Target become important - although AoEs can also reflect character skill.
In an RPG, I should be able to build my character to have heroic caliber aim and accuracy that surpasses what my personal aim and accuracy are as a player. Also, Fantasy RPGs tend to have abilities that are similar to Magic Missle, which locks onto a target regardless of the target's evasion attempts.
I think Neverwinter Online's soft-lock worked well enough that I did not miss tab-target in that game. Although, it's been 8+ years since I played it.
Actually I can more specifically illustrate the concept using exactly the same two abilities @NiKr
With the Javelin, assume it has priority, it pulls one enemy, the enemy 'closest to the center of the cone' (this calculation is fine since skill calculations can be complex).
Now you have 'I can hide behind another player'. 'I can coordinate with another player who leaps into the way', 'I can backstep and and trick my enemy into pulling my Summon to them instead'.
With Tab Targeted Javelin (not saying that Ashes would have this) you can't do THOSE things, explicitly, you couldn't 'be in range, and remain in range due to a scheming plan'.
For the leap, if the leap has a set distance, or a minimum distance of 2m (after all, it's not really a leap then and you should probably be using a different skill) then 'using that leap while close up' would fail, but there would be no case for any 'autocorrection' for 'I chose to leap and my enemy charged at me'.
Whereas in many Tab games, the outcome of that interaction would be 'I leapt at my Tab Targeted enemy but their charge did nothing to help them evade my leap, I just hit them anyway'. That sort of thing reduces the skill and complexity of the combat enough both in PvP and PvE that some people find it too simplistic for a modern game.
L2 played great with this system. Daggers had abilities that only worked if you hit your target's back. And they'd have a chance to work from the side, but quite rarely, and 0 dmg from the front. Tanks had a cone of their shield def, where if they met an attack with their shield - their "shield dmg mitigation" passive would work and decrease that dmg. So phys attackers would always try to CC them and move to the non-shielded side. There'd be several abilities that were action-based or ground-targeted.
All I'm saying is that Tab in some games makes it so that the player can't 'see the position of their opponent and make a decision' unless the ability is limited in basically the same way, which frustrates people because they don't 'know the range'.
Do they not see/know the range of the ability because of the UI? Cause L2 just had a "range" descriptor on abilities, both for distance moved and aoe radius. You had abilities that had a tab target and worked as you explained in the example, or you had pure action that worked based on your character's direction and you had to know/feel the distance to properly hit your target, which imo is the skill-testing part of the ability.
Whereas in many Tab games, the outcome of that interaction would be 'I leapt at my Tab Targeted enemy but their charge did nothing to help them evade my leap, I just hit them anyway'. That sort of thing reduces the skill and complexity of the combat enough both in PvP and PvE that some people find it too simplistic for a modern game.
And the best solution to this kind of problem that I see is to have a tab target system that has action abilities, which, to my knowledge, is most tab games.
So, at the end, it always comes down to developers and how they wanna make it. And, as you said, we gotta tell Intrepid what we wanna have in the game and Intrepid will need to find a way to realize those suggestions within their chosen system.
L2 played great with this system. Daggers had abilities that only worked if you hit your target's back. And they'd have a chance to work from the side, but quite rarely, and 0 dmg from the front. Tanks had a cone of their shield def, where if they met an attack with their shield - their "shield dmg mitigation" passive would work and decrease that dmg. So phys attackers would always try to CC them and move to the non-shielded side. There'd be several abilities that were action-based or ground-targeted.
All I'm saying is that Tab in some games makes it so that the player can't 'see the position of their opponent and make a decision' unless the ability is limited in basically the same way, which frustrates people because they don't 'know the range'.
Do they not see/know the range of the ability because of the UI? Cause L2 just had a "range" descriptor on abilities, both for distance moved and aoe radius. You had abilities that had a tab target and worked as you explained in the example, or you had pure action that worked based on your character's direction and you had to know/feel the distance to properly hit your target, which imo is the skill-testing part of the ability.
Bear in mind that every one of us who has played different games have different priors and base assumptions.
If you played a 'Tab Target' game where range matters that much, then calling it 'Tab Target' might miss some people's perspectives. This is why I don't like the terms (though I don't fault Intrepid for using them).
There are Tab Target games that involve 'autofacing', 'abilities that hit even if your opponent moves perfectly as if to avoid it', 'interactions that mostly involve no repositioning or commitment so you can stand pretty simply around relative to the enemy'.
At that point, Tab vs Ground Target is decided by 'will my ability strike my opponent even if I don't anticipate their movement'. A game where you 'select' a target but your abilities don't auto-target your selection and don't auto-track their movement, I would question what the Tab Targeting is for (beyond changing priority of a target within a group that would all be hit, or Tab-Targeting allies for heals and buffs).
Whereas in many Tab games, the outcome of that interaction would be 'I leapt at my Tab Targeted enemy but their charge did nothing to help them evade my leap, I just hit them anyway'. That sort of thing reduces the skill and complexity of the combat enough both in PvP and PvE that some people find it too simplistic for a modern game.
And the best solution to this kind of problem that I see is to have a tab target system that has action abilities, which, to my knowledge, is most tab games.
So, at the end, it always comes down to developers and how they wanna make it. And, as you said, we gotta tell Intrepid what we wanna have in the game and Intrepid will need to find a way to realize those suggestions within their chosen system.
Maybe so, but then we're back to interacting with OP's point.
"When is Action good, why don't we just always use Tab?"
Short of 'asking Tyranthraxus to fill out a questionnaire about what they feel Tab Targeted abilities should and should not do', there's no way to be sure. I'd assume that L2 players will be talking about what you described. Similarly, there's no quick and easy way to understand what someone means when they say "I want Action Combat".
Cleric has a 'Javelin' style skill that I would expect to be thrown forward at the first target within a cone and ignore any Tab Targeting. As of Alpha-1 (at some point) that ability sort of 'homed in on' my Tab Target. I wouldn't want this. If a player said "I don't see the point of Action Combat, I don't want my Javelin to miss because my opponent moved (even out of a cone)", that person 'doesn't want spacing to matter' and 'doesn't want movement to matter'.
When that person hears from Intrepid 'You can choose skills to be Tab Target', sees Alpha-1 footage of that attack 'homing in', and goes 'that looks great, why would you ever want anything else', the question is what to tell that person.
If you played a 'Tab Target' game where range matters that much, then calling it 'Tab Target' might miss some people's perspectives. This is why I don't like the terms (though I don't fault Intrepid for using them).
True, pretty much any/every ability in L2 had its range stat and the better players would know those by feel and move on the battlefield accordingly.
There are Tab Target games that involve 'autofacing', 'abilities that hit even if your opponent moves perfectly as if to avoid it', 'interactions that mostly involve no repositioning or commitment so you can stand pretty simply around relative to the enemy'.
And L2 had those too If you were out of range of the ability you wanted to use, and had a target selected, your character would auto-move towards the target to get in range. All weapon in the game were melee if you wanted to auto-attack with them, so mages that had action-based cone abilities with short range would usually select a target, press auto-attack so that their character turns and runs towards their target, and then use the action ability as soon as they thought they were in range.
And most tab ranged abilities would allow you to just stand in one place and spam them, because your character would turn/move with your target.
At that point, Tab vs Ground Target is decided by 'will my ability strike my opponent even if I don't anticipate their movement'. A game where you 'select' a target but your abilities don't auto-target your selection and don't auto-track their movement, I would question what the Tab Targeting is for (beyond changing priority of a target within a group that would all be hit, or Tab-Targeting allies for heals and buffs).
Tab is there for other abilities. The more updates L2 got, the more variety in abilities it had. With my favorite class of Soul Hound having mage and phys abilities, with several of those being purely action-based or purely tab, so you had to know ranges of your abilities and move across the field appropriately so that you could use your whole skillset.
When that person hears from Intrepid 'You can choose skills to be Tab Target', sees Alpha-1 footage of that attack 'homing in', and goes 'that looks great, why would you ever want anything else', the question is what to tell that person.
Yep, that's the biggest issue Intrepid have ahead of them if they go with their currently planned combat system. I myself don't know how they'll balance that system cause I'd have similar issues. If I have a choice - why choose the one that can miss. L2 had no choice so it was just "ok, this one is action so I gotta learn how to use it in the best way, and this one is tab so I'll just use it when the timing's right", and the combat required you to use both of those in the best way.
But if Ashes decides to keep the "change the base system for the ability" feature, I expect some intricate design where both version of the ability have their own benefits, so it's a choice instead of one being just better than the other.
If you played a 'Tab Target' game where range matters that much, then calling it 'Tab Target' might miss some people's perspectives. This is why I don't like the terms (though I don't fault Intrepid for using them).
True, pretty much any/every ability in L2 had its range stat and the better players would know those by feel and move on the battlefield accordingly.
There are Tab Target games that involve 'autofacing', 'abilities that hit even if your opponent moves perfectly as if to avoid it', 'interactions that mostly involve no repositioning or commitment so you can stand pretty simply around relative to the enemy'.
And L2 had those too If you were out of range of the ability you wanted to use, and had a target selected, your character would auto-move towards the target to get in range. All weapon in the game were melee if you wanted to auto-attack with them, so mages that had action-based cone abilities with short range would usually select a target, press auto-attack so that their character turns and runs towards their target, and then use the action ability as soon as they thought they were in range.
And most tab ranged abilities would allow you to just stand in one place and spam them, because your character would turn/move with your target.
At that point, Tab vs Ground Target is decided by 'will my ability strike my opponent even if I don't anticipate their movement'. A game where you 'select' a target but your abilities don't auto-target your selection and don't auto-track their movement, I would question what the Tab Targeting is for (beyond changing priority of a target within a group that would all be hit, or Tab-Targeting allies for heals and buffs).
Tab is there for other abilities. The more updates L2 got, the more variety in abilities it had. With my favorite class of Soul Hound having mage and phys abilities, with several of those being purely action-based or purely tab, so you had to know ranges of your abilities and move across the field appropriately so that you could use your whole skillset.
Right, and you enjoy that. Others don't necessarily, but balance wise, it still matters for a lot of things, and that's why this comes up. There's a weak correlation thus far between players that want Action Skills/specific playstyles and players that plan to play certain Archetypes in Ashes (I'll provide my datasets if you want, but they're small and not statistically significant, they're moreso confirmatory).
So if you have a player who comes into Ashes and says "I want to play a Wind ArchMage. I want my Tornado spell to do lots of damage. I also want my Tornado spell to manifest around whoever I have Tab-targeted, regardless of how they move, and do full damage."
That person is not going to be satisfied by 'well you can select that person as the Tab Target and it will make your character face them correctly so that when you set down your Tornado spell at the 6m distance you can safely cast it from, you are more likely to hit if they don't use one of their movement skills to get out of the way."
Tornado spells are usually pretty expensive, y'know?
You could disregard that person and say 'well, for Balance, Tornado can't be a Tab Targeted ability'. Maybe that's what they'll do. I have no opinions on just that level of decision, as its too low-level compared to most of the things I prefer to think about.
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You might be delighted to hear Intrepid´s combat designer Douglas Miller worked at cryptic, the studio behind neverwinter
Although he did not seem to be part of the inital combat dev/design crew, he had his hands on class balancing, designing new classes and PvE encounters.
I hope he does a good job at bringing over the action part to AoC, but still adapting to AoC´s requirements of slower methodical and tactical gameplay, especially for large scale PvP.
The thing is, I fully agree with this as the foundation for a non-persistent online game.
It is that persistency of MMORPG's that alters the paradigm.
An online FPS game where you cant attack other players would suck. As would an online RTS, BR, MOBA, 4X, racing game, fighting game, almost anything.
The only two genres I can think of where there is no inherent need for player confrontation in order to make an online aspect work are RPG's, and flight sims. Both of these games *can* have that PvP aspect, but neither *need* it.
You're more than welcome to say you prefer PvP. However, objective data (the fact that PvP in MMORPG's is still a niche within a niche) should prove to you that what you consider a foundation for an online game is not what the bulk consider the foundation.
Ashes absolutely will have PvP as a foundation to the game - but that doesnt mean it is a requirement of the genre. If anything, that PvP foundation is going to knock 10 years off the life of this game.
I must work within the framework because pve people want corruption, pvp players do not want corruption.
Therefore, you can keep repeating we are pvp focussed but we are not at all. If all pvp was bad all mobas would fail and all competitive simulators would fail.
Most people think an open world withactive pvp is true pvp when really it is the laziest, blandest and depravic pvp in the world.
However, don't expect Ashes to have a lifespan even close to that of WoW or EQ2 - let alone the original EQ, all of which are still going strong (well, still going). The major difference between MOBA and MMORG PvP is that in a MOBA, everything resets constantly. Lose a match and it doesn't matter, you just go in to the next one in the same state you started the last. In an MMORPG, if you lose, you lose something that you can no longer take in to the next fight, but the person that just beat you is able to take in to their next fight.
This is a massive advantage to the person that wins - especially people that have a >50% win rate. However, someone has to have a <50% win rate, and eventually these people realize that they simply aren't making it in said MMORPG, and so leave. Since in order for someone to have a >50% win rate, someone else needs to have a <50% win rate (basic math), and since people with <50% win rates just left, there will then be a new group of people that have to start having a <50% win rate, and the cycle will start all over again.
This is why all PvP MMO's have a history of starting out with a large (or even massive) population, but before long end up with only the few hardcore PvP players left - and there aren't really enough of them to support more than two AAA MMO's at a time.
There is no progression for pvp only leader boards. There is no pve progression only leader boards.
When I can buy any gear and also boost to max, I do not even need to pve.
I do not understand how you can counter the concepts with wow and eq.
Swg was very popular and very pvx until cu2 which made it like eq and wow and the playerbase died.
You will always back end game. I will always back gameplay.
I take your input and I do try to give your pve players enough areas but of course our pvp areas will have a lot of extra resources and sources which pvp players will sell to pvd players.
If I could count on all players to give a good game I would not need to separate the game modes to ensure a decent experience for all parties.
Caravans , nodes, freeholds. Not to mention the fact that a loss in PvP alters the content you have access to.
There are a LOT of players that are not even going to stick it out though one node loss. In Ashes - especially if a player sticks to smaller nodes - there is a real possibility that players could lose 3 or 4 nodes in a year.
Hell, a lot of people will just quit the game if they lose two or three caravans in a row.
I'm not saying Ashes should change any of this - Intrepid will never recover from that.
All I am saying is that players need to look at the game in a realistic fashion - which is that the games life as a multi-server game of the scale Intrepid wants it to be is likely to be limited to five years. After that, there will probably only be one server per region, and some of the smaller regions (Oceania, specifically) will likely be merged in to NA servers.
Compare that to a game like EQ that still has 10 servers running after 23 years, and yeah, that is a shorter life than an MMO could (should) have.
At the end of the day, I must build the game promised by Steven. Hell, I have to suffer the worst kind of open development at the moment lol. It is not easy making changes when you have to fight the same idiots day after day just to instill a single concept.
Just curious here @Neurath , but I have seen several times you write posts like you are somehow part of the development team. Calling it "my game" etc. Are you actually hired by Intrepid, or did you just plonk down the $500 like the rest of us in A1? I am pretty sure it's the latter, so I am mostly interested if it's just your peculiar (to me) way of referencing the game, or if you are really so invested in this game succeeding that you feel like you are actually part of the development team?
I mean no offense at all - you do you - but the curiosity is killing me here.
There is a setting you can change to make it more action'y
Switches it from tab to a target reticle
Video shows you how
This is it! great line.
Most mmo addicts will always quickly look to the overview of an mmo by looking at how they fall within it at its conclusion of content "end game" but what is that really a sign of...Narcissism.
The gameplay and deep/interesting/diverse systems are always 2nd to these people, they're just after the status, to appear on or near the top after all the conquest.
The mmorpg genre...cheated onto the scene, other genres besides RTS games weren't polished enough or graphically ready to have a chance to compete, WoW came into an open field and had that "fine and ready" harvester to sweep up every single boy and man lucky enough to have internet before 2005-2010.
The mmo genre has, essentially, been a victim of WoW's massive popularity and success, it's a game made in the very early 2000's, it does not have any real groundwork or needed harsh and experienced criticism for gameplay entertainment for a 3d game and open world game and there was barely any competition against it due to costs and work involved.
The mmorpg genre, at its foundation, is screaming to get the gameplay that other genre's possess, once it's there, will see the genre jump onto the scene again in a big way!
When you look at how a very simple mmo system like FF14 has leaped into first place of the mmorpgs, with solo story content, instanced areas and 5 man max or so dungeon'ing, mmorpg's aren't anywhere close to a real game you'd spend most days on, tame PvE only content.... it's nothing more than a very casual experience, a chat zone, a sub game to your main game ( LoL / Fifa / FPS game ).
MAKE MMO GAMEPLAY GREAT AGAIN! PvX is the best! ( copium inhale ).
@Noaani the MMO is the main focus, nothing else, it's needed, more players need more players, not to be cuddled by the RPG element being the number 1 focus! As long as there are passionate RPG/Fantasy devs, it will remain as an rpg regardless of focus on player vs player entertainment!
Just look at league of legends, we need casuals happy to earn "gold rank" and dedicated players happy and proud to earn a little bit more with platinum and beyond, not this quit and wait mentality, waiting for the next expansion and not taking it as their main gaming experience!
/ epic rant "completed!"
In most MMORPG's, 90% of all online time from all characters is spent at the level cap.
If you are looking at playing a new game, would you look at what you are doing 10% of the time, or what you are doing 90% of the time?
At absolute best, Ashes will be 85/15. The stated desire to have a longer leveling experience is still miniscule in comparison to the time players will spend at the level cap. The point isn't to spread out the leveling process to make it so long that players never get there, because all this does is segregate players in a manner where many simply will not ever catch up - people tend to give up if leveling is too hard.
This is something I agree with - but only sort of.
WoW had a LOT of criticism when it launched - but that was from experienced MMORPG players. Blizzard basically just said "but this game isn't for you, you should play EQ or EQ2, SWG, EVE or L2. We made WoW for Warcraft 3 fans".
To say WoW never received criticism is to say you weren't looking around much in 2004/2005.
I do agree that WoW doesn't have any real groundwork, but that is not because the genre didn't have it. EQ laid a fantastic foundation for the MMO genre (taking note of the mistakes of the games that came before it, rather than building on said games), and EQ2, SWG and L2 all built upon that. WoW built beside that foundation - they were aware of it, but they ignored most of it.
That foundation that EQ laid saw players have enough content - that was the key. Early EQ developers kept content up their sleeve - if players completed all the content in the game, they always had something new ready to release. There was almost never a point where a dozen guilds in early EQ had completed the top end encounter in the game before the next encounter was released.
EQ2 also did this - I was at the top end in EQ2, and literally never had more than a week or two before a new content drop where we were out of things we wanted to take on.
This is where the genre is a victim of WoW - a dearth of content. The foundation of the genre does not have this - WoW introduced it.
I agree with your assessment of FFXIV here, but I disagree with it in regards to you assuming that is the PvE aspect of MMORPG's as a whole. FFXIV is - at it's core - a casual game. Complaining that it is a casual game is obviously unproductive.
I'll translate what you are saying in to cars - because why not?
You are looking at a VW Golf, and saying sure, it's a fine car to get you from point A to point B, but as soon as you take it on to Nürburgring, it doesn't hold up to other cars at all!
The thing with a PvP game is that they burn bright, but burn fast. A game like FFXIV is designed to burn low and slow - you don't get to complain about that when that is what it's design is. All you get to do is the same thing as me - chose to not play it.
Where you are making the mistake here though, is in assuming that FFXIV - that burning low and slow - is all a PvE MMORPG can be.
Pointing you again to my above point about EQ and EQ2 always adding new content (seriously, coming up to 29 expansions for EQ - when L2 has had the equivalent of 4 in it's entire life). What this does is take a game that burns bright - and would thus burn fast - and gives it more fuel. This results in a game that burns bright, but also burns long.
In a PvP MMO' you simply can't do this. You can add actual new things to a game when you add PvE. Actual new experiences that players have never come across. In a PvP game, the main thing people are doing is still fighting other players. After a while on any given server, you get to know the people on said server well enough that they are no different to a games AI - they have no surprises left to throw at you (at least, this is what I saw in Archeage after a few years). When your main enemy is inherently the same, there is no real way to add new fuel to that fast burning game.
Sure, you may well get sick of fighting the same PvE encounter in a PvE focused MMO - but the developers can always add a new one, with new abilities - or even with old abilities that it uses in a different way. The thing with PvP though, is that in order to introduce a new enemy, they need to attract a new player, and have that player level and gear up to be on par with you.
Not sure where I ever said that the MMO was not the main focus, nor that we don't need more and more players.
I'm also not asking for RPG elements - I don't give a shit about playing a role, you have me mixed up with someone else, I think.
Perhaps you are just using PvE and RPG synonymously here, in which case all I can do is point out how massively mislead you are.
If anything, PvP cuddles you more than top end PvE. In PvP, a player will win 100% of the time. The only question is exactly which player wins. In top end PvE, that could be as low as literally 1% of the time (I have come up against PvE encounters where my guild had a total of less than one successful kill per 100 serious attempts - good PvE gets that hard). Sure, if you are only fighting low end content you will never see this - but if you have never seen this you also shouldn't be talking generalizations about PvE content.
I do agree with your last point about needing players that don't just leave the game and wait for the next expansion. However, my experience tells me that this is almost entirely exclusive to WoW (or at least much more common with WoW). This was simply not a 'thing' in EQ2 in the decade I played it.
So, rather than saying "we need players that don't leave the game when they feel they have nothing left to do in said game" (which is why players leave a game with the intention of coming back with an expansion), what you should be asking for is developers that release new content before players are finished with the existing content.
Basically, you are taking a failing of a specific developer mindset, looking at player reaction to that (seriously, are you begrudging players that leave a game when they are no longer having fun in that game?), and you are then blaming the players rather than the developers that put those players in that situation.
There is a simple fact of life. If people are not having fun in a leisure activity, they will not carry on with said activity. This is why PvP in a persistent world has caused more harm than good in most MMO's to date. It causes more people to not have fun more often, leading to them leaving the game because of course they will leave the game if they are not having fun.
You may be upset with that because those players are needed for YOU to have fun, but again, that is a failing of PvP in a persistent world - without those players that lose to you, YOU aren't having fun any more. Those other players are your content, and when they leave because they are not having fun being your content, you suddenly find yourself with less content.
The big issue with PvP in a persistent game is that you need to reward the winners, but you also need to find a way to retain the losers, and also find a way to keep those losers competitive with the winners that keep getting rewards for winning.
This is why games like LoL or basically any BR of FPS game works. They reset.
Sure, a game could hope to be like L2 and retain a miniscule population for a good amount of time - but most of L2's current population play it for nostalgia (generated at a time when players playing the game didn't know any better in regards to an MMORPG). Nostalgia is something a new game simply doesn't have, so you can't really rely on it for a new game.
I can really appreciate that approach
So, maybe you can help me out here.
Are you suggesting players should stick with the game even if they are not enjoying it, or are you saying the developers should do what they can to ensure people continue to enjoy the game?
One of these I absolutely agree with, the other I can't see how anyone could think.
Here's a video that shows biggest bosses/locations in the updates and here's a video that tells about the updates in more detail(autosubs are passable for the overall info).
I'm sure that EQ's expansions are cool and big too, but if you combine 2 L2 updates (that came out ~every 6 months) into one yearly update, I bet they'd be close to EQ's in size and in quantity, even though L2 came out several years later.
There's also this small article that tells even more detail about a group of updates, just to show the approximate size of them better. I dunno how fast AA got its updates, but in L2 you could fight the same person across several updates and get different results because of the class rebalances or new gear that either of you acquired or new people that either of your parties got (cause usually you'd be pvping in parties instead of 1v1). Why would I, as a pvp player, care about the other player winning though? If I lost - I still lost, no matter if I lost in pvp or pve. Your example of 1% of wins in pve is literally the same as some newb only winning once against a better/more geared pvper out of 100 fights. Except for some reason people leave when that happens, while they continue bashing their heads against a dumb mob for 100 more times.
Why is that? Maybe cause the PvErs are the ones who're getting cuddled by easier pve? But, just as you said, if you only clear easy pve then you'll never get to hardcore stuff that only a few can clear. Then why wouldn't that apply to pvp too? If you're a casual, you don't go fighting lvl50 mobs at lvl25. So why would you go fighting lvl50 players when you're at lvl25? And Ashes will have a system that prevents those lvl50s from fighting you, so that part of the pvp gameplay won't even touch you. At which point, the pvp game is no different than a pve game.
Except it takes way more time to create content than to consume it. And if devs make content that takes months to clear, people complain that it's too difficult/grindy/etc. Which is why most companies these days just make fast content and are ok with people leaving the game until the next batch of content comes online. And how many of those games were faction-based and had free PKing of the opposite side? From what I've heard, not that many people complain about BDO's pvp system because it's way closer to L2's/AoC's karma/corruption one, so people can't just freely genocide others which allows casuals to enjoy their game w/o worry, while hardcores enjoy their own fights. Though maybe I just missed those complains, so if you have any source for them - I'd love to see it. What is the reward for those who fail to clear an instanced super difficult boss 100 times in a row? What keeps them coming back each time? They're losers for a 100 consecutive times, so why don't they just leave the game, just how pvp losers do (at least you claim they do)? Is it the potential reward? The dim light at the end of the loser tunnel?
Why not have the same reward for pvp? If anything, that's exactly what Ashes is trying to do. The reward is caravan, castle, node, loot, pvp-event-based rewards, etc etc. You can lose 99 times in a pvp battle, but get the reward on the 100th time. Except what's different, from you doing the same thing in pve, is that you're fighting against people rather than a mob.
And if the problem is "one side wins and gets stronger, while the other loses and has to catch up even more", then it's on Intrepid to balance the system in such a way that the winning side has diminishing returns, while the losers don't get set back by days because of a loss. I definitely agree that there should be snowball-preventing mechanics in the game, mainly in the form of good gear tier balance and higher costs of upkeep/progress for those at the top. And I've even proposed systems that would support this here and here. You know what the funny thing is. Most people who still play L2 usually hop between new servers every few weeks or a month. So in a way, L2 went the way of the sessional games. Yes, there's a few big private servers that have been up for years at this point and they have quite a few thousand players there, but those are usually a rarity because it takes a lot of money and time to properly set up a server that would support thousands of people playing it for that long.
And obviously Intrepid should aim for the latter situation, though I would be interested in seeing a month-long mmo that resets characters and the world every month while giving them some sort of slow overall progress. Maybe some "generational mmorpg" where your character "dies" after some period of time, but your "family" continues. And you could have some cataclysmic events here and there that would wipe all the oldies and their gear, while introducing some new progress mechanic. This way you'd have the feeling of constant progress/leveling w/o having it all be at max lvl.
I can give you a massive pile of reasons why Noaani is entirely right here, but I won't derail the overall thread with it if you don't care (technically, after all, we are still discussing good reasons to have Action vs Tab Combat even if it is shifting into PvP vs PvE reasonings). Here are the most important 3, and since they have entirely to do with the psychology of players, you can just dismiss them all as 'traits of people you don't consider important'.
1. Because players adapt and bosses don't, people who lose to bosses feel like they are unraveling a puzzle, and that 'because someone can do it, and it was designed by a person, it must be possible', so they are more willing to keep trying. PvP does not have this property.
2. Because players can look at a situation, know that in order to participate in an enjoyable and successful way in that situation means needing to defeat another player of potentially superior skill and investment, and then choose to avoid that situation. The problem arises when most of the game is 'that situation' for a player.
3. Because players are mostly 'regular human beings' and the 'regular human being' response to 'being defeated by a mob over and over is 'this sucks but I can deal with it on my terms' (see #1 and #2) whereas losing to other players tends to trigger feelings of bullying and social demotion which our species is conditioned to avoid, sometimes at extreme cost.
Though I think I might tie it back in. In yall's opinion, what's better for casual pvp players: an action combat system where the player has to be very mechanically good to even come close to the better players, or a tab/hybrid system where you can take your time learning about bot/all classes and come up with strategical ways of overcoming power differences (alternatively you could just look up a guide)?
Imo tab is way better for the pvp casuals because the floor is way lower and allows them to "take it at their own pace", while if a casual player doesn't know how to noscope360fromabackflip - they ain't winning in pvp. Well, that is, if the game is even a step above the usual "action combat is just aoes".
I believe that the optimal method for a wholistic game where people want to continue playing and are willing to play it in addition to, or more than, a different genre, is that the game must have Action-Lite combat. The design of such a system could be easily determined from the principles of the desired experience for the game. I certainly believe that if the overall community or Director can define exactly what the psychological goals of PvP situations are, someone like the aforementioned Douglas Miller (hi!) could do this.
Heavy Action style combat has too many performance flaws and too high a learning curve while not mechanically adding much that is useful to the Genre, imo. BDO fits in here.
I as usual don't believe in 'Hybrid' in the way it is discussed by most posters, because the word does not have a meaning, but as usual I will not hold Steven to 'the meanings of old terms used', and it's a good buzzword.
The precise system needed to please the maximum number of players is 'Spacing matters for attack abilities, defensive buffs matter, defensive skills are tab targeted, offensive debuffs can be tab targeted but have a range limit (usually short)'.
Pure Tab is bad because it removes 'Spacing Matters for Attack Abilities'. Note that I refer to positional spacing, not range. MOBAs perfected this system so hard that even FFXIV's newest 'PvP arena' is literally just a gear-homogenized MOBA. They know what people want, so they do it.
Do you mean smth like "I stand here, my enemy is at the front and does X amount of damage, but if they're at the back then it's Y dmg, and Z dmg from the sides"?
That's basically correct, yes. Sometimes this means that the ability will feel exactly like Action, sometimes it doesn't. Let's take a 'draw in' Javelin style ability. We assume an attack cone in front of the player. If the enemy is within the cone, they are hit and pulled in. The enemy knows 'If I want to avoid being in range of this attack I can move backward or to the side'.
Similarly a leaping downstrike shockwave with a weapon doing damage in a circle, with damage being reduced when the enemy hurtbox is toward the edges of the circle. The Attacker wants to kill the Healer, they have to target the ability so that the Healer is in the center of the attack, the healer can react by repositioning. They all end up being what most people call 'ground target', though it isn't usually quite that simple if the game is trying to be complex, because the requirement of movement creates interplay.
All I'm saying is that Tab in some games makes it so that the player can't 'see the position of their opponent and make a decision' unless the ability is limited in basically the same way, which frustrates people because they don't 'know the range'. In the case of the leaping downstrike, you'd get more of a 'I am targeting the Healer, this ability will hit the Healer as the center even if they move, and the only aspect of the shockwave damage is who was standing closer to the Healer'. The attacker no longer needs to have the skill to threaten, reposition, feint, or anticipate the enemy, so all the related interactions are lost.
That is fast enough to feel somewhat realistic and responsive, but also slow enough to respond to what others in my group are doing and synergize my abilities with theirs as they make tactical decisions.
To me, this really has nothing to do with casual v hardcore and everything to do with being an RPG rather than a Hack & Slash or MOBA. Where, really the focus is on defeating enemies as fast as possile and moving on to the next combat encounter.
Action Combat should not be so fast that we are just racing through rotations as fast as cooldowns will allow.
It needs to be slow enough that we have time to adjust our tactics to support the momnt-to-moment tactics of our allies.
With regard to player twitch skills - RPGs are supposed to be about the skills of the character more than the skills of the player. Which is why features like Tab-Target become important - although AoEs can also reflect character skill.
In an RPG, I should be able to build my character to have heroic caliber aim and accuracy that surpasses what my personal aim and accuracy are as a player. Also, Fantasy RPGs tend to have abilities that are similar to Magic Missle, which locks onto a target regardless of the target's evasion attempts.
I think Neverwinter Online's soft-lock worked well enough that I did not miss tab-target in that game. Although, it's been 8+ years since I played it.
With the Javelin, assume it has priority, it pulls one enemy, the enemy 'closest to the center of the cone' (this calculation is fine since skill calculations can be complex).
Now you have 'I can hide behind another player'. 'I can coordinate with another player who leaps into the way', 'I can backstep and and trick my enemy into pulling my Summon to them instead'.
With Tab Targeted Javelin (not saying that Ashes would have this) you can't do THOSE things, explicitly, you couldn't 'be in range, and remain in range due to a scheming plan'.
For the leap, if the leap has a set distance, or a minimum distance of 2m (after all, it's not really a leap then and you should probably be using a different skill) then 'using that leap while close up' would fail, but there would be no case for any 'autocorrection' for 'I chose to leap and my enemy charged at me'.
Whereas in many Tab games, the outcome of that interaction would be 'I leapt at my Tab Targeted enemy but their charge did nothing to help them evade my leap, I just hit them anyway'. That sort of thing reduces the skill and complexity of the combat enough both in PvP and PvE that some people find it too simplistic for a modern game.
So, at the end, it always comes down to developers and how they wanna make it. And, as you said, we gotta tell Intrepid what we wanna have in the game and Intrepid will need to find a way to realize those suggestions within their chosen system.
Bear in mind that every one of us who has played different games have different priors and base assumptions.
If you played a 'Tab Target' game where range matters that much, then calling it 'Tab Target' might miss some people's perspectives. This is why I don't like the terms (though I don't fault Intrepid for using them).
There are Tab Target games that involve 'autofacing', 'abilities that hit even if your opponent moves perfectly as if to avoid it', 'interactions that mostly involve no repositioning or commitment so you can stand pretty simply around relative to the enemy'.
At that point, Tab vs Ground Target is decided by 'will my ability strike my opponent even if I don't anticipate their movement'. A game where you 'select' a target but your abilities don't auto-target your selection and don't auto-track their movement, I would question what the Tab Targeting is for (beyond changing priority of a target within a group that would all be hit, or Tab-Targeting allies for heals and buffs).
Maybe so, but then we're back to interacting with OP's point.
"When is Action good, why don't we just always use Tab?"
Short of 'asking Tyranthraxus to fill out a questionnaire about what they feel Tab Targeted abilities should and should not do', there's no way to be sure. I'd assume that L2 players will be talking about what you described. Similarly, there's no quick and easy way to understand what someone means when they say "I want Action Combat".
Cleric has a 'Javelin' style skill that I would expect to be thrown forward at the first target within a cone and ignore any Tab Targeting. As of Alpha-1 (at some point) that ability sort of 'homed in on' my Tab Target. I wouldn't want this. If a player said "I don't see the point of Action Combat, I don't want my Javelin to miss because my opponent moved (even out of a cone)", that person 'doesn't want spacing to matter' and 'doesn't want movement to matter'.
When that person hears from Intrepid 'You can choose skills to be Tab Target', sees Alpha-1 footage of that attack 'homing in', and goes 'that looks great, why would you ever want anything else', the question is what to tell that person.
And most tab ranged abilities would allow you to just stand in one place and spam them, because your character would turn/move with your target. Tab is there for other abilities. The more updates L2 got, the more variety in abilities it had. With my favorite class of Soul Hound having mage and phys abilities, with several of those being purely action-based or purely tab, so you had to know ranges of your abilities and move across the field appropriately so that you could use your whole skillset.
But if Ashes decides to keep the "change the base system for the ability" feature, I expect some intricate design where both version of the ability have their own benefits, so it's a choice instead of one being just better than the other.
Right, and you enjoy that. Others don't necessarily, but balance wise, it still matters for a lot of things, and that's why this comes up. There's a weak correlation thus far between players that want Action Skills/specific playstyles and players that plan to play certain Archetypes in Ashes (I'll provide my datasets if you want, but they're small and not statistically significant, they're moreso confirmatory).
So if you have a player who comes into Ashes and says "I want to play a Wind ArchMage. I want my Tornado spell to do lots of damage. I also want my Tornado spell to manifest around whoever I have Tab-targeted, regardless of how they move, and do full damage."
That person is not going to be satisfied by 'well you can select that person as the Tab Target and it will make your character face them correctly so that when you set down your Tornado spell at the 6m distance you can safely cast it from, you are more likely to hit if they don't use one of their movement skills to get out of the way."
Tornado spells are usually pretty expensive, y'know?
You could disregard that person and say 'well, for Balance, Tornado can't be a Tab Targeted ability'. Maybe that's what they'll do. I have no opinions on just that level of decision, as its too low-level compared to most of the things I prefer to think about.
Here's some data on stuff people said. Relevant outputs are in the Spoiler tags.