A multitude of skills and a plethora of hotbars is what has driven me away from most MMOs. I never got the debate over 'tab targeting' vs 'action combat' because the manner in which I target something is far less important to me than the manner in which I actually take an action, and both of these systems have invariably involved the use of hotkeys on hotbars.
Cooldown management is not fun for me in the long run. Staring at hotbars or downloading mods to help you manage your cooldowns most efficiently is not fun for me. Having one button which I can press and watch my mage cast a fireball and another which I can press and see frost nova is not fun for me.
I've eschewed every other game on the market and stopped paying attention to any upcoming titles in favor of just playing eve, which I find to be more entertaining than any hotbar game. Freakin' EVE Online, for chrissake. It says a lot when a game where spaceships behave like fat drunken submarines, where moving involves either setting a course from which you will not deviate unless you act again or navigating a contextual menu, where weapons are simply set to a target and left on is actually more stimulating to me to play than any hotbar mmo.
Personally I prefer the less is more approach, for me it makes the game more fun. The older mmos had far too many hotbars which didn't add to the fun it just cluttered up the screen.
I raided in some top guilds for a number of years and most of the skills on the hotbars were redundant most of the time, and all those hotbar skills just ment pvp balance was always off. Less skills means easier balance and less useless or rarely used skill. The newer action style mmos with dodging,etc are far more skill based than the old button mashing macro mmos of yesteryear.
Though I do feel that no one as of yet has got the formular totally right. Less hotbars doesn't have to mean dumbing down other features and I do feel this has been a trend over the past few years.
Originally posted by Horusra Some like the simplicity of Super Mario and other like more thinking games. The console generation is here. Super Mario is all they can handle.
Lol, i would hardly call mmos thinking games, if you want thinking games you go play chess. Mmorpgs are about community interaction, lots of hotbars don't make a good mmo. Content makes a good mmo.
Originally posted by Horusra Some like the simplicity of Super Mario and other like more thinking games. The console generation is here. Super Mario is all they can handle.
Lol, i would hardly call mmos thinking games, if you want thinking games you go play chess. Mmorpgs are about community interaction, lots of hotbars don't make a good mmo. Content makes a good mmo.
MMO's are first games.....pushing A and B make boring games....boring games make bad games. The less thinking in the game the more boring.
Less skills being sold off as less action bar is the trend now.
I don't like WoW and left long ago but I appreciated their letting players mod the UI so you could get your action bar any size you wanted. I am really sick of huge ass fancy action bars swallowing most my f*ing screen. So what if the action bar has less skills on it? Devs made it so big ass it might as well have 100 skills on it. Now my char is being limited to only using four or five skills and I had better chose carefully. Screw this new trend. I would rather have skill full modded micro action bars up and down the edges of my screen. And not told I only have two buffs and three f*ing skills I can use at a given time. No changing them in battle! This new trend, even if it was an old trend revived, blows.
Originally posted by Horusra Some like the simplicity of Super Mario and other like more thinking games. The console generation is here. Super Mario is all they can handle.
Lol, i would hardly call mmos thinking games, if you want thinking games you go play chess. Mmorpgs are about community interaction, lots of hotbars don't make a good mmo. Content makes a good mmo.
MMO's are first games.....pushing A and B make boring games....boring games make bad games. The less thinking in the game the more boring.
I think it's the principle of the matter that upsets people the most, the fact that we are going backwards in terms of combat complexity. Is all people want is forward development, not backwards development.
Originally posted by Horusra Some like the simplicity of Super Mario and other like more thinking games. The console generation is here. Super Mario is all they can handle.
Lol, i would hardly call mmos thinking games, if you want thinking games you go play chess. Mmorpgs are about community interaction, lots of hotbars don't make a good mmo. Content makes a good mmo.
MMO's are first games.....pushing A and B make boring games....boring games make bad games. The less thinking in the game the more boring.
I think it's the principle of the matter that upsets people the most, the fact that we are going backwards in terms of combat complexity. Is all people want is forward development, not backwards development.
I rather have 10-15 solid skills vs having 50 redundant skills and obscure use skills.
Action MMO are severely lacking in strategy like CC and pulling because most removed the targeting system. The ones that remove the tank and healer rolls (trinity) have only DPS left, and that's what every class is in those games, a glorified DPS character. The end result is a button mashing zergfest.
Today I will pose this question. Is the new trend of MMOs, action oriented, fewer skills, and less hotbars? If you look at the old juggernauts of the MMO world, EQ 1, EQ 2, and Vanilla WoW, you literally were able to use all of your skills (usually 30+) at any given point. You were not limited to 8, 10, or 12. Fast forward 10 - 12 years later and you see games like GW2 with this action styled dodging and rolling around, while only being able to use a set amount of your skills during a single combat period.
Is this the way MMOs are leaning? What I think to be a more casualized, less intensive, easier learning style? Are MMO companies attempting to make combat more fun? Or are they instead trying to make it easier for the younger (or older) gamer?
Today I will pose this question. Is the new trend of MMOs, action oriented, fewer skills, and less hotbars? If you look at the old juggernauts of the MMO world, EQ 1, EQ 2, and Vanilla WoW, you literally were able to use all of your skills (usually 30+) at any given point. You were not limited to 8, 10, or 12. Fast forward 10 - 12 years later and you see games like GW2 with this action styled dodging and rolling around, while only being able to use a set amount of your skills during a single combat period.
Is this the way MMOs are leaning? What I think to be a more casualized, less intensive, easier learning style? Are MMO companies attempting to make combat more fun? Or are they instead trying to make it easier for the younger (or older) gamer?
I look forward to hearing back from all of you,
Talint
When EQ released the warrior had:
autoattack
taunt
kick
bash (if ogre or with shield)
- so....new trend?
Exactly.
The trend was too many skillbars to give the player an illusion of doing something complicated.
Back in the day even Wizards had 8 spells mem'd and.. Sense Direction.
Originally posted by Horusra Some like the simplicity of Super Mario and other like more thinking games. The console generation is here. Super Mario is all they can handle.
Lol, i would hardly call mmos thinking games, if you want thinking games you go play chess. Mmorpgs are about community interaction, lots of hotbars don't make a good mmo. Content makes a good mmo.
MMO's are first games.....pushing A and B make boring games....boring games make bad games. The less thinking in the game the more boring.
I think it's the principle of the matter that upsets people the most, the fact that we are going backwards in terms of combat complexity. Is all people want is forward development, not backwards development.
We never moved forward is the thing.
There was never anything added with a ton of action bars. You do damage, you heal, you cc, or you help improve / remove that.
EQ2 and WoW did what exactly? Have varying versions of those that you'd macro into a rollface order anyway.
Making the combat in the field, not on the bars, is a worthwhile trend.
Originally posted by Waterlily Action MMO are severely lacking in strategy like CC and pulling because most removed the targeting system. The ones that remove the tank and healer rolls (trinity) have only DPS left, and that's what every class is in those games, a glorified DPS character. The end result is a button mashing zergfest.
The target system is still there, you just have to actually aim and hit your target now. Just because they changed the way you do combat shouldn't mean that the mechanics behind the trinity should change. The two are not related. All this thread discusses is the fact that performing combat is changing, not the fact that devs are being lazy with classes and group dynamics.
So, I think a lot of people are angry because games are taking away skills from them, but really the 500 skill system was an illusion to begin with. Games are taking away skills but adding more dynamic ways of fighting, such as active dodge abilities. I personally love the way combat is heading (less gear, more skill) because it involves more player skill and immerses you more into your character. I love the idea that a low level character has the possibility of defeating a high level one, or that if someone was skilled enough they can take 3-4 people at a time. Although I think that we have not seen an impressive case of action combat (vindictus is a step in the right direction, tera too) I think we will get there.
Originally posted by Waterlily Action MMO are severely lacking in strategy like CC and pulling because most removed the targeting system. The ones that remove the tank and healer rolls (trinity) have only DPS left, and that's what every class is in those games, a glorified DPS character. The end result is a button mashing zergfest.
Nothing wrong if it is fun.
There are plenty of action RPGs that you need to consider terrain and special abilities, and that you have to do it with little time. CC is not the only strategy. Use of terrain, line of sight, defense vs offense skills, CD management, all can be fun strategic elements.
Originally posted by Waterlily Action MMO are severely lacking in strategy like CC and pulling because most removed the targeting system. The ones that remove the tank and healer rolls (trinity) have only DPS left, and that's what every class is in those games, a glorified DPS character. The end result is a button mashing zergfest.
Nothing wrong if it is fun.
There are plenty of action RPGs that you need to consider terrain and special abilities, and that you have to do it with little time. CC is not the only strategy. Use of terrain, line of sight, defense vs offense skills, CD management, all can be fun strategic elements.
You said it... "there are plenty of action RPG's..."
So why do we need one more?
Not macro-smashing buttons.. like we have to do with arcade games. So much fun mashing as many button as I can to win... so much fun...
"No they are not charity. That is where the whales come in. (I play for free. Whales pays.) Devs get a business. That is how it works."
Originally posted by Horusra Some like the simplicity of Super Mario and other like more thinking games. The console generation is here. Super Mario is all they can handle.
Lol, i would hardly call mmos thinking games, if you want thinking games you go play chess. Mmorpgs are about community interaction, lots of hotbars don't make a good mmo. Content makes a good mmo.
Super Mario is a skateboard, MMOs are an 18 wheeler. Does it take skill to ride a skateboard? Yeah it sure does, but it's still a skateboard.
It gets old watching the same scene but I have to get props to the actor.. he was really fucking good. Who would of guessed he would of been dubbed over for bitch fests and musings over MMO's.
Because keys are largely hit sequentially and in minor combination, not fifty at a time (unless you're perhaps typing with your forehead)?
Amazing how much coffee has in common with MMOs.
A lot of people have to type in different languages where the orders are largely different. Take somebody in China for instance who is also proficient in English, or anybody in S Korea for that matter..
Simply because you can have 50 available actions at a time does not mean you have to concomitantly use them. That's just an assumption you added.
Well yes, my comment was an exaggeration to point out the fact that the speed of one's typing has very little to do with any real knowledge base and their physical movement is, as I stated already, commonly sequential and not concurrent (excusing minor combinations).
It was clarifying that people are not thinking of a bunch of things at the same time as they are typing. You don't have t sit there thinking about every key combination possible and the location of each key spatially. a lot of that's essentially muscle memory any ways, not complex thought.
Sure, there's more thinking when you have to translate things between languages while typing, but that does not directly correlate to a notable increase in concurrent activity. It's, like many other aspects, a sequentially ordered action with sequential responses.
As it applies back to the point of the topic. A ton of different buttons giving a ton of different abilities has multiple reasons it's not really necessary.
The Secret World is perhaps a good example for this. For the complexity the game touts there is a pretty finite set of functions upon which everything is based, weapons and abilities granting you some combination of status effects. Most games are like this at a fundamental level. It's a numbers game and the actual variety in abilities usually boils down to a surprisingly small number of variables.
Having oodles of powers is certainly neat, but not every potential combination is particularly necessary or even useful.
Games that give you access to all the combination options, but force you to pick a subset of them aren't necessarily doing it to cut you off, but so that you have a more clear game play mechanic and 'role'.
Alternatively, there are games that let you break down the abilities and assemble your own ones, tailoring the play to a high degree. Even in this case it's not really about the volume of options available, but the ability in which you can utilize them.
Tossing a bunch of powers at a player and letting them sort them out so they have a potential option for every scenario is certainly a viable form of play, but it's far from a practical one when you know that the player's style and behavior is going to commonly make them rely on a much more finite set of the powers.
And that's the other factor. With as much freedom of choice as there is, it's not abnormal for players to pick whatever constitutes the 'strongest' options in the game at any given time. Consequently it's rather normal for the majority of abilities on a character to be ignored while the player focuses on spamming what's considered the most effective or efficient build's abilities.
So yeah, freedom of choice is nice and having all options available at once sounds quite empowering, but practical value is an important factor when considering how abilities are handled.
"The knowledge of the theory of logic has no tendency whatever to make men good reasoners." - Thomas B. Macaulay
"The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge." - Daniel J. Boorstin
Comments
A multitude of skills and a plethora of hotbars is what has driven me away from most MMOs. I never got the debate over 'tab targeting' vs 'action combat' because the manner in which I target something is far less important to me than the manner in which I actually take an action, and both of these systems have invariably involved the use of hotkeys on hotbars.
Cooldown management is not fun for me in the long run. Staring at hotbars or downloading mods to help you manage your cooldowns most efficiently is not fun for me. Having one button which I can press and watch my mage cast a fireball and another which I can press and see frost nova is not fun for me.
I've eschewed every other game on the market and stopped paying attention to any upcoming titles in favor of just playing eve, which I find to be more entertaining than any hotbar game. Freakin' EVE Online, for chrissake. It says a lot when a game where spaceships behave like fat drunken submarines, where moving involves either setting a course from which you will not deviate unless you act again or navigating a contextual menu, where weapons are simply set to a target and left on is actually more stimulating to me to play than any hotbar mmo.
Personally I prefer the less is more approach, for me it makes the game more fun. The older mmos had far too many hotbars which didn't add to the fun it just cluttered up the screen.
I raided in some top guilds for a number of years and most of the skills on the hotbars were redundant most of the time, and all those hotbar skills just ment pvp balance was always off. Less skills means easier balance and less useless or rarely used skill. The newer action style mmos with dodging,etc are far more skill based than the old button mashing macro mmos of yesteryear.
Though I do feel that no one as of yet has got the formular totally right. Less hotbars doesn't have to mean dumbing down other features and I do feel this has been a trend over the past few years.
Lol, i would hardly call mmos thinking games, if you want thinking games you go play chess. Mmorpgs are about community interaction, lots of hotbars don't make a good mmo. Content makes a good mmo.
MMO's are first games.....pushing A and B make boring games....boring games make bad games. The less thinking in the game the more boring.
Less skills being sold off as less action bar is the trend now.
I don't like WoW and left long ago but I appreciated their letting players mod the UI so you could get your action bar any size you wanted. I am really sick of huge ass fancy action bars swallowing most my f*ing screen. So what if the action bar has less skills on it? Devs made it so big ass it might as well have 100 skills on it. Now my char is being limited to only using four or five skills and I had better chose carefully. Screw this new trend. I would rather have skill full modded micro action bars up and down the edges of my screen. And not told I only have two buffs and three f*ing skills I can use at a given time. No changing them in battle! This new trend, even if it was an old trend revived, blows.
I think it's the principle of the matter that upsets people the most, the fact that we are going backwards in terms of combat complexity. Is all people want is forward development, not backwards development.
The argument that console players can only play easy games is dispelled by the existence of Demon's Souls.
The argument that many buttons are needed for a complex game is dispelled by the existence of EVE Online.
Favorite MMO: Vanilla WoW
Currently playing: GW2, EVE
Excited for: Wildstar, maybe?
I rather have 10-15 solid skills vs having 50 redundant skills and obscure use skills.
When EQ released the warrior had:
autoattack
taunt
kick
bash (if ogre or with shield)
- so....new trend?
Exactly.
The trend was too many skillbars to give the player an illusion of doing something complicated.
Back in the day even Wizards had 8 spells mem'd and.. Sense Direction.
a yo ho ho
We never moved forward is the thing.
There was never anything added with a ton of action bars. You do damage, you heal, you cc, or you help improve / remove that.
EQ2 and WoW did what exactly? Have varying versions of those that you'd macro into a rollface order anyway.
Making the combat in the field, not on the bars, is a worthwhile trend.
a yo ho ho
The target system is still there, you just have to actually aim and hit your target now. Just because they changed the way you do combat shouldn't mean that the mechanics behind the trinity should change. The two are not related. All this thread discusses is the fact that performing combat is changing, not the fact that devs are being lazy with classes and group dynamics.
So, I think a lot of people are angry because games are taking away skills from them, but really the 500 skill system was an illusion to begin with. Games are taking away skills but adding more dynamic ways of fighting, such as active dodge abilities. I personally love the way combat is heading (less gear, more skill) because it involves more player skill and immerses you more into your character. I love the idea that a low level character has the possibility of defeating a high level one, or that if someone was skilled enough they can take 3-4 people at a time. Although I think that we have not seen an impressive case of action combat (vindictus is a step in the right direction, tera too) I think we will get there.
Nothing wrong if it is fun.
There are plenty of action RPGs that you need to consider terrain and special abilities, and that you have to do it with little time. CC is not the only strategy. Use of terrain, line of sight, defense vs offense skills, CD management, all can be fun strategic elements.
You said it... "there are plenty of action RPG's..."
So why do we need one more?
Not macro-smashing buttons.. like we have to do with arcade games. So much fun mashing as many button as I can to win... so much fun...
"No they are not charity. That is where the whales come in. (I play for free. Whales pays.) Devs get a business. That is how it works."
-Nariusseldon
Super Mario is a skateboard, MMOs are an 18 wheeler. Does it take skill to ride a skateboard? Yeah it sure does, but it's still a skateboard.
Survivor of the great MMORPG Famine of 2011
Call me old fashioned, but I don't think announcing a restriction is a good thing.
Why not let there be100 skills where you can have up to 50 on demand that do completely different things?
Why not ascribe skills to different 3directional movements that can total something absurd,but would lead to ruin if done trivially?
For many of those classes in WoW, EQ2, etc, even with macros you had to know at least 16 buttons at any given moment, if not more.
However, let's not beat around the bush: the real reason for this new wave of restrictions is for playability on consoles.
Because humans have limited working memory and most cannot handle 50 different things at the same time.
It gets old watching the same scene but I have to get props to the actor.. he was really fucking good. Who would of guessed he would of been dubbed over for bitch fests and musings over MMO's.
Then how exactly did most of humanity learn to type quickly on a keyboard then?
Because keys are largely hit sequentially and in minor combination, not fifty at a time (unless you're perhaps typing with your forehead)?
Any who, have this.
Amazing how much coffee has in common with MMOs.
"The knowledge of the theory of logic has no tendency whatever to make men good reasoners." - Thomas B. Macaulay
"The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge." - Daniel J. Boorstin
A lot of people have to type in different languages where the orders are largely different. Take somebody in China for instance who is also proficient in English, or anybody in S Korea for that matter..
Simply because you can have 50 available actions at a time does not mean you have to concomitantly use them. That's just an assumption you added.
Well yes, my comment was an exaggeration to point out the fact that the speed of one's typing has very little to do with any real knowledge base and their physical movement is, as I stated already, commonly sequential and not concurrent (excusing minor combinations).
It was clarifying that people are not thinking of a bunch of things at the same time as they are typing. You don't have t sit there thinking about every key combination possible and the location of each key spatially. a lot of that's essentially muscle memory any ways, not complex thought.
Sure, there's more thinking when you have to translate things between languages while typing, but that does not directly correlate to a notable increase in concurrent activity. It's, like many other aspects, a sequentially ordered action with sequential responses.
As it applies back to the point of the topic. A ton of different buttons giving a ton of different abilities has multiple reasons it's not really necessary.
The Secret World is perhaps a good example for this. For the complexity the game touts there is a pretty finite set of functions upon which everything is based, weapons and abilities granting you some combination of status effects. Most games are like this at a fundamental level. It's a numbers game and the actual variety in abilities usually boils down to a surprisingly small number of variables.
Having oodles of powers is certainly neat, but not every potential combination is particularly necessary or even useful.
Games that give you access to all the combination options, but force you to pick a subset of them aren't necessarily doing it to cut you off, but so that you have a more clear game play mechanic and 'role'.
Alternatively, there are games that let you break down the abilities and assemble your own ones, tailoring the play to a high degree. Even in this case it's not really about the volume of options available, but the ability in which you can utilize them.
Tossing a bunch of powers at a player and letting them sort them out so they have a potential option for every scenario is certainly a viable form of play, but it's far from a practical one when you know that the player's style and behavior is going to commonly make them rely on a much more finite set of the powers.
And that's the other factor. With as much freedom of choice as there is, it's not abnormal for players to pick whatever constitutes the 'strongest' options in the game at any given time. Consequently it's rather normal for the majority of abilities on a character to be ignored while the player focuses on spamming what's considered the most effective or efficient build's abilities.
So yeah, freedom of choice is nice and having all options available at once sounds quite empowering, but practical value is an important factor when considering how abilities are handled.
"The knowledge of the theory of logic has no tendency whatever to make men good reasoners." - Thomas B. Macaulay
"The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge." - Daniel J. Boorstin