Meh, in either case it's really just learning the dance moves, one is just a bit more difficult, but not really any more interesting. At the end of the day, you are just there for the gear.
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
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"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
Originally posted by Kyleran Meh, in either case it's really just learning the dance moves, one is just a bit more difficult, but not really any more interesting. At the end of the day, you are just there for the gear.
It makes the boss fights far more interesting the first few run. Given that people quit after after a few week - a month, it matters.
I can't say MMOs are really that hard to play in general anyway, so this makes no odds to me, to say I wouldn't play it because mobs have red circles they put down before a deathblow skill would potentially be not playing a really awesome game! I've raided in just about every game that had raids, often with hardcore 5-6 day a week guilds.
You need a method of 'telling' the players what is gonna happen next if you're gonna make your combat this action-based. Otherwise it's literally just you guessing the upcoming skills (AKA DIablo 3) which really removes any skill required and introduces luck instead. Sure GW2 attempted to do this with monsters charging up abilities, giving warnings and so on but honestly that system never really worked out as they intended.
The other alternative is don't have an action system, have a boring bog-standard roll system - I hit you, you hit me and so on.
Personally I think they should have us take the GRE before entering a dungeon and the loot you get should be based on your score. Stop dumbing down games.
You need a method of 'telling' the players what is gonna happen next if you're gonna make your combat this action-based. (...)
Sure and should be told through well-done boss animation, not red circles on the ground.
This doesn't mean that the boss should necessarely do a "charging " animation. For instance, the boss could quickly throw fire into the air, but then it takes a while before the fire hits the ground and thus gives you time to react.
You need a method of 'telling' the players what is gonna happen next if you're gonna make your combat this action-based. (...)
Sure and should be told through well-done boss animation, not red circles on the ground.
You kinda took the rest of what I said out of context - I went on to say GW2 tried this and failed at it. It's a pretty complicated task to give hundreds of different monsters a specific animation or multiple animations for that fact, you can tell they had started to do this in early levels where mobs did have various animations. Later on though it literally just became the same single animation, which in my mind is no different than a big red circle on the floor. "Oh the mob is glowing white and is doing a charge-up animation, move left"
Sure, it's a nice proposition to give hundreds of models multiple animations but a) it's hugely resource consuming, not to mention when new mobs are added and b) eventually you will just know the tells instinctively anyway thus turning it back into a big red circle for you anyway.
If they choose to make the combat more reaction/timing based than "circle = move within 5 seconds" then it'll be great. I think twitch gaming and decision making is something we don't get enough of in MMOs these days.
EDIT: For bosses, yeah, I agree, they could muster up resources for multiple 'telling animations' to make it a bit more challenging. And they might just do that - Red circles for mobs, boss animations for tells.
You can thank the masses for this 'trend'. The more popular something is, the lower the average IQ of it's interest base. MMOs need a large group of peopel to survive, hence.. you can do the math.
The trend isn't even all that new. We had this in SWTOR, TSW, GW2, All the Super Hero MMOs. People want more challenging content, but if it's difficult to the point of requiring thought, people complain that its 'unfair'.
I'd love to see more difficult MMOs, but unless MMOs can start being made without a massive budget, I just don't see that happening.
You can thank the masses for this 'trend'. The more popular something is, the lower the average IQ of it's interest base. MMOs need a large group of peopel to survive, hence.. you can do the math.
The trend isn't even all that new. We had this in SWTOR, TSW, GW2, All the Super Hero MMOs. People want more challenging content, but if it's difficult to the point of requiring thought, people complain that its 'unfair'.
I'd love to see more difficult MMOs, but unless MMOs can start being made without a massive budget, I just don't see that happening.
Have MMOs ever been difficult though? Sure, the early days of Asheron's Call were tough but no one had a clue how to build and the skill system was incredibly broken; once people figured out the overpowered skills it was over.
The SWG krayt dragons were very tough but there were huge threat issues in that game.
Classic 40 man WoW raids are supposed to be some of the toughest raids in MMO history but frankly the threat generation system was screwed, the healing system was a mess and classes were unbalnced to the point of entire specs being horrendously broken. The mechanics infact were very easy and in hindsight we had a LOT of players who had no idea what they were doing.
And lastly yeah, I guess you could say levelling in Dark Age of Camelot was very tough but that was generally due to a broken questing system which pointed you often in the wrong direction, alongside an aggro system that meant 20 mobs would suddenly come running your way.
See what i'm getting at here? We look at tough times in MMO history as tough because the game was generally a mess, one that we loved but still, had some glaring issues we chose to ignore or didn't know any better.
First heard the day after they expanded the size of the original Pong paddle.
LOL! I remember that... ^^ It seems that way too many people forget that this is supposed to be about fun, and entertainment. Not a second job, or some alternate reality.
Sure, they could program bosses to pick some random abilties and string them together in various random fashions. While that might be "challenging" to some, it wouldn't be *fun* or entertaining to many others.
The boss just dipped their right shoulder! Does that mean an aoe fireball spread, a charge at the casters/healer, or a tail whip spin?... Multiple this by any number of such patterns, and you understand one of the reasons for telegraphing.
Look at the various mods in use for raiding in WoW. Would there be nearly as much supply of such, if there wasn't a great deal of demand? Why the great demand? Because many people get information overload in a stress environment. Not everyone can handle that input in an effective fashion in real time.
What really gets entertaining is how complex telegraphing could get, with intersecting colors and shapes on the ground and later in the air. But thats a topic for another time.
Originally posted by Rossboss What's the alternative to this? Talking on ventrillo or some other voice chatting service. Just think of how much hassle this removes when doing boss fights for the first and subsequent times. You now have a reason to get mad at people who don't follow directions because it's quite literally shown that the person died and it was their fault. I really like this idea, explaining boss fights and mobs just got intuitive. Instead of trying to explain what skills do, you can tell people, "Don't stand in the red areas. You will get hit if you do."
Edit: I'm wondering if games will allow players to turn off this functionality or change it to something less identifiable. I've seen in games where they use visual cues like shadows on the ground for falling objects, or wind-up for large attacks.
When I used to raid in EQ, a few years ago, there was a log parser utility called EQ Companion, which would just read your log file (a big text file), and put up big huge alert text and warning sounds if it encountered certain triggers.
Later on, EQ incorporated this feature into the game - allowing audio files to be played (but I don't think it would flash text messages). But you still had to manually set it up - no text triggers were included by default.
So you could try to read through many different windows of chat text scrolling for certain textual queues (nearly every trigger in EQ was text-based and send either by emote or /say/shout/yell/etc), or you could set up a trigger and just make it play some sound or provide some other audible/visual method of alerting you.
I had mixed feelings about it then, and I still do today - this is essentially the same thing as the "big red circle" we're talking about here. There were a few people who genuinely didn't need the tool - either they had their UI set up well enough it didn't provide anything or they could just read several different chat windows simultaneously. There were not many of these people - maybe 5% of the players I ever raided with. Nearly every one else, though, it would improve their raid performance (and by that, I mean missing fewer triggers) - it didn't perform the action for them, but it helped to bring their attention around when they needed it.
It was a tool, and it was totally optional to use. For that reason, I tolerated it. I admit to using it for some things, but not every single situation. I was not in the 5%, but I was stubborn and looked upon it as a crutch - and still do to some extent, but there was no denying that it helped us beat encounters faster. I don't think that it allowed us to beat any encounters we weren't going to beat eventually anyway (at least taking away the fact that some people leave due to frustration/grass-is-greener/other reasons guilds tend to implode when they hit something moderately difficult to overcome).
The same way a real-life boxer can avoid a blow. He doesn't get some arrow warning on which way to dodge or where not to stand. He has watch everything to predict a blow, e.g., watching for shoulder movement, foot and balance movement, etc.
Playing a video game is same as boxing in real life?
Thats one of the problems. Some people forget that not everyone can deal with the information overlord that happens in a stressful situation. Tunnel vision is just one of the problems. Judgement, fine motor skills, and focus are also impacted.
Many people take these games WAY too seriously. Their self image gets tangled up in their achievements within the games they play. Thats dangerous in many ways.
Originally posted by Kyleran Meh, in either case it's really just learning the dance moves, one is just a bit more difficult, but not really any more interesting. At the end of the day, you are just there for the gear.
Well stated. Thats exactly the motivation (carrot) for the vast majority of people involved. Even after the AI driving these encounters gets much more complex, its still a matter of learning the patterns and branch points. But like many such experiences, not everyone will be willing (or able) to enjoy such.
Love all the game trash talk, WOOT, ya good old day! What are developers thinking pushing the boundries of MMOs? I was a EQ1 raider. Boss fights had 1-2 things you had to watch for. Games like wildstar are adding a level of combat never seen before in a MMO. Telegraphing is needed because the boss fights are way harder then anything you have done before. With so many varied attacks it will blow your mind. Thats their goal. Try the game before we do the normal gamer prejudge. You may find something ya like. We keep yelling we want something new and fresh but when its given to us we trash talk it to the point we swarm and scare people away from trying it. We gamers can be fickle.
You need a method of 'telling' the players what is gonna happen next if you're gonna make your combat this action-based. (...)
Sure and should be told through well-done boss animation, not red circles on the ground.
You kinda took the rest of what I said out of context - I went on to say GW2 tried this and failed at it. It's a pretty complicated task to give hundreds of different monsters a specific animation or multiple animations for that fact, you can tell they had started to do this in early levels where mobs did have various animations. Later on though it literally just became the same single animation, which in my mind is no different than a big red circle on the floor. "Oh the mob is glowing white and is doing a charge-up animation, move left"
Sure, it's a nice proposition to give hundreds of models multiple animations but a) it's hugely resource consuming, not to mention when new mobs are added and b) eventually you will just know the tells instinctively anyway thus turning it back into a big red circle for you anyway.
If they choose to make the combat more reaction/timing based than "circle = move within 5 seconds" then it'll be great. I think twitch gaming and decision making is something we don't get enough of in MMOs these days.
EDIT: For bosses, yeah, I agree, they could muster up resources for multiple 'telling animations' to make it a bit more challenging. And they might just do that - Red circles for mobs, boss animations for tells.
So let me get this right. EQ had no problem doing this back in 1999 or so, but newer games can't seem to make mob animations good enough so that the players can learn and figure out when to to the hell otta the way? So, did the devs forget how to code and choreograph fights?
Let's be honest, the circles are put there so that players no longer have to learn when to move. It makes easier and faster to complete dungeons and raids. Players are more concerned about the loot these days than they are about feel the satisfaction of figuring the fight out AND getting the loot. It's just a matter of time before the single button replaces all the skill bars. It'll simply say "I Win".
Originally posted by Latronus Originally posted by SuperNickOriginally posted by TwoThreeFourOriginally posted by SuperNick(...)You need a method of 'telling' the players what is gonna happen next if you're gonna make your combat this action-based. (...)
Sure and should be told through well-done boss animation, not red circles on the ground. You kinda took the rest of what I said out of context - I went on to say GW2 tried this and failed at it. It's a pretty complicated task to give hundreds of different monsters a specific animation or multiple animations for that fact, you can tell they had started to do this in early levels where mobs did have various animations. Later on though it literally just became the same single animation, which in my mind is no different than a big red circle on the floor. "Oh the mob is glowing white and is doing a charge-up animation, move left"Sure, it's a nice proposition to give hundreds of models multiple animations but a) it's hugely resource consuming, not to mention when new mobs are added and b) eventually you will just know the tells instinctively anyway thus turning it back into a big red circle for you anyway.If they choose to make the combat more reaction/timing based than "circle = move within 5 seconds" then it'll be great. I think twitch gaming and decision making is something we don't get enough of in MMOs these days.EDIT: For bosses, yeah, I agree, they could muster up resources for multiple 'telling animations' to make it a bit more challenging. And they might just do that - Red circles for mobs, boss animations for tells.So let me get this right. EQ had no problem doing this back in 1999 or so, but newer games can't seem to make mob animations good enough so that the players can learn and figure out when to to the hell otta the way? So, did the devs forget how to code and choreograph fights?
Let's be honest, the circles are put there so that players no longer have to learn when to move. It makes easier and faster to complete dungeons and raids. Players are more concerned about the loot these days than they are about feel the satisfaction of figuring the fight out AND getting the loot. It's just a matter of time before the single button replaces all the skill bars. It'll simply say "I Win".
EQ didn't use animations, they used text.
Replacing text, or an animation, with a red circle does not remove the requirement that the player has to learn to move (or associate that with some other function) - it just makes the stimulus larger.
Stop signs mean your supposed to stop your car. And I do, probably 99.7% of the time. Sometimes I miss it - I'm distracted on the phone, or listening to the radio. Sometimes it takes the other guy honking his horn to keep me from wrecking. It happens... it's not good but it happens. The other guy can't hit my brake pedal, no matter how much he/she may like to - they can just increase the stimulus and hope I take the correct action.
Another way to look at it, and realize why so many guilds require tools like this (Boss Mods, etc):
Let's say you have a raid of 25 people - the standard WoW raid nowadays.
Let's say there's a boss tell - if someone misses the tell, the boss enrages and wipes the raid. Not a totally uncommon scenario. Sure, most of the times the punishment is less severe, and it takes several people failing, but to make the math easy (I'm hardly a math major), we'll say 1 failure = wipe.
Most people can get this tell right 95% of the time. In fact, we'll assume that everyone gets this right 95% of the time.
To calculate the odds of success, it's (P)^n, where P is the probability of a single occurance happening, and n is the number of occurances.
So, our P is 0.95, our n is 25. 0.95^25 = 0.277
So we have a <28% chance of winning this raid... even though there's only a 1 in 20 chance of any one person screwing up. Once you take that out 25 times, odds are someone is going to screw up. And that means a wasted run for 25 people - one hour wasted, buffs and consumables wasted, and most importantly, morale wasted.
Now let's say there's an addon, that puts a huge red circle on the ground. Just by installing and using it, it increases the chances of success. Now, each person has a 98% chance of succeeding against the boss tell.
P = 0.98, n= 25, 0.98^25 = 0.603
Sure, these are arbitrary numbers, but I'd say they are within the realm of plausibility.
So now, just by increasing the awareness of the raiders, we increased the odds of success to more than 60%. We didn't change the action they had to perform, we just increased the stimulus, and in doing so, more than doubled our chances of success. If you think "uber top guilds" don't use tools like this ... "uber top guilds" are the ones writing tools like this, and use of tools such as these give them the edge they have to get on top in the first place.
Well, telegraphing has been in video games as far back as I can remember. Mike Tyson's Punchout is a good example of an early game that was all about telegraphed boxers.
I normally don't want it in my MMO... I guess it doesn't matter though with all those raid boss mods pretty much taking the risk right out of the games anyways.
Enter a whole new realm of challenge and adventure.
Another way to look at it, and realize why so many guilds require tools like this (Boss Mods, etc):
Let's say you have a raid of 25 people - the standard WoW raid nowadays.
Let's say there's a boss tell - if someone misses the tell, the boss enrages and wipes the raid. Not a totally uncommon scenario. Sure, most of the times the punishment is less severe, and it takes several people failing, but to make the math easy (I'm hardly a math major), we'll say 1 failure = wipe.
Most people can get this tell right 95% of the time. In fact, we'll assume that everyone gets this right 95% of the time.
To calculate the odds of success, it's (P)^n, where P is the probability of a single occurance happening, and n is the number of occurances.
So, our P is 0.95, our n is 25. 0.95^25 = 0.277
So we have a <28% chance of winning this raid... even though there's only a 1 in 20 chance of any one person screwing up. Once you take that out 25 times, odds are someone is going to screw up. And that means a wasted run for 25 people - one hour wasted, buffs and consumables wasted, and most importantly, morale wasted.
Now let's say there's an addon, that puts a huge red circle on the ground. Just by installing and using it, it increases the chances of success. Now, each person has a 98% chance of succeeding against the boss tell.
P = 0.98, n= 25, 0.98^25 = 0.603
Sure, these are arbitrary numbers, but I'd say they are within the realm of plausibility.
So now, just by increasing the awareness of the raiders, we increased the odds of success to more than 60%. We didn't change the action they had to perform, we just increased the stimulus, and in doing so, more than doubled our chances of success. If you think "uber top guilds" don't use tools like this ... "uber top guilds" are the ones writing tools like this, and use of tools such as these give them the edge they have to get on top in the first place.
Funny I have used the same math to come up with an entirely different conclusion.
25 people, Each with a 5% chance of failing the mechanic = 72% chance of raid wiping = bad mechanic. In fact nearly all mechanics are bad. Instead of playing the game we are reduced to min-maxing the mechanic. Not fun, not fun at all.
We need to convince ourselves and then the developers that the "boss fight" and the "boss fight mechanics" are a stale dead end and move on to some other paradigm.
I can understand the occasional telegraph because not every game has deadly boss mods but seriously, what that new game showed in their video was EVERYthing was telegraphed, it's a tad boring that way.
Its a byproduct of the action bar / hot key style that nearly every mmo action or not uses. Fact is without them you would have little warning of when a boss was about to one shot you.
How would you do it? While keeping in mind factors like "drawing of the eye" and field of vision?
The same way a real-life boxer can avoid a blow. He doesn't get some arrow warning on which way to dodge or where not to stand. He has watch everything to predict a blow, e.g., watching for shoulder movement, foot and balance movement, etc.
I agree with the OP. It makes MMOs feel like a dumpy Nintendo game.
I've yet to see a MMO that requires more skill in PVE than *any* Nintendo game, ever.
The same way a real-life boxer can avoid a blow. He doesn't get some arrow warning on which way to dodge or where not to stand. He has watch everything to predict a blow, e.g., watching for shoulder movement, foot and balance movement, etc.
Playing a video game is same as boxing in real life?
Thats one of the problems. Some people forget that not everyone can deal with the information overlord that happens in a stressful situation. Tunnel vision is just one of the problems. Judgement, fine motor skills, and focus are also impacted.
Many people take these games WAY too seriously. Their self image gets tangled up in their achievements within the games they play. Thats dangerous in many ways.
Yeah. Some of them think that MMOs are actually second lives, and achievements in a game means anything. Sad!
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Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
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"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
It makes the boss fights far more interesting the first few run. Given that people quit after after a few week - a month, it matters.
I can't say MMOs are really that hard to play in general anyway, so this makes no odds to me, to say I wouldn't play it because mobs have red circles they put down before a deathblow skill would potentially be not playing a really awesome game! I've raided in just about every game that had raids, often with hardcore 5-6 day a week guilds.
You need a method of 'telling' the players what is gonna happen next if you're gonna make your combat this action-based. Otherwise it's literally just you guessing the upcoming skills (AKA DIablo 3) which really removes any skill required and introduces luck instead. Sure GW2 attempted to do this with monsters charging up abilities, giving warnings and so on but honestly that system never really worked out as they intended.
The other alternative is don't have an action system, have a boring bog-standard roll system - I hit you, you hit me and so on.
I prefer the first one.
Personally I think they should have us take the GRE before entering a dungeon and the loot you get should be based on your score. Stop dumbing down games.
Sure and should be told through well-done boss animation, not red circles on the ground.
This doesn't mean that the boss should necessarely do a "charging " animation. For instance, the boss could quickly throw fire into the air, but then it takes a while before the fire hits the ground and thus gives you time to react.
You kinda took the rest of what I said out of context - I went on to say GW2 tried this and failed at it. It's a pretty complicated task to give hundreds of different monsters a specific animation or multiple animations for that fact, you can tell they had started to do this in early levels where mobs did have various animations. Later on though it literally just became the same single animation, which in my mind is no different than a big red circle on the floor. "Oh the mob is glowing white and is doing a charge-up animation, move left"
Sure, it's a nice proposition to give hundreds of models multiple animations but a) it's hugely resource consuming, not to mention when new mobs are added and b) eventually you will just know the tells instinctively anyway thus turning it back into a big red circle for you anyway.
If they choose to make the combat more reaction/timing based than "circle = move within 5 seconds" then it'll be great. I think twitch gaming and decision making is something we don't get enough of in MMOs these days.
EDIT: For bosses, yeah, I agree, they could muster up resources for multiple 'telling animations' to make it a bit more challenging. And they might just do that
- Red circles for mobs, boss animations for tells.
You can thank the masses for this 'trend'. The more popular something is, the lower the average IQ of it's interest base. MMOs need a large group of peopel to survive, hence.. you can do the math.
The trend isn't even all that new. We had this in SWTOR, TSW, GW2, All the Super Hero MMOs. People want more challenging content, but if it's difficult to the point of requiring thought, people complain that its 'unfair'.
I'd love to see more difficult MMOs, but unless MMOs can start being made without a massive budget, I just don't see that happening.
Have MMOs ever been difficult though? Sure, the early days of Asheron's Call were tough but no one had a clue how to build and the skill system was incredibly broken; once people figured out the overpowered skills it was over.
The SWG krayt dragons were very tough but there were huge threat issues in that game.
Classic 40 man WoW raids are supposed to be some of the toughest raids in MMO history but frankly the threat generation system was screwed, the healing system was a mess and classes were unbalnced to the point of entire specs being horrendously broken. The mechanics infact were very easy and in hindsight we had a LOT of players who had no idea what they were doing.
And lastly yeah, I guess you could say levelling in Dark Age of Camelot was very tough but that was generally due to a broken questing system which pointed you often in the wrong direction, alongside an aggro system that meant 20 mobs would suddenly come running your way.
See what i'm getting at here? We look at tough times in MMO history as tough because the game was generally a mess, one that we loved but still, had some glaring issues we chose to ignore or didn't know any better.
LOL! I remember that... ^^ It seems that way too many people forget that this is supposed to be about fun, and entertainment. Not a second job, or some alternate reality.
Sure, they could program bosses to pick some random abilties and string them together in various random fashions. While that might be "challenging" to some, it wouldn't be *fun* or entertaining to many others.
The boss just dipped their right shoulder! Does that mean an aoe fireball spread, a charge at the casters/healer, or a tail whip spin?... Multiple this by any number of such patterns, and you understand one of the reasons for telegraphing.
Look at the various mods in use for raiding in WoW. Would there be nearly as much supply of such, if there wasn't a great deal of demand? Why the great demand? Because many people get information overload in a stress environment. Not everyone can handle that input in an effective fashion in real time.
What really gets entertaining is how complex telegraphing could get, with intersecting colors and shapes on the ground and later in the air. But thats a topic for another time.
When I used to raid in EQ, a few years ago, there was a log parser utility called EQ Companion, which would just read your log file (a big text file), and put up big huge alert text and warning sounds if it encountered certain triggers.
Later on, EQ incorporated this feature into the game - allowing audio files to be played (but I don't think it would flash text messages). But you still had to manually set it up - no text triggers were included by default.
So you could try to read through many different windows of chat text scrolling for certain textual queues (nearly every trigger in EQ was text-based and send either by emote or /say/shout/yell/etc), or you could set up a trigger and just make it play some sound or provide some other audible/visual method of alerting you.
I had mixed feelings about it then, and I still do today - this is essentially the same thing as the "big red circle" we're talking about here. There were a few people who genuinely didn't need the tool - either they had their UI set up well enough it didn't provide anything or they could just read several different chat windows simultaneously. There were not many of these people - maybe 5% of the players I ever raided with. Nearly every one else, though, it would improve their raid performance (and by that, I mean missing fewer triggers) - it didn't perform the action for them, but it helped to bring their attention around when they needed it.
It was a tool, and it was totally optional to use. For that reason, I tolerated it. I admit to using it for some things, but not every single situation. I was not in the 5%, but I was stubborn and looked upon it as a crutch - and still do to some extent, but there was no denying that it helped us beat encounters faster. I don't think that it allowed us to beat any encounters we weren't going to beat eventually anyway (at least taking away the fact that some people leave due to frustration/grass-is-greener/other reasons guilds tend to implode when they hit something moderately difficult to overcome).
Thats one of the problems. Some people forget that not everyone can deal with the information overlord that happens in a stressful situation. Tunnel vision is just one of the problems. Judgement, fine motor skills, and focus are also impacted.
Many people take these games WAY too seriously. Their self image gets tangled up in their achievements within the games they play. Thats dangerous in many ways.
Well stated. Thats exactly the motivation (carrot) for the vast majority of people involved. Even after the AI driving these encounters gets much more complex, its still a matter of learning the patterns and branch points. But like many such experiences, not everyone will be willing (or able) to enjoy such.
So let me get this right. EQ had no problem doing this back in 1999 or so, but newer games can't seem to make mob animations good enough so that the players can learn and figure out when to to the hell otta the way? So, did the devs forget how to code and choreograph fights?
Let's be honest, the circles are put there so that players no longer have to learn when to move. It makes easier and faster to complete dungeons and raids. Players are more concerned about the loot these days than they are about feel the satisfaction of figuring the fight out AND getting the loot. It's just a matter of time before the single button replaces all the skill bars. It'll simply say "I Win".
You kinda took the rest of what I said out of context - I went on to say GW2 tried this and failed at it. It's a pretty complicated task to give hundreds of different monsters a specific animation or multiple animations for that fact, you can tell they had started to do this in early levels where mobs did have various animations. Later on though it literally just became the same single animation, which in my mind is no different than a big red circle on the floor. "Oh the mob is glowing white and is doing a charge-up animation, move left" Sure, it's a nice proposition to give hundreds of models multiple animations but a) it's hugely resource consuming, not to mention when new mobs are added and b) eventually you will just know the tells instinctively anyway thus turning it back into a big red circle for you anyway. If they choose to make the combat more reaction/timing based than "circle = move within 5 seconds" then it'll be great. I think twitch gaming and decision making is something we don't get enough of in MMOs these days. EDIT: For bosses, yeah, I agree, they could muster up resources for multiple 'telling animations' to make it a bit more challenging. And they might just do that
So let me get this right. EQ had no problem doing this back in 1999 or so, but newer games can't seem to make mob animations good enough so that the players can learn and figure out when to to the hell otta the way? So, did the devs forget how to code and choreograph fights?
Let's be honest, the circles are put there so that players no longer have to learn when to move. It makes easier and faster to complete dungeons and raids. Players are more concerned about the loot these days than they are about feel the satisfaction of figuring the fight out AND getting the loot. It's just a matter of time before the single button replaces all the skill bars. It'll simply say "I Win".
EQ didn't use animations, they used text.
Replacing text, or an animation, with a red circle does not remove the requirement that the player has to learn to move (or associate that with some other function) - it just makes the stimulus larger.
Stop signs mean your supposed to stop your car. And I do, probably 99.7% of the time. Sometimes I miss it - I'm distracted on the phone, or listening to the radio. Sometimes it takes the other guy honking his horn to keep me from wrecking. It happens... it's not good but it happens. The other guy can't hit my brake pedal, no matter how much he/she may like to - they can just increase the stimulus and hope I take the correct action.
Another way to look at it, and realize why so many guilds require tools like this (Boss Mods, etc):
Let's say you have a raid of 25 people - the standard WoW raid nowadays.
Let's say there's a boss tell - if someone misses the tell, the boss enrages and wipes the raid. Not a totally uncommon scenario. Sure, most of the times the punishment is less severe, and it takes several people failing, but to make the math easy (I'm hardly a math major), we'll say 1 failure = wipe.
Most people can get this tell right 95% of the time. In fact, we'll assume that everyone gets this right 95% of the time.
To calculate the odds of success, it's (P)^n, where P is the probability of a single occurance happening, and n is the number of occurances.
So, our P is 0.95, our n is 25. 0.95^25 = 0.277
So we have a <28% chance of winning this raid... even though there's only a 1 in 20 chance of any one person screwing up. Once you take that out 25 times, odds are someone is going to screw up. And that means a wasted run for 25 people - one hour wasted, buffs and consumables wasted, and most importantly, morale wasted.
Now let's say there's an addon, that puts a huge red circle on the ground. Just by installing and using it, it increases the chances of success. Now, each person has a 98% chance of succeeding against the boss tell.
P = 0.98, n= 25, 0.98^25 = 0.603
Sure, these are arbitrary numbers, but I'd say they are within the realm of plausibility.
So now, just by increasing the awareness of the raiders, we increased the odds of success to more than 60%. We didn't change the action they had to perform, we just increased the stimulus, and in doing so, more than doubled our chances of success. If you think "uber top guilds" don't use tools like this ... "uber top guilds" are the ones writing tools like this, and use of tools such as these give them the edge they have to get on top in the first place.
Well, telegraphing has been in video games as far back as I can remember. Mike Tyson's Punchout is a good example of an early game that was all about telegraphed boxers.
I normally don't want it in my MMO... I guess it doesn't matter though with all those raid boss mods pretty much taking the risk right out of the games anyways.
Enter a whole new realm of challenge and adventure.
Funny I have used the same math to come up with an entirely different conclusion.
25 people, Each with a 5% chance of failing the mechanic = 72% chance of raid wiping = bad mechanic. In fact nearly all mechanics are bad. Instead of playing the game we are reduced to min-maxing the mechanic. Not fun, not fun at all.
We need to convince ourselves and then the developers that the "boss fight" and the "boss fight mechanics" are a stale dead end and move on to some other paradigm.
I've yet to see a MMO that requires more skill in PVE than *any* Nintendo game, ever.
http://lyrics.iztok.org/verse/Lynyrd_Skynyrd/Simple_Man/80615
Yeah. Some of them think that MMOs are actually second lives, and achievements in a game means anything. Sad!
I like this method simply becauses it reduces the need for Raiders and Raid Leaders from having to 'exit' the game to look up strategies on the web.
-Blitz
Werewolf Online(R) - Lead Developer
Actually is quite easy. Have difficulty settings like D3. D3 is a very popular game and yet it has perma death.
This has been around ever since Vanilla WoW, hellllo Deadly Boss Mods? And this was probobly done before that but that's the oldest MMO I played.
If your gonna introduce huge spikey damage then there needs to be telegraphing.