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Action MMORPGS and why I don't think they'll catch on.
Mkilbride
Member UncommonPosts: 643
At least not for awhile.
Vindictus, Tera, and to some degree, TESO. I love third person hack and slashes like DMC. Great fun. I love Vindictus too. Tera had neat combat.
The issue with why these games didn't / aren't succeeding lie with the combat. It's not Tab Target. Now, I don't think Tab Target is anything super amazing either. But MMORPGS are designed for the long term. Long hours. Years, even. With Tab Target combat, you can easily create new skills and combat modes. Not so with action, hence why most action games rarely update the moveset years after release.
The main problem is the attention. Tab Target you can watch TV, talk to friends, for hours on end. Plus, grinding and such isn't to bad. However, with Action Combat, it requires your full attention, dodging, attacking, combos, ect. You have to remain very focused, it's tiring on the hands and fingers if you try to grind these MMORPGS. It becomes exhausting.
Running a dungeon 4-5 times in a game like Vindictus or Tera is brutal, but because they are setup like MMORPGS, you need to grind. Hence, it's like replaying the same level of GoW or DMC 5 times over in a row. It gets stale, and yet it doesn't really become easier, you still need to give your full attention.
Action MMORPGS require alot of physical and mental effort, while Tab Target does not. So the difference between 5 hours of a game like Vindictus, or WoW, in those 5 hours in Vindictus, it feels like 10. You can't just kinda "Blank out", during the boring parts. So people end up taking breaks. But with a subscription, I mean, the breaks aren't all that appealing, yet you don't want to play either, so obviously you won't subscribe to a game that is like that. Hence why you see these types of MMORPGS getting alot of excitement at release
"Skill based! Action combat! Not the same old Tab target!"
These things are thrown around alot. But then it comes out. Maybe it has a good story, world, and satisfying in general, you can't find anything "wrong", but it all seems terribly exhausting after awhile because on top of the usual MMO grind / exhausting, you now have fatigue from mashing a button 500 times a Dungeon instead of 50.
Perhaps one day it will work, but not at current or the future as I can see. Not unless the nature of MMORPGS change to allow action combat. Even that odd Darkfall Online has a terrible grind where you spend all stay standing in a spot and kill monsters that pop up from it, over and over, just to level.
Alot of people play MMORPGS to get away from reflex intensive games, ones they can find unique or interesting builds, not just press WASD + Dodge key + M1/M2.
Every time an action MMORPG comes out, people just love the idea of a 'skill' based MMORPG, but it doesn't work because by their very nature, MMORPGS aren't meant to be that way. It's trying to fit something that wasn't designed for it in, and that is why until MMORPGS themselves change, "True Action Combat MMORPGS" will always fail.
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I would find Devil May Cry style combat very tiring with a keyboard and mouse too. With a gamepad I could grind all day laid back and my hands would never feel tired doing over 50 different skills one after the other in the blink of an eye switching between weapons on the fly. And all without any hotbars filling up my screen.
I even found Final Fantasy XIV more comfortable to play with a gamepad and that game has traditional tab target hotbar combat.
They aren't?
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein
"Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
I have to disagree with the OP. The MMO playerbase has been swelled to overflowing with players that desire action combat. Most of these new players find "old tab targeting" boring and dull. Many even believe it is so 1999, as if action combat indicates newer, better technology. It is just a different way of handling combat.
- Al
Personally the only modern MMORPG trend that annoys me is the idea that MMOs need to be designed in a way to attract people who don't actually like MMOs. Which to me makes about as much sense as someone trying to figure out a way to get vegetarians to eat at their steakhouse.- FARGIN_WAR
Action MMORPGS tend to be shallow. that being said, I enjoy playing such games, like Neverwinter. Some gamers just prefer the action and arcade gameplay, thus there will be a market for these gamers. I believe they still cannot catch up with true MMORPGs cuz they are made to be boutique games, catering to the intended audiences.
And because the attention span they can evoke in gamers are so short, these games have to constantly promote new stuff in game (which unfortunately, most of the time, it is the ever fanciful cash shop items. Neverwinter's lockboxes, sigh~~~~)
The possibility of the universe collapsing into a singularity is higher than the birth of a perfect MMORPG.
Actually, I kinda feel that action combat hides the usual lack of depth that these games have. Shallow character development, lack of complex gaming systems seems to be the normal thing to be found in most action-mmo's.
No MMOs have not been overflowing with players that want Action combat. Its a very small part of the population. Its just the vocal minority on the forums that want Action Combat. For example I have played with well over a hundred players. None of which will ever post a message on a forum. None of them like action combat period. Many of us played FPS at some time in our gaming lives over the last 15+ years and love the action however today not many of us can take that Action combat MMOs. 2 dozen tried WildStar and disliked the combat a few because how much it hurt their wrist, I didnt like Neverwinter or Tera because my wrist hurt after playing them games. All of us are over 30 years old now and just cannot play games that require repetitive motions like Action Combat games require. So we stick to Tab Target because how much we can macro and adjust our hotbars to change from repetitive motion to a different motion. So no its not overflowing thats just your opinion. If so many people wanted action combat why are these games not doing better? Because its a small group of players.
It actually has, which is why we saw a big shift over the past half decade from MMORPGs to MOBAs both in players and development. I know, I know... MOBAs aren't MMOs. w/e
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein
"Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
It not because of combat .
Those game have same code design as many "new" MMORPGs and get same "success" as other
so the combat wasn't main reason they can't have "WOW" success .
But the action combat they used kind of half-*** , not ready action.
If about "action" then there are many skill design in tab target more "action" than them .
IMO
Mage / archer target on ground , people pass by and they take damage .or Warrior AoE , people around him get hit are more action and player skill / tactic than so call action.
Was thinking the same.
Wasn't it just revealed that TERA is the third most revenue generating MMO (behind WoW, obviously, and Lineage 1)? Seems successful to me. Vindictus isn't really an MMO though, is it? I thought it was more of a lobby/party based co-op actiony thing.
I don't understand this obsession to combine a FPS style of game play into a MMO. I've played Wildstar, GW2, Tera and ESO while they all have some neat systems these combat systems in my opinion don't function very well in a group setting. I personally don't think action combat works well for traditional MMOs. I'm not entirely against it I have just yet to see a good version of it implemented into a game.
The main problem I see with the MMO concept and concepts not based on RPGs is that with the former, you can have cooldowns and you can do attack routines etc. Such things allow for ping tolerance. Somebody who sits in Europe and plays on a server in the USA can still play pretty well.
With Action games, you can do online, but you need very short ping times. Because of the laws of physics, you have limits to what you can allow in the distance department. A europe-USA ping of 500ms is not exceptionally slow, and 300ms is already close to the limits. But this is half a second reaction time that a european player will lose over an US based, which makes them unable to compete if the game is action based and thus no longer has cooldowns.
This ^
All of the games the OP mentioned haven't failed. And some of them are actually doing surprisingly well. GW2 and TESO still have a ton of people playing, and last I played TERA (after it went F2P) that game also still had a healthy population, against all odds.
The main issue people tend to have with a lot of these games seems to actually have little to do w/ the combat itself:
GW2, most people don't like the grinding, the writing, or want Anet to add more content (classes / skills / weapons / maps) etc.
TERA, most people complained about the painfully bland questing in that game (the bulk of which being kill X of Y quests).
ESO, most people complained about the bugs, or the phasing issues, or the VR grind.
- The OP's theory (and that's all it is, a theory), is an interesting one. The problem is, there's no data to actually back it up. It's an assumption w/ no visible correlation to his conclusion. Retention issues can be seen across ALL games, regardless of whether they are action-based or not. Heck, FFXIV:ARR, the latest tab target game to be primarily hailed by the community, isn't stomping other games in sales or concurrent users. It's definitely not doing poorly, but it's more or less on par w/ everything else out there.
Another issue with the OP's assumption, is that he's assuming that action-combat games require your full attention for everything. Most actually don't. The tough fights (bosses, BAMs, pvp) usually do, but there's also a lot of really easy content that is very forgiving. Heck the early lvls of GW2, TERA, and ESO can all be more or less auto-piloted; unless you accidently stumble into a world boss, in which case u just run away. The harder content rarely has downtime when you're actually doing it (you wouldn't watch TV while doing a raid in WoW, and you wouldn't be watching TV while doing a dungeon in GW2). It's the times before / after the runs that you have the downtime.
From what I've seen action combat has already caught on. It's already popular, and to most people it already 'feels' better than tab targetted games. The biggest issue I've seen w/ action-combat games, is that they are less friendly to gamers with certain health issues (like arthritis).
Some people like this approach, as it creates the illusion of "skill". For me, the real reason is to create the illusion of content. People get tired faster, play less, takes longer to devour the content. It's the same thing with some classic tab-targeting approach mmo's also - i took the opportunity to look again at FFXIV with this free weekend... meh, such a complicated, annoying map system, it takes ages to go from place to place, every quest has 4-5 steps until the reward (talk to X, talk to Y), every npc has 6-7 paragraphs of dialogue you have to click through, every quest hub, instead of having 7-8 quests which you can just take, solve and come back, just has one or two quests, you go, solve them, come back, another two quests open, you go solve those, come back, there's another 2 quests and so on, back and forth, walk walk walk etc. Everything is just made like this just to take more time, to create the illusion of content.
That's true. I think OP might be onto something.
Pretty much summed up what i as thinking. The main strength of Tera is the combat and the Mob mechanics. the Way you Tank, Heal and Dps. imho It's whats keeping the game going still.
I like games where have to do more than just remember my keybinds, unfortunately non-action tab-targeting doesn't offer that
If these recent action MMOs all had controller support, they would be much more popular. It is way more enjoyable and comfortable to play a twitchy action oriented game with a game pad 100%.
Unless you have some crazy ass computer station set up that is uber comfortable with a mouse and keyboard then you will probably agree with this comment too.
There is a huge difference between kickin back with a controller, and sitting up straight with your arms extended infront of you on a computer. I have just started playing FF XIV again, haven't tried using a controller yet but am going to try it out.
Originally posted by Arskaaa
"when players learned tacticks in dungeon/raids, its bread".
Call me crazy but something tells me action MMORPGs have already caught on.
/shrug
"If I offended you, you needed it" -Corey Taylor