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Action/Twitch, 8-button Combat

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  • Magna104Magna104 Member UncommonPosts: 3

    I have asked for many of the changes that we're seeing in these "next generation" games for years.  I think they have all the right ideas with EQ next, but it's going to come down to execution.

    I don't buy that you either have a "trinity" or its a zerg fest.  I think that you can have game play where, if everyone doesn't work together, everyone dies.  Now, with the compute power that we have, it is possible to have game play that requires tactical awareness and adaptation, as opposed to developing a strategy through trial and error then repeating that strategy over and over to "farm" loot.

    Old style raid:

    "Ok, when the boss gets to 50%, stop DPS except for the main tank, and debuff until the worms spawn.  Healers be ready to cure the worm rot and off-tanks pull each worm to a corner of the room so they don't cast the insta-death enchantment on the boss..."

    You do a raid over and over, learning little bits of how to win by trial-and-error, and then once you know how to win, you keep doing it so that everyone can get the uber boss loot, sometimes for many months or even years if you have a big guild.

    15 years ago, it had to be that way.  The developers had to design these encounters in advance because computing power was limited and the NPC behavior was static.  It didn't change based on what the players were doing.  We don't have that limitation anymore.  the behavior of NPCs can adapt based on what the players are doing now, and the players have to adapt in real time too.

    In this way, in these newer games, PVE is going to start to look more and more like PVP.  You'll be fighting an NPC or group of NPCs who are trying to win and adapting to what you are doing.

    Is this a good or a bad thing?  It depends on why you play, right?  Some people get a huge charge out of knowing the strat to kill that uber boss encounter and being a "sombody" in the social structure of their guild and the game.  They like their raids to have tactics that can be learned and known in advance so that they can be the one explaining what to do as in the "old style raid" scenario above.  They aren't going to like raids that require tactical awareness and adaptation.  That's going to seem chaotic and pointless ot them, and it won't give them the social strokes that they want.

    Other people want an edge of your seat life-and-death struggle on every raid, where you don't know in advance exactly what's going to happen when, and you have to react quickly to win.  For them, spanking the same boss that you know how to spank for years is just horrendously boring.  

    Fortunately, for those who like the old style play, it's still there for you.  They still expand EQ1 regularly, and other games out there also offer the static strategy "trinity" style of play that you know and love.  

     

  • wizardanimwizardanim Member Posts: 278
    Originally posted by ignore_me
    The lure of MOBA $$, the lack of trinity, the need for simple controls because movement along 3 axes will be necessary. What's your take on this feature of EQNext?

    Non conventional tanks/healers/dps does not mean lack of trinity.  They said you will not see a classical tank, but there will still be 'tanks' as we are familiar with them - characters that can take a beating.  There will still be healers as we know them - characters specialized in tending to others wounds.  There will still be dps - characters oriented around doing more damage than others.  From the sounds of their announcement, different creatures will require different combinations of the aforementioned to be defeated.

    So, the entire game isn't just a set of three roles walking around able to defeat everything in the world.  It is about how the player can understand what they are up against, and adapt to the situation/combat at hand.  Sounds much more interesting to me.  Be smart to create the trinity via constructing a character that represents your ideal of that roll for a given situation.

  • jerlot65jerlot65 Member UncommonPosts: 788
    I like the premise of a game that is "Easy to learn, but hard to master".  Hopefully EQN uses the 8 button method towards this goal.

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