Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Quick Links
Combat defines the MMORPG
Archlyte
Member RarePosts: 1,405
But should it? I am wondering if an MMORPG has to have absolutely spellbinding combat. WTF is spell binding combat? Is combat really role-playing? Isn't MMORPG combat really pretty boring anyway?
MMORPGs seem to be largely built on the Kill and Collect model.
Is the combat mechanic the thing which must define a game the most? Maybe it is, but I wondered what the thinkers here have to say about it. In an MMORPG you will typically engage in tens of thousands of fights until it becomes an almost rote task. Could an MMORPG work with a very simple, low importance, or summarized combat system?
If not simple, then what about combat that is very serious, and cannot be entered into lightly, but that represents a small investment of game time overall?
MMORPGs seem to be largely built on the Kill and Collect model.
Is the combat mechanic the thing which must define a game the most? Maybe it is, but I wondered what the thinkers here have to say about it. In an MMORPG you will typically engage in tens of thousands of fights until it becomes an almost rote task. Could an MMORPG work with a very simple, low importance, or summarized combat system?
If not simple, then what about combat that is very serious, and cannot be entered into lightly, but that represents a small investment of game time overall?
MMORPG players are often like Hobbits: They don't like Adventures
Comments
What other kinds of combat could exist?
My ideal mmorpg would host many forms of gameplay like a fantasy second life and as much to accomplish in non-combat endeavors as adventurers would gain from combat.
Help me Bioware, you're my only hope.
Is ToR going to be good? Dude it's Bioware making a freaking star wars game, all signs point to awesome. -G4tv MMo report.
Combat doesn't necessarily define a game, but it's the main driving force behind a lot of them, because it creates conflict, which is good for storytelling and retaining interest.
I would say, persistence & progression, define the genre, not solely combat.
I'd love a game where combat is just one element of the gameplay, where you could essentially progress through the whole game without ever raising a weapon. I'd love for deception and redirection without having to kill, to be a viable play style. I'd love for exploration, crafting and trading to be a viable play style, just as much as strapping on some armour and going on a killing spree.
its basically a text based mmorpg
what is the best mud medieval fantasy theme?
I don't think I would like to play a game with no combat, but I think the Hamster wheel of Killing can get a bit stale.
Someone mentioned D&D, and too often simplistic D&D games are really just about rolling dice against enemies. More sophisticated games use combat as a potent spice rather than a universal ingredient.
An Ecosystem would go along way toward a different type of game. Right now you literally have to Kill to Move across the landscape, and the path behind you will fill in with new mobs like water with no end or respite.
When the reasons for combat becomes combat for combats sake, then it is mindless slaughter; but given interesting reasons from the game design, it suddenly transforms the combat.
Many a mmorpg have neglected good reasons and background for why you do combat and ended up being too much function and very little form. As an example, to only do combat to level up to max is a weak reason and because of that the combat will define the game.
"I am my connectome" https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=HA7GwKXfJB0
And it might be that MMOs have too much combat in percentage of the content, it certainly have far more then almost any P&P campaign have.
In P&P you have intrigues, puzzle solving, romance, resource managment, strategy (in some campaigns players might be officers leading an army or ruling a kingdom) and a lot more.
The problem is that many of thses features are hard work to get into MMOs, or just get pointless due to wikis.
We played some Forgotten realms this saturday, the rogue got killed in a reverse gravity trap and the rest of the party got beaten up (2 of them bathed in my acid trap, and even when they figured out how the gravity trap worked they alos got falling damage on the other side of the reverse gravity field). It was a puzzle trap dungeon, not much based on rolls but the players had to figure out how to bypass the traps and solve the puzzels. If they just could have gone online and checked how to do things it wouldn't have been fun for anyone.
Unless you either could figure out a way for a AI to make random traps or design a few thousands that can show up in any dungeon it wont really work in a MMO, and the replay value of a static trap puzzle dungeon is pretty much zero even without any wikis.
Certain features would work in a well made sandbox game but wont work in themeparks, others are hard but possible to make and some don't just work at all.
The devs tend to play safe and combat content is the easiest to make of all content. One could wonder why they can't make the combat in itself more fun though considering how much of the games are based on it.
I think that would be really cool, but then what are people going to be doing besides combat?
People expect a lot of playtime out of their MMOs. People play MMOs for 8-12 hours a day for months and still complain there isn't enough content and quit.
Combat is an easy out, but it works. It keeps the player engaged (I prefer action-combat because it keeps you slightly more engaged).
If you're going to minimize combat, than what could you put in that would keep the player at least as engaged while they're playing the game for say 8 hours a day?
If you dislike the historical setting (loosely 16th century, though they take considerable liberties with the timeline), then so be it. But if you choose your MMORPGs primarily on the basis of graphics and setting, don't be upset if you spend the rest of your life playing mediocre WoW-clones.
Whether it is "really" RPing is irrelevant. CRPGs are different from tabletop RPG, and it is silly to think that they should, or can be the same.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
If you're (ridiculously) suggesting that MMOs should provide the same amount of hours as single player games, then yeah, this isn't an issue.
Kind of hard to get recurring payments/subscriptions out of people that are done with a game in 20-60 hours though.
I'm not saying 12 hours/day is the norm. Reading comprehension pls.
He uses the profits to make even more money on market speculation.
The best games have options for many different types of players. The worst games force you to go on genocidal rampages across the landscape, murdering hundreds of thousands of naked mole rats so you can turn their spleens in at a static quest marker.
I realize how silly it is to pick and choose based on artstyle and setting and I hate myself for it.