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I posted a small part of this in the MMO wish list, but it got buried. I am reposting it here for the purpose of discussion.
I constantly see people talk about the "dumbing down" of WoW, and I want to address this with regards to PFO.
In a way I completely disagree. WoW is incredibly complex and sophisticated, and no amount of information on wowhead, google, or wow forums can detract from that.
But I understand where they're coming from:
1) Rote fights. Endgame often consists of watching a video of another guild killing a boss, and replicating what they did over and over. While the fights are always pushing new levels of complexity mechanics-wise, they are still repetetive. Nothing ever changes.
2) One button wonders. While this is an exaggeration, every class basically has their "go-to" ability. They spend some time ramping up, some much more or less than others, but ultimately the goal is generally to push that one button as many times as possible.
3) Binary challenge curve. Often fights are either impossible or pushovers--very tough or very easy. Few challenges ride the grey area. This is because, due to the static nature of everything else in the game, the only variables are fight mechanics (which are rote once learned) gear level, and the wide spectrum of player skill.
Solution strategy:
Something needs to be done to mix things up. Something that is somewhat forgiving of skill, yet also provides challenge for players operating with years of experience. Something to really diversify things.
And I think the answer can be found right in the Pathfinder RPG.
No Holy Trinity!
There is no "tanking" at the table. Tanking implies aggro control, which does not exist in RAW. (Except for that one feat which shall not be named.) Sure you have your tin cans and meat shields, but tanking is more than being able to take hits and running in first. Without aggro, these builds are just more survivable damage dealers.
Healing is not a dedicated role at the table either. On the contrary, healing in combat is decidedly sub-optimal.
Dedicated damage dealers are not required due to the variety of campaign style options. If you run a social game, for instance, you may not even engage in combat.
The point is, the Trinity roles don't exist as such at the table. The Trinity roles don't feel like Pathfinder.
What could this mean?
Remember playing through dungeons while leveling in WoW (or whatever you've played), before you really knew what you were doing, before knowing that you were "supposed" to tank 'n' spank? It was chaotic. It was awesome. How could we make that the way the game is supposed to be played?
Get rid of the Trinity roles.
-Make "tanking" be about keeping yourself alive while the focus is on you, rather than about keeping the focus on you, as it is in other MMOs.
-Keep taunt (in fact, make it available to everyone as a skill), but do not have any aggro ensuring abilities or aggro multipliers. Taunt would give you brief seconds of control, be used as an emergency to save another player, and be on a long cooldown to avoid taunt swapping.
-Give all martial characters the ability to situationally "tank" as part of their utility abilities or cooldown abilities.
-Give all ranged characters the ability to root, snare or otherwise control mobs at range--effectively, to "tank" at range.
-Give everyone comparable damage opportunities (lest they be pigeonholed into a role due to lack of built-in potential).
-Make "healing" be ideally done as HoTs, shielding, buffs, debuffs, potions, between fights, that sort of thing. Do not require dedicated healers.
-Give people more options for mitigating damage done to other players than just healing. Got a shield? Use it to protect your friend. Shooting arrows? Cast a spell to give the current "tank" a short, powerful protection buff. Casting? Debuff the mob so it does very little damage for a few seconds.
In other words, give everyone some ability to perform all three of the former Trinity roles in some manner.
What effect would this have?
Roles would be dynamic instead of static. One minute you'd be DPSing something your friend was tanking, the next, you'd be tanking! But it would be ok, because you'd have the situational tanking tools you need. The ping pong would be constant, but that wouldn't mean an automatic wipe like it always does in "trinity" based encounters. Instead, it would mean no fight would ever be the same twice. Very basic boss fight mechanics could generate wildly different fights over time.
This would preserve the feel of the PnP game, give characters improved PvP viability (especially group PvP where the strategy almost always boils down to "kill the healer"), and also introduce a revolutionary tactical challenge to raiding that would not relent once the strategy is learned. Players would always need to be paying attention, be prepared for when they get aggro, and have a plan for how they will deal with it this time around.
In short, it would require players to think.
Goblin Squad Member
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There's very good argument to be made that the problem with the Trinity is the Tank. And the Tank works because of Hate. Hate was an interesting mechanic, but by metagaming it the Tank became possible, and once the Tank became possible, the Trinity was the only rational outcome.
WoW has gone down a rabbit hole of feedback due to the Tank from which they cannot easily extract themselves. But Pathfinder Online does not have to follow them.
We're going to focus design effort on the Hate mechanic and on other ways that PvE content interacts with players with an eye towards avoiding a feedback loop that would trap us in the Trinity.
RyanD
It either forces everyone into tankmage builds, de facto forces everyone into trinity builds, or ends up into a vague City of Heroes blur where there are seventeen million different builds of vastly varying effectiveness but who cares because the game is extremely easy.
All of the WOW dungeons that everyone zergs without paying attention to party roles are very easy. Didn't you notice that?
The WoW dungeons you refer too are as easy as they are because people are/were vastly overgeared for the content.
I'm definitely not suggesting any of the three possibilities you mentioned. Making a rogue would not force you to make a rogue/tank/mage. It would make you a rogue (dps) with some sort of defensive cooldown like evasion ("tank") and maybe a debuff that reduces boss damage ("healing"). Or an archer ranger (dps) who has snare ("tanking") and barkskin ("healing"). Abilities that approximate trinity roles would be in keeping with the flavor of the archetype you choose, and would be implemented such that you had to be judicious about their use (probably via cooldowns or resource management).
Forcing everyone into trinity builds would simply not work because tanking and healing--such as they are in other games--would flat out be impossible. There would be next to no such thing as aggro control except as an emergency taunt. Having a player who does nothing but healing/mitigation would be inefficient because bosses wouldn't die quickly enough.
This could require bosses to do significantly less damage than we're used to in order to work. But over fights of several minutes, if not adequately mitigated and "patch healed," that damage would add up. Just like at the table.
The only alternative I can think of is changing the likelihood of causing damage in the first place - in other words, making the main mechanic about parrying, blocking and avoiding blows which is actually more like a real sword fight anyway.
This is what I'm talking about.
Say you want to build a tin can. You pick a few abilities. Let's say block, parry, and intervene. Block could reduce incoming damage by a reasonable percent for several seconds. Parry could be a passive chance to avoid damage. Intervene could be a defensive ability on a relatively long cooldown (long enough to be reserved for emergency use but not so long that you're afraid to use it) used to charge to and protect someone else when they have aggro and are in trouble. What you have is a defensive specced character who, while he can't "tank" in the traditional sense because he has next to no aggro control, can effectively mitigate damage done to himself and others.
There's very good argument to be made that the problem with the Trinity is the Tank. And the Tank works because of Hate. Hate was an interesting mechanic, but by metagaming it the Tank became possible, and once the Tank became possible, the Trinity was the only rational outcome.
WoW has gone down a rabbit hole of feedback due to the Tank from which they cannot easily extract themselves. But Pathfinder Online does not have to follow them.
We're going to focus design effort on the Hate mechanic and on other ways that PvE content interacts with players with an eye towards avoiding a feedback loop that would trap us in the Trinity.
RyanD
This is exactly what I was trying to convey. I will eagerly await what you guys have in mind.
Then again if PFO is mainly going to be about PVP type combat, a lot of this is moot.
The fact that Ryan even mentions Hate means there will be group PvE encounters. The scale of which remains to be seen, but I'd be very surprised if there aren't any raid bosses to kill. Dragons, for instance. :)
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Goblin Squad Member
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I think you are stuck with a hate mechanic, you kind of have to really or the MMO's don't work.
MMOs =/= Tabletop.
It's not like MMO's are turn based so that just madly rushing past the fighters to get to the Casties will provoke AOO's, there probably wont be AOO's.
Similarly we already have each class wanting that one great ability - level 20 capstone much?
We already have clearly defined character roles; we do have 'tanks'.
I've played a lot of MMO's - to the endgame, and what you are asking for sounds not inly pretty unenjoyable, but flat doesn't work. I can see how you feel this way though after Borecraft... but other brands of MMO were far superior and not just this 'one-two' stuff, and they had good hate mechanics and solid gameplay.
Your game would quickly end up not in a trinity, but a homogenised game where there was only one or two 'uber' builds for the serious player. No thanks.
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Tank, Healer, Damage Dealer...there is nothing inherently wrong with these roles. I think the biggest problem is that these have become the only roles.
The Dedicated Buffer, the Debuffer, the Controller, and the Puller (and more that I am surely forgetting) have been forgotten or had their role spread out amongst the Trinity.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Why? Why can't the AI slow down and carefully shuffle around a melee combatant anytime they come into weapon range? Why can't the same thing happen to players? Why can't creatures just be satisfied with attacking the dangerous guy with the sword that's right next to them? It's not like the sword guy is trying to kill them less then the spell guy that's further away.
Which is the point of the Hate mechanic I am advocating.
Aggro means that the guy with the sword IS getting that attention from the mobs, until that Wizard starts getting too over enthusiastic with his casting, which sends the creature after him instead.
The posters above seem to want no aggro mechanic, which would see the mobs running about willy nilly, with no way to prevent them from running past you nor no way to lock down their attention.
No thanks.
I'm guessing those guys haven't done much MMO time.
Tank, Healer, Damage Dealer...there is nothing inherently wrong with these roles. I think the biggest problem is that these have become the only roles.
The Dedicated Buffer, the Debuffer, the Controller, and the Puller (and more that I am surely forgetting) have been forgotten or had their role spread out amongst the Trinity.
Pretty sure all those roles are still to be found in many MMO's.
WOW seemed to cut that down a lot.I found the cut down play of WOW raiding rather lackluster after running 72 man raid forces about the place.
I think you are stuck with a hate mechanic, you kind of have to really or the MMO's don't work.
Yeah, I think we are stuck with Hate. But that doesn't mean we have to be stuck with tanks who corner the Hate market. Things could be more dynamic than that.
Your game would quickly end up not in a trinity, but a homogenised game where there was only one or two 'uber' builds for the serious player. No thanks.
Maybe the devs have something more interesting in mind. It's possible that the "core" of every character would be halfway competent, and the skills we get to choose from would actually contain meaningful choices that would resist the cookie cutter approach.
Tank, Healer, Damage Dealer...there is nothing inherently wrong with these roles. I think the biggest problem is that these have become the only roles.
The Dedicated Buffer, the Debuffer, the Controller, and the Puller (and more that I am surely forgetting) have been forgotten or had their role spread out amongst the Trinity.
I would love to see these roles regain some of what they lost. I just don't want them to be static. I'm tired of having my chosen role be all I do.
We're both actually advocating a return to a more EQ style of design. There are things people do in EQ that would get you laughed out of a group in WoW. Things like rangers tanking small group content, or monks doing crowd control (feign death ping pong). Creative things that break the roles mold. I'd like to see even more of this be possible.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I can't say WOW held my interest after EQ 1 & 2.
Age of Conan had some interesting stuff (for a largely PvP game)
Warhammer got PvP 'right' as far as I could see (probably the best)
Lotro was great for group content.
DDO was excellent in the early game, but then became 'group or bust' around mid level.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Thats right, a colossal undertaking, which means a 99% certainty that it isn't going to happen.
I'm not sure that people quite grasp that this will be a niche mmo, and there won't (and nor should we realisticaly expect) a lot of revolution in this title. They won't have the budget, the people, the skills, the tech, or the rep to pull that off.
I remember the last time someone got all caught up in hus panties and decided he was going to develop half of these suggestions, he was going to build the greatest MMO of all time - he had a name, a rep, and the funding.
He was 'Brad with the Vision(tm)' and he was going to make the most hardcore awesome that ever existed. Thats right, Vanguard.
Thats right, a colossal undertaking, which means a 99% certainty that it isn't going to happen.
I'm not sure that people quite grasp that this will be a niche mmo, and there won't (and nor should we realisticaly expect) a lot of revolution in this title. They won't have the budget, the people, the skills, the tech, or the rep to pull that off.
I remember the last time someone got all caught up in hus panties and decided he was going to develop half of these suggestions, he was going to build the greatest MMO of all time - he had a name, a rep, and the funding.
He was 'Brad with the Vision(tm)' and he was going to make the most hardcore awesome that ever existed. Thats right, Vanguard.
In all fairness, what McQuaid had planned was not all that innovative or difficult to create. He was basically just talking about making a new Everquest with updated graphics and a wish to cater to the more hardcore PvE types who wanted more difficulty in their theme park, and if you were to judge from the prerelease hype and traffic on the development boards, he would have had a large enough fanbase to justify such a game.
Vanguard suffered for two main reasons: McQuaid and company didn't have business experience, and if you believe the rumors he and the other guys in charge had no direction as far as putting work into the game, and were too distracted by personal issues (substance abuse, interoffice affairs, inner Microsoft politics, etc.) to get things in order.
I thought Brad was a bit annoying personally, and felt EQ was better with his departure.
Vanguard just wasn't all that.
The Vanguard you played was nothing more than a hack job that was thrown together by Sony over the course of six months. McQuaid had nothing to do with it.
Actually I was proposing an NPC AI that didn't use a "hate" mechanic. Instead it would use other factors to select it's targets. And different mobs could even use different criteria. But pretty much in all cases when there is a guy standing next to them they would turn to face the immediate threat. Mob control would be more about positioning, and crowd control, rather then some archaic hate manipulation chicanery.
A lot like DDO's aggro system actually, just without any of the "You hurt me more!" or "You heal guy me hurting!" followed with "Me run halfway across battlefield to hit you while other guys keep chopping at my heals!" nonsense. It would also prevent players from ping-ponging mobs between two or more ranged characters, which while fun (Arrow-burn 4eva!), is really poor AI.
This would be interesting. Since Hate basically is a measure of performance (not counting taunts or modifiers), there would have to be something other than just Hate. Otherwise, whoever is doing the most dps becomes the de facto tank.
You could supplement the Hate mechanic by periodically clearing Hate, or periodically cycling through the Hate list based on criteria that could vary by mob (ie: one mob could really hate crits, another could really hate debuffs, or melee characters, or mages, etc.)
These are just brainstorms.
Thats right, a colossal undertaking, which means a 99% certainty that it isn't going to happen.
I'm not sure that people quite grasp that this will be a niche mmo, and there won't (and nor should we realisticaly expect) a lot of revolution in this title. They won't have the budget, the people, the skills, the tech, or the rep to pull that off.
You build a castle by having the stonecutters make blocks that are mostly all the same size and shape. On one level, all you have to do is balance the blocks and set the limits. If the pieces are balanced, theoretically the whole will be as well. And then you test it and reiterate. I don't think it is any more of a balancing act than any other MMO.
I know this will be a niche, but I have high hopes. Technology, and design philosophy, have come a long way in the last 15 years. Who knows what they will be able to pull off.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I don't think it requires an epic amount of money, time or design brilliance to avoid creating a feedback loop between leveled challenges, Hate, and Tank metagaming. It just requires not falling into a design pattern that mimics what has happened before and then expecting a different result.
RyanD
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In short, it would require players to think.No, it doesn't. It either forces everyone into tankmage builds, de facto forces everyone into trinity builds, or ends up into a vague City of Heroes blur where there are seventeen million different builds of vastly varying effectiveness but who cares because the game is extremely easy.
This gentleman is correct. Contrary to the talk about "Hate" mechanics, the reason for "trinity" roles is microeconomics.
A basic axiom of microeconomics is: It is more efficient to specialize and trade.
You are a strong and athletic person, so if you spend an entire day, you can get 6 logs, or you can pick 10 baskets of fruit.
Bob isn't quite so strong, so if he spends a whole day, he can only get 2 logs, or he can pick 7 baskets of fruit.
At first you might think, "Well, I'm better at getting logs and picking baskets of fruit. Why would I want to trade with Bob?"
Bob really sucks at getting logs. To get 4 logs, it would take him 2 days worth of effort. Two days he could spend gathering 14 baskets of fruit.
So Bob offers you a trade: If you give Bob 4 logs, he'll give you 8 baskets of fruit.
On your side, 4 logs is 2/3rds (66%) a day of work. But picking 8 fruit baskets is 4/5th (80%) a day of work. So, even though you're better than Bob at both jobs, it makes sense to accept the trade.
On the day you usually spend picking fruit for yourself, you'll be able to knock off 15% early, thanks to fruit from Bob.
But what about poor old Bob? Isn't he getting screwed in this trade?
Not at all. Bob is trading 8/14ths (57%) of two days fruit picking labor to gain 4/4 (100%) of two days logging labor.
So Bob gets to knock off most of the second day, thanks to trading logs with you.
So what? What do logs and fruit have to do with an MMO? Everything.
Replace "logs" with "damage" and "fruit" with "healing".
A party specializing in roles and trading with one another (i.e.: the healer trades healing to the dps in exchange for the dps also doing the healer's share of the damage) is using their time and resources more efficiently.
Means they spend less and do more, faster.
It also means that every successful guild in the game will be looking for specialized people who can trade their skills to the group.
The more successful the guild, the greater the degree of specialization they will desire.
Anybody not specialized will be excluded, or given very bad rates on their trade (i.e.: you don't get to go on the raid unless there's an opening they can't fill, but, you only get to roll on things that absolutely nobody else needs).
All this said, there are ways to design games out of the trinity pit.
But, I guarantee that none of those ways is ignorant of the underlying microeconomics involved.
In short, it would require players to think.No, it doesn't. It either forces everyone into tankmage builds, de facto forces everyone into trinity builds, or ends up into a vague City of Heroes blur where there are seventeen million different builds of vastly varying effectiveness but who cares because the game is extremely easy.This gentleman is correct. Contrary to the talk about "Hate" mechanics, the reason for "trinity" roles is microeconomics.
A basic axiom of microeconomics is: It is more efficient to specialize and trade.
** spoiler omitted **
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With a broad enough array of specializations to choose from, this becomes a non-issue.
The most efficient route to the top of the mountain is by plane. The only way that's worth getting there, however, is on foot. Sometimes efficiency is trumped by a human element. "Fun" is not a mode of production.
Even in WoW, most guilds don't care what class/spec you are. Only the top guilds with sponsers who are competing with each other for firsts really care about that enough to tell people how to play. And they're not playing a game, they're working.
People will gravitate towards obviously stronger options. But that is a balance problem, not a design problem.
giving every class a way to stop damage is great, it can work in both PvE and PvP but i don't really know of any MMO's that don't have a hate/threat system like wow and does PvE good and im really yet to see how this game could make it work
also talking about MMO's that are similar in combat design, not talking about shooter mmo's and other games like that
threat is wow was just one thing you had to worry about during a fight, the best fights were the ones where you had to dodge spells and move around a lot
Even in WoW, most guilds don't care what class/spec you are. Only the top guilds with sponsers who are competing with each other for firsts really care about that enough to tell people how to play. And they're not playing a game, they're working.
People will gravitate towards obviously stronger options. But that is a balance problem, not a design problem.
my WoW guild before i quit was US top 10 at one point and always in the top 3 oceanic guild (doing stuff with 200-500 ping ftw), the only time it wasn't fun is when people needed to be told how to play haha, generally if you are in a guild like that you should know how to play and people really don't like wasting time because someone didn't
also by how to play i mean having the right spec, knowing strats, right gear/enchants, etc
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Goblin Squad Member
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There are lots of different ways to split up roles besides the Trinity. One of the problems that many MMO's face is there is very little differentation between the types of challenges, the types of opponents and the types of combat situations that are presented to players as well as the variety of things that need be done in combat in order to be successfull.
I'll suggest one PvP based MMO...albeit in an entirely different genre...that doesn't use the Trinity just as an example of the different ways things can be broken up.... WWII Online.
In WWII Online your main combat arms are...
Infantry - Infantry are criticaly important because they have great situational awareness and stealth abilities. Recon and Combat Intelligence are critical factors in winning fights in WWII Online. They are also absolutely deadly in urban combat and thick terrain because of thier ability to surprise other units close in and strike at thier weak points. They are also the only units that can enter most buildings or traverse certain types of terrain, so they are the ones who actualy end up capturing things.
Armor - Armor provides mobility both strategic and tactical. Some measure of protection (it can provide cover for infantry) and long range fire support. However it has extremely poor situational awareness. Is extremely vulnerable to air. Is vulnerable when operating in close terrain without infantry support and can actualy be quite vulnerable to AT guns unless it has assistance in spotting them.
Air - Air is firepower that can be brought to bear very quickly at any point on the battlefield. It can also transport paratroops for vertical envelopment. However, it can't really take or defend ground on it's own. It is extremely dependent upon ground troops for that...and relies on them to direct it's missions. It also operates from bases that are subject to capture or attack...and it must take off and land from these bases where it is extremely vulnerable to all forms of attack.
Guns - Provide effective long range anti-tank or anti-air capabilities. They are not very mobile on thier own (they rely on soft-skinned trucks to move them and can't fire while limbered up). They have better stealth capability then armor but can't compare to infantry in that regard....and thier crew can be very vulnerable to infantry fire.
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Goblin Squad Member
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In short, it would require players to think.No, it doesn't. It either forces everyone into tankmage builds, de facto forces everyone into trinity builds, or ends up into a vague City of Heroes blur where there are seventeen million different builds of vastly varying effectiveness but who cares because the game is extremely easy.This gentleman is correct. Contrary to the talk about "Hate" mechanics, the reason for "trinity" roles is microeconomics.
A basic axiom of microeconomics is: It is more efficient to specialize and trade.
** spoiler omitted **
...
That's a nice point, but it lies in contrast to another basic axiom...one of biology....the more specialized of a role an organism is, the less adaptable it tends to be and the less it can tolerate changes in it's environment.
Human beings were successfull as organisms largely because of our adaptability.
One of the reasons why specialized roles are so heavly favored in most MMO's is because the environments are largely static and entirely predictable. You know if you goto X area you will ALWAYS face Y encounter... and you'll need 3 of this type of role and 2 of that type of role and 1 of the other type of role for the optimum mix to succeed.
If you remove that level of predictability....then all of a sudden characters who have versatiliy become much more important....because you don't know if specialist X will have any function whatsoever in the upcoming encounter.... and if you have a guy that can do X maybe 75% as good as the Specialist but can also do Y & Z.... that can often be a more attractive option because it's better to have someone that is 75% usefull then take the chance of having someone who is 0% usefull.
Ideally, a game for me, will have a mix of specialist and generalist roles....and both will be important in thier own way.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I suppose you could combine hate with Priorities. Use a list of some kind to get Different monsters to "think" differently, while shifting tactics based on hate.
An Ogre sees a group of heroes and thinks "Da Big guy with da Axe looks strong, girly man in dress is just mumbling to himself. Me crush da big gun, girly man no threat."
Dragon sees the same group "Wizard could be an issue, so I'll keep away from the axe till I kill the Wizard. Man decked out in Holy symbols could be an issue. Uh oh Pally Smite, Kill him fast before he hurts me too much."
While an Intellect devourer thinks "Tasty Tasty Brains."
A caster mob could have a simple priority of "Stay the hell out of melee" and use some kind of CC on any one who gets to close tank or other wise.
Honestly the biggest issues between an MMO and a Table top game is that the MMO often tells you how you have to play. WoW is a perfect example of that. When that game started people had a lot of freedom on creating their characters. Yes it was possible to screw yourself with a bad build but by and large you could do as you liked. As the game grew older the people in charge spent more and more time Telling Players how they should play their characters, eventually getting to a point where they took away the player's ability to make his own decisions.
But in a Table top game If I want to create a "Spellcaster Tank" all it takes is me being creative and inventing a Melee Spellcaster who can survive in long combats.
A lot of developers these days seem to want to keep players from making Bad Decisions, but giving players the freedom to make bad decisions also gives them the freedom to be what they want to be.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I suppose you could combine hate with Priorities. Use a list of some kind to get Different monsters to "think" differently, while shifting tactics based on hate.
An Ogre sees a group of heroes and thinks "Da Big guy with da Axe looks strong, girly man in dress is just mumbling to himself. Me crush da big gun, girly man no threat."
Dragon sees the same group "Wizard could be an issue, so I'll keep away from the axe till I kill the Wizard. Man decked out in Holy symbols could be an issue. Uh oh Pally Smite, Kill him fast before he hurts me too much."
While an Intellect devourer thinks "Tasty Tasty Brains."
A caster mob could have a simple priority of "Stay the hell out of melee" and use some kind of CC on any one who gets to close tank or other wise.
Honestly the biggest issues between an MMO and a Table top game is that the MMO often tells you how you have to play. WoW is a perfect example of that. When that game started people had a lot of freedom on creating their characters. Yes it was possible to screw yourself with a bad build but by and large you could do as you liked. As the game grew older the people in charge spent more and more time Telling Players how they should play their characters, eventually getting to a point where they took away the player's ability to make his own decisions.
But in a Table top game If I want to create a "Spellcaster Tank" all it takes is me being creative and inventing a Melee Spellcaster who can survive in long combats.
A lot of developers these days seem to want to keep players from making Bad Decisions, but giving players the freedom to make bad decisions also gives them the freedom to be what they want to be.
That's one good way to go....but you don't even need to just limit it to "hate" mechanics and monster A.I..... in PnP games different types of monsters have vastly different capabilities from one another and require different sorts of tactics to engage.
Why should a non-corporeal creature be at all vulnerable to purely physical weapons?
In fantasy worlds aren't there creatures with high magic resistance that aren't very vulnerable to spells?
Are there creatures that are very hard to detect (and this target) unless you have a character with good SPOT in the party?
What about winged creatures....why would they seek to land or hover close to the ground where any slob with a sword can hurt them?
Heck, even the entire "hate" mechanic is an artifact of the limitations of 1980's technology. It was origionaly implimented in computer games because they lacked sufficiently sophisticated technology to handle collision detection with mobs. The "Aggro" system was put in place as a cheap hack to compensate for that.
There really is no reason to have it in todays games....at least in terms of PvE. I you remember the old school PnP games....there really was no such thing as "managing Aggro" it was all about positioning and making sure you restricted access to vulnerable characters as well as protected your own flanks.
There is no reason a game engine today couldn't manage combat with mobs more based on position and engagement then on "aggro".
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Goblin Squad Member
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@Grumpy Mel, and @Greylurker: You're exactly right about the potential for variant tactics by NPCs.
In fact, the whole industry knows it. They know that with a little extra work (and not so much extra work that it would be prohibitive) they could make PvE encounters deadly good at killing player characters.
So why don't they?
Because in general, players vote with their feet and their dollars to not support that kind of opponent. Frankly, most players just don't like the idea that the monsters have a better than even chance to kill them. What they want is a situation where occasionally, but not so often as to be annoying, they lose a fight and have to respawn/reload/whatever. A number less than 10 per game session is about the right amount, apparently.
Make the game too "good", and what happens is that too many people say the game is "broken" or "not fun", and they won't play it long enough to get good enough to gain mastery over the AI. There are just too many options in the gaming universe for people to play instead of a game that frustrates them and makes them feel stupid.
Conversely, if the opponents are humans, this issue goes away. Being beaten by a real person who is better than you is far less of a problem. This is why multiplayer FPS games are so insanely popular - getting headshot by a 12 year old is a different experience than being headshot by an AI.
There is a tricky inverse function at work too. The harder you have to work to solve a theme park puzzle, the less acceptable it is to die trying. If you have to get 20 people together, wearing the correct gear, with the right character skills and abilities, and they have to follow a pre-arranged script of actions to win, those people will quit in disgust if after all the work required the game throws them a curve-ball and TPKs them. The "reward" of some new shiny loot simply isn't enough to overcome the easy-to-exit situation into other games.
Make that 20 person group do the same thing to go up against an opposing force of 20 people, and they'll try it again and again as long as they can sustain the 20 people, because it's fun. In EVE, I played in a group called Red vs. Blue. That was two corporations (Red & Blue) who had a state of war between them, allowing PvP in any area of the game at any time without restrictions. By compact, everyone in the group flew cheap ships and had low-skilled pilots. The whole point was to gank on each other, just a frenzy of combat from duels to huge hundred-person battlefleets. Fun as hell - because the opponents were real people and you knew that they had to be good to beat you and your friends.
The AI can always just cheat. It knows your exact position. It has perfect aim. It knows exactly where you're pointing your weapons and when they will fire. It knows your weaknesses and your strengths. It knows exactly what your line of sight is. It's trivial to make an AI that is virtually impossible to overcome, and when you get beat by an AI, especially if it happens too often, you get disgusted because there's an inherent power imbalance between you (a mere player) and the AI (a godlike being).
Thus, the only really fun, good, and mutually acceptable losses that can sustain a profitable business in on-line combat games are PvP combats.
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Goblin Squad Member
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This is where the P&P rules come in handy. The AI might have perfect aim...but a d20 has 20 sides. The AI might know exactly where you are, but it can only move so far in x time...P&P rules aside, any limiting rule set could play this role.
A different solution to this problem is to remove any expectation of difficulty. Like Moria, tribes of goblins might be living beneath the eye of a more powerful denizen. A group of "low power" PCs might feel like raiding the goblins home only to find this uber being. They should be made if the cave is labeled for levels 40-50 (random numbers for illustration) and this monster is 5 times that, they have no place being angry if the cave is just part of the open world in which the ecosystem is trying to find a balance. If the devs made it this way, there is someone to be mad at, if the system itself evolved into this situation, there is not much to be mad about.
Or, maybe I am entirely wrong and players will feel mad about being beat by the interactive ecology. Personally I am annoyed by stupid unrealistic "AIs" (but I am probably unfairly biased by being an AI researcher IRL).
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Goblin Squad Member
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The problem is that most PvE encounters nowadays are scripted.
So there is no unexpected behavior, every fight is almost exactly the same.
In this way you can do "hard" encounters without being accused of cheating because the palyers see that the mob follows a rota and all they need to do is to react accordingly to beat it 100% of all tries.
But this also leads to boring repetitive content after you managed to do the rota blindly.
I am all for a real AI where the "I" stands for intelligence. But this means you may be wiped during some fights that you did a 100 times before.
Make the game too "good", and what happens is that too many people say the game is "broken" or "not fun", and they won't play it long enough to get good enough to gain mastery over the AI. There are just too many options in the gaming universe for people to play instead of a game that frustrates them and makes them feel stupid.
if you make players feel like they ccan win even after wiping out they'll keep playing even if its really hard
Conversely, if the opponents are humans, this issue goes away. Being beaten by a real person who is better than you is far less of a problem. This is why multiplayer FPS games are so insanely popular - getting headshot by a 12 year old is a different experience than being headshot by an AI.
people keep playing because they think they can still win even if winning to them is just getting a bunch of kills like in a FPS
so many times while pvping if i felt i couldn't win i would just log off, if the other team is scissor and I'm paper i'll either try to avoid them or just log off
There is a tricky inverse function at work too. The harder you have to work to solve a theme park puzzle, the less acceptable it is to die trying. If you have to get 20 people together, wearing the correct gear, with the right character skills and abilities, and they have to follow a pre-arranged script of actions to win, those people will quit in disgust if after all the work required the game throws them a curve-ball and TPKs them. The "reward" of some new shiny loot simply isn't enough to overcome the easy-to-exit situation into other games.
while raiding it wow for me it was less acceptable to die on the easy stuff then the hardest fights in the game, i stopped raiding because i was sick of wiping on the easy stuff because of bad players (then that guild disbanded and most players quit because the core group was sick of the same thing)
this is all from the point of view of someone who plays most games really competitive, most of what i said wouldn't really apply to a lot of people
The problem is that most PvE encounters nowadays are scripted.
So there is no unexpected behavior, every fight is almost exactly the same.
In this way you can do "hard" encounters without being accused of cheating because the palyers see that the mob follows a rota and all they need to do is to react accordingly to beat it 100% of all tries.
But this also leads to boring repetitive content after you managed to do the rota blindly.
I am all for a real AI where the "I" stands for intelligence. But this means you may be wiped during some fights that you did a 100 times before.
I would argue that, for theme park game such as WoW, the biggest issue isn't that the encounters are scripted, it is that the script has been copied and distributed to the players well before the encounter is even available for most people to play.
The test servers are nowadays being used more for allowing the top tier guilds to practice figuring out the script than they are for testing, and tutorial videos of the dance steps needed to beat any given boss are widespread before the general populace even has a chance to see the encounter. This is, in my opinion, a major factor if not THE major factor contributing to the popular opinion that WoW and games like WoW are too easy.
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Goblin Squad Member
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@Grumpy Mel, and @Greylurker: You're exactly right about the potential for variant tactics by NPCs.
In fact, the whole industry knows it. They know that with a little extra work (and not so much extra work that it would be prohibitive) they could make PvE encounters deadly good at killing player characters.
So why don't they?
Ryan,
Thanks for your response. I fully understand your point about not making PVE encounters "too difficult" for players to accomplish. As an old school PnP GM... I appreciate that dynamic as well.
My point was not about the level of difficulty presented to the players but the variety of challenges and prehaps the manner in which difficulty is achieved.
As a GM, I could throw nothing but red dragons at the players, and I could give those dragons the exact same abilities and have them use the exact same tactics every time. The first couple of encounters might be terribly difficult for the players, but pretty soon they'd learn the "trick" of beating the dragons. They'd know exactly what to do at exactly the right time to execute the optimal strategy for beating the dragons...and they'd develop the highly specialized skill set which is optimized for beating dragons and nothing else. The encounters would still be difficult, as a dragon is a powerfull foe...and one misstep or bad role by the party could mean defeat. However, they would never have to think again about how to approach fighting an opponent...because all opponents were similar and they already had the one optimol routiene burned into thier brains.
Conversely, I could throw a tribe of kobolds at the players one encounter, a couple wraiths the next, maybe a few harpies the next. The encounters wouldn't be any "harder" then fighting the dragons...because the creatures in each encounters aren't all that powerfull in themselves compared to the party. However every encounter would be different, it would require the party to approach it with different tactics for optimal success, use different skill sets, adapt to different challenges. Each encounter would be new and fresh for the players, emphasize perhaps the importance of a different characters strong points and most of all have the players constantly USING thier brains as to how to approach the encounter. There would be no one rote routiene that the characters could memorize and then turn off thier brains. Because the opponents weren't all that powerfull compared to the players, the players wouldn't need to develop the optimal strategy to win...in fact they'd be expected not to do so....just a half-way decent one...the power level of the opponents would allow for the party to make a few mistakes, have a bit of bad luck...that should even be expected... and still win. What they probably wouldn't be able to do is completely turn off thier brains or use a horribly unsuited strategy or skill set against the encounter.
Both approaches are equaly difficult...but the 1st one ends up boring in terms of gameplay decisions after the 1st couple times...and only affords very narrow skill sets be developed by the players.
The "boss fights" in many of todays MMO's really aren't all that easy....because the things they are fighting are so incredibly powerfull that a single mis-step, a single keystroke misplaced, a single mis-timed attack can cause a defeat.
However, the game skills they are testing are simply the players ability for rote memorization and choreography. They aren't testing the players ability to think, to adapt or to use tactics.
Frankly the former is just boring repetitive gameplay for me. If I wanted that, I could play "Dance, Dance Revolution" instead. The latter is more what interests me in terms of gameplay.
I want encounters that allow me to play less then perfectly, but challenge me to use my brain and think tacticaly each and every time.
That's one of the reason why PvP FPS games are fun for me. My opponents aren't perfect, thier human, they make mistakes, the game doesn't force me to be perfect to win...just better then them. But what they do is approach the conflict in very different ways from one another...which forces me to figure out different tactics to use each time.
Note, one nice side effect of the variety approach is it allows for greater differentiation among characters and allows everyone the opportunity for thier moment in the sun.
If one (as most of todays MMO's do) only presents the characters with a very narrow range of challenges.... then there isn't really much difference between the Wizard using a lightning-bolt or whaterver to do damage...and the Druid using nature magic to do damage... they both need to do 8 points of damage with thier "bolts" and the only difference is one wears brown robes and one wears blue. On the other hand, if in one encounter you are facing a giant electric eel that isn't much bothered by lightning and in the next you are facing an animated metal construct that isn't a "living creature".....then the differences between being a Druid and being a Wizard start to become interesting.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I would argue that, for theme park game such as WoW, the biggest issue isn't that the encounters are scripted, it is that the script has been copied and distributed to the players well before the encounter is even available for most people to play.
The test servers are nowadays being used more for allowing the top tier guilds to practice figuring out the script than they are for testing, and tutorial videos of the dance steps needed to beat any given boss are widespread before the general populace even has a chance to see the encounter. This is, in my opinion, a major factor if not THE major factor contributing to the popular opinion that WoW and games like WoW are too easy.
Well true, but the fact is no matter what that is going to be an issue. You cannot prevent people from using FRAPS, you cannot prevent people from writing up the script, and you certainly can't stop people from visiting youtube, bottom line is when you've got 200 groups attempting, one of them is going to figure it out on the first day, and basic rule of thumb is once one person knows it, everyone else can cheat.
The second factor is, even if it took time to learn it, the way WoW and most theme parks work, is now that you know it, you repeat it 300 times to get everyone the items. By design it intends you to keep doing it long after the challenge has subsided.
Perhaps it is a flaw in the nature of people. In an offline puzzle game, the people who want a puzzle restrain themselves from reading the walkthroughs. in an MMO, at least 1 person in your 20 man raid has already read it, and the competitive nature of humans to desire to be the first to have all of the gear, is something that cannot be hindered by game development. Bottom line is if it is predictable, it will be predicted.
Personally what I would like to see, is optional nonscripted dungeons. Make it very clear that they are random, the rewards and difficulty are just flat out non-predictable, there is no set puzzle or set skillset to accomplish the goals, nor are they a required or critical part of the game to beat, just something fun on the side for when the players want a break from PVP. Think of it as the equivelent of battlegrounds in a game that's core focus is PVE, only it's random PVE events as a small feature of a PVP game.
My hope was to suggest a way to remove the static, predictable element from fights, within those same fights. Fighting Roger the Red Dragon, for instance, would never be the same twice.
One part of that is to remove the static element from roles, which to me means removing the dedicated tank and healer. Now roles are dynamic, and you can't predict exactly how you will contribute to the fight. You couldn't walk in thinking "I'm going to do the most dps" because the dynamic nature of the game might require you to utilize other aspects of your character more... this time. Maybe you (a mage) sieze a good dps opportunity and blow through your mana quickly, and are forced to spend the rest of the fight using cheaper, more efficient buffs and controls. Or maybe you (a rogue) get unlucky and have your weapons sundered early on, and are forced to make use of your defensive and supportive abilities so as to be more useful to the group.
The other part is to remove the predictability of the boss. One aspect of this is Hate. A boss with the basic Hate mechanic is utterly predictable. Some randomness in the AI that determines what really pisses Roger off could solve this. One week, he may be particularly irritated by crits, the next, debuffs might set him off. The other aspect is the boss's abilities themselves. Maybe bosses could be subject to the same "mile wide inch deep" skill system the players are, only theirs is somewhat random. Say one week Roger is really good with his wing buffet, but for the next encounter he decides to hone his breath weapon or his fear spell. The potentially huge number of simple, random mechanics, as well as some sort of dynamic Hate mechanic, would make him totally unpredictable.
Dynamic boss behavior, in conjunction with dynamic player roles, could create so much variance that no fight would ever be the same twice. I'm not sure if this would make the game too difficult, but if the focus was on adapting to the fight, I think a balance could be struck.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Very interesting thread, and I think the topic encapsulates the main problems facing MMOs today. I unfortunately haven't been able to follow most of the threads on the board at present, so I'll ask this question but please correct me if it has already been covered somewhere else:
If Pathfinder eliminated instance based dungeons and raids, would this go some way to solving some of these issues? I remember when the gates of AQ40 came down the first time on our server on WoW. It took a large amount of effort to get to that point, (admittedly most of it involving tedious tasks). What if taking out a dungeon full of nasties was similar to this, in that it required a cohesive effort from the player base over some period of time? Keeping in mind of course Ryan's point of not making PvE too hard.
And what if the reward for finally overcoming the dungeon was not loot per se but the real estate of the dungeon itself? Which would then put it up for further attacks from other player factions who wanted it for themselves.
With only one example of a dungeon, and with a lot of time and cooperation needed to overcome it, the problem of static encounters and all its incumbent issues might be resolved.
At first I thought this thread was about not making a WoW-clone.
Reading it I feel kind of lured into it though...
Very interesting thread, and I think the topic encapsulates the main problems facing MMOs today. I unfortunately haven't been able to follow most of the threads on the board at present, so I'll ask this question but please correct me if it has already been covered somewhere else:
If Pathfinder eliminated instance based dungeons and raids, would this go some way to solving some of these issues? I remember when the gates of AQ40 came down the first time on our server on WoW. It took a large amount of effort to get to that point, (admittedly most of it involving tedious tasks). What if taking out a dungeon full of nasties was similar to this, in that it required a cohesive effort from the player base over some period of time? Keeping in mind of course Ryan's point of not making PvE too hard.
And what if the reward for finally overcoming the dungeon was not loot per se but the real estate of the dungeon itself? Which would then put it up for further attacks from other player factions who wanted it for themselves.
With only one example of a dungeon, and with a lot of time and cooperation needed to overcome it, the problem of static encounters and all its incumbent issues might be resolved.
Instancing in WoW was a measure to prevent the rampant monopolies on outdoor bosses that top guilds enjoyed in early WoW and EQ. In EQ there were guilds that monopolized entire zones as their personal farming grounds, by training the entrance whenever invariably lesser geared guilds showed up vainly trying to play. Those are the kinds of things I would like to see this game avoid.
I would like to see large cooperative efforts like the AQ gates as well. I just don't think outdoor bosses with implied perma-death would allow for a PvE endgame that is accessible to anyone other than the top one or two guilds.
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Goblin Squad Member
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TANGENT ALERT!
We've all had those kinds of battles where you start beating on the Big Monster of a ruin or dungeon, and too much noise is made, you haven't secured the door or otherwise made it too difficult for something else to join the fray, and oh hey Kobolds! They might not be much of a threat compared to the Troll (Fighter 12) you are fighting, but they can flank you, and suddenly the Troll is much, much harder.
Players who drag monsters more than X meters (perhaps 50?) from their spawn-point start to face an ever-increasing % of new monsters Spawning, attracted to the noise or the smell of blood. These monsters have an equal chance of attacking the Players or the Monster they are 'dragging'/'training', which can add to the 'fun' of trying to pull a monster to attack a rival's town or into an enclosure for a Gladiatoral Game.
That said, yes, again, I can see abuses with the above idea. Powerful Groups could train monsters quickly into a region and then keep dragging them about purely to continue spawning monsters and quickly flood the immediate surroundings with monsters who are going to attack everyone and everything, for starters.
The reason I think the Holy Trinity came about is because it became so easy to do those three roles, they were necessary to every encounter, while Dedicated Buffers/Debuffers had a minimal role outside of the first few seconds of an encounter, Controllers tend to make a fight easier, but also drag it on and have the potential to be useless against enemies like Undead, Outsiders and other creatures Players start bumping into rather quickly.
I would like to see a Collision System in place, like in Skyrim, which can help people literally 'block' enemies/attacks from getting through to their other, squishier companions. Not just taking body-blows, but abilities like Block, Parry, Dodge and Deflecting the incoming attacks, within reason.
I don't care what Bob the Tower-shield Fighter's strength is, he cannot successfully 'Block' a Frost Giant's strike. He can mitigate some of the damage, but sheer force and inertia behind the Giant's attack is going to make him stumble and stagger, maybe even fall to his knees. Time for Bruce the Archery Rogue to step up and start punishing the Frost Giant by using his Rogue abilities to either partially blind the Giant, reducing it's hit capabilities, or start hitting it's vital points and make it worried enough about it's health to either retreat or take cover from Bruce.
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That's a nice point, but it lies in contrast to another basic axiom...one of biology....the more specialized of a role an organism is, the less adaptable it tends to be and the less it can tolerate changes in it's environment.
Human beings were successfull as organisms largely because of our adaptability.
This became an issue, for me, in EQ1, where the crowd control abilities being so hard-coded into the Illusionist class meant that, in many encounters, you felt like you *had* to have an Illusionist.
But because Illusionist crowd control was 'all-or-nothing,' you either had a mob mezzed/stunned/etc. or you didn't, Sony felt the need to make entire encounters utterly immune to crowd control, to prevent them from being turned into cakewalks, or to show off how 'tough' this new content was, resulting in entire areas, and, in one or two cases, one or two entire *zones,* in which Illusionists were about as useful as t##! on a bull.
By shoving all of the best crowd control on a single class, it became overspecialized and either 'too good' for some encounters (becoming as much a 'must-have' class as a cleric) and not worth a slot in the party in others, since it's abilities didn't work against mob X or in zone Y.
I'd rather have a trinity than a bunch of sub-roles that end up either being too good or utterly worthless, depending on the situation.
I'd rather have a 'Warrior' class that, through specialization and development or 'feat chain' choices, can be a Berserker or a Holy Warrior or a Huntsman, without necessarily having to be locked into a Barbarian or Paladin or Ranger class, only to later discover that such fine-tune specialization has rendered the class subject to later nerfs to 'correct the imbalance,' which ends up punishing all of the players of that class who *didn't* jump on whatever overspecialized flavor-of-the-month fad is dominating the forums this week.