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[Keiseth]

I actually loved Guild War's system in every way. Combat, spells, level cap, etc.

I just don't like MMO-ish RPGs with its control scheme. Even the WASD controls felt rather jarring, and there are a lot of invisible walls and the like. I prefer them to be more open and free.

Something I think the sequel is doing, fortunately. Hopefully the controls will be tightened up for that.

CoH is what I mean by "free" in that there's a lot of silly places you can get to and moving around feels fluid. WoW's controls are fluid, though I guess there's not much to go around and "get to" until the end game. And if I can't enjoy a game early on, I won't enjoy it later on.

[Sowelu]

And that's the assumption that ruins mmorpgs in my opinion.

No assumption it is pretty much true.

No, it's an assumption that levels and grinding is required to keep people there for longer. Take TF2 for example. It's an mmo that makes no such assumption, to the point where it doesn't charge you monthly. And yes, it's an mmo, at any given time there are thousands of people playing it in 'servers' which are pretty much instances of the game. Guildwars halved such assumption and lot of people like it. It's seriously not required. What is required is for people to have fun with it. It's the assumption they have to drag people through advancement in order to make another month of cash that leads people to create the shitty mmos we have around today.

I'd personally like to see a mmo without levels where in game skills only have a partial effect on the final result. Something focused at having fun, using strategy and thinking instead of staring at the screen grinding. Darkfall might be an example, but I haven't played it yet. A good example for me is operation 7, even tho it has levels. I play it for fun, not to level up.

I don't think you can drag TF2 into it because it's not "massive".  It's multiplayer, but each individual game server only has up to 32 players or so.  I'm pretty sure "MMO" is, in common speech, used to refer to persistent games as well.  TF2 only persists your character, not any game state.  Though I guess you could say the same of World of Warcraft, very nearly, heh.

(Persistence is a good thing.  Hell, I had fun on the Soul Calibur 2 arcade machine at university because you could make a character, join a color, and fight to expand your color's territory against other player characters over a period of days or weeks.)

My understanding of Guild Wars is that it's just a big pile of PvP.  Same with TF2, obviously.  I don't know if I always like that kind of gameplay.  I'm not convinced you could make exploring and puzzle solving into a long-term game and keep players around--it's very hard to make exploring and puzzle-solving both repeatable and fun.  Remember how big of a success Uru was?

Honestly, Puzzle Pirates is one of my models for a perfect MMO...heh.

[Servant Corps]

(Persistence is a good thing.  Hell, I had fun on the Soul Calibur 2 arcade machine at university because you could make a character, join a color, and fight to expand your color's territory against other player characters over a period of days or weeks.)

Interesting. How does it work?

[Granite26]

So let's take a step back:

Things that determine success in video games:

1: Character Power (Leveling up, getting better equipment, whatever.)
2: Twitch (Skill)
3: Tactics (Knowledge of the right action, ability to outthink your oponent)

I don't THINK I'm missing anything.

PvE in MMO's is entirely based on Character Power.  You play more, your character gets better.  It's a constant feature of all RPGs, computer ones especially.  Take any RPG, and experience of the character is the primary factor.

PvP on the other hand, shouldn't be based on that.  It should be based on some combination of twitch and tactics.  (where in between is based on the game and personal opinion)

MMO's have a bad habit of mixing the two imperfectly... (AKA, if you want a PvP game, MMO's are a bad pick for you)

[Soulwynd]

Sure it is massive. Perhaps not in game world size, but in playerbase. And if you take an mmo, in common speech, you might find what? 100ish players in a certain area? Only 12-20 in an instance. That's pretty much in the same levels of a regular shooter or a huge open area shooter with 62 people in a server.

I do have to contest persistence in most mmorpgs tho. You save the world from the same guy how many times? How many of the same monsters you kill that simply appear allover again without ever facing any extinction? They only save your character stats, maybe some guild city and guild stats, but that's pretty much it. Unless we're talking about wurm, but that is another click-grind-fest. Wurm would have been oh so much better if it wasn't for that. The very assumption they had to make people grind to stay in the game was exactly what set me away. Same with wow (yes, I have played it), I got to level 40 and the quest grind was so bad and slow I left. Same with CoH, after grinding a few heroes all because I wanted to see how they would play with all powers and then facing the stupid fact that there was no pvp, no fun, only more item grinding at the end just put me away again. If the process was filled with fun pvp and actually non-grindy stuff to do, like original player-made quests, developing your own enemies, sharing them, maybe even be super rewarded for helping new players level up, etc. You can add a lot of fun things to this list that any mmorpg would say, "WOW, not, they would be top level too fast and leave!" and sadly, those things would be the things that would keep me in them.




Skill doesn't always mean twitch. It can be slow paced, it can be chess, it can be turn based. It doesn't have to be counterstrike, even if both are nice examples of player skill requirements.

Play warhammer online when you can, it has decent pvp. Or guildwars. Or quite a few others to be honest. The problem is making pvp an end game thing.

[Neonivek]

Take TF2 for example. It's an mmo

Really... if we are going to include every game with multiplayer into the MMO category...

Besides TF2 isn't the best example anyway because even though it is a multiplayer shooter it DOES artificially draw out its gameplay with Achievements AKA Collection based gameplay.

[Granite26]

Skill doesn't always mean twitch. It can be slow paced, it can be chess, it can be turn based. It doesn't have to be counterstrike, even if both are nice examples of player skill requirements.

Play warhammer online when you can, it has decent pvp. Or guildwars. Or quite a few others to be honest. The problem is making pvp an end game thing.

Covered in Tactics...  Tactics is making the right choice, Skill is implimenting it once you have.

The issue is giving a real power gain for the PvE portion, while still letting players of disparate levels be competitive.  (Especially with the gross power gains you see in fantasy games)

[Servant Corps]

See, what would happen if a game like TF2 had a main "meta-map", like in EndWar or World War II Online? You win a battle, the Red Faction gets some land. Then you have a reason to do well.

Battlefield: Heroes promises to do that. It is a free game out there where victory in the battlefields can affect who win the WWII-sque Campagin. Microntranscations would make you look cool, but otherwise all twitch to plya. It is a fun MMORPG to play. Even if it was made by the spawn of Satan, aka EA.

Or it would be a fun game if EA didn't endlessly delay Battlefield: Heroes and make it vapourware. Bah.

EDIT: And it turns out now they are selling Servers! You too can make your own Battlefield: Heroes MMORPG, allowing you to have your own private server and your own "meta-map" campagin.

* Servant Corps shrugs.

[Sowelu]

(Persistence is a good thing.  Hell, I had fun on the Soul Calibur 2 arcade machine at university because you could make a character, join a color, and fight to expand your color's territory against other player characters over a period of days or weeks.)

Interesting. How does it work?

Imperfectly.  When you put in your quarters and select that mode, you get to enter a name and a password.  If it's your first time, you select a character to play as for that account.  You also pick one of four colored nations, if you haven't played in the current campaign.  Your character has stats (similar to the SC3 console)--basically you just do more damage and have more HP as you go up in level, I think it might get reset each campaign, not sure.  You select which other country you want to attack, and it picks seven random players who are also registered on that machine.  The more fights you win, the more % territory you capture; if you wipe out a nation entirely, their players get randomly reassigned.

"But how do you fight another player who may or may not be there?" you ask.  Easy, they are AI controlled.  That's the imperfect part.  However, the AI is pretty neat.  It learns what moves and move combinations you tend to use, and I think it even learns how you react to your opponents somewhat...or at least, it scales its playing and dodging ability based on your historic performance.  I know it works at least a little bit--I made a Yoshimitsu character that I named POGO, and taught him to do nothing but one move where he bounces around on his sword.  Sure enough, when you run into him, that's all he does.  It is possible to get some idea of how a human will play in pvp by playing against his character.  Won't work at expert level, but this mode is for happy amateurs.

[Servant Corps]

Hm. How much money did you throw every month? This idea sounds like something more arcade machines should be copying.

[Sowelu]

Eh, probably $5 or so.  Less than the $20 I blew on the DDR machine, before I realized I could buy my own pad for home use.

[Keiseth]

That... that is the greatest arcade game I've ever seen. Somebody needs to translate the concept into an online game, and allow individual player-run servers. So we could have a strictly Bay 12 version.

Also, back on topic for CoH for this post, I'm getting to pick my first travel power soon. A friend of mine wants to go with Super Speed and Fly, but doesn't know if they stack. I'm probably going to take Super Jump and eventually Super Speed (because I'll want Hasten, anyway!)

I'm pretty sure the latter two stack, but not positive. Anyone who played, what travel power did you like the best? I hope Super Jump has some base speed increase by itself...

[Aqizzar]

I have no idea if they stack, but taking a whole pool just to someday get Haste is pretty pointless.  Super Speed is the least useful travel power, especially in Villains (due to the architecture).  Super Jump is by far the most useful, because you get a nice constant-buff as your first power, and it's almost as fast as Speed when running around.

[Soulwynd]

Super speed is almost a must in pvp, unless you really don't want to zoom around. Tanks often don't require it in pvp, but depends on the tanking style.

[Servant Corps]

Tanking...styles?

How hard is it to stand there and get hit?