I Have a Dream

Sandbox gamer

Author: vajuras

One of the things that pretty much go along with dodging, that never get into an mmo, is the ability to body block players in. With guild wars you can not walk through another player. So if 3 people press against you and your back is to a wall, your pretty much stuck there. Now if I throw a spear at a person behind you, why does the spear go through you and hit the guy behind you? It shouldnt. The idea is to get warriors doing what they are supposed to do, and that is to shield the soft targets by simply standing in front of them.

 Arrows are a good example of a ranged attack made to fire over targets and hit targets behind a line. A gun should not do this. I would say most magics should be line of sight also. If a player is between you and your target, you should hit the guy between and not the target. This adds even more tactics to a battle...

 Im half asleep as i write this so ignore any typos or rambling :)

I won't say "Go back to FPS," because that's mean.

But I'm thinking it. :P

Being serious, you are entitled to your opinion, but I'd rather play with my brain than my mouse-fu. However, you're the lucky one: MMORPGs are moving towards action and FPS style gameplay to wean frat boys off of Halo and Counterstrike and get them into paying a monthly fee. WoW started the trend, the rest of the genre will finish it.

Not that that's wrong. It's a different style of play than what I want, that's all. And no, I'm not some crusty old EQ player who wants to sit and watch auto-attack or deal with super-restrictive classes. I want static health, slow-based combat, with lots of abilities with different effects.

However, that's not the way things are going. They are going the other way. That means your wish to see active dodging will quickly become a reality.

Anyway, I lose,  so I guess I'll go play Fallout 2. -sulk-

A couple points.

Spears move slower than arrows, and thus have a shorter arc.

Point #1, I am not seeing the complex stragies you're describing.  Making a shield wall isn't really complex.   It also requires  all he characters to, you know, have shields. All they have to do to balance ranged vs melee characters is take away snaring and holding effects from the range players and give them to the meleers.

Your points 2 and 4 are contradictory.

Point 6 is agains the developers interest.  It's called 'trivializing content'.  If you don't have to play a game for a  year to beat a boss, people are not going to play it for a year.

As PrinnySquad pointing out, many games are moving to this Donkey Kong style of play,  so I am not sure what you're whining about anyway.

You dont see strategies?

 Lets say you are solo and fighting 3 other players. one of the players you are fighting is melee and the other 2 chuck spears. As the melee guy engages you, you rotate and keep rotating to keep him between you and atleast one of the spear chuckers. The idea is that you are limiting what your opponents can do to you due to line of sight.

 With shields, say you have 5 allies with you and you are a soft target healer. Two of the warriors keep rotating themselves to stay between you and the enemy, thus allow you to actually heal with out getting pounded on. Back the the line of sight idea. These warriors may or may not have shields, as long as they block line of sight, the n you should be relatively safe. This is where rogues stealthing by and archers arcing over the line come into play.

 With games like WoW, every character must have snares and CC's due to the fact that its the only way to get someone off a soft target. If you could simply body block and block line of sight, you could effectively cover a soft target with out the game relying on CC so much. Most games have way to much CC as is.

The ability to block players in leads directly to griefing.  Unless you have a way to avoid that pitfall, no sane developer will ever implement it.

To the greater point, i.e., the "necessity" of moving toward realtime dodging, you have to remember that there are many different types of players out there, and most of them will disagree with you on one point or another.  There are a LOT of MMO players who would not respond well to a game with twitch element.

MMO players tend to be more thoughtful and deliberate in their gameplay, not so much hair-triggered and reactive.  These players tend to enjoy achievment more than adrenaline.  This is why PvE content is so maddenly predictable to a PvP player.  It's not designed to give you a rush -- it's designed to give you an obstacle you can reasonably overcome.

I'm guessing that the twitch-loving crowd and the PvP-loving crowd have a lot of overlap.  The market has shown that the PvP crowd is not insignificant, but it is far from the majority.  So your ideas may be great for a niche title, but I really don't expect the genre as a whole to head in that direction.

One particular issue you might think about is your item number 6.  Take this idea to its logical conclusion -- if dodging is so powerful that it allows you to do things you shouldn't be able to do, then everyone who wants to be good at the game has to learn to dodge well and  the developers will have to balance the entire game around the dodge mechanic -- meaning they have to assume most people are dodging most of the time.  So the game becomes one big dodge-fest, and all other tactics become secondary or even obsolete.

What I'm saying is, perhaps it would get old fast?

Forgot to add, D&D Online has a form of dodging -- not so much for spells and missiles, but definitely for melee attacks.  People who like it love it and think DDO is the bestest game ever.  People who dislike it quit the game because it colors the entirety of the combat system.

I happen to be one of those who hate the combat system in DDO.

BTW thanks all for sharing your thoughts. Good arguments made for and against. My goal isn't to see all mmorpgs become twitchy no- but rather see some PVP-oriented MMORPGs go that route.

Hex has some good arguments I want to focus on some of them-

"the developers will have to balance the entire game around the dodge mechanic -- meaning they have to assume most people are dodging most of the time.  So the game becomes one big dodge-fest, and all other tactics become secondary or even obsolete."

Halo 3, Rainbow 6, Ghost recon, etc have popular PVE coop modes I think you're imagining the worst. It's not so much a dodge-fest but rather you use terrain cleverly to avoid incoming fire.

"There are a LOT of MMO players who would not respond well to a game with twitch element."

As MMOs move towards Consoles they will either have to adjust or be left behind. There is just way too huge of a console market that publishers want to capitalize on. World of Warcraft showed the game industry that aiming for the common man (low end computers) will help your sells dramatically. Well the next step is to also hit Consoles. The Console market will demand 'twitch' as evidenced by Mass Effect and Elder Scrolls Oblivion remarkable sales performance (RPGs that include Twitch)

"The ability to block players in leads directly to griefing.  Unless you have a way to avoid that pitfall, no sane developer will ever implement it."

Spellborn, Warhammer Online, and Age of conan all are said to have it for PVP enabled areas. This article isnt trying to beg Developers to include this but rather explain to others the benefits. I am positive realtime dodging will become mainstream it is already taking place

Sorry I meant realtime Collision is becoming mainstream for PVP encounters. Might cover that later its sort of another topic