General Discussion

Boxes are evil but I  my companion cube.

So, KILL THE HUD, BURN THE UI, down with spread sheets, praise the intuitive.

FPS are boring.

X X R1 O

Originally posted by Teiman

Originally posted by Munki

 

Well you have been hit with a few arguments already on this thread, but let me give you a few more.
Communication

 

• How do you type to communicate with a controller

voice chat

• Assuming you argue for voice chat, how do you whisper/tell/change channels with voice chat

double tap on these people, a "list of friends" if are not on-screen.
double tap then with what, I would assume the analog sticks would be used for movement. Is a button mapped for this? if so you've lost one button to use for game mechanics.

• How do guild message of the day, or longer bits of text which might need to be read multiple times to be understood come about to being made

is that a problem?, you can type then with a emulated keyboard on-screen, or save a small voice message.
I dont know about most people, but typing on an emulated keyboard anything other than "lol" or "mayb tomrw" is painful. Have to write out a raid schedual or a series of dates would be tedious at best.

• assuming you have a keyboard, whats the point in switching between the two when you can just have one

agreed, but you may not need a keyboard

Control

• Precision  - Anybody who has played an fps on a console and on PC knows they are totally different games. You cannot look around and react on a console like you can on a PC with a mouse and keyboard... Tests were done with Halo cross platform and even the best console players were slaughtered by PC players of minimal abilities.

MMORPG are not precision based, but "Skills" (not skill) based.
I disagree. Ill use wow as an example since most people have played it but in many raids positioning is crucial. Targeting the correct mob quickly is important as well. For those who have been a main assist on a raid before, you know that just having a button to cycle through nearest targets is often times not enough.

• Lack of buttons. Using the example of WoW raiding, it would not be possible. Even in raids of 25, to suggest a healer just heals his group is naive. You watch the whole fight. You help debuff and heal everyone if the need arises. You need to have control and flexability. Part of the glamour of raiding is that is it complex and you do have to watch a lot of things. A controller cant do this.

is like crafting,  some games have a 2 button crafting system that able to create zillion different items.  You can create a "minigame" that the healers will play, and the result will be healing.
This is a rather large design change. If they were to do this for healing, then it would be done for other classes as well id assume. Combat becomes a mini game. Next thing you know you have puzzle pirates. Which is barely an rpg and more a puzzle game with a rather colourful lobby.

• Fuctionality - A controller cant script a ui, typing out macros letter by letter would be horrible. Part of what makes WoW so great is the customizable UI so that tools can be made to fit the players exact needs. This just isnt doable with a controller. You need computers, which give you much more controll over what your doing and what you can do.

a download menu can let you get scripts from a central server, on that central server you can enter scripts with a browser (maybe from this console, or with a PC).
How would you search these scripts? a seudo-keyboard? They are coded on the computer, which requires a keyboard. So if your going to be using a keyboard, why not keep it simple and use it for everything. As well the server would need to be designed, programmed, maintained. Lots of more work to accomidate a controller

On the other side, I agree that controller would be easier. But to get that simplicity you would have to remove a lot of depth, which is what I lot of people love about mmorpgs. MMORPGS have depth, they arent just action/adventure games.

maybe

 

It seems like a LOT of work, and possibly confusing/complicated mechanics to work around the lack of the ability to type.

Originally posted by Munki

 

In all your solutions you suggest radical changes to the game (healing a mini game, content created on a computer then downloaded to the console, removal? of private channels (I didn't quite understand you solution to this, from what I understood there would be a lot of "sudo-keyboard" work which would be painful, especially trying to get a hold of XxXSepheroth783XxX.)

 

It seems like a LOT of work, and possibly confusing/complicated mechanics to work around the lack of the ability to type.

What if the game was a crab MMO with building sand castles and claw fighting over teritory and all comunication was done in a Mass Effect fashion where you don't speak words but use moods and phrazes?

Fuctionality - A controller cant script a ui, typing out macros letter by letter would be horrible. Part of what makes WoW so great is the customizable UI so that tools can be made to fit the players exact needs. This just isnt doable with a controller. You need computers, which give you much more controll over what your doing and what you can do.

a download menu can let you get scripts from a central server, on that central server you can enter scripts with a browser (maybe from this console, or with a PC).

How would you search these scripts? a seudo-keyboard? They are coded on the computer, which requires a keyboard. So if your going to be using a keyboard, why not keep it simple and use it for everything. As well the server would need to be designed, programmed, maintained. Lots of more work to accomidate a controller

Yea, you will write teh scripts in the notepad, in windows, at work,  and paste these scripts in Internet Explorer ( or firefox) on a special page.  That page will store that script with your account, so you will have available that script as a option.  Maybe with say macros

You may also visit that page with the console web browser, If you don't have a PC.

Anyway all this stuff feel absurd even to me..  maybe you are right.

Originally posted by SonofSeth

 

Originally posted by Munki

 

In all your solutions you suggest radical changes to the game (healing a mini game, content created on a computer then downloaded to the console, removal? of private channels (I didn't quite understand you solution to this, from what I understood there would be a lot of "sudo-keyboard" work which would be painful, especially trying to get a hold of XxXSepheroth783XxX.)

 

It seems like a LOT of work, and possibly confusing/complicated mechanics to work around the lack of the ability to type.

 

What if the game was a crab MMO with building sand castles and claw fighting over teritory and all comunication was done in a Mass Effect fashion where you don't speak words but use moods and phrazes?

Only if there is an emote for /spit and /humpleg

Speaking in moods is awesome.  A simple "HA, I have killed every NOOB in the ZONE!" becomes "Happy Happy Joy Joy"

I dig.

You guys miss the most important thing. You only got 10 digits. So drop the number of buttons. Also keep in mind you can always add more buttons if needed.

A keyboard and PS3 are both controllers. The difference is with the mouse being a sensor controller. This sensor controller is best for MMO's and other games. It's usually replace by the analog stick for the ps3 but not as fast DPI as the mouse.  Maybe they will improve it latter down the road.

The PS3 also has a  6 axis sensor what will benefit more for some games over the mouse. For example a flying game. Although people might say it needs improvement like the WII controller.

This debate should be about what sensor is best for an which mmo or should there be any?

WoW UI. That screenshot of  someone UI is also missing many many major raid mods. Omen and deadly boss mods are the top two. This usually have more bars on the screen and will take up more room.

You only need this stuff because the game built that way. If you remove pots and majority of buff abilitys you will remove much from someone UI.

You cast smite with Square or 1 what takes 1.5 seconds to cast. During the cast at .5 seconds into it. You hit Circle or 2. Your smite then turns into a Holy Fire with 2seconds added to the cast timer. I think this would add a lot more to combat.

Originally posted by Jimmy_Scythe

I'm getting really tired of console apologists reminding PC snobs that you can hook a keyboard and mouse up to a PS3 or XBox 360 everytime someone bashes console controllers. If the keyboard + mouse configuration was such a wonderful control scheme, then consoles would already be using them and arcade games would have adopted it while they still existed. The only times that a keyboard and mouse is really appropriate is for flight sims, RTS and traditional strategy games where you need all the resource management functionality of Microsoft Excel.

Just how fucking complicated do you think Diku style MMOs (EQ, DAoC, LoTRO, WoW, etc.) are? Remember that a 360 controller has 16 buttons. The skill hotbar only takes up the 0-9 range.  So the D-pad, face buttons and two shoulder buttons are all that's required to actually controll all of your character's skills. Left stick moves, right stick rotates camera, left trigger targets, right trigger attacks. Secondary screens work "point and click" with the right stick controlling the pointer with X and A working as the right and left moust buttons respectively. How would you get to those secondary screens? Uh... start... or select maybe... Just because PC supremists aren't creative enough to consider gamepad configurations that work, doesn't mean that they don't exsist.

We aren't talking about Microsoft Flight Simulator here, we're talking about games like WoW,  CoH, Guild Wars, EQ2 or even Vanguard. You don't need the accuracy of the mouse since combat in most MMOs is auto-attack. You just need to be able to target an oppenent and spam hot buttons. You can't do that with a controller? That's a new one on me.

Actually, I've already covered this issue in blogs a couple of times already.

Dumbed Down Controls?

Controller Rant

The reason I play MMO's with their crap gameplay is because of the social element.

If gameplay was all an MMO had to offer, a console controller would be fine.

Unfortunately, gameplay in MMO's is abysmal. If that's all i was looking for I wouldn't be playing one at all.

The social element is king, and for communication, the keyboard is the undisputed master.

How long does it take you to type your name in on a console controller?

Sorry but when it comes to typing, console controllers don't work. If they did, offices the world over would have adopted them already. They keyboard would never have been invented in the first place.

It isn't a question of being "creative", it is a question of being practical.

MMO's aren't arcade games. They didn't evolve from arcade games. They evolved from MUD's. Sure you can do all your 3D interaction with a controller if you please, but the core element of these games, communication with other players, requires something a little more sophisticated.