And no, you can't have all the AI and boss stuff client side like in a single player game because people would hack the shit out of it.

It doesn't matter if people hack the shit out of non-multiplayer games because you are only effecting your own game experience.

Look what happened when a game like Halo allowed you to download maps to your harddrive, before they figured out how to protect them, most hacked shit ever.

In a MMO where you are paying a fee to play the game online, you cannot have some r-tard hacker screwing up the game for thousands/millions of others because they think it's be funny to change boss X's damage to over 9,000!!!!

<Mod Edited>

And if you think you can make a boss fight as complex as one in an offline single player game for a MMORPG.. well...

No one has done it yet, so unless you know something Blizzard, NCSoft, Sony, etc. doesn't know....

It's called server to console/PC communication. A whole lot more intensive then simply asking the game/console/your own PC to load up and do something.

Sure, I would LOVE to have EVERYTHING you are describing, I agree with you 100% on that, but if it could be done, someone would have done it already, and it would have likely been Blizzard because they have the biggest budget, probably the best tech, and some of the smartest devs.

You may disagree with that statement about Blizzard, but all you have to do is look at the critics score of ANY game they have ever made or the popularity of their games, and ask if such things are possible by untalented people?

Are you really that sad and desperate to back up your illogical arguments you bust that out? Some Japanese arcade game that like 6 people know about? 

Jesus. I'm done.

It's like talking to a wall, and a particularly stupid wall at that.

l2game develope, then come back and actually make sense

Originally posted by Greenie

Honestly, would you rather they spend all the time, money, and effort on that, or just make more actual content for players of all styles?  Before all the scoreboards you could tell by playing with or watching other players if they were good at their class or not generally. The scoreboard scenarios have skewed many people's visions on what makes a good player, stats or decision making and the unstatistical data such as capping a flag at the right time/buffs/debuffs/ rezzes, etc.

It's the same problem with statistics in sports. Take the NFL a RB has a 1000 yard season one year he's a good RB, the next year he loses most of his offensive line andhe has a 600 yard season. Is he a bad RB now or did the situation and team around him make the difference? Same thing goes for scenarios in war and Bg's in wow.

Very well said sir.

I agree, I'd rather they do what I highlighted, make more actual content for players of all styles.

But, alas, limitations of people and technology and time and money....

Originally posted by Cryomatrix

 

 

If there was a huge spider to kill, i'd just turn the knife on myself. I mean, I was so glad to hear that spiders are limited in size by the diffusion capacity of oxygen across their carapace. I mean back in the old days where the Earth had more oxygen they can get bigger. Thank god our Earth's oxygen content is lower than in the past or else i'd a pk myself.

best. post. ever.

you win the interwebz Cryomatrix

I'd love to see you make a game where the player wasn't designed to win if they were skilled enough.

Where they were designed to lose and only through complete and total luck or cheating or a fluke or glitch would they win.

All the masochists would love to play it!

Talk to a real developer sometime and ask if PvE content is designed for the player to win or not.

Get a clue.

Originally posted by Neanderthal

You're supposed to win?  So much for that whole "challenge" argument huh?

But you were right at least with that one line.  Raid fanatics don't really want challenge.  They don't want interesting content.  They don't even want it to be fun.  They just want to put in their time and get their loot.  Getting their loot is the fun part for them and getting it from content that is so horrifically tedious that only insane people will put up with it is the icing on the cake for them because then they get to stroke their oversized e-peens and feel all special about themselves.

And as for the randomoness in PvE I will say that one of the things that made normal exp. groups in EQ so much fun was all the random chaos that went on in the popular (non-instanced) areas.  It wasn't programmed in and it probably wasn't intended or even expected to be that way but it quite often was and it made it that much more fun.  Players pulling stuff this way and that, trains, wandering mobs argroing, bad pulls and so forth created a lot of chaos at times and, hell, that was half the fun of the game.  When everything was going smoothly and methodically those were the most boring times.

So what you are suppose to lose at PvE? 

All games, every single one is designed so that you can and will eventually win if you learn the game and are skilled enough at playing it.

I don't understand you at all, stop spouting the popular catch phrases from your "forum posting 101" handbook please, and think about what you are saying.

Just because PvE, or players versus the computer is designed so the players can win doesn't mean it isn't challenging to win.

There is a LOT of randomness in most every group I have ever been in while playing a game like World of Warcraft. Sure it's a lot of fun when everything is perfect and you down the content like clockwork, at least to me, but also it's a lot of fun to mix things up and pull two groups at once instead of one or pull a boss before people are ready and all kinds of randomness.

It happens ALL the time. The absolutely pefect fight happens so rarely... unless you are at the level of Ensidia or one of the "world class" guilds I gaurantee you most of the time everything in a raid is less then 100% perfect.

Or..

Just get rid of this idea that players should take damage that requires healing.

I know if I was a bad-ass fighter or mage whatever I'd try and win all my battles without getting a scratch on me.

Make everyone fight, rezzing happens after the battle is over and any healing done is after the battle, no combat healing magic waving your arms crap.

To do this requires all players to have capable close combat and ranged defenses, stuff like Dodge and Parry and Block being important to all player characters, not just tanks, and easily at 100% total once the players are "really good" but then give the enemy mobs abilities to reduce your defenses or make a basic PPS (procs per second) for all dodge blocks and parries so the only way (if you are really good) you can take damage and get killed is if you are overwhelmed.

Would force teamwork and creating actual formations and helping each other in combat.

I do like the idea of Raids and group dungeons being more like carefully crafted public quests ala WAR.

However, in terms of design, they've fallen short but I think of something like SFK in WoW where you start out at the gate of the castle and battle through the ENTIRE castle until you scale the tower and slay the final boss. That is cool.  There were even optional bosses and multiple paths through the instance.

Now, it's all too free-form and stupid caves and such. Either give me lairs or actual castle/dungeon feeling sieges for PvE.

Oh, and the music in the courtyard of SFK was awesome.

Originally posted by Jimmy_Scythe

Originally posted by heerobya

Originally posted by SwampRob

Oh, I dunno.   How about....randomness?   How about you make a boss so that at a not-predictable time (like 40% of his health) he does something unexpected?    How about giving a boss a variety of abilities that he (semi-)randomly chooses from each time he is encountered?    The point is for the heroes not to be able to know the ideal and works-every-time strategy when entering the boss' lair.   

Stuff like: "After 22 or 23 ticks, the person in the red beam has to switch out..." is what makes the encounter dull.   It should be impossible to know this in advance, regardless of how many times a player may have done it.   At best, the person might know; "he could use this or this or this or this" but should still have no way of predicting when said mob will do that.

In PvP, how often do you just see someone stand still and let you whack at them?   Yet raid bosses do this all the time.   They could, I dunno, move around?   Place themselves in strategically advantageous locations?

Look, it's fine for typical trash mobs in the world to be this way, cause the programming to make them all that unpredictable would be insane, but for encounters that are supposed to be 'Epic' to be dumbed down to the point where any schmoe can just go look up what the Uber Boss is going to do at every stage of the fight and when is simply.... unimaginative.     The devs can and should be able to do better.

Ok ok... so why do YOU think that they haven't done this or tried this yet?
 

 

You know, you could just save us all a lot of time and irritation if you ditched the "smug professor" act and just made a reply. I realize that you get off on the whole "more uber than thou" posturing, but it really is irritating. Throw down or go home.

I'm just trying to provoke a good argument and discussion.

It's easy to say "I don't like this and here is why" but it is much harder to come up with something better most of the time.

And then if/when you think you have, you have to cut through the idealistic ideas and bring it back down to Earth and then you realize the limitations of the systems and everything else.

Calm down skippy.

It's how games are actually made. You start with high concept and flesh through the details until you end with something that works.
 

Why don't raid bosses have a lot more random variables and abilities and such so that you can't predict them and make it more then a dance? 

There are a lot of reasons. First and foremost because learning how an encounter works and then besting it and winning is the point of PvE. You are suppose to win. Second, 99% of gamers in PvE don't want something 100% random they want something they can learn and get better at and eventually beat.

Randomness is saved for PvP. Also no matter how "random" you make an encounter you are still limited by the AI and you can't make the AI too smart in a MMO because of technological limitations, huge complicated AI + online with thousands of people is a recipe for horrible performance. So you have to run things based off of scripts, and scripts can be learned and predicted.

Also you have to program in every single one of those "random" things a boss can do, and that takes time and money and when you have 14 other bosses to program and a deadline of 3 days you can only spend so much time on a single encounter.

Again, take the idealistic "big" ideas and break them down to the realistic and what you can actually do, and what players actualy want. In the end, you have a game.

Originally posted by Ilvaldyr

How to make a game that doesn't rely on the holy trinity of tank/dps/healing:

1. Concentrate on many-vs-many fights rather than many-vs-boss.
2. Give every class balanced survivability, damage and healing abilities.

As someone mentioned, TOR is (currently) approaching things from this perspective and I personally think it's a very viable alternative to the trinity. It may also lead to a game that has better balance in terms of PvP, more accessible group mechanics and a much, much overdue removal of the "LFG: Need Tank!" spam that we all are so very fond of.

If I can also play a wookiee I might never buy another game ever.

Very well said.

Create the "epic-ness" of group/large group vs. solo play by adding tons of mobs. If everyone can fight and survive a fight, then your party of 5 or 10 or 25 whatever should fight against a dozen, dozens, or even hundreds of mobs... problem is in a online game even with only 25 or so players in an instance can you have a hundred mobs on screen at once? 

I dunno... there are good ideas, but implementation is the key. Without too much coordination it just becomes a mad brawl, a big rumble. There is a certain degree of satisfaction with a group that is running like a fine oiled machine where everyone plays there role up to a high standard.

Originally posted by SwampRob

Oh, I dunno.   How about....randomness?   How about you make a boss so that at a not-predictable time (like 40% of his health) he does something unexpected?    How about giving a boss a variety of abilities that he (semi-)randomly chooses from each time he is encountered?    The point is for the heroes not to be able to know the ideal and works-every-time strategy when entering the boss' lair.   

Stuff like: "After 22 or 23 ticks, the person in the red beam has to switch out..." is what makes the encounter dull.   It should be impossible to know this in advance, regardless of how many times a player may have done it.   At best, the person might know; "he could use this or this or this or this" but should still have no way of predicting when said mob will do that.

In PvP, how often do you just see someone stand still and let you whack at them?   Yet raid bosses do this all the time.   They could, I dunno, move around?   Place themselves in strategically advantageous locations?

Look, it's fine for typical trash mobs in the world to be this way, cause the programming to make them all that unpredictable would be insane, but for encounters that are supposed to be 'Epic' to be dumbed down to the point where any schmoe can just go look up what the Uber Boss is going to do at every stage of the fight and when is simply.... unimaginative.     The devs can and should be able to do better.

Ok ok... so why do YOU think that they haven't done this or tried this yet?
 

Only 50 something votes but so far almost 50/50.

I'm actually suprised.

I thought with the general attitude of most on these boards the overwhelming response would be gear/level based PvP because people love pwning noobs... griefing/ganking PK types which you can't really do as much/so well in a more "even" player skill based PvP system.

Originally posted by Anubisan

But being 'better' as you describe it is really just an illusion. You are no better than you were before. The game has adjusted your character's powers because your gear is better. You are only defeating opponents because they are at a big disadvantage when facing you...

Personally, I find it much more enjoyable when I truly AM better than an opponent through superior knowledge of my character and the game. All of the most satisfying PvP experiences of my gaming career were in games where PvP was more about skill. 

I can remember some very epic battles in UO where nearly everyone was using similar skill builds and had almost identical stats. It came down to who understood the combat better and who could use their environment to their advantage. Victory under those circumstances is MUCH more satisfying than winning because of a handicap.

I can definitely partially agree with you as I have very fond memories of UO PvP too.

But understand that there is never only one person at the top with the best gear in a modern MMO, usually I'm playing catch up so there is still LOTS of opportunity for such epic fights.

Like last night I did Strand of the Ancients in WoW for the very first time. Had a two minute or so battle with a Ret Paladin, just one on one with everything else that was going on. He beat me, just barely, so the rest of the match I'd hunt him down when I saw him. I have no idea if I ever will see that Paladin again, but for those 10-15 minutes I had a true nemesis and it brought so much joy and satisfaction to beat him after he had bested me.

I guess in the end I like when gear matters because it makes you feel good once you put in the work and win enough to start getting the good gear, yeah most of the time it's just a grind through a gear treadmill but I like stomping people once I have the good gear.

Yeah it sucks to get stomped when I'm still working on getting the gear, it's true, but I guess I view it as motivation to be better and invest my time and energy into getting the good stuff.

The skill in RPG combat games, or numerical gear/level based comes down to a few things IMO-

1. Min/maxing your character. This includes gear selection, stats, talent/skill builds, even optimal rotations and macros and mods. Most of this you CAN look up and have someone else tell you, but you won't really be the best unless you understand the "why" not just the "what."

2. Knowledge of game/character mechanics. This includes knowing the terrain or map, knowing your abilities and what they do and also knowing your enemy and what they are capable of and what they can do and how you can counter it. Also this is knowing how to "read" your enemy based off of factors like the gear they are wearing or Titles they have etc.

3. Playing you character. You have to know when to use your abilities and when to save them and knowing the best strategies does not = being able to execute the best strategies. There is a bit of finesse and style associated with it and really this point is one of the most important little nuances that really make a player "good" or not. There is a degree of "twitch" in this as you have to be able to react quickly and be faster "on the draw" in a lot of cases.

Originally posted by SwampRob

When I was raiding in Wow, most of the boss fights were like a bunch of people playing Dance Revolution.  Seriously.   "You stand here, and when this bar turns green, everyone move to the right.   And then when the boss flashes, everyone move to the edge of the room...."

The first time I saw this, I was like WTF?!   This is what qualifies for a boss encounter?    Where's the opportunity for on-your-feet thinking?   For different tactics to accomplish the same goal?    Nope.   It's all "Put your feet on the faded marks in the ground and step in exactly the same places that everyone else did".     My god, they couldn't have made it more boring it they'd tried.

Also, the trash mobs.   I remember going through so many raids where the plan was "OK, we have 20 minutes of trash to wade through, then we get to boss A.   Then another 15 minutes of trash to get to boss B."    Translation:  do a bunch of boring stuff that not one person in the group wants to do, to get to the Dance Revolution encounter.

Wow.   Just wow.  And raiders think that this stuff deserves top quality gear cause it's "hard".

Explain a better way to do a raid encounter in a MMORPG then. It's going to be fun to tear it apart.

Originally posted by brostyn

Originally posted by Loke666

Originally posted by brostyn

Raiding is like voting. One person isn't going to make a difference.

I also find it very boring.

In a really hard RAID it does. One guy mess up and you die, EQ2 have a few raids like that. Of course the raid only have place for certain classes then.

But you have probably just played the easy ones or j8ust played Wow.

The boring part however is a different thing, that is a good reason not to play them.

 

Never raided in WoW. Learned my lesson long before that. Glad to see people are still taking the usual stabs at WoW, though.

I know how different EQ2 is from WoW. You must be proud to play such a radically different game.

It's ok, he's probably one of the scrub DPS players who is carried by good tanks and healers who has NO idea how hard raiding can be, because their guild/freinds do all the hard work for them, no instead they just have to sit there and pew pew fire!

I agree sanders01.

I like my MMO PvP to be about dice rolls and a bit of random chance involved in that and thus I like gear and numerical progression systems...

But I also like my skill to matter so as long as the differences in gear/level aren't too great I still have a good chance to win if I am better then the other player.

Still though, this poll is for a "purist" perspective.

i.e. if you think gear should matter at all, even just a little, choose the gear/level option. If you hate dependancy on gear and think it should be TOTALLY 100% about skill/tactics then choose that option.

If they can figure out how many kills you have and how many deaths and how many death blows and how much damage you've done and how much you've healed, as well as how many objectives you've captures or stolen etc. etc.

Seems like they could figure out how many of those were even fights or if they had a level difference, seems like they could figure out how often you took out someone solo or assisted others in killing. Seems like they could figure out a percentage of damage you did as incidental "splash" or AoE damage. Seems they could do the same with the amount healed and who you healed. 

And seems they could create an "aura" around objectives to know if you are fighting around/at them or not, even if you don't cap them or steal them or turn them in etc.

And then take ALL of that, and give players XP and "contribution points" or something to be used on rolling for randomly generated greens/blues (even epics I don't care) at the end of the match, along with bonus honor and/or badges.