The title is something I came across while reading a blog about DAOC and this has been something that has come up too frequently in the wow forums. I think people who say this are a bit dense when thinking about group dynamics.

Why are you dense if you think like this? Look at chess. Look at starcraft. Games that are considered to be mostly balanced but the pieces used are wildly different from each other.

Now imagine a game comes out where you can play as one of those pieces and you are aware in most combat situations a unit cap exists.

People who don't understand group dynamics are like pawns who complain about the solobility of the queens. I'm sure a lot of people would like to be dragoons and choose them for stylistic reasons but don't whine about not being able to solo a carrier or have the soloing capabilities of a carrier. Lurkers are even cooler and have interesting dynamics in a group but don't complain about being forced to rely on queens or ling spam so you can properly dps. Oh and you people who play queens that can intimidate other pieces just by being in their vicinity, don't complain about how you have to rely on other classes just so you can kill the one class you normally can't kill, knights.

So if you get my drift you are being dense. That doesn't mean there isn't a reason to feel bitter about how the game is structured. I also agree it is possible to be able to have sololing capabilities while being indsipensible to a group.

After 20 years since online multiplayer started I've finally played one game that achieves that, Call of Duty of 4. But there are caveats to COD4s class design I'm betting that would make you complain about other things such as a feeling of homogeny.

So in the end you should accept the designers' choice in how they develop group dynamics and determine if in the right context (meaning anything beyond you wanting to become the top 50 in a game) it works as they state it should. If you can't accept that just play COD4 until someone comes along and makes an MMO with group design you think you prefer.

Hero classes as Blizzard is presenting them is flawed. They should've just called it a class that doesn't have a level gap and left it at that.

But if they insist on calling these new classes heroic one simple rule would fix a lot of annoyances with the concept.

The new rule is that groups consist of five regular classes and 1 hero class. (maybe 2)

This rule means the following.
What traditionally was a 5 man dungeon is now a 6 man dungeon (where only one class is heroic)
What is 25 man raid is 30 man raid.
WSG, AB/EOTS and AV would have teams of 12, 18, and 48 respectively.

2 Man arena is replaced with 3 man with nothing but normal classes.
5 man arena remains.
New Arena with 4 man and 6 man arenas are created. (the fourth and sixth player being a heroic class)

What annoyances does it address:

The inability for hero classes to feel heroic. What made heros heroic in a warcraft sense was their rarity. The game doesn't have to retread this path but it is better than what Blizzard is offering already.

By restricting group sizes heros can be designed to be a lot more powerful. Sure this would affect world pvp but world pvp by the statements of the CMs was never meant to be fair. That's why they don't feel that raid/high warlord epics should be disallowed in world pvp.

The fear that there will be too many flavor of the month death knights. In the long run this wouldn't be a big deal so players should put up with the short term drama of death knights but with this idea you won't have to deal with those short term problems.

The one glaring problem with this idea.

The limit on heroic slots. Most people I would think would like the chance to use their heroic class in a group. This creates a very long waiting list to get you chance. But consider this, death knights are a tanking/dps class. In what alternate reality does Blizzard produce content that requires more than 2 main tanks? If you want to tank you still be waiting a long time. Secondly would dpsing as a deathknight seriously give you more satisfaction than dpsing as another of the many classes that can dps? That's questionable.

Anyone in favor of this idea?

Runescape actually has 10 million accounts with 1 million being subscribers. I remember reading that blurb at gamasutra.

I'm curious to see what changed about pvp and trading to convince even a handful of servers to riot. It's not a good idea to turn upside a playstyle people are used to. If that's what happened Jagex should just change things back. Hopefully this is a legitimate complaint unlike the way people whine about the game going 3D...

What part of Europe ?:\

I'm assuming Germany which is near where the devs live, the Netherlands and the combat designer and CMs will be online at 7pm +1 GMT.

[quote]Originally posted by AzurePrower
[b]

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Originally posted by fizzle322

Eve is a pure PvP MMO.

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A Pure PVP MMO that failed to implement PVP well. 95% of PVP in EVE is gate camping and who ever has the more ships wins. [/quote]

That's not an accurate statement. Titans alone make this point null and void. Logistic ships in sufficient gang numbers can easily outtank the offensive abilities of most ships but most people don't like playing the role of the healer which is what logistic ships essentially are, Paladins/priests in space.

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But the gates especially fails EVE majorly.

One, because it's hard to find ships. Two, because gates are an unavoidable choke point.

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I've only played the game for 3 months and left but I already know you are far more ignorant of the game than I am. If you want to avoid gates get ships that can build cyno fields. Even though such ships are restricted from the highest levels of security space they are useable where getting around gates matters.

Secondly finding ships isn't hard in fact a major complaint is that it is too easy. Even stealth ships can't circumvent the chatbox giving away the fact that you are in local space.

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Why that is bad?
1. You lose the immersion of space.
2. It's no fun camping a gate for 4+ hours hoping some newbie comes out from the other side nor is it fun to spend an hour or two looking for replacement parts on the market (as well as travelling to the right places for parts) if you're the victim. Basically it's too much time wasting for such little fun.

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Gate camping doesn't occur just to gank people. Sometimes a war is in progress and you fly into a kill zone by accident.

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3. It would be more fun if enemies warped/jumped in on you rather than you warping/jumping to them. But rarely does that happen because of the way EVE is designed and flawed in that design.

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How does this make any sense? One way or the other somone has to warp to the other person. Your complaint is a convulated chicken vs egg scenario.

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I absolutely love space sims/action and PVP. It's why I am keenly looking at the developments of new sci-fi space MMOs in the coming years. Because EVE is just a big, eye-candy failure.

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I stopped playing eve for a few reasons but nothing you said aside from gate camping and the numbers game in winning fights resembled reality or logical thought. Eve was obviously a game too complicated for your tastes.

One thing that should be mentioned is that if anyone has any questions they can't be about things like guild housing, exploration, roleplaying, customer service, etc. This devchat will be specifically about combat as noted by their CM here.

It was implied in the initial posting by MMORPG.com; since they said the combat designer and community managers will attend this chat, but I'm guessing I'm not the only one who glossed over this detail.

The devs have been reading this thread Bescerga because they directly responded to it in their latest dev journal.

Working with goals
The mentioned goal sounds pretty easy, but in the world of MMO’s this means that all old fashioned stun/polymorph effects aren’t allowed. We could decide to allow these types of effects and add a counter mechanic, so players have something to do while their avatar is incapacitated. Maybe some button mashing minigame, popular in a lot of console games currently, to break out of the effect early.
However, we prefer to remedy the cause, rather than the effect, so players will always be able to do something. Slow downs are still present, but no complete root effects. Players might get disarmed but then there’s always magic and the other way around. Another popular mechanic is ‘fear’, our equivalent are the numerous ‘teleporting’ type skills, which displace a target across a short distance, effectively disrupting aim.
Goals might influence subjects you wouldn’t expect after giving them a quick thought. This goal single-handedly makes sure that big bosses will never be allowed to stun a player to make it harder for the rest of the group, let alone stun entire groups for phase transitions (not counting cut-scenes).

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Originally posted by Qaze
You should change the title of this thread to "When hell freezes over".
Gameplay will never be the same as trailers and cinematics.

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You're either lying, being a cynic or just ignorant. Assassin's Creed basically makes your point null and void. Atleast nonmultiplayer games are getting closer to that level of movie style realism. Whether or not this is actually a good idea for a videogame is another matter, but it is one that should be explored as Assassin's Creed has made all too clear in the mixed reviews it gets.

As for an MMO reaching that level of quality? Not for a long time. Creating that level of theatrical like experience is expensive on both the developers and the players.

There are several ways the new Black ops can be done. They could be enitirely different branch class of ships in the same way interdictors have low requirements and don't lead to anything better (aside for the upcoming more powerful interdictors being patched in) or they could have prequisites placing them deep in a skill tree.

So far the devs are considering on making battleships their prequisite since they are a battleship class.

I'm hoping though they change their minds on this one and make recon their prerquisite. Recon ships are cool but their requirements make it hard for a player to invest time training both that and battleships if they want that flexibility of having a ship as strong as a BS.

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Originally posted by Bearmug
It has been said there are 3 pvp areas in the game at start - arena, mines and Green District.
Arena is standard, lvl 50 only, ranked and unranked fights.
Mines are places to go for certain crafting materials, they are FFA PvP area.
Green district is also a FFA PvP area in the main city. City guards don't enter there often. (also it has been said it is lvl 30ish area)
 
So, PvP is inside, and it can be avoided if players wish.

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Arena starts at level 40.

You also forgot they designed quests where you have to pvp to complete objectives.

Exactly. How ignorant does Azureprower have to be to not believe an Securites Exchange Commission report? Where else are corporations supposed to go when they fail miserably, the National Enquirer?

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Originally posted by daarco
I dont understand it either.
But if the mages can teleport others...that would be awesome. You have to watch out when you run into a mage then : )
I will play a warrior so i dont care much anyway.

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6 subclasses of the 9 have teleportation skills and only two of them are mage subclasses.

Ancestral Mages typically teleport their pets and have a couple of skills to teleport enemy characters.

Rune Mages have a lot of control when teleporting enemy players enmasse.

The Wrathguard (warrior subclass) can force allies and enemies to teleport near it.

Furyhammers (warrior subclass) have the ability to teleport themselves near a target.

The Skinshifter (rogue subclass) is the only class with teleportation skills that solely act like a dodging maneuver.

Tricksters (rogue subclasses) have a set of teleportation skills that are siilar to the above classes but most of them are extremely chaotic in nature.

As for the OP's question you are just going to have to get used to the idea of being randomly selected by some of these skill effects.

You should note that certain skills say all or some so some telportaiton skills aren't random but controlled by an AOE range.

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Originally posted by Sykomyke
I like how the inner city defenders cannot respawn when they die.  Will make groups fight more strategically rather then the usual idealogy of zerging people until they grow weary of trying to inch foward and just give up (Read: Alterac Valley before the NPC nerf).  God damn good job Mythic!

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Originally posted by Gameloading
OP: I find your comment about Lucas Arts a bit weird. Lucas Arts is responsible for tons of SW games, they might not all be good games but they certainly understand the potential. Don't forget that a Kotor mmorpg is partly Bioware's decision, not just LA's.

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This guy has a point. Lucasarts used to be about making original games but since the late 90s they've focused a lot more on making Starwars into a bigger franchise.

Still it would be better if Bioware used Mass Effect act their mmo because they spent a considerable amount of time fleshing out its details. It would be wasteful to never reuse all that background/historical knowledge they fabricated.

Not only is your estimation of Lucas arts is wrong but your estimation of Warhammer is wrong. There are a lot of people that like to play games where they bash their heads in. The fighting game genre was a dominant force in the early mid 90s because it catered well to this playstyle.

FPS games are another example that shows people like straight up action.

The issue here is that each of the three games that could appeal to such people have issues.

Warhammer is using the same autoattacking template that grates against the sensibilities of players who want to be in control of their actions. So even though warhammer has a ton of features for epic and small scale battles their combat system is a hinderance.

Age of conan will have rediculously high system requirements. Telling people they'll need a new computre to deal with framerate issues is pouring salt on the wound that is the subscription fee most MMOs have. FPS gamers are used to not paying a subscription fee. It would be easier to accept Conan if there wasn't a huge upfront cost implied.

Spellborn has a great combat system too bad the majority of pvp content is only allowed at the highest levels. Online gamers who don't play MMOs are used to just getting into a game room and start fighting each other. TCOS prevents you from jumping into that type of combat until level 40.

Each of these games have other flaws I could site but I'm not going to write a term paper.

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Originally posted by heerobya
Are you in the U.S. ??
I don't know how willing they'll be to allow beta testers in from the U.S. when they don't even have a U.S. publisher yet..
and thus unsure about whether or not the game will be released in the U.S.
Their beta servers are most likely in Europe, so...

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A significant number of testers are from the US. Who ever owns the Virgin Worlds website claims they even handpicked a crew of people from New jersey for the earliest stages of beta.

Being an active community member noticeably helps because atleast half the beta testers are people I've noticed who have made some intelligent or fun discussions in the forums for the past two years. Another chunk of testers make use of the chatrooms that used to be frequented by devs. THese days you only get to see the CMs in the chatrooms.

Don't lose hope.

If I'm reading the title correctly you posted in the wrong forums. Soul of the Ultimate nations ishere.

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Originally posted by Ravel_RP

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Originally posted by Lord.Bachus

 

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Originally posted by JagerMichael

I'm all for this game, but whoever designed their website needs to check their head. They have so many images loading per page its painful to navigate.

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Thats because we over in europe all have true broadnand connections like 20 mbit, we are so spoiled that we keep  forgetting about the slow US ISP's.... Porblem is US ISP's don't have much bandwith to europe, because they beleive that US peopel only visit websites in the US.

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Must be the cheap providers that don't want to pay for overseas data traffic.

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It's moreso that they decided to steal taxpayer's money after double crossing Congress on a deal where they would get public funding to overhaul our networks nationally.

Wolfshiem good sum up. The only thing you missed is the combo system. Certain skills are designated as finishers and openers. If you use an opener it can never be used until you end your combo with a finisher.

They didn't explicitly say if finishers require openers to be used first before the finsihers are available.

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Originally posted by Llamster

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Originally posted by Aristea

As far as FPS goes, it's more TPS to me ( third person shooter ) but it's not a shooter. There will not be any mouseclicking to move though.

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How is it not a shooter?
If you have to aim with a reticule, it's a shooter.

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With shooters the majority of the time you are going to be kiting. Noone seriously expects to be pummeled or gibbed with a knife. So even though a game as old as Hexen or as recent as Shadowrun uses spells they don't try to make melee combat respectable with ranged combat like other shooters.

Spellborn is more like a first person adventure because about half the skills require your enemy to hug your battleaxe with their face.

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Originally posted by Tenebrion
Good god I hate it when people use the phrase "skill based" incorrectly. I guess it's time for me to drop some knowledge on the OP.
 
"skill based" refers to a game's character progression system - I.E. Ultima Online and EVE are both considered to be skill based games because they both have free form player characters molded through a pool of skills. The opposite would be "level based", such being the case with WOW and EQ, where the player characters fall into rigid level-based class systems.
 
If you're trying to refer to a "twitch" combat system, such being the case with Spellborn, Age of Conan, and Darkfall, then it's simply called "real time combat".
If you're trying to say that a game requires "skill" to play, then simply say so. Just keep in mind that since ALL games require some degree of skill to play, calling a game that requires skill "skill based" would be the equivilent of calling a steak that requires chewing "chew based". It just makes you sound like an idiot.
 
Please, stop butchering MMO terminology. Thanks!

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Even though you are historically correct you are 7 years too late to start preventing the alteration of internet slang now and you are over 4000 years too late to prevent humanity from making languages into a dynamic object.

THe only thing you can do as a responsible person is to explicitly define what you mean when you use certain words that you believe someone is interpretting in a different way.

Thanks that was a good start in examining these questions.