Originally posted by gestalt11 <snip>

Originally posted by Ortwig <snip>

Originally posted by gestalt11 <snip>

Well there is more to it than just tooltips and such.  This becomes quite evident when you fight some nightmare mobs.  Nightmare mobs usually have some sort of buff that needs to be counters such as "mob heals when you miss them".  Thus you need to know the mob and you need to come up with some way to not miss or reduce healing.  If you don't you just can't kill the mob even though its not necessarily lots harder than a normal.

The only way I figured this out in part of egypt was by scoping out the buffs and I did it rather by accident after me and another guy tried to DPS em down earlier and were getting nowhere.  So  Iwent back and tried to figure out what was the deal and I noticed it said the mob was nightmare which I assumed just meant elite so  I hovered over the nighrmare icon expecting the typical "This mob is much tougher bring some friends" type blah blah.  Instead if specced this heal when the attacker misses thing and I specced out a high accuracy build and soloed those mobs.  Once I figured that out I made sure to check in transylvania and there are many alternate types of buffs.

IN the end you need a pretty large number of alternate things in Secret World you really do need to swap between many builds.

Edit:

Forgot to add that this is really the sum total of the analysis of the game outside of how to actually do a quest or dungeon.  You basically analyze what a mob does or is weak to what synergies it may have then you select a build for that then go through whatever rotation of skills that build would do.  Now this is not abnormal of MMOs.  But this is kind of the problem in general with MMOs is basically this dynamic makes them robotic and arcane.

What I'd really prefer is more ingame items that are character building tips in disguise.  Why not find a tome talking about a particular mob or boss, and ways they are more easily defeated, but do it in story form, so that it actually becomes part of the lore.  WoW did a little bit of this recently with the Dungeon Journal (I think that's what it is called), but I'd almost prefer you find it somewhere in the world as an item that you can pick up and possess -- make it part of your library or something. So in preparation for said boss, you can a bit of in-game investigation (as opposed to reading spoiler sites).  Trial and error works too I suppose, but finding clues as part of the storyline fits with the theme of the game anyway, so why not work it in?

Originally posted by AdamTM

Originally posted by fallenlords
Any good RPG should allow a player to be as involved as they choose to be overall.  If it forces a player to get involved beyond their comfortable level, then as an RPG game it has fundamentally failed.

Where did you read that? Your RPG Bible? Did the RPG pope declare the fundamentals of an RPG to be accessibility?

I must have missed so much since the days of ADnD and Ultima.

 

Please, do go on and enlighten us peasants with your superior knowledge and wisdom.

Originally posted by Ortwig

Originally posted by gestalt11

Originally posted by Ortwig

Originally posted by gestalt11

Well there is more to it than just tooltips and such.  This becomes quite evident when you fight some nightmare mobs.  Nightmare mobs usually have some sort of buff that needs to be counters such as "mob heals when you miss them".  Thus you need to know the mob and you need to come up with some way to not miss or reduce healing.  If you don't you just can't kill the mob even though its not necessarily lots harder than a normal.

The only way I figured this out in part of egypt was by scoping out the buffs and I did it rather by accident after me and another guy tried to DPS em down earlier and were getting nowhere.  So  Iwent back and tried to figure out what was the deal and I noticed it said the mob was nightmare which I assumed just meant elite so  I hovered over the nighrmare icon expecting the typical "This mob is much tougher bring some friends" type blah blah.  Instead if specced this heal when the attacker misses thing and I specced out a high accuracy build and soloed those mobs.  Once I figured that out I made sure to check in transylvania and there are many alternate types of buffs.

IN the end you need a pretty large number of alternate things in Secret World you really do need to swap between many builds.

Edit:

Forgot to add that this is really the sum total of the analysis of the game outside of how to actually do a quest or dungeon.  You basically analyze what a mob does or is weak to what synergies it may have then you select a build for that then go through whatever rotation of skills that build would do.  Now this is not abnormal of MMOs.  But this is kind of the problem in general with MMOs is basically this dynamic makes them robotic and arcane.

What I'd really prefer is more ingame items that are character building tips in disguise.  Why not find a tome talking about a particular mob or boss, and ways they are more easily defeated, but do it in story form, so that it actually becomes part of the lore.  WoW did a little bit of this recently with the Dungeon Journal (I think that's what it is called), but I'd almost prefer you find it somewhere in the world as an item that you can pick up and possess -- make it part of your library or something. So in preparation for said boss, you can a bit of in-game investigation (as opposed to reading spoiler sites).  Trial and error works too I suppose, but finding clues as part of the storyline fits with the theme of the game anyway, so why not work it in?

Yes I think you are on a decent track here, but I think its important to recognize the source of the disease rather than treating symptoms.

This is a fine idea but in the context of a game where people rush about and killing everything as fast as possible and expect to win 99.9% of the time without doing much tactical planning it becomes problematic.  Now I am not accusing TSW of being a no-brainer in that with nighmare mobs it throw a wrench into that equation.

But we must all recognize that in basically all MMOs you are basically doing massive amounts of slaughter in a regular basis and the main "challenge" is how efficently you slaughter things to gain xp/loot so that you may continue to efficently mass slaughter your enemies at roughly the same rate.

This is why I was contrasting this to Crawl.  In crawl almost every ecounter is something where you must ask yourself "Am I gonan die here?".  You have to ask yourself that for two reasons:

a) perma death is such a severe penalty that is demands constant vigilance 

b) the game itself is designed to make the encounters dangerous and uncertain.  It is a tenant of the devs that Out of Depth monsters are perfectly fine and even good, ie. a hill giant can spawn on level 5 (can one shot most characters).  If you procude too much noise you may attracts way too many things.  Stuff can cascade out of control quickly or you just get unlucky and be too close to something that can 1 or 2 shot you and you may not be able to run.

This is one reason people play the online version.  When you die past level 3 that characters stats get stored in a ghost file and there is a chance that a player ghost will spawn on that level.  Player ghosts in crawl are strong and dangerous.  people actively play online just to get this extra bit of "Oh holy shit this game is seriously trying to kill me".  I had a rather nice character that had 5 runes and could ahve got 15 probably ceratinly could have won the game.  But I wnet to pandemonium and one of the maps kept spawning fiends it eventually wore my char down and I thought I could hide in a corner and heal up but the frigging game just kept coming at me over and over frigging over and I got one shotted by a fiend using unressitable hellfire when I had like 15% health.   Looking back on it I should have used an emergency power I had from my god.  I should have been extra super cautious.  But I thought I could eck out some healing.  I was wrong and I lost a pretty badass naga transmuter.

So yes in the case of something like Crawl your idea has alot of merit as it can be the difference between winning and losing.  But in a typical MMO its basically just a matter of time.  Is it worth it to spend all this time figuring things out?  Every second i waste is a second I could spend grinding for gear ...  Maybe its really just better to power through it all anyway? 

Note I am not a proponent of the harsh death penalties of a game like EQ (keep in mind when I played MUDs our DPs were WAY harsher than EQ).  I understand why they exist and the reason behind them is sound but they also suck in the context of an MMO.  In the context of a grinding game based on character investment the permanent loss of stuff is just annoying.  Its not real loss its time punishment.  And games like EQ are designed to kill you anyway.

See EQ (and its progeny) and Crawl are fundamentally different.  In Crawl escaping and bypassing encounters is expressly part of the balance of the game and it is costed as very advantageous and probably a tactic that most good players would say its almost impossible to win without utilizing.  Whereas EQ is designed to kill you when you screw up.

In Crawl you can die when you get unlucky or when you screw up, but you should basically have a number of tricks up your sleeve to escape being unlucky or even a screw up (assuming your screw up was not about not figuring out when to run).  In EQ when you screw up (say the tank messes up his taunt and the healer dies) you basically all die (raid party whatever) and you are meant to die.

Thus the DP in EQ is kind of stupid as you are punished without any real ability to avoid.  Crawl punishes you far far harsher than EQ ever could, but its punishment is fair.  EQ's punishment is not fair, its just a fact of life.  Its just sadism to add some spice to life.  Crawl is far crueler than EQ but more fair.

The prupose of EQ style DP is to provide a reason for people stop and think.  To put some breaks on the headlong rush to grind for phat lootz.

As I said I do not like the EQ and MUD style DPs.  But they do serve a purpose.  In the absence of something that forces players to stop and take stock of what is the nature of  their character and what is the nature of the gameworld,  I would suggest your idea will gain little traction. 

But not because its a bad idea.  Rather why would it ever gain traction in a game that is made on the premise of:  Kill kill kill to get moar moar moar.

I mean the first reaction of most MMO players to a mob is to immediately kill it.  In Crawl (turn based game) I have literally walked into a room after opening a door and thought about what I am gonna do for 1 minute then closed the door and snuck away.  This was the right decision and it took 10 deaths(and some save scumming of local games for testing purposes) of other characters for me to comfortably be able to make this decision reliably.

So when we analyze your idea why would the MMO mentality spend time reading about how mobs work?  Wouldn't they just charge in like Leroy Jenkins and just figure it out through trial and error.  And wouldn't doing so in the end make their grinding more efficient since only a very small percentage of mobs are ever any real threat?

In my opinion this all comes back to the rush in and kills literally bajillions of mobs styl;e game play of MMOs in general.  Some people look back at EQ with rose colored glasses and say its "harsh" DP addressed that, but that is clearly false when you look at the camp and kill gameplay of that game.  People sat there for hours doing rote actions to kill stuff.

And that phrase right there is the heart of the matter "rote actions".  When your gameplay and game world encourages fast mechanical predefined actions for hours on end I would say you will never be able to achieve the goal of your idea via this implementation or any other.  Its simply not advantageous in the context of the game.

TSW addesses this to some degree with nightmare mobs but in this case since its a 50% solution its no real solution.  To kill nightmare mobs you must adjust your rote actions, your rote pre-planned build.  But the gameplay itself is still just as rote.  Once you have determined an appropriate build its business as usual.  Thus you cannot use the same skill build on all  content so the game is not completely rote.  You must occasionally say "Hold on what is this mob types syngery profile?".  But the answer is select build XYX then hit 1 2 3 1 2 3 5 1 2 3 during combat and you just run around and do the same standard MMO tactics you always do while in that area.  You may have 5 sets of rote actions but it still all rote actions. 

You need more than just something makes finding all this out a deep and interesting experience.  You need for the gameplay and gameworld you actualy make it mean more than a simple memorized formula of actions.

Note that in all three games mentioned you kill things and get loot and xp (two are skill, one is class based).  In all three games it is possible to grind for some numerical advantage (although Crawl is specifically designed to not be grind based and will attempt to kill you it thinks you are grinding a level's respawns and eventually kill the respawns if you survive).

Originally posted by fallenlords

Originally posted by AdamTM

Originally posted by fallenlords
Any good RPG should allow a player to be as involved as they choose to be overall.  If it forces a player to get involved beyond their comfortable level, then as an RPG game it has fundamentally failed.

Where did you read that? Your RPG Bible? Did the RPG pope declare the fundamentals of an RPG to be accessibility?

I must have missed so much since the days of ADnD and Ultima.

 

Please, do go on and enlighten us peasants with your superior knowledge and wisdom.

It's common sense.  You pitch an RPG game at a certain level - you have it wrong from the start.  You want to accommodate players of all levels.   People learn at different rates and have different requirements from the game.  Single player games 9/10 times offer an easy, medium, hard - or even very easy, very hard.   They do that in order to accommodate people of different game tastes and levels of skill   You can enjoy a game as much on easy mode if you are more interested in say the narrative.  In essence you need tiers for your gamers from casual to hardcore.    The idea should be to turn a casual gamer into a hardcore gamer by pulling them more and more into the game.  But ultimately what type of gamer you want to be should be your choice. 

 

OP mentioned TSW 'seems like work' - this is suppose to be a form of entertainment.   TSW is hampered by it's learning curve, also the fact nothing very interesting happens at the start.  It's boring and mundane, no decent character customisation, no storyline, no interesting NPC's, naff gear, no loot, poor weapons and combat.  So I agree with the OP it needs a dumb/easy mode.  It's pitched too high from the start.   Probably a major reason it has no appeal to the casual gamer.

You are not capturing the fact that most MMORPGs are shared, static worlds.

In the case of single player RPGs such as  Baldur's gate or Mass Effect or whatever I can select a gameplay profile in the settings. 

In the context of MMOs there are one with instances that have difficulty settings (DDO, Champions Online, CoH, etc).  But in all cases you get more reward for doing these.  Whereas in Single Player games you are almost never punished for selecting the difficulty you like to play.

And because of this more reward for more "risk" (there is no real risk of course, that is all BS) the people who play higher diffculty winding up becoming more effective yet clearly they did not need better rewards since they won at a higher diffculty.

In the end this whole concpt of yours, while not inaccurate, is undermined by the inhereently greedy mentality of the MMORPG genre as its currently implemented. 

When I choose the hard setting on a Single Player game I do so because Easy is not that fun, because its too well easy.  In an MMO people will choose the Easiest (ie. fastest route) that rewards with the best loot.

The difference in the mentality (which follows implementation) is the source of many perceived ills in the genre.  Both player elitism and lack of real subsstance in gameplay/gameworld can be traced to this dynamic at least partially.  Its not 100% due to this but its something.

Unfortunately I am unsure there is a real solution to this.  You can say well make rewards the same for all difficulties and let people who want a challenge do it that way.  But in practice 90% of people will do the easiest difficulty then.

Perhaps what is needed is something like what Path of Exiles does with Leagues.  Have a League "shard" per diffculty.  You can freely transfer between the leagues, but your equipment stays in the league.  Thus you have an equipment set per difficulty, but can freely go back and forth between Leagues to play with friends of any sort.

This way everything within that league is kept on a 1 to 1 basis except for player skill and even player should 80% of the time be on par.

Of course that is not a perfect solution but its perhaps more along the lines of a decent than what currently exists.

TSW was good for about 3 months of play.  The first zone was my favorite without a doubt, a town overun by zombies/mmorpg?  Yes please!

But it just got stale after a while, the pvp was a huge flop for me. I ran every dungeon like 5-x times, finding a group even as a maxed out healer was difficult, a lot of elitism(i found more so in TSW maybe cause of the small population).

I think Funcom wasted resources on things like the reticule, and opera house or whatever it is.

I found most people really disliked the desert maps(I sure did, probably the worst zones I've ever encountered but can't quite put my finger on why).

Originally posted by Drolkin

TSW was good for about 3 months of play.  The first zone was my favorite without a doubt, a town overun by zombies/mmorpg?  Yes please!

I found most people really disliked the desert maps(I sure did, probably the worst zones I've ever encountered but can't quite put my finger on why).

Everyone has their favorite zones -- mine is Scorched Desert, but many swear by Transylvania.  Hoping the updates for matchmaking and queues in PvP in the next Issue improve things for PvP.

Originally posted by ashleymorrow

I really like The Secret World. Certain elements of it are superb, easily the best by my standards in the crowded MMO market. The lush environments, the great stories, the horror elements and modern day setting really appeal to me. The dark humor is sharp as a razor.

But at time, TSW seems like work.  I read and reread the active and passive skills I'm using, trying to figure out if any of the fourteen I have slotted are useless or if another of the what, over five hundred skills in the game, would be better? Do we really need 500 + skills? All this time reading about theory crafting... I just want to play a game, not study. But because the game is so merciless, you really do have to sink time into it. Some people enjoy this, but I'm not one of them.

The loot is rarely someting I truly enjoy getting, because for every plus to one stat(s) there is usually a minus or two involved as well. So now I have to look at my character stats, try and figure out if this will make my character stronger or weaker or have little effect. Again, time not spent playing the game. I truly enjoy it when I find an item that is all Pluses! Those moments are rare though.

I believe this learning curve is really the one element that stopped TSW from being a runaway success. Because it has so much going for it. It oozes charm and personality. It is like no other game on the market. Its strengths are numerous. 

I wish they had a "dumb mode". An option for people like me who just want to play a game, not crunch numbers or look into optimum builds or what have you. I could pick something like "Fighter" and the next screen would say "OK, do you want to use guns, swords or magic?" And from there XP I earned would go into unlocking the best actives and passives. They would be automatically equipped for me.

This is not the game that many of TSW's fans want, I understand that. I am in no way looking down on people who do enjoy the statistics. I just wish it felt less like a chore at times. 

What you are saying is that you want an action game, not a RPG. RPG's are about building your character. That obviously requires a lot of thought.

Originally posted by Drolkin

 

 

I found most people really disliked the desert maps(I sure did, probably the worst zones I've ever encountered but can't quite put my finger on why).

 

 

my favorite zone is Egypt,my character living in Hotel Ghiza

Originally posted by Ortwig
I'm looking for information on Crawl, gestalt, and not finding anything. Can you give a link?

dev site

http://crawl.develz.org/wordpress/

wiki

http://crawl.chaosforge.org/Crawl_Wiki

online webtiles (shared player ghosts)

http://crawl.akrasiac.org:8080/#lobby

LearnDB

http://crawl.develz.org/learndb/index.html

I warn you this game is not for the faint of heart.  I used it for comparison only, most MMO players would run away crying from the game.  Here are some learndb entries:

what is that will it kill me

Yes.

 

winrate

This doesn't matter.

 

singing

It's just like talking, except louder, and longer, and you move your voice up and down.

 

skills

Here is how you train skills. First you train the skills that you use to kill dudes. Once you are killing dudes well enough, then you train the skills you use to not die to dudes. If you later run into problems killing dudes, you switch back to killdudes skills.

 

sigmund

1. A yellow @ with a shiny scythe, a magic wand, and a necklace of player skulls. A notoriously lethal early-game unique human wizard. Typically generated with a wand of lightning, draining, or paralysis when you get a really good character started. Spells: throw flame, confuse, invisibility, magic dart.
2. sigmund haters: whoever buffed grinder
3. Sigmund fan club: ##crawl
4. Proof that Crawl hates you and wants you to die.
5. Sigmund :D Zermako the Chopper (L5 HOFi), slain by Sigmund (a +1,+2 scythe) in D:4, with 285 points after 2293 turns and 0:06:29. FUCK!!

 

 

xom

1. thinks this is hilarious!
2. Xom cannot be prayed to, has no conducts, and accepts no sacrifices. He is not so much worshipped as he is experienced.
3. Xom does not use piety or gift timeouts like other gods. Instead, Xom has an attitude and an interest level. See http://chaosforge.org/crawl/index.php?title=Xom and please proofread it.
4. When Xom is in a bad mood he gives you random mutations and when he's in a good mood he gives you good mutations. As a result Xom worshippers will typically have good mutation sets or be dead.
5. 0.5: You hear Xom's avuncular chuckle. Erolcha evaporates and reforms as a giant lizard!
6. Yes, his mutations override an amulet of resist mutation (but not the mutation resistance *mutation* or Zin). Sometimes his potion effect will give you a potion of mutation, and you can resist THAT, but you won't resist the direct hand of Xom changing you. (Except by being undead.)
7. see rec.games.roguelike.misc usenet post: http://groups.google.com/group/rec.games.roguelike.misc/browse_thread/thread/da06166064699cf0
8. why am i death channeling
9. * orb of fire (inner flame)
10. xom gave inner flame to ogre and then berserked it
11. Xom welcomes you! _You feel sick.
12. Poncheis the Chiller (L5 OgIE) became a worshipper of Xom on turn 2142. (Temple) wait it isn't veh
13. huh, I just realized that was a balrug and not an inner flamed reaper

 

Originally posted by Roxtarr

I admit that I got pretty confused as far as what to do.  In order to try new weapons/combos I spent a crap ton of time in the starting zone.  Finally when I thought I was ready to move on, I got my arse handed to me by every other mob.  I hate to say it, but this game needed levels.  (not every game needs them, but this game does).  Even at Q level 4, I felt massively under powered with nearly any weapon combo.  

I did like the first dungeon though.

build, build and build.  I had the same issue....got out of the first area and got mowed down.  Deleted that toon, went back to the drawing board and came back to the 2nd area with a vengeance....

Originally posted by Randayn

Originally posted by Roxtarr

I admit that I got pretty confused as far as what to do.  In order to try new weapons/combos I spent a crap ton of time in the starting zone.  Finally when I thought I was ready to move on, I got my arse handed to me by every other mob.  I hate to say it, but this game needed levels.  (not every game needs them, but this game does).  Even at Q level 4, I felt massively under powered with nearly any weapon combo.  

I did like the first dungeon though.

build, build and build.  I had the same issue....got out of the first area and got mowed down.  Deleted that toon, went back to the drawing board and came back to the 2nd area with a vengeance....

Great avatar, wish more people read Bastiat.

Yeah I spent quite a bit of time I guess you could call it grinding but really I was testing things our for my own curiosity and wind up with a decent spread of skills and good builds.  I killed alot of those water zombie guys near the shaodw bug things right before entrance to the next zone.  So  I went in the next zone having kicked the tires on my skills and had both a heavy defense and heavy offense and a build with a bit of both using a few different startegies (passive heals from procs, active heals from rifle, avoidance from chaos, crit procs etc.).

I both looked for good synergies and also had various things I wanted to figure out.  I settled on a build that synergized with have as many attacks possible to get my procs working quickly.  It took me a number of hours searching through the skill tree etc to settle on chaos/rifle but I also had stuff from a number of other sections and had starts chaos/blade.

It made the rest of the game way less problematic than for many people.  But it was like I dunno a good 5-10 hours of extra work and my motivation was mostly curiosity.  Simply power hungeriness would not have gotten past 1 or 2 hours.

Originally posted by gestalt11

Originally posted by Ortwig

Originally posted by gestalt11

Originally posted by Ortwig

Originally posted by gestalt11

TSW addesses this to some degree with nightmare mobs but in this case since its a 50% solution its no real solution.  To kill nightmare mobs you must adjust your rote actions, your rote pre-planned build.  But the gameplay itself is still just as rote.  Once you have determined an appropriate build its business as usual.  Thus you cannot use the same skill build on all  content so the game is not completely rote.  You must occasionally say "Hold on what is this mob types syngery profile?".  But the answer is select build XYX then hit 1 2 3 1 2 3 5 1 2 3 during combat and you just run around and do the same standard MMO tactics you always do while in that area.  You may have 5 sets of rote actions but it still all rote actions. 

I still disagree that you need to do rote actions with a particular mob -- simply because someone has determined build X works in this case doesn't mean it's the only answer to that scenario.  I regularly use all 7 of my abilities in combat, so I'm still puzzled why so many of these examples show only 3-4 selections in these rote rotations.  And given the number of possible builds (77,258,540,228,633,700,000,000 in TSW -- see: http://karl3d.wordpress.com/2012/08/03/tsw-builds-final/), I think that perhaps it's lack of player imagination (coupled with narrow-minded leet nightmare group demands) rather than some shortcoming of the ability wheel system.  

That said, cookie-cutter rotations are a disease of most MMOs, and if TSW has been infected with it (I don't think that it has), it is in good company.

Originally posted by gestalt11

Originally posted by Ortwig
I'm looking for information on Crawl, gestalt, and not finding anything. Can you give a link?

dev site

http://crawl.develz.org/wordpress/

wiki

http://crawl.chaosforge.org/Crawl_Wiki

online webtiles (shared player ghosts)

http://crawl.akrasiac.org:8080/#lobby

LearnDB

http://crawl.develz.org/learndb/index.html

I warn you this game is not for the faint of heart.  I used it for comparison only, most MMO players would run away crying from the game.  Here are some learndb entries:

Thanks for those -- seriously old school -- I love it!  :)  Somehow all these older games seem to do much, much more, with so much, much less....

Originally posted by gestalt11

Originally posted by Randayn

Originally posted by Roxtarr

I admit that I got pretty confused as far as what to do.  In order to try new weapons/combos I spent a crap ton of time in the starting zone.  Finally when I thought I was ready to move on, I got my arse handed to me by every other mob.  I hate to say it, but this game needed levels.  (not every game needs them, but this game does).  Even at Q level 4, I felt massively under powered with nearly any weapon combo.  

I did like the first dungeon though.

build, build and build.  I had the same issue....got out of the first area and got mowed down.  Deleted that toon, went back to the drawing board and came back to the 2nd area with a vengeance....

Great avatar, wish more people read Bastiat.

 

Yeah I spent quite a bit of time I guess you could call it grinding but really I was testing things our for my own curiosity and wind up with a decent spread of skills and good builds.  I killed alot of those water zombie guys near the shaodw bug things right before entrance to the next zone.  So  I went in the next zone having kicked the tires on my skills and had both a heavy defense and heavy offense and a build with a bit of both using a few different startegies (passive heals from procs, active heals from rifle, avoidance from chaos, crit procs etc.).

I both looked for good synergies and also had various things I wanted to figure out.  I settled on a build that synergized with have as many attacks possible to get my procs working quickly.  It took me a number of hours searching through the skill tree etc to settle on chaos/rifle but I also had stuff from a number of other sections and had starts chaos/blade.

It made the rest of the game way less problematic than for many people.  But it was like I dunno a good 5-10 hours of extra work and my motivation was mostly curiosity.  Simply power hungeriness would not have gotten past 1 or 2 hours.

thanks!  I wish the same man, trust me.  The guy was just awesome...loved "The Law"

yeah, I had to tinker a bit to get  great build, but in the end I felt pretty powerful as well.

This game has many, many problems,  It's too bad because it could have been so much more than it is.

The biggest disappointment about the skill system is that you will still end up building the same character everyone else does if you want the best build for your class and faction.  I would have prefered they took all the extra skills no one uses and made them alternative skills with different animations and visual effects so people could make a more custom character rather than have a bunch of skills no one uses.

The first thing that turned me off about this game when I got far enough was the elitism for people looking for dungeon groups.   So many people were unwilling to take new players along that it became hard for new players to advance in the dungeon tiers.  This is what happens when your whole game becomes about grinding dungeon runs for the sake of getting gear. 

I just can't believe this game is a themepark.  This could have been a fantastic hybrid or sandbox with world PvP and it would have been ten thousand times more interesting than it is now.  Intead we get quests and dungeon gear grind.  What a waste.

Originally posted by Ortwig

Originally posted by gestalt11

Originally posted by Ortwig

Originally posted by gestalt11

Originally posted by Ortwig

Originally posted by gestalt11

TSW addesses this to some degree with nightmare mobs but in this case since its a 50% solution its no real solution.  To kill nightmare mobs you must adjust your rote actions, your rote pre-planned build.  But the gameplay itself is still just as rote.  Once you have determined an appropriate build its business as usual.  Thus you cannot use the same skill build on all  content so the game is not completely rote.  You must occasionally say "Hold on what is this mob types syngery profile?".  But the answer is select build XYX then hit 1 2 3 1 2 3 5 1 2 3 during combat and you just run around and do the same standard MMO tactics you always do while in that area.  You may have 5 sets of rote actions but it still all rote actions. 

I still disagree that you need to do rote actions with a particular mob -- simply because someone has determined build X works in this case doesn't mean it's the only answer to that scenario.  I regularly use all 7 of my abilities in combat, so I'm still puzzled why so many of these examples show only 3-4 selections in these rote rotations.  And given the number of possible builds (77,258,540,228,633,700,000,000 in TSW -- see: http://karl3d.wordpress.com/2012/08/03/tsw-builds-final/), I think that perhaps it's lack of player imagination (coupled with narrow-minded leet nightmare group demands) rather than some shortcoming of the ability wheel system.  

That said, cookie-cutter rotations are a disease of most MMOs, and if TSW has been infected with it (I don't think that it has), it is in good company.

No its not necessary, but its effective especially when you get a chain of syngeries going which is typically the optimal in effectiveness.  Its not truly necessary for 80% of normal world content.

The issue is not the you HAVE to do it.  The issue is that its always effective.  Doing the same sequence over and over should get you killed eventually.   Like the game should actively try to kill you if it figures out you keeping doing the same thing over and over.  If for no other reason than simply to preserve fun.  That way sound backwards because its kind of a sadistic thing to say, but its true because unpredictability is a major aspect of fun.

And yes this is true of almost every MMORPG currently its just that since TSW encourages such freeform building and essentially creating your class (which is a good thing IMO) its more apparent in  a sort of ironic way.

Originally posted by MindTrigger

This game has many, many problems,  It's too bad because it could have been so much more than it is.

The biggest disappointment about the skill system is that you will still end up building the same character everyone else does if you want the best build for your class and faction.  I would have prefered they took all the extra skills no one uses and made them alternative skills with different animations and visual effects so people could make a more custom character rather than have a bunch of skills no one uses.

The first thing that turned me off about this game when I got far enough was the elitism for people looking for dungeon groups.   So many people were unwilling to take new players along that it became hard for new players to advance in the dungeon tiers.  This is what happens when your whole game becomes about grinding dungeon runs for the sake of getting gear. 

I just can't believe this game is a themepark.  This could have been a fantastic hybrid or sandbox with world PvP and it would have been ten thousand times more interesting than it is now.  Intead we get quests and dungeon gear grind.  What a waste.

Well, you were wanting a sandbox and got a themepark instead, which is going to cause some disappointment no matter what.  That said, for a themepark, it does what it does in the PvE space very, very well.  The missions are challenging, you have to think, both in the investigations and in figuring out combat builds.  The community is friendlier than most, I think in part due to the learning curve of the game and the different approach (modern day, class-free, level-free, investigation missions, the ability wheel); lots of people there to help out newbies.  The RP community is also pretty active, and the progression is surprisingly horizontal at high levels (only 10.5 levels of gear), and the ability wheel emphasizes flexibility over pure power progression.

Not everyone decides to go for the gear grind either, though it is there for the people who want it.  Even so, some folks in the community started newbie paths for doing the elite dungeons -- specifically NOT requiring an special build.  

Yeah, would love to see more sandbox elements -- flagged open world PvP is coming, perhaps an expanded crafting system and player housing.  Some talk of adding more metagame elements.  We'll see, but from what I tell, the devs are thinking in the right direction, it's just gonna take some time.

Originally posted by gestalt11

Originally posted by Ortwig

Originally posted by gestalt11

Originally posted by Ortwig

Originally posted by gestalt11

Originally posted by Ortwig

Originally posted by gestalt11

TSW addesses this to some degree with nightmare mobs but in this case since its a 50% solution its no real solution.  To kill nightmare mobs you must adjust your rote actions, your rote pre-planned build.  But the gameplay itself is still just as rote.  Once you have determined an appropriate build its business as usual.  Thus you cannot use the same skill build on all  content so the game is not completely rote.  You must occasionally say "Hold on what is this mob types syngery profile?".  But the answer is select build XYX then hit 1 2 3 1 2 3 5 1 2 3 during combat and you just run around and do the same standard MMO tactics you always do while in that area.  You may have 5 sets of rote actions but it still all rote actions. 

I still disagree that you need to do rote actions with a particular mob -- simply because someone has determined build X works in this case doesn't mean it's the only answer to that scenario.  I regularly use all 7 of my abilities in combat, so I'm still puzzled why so many of these examples show only 3-4 selections in these rote rotations.  And given the number of possible builds (77,258,540,228,633,700,000,000 in TSW -- see: http://karl3d.wordpress.com/2012/08/03/tsw-builds-final/), I think that perhaps it's lack of player imagination (coupled with narrow-minded leet nightmare group demands) rather than some shortcoming of the ability wheel system.  

That said, cookie-cutter rotations are a disease of most MMOs, and if TSW has been infected with it (I don't think that it has), it is in good company.

No its not necessary, but its effective especially when you get a chain of syngeries going which is typically the optimal in effectiveness.  Its not truly necessary for 80% of normal world content.

The issue is not the you HAVE to do it.  The issue is that its always effective.  Doing the same sequence over and over should get you killed eventually.   Like the game should actively try to kill you if it figures out you keeping doing the same thing over and over.  If for no other reason than simply to preserve fun.  That way sound backwards because its kind of a sadistic thing to say, but its true because unpredictability is a major aspect of fun.

And yes this is true of almost every MMORPG currently its just that since TSW encourages such freeform building and essentially creating your class (which is a good thing IMO) its more apparent in  a sort of ironic way.

Hmm, I'm not sure I want a game that simply changes the rules to make itself harder.  I see where you are coming from, though.  Not knowing exactly what to expect everytime you encounter a mob would make for a challenging game for sure.

But I would think that most mobs are going to have cultural/biological aspects to them that keep them fighting using a particular style and using similar abilities, magic and weapons.  There's lots of room for variation with the bosses and elite mobs, of course, who are more likely to switch up their tactics.  Giving a boss completely different abilities every time or switching out the boss each time would be challenge to program, but more again, you also have to think about the game from a lore aspect; I don't know that I'd want a completely random set of traits each time.  

Now I could see bosses using very different TACTICS every time, intelligently switching up their abilities to match the challenge of the party.  Not blindly attacking the tank every time, when it's obvious the dps'ers are causing the worst damage.  Or intelligently targeting healers.  That's something I could get on board with.

Originally posted by gestalt11

No its not necessary, but its effective especially when you get a chain of syngeries going which is typically the optimal in effectiveness.  Its not truly necessary for 80% of normal world content.

The issue is not the you HAVE to do it.  The issue is that its always effective.  Doing the same sequence over and over should get you killed eventually.   Like the game should actively try to kill you if it figures out you keeping doing the same thing over and over.  If for no other reason than simply to preserve fun.  That way sound backwards because its kind of a sadistic thing to say, but its true because unpredictability is a major aspect of fun.

And yes this is true of almost every MMORPG currently its just that since TSW encourages such freeform building and essentially creating your class (which is a good thing IMO) its more apparent in  a sort of ironic way.

One of TSW's problems is that it can be compared to Guild Wars 1. Unfortunately for TSW, GW1 has superior combat and deck customization for a few reasons, some of which you already mentioned:

1) Less synergy. Synergy is great, but having to do X in order to trigger Y that willl cause Z and let you trigger SSS leads to 1234 rotations. A 1234 rotation might as well be a single skill. GW1 avoided this by making most combos only require two skills, although it did have some problems with excesive synergy, too.

2) Enemies' actions triggering skills. "If your target is moving, it's knocked down." "If your target is casting a spell, that spell is interrupted and target starts bleeding." Skills like this make combat more fun by letting you interact with your opponent on another level.

3) Situational skills. "Attack 50% faster, but receive twice as much damage." "Interrupt target's action, but give him 5 energy." Skills like this make combat smarter and more rewarding.

4) Strategic skills. "Place a Ward at your current location that lasts 20 seconds. Enemies move 50% slower in this Ward." Skills like this let you affect the battlefield in a lasting way and force your opponents to rethink their strategy.

I haven't unlocked the entire skill wheel yet, but at least my character doesn't seem to have any abilities of this kind. All of my abilities do damage, cause Conditions, buff me, give me Resources or benefit from Resources/Conditions in some way. They're boring. When I see another ability that does +25% damage if its target is Hindered, I don't get excited about unlocking it.