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kaffo posted:So, I was talking to some friends the other day about MMO combat. I'm sure it's been talked about in here somewhere in detail, but what even would be satisfying combat for like 1000+ hours? Monster Hunter.
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Jan 25, 2020 17:26
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Age of Wushu had a the beginnings of a really good idea with the instance bosses that would sometimes summon players. Suddenly having to face down a living, breathing person instead of just an AI that sticks to the tank complicates things.
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Jan 25, 2020 17:54
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I would be okay with fights being lethal in an mmo. If you die you stay dead and spectate the party until they die or find a place to rez you. (Works in EVE) But monster hunter is a great example of souls like action combat but not quite as punishing. Copying monhun would work really well.
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Jan 25, 2020 18:14
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Souls combat is absolutely good for 1000 hours, and some people probably have thanks to New Game + and the existing multiplayer options. It's what you get around the combat that makes it all so moreish, hence why even arena shooters have structured unlocks and a million cosmetic items.
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Jan 25, 2020 18:16
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kaffo posted:So, I was talking to some friends the other day about MMO combat. I'm sure it's been talked about in here somewhere in detail, but what even would be satisfying combat for like 1000+ hours? Rock paper scissors with instant death on failure and 30 minutes corpse runs. The real answer is whatever you can play while barely paying attention, drunk and listening to your favorite playlist of songs or podcasts. Anything that requires too much active attention won't make 1000 hours.
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Jan 26, 2020 05:40
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See, if a game is THAT mindless I will lose interest really quickly. I like a more fast-paced game that I can mute and then listen to podcasts. Maybe I should smoke weed.
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Jan 26, 2020 06:45
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I'd like to see Square Enix use the basic gameplay of FFXV as the inspiration for another MMO. It has an open world full of hunts, dungeons, sidequests, fishing and foraging, and the combat is super quick and simple when you're just ploughing through mobs.
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Jan 26, 2020 10:29
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Zaphod42 posted:I would be okay with fights being lethal in an mmo. If you die you stay dead and spectate the party until they die or find a place to rez you. (Works in EVE) Monster Hunter World had a crossover event with FFXIV, importing a Behemoth. It had an aggro system, and group mechanics ala MMO bosses. It's the closest I'm probably ever going to get to the game I want to play.
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Jan 26, 2020 16:45
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apostateCourier posted:Monster Hunter World had a crossover event with FFXIV, importing a Behemoth. It had an aggro system, and group mechanics ala MMO bosses. It's the closest I'm probably ever going to get to the game I want to play. That sounds about what I want. I played a metric fuckton of Warframe but I want something a little slower and more deliberate. WF is fun as hell but you get to a point fairly early where you're not engaging with the enemies, you spamming AOE weapons and powers to delete the map before you see anyone.
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Jan 26, 2020 17:30
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Doctor_Fruitbat posted:Souls combat is absolutely good for 1000 hours, and some people probably have thanks to New Game + and the existing multiplayer options. It's what you get around the combat that makes it all so moreish, hence why even arena shooters have structured unlocks and a million cosmetic items. The problem with importing Souls combat to an MMORPG is that Dark Souls combat relies on hitstuns to feel good, and wonky connections can really screw with that. I'm sure anyone who has played Dark Souls PvP knows how awful it can be to play against someone with high ping. It could still work, but you'd probably have to cut down instance sizes and make it more like a sparsely populated dungeon crawler thing, which to me would be perfectly fine. Some MMO fans are specifically looking for that experience of seeing tons of real people everywhere.
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Jan 26, 2020 22:24
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Minorkos posted:The problem with importing Souls combat to an MMORPG is that Dark Souls combat relies on hitstuns to feel good, and wonky connections can really screw with that. I'm sure anyone who has played Dark Souls PvP knows how awful it can be to play against someone with high ping. It could still work, but you'd probably have to cut down instance sizes and make it more like a sparsely populated dungeon crawler thing, which to me would be perfectly fine. Some MMO fans are specifically looking for that experience of seeing tons of real people everywhere. Properly implemented you can have both. But nobody has really pulled it off.
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Jan 26, 2020 22:27
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DancingShade posted:The real answer is whatever you can play while barely paying attention, drunk and listening to your favorite playlist of songs or podcasts. I keep seeing people mention that this is just how they like playing games and it completely boggles me every time. like - that is not why I want to play a game, I loving don't want to get drunk or high or listen to netflix while I'm playing a game, I want to be focused on the game I'm loving playing. that's what I'm looking for in a game, to get in that moment where you're so aware of what you're doing and what choices you have for the situation that it's like you can almost physically feel the possibility space. so character action, racing, strategy, simulation where you're not clicking buttons, those sort of things are what I'm looking for. huge problem, of course, is that what I want isn't what everyone playing a game necessarily wants. a lot of people like playing and not having to think about what to do, that's absolutely a valid desire; as a designer you either need to accommodate for that playstyle or just accept that they're not going to be the game's intended audience
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Jan 28, 2020 00:27
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Maybe the appeal to video games as a medium are that there's games for everyone's predilections and if you have a way you like to play video games you can hopefully find one that fits your niche. A lot of people hope (and insist) that their MMO of choice is the only video game they ever need to play which is mind boggling, but it happens. So the makers of MMOs like to give you varied playstyles to accommodate differing tastes. WoW, for example, hooked a lot of people who didn't even play video games and they would play only that game. Ever. And they'd play it compulsively. MMOs, in some ways, are like dancing with the devil. But there's no dancing and the devil isn't usually very fun. The Only Good MMO, FFXIV, has a lot of great content that is immersive and engaging but also has some content that you can get really, really, really, really high and gently caress around with in a brain-dead zombie grind manner. I appreciate both sides, and never engage with the latter and pity all who hosed with relics/Eureka. jokes fucked around with this message at 00:42 on Jan 28, 2020 |
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Jan 28, 2020 00:38
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I mean, even in GTA I mostly like to gently caress around doing nothing much, it's just I'm flipping my quad bike over hills instead of beating up rats. Part of the joy of an MMO is having a world you can stroll around and relax in, and being able to do what are essentially menial chores in that world can be part of that. One thing I've considered, as an alternative to grinding these things out yourself, would be an auto mode where you can set a few limited daily tasks, like farming low level enemies for a particular resource, crafting a particular item, etc, and have your character get on with it for you. You'd be limited in how many tasks you could accomplish in a given timeframe, have combat limited in the number of enemies and their level your character could take on, they would probably do them slower than you could, then once those tasks are done they could just wander off and chill out in various ways, perhaps with a sleep timer as well so the game can shut down and let your PC or console sleep. So you could get a limited amount of tasks done for you in a day and still have that nice, immersive world to have on in the background when you have other things to get on with, like an alternative to YouTube or music or TV. Plus of course you can just pick the game back up whenever you want.
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Jan 28, 2020 01:07
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Making a game that literally plays itself does seem like the logical conclusion to MMO game design
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Jan 28, 2020 04:39
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Doctor_Fruitbat posted:I mean, even in GTA I mostly like to gently caress around doing nothing much, it's just I'm flipping my quad bike over hills instead of beating up rats. Part of the joy of an MMO is having a world you can stroll around and relax in, and being able to do what are essentially menial chores in that world can be part of that. EVE's leveling and lots of its crafting economy can work like that, where you just assign things and they happen in real-time whether you play or not. But they're things that have to be done that way, they're just on autopilot period. Other mechanics are player driven and have to be. The problem is what you're describing, where you can log in and do it or let it be auto, that really really doesn't work. There's basically no way to balance it. If I can have my character auto-mine for me, how many hours can you game a day? Lets say I play for 1-2 hours a day. That means auto-me can mine for 22-23 hours per day. So if every single day, its doing 22X units of mining for me, am I really going to want to waste the time to spend 30 minutes or more of my 1 hour of gaming to just get 0.5X units of additional ore over what I already get for "free" ? And if you cap it so you can only auto-mine for like 2X ore, then that just becomes baseline. Now I mine and I get 1X extra and it just means spending a day mining gets you 3X instead of 1X. Alternatively again you crunch the numbers and find that its not worth it for you to spend an hour mining just for 50% more so you still just let it auto-mine, and mining now feels like a pointless chore with no reward so when you log in, you don't do it, and you have nothing to do or you go play fantasy tennis or something instead. You gotta think of all the consequences of these systems. That's an idea that sounds kinda cool on paper but I really don't think it adds anything in reality. Games are for playing.
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Jan 28, 2020 05:02
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Yeah BDO has this exact issue They had a bunch of auto gathering/crafting modes in the beta to help testers grind, but when the release came out people were like "the game sucks without them" so they left them in The problem is, the game has since evolved in a way that if you aren't abusing the auto fishing/mining/horse levelling ALL DAY EVERY DAY you never get the top tier poo poo before your grand kids inherit your character I think I honestly spent weeks with my PC turned on all day and night just grinding horse levels by riding them and I reached the second to last tier at the time, now there's another two tiers on top of that. It's nuts Back to combat, what's thread's thoughts on a more slower paced, strategic combat? More about character positioning, flanking and countering with the right moves/equipment than flashy action combat? It's obviously a different game right, but has an MMO done something like this before? It's kinda like mount and blade I guess, but maybe less autistic with the sword play? (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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Jan 28, 2020 12:22
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kaffo posted:Back to combat, what's thread's thoughts on a more slower paced, strategic combat? More about character positioning, flanking and countering with the right moves/equipment than flashy action combat? none of the above prevents you from it being a fast paced game. DDO is pretty actiony for an mmo, but also contains all those things. flanking gives you extra to attack rolls, there's shittons of gear you have for different situations (i.e. deathblock amulet to prevent instant death effects, but fairly useless otherwise which you only when an enemy is using those, silver sword for killing vampires, etc)
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Jan 28, 2020 13:05
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Truga posted:none of the above prevents you from it being a fast paced game. DDO is pretty actiony for an mmo, but also contains all those things. flanking gives you extra to attack rolls, there's shittons of gear you have for different situations (i.e. deathblock amulet to prevent instant death effects, but fairly useless otherwise which you only when an enemy is using those, silver sword for killing vampires, etc) +1 to DDO being fairly close to Real Good, but it's married to D&D 3.5/4E trappings like to-hit rolls and just the d20 in general. This turns into "you need to be able to hit on a 2" fairly quickly so it's just a gearing + character build chore.
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Jan 28, 2020 16:07
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ehh, is to hit still even a thing that matters? maybe during early levels, but later on numbers got super inflated (as mmos tend to do), and you need to build some real hosed up poo poo to not hit on a 2. i played a few quests with a friend this week after we haven't played for 6 years and even in a level 26 quest we had zero issues, even though our poo poo is probably super outdated now because when we quit the game max level content was like... 23? defenses are a lot harder to optimize tho, which is great since the game stays fairly deadly that way. e: to be clear not saying there aren't some pretty big problems with it, but to-hit specifically isn't one of them 
Truga fucked around with this message at 16:23 on Jan 28, 2020 |
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Jan 28, 2020 16:19
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Truga posted:ehh, is to hit still even a thing that matters? maybe during early levels, but later on numbers got super inflated (as mmos tend to do), and you need to build some real hosed up poo poo to not hit on a 2. i played a few quests with a friend this week after we haven't played for 6 years and even in a level 26 quest we had zero issues, even though our poo poo is probably super outdated now because when we quit the game max level content was like... 23? I haven't played in a loooooooooooooooong rear end time, so fair enough.
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Jan 28, 2020 16:28
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Doctor_Fruitbat posted:I mean, even in GTA I mostly like to gently caress around doing nothing much, it's just I'm flipping my quad bike over hills instead of beating up rats. Part of the joy of an MMO is having a world you can stroll around and relax in, and being able to do what are essentially menial chores in that world can be part of that. FFXIV has that sort of thing, after a fashion, you can send retainers out to collect resources. Anything you've mined/logged can be gathered by them. And it's done offline. Not quite what you're getting at of course, but I see the appeal.
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Jan 30, 2020 13:40
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Still ploughing through FFXIV and instead of tweaking existing quests SE should just remove all of the filler, just gouge it out with a loving knife. "You aren't ready to face Titan, go cook my dinner over ten quests" no how about you go gently caress yourself.
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Jan 30, 2020 17:36
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Doctor_Fruitbat posted:Still ploughing through FFXIV and instead of tweaking existing quests SE should just remove all of the filler, just gouge it out with a loving knife. They really need to just let you boost a job to level 30 for free if you want. Also should let you skip to the end of ARR for free if you want. Especially since you have to pay for the loving expansions! WoW at least got smart about giving you a free level boost with each expansion now. Took em years, but its a consistent thing now. If you're gonna have an MMORPG with literally 100+ levels that takes 500 hours to catch up, you gotta offer people shortcuts. Square has the shortcuts but they charge way too much money for them. Blizz charges and arm and a leg too, but at least you get a free one with each xpac.
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Jan 30, 2020 18:32
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Doctor_Fruitbat posted:Still ploughing through FFXIV and instead of tweaking existing quests SE should just remove all of the filler, just gouge it out with a loving knife. You're in luck, in 5.3 they're completely reworking 2.0 and 2.x specifically cutting out filler Zaphod42 posted:They really need to just let you boost a job to level 30 for free if you want. there's much more an emphasis on story in FFXIV, I don't mind level/story skips being disincentivized.
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Jan 30, 2020 21:49
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FFXIV is weird. I played until 30 but it's pretty much a single player game. There's some overarching plot but I skipped every cutscene because gently caress cutscenes in an MMO (and also a plot in an MMO).
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Jan 30, 2020 23:18
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Groovelord Neato posted:FFXIV is weird. I played until 30 but it's pretty much a single player game. There's some overarching plot but I skipped every cutscene because gently caress cutscenes in an MMO (and also a plot in an MMO). Yeah it starts being more of an mmo at around where you stopped But as I've discussed ITT a lot, wow is basically single player too. They both lost the social backbone of EQ/FFXI where you HAD to group up.
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Jan 30, 2020 23:22
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Yeah, one of the things that really sticks out is how all cutscenes and dialogue feature just your character; the other people in your party and indeed the entire game might as well be wind and ghosts. Like, take the Titan battle, which I did today. Titan jumped out of sight, then a big aoe circle appeared, which I dutifully avoided by doing what every single previous encounter in the game teaches you to do and ran just outside its boundary. Then he landed and punted me off a cliff to my death, and I got to watch the entire battle get fought by everyone else. Then they all vanished forever, and everyone sang my praises, because no-one exists but me. That's another good thing about GTA: the cutscenes for any given mission feature all four player characters, and they are proper cutscenes that your characters all take an active part in with varying degrees of nervous, mute enthusiasm. Not just standing and occasionally emoting. Also you get treated like garbage. Useful garbage with a certain flair for violence, but still just bit players in the grand scheme of things. Doctor_Fruitbat fucked around with this message at 00:23 on Jan 31, 2020 |
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Jan 30, 2020 23:58
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Doctor_Fruitbat posted:Yeah, one of the things that really sticks out is how all cutscenes and dialogue feature just your character; the other people in your party and indeed the entire game might as well be wind and ghosts. This will change a little bit as you get to later content as the rest of the party gets to stand around in the background. Certainly the game has made a conscious decision that in your version of the game you are the Warrior of Light and/or Darkness, and everyone else is some random adventurer buddy. It very intentionally is both a single player Final Fantasy game and an MMO, and those things don't always mesh. Re: Titan aoe circle, I did the exact same thing first time. Unlike previous ones you've seen his knockback jump circle has inverted coloring, where the inside is clear and the outside has the orange danger waves. Since the outside is so drat small this is hard to tell, especially as it's likely to be your first time encountering a safe zone sort of mechanic. I still really like the visual language FF14 uses for bosses on easy difficulties overall, it makes it a much more readable game than WoW and really works well with the sort of puzzle approaches they take to boss fights. Later on they'll also be a lot more careful about things like Titan's knockback: there would be an arena barrier the first jump so you couldn't get knocked off that would be removed later once you've seen the mechanic, and death by falling won't prevent you from being resurrected. It would be nice if as they revamp ARR they also fix some of the more outdated mechanics, but I'm not really expecting it. Suffice to say that squeenix at least learned from their mistakes in both how they structure the narrative and how to do a cool boss fight for a random group of newbies. Later expansions are a lot better at both.
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Feb 2, 2020 16:25
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Xerophyte posted:I still really like the visual language FF14 uses for bosses on easy difficulties overall, it makes it a much more readable game than WoW and really works well with the sort of puzzle approaches they take to boss fights. I've seen some of the later bosses and they use AOE mechanics in a super cool way, like the Nier Automata crossover where gridlines trace across the arena, then you have to dodge out of the lit squares as fast as possible. Looks great, gives an action element to the battle, and one of the reasons I wanted to give the game a shot. I've watched a couple of WoW streams and they were both like nightmares made flesh. Just an indistinct mess of clashing colours and numbers and lights that looked like hell on earth to play, even before you add the screaming neckbeard berating everyone for not successfully following an endless stream of commands that was a central feature of both streams. Doctor_Fruitbat fucked around with this message at 17:28 on Feb 2, 2020 |
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Feb 2, 2020 16:53
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Groovelord Neato posted:FFXIV is weird. I played until 30 but it's pretty much a single player game. There's some overarching plot but I skipped every cutscene because gently caress cutscenes in an MMO (and also a plot in an MMO). Thing to keep in mind, FFXIV is a Final Fantasy game first and an MMO second. The plot gets good once they're no longer scrambling to unfuck 1.0, and the early stuff is getting reworked in the near future. I suggest giving it another chance once they do!
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Feb 3, 2020 05:52
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I have a feeling that someone who doesn't give a poo poo about story in an MMO isn't really going to like ff14
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Feb 3, 2020 09:53
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I care about story in an mmo at times but FF14 was really bad story. I really only liked the latest expansion and felt everything else was forced upon you. Also that you can't skip it but can pay to skip it is some bullshit.
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Feb 3, 2020 10:02
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My problem with 14 story is that it is utterly watered down by too many cutscenes, too much pointless dialog, and constant fetch quests. In one sense it is well designed because it’s impossible to get lost or feel aimless along the way- you just follow the little meteor symbol all the way to level cap. But the side effect is that the important, big story beats that are interesting and should carry weight are lost in the ocean of poo poo quests and brain dead trash fights. I can’t bear slogging through 10 hours of garbage just to get maybe 1 hour of quality story. But hey, the bar for storytelling in MMOs is pretty low I guess. When people praise Shadowbringers as the best ff story ever, I can only believe they’re praising interesting plot points and not how they are actually conveyed during the players experience. Outside of a couple of surprising moments, a few beautiful vistas, and a handful of super easy but interesting-to-do-once story fights, I find it to be pretty dull. But sadly I’d probably agree it’s the best the genre has to offer currently.
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Feb 3, 2020 14:19
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If you don't like reading stories, don't play FF14. The fetch quests are basically all gone by HW.
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Feb 3, 2020 16:30
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I like reading stories I hate reading bad stories FF14 is a land of contrasts
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Feb 3, 2020 16:45
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This is why ARR is such an albatross around FF14's neck.
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Feb 3, 2020 16:54
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I absolutely love reading stories. Badly written filler, almost entirely in the form of dry npc dialogue, which is the bulk of 14, I do not love. Fetch quest may not be the best term, as “go get me 10 tonberry coats” or whatever doesn’t constantly happen. But functionally I don’t see much of a difference between that and “thanks for riding your mount across this zone to talk to me, now ride over to this zone to talk to him” or “oh no a scary purple circle spawned 3 mobs you kill in 10 seconds (there might be a second wave!!)”. There’s interesting themes in 14, Shadowbringers especially, but it’s buried under so much modern mmo fluff that I personally find it hard to enjoy the actual narrative. If you like it, that’s honestly great, but it’s absolutely not how I would want my ideal, or even “good MMO”, to be designed.
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Feb 3, 2020 17:01
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jokes posted:This is why ARR is such an albatross around FF14's neck. And that's why boosts to level 30~50 and the ability to skip ARR quests should really be free.
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Feb 3, 2020 18:38
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Zaphod42 posted:And that's why boosts to level 30~50 and the ability to skip ARR quests should really be free. I much prefer the alternative that they're going with, which is entirely reworking 1-50.
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Feb 3, 2020 20:30
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