Wildstar Launch Thread - Server: Stormtalon | Faction: Dominion

Flipmode_sl said:

So on one hand gamers want the leveling curve slowed down and fights to be strategic. On the other they want to faceroll mobs WoW style. Is there no happy medium?

Click to expand...

..........Reduce the amount of XP I get per mob. Reduce the amount of time it takes to kill a mob.

There is a difference. I couldn't be bothered finding it. But studies have shown making players feel small rewards more often leading to bigger rewards later makes it more enjoyable for the player a long with increasing the chance of 'hooking' a player.

From personal experience whenever I'm killing a mob. I get this small sense of tension like I have to kill it as quickly as possible. After each mob I kill I get a small sense of relief. Where as if I'm killing some shitty random mob and it's taking forever the reward doesn't match the energy required to kill such an insignificant mob.

There's also the case of characters not feeling 'powerful' enough and players not feeling like 'super heroes'.

Flipmode_sl said:

Yeah I understand what you're saying. Personally I think we as players have gotten to used to being gods and facerolling content. I think we need to shift back a bit to mobs being challenging or smarter at least. I don't wanna take 3 mins to kill a mob with stupid AI, but I wouldn't mind if the mob was smarter and used tactics. All in all we need to slow shit down. Not EQ level slow, but not WoW faceroll fast. Happy medium.

Click to expand...

I've always wondered what an MMO would be like that was exclusively very long and rare combat events that rewarded massive amounts of xp + loot. Where every encounter was tactical like a mini raid boss that takes 15-20 mins or so. You could control leveling/gearing speed by placing them geographically far apart and making travel slowish/dangerous.

Flipmode_sl said:

Yeah I understand what you're saying. Personally I think we as players have gotten to used to being gods and facerolling content. I think we need to shift back a bit to mobs being challenging or smarter at least. I don't wanna take 3 mins to kill a mob with stupid AI, but I wouldn't mind if the mob was smarter and used tactics. All in all we need to slow shit down. Not EQ level slow, but not WoW faceroll fast. Happy medium.

Click to expand...

Medium is good.

But to be honest; I don't mind fighting monsters for three minutes. To me that's a lot more exciting than killing a monster in 3 seconds. At least I'd get to feel I've been in a "fight" with a monster... not being in a "pop". They're beings not XP bubbles.

I also want to see different types of monsters (WITHOUT ANY INDICATION like legendary, three-dots..etc).
I don't want to "expect" how a fight might take. I don't want an algorithm for monster HP/Power. I don't every type of monster is unique and no in-game indication shows what to expect.

I fight a monster I've never faced before; the fight might last 2 minutes and it might last 10 minutes (in which this monster requires more than one person to fight).

My favorite part of EQ was underconned NPCs.

Fighting for several minutes is nonsense. Real fights are usually over fast. Generally in bladed sports they play for points and points are earned by what would be a serious blow. They happen constantly, and many blows are incapacitating even if not immediately lethal.

DeLLy_sl said:

I hate whoring myself out but if keys really have a chance of being given add me to a list.

Click to expand...

This, oh so many times over. My girlfriend is hogging my Hearthstone Beta, a man has to game!

Having every fight be some great epic diminishes the great epics when they come along unless you make them even more epic. I certainly don't want Luclin length fights again with their related lack of interactivity.

And how do you make that longer fight interesting? Most fights are going to be a rinse repeat of the same mechanics every few moments. If I have to dodge the laser beam a 40th time while doing 1% damage every 10 seconds, that's a boring endurance contest. Encounters should test your ability to defeat the mechanics of the encounter 3-5 times before phase shifting to some other mechanic or just layering another on top of the former. Beyond that it gets tedious.

They can't assign the brainpower to make every encounter interesting at length either unless they drastically reduce the number of encounters. I don't see either of those as an acceptable solution to what some consider too-short fights.

I like the DDO model. Give me 50 mobs to fight where I'm killing them off in waves. That's fun. SWTOR did this for the first 5 levels before it got boring.

This is an arcade like combat system. Movement, aiming, attacking, dodging etc. In GW2 alpha, mobs used to have half the hps they had at launch. Before that, the game was fuuuuuuuuuuuun. You just ran around and dominated events, but there were difficult events and difficult mobs that you couldn't solo too.

I really dislike games where I'm up against a normal creature and I have to work at dodging and aiming just to kill it in 2-3 full skill rotations. YAWN. I should be able to initiate and execute a non-special target. But to make things difficult give me 5-7 targets instead of 2-3. To me that is satisfying.

edit:
Regarding long fights as the norm: no thanks. I'll take longer fights at intervals or end points, but not constantly. That'll become tedious quickly for me.

It's like we're twins. I'm Schwarzenegger though. Pay no attention to the avatar to the left and its DeVito-esque nature.

I think what L4D/2 did for its combat design was pretty great and could be applied here as well. 1-2 low level mobs die super fast, aren't dangerous. Mix in some mid-level mobs that have some specials and things get a little scary. Multiply that by the horde, shit gets crazy. Finish it off with a Tank-like boss and you have a great range of experiences with just one "species" (zombies, in this case). This works because you can't have 100% "up-time" where plays have to focus all the time, nor do you want a bunch of faceroll. The key is to give the game an appropriate heartbeat that is fun and engaging.

In L4D, it was basically a handful of monsters. In an MMO, you could have lots of different "species" that follow a similar pattern but with really different abilities and execution requirements. Then you start to mix and match and all of a sudden you have a massive range of content and ways to enjoy the combat with varying levels of attention required.

I want a zone that's just one big monster and it's various sized appendages. Some parts of the monster are relatively benign (it's not a death star) and people live there. Other parts suck ass (perhaps literally) and you have to fight it. This naturally extends itself to some zone wide or multiple regional public quests involving the omnipresent zone monster.

This zone pleases everyone. The monster never actually dies, so the fight is infinite in length and tedium for those with that interest. It's growths die all the time though, obviously.

Draegan_sl said:

Regarding long fights as the norm: no thanks. I'll take longer fights at intervals or end points, but not constantly. That'll become tedious quickly for me.

Click to expand...

In terms of this, it does hurt the community aspect though. This game seems like the most active of mmos yet. Even more so than GW2 (which I don't really consider to be a mmo). You are constantly moving, nearly impossible to communicate while fighting. Add low hp high damage (quick) fights into the mix, and the game will basically be a whirlwind of action, at all times. Constantly moving.

This is the progression all mmos have taken since Everquest. Removal of downtimes, faster encounters, more active movement and a much more recognizable conning system (very easy to spot mobs you can/can not kill). It's very, very, very, rare to not know the outcome of the battle (outside of group content) these days, before you even attack the mob. So I actually agree with the tedium of todays fights, because there is rarely any risk. Zerg attacking (dying, respawning and trying again) a boss mob solo is not "risk", certainly doesn't register in your psyche as such.

DMK stated that it is better/more addictive to get smaller but more rewards. I have mentioned this before in the EQN thread. Sure, that might be true, if there was risk involved, as in risk vs rewards, but when you plow through content, the constant little rewards mean little to nothing as it is a +1, +1, ohh a +2, +1, etc grind of upgrades. This, to me, feels more like having a battle with the RNG to get lucky with the world loot tables than it is to find a mob and actively go after it for its loot and get a sense of accomplishment afterwards. I had a larger sentimental attachment to the first bag I managed to get in EQ than I had for any of my WoW loot in the little I ended up playing that game.

That being said, the way the combat system is in this game, they really don't have much choice of going the same route as everyone else. Fast encounters (30 seconds or less), more mobs and the danger comes from adds, not so much the abilities of one mob in particular (this seems to be the case too, based on the last twitch stream from the esper standpoint). Like every game since WoW onwards, it is unlikely that any mob 1/1 will pose any risk towards you at all unless it is much higher level.

Upside to doing this though is that general chat and such will be much better, as nobody will have time to type anything amidst all the jumping and dodging. I think mmos are growing more and more into massive single player games. MMO part is becoming more and more optional in "mmo"rpgs these days and faster combat is undoubtedly due part of this.

And no, this is not me saying I want the long tedious camps and kills of EQ. I would just like to play a mmo again where fights don't only pose a challenge when you make them so yourself (by going to higher level areas or group content). This has not been done since EQ as far as I know. There is rarely ever a risk of the unknown, and this includes the knowledge of "these mobs I can kill, these I can not". There is rarely a middle ground as well, due to the quickness of the fights that are common in games today, attacking a mob in a 1/1 is usually a known outcome before you even initiate the combat. So of course, quests saying kill 10x of a mob becomes boring, because it offers no challenge except the time it takes to kill them, where the only "unknown" is the potential of the RNG spitting out a green/blue/whatever color item from the world loot table. That is neither risk or rewarding. In EQ you could fight blue con mobs that if you made a mistake, you were dead, where you could push yourself to the limit, having to utilize mana gain items, etc. Add that element again to games, then quick fast paced combat might not be so problematic.

Problem as I see it boils down to - There was a bigger sense of unknown danger while camping the gnolls in Karanas staring at your spellbook, than there has ever been charging into a mob 1/1 in any mmo since EQ. Is that thumping an Elephant or a Cyclops? Then you heard a roar, and you quit med and desperately ran cursing the lack of having scribed the gate spell. And it is not like those fights weren't quick either, if the cyclops caught up, it would take roughly 2-3 seconds to kill me. Aside from running into world raid bosses, there are no equal level mobs that can kill you in 2-3 seconds or less that I know of in any game past EQ. However, if I was prepared, I could also kill the cyclops. Would take all my mana, and a lucky pet chain or two, but still doable. Not even sure what I am explaining here, but .... something is missing in mmos, and to me, it is the unknown. Faster battles tend to remove that even further, because it is very hard to design a fast encounter with an unknown outcome. Or I assume it is, because I haven't seen it done yet. Again, not talking group content, but just you by yourself vs a npc mob. Or to put it like this, ever gotten a kill X amount of Y mob quest where you even for a second thought "oh, I am not sure I can do this?". An equal level quest that is.

Tl;dr
Long fights without risk. Tedious. This needs to be removed.
Short fights without risk. Tedious. This needs to be removed.

And there we have removed all solo combat from any mmo since EQ... Think that was the biggest secret to EQ. A low functional limited UI that didn't give you the outcome before you even attempted something while having a system in place where you really didn't want to fail. So, like Draegan suggested, make some fast, some long, change them up, but easiest way to make it fun, is to make the fight outcome unknown while putting something of yours on the line as well as a risk upon failing. That makes encounters interesting no matter their duration.

Droigan_sl said:

Problem as I see it boils down to - There was a bigger sense of unknown danger while camping the gnolls in Karanas staring at your spellbook, than there has ever been charging into a mob 1/1 in any mmo since EQ. Is that thumping an Elephant or a Cyclops? Then you heard a roar, and you quit med and desperately ran cursing the lack of having scribed the gate spell. And it is not like those fights weren't quick either, if the cyclops caught up, it would take roughly 2-3 seconds to kill me. Aside from running into world raid bosses, there are no equal level mobs that can kill you in 2-3 seconds or less that I know of in any game past EQ. However, if I was prepared, I could also kill the cyclops. Would take all my mana, and a lucky pet chain or two, but still doable. Not even sure what I am explaining here, but .... something is missing in mmos, and to me, it is the unknown. Faster battles tend to remove that even further, because it is very hard to design a fast encounter with an unknown outcome. Or I assume it is, because I haven't seen it done yet. Again, not talking group content, but just you by yourself vs a npc mob. Or to put it like this, ever gotten a kill X amount of Y mob quest where you even for a second thought "oh, I am not sure I can do this?". An equal level quest that is.

Click to expand...

I agree with your post completely.

and I wonder, and ask everyone this question, where else would you end up with such a situation as described above without adapting a combat like EverQuest? How? How combat worked there, to me, was extremely important because there was something addictive and challenging about it. I can't put my finger on it but I never enjoyed kiting, fear kiting or aggro kiting as much as I did in EQ. I never enjoyed fighting in a tight room (grinding) with my group as I enjoyed it on EQ because shit WILL happen... respawns will happen when you're not ready and that adrenaline rush you get when things just get overwhelming and hearing your group shouting "EVAC!! EVAC!!" and hope the wizard have that spell memmed.

Can't we have that kind freedom in venturing where we want and choosing who we want to attack (challenging decision or take a lazy safe path). We made the choices and it was filled with surprises and "oops" and "fuck" kind of moments. We will never have that again because this thing is too complicated to summarize and explain in one post. There are hundreds of variables, all together, make up that kind of experience.

Yes, I agree with you... take away the risk and combat WILL be boring.
I also add the "uncertainty", when things are uncertain the combat gets more interesting (spells fizzle, resist or invisibility going off at any minute, missing a backstab, taunt not working...etc) that kind of stuff.

Droigan_sl said:

In terms of this, it does hurt the community aspect though. This game seems like the most active of mmos yet. Even more so than GW2 (which I don't really consider to be a mmo). You are constantly moving, nearly impossible to communicate while fighting. Add low hp high damage (quick) fights into the mix, and the game will basically be a whirlwind of action, at all times. Constantly moving.

Click to expand...

Thing is with Wildstar, each zone (or so they've said) has a raid boss in it in the open world that people can attempt.

Laura_sl said:

I agree with your post completely.

and I wonder, and ask everyone this question, where else would you end up with such a situation as described above without adapting a combat like EverQuest? How? How combat worked there, to me, was extremely important because there was something addictive and challenging about it. I can't put my finger on it but I never enjoyed kiting, fear kiting or aggro kiting as much as I did in EQ. I never enjoyed fighting in a tight room (grinding) with my group as I enjoyed it on EQ because shit WILL happen... respawns will happen when you're not ready and that adrenaline rush you get when things just get overwhelming and hearing your group shouting "EVAC!! EVAC!!" and hope the wizard have that spell memmed.

Can't we have that kind freedom in venturing where we want and choosing who we want to attack (challenging decision or take a lazy safe path). We made the choices and it was filled with surprises and "oops" and "fuck" kind of moments. We will never have that again because this thing is too complicated to summarize and explain in one post. There are hundreds of variables, all together, make up that kind of experience.

Yes, I agree with you... take away the risk and combat WILL be boring.
I also add the "uncertainty", when things are uncertain the combat gets more interesting (spells fizzle, resist or invisibility going off at any minute, missing a backstab, taunt not working...etc) that kind of stuff.

Click to expand...

Combat has nothing to do with it, it's game/world design. Games like Wildstar having you moving through the map via quests. In EQ you just had a map, so you could have portions that were more difficult and surprise people. My issue with MMO world design is that each area/map/zone has a hardcoded level range attached to it. It makes things boring imo.

You could stick any kind of combat system in to EQ and still have that experience. To make it enjoyable you just have to like that combat system.

Personally I would like to see more challenging content as well. And once there isn't an NDA people can talk about Wildstar's content.

Laura_sl said:

I agree with your post completely.

and I wonder, and ask everyone this question, where else would you end up with such a situation as described above without adapting a combat like EverQuest? How? How combat worked there, to me, was extremely important because there was something addictive and challenging about it. I can't put my finger on it but I never enjoyed kiting, fear kiting or aggro kiting as much as I did in EQ. I never enjoyed fighting in a tight room (grinding) with my group as I enjoyed it on EQ because shit WILL happen... respawns will happen when you're not ready and that adrenaline rush you get when things just get overwhelming and hearing your group shouting "EVAC!! EVAC!!" and hope the wizard have that spell memmed.

Can't we have that kind freedom in venturing where we want and choosing who we want to attack (challenging decision or take a lazy safe path). We made the choices and it was filled with surprises and "oops" and "fuck" kind of moments. We will never have that again because this thing is too complicated to summarize and explain in one post. There are hundreds of variables, all together, make up that kind of experience.

Yes, I agree with you... take away the risk and combat WILL be boring.
I also add the "uncertainty", when things are uncertain the combat gets more interesting (spells fizzle, resist or invisibility going off at any minute, missing a backstab, taunt not working...etc) that kind of stuff.

Click to expand...

EQ was a more dangerous game and because individual characters were not nearly as powerful as other current games, when shit went bad, groups wiped (or if you were solo and got ONE add, you were likely dead too). Current games are too easy and cater to the lowest common denominator, EQ did not and was not designed to be easy so Johnny Casual Derperson could feel special and get his rares.

**What Draegan said; overall game design, not just combat design.