Big Phoenix
Pronouns: zie/zhem/zer
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World of Warcraft: Current Year
- Thread starter hodj
- Start date
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That game design worked because the combat loop in EQ was relatively slow, with fights per mob taking 30 seconds or more. EQ also had other "roles" you needed for group content, e.g. snare, slow, puller. Combat in WoW (for normal and instance trash) has sped up to around 10 seconds, so they moved on from hard CC (mez/charm) to soft CC (stun/interrupt).
Chris
Potato del Grande
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Lol did they film it in one take?
If there are things like repositioning characters for dramatic angles, why wouldn't they do it in pieces and edit it together?
It can't be running on the live server for each player right!?
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nevergone
Low IQ Vegan Pacifist
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Yes, I think that was an ultimately bad decision for game design. I fully believe it's possible to develop a game featuring complex real time combat with more than the dps/tank/heals trinity.
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Tearofsoul
Ancient MMO noob
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A couple of points:
When EverQuest was in full swing, the "holy trinity" was "tank, heal, and mes", which ideally meant "warrior + cleric + enchanter". Technically, each of them could be substituted by a different class, but you would have to make compromises. Like taking a druid/shaman instead of a cleric: no more rezzes. Taking a bard instead of an enchanter: Bard needs to really be on point with his twist/targeting, and there is a limit on how many mobs you can mez at a time. Not having mez at all? Better bring an offtank, or have a pet that can tank.
And it was called "holy trinity" because it was the optimal solution, but you could get away with non-optimal solutions. This does not work with modern game design however, especially the kind WoW has nowadays: any non-sanctioned type of gameplay is simply either nerfed, banned, or both.
It also worked in EverQuest, because the group size was 6, so you could have two classes substitute for one role. This is one of the points where WoW may have made the wrong choice: Yes, it's easier to fill a group by only having 5 slots, but tanks for group content are always in short supply. For raid content suddenly there are more than enough, because you need one to three. There are exceptions like Rathe Council/PoEB, but fuck that encounter.
Anyways, back to WoW: they did away with hard CC, because setting them up took time (remember marking the mobs?), and they made their core gameplay loop faster. The modern designers didn't think that hard CC and the setup is "fun", so away it went. They just don't want the type of tactical gameplay EverQuest had, and went more twitch-like gameplay with complex rotations and reacting. Ironically, EverQuest also made their core gameplay loop faster with PoP and beyond, where mobs had less HP, but hit harder. Suddenly you needed a slower.
Anecdote time: Back in the day during the end of WotLK I was trying out the brand new "dungeon finder" on my ret paladin. Group consisted of a wife/husband as healer/tank team and their guildmates. Couple pulls in and tank went off in chat how great it was that I instantly put a caster mob that was away into Repentance without anyone asking or marking the mob, and how he never saw anyone do that in dungeon finder. It was legit creepy, like he was trying to suck my dick or something. But it was also the point where I realized that the "old" game is gone for good, and will slowly erode with the least common denominator that is the dungeon finder, as the game design will now focus on it.
Cybsled
Avatar of War Slayer
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City of Heroes tried with controllers - the idea of mitigation of damage through disabling enemies. It’s very difficult to balance correctly, though. Anything that involves your party not hitting the mobs is always going to fail
Runnen
Vyemm Raider
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Allow the controller class to disable players and there'll be no more mez-breaking.
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Mist
Eeyore Enthusiast
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zzz all the hard CCs still exist, you just don't use them every fucking pull unless you're undergeared for the content. The tools still exist, they have their use, they're just not used on every pull. You still use sheep, sap, imprison, banish, etc fairly regularly in real keys when you're pushing what your group is capable of.
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Mist
Eeyore Enthusiast
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We're talking about WoW right now, not WoW at its literal lowest point.
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Even on classic wow no one used CC much, it is just a shift in how people approach content more than making things easier.
Back in EQ the death penalty was really high so the approach to content was generally really careful, it wasn't hard, it didn't take some galaxy brain individual to figure out how to mark targets for CC and then CC them, coming at it from the view point that CCing stuff was hard is wrong IMO.
It was just slow and boring to most players to do it that way so when strats started to come out using more AE and cooldowns to deal with masses of mobs people did that instead. I could argue that CCing is actually easier than AEing because its so slow and steady and is the risk averse strategy.
Back in EQ the death penalty was really high so the approach to content was generally really careful, it wasn't hard, it didn't take some galaxy brain individual to figure out how to mark targets for CC and then CC them, coming at it from the view point that CCing stuff was hard is wrong IMO.
It was just slow and boring to most players to do it that way so when strats started to come out using more AE and cooldowns to deal with masses of mobs people did that instead. I could argue that CCing is actually easier than AEing because its so slow and steady and is the risk averse strategy.
Rogosh
Lord Nagafen Raider
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Agree with everything said, would like to add that in the old days getting 3 or 4 mobs without crowd control could easily wipe most groups. Aoeing down packs did not work, just not enough ways to hold threat on the tank. Trains were also a real thing as mobs would bounce aggro on anyone nearby.
Chris
Potato del Grande
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We always ran with at least 1 strong CC on EU when WoW came out, because I played a Hunter and had to say I could freeze trap/kite, and later a Shadow Priest and just gimped my group. Mages were in demand.
nevergone
Low IQ Vegan Pacifist
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That's nowhere close to the experience offered by games with better and more complex design paradigms.
Chris
Potato del Grande
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Never said it was, just that the original WoW design could have been easily iterated in that direction.
