Why can't MMOs have fun combat?

[Vergil]

What is the deal with MMOs almost exclusively having the most mind numbing boring combat imaginable? They almost all boil down to standing still watching two characters animate at each other (with zero weight or actual impact based on those animations) as you stare at your hot bar waiting for cool downs? With how popular more action oriented RPGs have become why have so few games in this genre tried to make the act of killing enemies at all enjoyable?

[Decline]

There are MMOs with good and quasi-good combat it is just that they are very rare:

* Planetside 1/2
* Darkfall Online
* Albion Online
* Guild Wars - technically not an MMO but if we just consider the combat it should definitely be part of the list.

The aristocrat will also immediately spot a trend here: All MMOs with good combat - with the exception of GW - are (or were ) anti-carebear full-loot hardcore MMOs. This is not by accident: This must be part and parcel of any game of aristocratic character.

The bitter reality is that people who like good - or rather acceptable - combat in their games do not play MMOs and therefore these games are hyper rare and really only played by the high aristocracy. A subscription fee is mandatory both to cover the enormous cost and to keep the poor and the stupid out.

They can also only be made by the high aristocracy of game development because the scope of these game is massive and their technical requirements the highest known to mankind. A custom engine is a must as is copious amount of liquidity because the time these games spend in the forge is usually in excess of 10 years. Logically they can only be made by a team(!) of the greatest talent among game developers, talent that has become exceedingly rare in recent years.

In a world full of dept, wars and plebeian stupidity these games might as well be magic and are reserved for a time in the future where humanity is bluntly better than it is today.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

True action combat as in hitboxes and lots of twitch movements like in Black Desert does not scale well with MMOs, where you might have several hundred people in the same space and the server has to be communicating every player's action to every other player in the space, and the communication required becomes exponential and there is a limit to how much information can be transmitted at a time. You can't have the huge Ultima Online/DaoC/Lineage/Air Rivals/SWG/WoW/WAR/etc battles that define the MMO genre with real physicalized action combat. It has to be tab target where this stuff is not physicalized. Even the new Throne and Libert aka Lineage 3 is tab target because that's the only way you can have the massive battles there.

The second thing is that combat is of secondary importance in an MMO. If combat was the most important thing, then people would be playing a singleplayer or co-op game that has a priority on combat. In an MMO, the most pressing things for consumers is the MMO experience of interacting with lots of other people, followed by the art and character customization. Combat is down the totem pole and is not as high of a priority to be worked on. FF14 is popular in spite of its combat.


Another thing too is that MMO developers have learned how to make their games fun in spite of the restrictive nature of tab target. While they can't make the button presses and animations feel that impactful, they have managed to make more engaging encounters. WoW raids are excellent with many encounters being more memorable than stuff I've played in singleplayer games outside of a few titles like Sakura Wars or Valkyria Chronicles. You have the gunship battle in ICC where people are jetpacking to other airship to assasinate the enemy commander, Spine of Deathwing where you are on the back of a dragon ripping apart his armor and hanging on to dear life as he barrel rolls trying to throw you off, Siegecrafter Blackfuse where a party has to detach from the main raid to go destroy the inventions on the conveyor belt, the conveyor belt fight of Hans'gar and Franzok, dodging the incoming trains on Operator Thogar, the battle against Blackhand and his army with snipers shooting down at you and siege engines advancing towards you, the Opulence fight in Dazar'alor where the raid has to split in two and are having to move down Indian Jones trapped towns simultaneously, chasing Jaina on the ship, chasing Sylvanas across the chains, the Halondrus fight where the whole raid has to be moving down the corridors while fighting the boss, the ice spider Sennarth where she is trying to yank people off of the spiral staircase, Zskarn where you are constantly having to dodge the traps, Echo of Neltharion where his trying to separate the raid by raising earth walls, and so on. And we are starting to see singleplayer action games step up and take inspiration from MMO encounter design.

[Magick]

Playing a Fire Mage in WoW used to be pretty fun. Very flexible, very mobile, just jump around blasting the enemy with whatever spell you felt was the most useful at the time. (Besides raids which needed slightly more of a "rotation" to keep up in damage meters lol, but even then not too regimented).

Then I heard after Cata (just as I stopped playing) they changed it, where it's basically another ******* "simon says" ******** now, where you're "encouraged" to cast in a certain order and use certain spells at certain times. Something to do with changing fire blast?

These ******* ****** devs just can't help but force you to "conform" to their design, rather than just letting you PLAY.
They even ****** up DOOM (Eternal) with this Simon Says ********, it's so tiring.

[ArcaneLurker]

I was amazed by Vindictus (or whatever it was called) when it first came out

[OnTilt]

There are MMOs with good and quasi-good combat it is just that they are very rare:

* Planetside 1/2
* Darkfall Online
* Albion Online
* Guild Wars - technically not an MMO but if we just consider the combat it should definitely be part of the list.

The aristocrat will also immediately spot a trend here: All MMOs with good combat - with the exception of GW - are (or were ) anti-carebear full-loot hardcore MMOs. This is not by accident: This must be part and parcel of any game of aristocratic character.

The bitter reality is that people who like good - or rather acceptable - combat in their games do not play MMOs and therefore these games are hyper rare and really only played by the high aristocracy. A subscription fee is mandatory both to cover the enormous cost and to keep the poor and the stupid out.

They can also only be made by the high aristocracy of game development because the scope of these game is massive and their technical requirements the highest known to mankind. A custom engine is a must as is copious amount of liquidity because the time these games spend in the forge is usually in excess of 10 years. Logically they can only be made by a team(!) of the greatest talent among game developers, talent that has become exceedingly rare in recent years.

In a world full of dept, wars and plebeian stupidity these games might as well be magic and are reserved for a time in the future where humanity is bluntly better than it is today.

I stopped reading after the third or fourth mention of aristocracy. Do you keep your head so far up your own *** because you like the smell?

[Decline]

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[OnTilt]

Found another one.

Is this Aweigh?

[Vergil]

True action combat as in hitboxes and lots of twitch movements like in Black Desert does not scale well with MMOs, where you might have several hundred people in the same space and the server has to be communicating every player's action to every other player in the space, and the communication required becomes exponential and there is a limit to how much information can be transmitted at a time. You can't have the huge Ultima Online/DaoC/Lineage/Air Rivals/SWG/WoW/WAR/etc battles that define the MMO genre with real physicalized action combat. It has to be tab target where this stuff is not physicalized. Even the new Throne and Libert aka Lineage 3 is tab target because that's the only way you can have the massive battles there.

The second thing is that combat is of secondary importance in an MMO. If combat was the most important thing, then people would be playing a singleplayer or co-op game that has a priority on combat. In an MMO, the most pressing things for consumers is the MMO experience of interacting with lots of other people, followed by the art and character customization. Combat is down the totem pole and is not as high of a priority to be worked on. FF14 is popular in spite of its combat.


Another thing too is that MMO developers have learned how to make their games fun in spite of the restrictive nature of tab target. While they can't make the button presses and animations feel that impactful, they have managed to make more engaging encounters. WoW raids are excellent with many encounters being more memorable than stuff I've played in singleplayer games outside of a few titles like Sakura Wars or Valkyria Chronicles. You have the gunship battle in ICC where people are jetpacking to other airship to assasinate the enemy commander, Spine of Deathwing where you are on the back of a dragon ripping apart his armor and hanging on to dear life as he barrel rolls trying to throw you off, Siegecrafter Blackfuse where a party has to detach from the main raid to go destroy the inventions on the conveyor belt, the conveyor belt fight of Hans'gar and Franzok, dodging the incoming trains on Operator Thogar, the battle against Blackhand and his army with snipers shooting down at you and siege engines advancing towards you, the Opulence fight in Dazar'alor where the raid has to split in two and are having to move down Indian Jones trapped towns simultaneously, chasing Jaina on the ship, chasing Sylvanas across the chains, the Halondrus fight where the whole raid has to be moving down the corridors while fighting the boss, the ice spider Sennarth where she is trying to yank people off of the spiral staircase, Zskarn where you are constantly having to dodge the traps, Echo of Neltharion where his trying to separate the raid by raising earth walls, and so on. And we are starting to see singleplayer action games step up and take inspiration from MMO encounter design.

This is all getting causation backwards. MMO develops have not tried to find solutions to technical issues because they are just copying what has come before. People who like MMOs don't care about combat because MMOs never attempt to gain an audience of people who like combat. It's not an impossibility it's an issue of complacency and laziness. There's no reason MMOs can't have the things people enjoy about them AND gameplay that isn't ungodly boring.

Another thing too is that MMO developers have learned how to make their games fun in spite of the restrictive nature of tab target. While they can't make the button presses and animations feel that impactful, they have managed to make more engaging encounters. WoW raids are excellent with many encounters being more memorable than stuff I've played in singleplayer games outside of a few titles

MMO raids are extremely boring and mostly consist of groups of people trying to sprint through them as fast as possible while engaging in the same boring floating combat as the rest of the game. The only difference is the enemies have bigger healthbars requiring a bigger group of players to defeat them. There is rarely if ever anything mechanically interesting about dungeons/raids.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

There is rarely if ever anything mechanically interesting about dungeons/raids.

You don't think this fight where you have to split into multiple groups and fight the reinforcements before they overwhelm the main group is tactically interesting?




Or this intense fast paced fight where you are trying to snake out of encirclements that are about to be hammered by AoEs, burning down reinforcements as quickly as possible before the tank dies, and hopping into a black hole in the nick of time... that doesn't look fun?




Or this other fast paced intense fight where there are bombs that have to be soaked within seconds, or your allies have to be freed from their root prisons before they get killed, or pursuing the villain as he flies away?

[Vergil]

There is rarely if ever anything mechanically interesting about dungeons/raids.

You don't think this fight where you have to split into multiple groups and fight the reinforcements before they overwhelm the main group is tactically interesting?




Or this intense fast paced fight where you are trying to snake out of encirclements that are about to be hammered by AoEs, burning down reinforcements as quickly as possible before the tank dies, and hopping into a black hole in the nick of time... that doesn't look fun?




Or this other fast paced intense fight where there are bombs that have to be soaked within seconds, or your allies have to be freed from their root prisons before they get killed, or pursuing the villain as he flies away?

I think it's really funny you gave these epic descriptions of what the fights would be and then every video is a group of people swarming and spamming their rotation of hotbar abilities while occasionally moving around ad nauseum with no meaningful difference between fights

[Magick]

There is rarely if ever anything mechanically interesting about dungeons/raids.

You don't think this fight where you have to split into multiple groups and fight the reinforcements before they overwhelm the main group is tactically interesting?

Isn't that just basically the original Onyxia fight?

[WhiteShark]

This is all getting causation backwards. MMO develops have not tried to find solutions to technical issues because they are just copying what has come before. People who like MMOs don't care about combat because MMOs never attempt to gain an audience of people who like combat. It's not an impossibility it's an issue of complacency and laziness. There's no reason MMOs can't have the things people enjoy about them AND gameplay that isn't ungodly boring.

It's been tried. I played Vindictus for a while, which is a heavily instanced pseudo-MMO, and the action combat was great, but the raids with dozens of players were hopelessly laggy and unresponsive. There were some godlike players who could land their timed abilities through all the latency, but I enjoyed the solo and small group content way more because of the network issues.

[rusty_shackleford]

Because the genre has been dead for longer than it was alive, and most of the time it was alive people generally had very bad internet.

[Finarfin]

I wish there was an mmo with a classic fantasy setting, where you are just a adventurer who runs around the world and takes on Quests. Both solo and in a 4-player group. Where you have to make a campsite, to eat, sleep and meditate on your skills and abilities. Just to not make the game a slog, you have teleport stones but only for the places you completed. Your weapon skill increases by actually using it, and skills too.

[KOS-MOS]

mmo players are not different from fanfic writers. They have to use their imagination to create a version of boring media that lives up to their expectations.

[GhostCow]

I just wanted to pop in and say that Mortal Online 2 has great combat. It's great bones for a good MMO, but that's all it is - bones. The devs have some dumb ideas too like only having a single server and just giving LPBs artificial lag to even out the pings. If I were rich I'd buy it off them and hire some devs to turn it into something great

[LemonDemonGirl]

Everything MUST copy WoW or it'll be too hard for the kiddies to play

► Show Spoiler

Mostly joking

[WaterMage]

Simple. Balance cultism.

[Jordy]

You should try Olds Chool Run Escape.

[Xenich]

What is the deal with MMOs almost exclusively having the most mind numbing boring combat imaginable? They almost all boil down to standing still watching two characters animate at each other (with zero weight or actual impact based on those animations) as you stare at your hot bar waiting for cool downs? With how popular more action oriented RPGs have become why have so few games in this genre tried to make the act of killing enemies at all enjoyable?

Depends on taste.

I prefer EQ style combat where player skills are limited to tactical application of the characters development and environment. That tends to be less "interactive" in play, but the enjoyment is the development choices leveraged against the RNG. It is a style of play.

I have on occasion, enjoyed active player input games such as arcades and various hybrids, but I prefer the above (that or obviously turn based).

That said, I tire quickly of the "reflex" style play as it really is just a process of muscle memory and reactive timing, which at the core is just an arcade game repacked and flavored in different formats.

I would honestly love to see another EQ style game combined with a complex layered development system similar to DDO, but unfortunately "action arcade" dominates the market.

[Xenich]

Everything MUST copy WoW or it'll be too hard for the kiddies to play

► Show Spoiler

Mostly joking

Yep, and it is my current worry concerning DDO.

They are testing out their new 64 bit client and the game has got a lot of attention lately. I worry that with new clients and major changes, the game will shift to try and appeal to "modern audiences" which means the layered development system will get dumbed down and greater influence placed on the already too actiony combat system it has.

[Alberto Pizzaolla]

Phantasy Star Online 2 New Genesis is the only MMO I play because of how fun the combat is. The western released is censored and full of ****** mods though, so I play with the Japs instead.

[WhiteShark]

Phantasy Star Online 2 New Genesis is the only MMO I play because of how fun the combat is. The western released is censored and full of ****** mods though, so I play with the Japs instead.

I thought it looked interesting but it also seemed like New Genesis was a flop. Is it actually worth playing on the JP servers?

[J1M]

I wish there was an mmo with a classic fantasy setting, where you are just a adventurer who runs around the world and takes on Quests. Both solo and in a 4-player group. Where you have to make a campsite, to eat, sleep and meditate on your skills and abilities. Just to not make the game a slog, you have teleport stones but only for the places you completed. Your weapon skill increases by actually using it, and skills too.

So FFXI.

[Alberto Pizzaolla]

Phantasy Star Online 2 New Genesis is the only MMO I play because of how fun the combat is. The western released is censored and full of ****** mods though, so I play with the Japs instead.

I thought it looked interesting but it also seemed like New Genesis was a flop. Is it actually worth playing on the JP servers?

People didn't like NGS because by MMO standards, there isn't as much content to sink time into, i.e, play it every day for hours. I don't play games that way, so I never had a problem with it. That being said, there are problems that are exclusive to the Global version of the game such as lag, bots, and general poor performance. For whatever reason those problems don't exist in the JP version.

The original version of Phantasy Star Online 2 is also still available to play. Not that many people are active on it these days, but it's still very enjoyable to play through it with just you and some friends.

All that being said, I wouldn't say that now is a good time to jump into the game. The Japanese version recently changed its anticheat which resulted in a lot of the fan patches no longer working. Namely the patches that translated items names and bypassed the region blocking without the need for a VPN. It's still playable, but I wouldn't advise any newcomers to jump in until those fan patches are updated. I'm personally taking a break until that happens as well.

[Vaako]

edit nvm

[GhostCow]

DCUO had good combat but I haven't played in so many years that I can't really describe it well. Just decent action RPG type combat. Not many of the MMOs I've played have had that.

[Finarfin]

Dont wanna start a new thread so I necromance this one.



new season starts on saturday this week on the eden freeshard, should be lots of action if you are into pvp or pve and want to play a 20year old mmorpg

info here:
https://eden-daoc.net/how-to-play

it uses discord as login

I dunno man, wasn't Dark Age of Camelot more leaning towards PVP?

[TKVNC]

It's because MMO players are script slayers who cannot operate a game that requires more than 10 IQ