How do you make damage dealers more engaging to play?

[Val the Moofia Boss]

Healers have to manage their MP pools and proactive apply regens and shields to people, and ofcourse have the stressful minigame of triage where they have to prioritize who to heal up first. Buffers and debuffers have to keep track/rememeber who they cast a buff/debuff on, in what order, and what buffs/debuffs are about to expire so they refresh it. Tanks have to worry about grabbing and maintaining aggro on the mob(s), finding a good place to position the mob that melee can reach and won't aggro more mobs, rotating their defensive abilities, being ready to do something in case someone gets aggroed and is dying, etc. But DPS just stand there and press their buttons to do damage and that's it. Is there a way to make this role intrinsically more engaging, as opposed to designing every encounter force DPS to split up and do mechanics like kill mobs or flip switches on different sides of the room? Sometimes you have to interrupt or stun the mob's cast, but that's it.

Final Fantasy XI has the skillchain minigame where you are keeping an eye out on other DPS player's TP, getting ready to each use a weaponskill in order to deal bonus damage, but weaponskill elements for skillchaining are unintuitive and requires using an out-of-game calculator to figure out the skillchain for one mob before fighting it. It is very difficult to figure out what a mob is weak to and coming up with a skillchain for it on the fly. Granblue Fantasy Relink greatly simplifies this so you don't need to care about figuring out the skillchain before hand: using any skybound arts works so long as you press the button to chain in time.

Final Fantasy XIV has melee classes deal bonus damage if they use an ability from a certain direction relative to the mob (ie, a back attack, or a side attack) so melee will be moving around a lot to maximize damage.

[ArcaneLurker]

Stack conditions, and certain combinations of them, to be able to effectively pull of more damaging skills rather than doing the minimum damage?

[Oyster Sauce]

DPS is more fun and engaging than healing in my experience. Of all roles in WoW Classic, healer was easily the most brain dead for me (priest main)

[WhiteShark]

It depends on how much you're willing to break from traditional MMO combat. The more you move away from the round-based MMO model to an action model, the more engaging it will be in its moment-to-moment gameplay. The archetypal example is a game like Vindictus, which completely drops typical MMO combat for fast-paced action combat with iframes, dodging, perfect guards, aiming and hitboxes, etc. Of course, that also means abandoning typical MMO concepts like dedicated healer and tank roles.

[rustys-name-is-kumar]

you'd have to first begin with making an mmo with fun gameplay to begin with which seems to be a herculean task

[rusty_shackleford]

fighter uses attack

---

In a more serious answer, it's by not using the "DPS" role. Even if you wanted to stick purely to MMO terms, EQ itself did not have a "holy trinity", there were plenty of roles to go around.

[J1M]

You need to do the opposite of what designers have been doing.

In order for something to feel strong it needs to have a clear drawback as well. Things are often more differentiated by their weaknesses.

Second, the trend towards mashing buttons to fill every GCD has to reverse. When you have open GCDs you have a decision to make that is more interesting than waiting a second to press the next priority button. Even if the decision is usually to leave the GCD open. When you have the option to buff an ally or provide some kind of other utility without loss of damage throughput you are engaging more than one part of the brain.

Modern MMO designers would bow to players whinging that their buff can't be cast on themselves and give them a resource builder to spam in every open GCD.

[Norfleet]

Damage dealers already ARE more engaging to play. Why do you think the population of the typical game is like 90% DPS mains, leaving them with very long queue times?

[Val the Moofia Boss]

Damage dealers already ARE more engaging to play. Why do you think the population of the typical game is like 90% DPS mains, leaving them with very long queue times?

From my experience, tanking is more engaging to play than DPS. You get to set the pace of the group, decide where to go, pick which mobs to pull, have to decide where to park, have to be on the lookout for other mobs, need to pay attention to aggro and status of party, need to be proactive with using defensive abilities and items, etc. However:

1. Most MMOs revolve around soloing to level cap, thus to get through it the fastest you want fighting capability which incentivizes people to pick fighting classes. Most people typically do not do WoW's or FF14's levelling and story experience as a healer. Non fighting roles like scout, interdictor/tackle, target caller, CC, mage who teleports the group, etc, become more attractive in MMOs where the bulk gameplay is team based from the get go, like EVE Online.

2. Tanks are usually outnumbered by fighting classes which provide more class fantasies which might appeal to people (ie different flavors of mage, warlock, lancer, guy who swings hammer, people dancing with daggers, etc). Whereas tanks get a very limited number of class fantasies in comparison. Chances are you can find a DPS class that might really appeals to you. Even in WoW which has the most tank classes of any MMO I can think of, there is still not any tank class that completely fulfills my desires. I like two handed weapons, but the only tank class that does that is Blood Death Knight, but I do not like the blood magic aesthetic. I like Prot paladin's gameplay but I am not too keen on the sword and board or the yellow magic VFX. Etc. Same issue with FF14 where 6 out of the 14 DPS jobs appeal to me (especially Samurai), but there are only four tank classes and none of them really appeal to me.

3. Most MMOs do not facilitate the formation of friendships and guilds from the get go. This makes tanking stressful as you are usually entering a PUG as a mercenary where no one cares about each other as a person, where everyone views each other as an impediment to getting their loot, and will kick and replace people at the drop of the hat hoping to find a better cog to fit into the machine (read: flip through groups until the stars align and they get carried). Tanking however is a technically difficult job in that there is a binary fail state where if the tank dies or loses aggro, other people will die and the group might wipe, which means the PUG's resentment is directed towards the tank and they might get kicked. DPS usually have no responsibility or binary fail states that wipe the group, so they can make mistakes over and over and are allowed to learn from them, but tanks are not allowed to make mistakes and learn in a PUG environment which is what most current MMOs are.

4. LFR and duty finder cultivates a passive player base, where people would rather queue as a DPS and wait for their turn, rather than consider stepping up to fulfill a desired role like in MMOs without LFR and duty finder. Your friends or guilds lacking someone playing such and such role is another motivator.

[DemoGraph]

Is there a way to make this role intrinsically more engaging, as opposed to designing every encounter force DPS to split up and do mechanics like kill mobs or flip switches on different sides of the room? Sometimes you have to interrupt or stun the mob's cast, but that's it.

Introduce twitchy (or more proactive) gameplay:
1. heavy use of stunlocking, parrying and interrupts. Fencing-like.
2. "intelligent" enemies that switch resists on the run or randomized waves of enemies with varying resists.
3. enemy drops or env loot that DPSers have to use on the go (raise enemy dead, sacrifice prisoners, etc.).
4. cooping damage - cross the beams, hit with fire and cold simultaneously, etc.

The game called Magicka is all about glass cannon mages and combos and it's great. Another example could be Mordhau.

[rusty_shackleford]

dance dance revolution combat is not fun

[rusty_shackleford]

in fact, if I am pressing a button and it does nothing more than "attack, but with a different animation", you have ****** up beyond belief and I hate you

[Val the Moofia Boss]

in fact, if I am pressing a button and it does nothing more than "attack, but with a different animation", you have ****** up beyond belief and I hate you

Do you hate clicking to swing your sword in Oblivion?

[rusty_shackleford]

in fact, if I am pressing a button and it does nothing more than "attack, but with a different animation", you have ****** up beyond belief and I hate you

Do you hate clicking to swing your sword in Oblivion?

no because I don't have five separate abilities that are all "attack but with slightly different short-term buffs/debuffs" that I have to weave into a dance-dance revolution priority queue

[Xenich]

I prefer less action and more tactical use of abilities in a longer term progression of play.

I think of EQ and how it was less about burning down the mob as fast as possible through spamming keys and more about managing your resources and downtime as well as controlling the mobs in play (ie CC, dealing with runners, adds, pops, etc...).

I guess I just don't care for the concept of the holy trinity as it forces a certain design approach to play that I think leads it on a path to simplistic design in the fights which is likely why everything turns into dance games and wack-a-mole style play.

[Norfleet]

From my experience, tanking is more engaging to play than DPS. You get to set the pace of the group, decide where to go, pick which mobs to pull, have to decide where to park, have to be on the lookout for other mobs, need to pay attention to aggro and status of party, need to be proactive with using defensive abilities and items, etc. However:

The "however" is that what YOU like is not the same as what the general public seems to consider engaging. That's why 90% DPS mains.

1. Most MMOs revolve around soloing to level cap, thus to get through it the fastest you want fighting capability which incentivizes people to pick fighting classes. Most people typically do not do WoW's or FF14's levelling and story experience as a healer.

It's what I've long asserted, that levelling and story are both impediments to gameplay.

Non fighting roles like scout, interdictor/tackle, target caller, CC, mage who teleports the group, etc, become more attractive in MMOs where the bulk gameplay is team based from the get go, like EVE Online.

I'm pretty sure most of these are not mains. Hell, I've played the shotcaller role...in a game in which I did not actually play and had no character in. I purely analyzed the telemetry feeds from my team and told people what to do from there. So some of these aren't even actually roles in the game. Things just get weird when you throw team PvP into the mix.

2. Tanks are usually outnumbered by fighting classes which provide more class fantasies which might appeal to people (ie different flavors of mage, warlock, lancer, guy who swings hammer, people dancing with daggers, etc). Whereas tanks get a very limited number of class fantasies in comparison.

I'm pretty sure "warrior" IS the traditional tank class. The guy with the sword and shield, and heavy armor, whose job it is to stand between the enemy and the team's mages.

3. Most MMOs do not facilitate the formation of friendships and guilds from the get go.

The nature of attempting facilitate social interaction is that the opposite often results, like dating services that attempted to facilitate dating only to end up becoming the biggest impediment to it.

4. LFR and duty finder cultivates a passive player base, where people would rather queue as a DPS and wait for their turn, rather than consider stepping up to fulfill a desired role like in MMOs without LFR and duty finder. Your friends or guilds lacking someone playing such and such role is another motivator.

See, it's like I said: These were actually tools that attempted to facilitate social interaction. And, of course, they accomplish the exact opposite.

[TKVNC]

Just get rid of the tank/healer/damage system

All melee classes should be bootleg tanks, and all casters capable of healing. Ranged non-casters can be most everything else, damage and support.

That's about it really.

[J1M]

Damage dealers already ARE more engaging to play. Why do you think the population of the typical game is like 90% DPS mains, leaving them with very long queue times?

Because the majority of players are male and males daydream about being strong, not nurturing people.

Also because the other roles are perceived as higher stress and higher individual responsibility and not everyone finds that an enjoyable way to spend their leisure time.

[Demonic Fate]

Tactical combat shouldn't be a ******* spreadsheet simulator where you try to optimize {(damage + buffs - debuffs) * time > hp + heal * time} and then repeat the formula for so many turns that you get bored of attacking.

If your concern is "I find this MMO tank'n spank gameplay a bit boring", GOOD. That means your brain ISN'T completely fried yet. Follow what your brain is telling you, instead of trying to refine the slop into a more potent drug.

[Manny V]

healsluts BTFO

[Norfleet]

Just get rid of the tank/healer/damage system

It's remarkably hard to get rid of because it often spontaneously reemerges even in the absence of explicit design. The most logical type to get rid of might possibly be the "tank", since this concept only really emerges in the context of defective AI, either by design or unintentionally, where the AI cannot correctly evaluate target value and thus can be convinced to tunnelvision into a low-value target that it can't easily kill. This is essentially the essence of "tank" as separate from DPS or Healer: It's a class that doesn't do much damage or otherwise have any significant impact, yet the AI is compelled to preferentially attack, resulting in its damage output being largely wasted. The only reason "tanks" even exist is because the AI is ******* stupid, either intentionally or accidentally (if tanks emerge spontaneously).

Then you can eliminate healers entirely, either by not having healing at all, or making all characters self-manage their own health to some degree, with minimal differences in ability to heal others. At that point you just have a single type of "does basically everything" classes.

Is this good? I dunno.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

Just get rid of the tank/healer/damage system

It's remarkably hard to get rid of because it often spontaneously reemerges even in the absence of explicit design. The most logical type to get rid of might possibly be the "tank", since this concept only really emerges in the context of defective AI, either by design or unintentionally, where the AI cannot correctly evaluate target value and thus can be convinced to tunnelvision into a low-value target that it can't easily kill. This is essentially the essence of "tank" as separate from DPS or Healer: It's a class that doesn't do much damage or otherwise have any significant impact, yet the AI is compelled to preferentially attack, resulting in its damage output being largely wasted. The only reason "tanks" even exist is because the AI is ******* stupid, either intentionally or accidentally (if tanks emerge spontaneously).

Then you can eliminate healers entirely, either by not having healing at all, or making all characters self-manage their own health to some degree, with minimal differences in ability to heal others. At that point you just have a single type of "does basically everything" classes.

Is this good? I dunno.

Sounds like there would be little to no team play in combat aside for combos (like a character dazing the boss so someone else can stun it), which would be maximum extent of cooperating with others unless there was more to gameplay than just combat (ie, someone baiting mobs to a trap that the players had previously set up).

[Norfleet]

Sounds like there would be little to no team play in combat aside for combos (like a character dazing the boss so someone else can stun it), which would be maximum extent of cooperating with others unless there was more to gameplay than just combat (ie, someone baiting mobs to a trap that the players had previously set up).

That'd be more or less how I'd describe the game I was previously playing with WhiteSquare, yes, including more or less exactly those things.

[DemoGraph]

The only reason "tanks" even exist is because the AI is ******* stupid, either intentionally or accidentally (if tanks emerge spontaneously).

There're tanks in EVE. I don't know the meta that well, but they do have close combat ships, artillery / carrier ones, utility (jump blockers, supplies) and buffers (electronic warfare).

Having classes is dumb. You can design the balance around skills/guns/spells and get comparatively more creative gameplay.

[DemoGraph]

@Kalarion, don't just disagree on me, bro! Say something.

[Kalarion]

Having classes is dumb. You can design the balance around skills/guns/spells and get comparatively more creative gameplay.

Friendship with DemoGraph ENDED

[TKVNC]

Just get rid of the tank/healer/damage system

It's remarkably hard to get rid of because it often spontaneously reemerges even in the absence of explicit design. The most logical type to get rid of might possibly be the "tank", since this concept only really emerges in the context of defective AI, either by design or unintentionally, where the AI cannot correctly evaluate target value and thus can be convinced to tunnelvision into a low-value target that it can't easily kill. This is essentially the essence of "tank" as separate from DPS or Healer: It's a class that doesn't do much damage or otherwise have any significant impact, yet the AI is compelled to preferentially attack, resulting in its damage output being largely wasted. The only reason "tanks" even exist is because the AI is ******* stupid, either intentionally or accidentally (if tanks emerge spontaneously).

Then you can eliminate healers entirely, either by not having healing at all, or making all characters self-manage their own health to some degree, with minimal differences in ability to heal others. At that point you just have a single type of "does basically everything" classes.

Is this good? I dunno.

You simply don't add giant monsters that can apparently kill people in one second, except for the tank.

Then you just make fights believable, using diverse skillsets. What was a tank becomes a control player, shield bashes to stun or knockdown, so the opponent has a valid reason to fight them, not just a taunt.

Get rid of threat too, and have enemies use actual AI to pick targets based on distance, equipment, and other considerations. It’s not even hard to do, a lot of games already do this.

Casters or ranged fighters should be mobile to avoid attacks, and powerful stationary abilities should have the tradeoff of being high risk due to the high reward.

Think about real world historical warfare - pikes protected gunners, who protected pikes, who both pinned down a target to allow mobile cavalry to operate.

No taunts necessary, just practical positioning, relevant skillsets and actual enemy AI is all you need.

PvE players have sub 75IQ

[Vaako]

Gambling your health for damage.

[Norfleet]

You simply don't add giant monsters that can apparently kill people in one second, except for the tank.

Well, the game still has those.

The rest of it is more or less what you describe, though.

[Norfleet]

There're tanks in EVE.

Pretty sure this cannot be true, at least in PvP, simply because it's impossible to effectively compel a player to attack a specific target to the exclusion of better targets. You can make something very durable and hard to kill, but this is just a turtle, not a tank. You can make a very well-protected attacker, or a support unit, but the moment you make it TOO tough, it stops being a desirable target because the amount of effort needed to kill it has exceeded the value you'd gain from doing so.

Having classes is dumb. You can design the balance around skills/guns/spells and get comparatively more creative gameplay.

Not having explicit classes doesn't really eliminate the existence of classes. The moment you force a player to make mutually exclusive choices about what to bring to the table, and then impose some level of barrier to being able to switch, you've effectively created classes. In that one game, for instance, there are no classes or even skills. Just weapons and equipment. But your weapon and equipment build effectively defines your class, since you can't switch in the field and the cost of changing your build is quite high.