Why can't MMOs have fun combat?

[Vaako]

edit nvm

[Finarfin]

Well, I installed it. Time to see how it is.
Seems like it is offline right now.
Reeeee, offline until 29.03

[Finarfin]

Got in but I have no idea what to do and which classes to play.

[Vergil]

Amalur would have been cool as an MMO. I really like the combat.

[rustys-name-is-kumar]

dont bother fagarfin you'll just suck and quit like you do with every other game you play after 2 weeks

you lack passion

[Vergil]

dont bother fagarfin you'll just suck and quit like you do with every other game you play after 2 weeks

you lack passion

In awe of the wit and biting remarks from this fella

[rustys-name-is-kumar]

stop spamming ******

[Vergil]

stop spamming ******

Yo @Humbaba I think he's talking to you.

[Finarfin]

Yall hear sumn?

[rustys-name-is-kumar]

ya

the sound of you not hitting lvl 10 in another mmo lol

[Demonic Fate]

* Planetside 1/2

Some billionaire needs to buy the netcode from whatever skeleton team is left running this game and make sure it's available for new projects. This is a game from 2003 that was able to track hundreds of players shooting at each other around the same objective, and you could seamlessly move across a single world that hosted thousands of players. I didn't play the original, but the sequel was still able to do this with reasonably high quality graphics and combat mechanics in 2012.

It's insane that Current Day® shooters with ten times the budget seem to **** themselves when hitting 64v64 instanced arenas at the most.

[Norfleet]

That's because everything "current day" is ****.

[Vaako]

Yeah cant recommend the daoc Eden server anymore. They now banned me ingame for upvoting a 20+ poop emoji on one of their discord announcements. The people handling the discord and moderation are all snowflakes and give you none answers if you want a bann reason. So they dont have to admit they are snowflakes if they cant bann someone if he doesnt give them a very clear rule breaking.

Always the same on freeshards if you speak your mind to freely and they dont get money from you. Power corrupts.

[Norfleet]

Power corrupts.

It's not that power corrupts. It's that those people were always petty tyrants and the taste of petty power has revealed that. That's why private server admins and forum moderators are often the worst.

[Vaako]

Power corrupts.

It's not that power corrupts. It's that those people were always petty tyrants and the taste of petty power has revealed that. That's why private server admins and forum moderators are often the worst.

Some sure. But I also had good experiences with some mods, in the past especially arround daoc forums on third party forums (before TDS and censorship became a regular occurence). I never got banned there and never ingame. But they later made a subscription based only forum that only live server subscribers could even write feedback and from what I have heard its pretty dead there now. People were just too negative all the time and patch changes you could wait for years sometimes and most where 3 steps forward 2 steps backward. They had like one person who could even code there and he probably also coded for Ultima Online aswell.

[Norfleet]

Of course people are negative. Why would they need to say anything if nothing is broken and they're satisfied with what is happening? More importantly, what possible use would such commentary be, clogging the queue with non-actionable rubbish? I know people doing that was always kind of a nuisance when I was modding, because yes, I get that you like it, but this is just spam, I can't do anything with this information.

[anvi]

I love this topic but don't know where to begin, it's so big.

When I played EQ in the early years it felt like it was far more advanced than anything I had seen. Combat as deep as any single player RPG but all done in realtime. I spent all the years since release of that game hoping that single player RPGs could eventually find a way to keep up.

But instead single player RPGs became more like action games. I don't really know what OP and others like from modern RPGs that MMOs don't have? Most stuff is recent. Like if you go back 20 years then single player RPGs were like NWN, a Warrior basically clicks the enemy and you watch them fight. It's only more recently with Witchers and Dark Souls that they have people double tapping keys to dodge attacks and stuff. Tighter interaction with mobs. Although some MMOs let you do that too. I don't know much in modern games that I am interested in. I like Noita and the idea of making your own crazy wands. I would like to play an RPG like that.

EQ's combat I always loved because it is very tactical with more depth than even single player RPGs. It is actiony too in some ways, the whole thing plays in realtime and movement matters sometimes. Some characters can kite enemies around and avoid being hit. Bards are especially mobile. But even casters who have to stop to cast spells still sometimes do a lot of action packed running around. Also even at level 1 timing and stuff mattered. If you try to cast a spell when an enemy hits you, it gets interrupted. So you learn to cast a spell as soon as the enemy finishes an attack.

But it's the tatical side of it I liked. I didn't care if my character stood still and just casted spells. I liked that I had to do things like a debuff to help spells land, then do something with aggro and mana in mind. Balancing those things was a fun balancing act. Especially as a Necro because you have a HP pool which you can convert into mana so it becomes a balance of multiple things at once. And it's not just all about avoiding aggro. Like sometimes I would blast an enemy with my most powerful spell and steal aggro. Then I feigned death and it would go back on the tank. But the advantage was it doing full damage on mobs right from the start of the fight. Or you could aggro something on purpose, then root it and leave it in the corner of the room out the way and unable to hit anyone.

It was intense because there was no noobifying and QOL. If you used a poison or something on an enemy and then someone tries to put that to sleep/mez, then there are big problems. The poison will break the mez and then it will kick you or the enchanters *** and the tank might not even notice. One time we had a lot of enemies and the Enchanter was struggling to mez everything and was being beat up by a mob too. So I put my pet on the mob. And I could tell the Enchanter was worried because now he can't mez that mob or the pet will break it and it will wreck us both. But I saw him cast the mez and I quickly hit "pet back off" just at the last second and it worked. The Enchanter was impressed! I was more impressed with the game. This was made in the 90s.... I've never found anything else as deep and interactive as that.

In fact I like it so much I wish other games in other genres were more like that. I am desperate to play a space game as a giant starship. And I would want combat to be just like EQ, hotkeys and cooldowns etc. If you want to fly in circles doing pew pew pew at a crosshair then there are already lots of games. But I want to be like a captain on tactical battles. Start by blasting them with something to remove their shields (debuff). Then hit them with something that does damage over time. Maybe slow them down (snare), maybe make the ship lose control (fear), etc. Build your own shields up at the same time (healing). EQ combat could be translated to other games. I played one space game like this but it was too basic. Only a few hotkeys.

I also like how the combat changes in EQ based on what you do. Solo I would cast Snare and Fear and stuff runs away while I chase it doing damage. But in a dungeon you can't do that or it would cause chaos. So I used Root instead which means you have to use damage over time and no pet. And in a group it was different again. But there were other things. Like later on they had enemies immune to Snare and Fear so you 'aggro kite' them by changing the pet to not taunt, and do a bunch of damage to make it mad at you, and then run in circles while your pet chases it.

I always loved EQ combat but I think the main attraction to the game is the character building and progression. It's such a constant kind of straight line. No matter what you do there is always something more to do. I am playing THJ at the moment and the combat is great too because you are multiclassing 3 different classes at once. So it can get pretty advanced depending on what you pick. But mostly it's all about hitting auto attack, standing still and pressing your abilities at the right time. I doubt I would play it if it wasn't for the progression aspect hooking me.

On paper there are only a few types of combat I would prefer. And I don't think they would work very well in a game of constant fighting for months. Like there's an old 2D fighting game I think is way better than Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat etc. It's Panza Kickboxing and it's got great combat and controls. But would you really want to fight like that against every single mob 100000 times?

[Kalarion]

I love this topic but don't know where to begin, it's so big.

When I played EQ in the early years it felt like it was far more advanced than anything I had seen. Combat as deep as any single player RPG but all done in realtime. I spent all the years since release of that game hoping that single player RPGs could eventually find a way to keep up.

But instead single player RPGs became more like action games. I don't really know what OP and others like from modern RPGs that MMOs don't have? Most stuff is recent. Like if you go back 20 years then single player RPGs were like NWN, a Warrior basically clicks the enemy and you watch them fight. It's only more recently with Witchers and Dark Souls that they have people double tapping keys to dodge attacks and stuff. Tighter interaction with mobs. Although some MMOs let you do that too. I don't know much in modern games that I am interested in. I like Noita and the idea of making your own crazy wands. I would like to play an RPG like that.

EQ's combat I always loved because it is very tactical with more depth than even single player RPGs. It is actiony too in some ways, the whole thing plays in realtime and movement matters sometimes. Some characters can kite enemies around and avoid being hit. Bards are especially mobile. But even casters who have to stop to cast spells still sometimes do a lot of action packed running around. Also even at level 1 timing and stuff mattered. If you try to cast a spell when an enemy hits you, it gets interrupted. So you learn to cast a spell as soon as the enemy finishes an attack.

But it's the tatical side of it I liked. I didn't care if my character stood still and just casted spells. I liked that I had to do things like a debuff to help spells land, then do something with aggro and mana in mind. Balancing those things was a fun balancing act. Especially as a Necro because you have a HP pool which you can convert into mana so it becomes a balance of multiple things at once. And it's not just all about avoiding aggro. Like sometimes I would blast an enemy with my most powerful spell and steal aggro. Then I feigned death and it would go back on the tank. But the advantage was it doing full damage on mobs right from the start of the fight. Or you could aggro something on purpose, then root it and leave it in the corner of the room out the way and unable to hit anyone.

It was intense because there was no noobifying and QOL. If you used a poison or something on an enemy and then someone tries to put that to sleep/mez, then there are big problems. The poison will break the mez and then it will kick you or the enchanters *** and the tank might not even notice. One time we had a lot of enemies and the Enchanter was struggling to mez everything and was being beat up by a mob too. So I put my pet on the mob. And I could tell the Enchanter was worried because now he can't mez that mob or the pet will break it and it will wreck us both. But I saw him cast the mez and I quickly hit "pet back off" just at the last second and it worked. The Enchanter was impressed! I was more impressed with the game. This was made in the 90s.... I've never found anything else as deep and interactive as that.

In fact I like it so much I wish other games in other genres were more like that. I am desperate to play a space game as a giant starship. And I would want combat to be just like EQ, hotkeys and cooldowns etc. If you want to fly in circles doing pew pew pew at a crosshair then there are already lots of games. But I want to be like a captain on tactical battles. Start by blasting them with something to remove their shields (debuff). Then hit them with something that does damage over time. Maybe slow them down (snare), maybe make the ship lose control (fear), etc. Build your own shields up at the same time (healing). EQ combat could be translated to other games. I played one space game like this but it was too basic. Only a few hotkeys.

I also like how the combat changes in EQ based on what you do. Solo I would cast Snare and Fear and stuff runs away while I chase it doing damage. But in a dungeon you can't do that or it would cause chaos. So I used Root instead which means you have to use damage over time and no pet. And in a group it was different again. But there were other things. Like later on they had enemies immune to Snare and Fear so you 'aggro kite' them by changing the pet to not taunt, and do a bunch of damage to make it mad at you, and then run in circles while your pet chases it.

I always loved EQ combat but I think the main attraction to the game is the character building and progression. It's such a constant kind of straight line. No matter what you do there is always something more to do. I am playing THJ at the moment and the combat is great too because you are multiclassing 3 different classes at once. So it can get pretty advanced depending on what you pick. But mostly it's all about hitting auto attack, standing still and pressing your abilities at the right time. I doubt I would play it if it wasn't for the progression aspect hooking me.

On paper there are only a few types of combat I would prefer. And I don't think they would work very well in a game of constant fighting for months. Like there's an old 2D fighting game I think is way better than Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat etc. It's Panza Kickboxing and it's got great combat and controls. But would you really want to fight like that against every single mob 100000 times?

Hi Anvi, welcome to HQ. If you go back to Codex I will consider you a traitor and have you shot.

[anvi]

I think the game NOX should be studied more. I only ever played the demo but that was just multiplayer combat and it was awesome. There was some good parts in MOBAs too. I know they are kind of universally hated but I liked one called Heroes of Newerth. The Behemoth could create an earthquake in a big line that stunned the hell out of anything it hit, and it blocked the path of everything. You could invis and run behind the enemies, then stun them all and block their path of escape. Then quickly teleport back to safety before they react. I also liked the turtle that could fly into the enemies and blast them and then disappear on a wave of water.

I think games like that have the best combat. But I hate the framework of them. There's no progression, and you play the same map over and over. That combat but in a good MMO world would be awesome.