Theory Crafting MMO Roles

[TankHunter678]

That's what I'd do anyway, just in paragraph form. This is better formatting and ultimately I do respond to your whole post

You respond to individual sentences instead of the argument that is the whole post. You take everything out of context and respond to just bits and pieces. That is what renders you frustrating.

I am not going to bother to respond to the rest because you will just dismantle it sentence by sentence and make me incredibly angry.

 

[Demigan]

Turning a gradient from no options to "a plethora" of options into "zero options or my way" is a false dichotomy. Sorry

No you misunderstand again. My point is that with my option or with hybridization or class structures you still have a plethora of options to balance.
So my dichotomy is that I put all idea's that give a plethora of options together (which is all of them that give options unless you arbitrarily limit those options, which is again possible with all of them) and put the idea of giving players no option separate.
That's not a false dichotomy, it's a completely true observation and logical conclusion. You change it to "no options or my way". Why? I think because you completely misunderstand the concept I'm holding in front of you. The alternative would be you deliberately trying to shoot down the idea simply because you disgree, but I really hope you aren't that kind of person.

Don't mistake disagreement for misunderstanding

I understand you disagree, but from your words I also understand you don't understand the idea.
The only way you could really show you actually don't misunderstand is retelling me exactly the idea I've told you in your own words.

Are the damage types not ultimately archetypes? If I cant carry all 3, then my output is ultimately based off of what role I play in combat w.r.t. what enemies I should fight to achieve max efficiency.

You could call them archetypes, but the system behind these archetypes and the execution of the archetypes is completely different from any available in other games.
And the point is that in solo fighting any loadout would average out at the same efficiency, since the enemy archetypes that you encounter on average would consist out of every single type of archetype in the game. It would change per engagement, so in one engagement you would have a breeze as your loadout is designed against them and the next you have a tough one where none of the archetypes are weak against you.
In group fighting the goal would be that if any two players went for a "standard" loadout you would screw yourselves over, since it would be better to maximize the loadout choices you have.

As far as I'm aware, the plan is to have a similar system in Ember, whereby there are distinct roles. What the OP and I both suggested was making the roles hybridized so that everyone needs to take part in direct combat, which ultimately makes encounter balance easier

And I take that hybridization a bit farther. The archetypes of healer, engineer etc could still exist as an overarching structure, but within that structure you have (almost) complete freedom in what you pick.
Besides that, didn't you talk about one loadout being the best and that being a bad thing for the game? Wouldn't a more standard archetype structure make it easier to have a standard loadout and unit in the game? Such as in Firefall where in some updates you simply had to take archetype X with loadout X to do mine resources or engage Baneclaw?

They also have to be balanced against units they're not good against, assuming the damage value is not 0. They also have to be balanced against other weapons of the same category just like in the current system. Are the enemy types pallette swaps? Because if they arent that becomes a balancing factor as well. If red units are big and slow and blue units are small and fast, having slow weapons to fight blue units is worse than having fast weapons to fight red units

As I said, the average DPS for all of these weapons and abilities would be about the same against units they aren't designed against, give or take the enemy composition. An AOE weapon would overall deal less damage than a sniper weapon, but depending on how many enemies are attacking at a time the DPS of the AOE weapon might go higher or lower.
Although those could either be parts of the primary features by making AOE weapons the go-to weapons for groups or the secondary features of the weapon that allow each weapon to have a different use without becoming too generic.

Besides here's that dichotomy again: You run into the exact same 'problem' with the other systems. The difference is that you don't have to balance each separate weapon combined with every single available ability and armor, you only have to balance the weapons against each other.
That might be an oversimplification, since the abilities and armor would still have some overlap even with the exclusion system I proposed, but the impact would be far lower and it would be far easier to balance altogether.

More HP doesnt always equate to more difficulty, but it does inevitably move firmly into tedium. I'd like to avoid a combat system based on tedium-as-motivation, thanks

Well boo-hoo, as if more HP would be the only option available. Besides that it wouldn't be "tedium as motivation". The average solo-fight would be designed around having to fight mobs that you are only partially strong against, thus allowing the difficulty (IE length of time you have to withstand the attacks) to rise and fall depending on how strong you are against them.
That said, It doesn't necessarily have to be more hitpoints or longer fights. That's just an easy example of how you could balance the system. There are other systems, which incidentally could be mixed with increased EHP against certain weapons, to be used. Such as enemies being able to activate certain special abilities when hit by weapons not designed against them as one example.

Do you not remember how hard FF could shit the bed when it came to hitboxes? Do you really want to try that shit again with a smaller team that has less cash?

Yes, because they don't have to build an engine from the ground up but will be using the Unreal engine, of which each iteration as far as I know was extremely solid when it came to being modable and offering 'basic' things like good hitboxes and netcode.

Except this thread is about not having a trinity system, not creating a trinity system with damage

Seriously? You've stopped the discussion now and started being pathetically defening your point to the bitter end no matter how low you can stoop.
Yes, this thread is about making sure we move away from a trinity system. Read again what I wrote: "That's just one way, just like having a trinity system can be done in half a dozen ways." I'm referring to how my system has many different ways you can balance it out, just like the trinity system of the passed has been balanced in many different ways depending on the game.
I'm not saying in any way that I want the trinity system back. I'm making a point, the point that no matter what system you create, it can be completely unbalanced by making everyone OP, it can be completely unbalanced by making everyone UP and it can be everything in between. It all depends on how you balance it, but you only see the option where it's unbalanced. Then when I simply name the trinity system as an example why any system can have a widely different balance you instantly assume that I want a trinity system.

Something about "misunderstanding" much?

The details of roles and the weapons you create *are* the mechanics

Yes, the details. And those details can be completely different depending on what kind of balance you are trying to achieve. Exactly my point. Yet you somehow still try to pass it off as if you are the one making that observation and that I somehow missed that.

Firefall had vertical progression, Ember is not planned to

Oh look! More stupidity! This is getting tiresome. Firefall has had horizontal progression, a mixture of horizontal and vertical progression and ended up in a 100% supa-dupa vertical progression system. Yes. Ember isn't planned to, but I never said it wouldn't did I? Are you really so desperate that you have to invent my side of the argument just to get a word in?

What I'm doing is drawing a parallel. I show you with examples of Firefall that there isn't just one balance to be made in one archetypal structure, I'm showing that there's many different ways to balance it and that it can go wrong in many different ways. This is a "problem" that surfaces in any of the idea's put forth so far. It's simply part of balancing. The only difference is that in the other systems you need to balance one weapon with every single ability and armor to prevent an OP combination (and the one weapon shouldn't be stronger than it's counterparts), while with my system you only need to balance the weapons among themselves to prevent them being inherently stronger than their counterparts since you can't min/max the loadouts.
That might be an oversimplification since there will be some overlap between the weapons and abilities. But it'll be a lot easier to compensate and balance for this small overlap compared to having to balance every single loadout combination with each other.

Rest in next post.

 

[Demigan]

If it wasn't possible to deal with them they didn't increase the skill ceiling

And I never said they should raise the skill-ceiling. So what's this now, you've resorted to saying random things that have barely anything to do with my words to make people think you say something smart? read the damn things I'm saying instead of this crap.

I do lots of damage or I do a little damage is not a massive range of possibilities.

And your idea's don't have this "problem"?
I recognize that there's dozens of ways to balance it out, I only named the EHP changes per weapon type as an easy to understand example. You are a massive hypocrite for making it look like my idea is somehow flawed because I used damage as one (balanceable and enjoyable) example how it could be done while your own idea's have to circumvent the same obstacles.

Not when you have to balance for groups and individuals, no. And it's more of a difference between tedium and pointlessness

There is a gray area when you have to balance for groups and individuals, and you instantly assume that my system is geared to tedium and pointlessness even though that doesn't have to be the case. Hey I could invent a game with your idea's, but with mechanics and balancing behind it that make it the most pointless and tedious game ever created. It's completely possible, but it doesn't have to be. Just like my idea doesn't have to be tedious or pointless. In fact, with the same world and mechanics behind it but only the player's class and weapon system being what either you or I propose, my system would offer less tedium because you have more variety and change within each battle while it would still be easier to balance.

There will still be differences in frequency of enemies, unless all encounters are designed to have a 1:1:1 ratio of enemy types. There will also be differences in difficulty when fighting those enemies, unless they're all pallette swaps

Oh noes! How terrible would it be if enemies had differences in frequencies and difficulty per engagement! That would give massive problems since it would reduce the amount of tedium the game offers!

Ofcourse the game would be better if enemy types and archetypes changed with every engagement instead of the player knowing in advance the exact amount and enemy type he's going to encounter. That's why I suggested it along with my system so that it would combat tedium and set roles for players.

You can always minmax in games without predefined loadouts, and fighting against enemies that you do a fraction of your normal damage to is always going to be a disadvantage unless you make the difference small enough that it wouldn't matter anyway

Except that I've just suggested a way to prevent min/maxing without predefined loadouts. And the best thing is that it's applicable to any system without predefined loadouts.
And in other news, you are again assuming the worst situation possible. "a fraction of your normal damage"? Look I can also call your idea tedious and pointless from the get-go very easily. For instance, the fact that everyone should be a damage dealer means that there's much less variation or reason to pull other classes and thus it becomes tedious. That's a "valid" argument, however it completely bypasses all the reasons and balancing idea's that could prevent this from becoming tedious. That's why I don't make that kind of observation. But you do.

Why don't we reset this and actually make a discussion out of it instead of a "make stuff up at random and pass them off as arguments".

 

[Daynen]

It's a little amusing, and a little sad that this argument has gone on between the few of you this long, when the answer to ALL your issues lies in NONE of your proposals...

I said it before: the world needs to demand functions and activities of the player beyond emptying a lifebar if we hope to move beyond the stale old trinity. By 'the world' I don't just mean 'the enemies' either. That's part of the original 'box thinking' I warned against a couple pages back. We (including devs) need to look at the world as more than a multi-tiered floor for firefights to happen. What you guys are debating is ultimately the means by which we do damage to enemies and vice versa--that's really all it boils down to, guys. You're all arguing complexity, not depth. Many ways to accomplish the same end. We'll have plenty of means, no matter the shape of the game; what we need is more ends.

Take a step back--a BIG step back for a second. If the only goal in the game is making sure all enemies are dead, everything else becomes incidental; when that happens, DPS becomes the name of the game and finding a build that maintains high DPS against the highest number of enemy types becomes the only race that matters. Once that race is won, it doesn't matter WHAT class/classless system we have; the game is reduced to tedium either way because it is solved. In the dozens of varying "role" systems of all the games I've played over the years, it always ends the same way. The road looks a little different from the start, but when you look back from the end, it turns out it was all the same, yet again. Has no one else perceived this? Why does this keep happening?

It's simple: because "kill them faster than they kill us" is 99% of every MMO's objectives. Everything--EVERYTHING--in these games revolves around the same victory condition: their HP is zero and yours is not. You wanna talk about binary, there's your cuplrit, right there. Call out all the "hit E to interact" things you want; in the end it's all rooty-tooty-point-n'-shooty. Again, I know it's called a "shooter" game, but purposely limiting it to JUST shooting things, even just on this level of discussion is doing it and ourselves a disservice.

I liked repairing thumpers. I liked LGV races. I liked glider courses. I liked stealth missions (bugs and silliness notwithstanding.) I liked recovering stuff and racing to get it out of a cave. I relished the chance to do something in FF BESIDES just shooting another few dozen targets. Shooting things is our first and last answer to everything, sure, but if we have more diverse situations and challenges where shooting is an OPTION and not THE ONE AND ONLY GOAL, something magical happens...we start finding uses for more classes and player options. We start building characters to move, investigate, discover, repair, analyze, hunt, build, transport and change things for others. We start to have fun in ways we didn't expect. We grow from "a shooter MMO" which, let's face it, is a label which does not inspire THAT much optimism anymore, into "an awesome sci-fi game where you do all sorts of cool stuff with jetpacks and guns and gliders and big mining robots and stuff" that just happens to have things to shoot.

Once you have a world like that, a "role" becomes a "career choice." Your combat prowess becomes just a part of a bigger, more adventurous, and much more involved picture. Does the term "DPS" conjure images of excitement and adventure for you? No? How about something more tangible, like a long-range mineral prospector, a hot zone transport pilot, a sustained siege engineer, a pest control specialist, a professional bodyguard, an infiltration expert, a hazard zone salvager, or an expert aircraft mechanic? If THOSE don't conjure up mental imagery, then we've identified part of the problem on an individual level.

Note that ALL of these "careers" can and likely WILL still involve copious amounts of jump jets and shooting things.

Start with more diverse kinds of environments and more necessary functions for players and the build options will start to take care of themselves. If we want the trinity to evolve or go away, then the type of world that spawned it needs to make the same choice. Otherwise, we will forever be stuck with it.

 

[Aphaz]

dayum daynen, that wuz awesomely well said! it's the world that shapes our choices, not the other way around.

 

[TankHunter678]

@Daynen that kinda talk is separate from making the combat interesting and a challenge for the player. Which is what is being discussed in this thread.

Things that players can do besides combat is a topic that should have its own thread. The entire basis of the discussion in THIS thread is all about the combat portion.

Though I will say this to give you something to think about if you go make a thread for your topic: Long range mineral prospector? That is what we do automatically just to progress. Pest control specialist? We already do that, its part of the basis of our job. Professional Bodyguard? We already do that, its part of the basis of our job. Hazard zone salvager? When do we NOT do that? Infiltration expert? Depends on build but its something that we do. Sustained siege Engineer? Depends on build but its what we do. Hot zone transport pilot? Aircraft Mechanic? Also stuff we do.

All of those things are already under our characters Career choice at creation: A Mercenary. We do jobs to get paid and we make the best use of resources we can get our hands on to accomplish those objectives. Including taking training in as many related things as we can to make it easier. As our job as Reapers is to cleanse the wildlife and terraform the planet using whatever means necessary.

 

[Daynen]

@Daynen that kinda talk is separate from making the combat interesting and a challenge for the player. Which is what is being discussed in this thread.

Things that players can do besides combat is a topic that should have its own thread. The entire basis of the discussion in THIS thread is all about the combat portion.

Though I will say this to give you something to think about if you go make a thread for your topic: Long range mineral prospector? That is what we do automatically just to progress. Pest control specialist? We already do that, its part of the basis of our job. Professional Bodyguard? We already do that, its part of the basis of our job. Hazard zone salvager? When do we NOT do that? Infiltration expert? Depends on build but its something that we do. Sustained siege Engineer? Depends on build but its what we do. Hot zone transport pilot? Aircraft Mechanic? Also stuff we do.

All of those things are already under our characters Career choice at creation: A Mercenary. We do jobs to get paid and we make the best use of resources we can get our hands on to accomplish those objectives. Including taking training in as many related things as we can to make it easier. As our job as Reapers is to cleanse the wildlife and terraform the planet using whatever means necessary.

True enough, on a macro level...but my point still stands as relevant. How people approach combat and how they build for it will NEVER change as long as the entire game equates to "Enemy HP zero=we win." My line of thinking may deserve it's own thread, true, but divorcing it from the combat discussion leads right back to the box...it has every single time. just sayin'.

 

[TankHunter678]

Well unfortunately combat is either reduce enemy HP to 0 or combat never happens in a shooter. This is not a tab target MMO like Final Fantasy XIV where in the quest you are working on (and only specific quests at that) can you use an emote to get a mob to stop attacking.

Even in games like Dungeons and Dragons, Elder Scrolls, etc once combat begins there is no going back. Either you die or the target dies. its a fight for your life situation.

 

[Daynen]

Well unfortunately combat is either reduce enemy HP to 0 or combat never happens in a shooter. This is not a tab target MMO like Final Fantasy XIV where in the quest you are working on (and only specific quests at that) can you use an emote to get a mob to stop attacking.

Even in games like Dungeons and Dragons, Elder Scrolls, etc once combat begins there is no going back. Either you die or the target dies. its a fight for your life situation.

Ever think that perhaps that's part of the problem? Combat ITSELF has become a very binary concept in games; either they die or you do. There's no grey area; perhaps that's another spot for big improvements. Having ways of "winning" a battle other than just turning everything to puddles would certainly open up career paths, would it not? Live bounty hunter, specimen collector, wildlife relocator...who knows what kind of game we could have if all combat didn't boil down to "who died first?" It IS a rather narrow definition of the word, after all; even fighting for your life doesn't HAVE to mean both parties want the other dead. Not everyone wants to fight for the same reason at the same time...just think of the possibilities that non-lethal takedowns offer.

 

[TankHunter678]

Which if you notice in games... all non lethal takedowns still involve emptying a health bar.

Effectively the only reason why NPCs get a non-lethal takedown is quest protection. Otherwise they would be dead.

Specimen collector? Empty a health bar, it gets picked up for quest. Wildlife relocator? Empty the health bars of whatever tries to attack your quest escort target. Live bounty hunter? Empty health bar, target gets picked up for quest.

Notice the same thing? All of them are tied to a quest.

Further none of those are careers for players because they are jobs that we would do as mercenaries. As our Career is already Mercenary. We get paid to do work for people, and we pick up just about any job.

There is a reason why MMOs are pretty restricted in what they can do for non-combat things players can do. Typically its in the form of a crafting class, or gathering class that avoids all conflict to gather, or you play mini-games in an entertainment district.

But if we do not have crafting or gathering classes, what is there we can do? Besides playing mini-games in an entertainment district most anything else we do have to do is going to be combat related. Cause standing like an NPC waiting for people to show up so you can fix their vehicle is boring. Unless you got NPCs to provide a constant stream of broken vehicles. At which point it would still be boring, but also be a simulator game in and of itself that would divert game development away from the rest of the game and would only be interesting to a even more niche group of players.


You seem stuck on this notion that we should have these careers for players to pickwhen we already have one decided for us to give us the most flexible offerings at character creation.

This is not a second life where we get a job that we go do from 9 to 5 day in and day out.

 

[Aphaz]

@TankHunter678 : i'll still have to agree with daynen...true, non lethal combat (or jobs that don't Require shooting/killing something/someone) is something that u can get in a PnP RPG and not so much in a computer game. that said, if something along those lines could be added in a computer game it would add to the life of a sandbox game/world, even if the game IS primarily a shooter. though that would prolly require some form "adventure style multiple options" and i don't think most people would be ok with that (even though i prolly would ).

 

[TankHunter678]

The closest thing would be a bioware RPG where non-lethal takedowns are done in a cutscene rather then in actual combat and most of the gameplay takes place in a choose your response cutscene whenever you talk to anyone.

Wont change how all actual combat is deplete a HP bar though.

 

[Beemann]

No you misunderstand again.

Except that's literally what you said. If there's an issue here it's with how you're presenting information (read: as a false dichotomy)

My point is that with my option or with hybridization or class structures you still have a plethora of options to balance.

Hybridized roles doesn't necessarily equate to a plethora of options. It could mean as little as 2 classes with locked loadouts. Having 3 variants of whatever weapons you want to add to a game immediately and exponentially increases the number of options

That's not a false dichotomy, it's a completely true observation and logical conclusion. You change it to "no options or my way". Why?

Because you're ignoring the fact that there's a gradient of options between N and 0?

from your words I also understand you don't understand the idea.

Or it could be that you dont understand the ways in which your system is deficient

the system behind these archetypes and the execution of the archetypes is completely different from any available in other games.

Except it isn't, at all. A resistance/weakness system has been done countless times before now

And the point is that in solo fighting any loadout would average out at the same efficiency, since the enemy archetypes that you encounter on average would consist out of every single type of archetype in the game.

So they're confirmed pallette swaps of every enemy type?

Like we have Charger, Lobber and Diver, you're proposing that we have a Red, Green and Blue version of each, with the exact same behavior, but if you shoot a Red Charger with a Green weapon you do less damage?

That just sounds like an ultimately very boring and tedious system even for the small amount of work that has to go into it

In group fighting the goal would be that if any two players went for a "standard" loadout you would screw yourselves over, since it would be better to maximize the loadout choices you have.

So enemy A has enough resistances vs type C that type C users are "screwed over"? That doesn't sound like a not-tedious fight at all, especially since we're purely talking about effective hp bloat

And I take that hybridization a bit farther. The archetypes of healer, engineer etc could still exist as an overarching structure, but within that structure you have (almost) complete freedom in what you pick.

Not going to happen, given that the current stated plan is to have those as separate roles, unless I'm misunderstanding the statements made in the Q&A

Additionally, that requires a lot of planning w.r.t. loadouts, so that people can't just basically pick the "optimal" abilities from each set

Besides that, didn't you talk about one loadout being the best and that being a bad thing for the game?

The more player-driven you make loadouts, the more minmaxing will be important. Firefall's main problem was that balance was one of its weakest points, and a fairly large reason for that was the way in which they decided to structure their classes
Additionally, I'm not opposed to everyone having the same setup, so long as that's made clear from the start. If this game was open world Doom and everyone had the same weapon set, that would be fine. It's when you add in other options that are basically worthless that it becomes an issue

As I said, the average DPS for all of these weapons and abilities would be about the same

So why wouldnt I pick the longest range weapon if its DPS is equal anyway? Why wouldnt I take an AOE weapon if single target DPS is equal to a single-target weapon?

Well boo-hoo, as if more HP would be the only option available.

Your proposed solution was to make enemies take less damage. Higher effective health as a solution is the laziest and worst imaginable. I'm not going to argue against a system you haven't outlined

Besides that it wouldn't be "tedium as motivation". The average solo-fight would be designed around having to fight mobs that you are only partially strong against, thus allowing the difficulty (IE length of time you have to withstand the attacks) to rise and fall depending on how strong you are against them.

Your solo fights are the same fights that groups are going to come up against, so if you can deal with it well enough on your own, what are two people going to do? What are 4? 8? etc

enemies being able to activate certain special abilities when hit by weapons not designed against them as one example.

Then it depends on what those abilities do. Remember that people still have to fight enemies they're weak against, and will on a regular basis. When you move into the realm of utility and CC (because I'm assuming your solution isn't more health or damage with ability triggering) it becomes even harder to balance factors out, and you have to do this now for every enemy in the game

Finished in the next post

 

[Beemann]

Yes, because they don't have to build an engine from the ground up but will be using the Unreal engine, of which each iteration as far as I know was extremely solid when it came to being modable and offering 'basic' things like good hitboxes and netcode.

You're showing your lack of knowledge here, and clearly haven't played a lot of the lower budget Unreal Engine titles

I'm not saying in any way that I want the trinity system back.

Your solution was to have 3 damage types and 3 resistance types. Players would not be able to take all relevant types of armor or damage, thus having people who are strong in each of the 3 is needed for tough fights and maximum efficiency. How is that different from needing the output of 3 explicit classes?

Yes, the details. And those details can be completely different depending on what kind of balance you are trying to achieve. Exactly my point. Yet you somehow still try to pass it off as if you are the one making that observation and that I somehow missed that.

Except you were trying to pass off archetypes as a non-factor. The details of said archetypes (the abilities, stats etc) are inherently attached to those identities. You wouldn't have a healer role where no heals are present, so discussing those roles from a high level is a good way to determine what skillsets should be present and how the game might play out.

Firefall has had horizontal progression

Firefall didn't go purely horizontal. A properly tuned frame was always better than a basic one, and many of the variants were flat-out better than the base models. Try again

you can't min/max the loadouts.

How can you not minmax loadouts when you're allowing one single person to fulfill all available roles? Unless you didn't mean what you said prior.
Also weapons will still be min-max-able. You're selling your system on balance but not providing a good reason as to why that issue will be solved

And I never said they should raise the skill-ceiling. So what's this now, you've resorted to saying random things that have barely anything to do with my words to make people think you say something smart? read the damn things I'm saying instead of this crap.

So you were suggesting that the skill ceiling is lowered? What meaning am I supposed to extract from describing, what was, in your own words an enemy that was "impossible to handle" causing a "change" in the "skill ceiling"?

You are a massive hypocrite for making it look like my idea is somehow flawed because I used damage as one (balanceable and enjoyable) example how it could be done while your own idea's have to circumvent the same obstacles.

It's not hypocritical if I dont use HP bloat as a method of balance. Saying "oh but it will be balanced" isn't valid when you're ultimately adding more factors to balance. Suggesting that more of X is less of X is also not a valid method of avoiding criticism

There is a gray area when you have to balance for groups and individuals, and you instantly assume that my system is geared to tedium and pointlessness even though that doesn't have to be the case.

When your proposed idea was "add more effective health to make fights harder" then yes, there is no grey area. Feel free to move the goal posts as far as you need to though

In fact, with the same world and mechanics behind it but only the player's class and weapon system being what either you or I propose, my system would offer less tedium because you have more variety and change within each battle while it would still be easier to balance.

HP bloat = tedium. At the end of the day, at least 30% on average of any encounter will either be HP bloat, or a yet to be explained triggered ability system that a small dev team now has to balance. On the flip side, my suggestion worked in 1993 on a game made by less than 20 people, and has been replicated by smaller studios as recently as 2012 (arguments about quality aside)

Ofcourse the game would be better if enemy types and archetypes changed with every engagement instead of the player knowing in advance the exact amount and enemy type he's going to encounter. That's why I suggested it along with my system so that it would combat tedium and set roles for players.

Except there are trends over time, and all of this shit has to be built by someone, so unless your enemies are pallette swaps (lazy and boring) or are all equally present and equally easy/hard to kill, one enemy type will become the largest target and your weapon balance is shot to shit even more than it otherwise would be

Except that I've just suggested a way to prevent min/maxing without predefined loadouts. And the best thing is that it's applicable to any system without predefined loadouts.

Only you haven't explained, in a way that actually works, how it does so. You've just been getting angry

the fact that everyone should be a damage dealer means that there's much less variation or reason to pull other classes and thus it becomes tedious.

If you don't want to shoot things, why are you playing a shooter?[/QUOTE]

 

[Daynen]

Which if you notice in games... all non lethal takedowns still involve emptying a health bar.

Effectively the only reason why NPCs get a non-lethal takedown is quest protection. Otherwise they would be dead.

Specimen collector? Empty a health bar, it gets picked up for quest. Wildlife relocator? Empty the health bars of whatever tries to attack your quest escort target. Live bounty hunter? Empty health bar, target gets picked up for quest.

Notice the same thing? All of them are tied to a quest.

Further none of those are careers for players because they are jobs that we would do as mercenaries. As our Career is already Mercenary. We get paid to do work for people, and we pick up just about any job.

There is a reason why MMOs are pretty restricted in what they can do for non-combat things players can do. Typically its in the form of a crafting class, or gathering class that avoids all conflict to gather, or you play mini-games in an entertainment district.

But if we do not have crafting or gathering classes, what is there we can do? Besides playing mini-games in an entertainment district most anything else we do have to do is going to be combat related. Cause standing like an NPC waiting for people to show up so you can fix their vehicle is boring. Unless you got NPCs to provide a constant stream of broken vehicles. At which point it would still be boring, but also be a simulator game in and of itself that would divert game development away from the rest of the game and would only be interesting to a even more niche group of players.


You seem stuck on this notion that we should have these careers for players to pickwhen we already have one decided for us to give us the most flexible offerings at character creation.

This is not a second life where we get a job that we go do from 9 to 5 day in and day out.

It's clear our perspectives are colored by very different upbringings and very different game experiences. It feels like every point you present is based around the lifebar; I know that's a generalization, but it's just a general feeling. While I've been seeing the concept for years, I just don't feel like it has to be, nor SHOULD be the final answer in game design.

The fact that everything has a single, abstract health bar is, in my estimation, PART of the problem; that's what I'm getting at. When you reduce everything to a health bar, damage per second becomes the final word, both in game and in mind. Yet there are so many things that, logically and intuitive, are NOT just a numbered bar. The only way we can interact with the world is by depleting all the lifebars, even when it seems there are things that deserve higher interaction. THIS is the fundamental puzzle/problem/limitation I'm trying to get people to re-examine; so many games manage to make more adventurous and exciting worlds with so few, if any, lifebars, yet by and large, the MMO genre seems trapped by them. It's very vexing for a veteran gamer who looks around and sees so much stagnation in the industry...

You're not off the mark when you say mercs can already do any job, but that actually reinforces my point, rather than refuting it. We CAN do any job; so why are all the jobs about reducing a lifebar to zero?

 

[TankHunter678]

Because if there are no life bars (even if they are hidden) it's not a shooter, nor an RPG (because even pen and paper RPGs have enemies that you kill have a finite number defined HP value outside of plot/quest events), nor an MMO. It's a point and click adventure puzzle, or something like a virtual novel where you click on an option and the scripted event continues.

In effect the removal of something like lifebars results in the game being an entirely different genre. It also renders the game less dynamic in terms of pacing for a shooter. No one wants to enter a cutscene every time they point their gun at someone and have to go through a lengthy text segment where they decide their fate, or whether they aim for a non-lethal takedown, or decide not to shoot them.

Especially not in a game that has declared shooter first.

Now why are all our jobs about reducing a lifebar to zero? Because if the jobs did not have a threat to them the NPC would do it themselves and we would be out of a job.

This is why in an MMO you are never given desk work. You are never given the task of showing up at work at 9 AM where you sit in the same spot till 5 PM filling out paperwork. Because it is boring day to day stuff like that which we play video games to escape from.

There are some parts of a genre that are so integral to its function that they cannot be removed without breaking the genre at its core.

 

[Demigan]

Except that's literally what you said. If there's an issue here it's with how you're presenting information (read: as a false dichotomy)

No, it's literally what you understood, but it isn't how it is.

Besides that, I already explained that both your system and mine could be used with either a lot of options or with barely any options. That's why my dichotomy (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dichotomy) where I create a universal set of all class/loadout choices and then put the one's without any options to pick in one subset, and the one's with options to pick consist the rest of the set.
Ergo: This "false" dichotomy is just a dichotomy that shows how it could be. My idea could be done with just 2 options to pick from. Just like your idea could be done with just 2 options to pick from. Also do you even know what a dichotomy is? If my idea is a "false" dichotomy because there are more categories according to you (no options, few options, plethora of options) then you are the one who made a false dichotomy by using my idea. It means that you are the one who actively created a false idea to make me look bad just by creating a 3rd set in a dichotomy (which removes it from being a dichotomy).
This is what I'm constantly fighting about you. You are making stuff up, then blaming me for what you made up.

And let's not forget that I already proposed a system to prevent min/maxing. I already explained it once so just read that again till you understand.

I think I can skip the rest of your two posts now, you've proven to be completely living in your own world. Unless you stop what you are doing, there's no point in "argueing" for want of a better word.

Hybridized roles doesn't necessarily equate to a plethora of options. It could mean as little as 2 classes with locked loadouts. Having 3 variants of whatever weapons you want to add to a game immediately and exponentially increases the number of options

Yep, I can skip it all. I've only mentioned this possibility 3 times by now, as well as the fact that my idea could work the exact same.

 

[Demigan]

It's a little amusing, and a little sad that this argument has gone on between the few of you this long, when the answer to ALL your issues lies in NONE of your proposals...

I said it before: the world needs to demand functions and activities of the player beyond emptying a lifebar if we hope to move beyond the stale old trinity. By 'the world' I don't just mean 'the enemies' either. That's part of the original 'box thinking' I warned against a couple pages back. We (including devs) need to look at the world as more than a multi-tiered floor for firefights to happen. What you guys are debating is ultimately the means by which we do damage to enemies and vice versa--that's really all it boils down to, guys. You're all arguing complexity, not depth. Many ways to accomplish the same end. We'll have plenty of means, no matter the shape of the game; what we need is more ends.

I think we might be discussing different things? How these classes fight against their opponents and how their playstyle changes depending on the mixture of enemies left can offer a lot of depth. Also, does having such a system exclude interactions with the rest of the world? I don't think so.

But I would like to hear, how would you use classes and their activities to continue through the world? Class X gathers some types of resources, class Y builds stuff with it and class Z uses it?

Take a step back--a BIG step back for a second. If the only goal in the game is making sure all enemies are dead, everything else becomes incidental; when that happens, DPS becomes the name of the game and finding a build that maintains high DPS against the highest number of enemy types becomes the only race that matters. Once that race is won, it doesn't matter WHAT class/classless system we have; the game is reduced to tedium either way because it is solved. In the dozens of varying "role" systems of all the games I've played over the years, it always ends the same way. The road looks a little different from the start, but when you look back from the end, it turns out it was all the same, yet again. Has no one else perceived this? Why does this keep happening?

Well, you could give penalties for the highest DPS loadouts to even the odds, or just let balancing take it's course and balance all these loadouts against each other by slowly nerfing the OP weapons and/or buffing the UP weapons till they equalize.

But I think you might be aiming for something like closed-room games. People have different focusses, and each player in a closed room can easily be categorized by the way they try to solve the closed room. The players that find the clue's, the players that put the right clue's together and the players that solve the clue's. This could be an over-arching semi-puzzle structure you apply to the world in general. Players have to scout, communicate what they've found (if they are with more), collect and assemble the clue's, solve the clue's and continue on... all the while beset upon by the enemies (it's still a shooter at heart). The fact that you are set upon by enemies puts pressure on the players but also allows the puzzles to be engaging without being too difficult for everyone to solve.
The overarching storyline could perhaps be a puzzle that has to be solved by everyone in the game. Where different quests and secrets can be combined together into one giant clue that takes perhaps years to solve. Problem ofcourse is that once that's known the developers need to throw the next puzzle in, and that might be a bit too much to ask of them.

It's simple: because "kill them faster than they kill us" is 99% of every MMO's objectives. Everything--EVERYTHING--in these games revolves around the same victory condition: their HP is zero and yours is not. You wanna talk about binary, there's your cuplrit, right there. Call out all the "hit E to interact" things you want; in the end it's all rooty-tooty-point-n'-shooty. Again, I know it's called a "shooter" game, but purposely limiting it to JUST shooting things, even just on this level of discussion is doing it and ourselves a disservice.

I really thought we were just discussing the rooty-tooty-point-n'-shooty part of the class/loadout/whatever system, and that the rest of the game can be discussed elsewhere.

I liked repairing thumpers. I liked LGV races. I liked glider courses. I liked stealth missions (bugs and silliness notwithstanding.) I liked recovering stuff and racing to get it out of a cave. I relished the chance to do something in FF BESIDES just shooting another few dozen targets. Shooting things is our first and last answer to everything, sure, but if we have more diverse situations and challenges where shooting is an OPTION and not THE ONE AND ONLY GOAL, something magical happens...we start finding uses for more classes and player options. We start building characters to move, investigate, discover, repair, analyze, hunt, build, transport and change things for others. We start to have fun in ways we didn't expect. We grow from "a shooter MMO" which, let's face it, is a label which does not inspire THAT much optimism anymore, into "an awesome sci-fi game where you do all sorts of cool stuff with jetpacks and guns and gliders and big mining robots and stuff" that just happens to have things to shoot.

Yet everything you named is separate from the class system isn't it? The name of this discussion might be theorycrafting MMO-roles, but the focus from the first page is the class-roles and how to create depth for the combat system.

But let's say we incorporate it. You could give each class access to a weapon/ability/armor for stealth, one for repairing things, one for racing across the countryside (on foot, in vehicles or flying doesn't matter), one for recovering and/or protecting stuff etc etc.
The question that then remains is, how to deal with situations that your loadout isn't suited for? What if you have the biggest, loudest and most magnificent light-show of a loadout in your hands when you get tossed into a stealth mission?
Maybe put in multiple modes. You can swap modes to "stealth", which changes your weapon/ability/armor properties to be more suited to stealth. It can still be difficult to go at a stealth mission because your loadout still carries the biggest and loudest gun and it's power is dialed down to be used properly, but it would be possible. Other loadouts designed for stealth would have a lower DPS to begin with, but would lose practically nothing when going into stealth mode.

Once you have a world like that, a "role" becomes a "career choice." Your combat prowess becomes just a part of a bigger, more adventurous, and much more involved picture. Does the term "DPS" conjure images of excitement and adventure for you? No? How about something more tangible, like a long-range mineral prospector, a hot zone transport pilot, a sustained siege engineer, a pest control specialist, a professional bodyguard, an infiltration expert, a hazard zone salvager, or an expert aircraft mechanic? If THOSE don't conjure up mental imagery, then we've identified part of the problem on an individual level.

It's a horizontal progression tree anyway, so DPS could (should?) be just a small modifier to the overall gameplay.
It wouldn't be too difficult to create scenario's where DPS becomes relatively meaningless. For instance by throwing unlimited enemies at you and ramping up the amount of enemies quickly to swamp the players, forcing them to run away ASAP and having a soft timer based on how long they can survive against the overwhelming odds while they flee. This is where both stealth (let's put a distraction here and while the mobs are moving there we circle around unseen here) and speed become more important than DPS. In the meantime you might be required to find specific items and bring them home. The best would be if the items you need are spread apart and change positions randomly. You might have some beeping mechanic to indicate you are near one, but that's it. Make sure it's tough enough that you will rarely bring all items home but rewarding enough that bringing only a part of the items home and it's already a good system.
All I'm thinking about is the Melding Tornado. Inside I raced the clock while I tried to get as high as possible, climbing on top of a mega-shard at the top whenever I could.

Note that ALL of these "careers" can and likely WILL still involve copious amounts of jump jets and shooting things.

Start with more diverse kinds of environments and more necessary functions for players and the build options will start to take care of themselves. If we want the trinity to evolve or go away, then the type of world that spawned it needs to make the same choice. Otherwise, we will forever be stuck with it.

I don't think they are mutually exclusive, but I would like to see a separate thread with all the idea's to create a larger, more engaging world.

 

[Beemann]

No, it's literally what you understood, but it isn't how it is.

No, it's literally what you said prior. Then you corrected yourself, but insisted that your correction was your initial statement. That's not on me at all

Besides that, I already explained that both your system and mine could be used with either a lot of options or with barely any options.

Except unless you're having very few abilities or weapons, that's not really true unless you're pallette swapping, which is ultimately a lazy as hell method of padding content

If my idea is a "false" dichotomy because there are more categories according to you (no options, few options, plethora of options)

You're now attributing your own words and terms to me, as if I was the one who put them out there

And let's not forget that I already proposed a system to prevent min/maxing. I already explained it once so just read that again till you understand.

Except you never explained how it would actually do so, you just insisted that it wouldn't need to be balanced for archetypes but failed to explain how it wouldn't need to be balanced for every conceivable loadout combination. Apparently if you have 3 equal sets of things, those sets are internally consistent by fundamental law of reality. Your system, as explained so far, is not a solution to minmaxing, it is a red herring

I think I can skip the rest of your two posts now, you've proven to be completely living in your own world. Unless you stop what you are doing, there's no point in "argueing" for want of a better word.

You mean the bits where I ask you to back your assertions? How convenient that you should become "fed up" before actually having to defend your position properly

 

[Wintersiege]

Does anyone else simply skip Beemann's replies due to how he does them?