I read one article(Cannot remember which) where people were concerned of the way CoX played, in that you had to hit the button respective to the power when it was available in a chain. I was wondering, if we could have it so say, a series of single target attacks, the "chain" could be tied to one button, with the highest damaging attacks being launched first in combo's(or highest damage/second attacks based on animations), with some variety in animations but enough we could tell. Or perhaps make it a combo-like system, we could have fewer buttons to launch more attacks, just balance it in a way that it wasn't a twitch-fest and was still fluid? What are your thoughts? Would we want to be more fighting-game like, somewhat, or more classic CoX where we manually hit each button for an attack? I don't think this would detract from strategy, since AoE debuffs/crowd control and the like would still be tied to buttons, but at the same time I wouldn't want the game to become a rock/paper/scissors system like DCUO.
I realized something today(5/8/2014) that many MMORPG players, are not like us who enjoyed CoX. They enjoy repetitiveness and predictability, rather then unpredictability. We on the other hand enjoy unpredictability and variety.
City of Heroes, Star Trek Online and to my knowledge Champions Online are all games running (or ran) on a common game engine first created by Cryptic Studios and used for City of Heroes. One of the major concerns that Cryptic Studios had, and still has, for their macro and keybinding system is that a single command (or keystroke) should not be enabled to activate multiple abilities or powers. Turning powers and/or abilities OFF is not a problem, so multiple deactivations can be made through a single keystroke, but turning things ON is restricted to one activation per keystroke no matter how many activations are written into any macro or keybind.
The reason for imposing this limitation is relatively simple and straightforward ... it is meant to combat automation and 'bots favored by gold farmers (and power levelers too).
Any time you enable multiple activations per keystroke, effectively creating activation chains, you hand a powerful tool over to Players who seek to earn the greatest reward for the least amount of effort ... and that tool is effectively a way to Automate the way(s) in which their character is played. This then potentially leads to the ability to reduce gameplay to mere scripts, which then makes it easier to control a character through pure automation, in which a client-side AI plays the game on behalf of the Player, creating an automated Farmer ... a 'bot.
Widespread use of 'bots is the hallmark of a game that is being farmed, and is substantially a phenomenon that became widespread in Diablo II over a decade ago, and I'd be surprised if it doesn't persist today in Diablo III, since the Diablo series has always been something of a Prime Target for 'bots and gold farmers. World of Warcraft inherited this legacy in which 'bots and gold farmers proliferated, to the point where it is now a stereotype that a substantial number of the gold farmers are really just Chinese (or at least outsource a lot of the "work" to chinese "players"). Hence the derogatory epithet "Chinese Gold Farmer" used across a wide swath of online gaming.
Another aspect is that City of Heroes gameplay was already [i]pretty easy[/i] by game industry standards, and offering Players [i]yet another way to AVOID PLAYING THE GAME[/i] was deemed by Cryptic (and later Paragon Studios) as a wise choice, since the One Keystroke Equals One Activation Rule effectively enforces a minimum level of gameplay interactivity from the Player, and that this behavior is considered desirable, since the alternative points in a direction that leads towards [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progress_Quest]Progress Quest[/url] and the not so hypothetical Zero Player Game where every activity and action in the game can be automated and run via a client-side program on behalf of the Player. Limiting the "power" of automation in this way is therefore seen as advantageous because it makes the task of creating a "script kiddie" solution to playing the game a challenge that often becomes more trouble than it is worth.
I agree with Cryptic's reasoning with regards to being able to chain activations of powers and abilities (ie. it's a bad idea to allow this), and begin with the default assumption that City of Titans will be quite motivated to "honor" this particular precedent in its spiritual ancestor.
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[i]Verbogeny is one of many pleasurettes afforded a creatific thinkerizer.[/i][/center]
Hmmm, your right on that one. Perhaps then I'd have to think about it more, since yeah, botting is a big problem in games. Disregard the idea then, I shoulda thought about bots and I didn't even think of that.
I realized something today(5/8/2014) that many MMORPG players, are not like us who enjoyed CoX. They enjoy repetitiveness and predictability, rather then unpredictability. We on the other hand enjoy unpredictability and variety.
Only time i would want/expect the use of Bot's is if i was a Mastermind and i wanted to EXPLICITLY have control over the Pets Attack chain, so my pets beat your pets habbits and live long'er and prosper. (*does spock fingers thing*) ;D
Technically, its not so much a BOT, but more of a Mechanic for Pets AI. :) So you still need to run to the next group before the pets AI will take over. Its a BOT, but the sucess of your pets relies soley on the Suggestions you made for your Pets AI to consider in a battle.
Ex:
- if... Pets HP < 10%
then... Fallback near Mastermind
Ex:
- if... Pets are using ranged "Attack Chain 1" (dropdown listing if chain attacks you setup beforehand)
then... Pets stay out of melee range
etc...
All of these things could be chosen from a full list of conditions the pets can conform to.
Keep it simple at 1st (4 Most Common Actions for Pets to take in those 4 situations),
and in 10 years.. have a Full Nodes based graphically editable Pets AI Editor. ;)
4 Most common now, since it would allow MWM to work on all the other content, and... it will also engage players later on, new to the game, to want more and make suggestions, which would be added when time allowed, and keeping those new players hooked, growing the player base by allowing player suggestions to improve the game, making them feel Connected!
IMHO, it would be neat if this game had enough random, unpredictable stuff that you wouldn't [i]want[/i] to automate a chain because that would put your character at significant risk.
Attack chains make me fall asleep playing the game anyway. Boring!
[i]Has anyone seen my mind? It was right here...[/i]
I prefer action games to repeating sequences verbatim
In action games, your base attacks get used frequently, even spammed sometimes, but you dont have the.... luxury of running through the same static attack chain in every encounter.
I don't like anything more than a three hit chain.... a "one-two" and a hook or cross or even haymaker... whether we're talking about actual punches or not.
my ideal would be all combat sets fall into either a "1-2" + "strike" type simple chain.... or a "spam 1" + "strike-finisher".... or a "slow 1-2"....
I often view games in relation to fighting game archtypes.. with rush characters and heavy characters and charge characters....
long chains in COX irked me..... I didn't like having so many powers in the first place, and I hate micromanaging timing games.
getting a "bot to do it" doesnt solve the problem, it just puts a band-aid on a bullet wound, imo.
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[i]....Fly me to the moon and let me play among the stars...[/i]
TERA managed to accomplish this quite successfully. I've seen guides for classes (done on youtube) come right out and baldly state "don't bother trying to build an attack chain" simply because the combat in TERA is so ... fluid ... that anything as predictable as an attack chain quickly runs into that age old problem known for centuries ... that battle plans do not survive first contact with the enemy.
Having played all 8 classes in TERA up into the low 30s, I can categorically state that the proactive/reactive way that combat "works" in TERA does manage to make anything approximating an attack chain (that just gets endlessly cycled) something of an obsolete concept inside of TERA. That said, there most definitely ARE combinations of 1-2 uses of powers, and indeed the game very deliberately supports the use of such combos with programming native to the client.
My only point here is that it [b]is possible[/b] to create a gameplay experience where what happens during combat is [i]unpredictable enough[/i] that relying on a pure Wash, Rinse, Repeat style of attack chain can result in a sub-optimal performance. Actually managing to pull that off, however, falls under the category of Really Good Trick™ simply because of the sheer number of factors that need to be juggled (successfully!) in order pull off such an elegant bit of gameplay. But the first ingredient you need to even start this entire conga line is for combat situations to have enough "random, unpredictable stuff" happening in them that automating an attack chain is not only more trouble than it's worth, but also not the best option for playing the game.
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[i]Verbogeny is one of many pleasurettes afforded a creatific thinkerizer.[/i][/center]
To play devils advocate here, I really enjoyed having as many tools (powers)in the tray as possible. But this may have something to do with the way I set my trays up. I generally had ST attacks set 1-4ish on tray one aoes 1-4ish tray two and moved them so they were in order of preference strongest to weakest. I did not bother with attack chains normalyy but simply hit whatever was my strongest currently recharged attack(ST or AOE depending on situation). The only real exception was when I fully kitted my fire/ss tank and started trying to solo all the AVs and pylons. There attack chains mattered much more than teaming or running content.
-joe
Repeat Offender
Tank Addict
Homeless.
Only time I wanted this type of 1 button/icon = multiple powers is turning on my Defensive powers on my Tanks/Brutes:
Example: Shield Defense Tank
- Deflection
- Battle Agility
- Active Defense (even though its a Click)
- Against All Odds
- Grant Cover
- Tough
- Weave
- Combat Jumping
- Other (ie: Leadership Pool powers)?
Allow me to turn all non-foe affecting powers on at once please - I dont see this allowing me to Farm :)
Basically a Macro key where I get to list the powers I want included.
The Phoenix Rising Initiative Rules Lawyer
a preset "all toggles" button would be interesting :P
and Joe, I totally get people wanting lots of tools, it just never appealed to me.... and I've always pushed for and supported any means of supporting both (particularly specialization vs. diversification arguments)
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[i]....Fly me to the moon and let me play among the stars...[/i]
City of Heroes couldn't do a "turn on all Self Targeting Buff Toggles" one click solution button simply because attempting to do that would produce a "collision" of necessary animations that either needed to play simultaneously (imagine the visual mess THAT would make!) or would need to play in series according to some pre-scripted scheduling that would almost certainly have to require something like a Tray 0, Slots 0-9 then Tray 1, Slots 0-9, then Tray 2, Slots 0-9 kind of organizational structure which then brings its own burdens in terms of forcing Players to organize their Powers in specific ways in their Trays so as to get them to activate in the "correct" sequence when pushing The Big Red Button to cue them all up ... and oh, by the way, once that is cued, there isn't any abort button in case you get "caught" mid-buff routine of toggling on all those Powers ... and ...
In other words, it's something that SOUNDS great, but only IS great when tested under "laboratory conditions" where nothing can ever go wrong or confront the Player with a dynamic situation. It's just yet another case of asking the game to "play itself for you" isn't necessarily as wise of an outcome as it might at first appear, even if it definitely has some "labor saving" features to it.
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[i]Verbogeny is one of many pleasurettes afforded a creatific thinkerizer.[/i][/center]
Actually, Cryptic built a brand new engine after CoH/V and that is what runs CO, STO, and NWN.
When Paragon Studios separated from Cryptic and perpetually licensed the CoH, they started hacking the code mercilessly into a franken-engine unlike anything else that exists. The old Cryptic engine could not do four legged rigs, but Paragon engineers hacked on code to make it happen. Everything we were ever told couldn't happen but did was because they later hacked the engine to make it happen. So, yes, technically, they should have said, "We can't do that without hacking the engine"
Former Online Community Manager & Forum Moderator
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Well that explains where a lot of the spaghetti code came from...
I remember when Star Wars was cool...a long, long time ago...
Holy Hell. It's a miracle anything worked.
And NC threw that miracle away.
[i]* fumes.[/i]
[i]Has anyone seen my mind? It was right here...[/i]
A lot of it was spaghetti to begin with, rendering the post-Cryptic devs afraid to touch it for fear of breaking the whole thing. What they managed to pull off was really pretty amazing if you think about it. They took an engine that was basically patched together to begin with, that none of them had direct involvement in writing in the first place, and managed to hack it more to come up with some amazing effects and do things it was never meant to do.
How would people feel about RIFT style macros. Basically you list a load of powers, and it executes the first one that's not on cooldown. One activation per press, but not necessarily the same power.
[color=#ff0000]Tech Team and Forum Moderator[/color]
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This is substantially similar to what City of Heroes did (although the specifics of how to script might be different). You could put multiple functions into a single keybind or macro, but only one would be executed out of the list if executing Powers and it worked on a reverse order precedent (ie. the last shall be first). So this sort of thing would certainly be in keeping with the precedent set by City of Heroes.
/em thumbs up
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[i]Verbogeny is one of many pleasurettes afforded a creatific thinkerizer.[/i][/center]
I have no problem with that setup. Personal preference between how various MMO's setups is of course, to be considered.
This also ties into addons as well (to a greater or lesser degree)
Actually how I did things in WoW, multiple macros for my DK. A setup to get diseases on, a tank to spam blood boil and get all the aggro (also had Death and Decay in it.. MOAR AGGRO!), Blood Strike spam followed by enough rune strikes to empty the runic bar.. the rest were all flavor ones that were there because I found it funny/awesome.. like Army of the Dead causing me to shout one of the Headless Horseman's quotes when it's cast (and the SFX played on my client ;D)
Unless you mean something like PW's where you set a certain number of abilities to a button and it does them in order, skipping any that are on cooldown.
[B]Revenge is motivation enough. At least it's honest...[/B]
Roleplayer; Esteemed Villain
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I don't think the writers will be responsible for combat kitting NPCs and balancing combat.
And that is probably a VERY GOOD thing.
That said, in my current ideas and write ups for NPCs, I am making an effort to ensure that they are understandable and non-random, yet not boring. If I have my way, you will be able to use situations and information from your own brain against even-level foes to your advantage. These foes will also have logical and somewhat synergistic abilities you will need to look out for.
But take this with a grain of salt: we are months away from programming or testing any of the stuff in my head, even if it makes it that far.
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IANAL, IMHO, WYSIWYG, YMMV, IIRC, AFAIK, ETC
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