MMO worlds broken? Nay I say!

Came across an interesting article about how someone thinks that the MMO worlds are "broken". This goes back to January, so, yes you self-appointed forum cops, I know it's not "breaking news". But my article in RETORT to that IS new, so take that and stick it someplace where the Rikti dare not 'port.

This is the original article...
http://fidgit.com/archives/2009/01/f...are_broken.php

And THIS is my retort, using CoX images of course, AND CoX experiences...
http://d2brutallytech.blogspot.com/2...en-really.html

You make some very interesting points. I do wish that an MMO would implement changes like real time world damage and rebuilding efforts, teaming with signature characters more, and more RL stats on attacks. Mostly accuracy, because yeah, if my enemy is immobilized or stunned, I should be able to clock him if I wanna.

And what about that enemy whose defense is not based on dodging? My Energy Aura Brute doesn't need to move a muscle for his energy field to send your punch far afield. That being said, I concur that a bit more rationality inherent in the game world would be nice, even if extraordinarily complex.

From the response article:

Defence and how it's implemented in City of Heroes is probably one of the few remaining griefs I have with the game as a whole. It's a convention, yes, but it's also an amalgam of two things that have NO BUSINESS being combined into the same mechanic - avoidance and deflection. It's like putting soup and diesel in the same bowl. They may both be liquids, but that doesn't mean they're pretty much the same thing.

Avoidance and deflection are linked together by one thing and one thing only - the fact that both manage to avoid damage entirely. That, however, is where the similarities end. Most prominently, defeating avoidance is entirely DIFFERENT from defeating deflection. To defeat avoidance, you must aim better and hit faster so as to actually hit the character you're aiming for. Deflection, on the other hand, is based around shields or armour, and defeating deflection is a matter of piercing armour or shields. Now, a game which had that as a concept would have armour-piercing or shield-piercing weapons and powers, or even weapons and powers which can break armour or shut down shields. The latter extravagance notwithstanding, defeating deflection is still a matter much less about being accurate as it is about hitting with concentrated force.

I've seen arguments about why being accurate could help you punch through a forcefield, why it can help you strike through stone armour, or why it can help you harm an invincible man. I've even made arguments to the same effect, and even so I can say most of them are nonsense. They rely on an after-the-fact justification of the system and conveniently ignore that having rocks encasing your body can be defeated not just by shooting the right spot, but also by plain and simple using high-powered, armour-piercing rounds. There is simply no system meant to handle this in the game, and I think it's a pity.

With all of the above in mind, it's really bad form to try and strip defence from characters when immobilized, held, unaware or what have you. You may be able to prevent them from dodging, but a character surrounded in an omnidirectional bubble forcefield isn't going to be any less hard to hit then than he would be normally. Unless we develop a brand new system for handling deflection separate from avoidance, that really will never work.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

When you allow the player to function as author and editor as well as player of the character, you are going to run into these kinds of questions.

But that also allows you to put the responsibility onto the player of explaining why their omnidirectional force field can be circumvented by a well-aimed punch.

One of my similar nitpicks has always been the way that various forms of 'held' are lumped together: "I shut down your mind, so your toggles drop." "That doesn't make my Kryptonian skin any softer!" "Does too!"

A game that doesn't have moving hair is certainly damaged, but not actually broken, I think.

It was a +1 Baldr's Blessing Shirt, obviously. Shoulda used a mistle-toe arrow or something instead.

You mean that if im immobile you can 100% hit me? Is it my legs that are immobile because im pretty sure i can duck and weave standing still

Anyway more real world stats are always good, i love playing RPG games where you can contribute different "points" to different attributes becoming truely unique in that situation.

Yeah, but in Rolemaster, if you rolled a 66, you usually chopped a guy's head right off. Srs Bsns.

Sometimes, even with a baseball bat. You think I kid.

I still remember my all time favorite RPG critical hit word for word.
It hails from Arduin Grimoire, a game I haven't played in probably 25 years.

00: Head pulped and splattered about a wide area- instant and irrevocable death.

Heck. I'll take a swing at this.

Subscription Fees
Pay a subscription for an on-going game or pay for a game that has a limited life expectancy.
In CoH you not only play for the longevity of the game, but also for improvements to the game system. Some other games make you pay more for these "expansions"; you know those things we call "issues" that we get for free.
If you pay for a game that has no subscription fee, you may bet updates for bugs, but it is highly unlikely that you will get any additional content during the length of the game. Instead, get ready to pay for "Game-with-no-subscription-fee 2".


Agro
Are you kidding me?
What game doesn't have enemies attack you when they see you?
Is it some how not obvious that people that see you will attack you?
Of course, you are going to try to avoid them if you can.
Hide-and-go seek is all about Agro. If you aren't "it", you know what agro is like once "it" see you.

As far as agro and group dynamics go...
It makes obvious sense from a PC point of view to go after the most dangerous target first. Why go after the heavily armored Tank if you can take down the blaster quickly?
Strategically, there is no reason not to do so.
Obviously, when I'm battling the enemy I take down the most powerful attackers and the support units (buffers, debuffers, healers, etc.) first.
Why don't the enemies do this?
Obviously, this is a literary license that extends into the world of gaming.
It's about the "role" playing.
Some people just want to be a big hulking Tank, but the point of a Tank/Brick, etc. in a game is to defend the weaker team mates. And this is one reason that this kind of character is given more armor/resistance/survivability than the other character classes in a game.
By-and-large, outside of a Taunt, the character that does the most damage is the one that pulls the agro. We all know that characters that do AoE damage tend to draw a lot of agro. So really, it's just the matter of a Tank using Taunt that will really make the difference in drawing agro away form other characters (Gauntlet/punch-provoke is minor when compared to Taunt).
Wthout the Tank (and the related mechanics), the enemies would behave in a more "rational" manner. So I guess the solution to this agro issue (I don't think there is one) appears to be getting rid of Tanks and presence attacks. There is no reason to give Tanks extra armor if they aren't defending anyone; if they aren't defending the team then they are just highly-armor scrappers.

Button Lock
In most MMORPGs, you are going to have to wait for your powers to recharge. This is a mechanic in place so that all players are restricted to the same playing field even though they are playing on vastly different computer systems and internet connections.
Regardless of how fast your computer is, your powers recharge in the same amount of time as mine do if I have a slower connection.
This is a good thing for play balance. It is a negative for the rich and uber tech'd.
Just because you can mash a button faster or your auto-fire switch is triggering your attack every 10th of a second doesn't mean that your character really should be able to attack that quickly.
PC gamers are playing on all kinds of different computers and over connections of varying speeds. While playing the delay seems minimal in most cases, but there is delay from when you hit a button to when the power goes off in the game, to when the enemy (Pve or PvP) takes the damage from the attack.
I feel that the current recharging-time for powers is a good idea for play balance in order to allow for a larger player base.

Static Worlds
I once hear of a virtual world where the world was created to work like the real world. Resources grew and the players needed to use these resources in order to create what they needed in order to survive in the game. The world was quickly deforested and there was no new growth of trees since all the trees had been destroyed.
I hate to quote the Statesman, but - I think it was him - he said something like - if we made the City destructible, there probably wouldn't be anything standing after an hour or two.
There are two main problems with destructible environments; keeping track of what is destroyed and leaving an environment for players to game in.
Any of us that have played in the City over the years know that the City is not static, the world does change.
Each Issue bring with it changes to the world. But this is all DEV based change.
Player based change is more subtle. You may not think that you are having a lasting effect on game play by triggering Rikti invasions or a Zombie Apocalypse, but you are. You see, it has an effect on the most fluid part of the whole MMORPG - the players. When you bring a character into the game you are changing the world, you change who other players can interact with (you weren't there before you logged in, and neither were they). When you trigger an event to happen, you are causing something to happen that other players can participate in that wouldn't have happened otherwise. Of course, many characters will get xp from these events and having characters progress in levels definitely changes their impact up on the world.
The World may seem static, but that is because it is the rock that the ocean of players washes over. And if the DEVs are good enough, they are watching the trends of player behavior and are molding the advances in the World based on player behavior.
I'm not even going to go into markets and how fluid they are - but, there again, the players are making the majority of the change happen.
I'm not going to argue that some more mutable aspects to the environment would be cool (I don't see a huge rush to the villain side here in order to run mayhem missions, so maybe it isn't as a popular of an idea as some would think). It would make checking out another server a whole different experience as each one would be different based on the characters actions on each server. But then it already is like that to some extent because the volume and type of players on each server gives each their own flavor.

You can't play with the people you want to play with
Obviously, this is no longer a problem for the many in CoH.
For me, it was never much of a problem in the first place. The old sk'ing system is more than most games have. And, if someone really wanted to game with me, we could always bring in some new characters.
I certainly don't have a problem logging into the same server as my friends. I know that can be a problem on some other games.
In game with wide reaching levels and no sk'ing system, it is always really a matter or the higher level characters not wanting to "slum it" with the lower level characters, and there is always sense that it really isn't worth the effort to drag along lower level characters into higher-level adventures because they would be defeated too easily (even while making their way slowly at their low-level speed toward the mission). Or maybe, it was just a matter of it wasn't worth the hassle to figure out a way to play with "the people you want to play with"...or maybe they weren't really "the people you want to play with" or you weren't "the person they wanted to play with" in the first place.
CoH has solved the mechanics problem. Now it really is a matter of who you do or don't want to game with on whatever basis you choose.