Raids/Groups: Lifeforce Merging...bizzare, but possible?

[aw3s0me]

take battlefield2, and the medics out and make it knife only with some bows i guess, change the artillary to catapaults, change the tanks into those armored boars, jeeps into horses, and helicopters to flying dragons.

could work though. but id prefer bf2 cause its so damn intense already.

EDIT: not a flame or anything .. i think its a good idea. but if you want fast action just go FPS.

[kaid]

Frankly I wish more MMOG went Cith of heros route with the healing/defense mechanic.

Coh is still the only MMOG I have played that you can group at the very high end vs really nasty creatures and not really care if you have a healer or not. The different defense power types are VERY good and very diverse. I never see a lack of buffers/debuffers in COH cause they are fun to play.

[Etadanik]

Abalieno ...

It's not difficult to convert MMORPGs into MMOFPSs from a design perspective (though making melee combat "fun" could be a challenge). But three issues arise:

1. Latency - desync is already a huge problem in WoW; imagine how bad server-client desync would be if the system had to manually calculate whether you hit someone based on that person's position and your swing arc. You'd literally be swinging at air with even a small bit of lag. Forget elves dancing around ogres. Everyone would be dancing around everyone else hoping they'd hit someone by sheer chance.

2. PvE... Making mob AI under this circumstance is nigh impossible unless you allow mobs to "cheat."

3. Twitch gameplay - do you really want it in a MMORPG? Remember that part of a MMORPG's mass appeal is its relative absence of need for "l33t" skills. Judging by the player base of most FPS's, I'd guess that many people play MMORPGs to try and get away from being headshotted every ten seconds by I_0WNRXU352. You'd be developing a game where people could be what they want to be... But actually can't in actual combat b/c they lack the action-gaming skills.

Of course, if the game is pure PvP as you suggest and you find a way to somehow circumvent the desync issue in a massive multiplayer environment, I can see MMO-Action games arise as a entirely different genre of MMOs that would have its own, action-loving fanbase. But it won't be a step towards "next gen" MMORPGs, just as despite the popularity of FPS games, RPGs like the FF series and whatnot remain popular. The first step towards your vision, I'd say, would be an actual MP Fantasy/Medieval Action-Game, perhaps akin to what the Offset Engine is being used for. Given the success of such a game, MMOs would then be within reach (though the desync issue is always going to be a pain in the butt for anyone trying to make a MMO based on twitch gameplay).

[Zhaun's_Shade]

Originally Posted by Abalieno

How's that? Would it be... "fun"?

Maybe. But it wouldn't be an MMORPG. I find a lot of people who play MMORPGs have no interest in twitch gameplay. This niche gameplay style you're describing could draw some action-junkies to it, but you have a good chance of loosing a bunch of the core MMORPG crowd.

[Abalieno]

I absolutely know it isn't anything possible.

The purpose was to continue the discussion:
- Is the interface needed as an aid for the players or to comply to some technical limitations?

That's the point. We were discussing about finding a way to remove the UI-intensive gameplay (like the one of an healer, staring at bars all the time) and I painted an extreem but "possible" scenario where we finally we could get rid of interfaces COMPLETELY. I just wanted to demonstrate that it is possible.

So what I wrote is not something that I would start to work right now. It was not intended as a realistic project. It was just a direction to aim for. The destination.

That said, there are parts of the idea that could be already possible.

Originally Posted by Etadanik

1. Latency - desync is already a huge problem in WoW; imagine how bad server-client desync would be if the system had to manually calculate whether you hit someone based on that person's position and your swing arc. You'd literally be swinging at air with even a small bit of lag. Forget elves dancing around ogres. Everyone would be dancing around everyone else hoping they'd hit someone by sheer chance.

Yes, this is a problem. But every game already calculates arcs and distance from the target. The system I described would be possible only if tweaked on certain aspects, but not completely absurd. If you think about it only the melee aspect is unlikely, all that I wrote about spellcasting and ranged weapon is easily possible with the technology currently available.

So yes, there would be a lot of work to "massage" a few parts. But the overall approach can still be valid and realistically possible (like playing at least a rudimental physics engine).

2. PvE... Making mob AI under this circumstance is nigh impossible unless you allow mobs to "cheat."

I don't see the issue here. The monsters don't usually have access to ALL the possibilities of a player. They rarely have more than an handful of attacks alone. It shouldn't be a big problem to script the attacks in a believable way.

3. Twitch gameplay - do you really want it in a MMORPG? Remember that part of a MMORPG's mass appeal is its relative absence of need for "l33t" skills. Judging by the player base of most FPS's, I'd guess that many people play MMORPGs to try and get away from being headshotted every ten seconds by I_0WNRXU352. You'd be developing a game where people could be what they want to be... But actually can't in actual combat b/c they lack the action-gaming skills.

And here you are completely wrong because I hate too frenetic games.

Give a look to what Tobold writes here. That was the premise of my idea.

Even if I described a game where you swing your weapon directly, I specified that I wanted to retain a more tactical feeling. This doesn't mean that you'll be allowed to run around bunny-hopping, circle-strafing and spinning your mouse like crazy.

A realistic combat would go in the exact opposite direction.

[Zinke]

I didn't read page 2 or 3, responding to stuff I saw on page 1. Especially the shaman slow post.

I used to always play healer or wizard types in online of single player RPGs. I got a little disillusioned with healers after EQ, but I played Priest in WoW beta because they seemed like they had enough enchanter elements that I'd like them. Then, they got nerfed (rightfully so though, sleep and pw:s were too good then) but instead of just being reduced in power, they removed the most interesting things about the priest.

Using the WoW classes, there are a ton more ways interesting ways to do healing.

Shamans would be even more about buffing and de-buffing. Totems like rockskin, but beefed up signifcantly, and their instant heals nerfed considerably. Rockskin should be a percentage of melee damage, like 20% even. Each totem element would have a similar totem that either reduces the mob damage, or increases the victims mitigation, or both.
Water would have one that puts a HoT on you for 1000 over 5 seconds when you are the victim of a melee crit. Fire would have one that absorbs and reflects 20% of the damage to the mob. Air would increase your chance to dodge by 25%. etc..

The shamans would also have a very weak slow, 5%, that would stack though. It is a short duration debuff, 20 seconds maybe, so the more shamans you have on the ball, the more slow the mob can be. 5 shamans on the ball could keep it 25% slower easily. Make this slow cap at 25-30% to prevent bringing too many shamans and nerfing melee bosses by doing so. Ideally, they are still on top of casting their totems during this too.

Do a similar thing with each of the totems for spells. Earth has a totem that helps against arcane and ice, absorbing a % of the damage. Air has a totem for earth and fire etc.. Since you can still only drop one of each element, if a boss melees and has a high damage AE or similar, you'd have to either change the totems if it's a phase mob (like Onyxia or Nefarian), or figure out which is more important to prevent, melee or spell damage.

Priests could expand on the vampire idea, to do damage and heal their party members in the process. They would have a few more PW:S type spells for taking care of sudden spikes in damage. Even if they aren't shadow, they would have vampiric embrace in it's beefed up form. Holy priests would be like the way they just changed them, Holy Nova, Lightwell, a single instant heal spell that would be less efficient then their current heal spells that is used simply for emergencies. Shadow priests would get a few more efficient ways to do damage then holy priests, which would allow their vampiric abilities to heal more also, including a slow refresh, large damage AE. Shadow priests would have a slight edge over holy priests on fights where you fight a decent amount of mobs that all need to die quickly, as they can do some AE and good single target damage while still providing decent healing. Holy priests would have an edge on healing multiple people at once, such as fights with AEs. They'd be equal at healing a single MT though.

Druids would have way more powerful HoTs, no instant heals, and a small amount of buffs/debuffs but not as powerful as shaman. They wouldn't have to stay on top of these buffs/debuffs like shaman though, and the HoT would last long enough that they could actually throw HoTs and buffs, then go shapeshift and start DPSing or offtanking. I'm talking 60 second, 10000 hp HoTs, but only one on a target, so each druid could HoT a tank and then shapeshift. Or, a heal that drains mana from a druid continuously, but is not channeled, so they can cast it, shapeshift and do whatever while it drains their mana. Plus, a buff in addition to MotW that is similar to the blessings from paladins, in that you can only put one on so you have to choose the right one. Mark of the Streams for fire resist and chance to heal upon melee hit. Mark of the Stone for 1000hp and 500 armor. etc..

All these ideas are overpowered if they just threw them on the WoW classes now, I realize that. But, if it had been done from the beginning everything could have been balanced around it. Shamans would have equally offensive and defensive totems. If your fighting a bunch of weak, high dps mobs, you might throw mostly offensive totems to just take them out quickly. If your fighting two large mobs that have high hp and mostly do melee, you could throw down all defensive melee totems and concentrate on slowing, but halfway through they change phases and starting AEing, the shaman would switch out totems for spell defense.

Basically, to make 'healing' reactive to the environment, not the health bar. A lot of it would be choosing the right method to prevent as much damage as possible so that the supremely efficient HoTs that each class has would have time to work. The HoTs can be powerful enough that if your healers are on the ball with everything else that it more than keeps up with the damage anyone would take.

[Etadanik]

But every game already calculates arcs and distance from the target.

Yes, but they do not calculate this score using a collision system. Desync occurs now in WoW, and it shows up when you're right ontop of someone but the system says your target's too far away, or when you're ten yards from a warrior and his axe's still hitting you. This is due to the simple logistics of handling thousands of players in different parts of the world via a central server, but it's tolerable because generally, desync is highly problematic for positional attacks (such as backstab), but irrelevant for target-based attacks, such as frost shock or fireball, especially if the abilities do not require LOS. In a full collision-based combat system, you'd need to do collision calculations for every attack, and your attacks' successes will be dependent on the exact position of your targets (or else trying to evade would be meaningless). Getting that kind of synchronization could very well be impossible in a massively multiplayer environment, though I agree that projecting such an idea into the future might yield better results.

I don't see the issue here. The monsters don't usually have access to ALL the possibilities of a player. They rarely have more than an handful of attacks alone. It shouldn't be a big problem to script the attacks in a believable way.

It sounded like you were saying that combat could be done based on a collision system, in which case a player would be able to "dodge" out of a swinging sword or a incoming fireball or whatnot. If this was the case, monster AI would either have to "cheat" such that all their attacks hit, or never even touch the best players because those players could easily exploit the pattern of attacks to dodge. A player would be able to adapt; a monster will not.

Give a look to what Tobold writes here. That was the premise of my idea.

I see. Well, if the purpose is to get rid of reliance on UI targetting and health bars, the idea is great with the aforementioned reservations. But of course, if you removed healers, as per your suggestion, is the UI really all that annoying for other classes?

[Abalieno]

Originally Posted by Etadanik

In a full collision-based combat system, you'd need to do collision calculations for every attack, and your attacks' successes will be dependent on the exact position of your targets (or else trying to evade would be meaningless). Getting that kind of synchronization could very well be impossible in a massively multiplayer environment, though I agree that projecting such an idea into the future might yield better results.

Planetside?

It's not exactly simple, but as I said, with some work to adjust the mechanics, it's all already largely possible even if there would be surely trade offs.

It sounded like you were saying that combat could be done based on a collision system, in which case a player would be able to "dodge" out of a swinging sword or a incoming fireball or whatnot. If this was the case, monster AI would either have to "cheat" such that all their attacks hit, or never even touch the best players because those players could easily exploit the pattern of attacks to dodge. A player would be able to adapt; a monster will not.

Come on. We are back to single player here. There are plenty of games with these types of attacks. It's not like you run around at 100mph easily dodging every swing in melee.

Oblivion uses similar patterns too. There isn't anything new. This was already possible many years ago.

I see. Well, if the purpose is to get rid of reliance on UI targetting and health bars, the idea is great with the aforementioned reservations. But of course, if you removed healers, as per your suggestion, is the UI really all that annoying for other classes?

The immersion. The combat mechanics would be direct, without the need to be "faked" through artificial means.

It's a shift of focus. The current combat in every mmorpg is heavily dependent on the UI. You PLAY the UI. If you remove it you remove everything.

So it's a completely new paradigm. At the point I've described the UI becomes just superfluous.

[Etadanik]

Originally Posted by Abalieno

Planetside?

It's not exactly simple, but as I said, with some work to adjust the mechanics, it's all already largely possible even if there would be surely trade offs.

Wasn't the lag a huge problem in Planetside?

Come on. We are back to single player here. There are plenty of games with these types of attacks. It's not like you run around at 100mph easily dodging every swing in melee.

Oblivion uses similar patterns too. There isn't anything new. This was already possible many years ago.

Well, I don't know about Oblivion since the game's not released yet, but the collision of combat in Morrowind is largely faked (or restricted by clunky movement), and to be honest the combat system in that game was one of its worst features. I think Project Offset is closer to what you're thinking, no?

The immersion. The combat mechanics would be direct, without the need to be "faked" through artificial means.
...

So it's a completely new paradigm. At the point I've described the UI becomes just superfluous.

I get the feeling that you're not really talking about the UI, per definition. UI = User Interface = every way in which the user can interact with the program. So essentially, the UI is never superfluous if the program is interactive, and games are always interactive (in your example, pressing the attack button while facing a certain direction to execute an attack is considered UI).

What you're really talking about is the GUI built ontop of the game itself, and I think it's necessary to make this distinction because when you say "immersion" and "playing the UI," I get the sense that you're complaining strictly about the presence of meta-gaming - of playing a game ontop of the existing game, such as when you play Whack-a-Mole healing in beating Ragnaros. You want to remove this level fo meta-gaming so as to get the player directly into the action - yet is it not true that some of these elements are *part* of the game - such as skill buttons and the names of monsters (you certainly would not, for example, want to force players to memorize long chains of hotkeys in order to execute a skill/spell)? So is the goal really to minimize every little presence of GUI (which is of course not possible in games with sufficient complexity unless you had a hardware piece capable of being much more expressive than the mouse & keyboard) or is it to minimize the presence of GUI elements that require you to monitor *them* as opposed to the game world? For example, a target box that you had to keep staring at as you click on monsters in the game world would certainly break the immersion, but a targetting circle around a monster in the actual world would keep your eye where it's supposed to be - is that, then, sufficient?

Anyhow, I think by qualifying your statements under the umbrella of removing the GUI you're kind of simplifying the breadth of what you're proposing. I think there's three important elements of your idea: realism (collision detection, physics, & positional combat are obviously more realistic than, say, D&D rulesets), simplified GUI (what I just discussed), and player skill-based combat. If it were GUI alone, I think we can reach a rather simple solution simply by removing group health bars & the target box and putting them into the game world itself (in the form of, say, a targetting circle and visible indicators of health).

[Abalieno]

Originally Posted by Etadanik

Wasn't the lag a huge problem in Planetside?

Not when I played it, not even on broadband.

The point is that Planetside is still MUCH faster than what I have in mind. In Planetside you have vehicles, airships, machine guns.

Again I was thinking to a more tactical and realistic combat. You cannot hop around, circle strafing and swing your weapon three times every second with a plate armor on you.

In WoW the average attack can go from 1.5 seconds to three. Swinging the weapon directly, using the shield, parry. All these would need a much slower pace to be "fun". It may even result slower than the current models largely used. And it should if you think it's supposed to support larger battles where you need the time to react.

So, again, there are technical difficulties because it's a completely different model. But it is still quite possible if tuned accordingly. My belief is that it's possible to go quite near to the goal, if not reaching it completely.

Well, I don't know about Oblivion since the game's not released yet, but the collision of combat in Morrowind is largely faked (or restricted by clunky movement), and to be honest the combat system in that game was one of its worst features. I think Project Offset is closer to what you're thinking, no?

Oblivion differs from MW because there aren't anymore to-hit rolls.

In MW you could swing 50 times to a monster and never hit if your skill was low. In Oblivion if you hit you hit. And the shield is not anymore automatically used but you need to rise it by pressing a mouse button.

There are many other examples of similar games that do nicely the work. I'm just saying again that it's technically reasonable.

What you're really talking about is the GUI built ontop of the game itself, and I think it's necessary to make this distinction because when you say "immersion" and "playing the UI," I get the sense that you're complaining strictly about the presence of meta-gaming - of playing a game ontop of the existing game, such as when you play Whack-a-Mole healing in beating Ragnaros.

Yes, it's not like I want to remove the mouse or the keyboard. Just the barrier between you and the game. GUI-based games need to be learnt. If you create instead gameplay that is much more "direct" you don't even need the players to learn the GUI beforehand. The game would be immediate and the expectations satisfied. The game would behave exactly as you would expect.

Which is the whole ideal of making combat believable and realistic. Not in the sense that you die with one hit. But that it looks more real and not simulated through artificial means.

You want to remove this level fo meta-gaming so as to get the player directly into the action - yet is it not true that some of these elements are *part* of the game - such as skill buttons and the names of monsters (you certainly would not, for example, want to force players to memorize long chains of hotkeys in order to execute a skill/spell)? So is the goal really to minimize every little presence of GUI (which is of course not possible in games with sufficient complexity unless you had a hardware piece capable of being much more expressive than the mouse & keyboard) or is it to minimize the presence of GUI elements that require you to monitor *them* as opposed to the game world?

I can explain my idea directly so you call it the way you like ;p

Yes, you would have inventory, detailed stats on items, detailed character sheets, spellbooks etc.. Think to a pen&paper game, all that is usually available there would be available in the game. You can see your damage rolls and the effects of the spells on you, as you can see your health, mana etc.. You just don't see other immersion-breaking elements, like target reticules, ten hotbars filling the screen, big arrows pointing at the target and so on.

Where it's possible I would remove the filters.

For example, a target box that you had to keep staring at as you click on monsters in the game world would certainly break the immersion, but a targetting circle around a monster in the actual world would keep your eye where it's supposed to be - is that, then, sufficient?

The target circle is not needed if you "swing" your weapon. You can swing it at the thin air as you can swing it on a tree or against an orc.

Anyhow, I think by qualifying your statements under the umbrella of removing the GUI you're kind of simplifying the breadth of what you're proposing. I think there's three important elements of your idea: realism (collision detection, physics, & positional combat are obviously more realistic than, say, D&D rulesets), simplified GUI (what I just discussed), and player skill-based combat. If it were GUI alone, I think we can reach a rather simple solution simply by removing group health bars & the target box and putting them into the game world itself (in the form of, say, a targetting circle and visible indicators of health).

I'm adding complexity, not removing it.

What you don't "get" is that those elements would become superfluous. You need to see health bars only when you are playing the "health bars" game, Watching them go up and down. But that level doesn't exist anymore. You don't react anymore to those elements.

In WoW you could use the bars because you would act differently, you watch the icons on the target to see the applied effects, you have the "execute" skill on warriors that is active only below 20% and so on.

All these possibilities do not translate in a "realistic" combat, because it's not realistic that you have a "special" attack only when your opponent has the health below 20%.

In WoW you have a gazillion of buttons to press and the single piece of iron you are wielding can produce a multitude of fancyful effects because that's the game: hotbars management. It's not a simulation of combat, it's just a "parody". It is ALL about the meta-game.

So, if you remove the meta-game mechanics, you also don't need anymore the meta-game GUI since one goes along with the other. It's simply another, different paradigm that is founded on completely different elements.

[Etadanik]

I'm adding complexity, not removing it.

What you don't "get" is that those elements would be superfluous. You need to see health bars only when you are playing the "health bars" game. Watching them go up and down. But that level doesn't exist anymore. You don't react anymore to those elements.

In WoW you could use the bars because you would act differently, you watch the icons on the target to see the applied effects, you have the "execute" skill on warriors that is active only below 20% and so on.

All these possibilities do not translate in a "realistic" combat, because it's not realistic that you have a "special" attack only when your opponent has the health below 20%.

In WoW you have a gazillion of buttons to press because that's the game: hotbars management. It's not a simulation of combat, it's just a "parody". It is ALL about the meta-game.

So, if you remove the meta-game mechanics, you also don't need anymore the meta-game GUI since one goes along with the other. It's simply another, different paradigm that is founded on completely different elements

No, I get what you're saying. You don't need health bars if there are no abilities that depend on monitoring them. However, I was operating on the principle that you don't need such a dramatic change to remove meta-gaming combat, with realism that I suppose is relative in a fantasy game (I say it's realistic that fireballs are target-seeking, you say it's not, etc...) This goes back to the premise of the thread - is healing fundamentally "immersion" breaking? I wouldn't say so, at least not moreso than any other sort of magic. If so, can healing be integrated into the actual game, rather than the meta-game of whack-a-mole health bars? I say yes - if the indicators of "health" are integrated into the actual game rather than into the meta-game. For example, if I could see whether a player is hurt just by looking at him in the actual game world and cast my healing spells accordingly, healing is no longer meta-gaming. Sure, it's still a matter of watching who's hurt, but that's what we'd expect a healer *in the "real" fantasy world* to do anyhow.

The same applies to WoW's hotkeys. They're simply a method to access the abilities available to a class in the game. Now, you can remove such an abstraction layer by replacing abilities such as "hamstring" with the realistic, physical versions (ie a successful attack to the knees causes slower movement), but in the process you're essentially building a different game altogether. Here, it's not the *meta-gaming* we're talking about - WoW's actual gameplay *is* the usage and counter-usage of myriads of abilities (akin to playing a game of cards with each ability as a card). In that sense you're right, WoW *is not* a simulation of real combat, but neither is it a "parody," at least no moreso than any other game, the oldest ones (ie Chess) included. It is simply a game - and like all games, takes liberties in reinterpreting rules.

From this perspective, there's two separate issues here. One is the reduction of "meta-gaming" through the integration of GUI elements into the intended actual game. The other is a critique of the actual gameplay itself - ie that it's not realistic. Your argument suggests that by tackling the latter, we get the former for free. I think the two are more independent - that is, I can implement a version of the latter with unnecessary GUI (ie if, for example, instead of letting you mouse-over attacks, I forced you to press hotkeys for whether you performed a horizontal slash, a vertical slash, a parry, or a thrust towards the direction you're forcing), and I can implement a version of the former with little or even no meta-gaming. The only question then is a matter of preference, which is what I was getting at originally with concerns of realism and player-skill combat.

[Abalieno]

Originally Posted by Etadanik

No, I get what you're saying. You don't need health bars if there are no abilities that depend on monitoring them. However, I was operating on the principle that you don't need such a dramatic change to remove meta-gaming combat, with realism that I suppose is relative in a fantasy game (I say it's realistic that fireballs are target-seeking, you say it's not, etc...)

"Fun" has the precedence on the realism. A fireball can seek the target or not, there is no written rule. I decided it doesn't simply because I expect this to be more directly fun (the fireball is then "real" and explodes, it doesn't do damage to just 1 target). It's a richer mechanic than "I point my finger and your health bar goes down of 10 points".

A degree of player skill I think is appreciated. I see as positive to give more direct control to the player instead of to the rules themselves.

This goes back to the premise of the thread - is healing fundamentally "immersion" breaking? I wouldn't say so, at least not moreso than any other sort of magic.

Of course, but noone said this. It's not the premise of the thread.

The premise of the thread is that healing is damn boring. So people wondered if there were different systems available resulting in more "fun".

On this I added my heresy that says: if we remove the dumb meta-game we will find out that the healers aren't even needed anymore.

Hence the idea to add "counterspells", like the possibility of extinguish a fire.

Here, it's not the *meta-gaming* we're talking about - WoW's actual gameplay *is* the usage and counter-usage of myriads of abilities (akin to playing a game of cards with each ability as a card). In that sense you're right, WoW *is not* a simulation of real combat, but neither is it a "parody," at least no moreso than any other game, the oldest ones (ie Chess) included. It is simply a game - and like all games, takes liberties in reinterpreting rules.

Yes, a "formal system". I'm on a personal crusade to demonstrate that formal systems aren't fun.

Have you ever seen a movie about a chessboard? No, of course. That's not fun. We love these games NOT because they are formal systems. We love these games, in particular fantasy settings, because they are SYMBOLIC. They are myths. Part of our culture.

What you expect people to like more to see in a movie theatre, a movie with a chessboard in the middle or Lord of the Rings?

That's the point. We want back the immersion, the direct feel. People don't like anymore to learn abstract, mathematical rules and puzzle games. We want emotions and myths. Symbols.

Not math.

I think the two are more independent - that is, I can implement a version of the latter with unnecessary GUI (ie if, for example, instead of letting you mouse-over attacks, I forced you to press hotkeys for whether you performed a horizontal slash, a vertical slash, a parry, or a thrust towards the direction you're forcing), and I can implement a version of the former with little or even no meta-gaming. The only question then is a matter of preference, which is what I was getting at originally with concerns of realism and player-skill combat.

Yes, I agree.

I would have no problem to replace mouseover attacks with hotkeys.

The point is that I wouldn't want the hotbars to fill the screen. 4-5 attacks would be already more than enough to create a moltitide of patterns once you add more concrete elements (like collision detection).

I just desire the meta-game to be removed and translated in a more direct gameplay.

P.S.
Then I also don't agree. I wouldn't use complex mouse gestures in the place of hotkeys. But it makes more sense to press a mouse button and swing your weapon instead of pressing a key.

I would remove the twitch "movement" of the mouse for a swing. But it makes sense to have the actions mapped on the mouse more than have them mapped on the keys.

It is more natural if you allow the player to "charge" an attack before releasing it. Or rise your shield.

[Bralkan]

Didn't read this last page -

If interaction with the game world, and not the GUI, is the what you want then do what was mentioned by someone else -

Move the indicators to the environment. Sounds may work, but unlike the real world, most people don't have surround sound on their comp. I think just having visual cues would be more pragmatic (You have a tint to your skin at the least graphically demanding, to visual injuries at the high end).

The problem isn't that healing is boring, which some people say. Its that healing really just involves looking at numbers and not objects. We play this game to look at objects - not to play MathBlaster.

MMOFPS - its really a different genre. The closest I can think of (although it wasn't persistent) was Savage. Was a fun game, not many played it. We'll see how Project Offset turns out. But someone hit the nail on the head - the problem with an MMOFPS/RPG is latency.

[Cad]

Re: Planetside. Anybody who has tried to walk around in a courtyard with vehicles around knows that what you see on your side isn't what they see on their side. You can be hit by a vehicle that appears to be well off your path. You cannot easily dodge projectiles coming at you because by the time you see them on your screen, they have already hit (or missed) you on the other guys screen, and if he hits you on his screen, you are hit. They had to nerf the speed-enhancing implant because combined with stairs you had people permanently embedded in the walls making them untargetable, but on their screen they're just moving around really fast. Combine that with the uber-shotgun of pwnage that 2-hits people in the heavy armor, and it sucks.

Planetside is a fine game, but the way the FPS elements are handled is no different from WoW, it's just a faster paced game.

[Abalieno]

Originally Posted by Cad

Planetside is a fine game, but the way the FPS elements are handled is no different from WoW, it's just a faster paced game.

Which is my point.

Those ideas I've written down are more a design challenge than a technical challenge.

It's mostly about how you use the elements available than the availability of those elements.