Combat evoltuion in MMO's does not impress Darwin.

So, last post I went over how combat as an environment can actually drive crafting forward, as well as adding in a very player-base important feature. Now, let’s talk about the elephant in the room in all MMO’s. Combat.

Let’s face it. Combat hasn’t really changed since Everquest. Perhaps even before that. It’s still the same stat + button system. Now, as much as I’d like to call it a failure like many might, I’m actually here to say that it’s a success. What the stat+button system does is turn combat into something trainable in such a way where you can go about half-auto-pilot and ‘enjoy’ the visual content of the game. However, if you see that statement in its true form, you see why things have hit the way they are in SWTOR. The belief is that, by making combat less invasive you allow for even more visual content. That’s the error though; people do not want purely visual content. They want game content. Unfortunately, because that hasn’t really gotten through, we have a visually stunning game with great audio.

There are two ways to handle this and not make the player-base feel like they are just paying to watch a movie. First, you can diminish the role combat has in the game. For a good example of this, you can see A Tale in the Desert. There is no combat at all in the game, yet it still functions and succeeds decently. By no means a AAA-rating MMO, but it does show there is room to buck the curve. And does this curve need bucked. First, the deficiencies of the system need pointed out.

Let’s start with what should be glaringly obvious, but isn’t. Stat+button is NOT skill based. I’ve seen people in World of Warcraft that actually just hit one button and keep up with people that perfectly follow the priority based rotation. Yes, the rotation users could be called ‘skill-based’, but with the macro-user being non-skill based, that kind of throws off the whole system. If the macro were published, ‘faith’ in the system would quickly vanish. So, how do you cater to both of these people? Well, I’m here to say you can’t cater to them without including the third person. And that is the twitch-gamer. I’m talking the guy who can sniper-shot a moving target in a video game from far enough away all you see are a few pixels, but you still pull it off. How you might ask?

Well, I consider it a mix of combat from many various games. It’s a fatigue and balance based system. Damage would be based off of two variables to be determined, be it stats or skills, and chance to hit would be based on other variables, preferably realistic ones. However, you would have two styles of play. Locked combat and Unlocked combat. There would be no penalty to either, but each would have a couple of downfalls. First off, locked combat would start by picking a target and locking the target. As soon as you lock a target, you are given the option to Engage, Keep Distance, or Disengage. This allows ranged or melee to take advantage of this style. Locked style allows you to not worry about moving. The AI would be enough to keep you from running through, or backing into things. Now, just because you are trying to disengage or keep your distance doesn’t mean you will, other factors are involved to keep it realistic (i.e. trip over a rock?).

In locked combat, combat becomes more about key presses. In unlocked, however, combat becomes very much FPS style. Chance to hit would be entirely based on reach, aim, and speed of the user. As you could imagine, firing arrows off a castle wall into a sea of players and mobs might not be the best idea. Friendly fire will be possible, but limited by a ‘Lookout Sir!’ rule. In other words, due to the nature of lag and just common sense, you wouldn’t fire an arrow without saying ‘Lookout Bob!’ Anyone hit by friendly fire would get a penalty to X things for Y seconds, showing that you did get hit, but not badly. The distraction from avoiding would be the worst part of it, since your balance would be thrown. This benefit is only from ‘party’ or ‘guild’ members. Direct PVP is handled later, with different consequences.

Now, what about the single-button guy? First off, macros would be allowed, but just the pure chaos theory around this type of balance/fatigue based combat, you would only be able to macro like that if you wrote really well or fought easy things. So, we have two styles here too. We have finesse and power. Finesse involved stringing attack after attack, as each attach affects balance and fatigue differently, as well as putting you and your weapon in a position that whatever you do next could greatly or minimally affect your balance. You could use ‘Bash Bash Bash’ and probably slowly become more and more unbalance, or you could use ‘Bash left, Bash Right, Bash Left’ and keep your balance perfect. This allows button mashers some degree of success, but also gives seasoned players constantly changing combat. The seasoned player could go unlocked as well for even more realistic combat, giving a massive risk vs. reward for those truly ‘skilled’, but keeping things realistic enough to make it easy.

Tomorrow, I’ll be tackling that other part of combat that just needs revamped as well, Damage.

How many is enough?

MMO size is something that I believe is always left out of things. First off, you’ve got two very basic options at the start, single-‘server’ or multiple ‘servers’. I use ‘servers’ in quotes because in this day and age, you aren’t talking about real hardware, you’re talking about how the players are parceled out. Anyone who has given EVE a serious go has learned the upsides and downsides of single-server. However, EVE was not the first single-server MMO I had played. My first one was Anarchy Online, and technical hurdles aside (Let’s just say they had a bad launch), they had much the same separation of players as EVE has done. I wouldn’t be surprised if the EVE devs learned the strategy from AO.

AO was separated into rather decent size quadrants separated by zone lines, and each area had essentially a designated mission hub where people joined up at. Of course, there were cities with large amounts of people, however, chat was separated by level, meaning you could turn off level 1-20 chat if you were 30, or 20-50 chat if you were 70. Trade channels were designed this way as well, making sure that players were given ways to stay as separate as they’d like. I think this is key to actually fostering an environment, especially in a single-server. Single-server also is a better design for the new players, as they get readily accessible experience and economies.

So, single-server or Multi-server? Well, think about it honestly. If you indeed do single-server, the game world has to be large enough to pull it off. Single-server also removes any need for server transfer, mitigating costs down the road for the player base somewhat.

For a single-server to be in my design, the single-server becomes one single planet. Oddly, this is convenient and makes it even easier to control the environment. So, how to add in the separation brought about by servers in a single-server design? Well, you have to make communities, and sometimes the best solution really is the obvious one. Make a community. I’ll separate the barren surface into many communities. Say, ten total. Then, it’s time to give each community a look and feel. Here is where a lot of ‘race’ designs fall flat. In a game like World of Warcraft, Races are there to give a choice, but you do not choice a race based on ‘where’. The same can be said of EVE somewhat, Race is just starting space, which ultimately isn’t really useful in the grand scheme of things. I’d prefer race/society to be a choice that will actually funnel like-people together. So, that’s is what I’ll do here, with each community, or ‘Crew’.

Each ‘crew’ will be the remnants of the crew of each mining-colony ship that contained more than just miners looking for the fuel to repair interstellar travel, it would also contain the families, scientists, farmers, essentially everything to be sustainable in case things go south.

So far:
You are a colonist, your colony can not leave the planet, cannot call for help, and there is no space travel due to a universal (literally) fuel outage. Your technology is running out of its own fuel, and soon your society itself will be required to become self-sustaining. Your colony has been operating for 60 years without incident on a barren world we’ll call ZG-1287. It was never given a formal name to keep hope of leaving shortly alive. There are 10 colonies, each has developed its own sort of personality, ranging from gregarious to xenophobic and paranoid. The planet to date is a barren waste-land of sorts, with water only being found underground. There is a large distance between each colony making travel long and hazardous between them, making trade caravans their own communities as well.

Next, we’ll answer the original question with the new direction, How Many People?