03-02-2013, 01:52 AM
So me and my partner in crime (game development) have long talked about making an MMO, we can't for obvious reasons but its fun to speculate what could work, or what we'd like to see / not like to see. This time my friend is playing Tera, new to the game first impressions have betrayed him.
what we're appropriately calling WoW syndrome, no this is not about games recycling the mechanics or GUI, we're specifically concerned with the skills.
What do you think are good systems for skills? me and my friend have come to consensus that they should be limited to 4 available at a time at most, having masses of skills is problematic because any of them could do anything making it hard to remember which does which, and as I have just been reminded, hotkeying everything can take a second to forever, increasing the tedium.
I personally am in favour of a mixing skills into the combat itself rather than have them be an add-on to it, extending combos, adding in conditional attacks, things that happen automatically, it may remove the tactics but it also takes the brain melt with it, simplifying and speeding up the flow of gameplay while still adding a layer of depth to the way you grow as you level up.
There is on the other hand limiting skills to preset actions to different degrees, making them easy to identify (only getting a heal, buff, damage and debuff ability and as you level up they become more effective, you only ever need to make 1 association with these abilities as opposed the the tens or even hundreds you may need to forget and relearn in a system with varying skills, its less flexible but the tactics are still there and the majority of brain melt is gone, but I always feel this is a waste, if your going to add in skills like this why not add the number of skills to choose from but this goes full circle, one thing leads to another and then we're back to the problem of too many to remember or read.
I'd be interested in knowing what anyone else might have to say on skills games with or built around RPG elements (the MMO part I suppose isn't as relevant, but MMO's tend to appeal to a different genre of player so it could be something to take into account)
what we're appropriately calling WoW syndrome, no this is not about games recycling the mechanics or GUI, we're specifically concerned with the skills.
What do you think are good systems for skills? me and my friend have come to consensus that they should be limited to 4 available at a time at most, having masses of skills is problematic because any of them could do anything making it hard to remember which does which, and as I have just been reminded, hotkeying everything can take a second to forever, increasing the tedium.
I personally am in favour of a mixing skills into the combat itself rather than have them be an add-on to it, extending combos, adding in conditional attacks, things that happen automatically, it may remove the tactics but it also takes the brain melt with it, simplifying and speeding up the flow of gameplay while still adding a layer of depth to the way you grow as you level up.
There is on the other hand limiting skills to preset actions to different degrees, making them easy to identify (only getting a heal, buff, damage and debuff ability and as you level up they become more effective, you only ever need to make 1 association with these abilities as opposed the the tens or even hundreds you may need to forget and relearn in a system with varying skills, its less flexible but the tactics are still there and the majority of brain melt is gone, but I always feel this is a waste, if your going to add in skills like this why not add the number of skills to choose from but this goes full circle, one thing leads to another and then we're back to the problem of too many to remember or read.
I'd be interested in knowing what anyone else might have to say on skills games with or built around RPG elements (the MMO part I suppose isn't as relevant, but MMO's tend to appeal to a different genre of player so it could be something to take into account)