Rogues Get Some Respect

GamerGod is running an article taking a look at the role of the Rogue in Dungeons and Dragons Online. In their estimation, the Rogue class finally gets to do its thing in an online game. From the article: "What rogue would be worth his salt if he didn't have any traps to disarm or locks to open? What truly sets D&DO apart from the competition is the need to find and disarm various traps, snares, and pitfalls. Again, the game's set-up and design makes this an invaluable part of game play. No regeneration of spell points results in limited heals, and no regeneration of hit points makes getting blasted with a trap actually MEAN something." Been playing the preorder Beta this weekend, and it does a surprisingly good job of recreating the PnP experience. Review upon release.

Comments

Thoughts on necessity of rogues in a group.

[WizardofWestmarch]

The problem I have with this is it may make rogues TOO required. If you can skip the traps entirely but it make the dungeon take longer (read: the long way around) I don't have a problem with it. Otherwise you risk everyone rolling rogue because they are so needed.

Re:Thoughts on necessity of rogues in a group.

[buffer-overflowed]

Well, we always had a rogue or rogue-like in every PnP D&D game. There is a certain percentage of people that like the way of the stabbity.

There's also race/class combos, since certain races get certain default abilities, a good substitute for a rogue would be an elven ranger or a bard(the gods of shmoozing, bard's were the UBER class in D&D 3.0, you had to throw deaf-dumb-blind-senseless things at them by the time they hit level 6 if you went strictly by the book, and they didn't entirely fix that in 3.5). And casters have various detect spells, but that'll consume spell points. And I have no idea how they're doing Sorcerers.

I'm not sure how they're doing things. If they manage to recreate the PnP experience, then you can get past anything with anything just by being clever. By their nature, MMOs are much more confined though. Can you cast "detect traps" and then chuck a loose stone at the trigger plate for example?

Re:Thoughts on necessity of rogues in a group.

[miyako]

And thus arises one of the main problems of the MMO. When I DM a game, I can alter the dungeon so that it works better with the skills of the players. If I have a group of rogues playing, I can add several traps on doors, and some areas that require quick reflexes- I can do it on the fly and still keep the overall feel of the game. If I want to make it harder on the group I can forego the traps and maybe throw in magical beasts that would be better handled by a magic user.
If I have a dungeon with a lot of traps and the party doesn't happen to include a rogue, then I can quickly alter the dungeon so that traps are replaced with simple puzzles or melee encounters that better play to the skills of the players. If there are no rogues and I want to weaken the party to make an encounter more dramatic, then I can throw in a couple of traps- knowing the party is unlikely to be able to detect or disarm them.
This isn't really possible in MMOGs. While it's theoretically possible to create multiple versions of a dungeon and then use the one most fitting for the given parties makeup- it would double or triple the amount of work that goes into designing the quest- and it would probably be exploited easily too.

Re:Thoughts on necessity of rogues in a group.

[GebsBeard]

Its really hard to believe that this kind of customization can't be handled by typical MMOs, especially with the rise of instancing. You'd think they could take a party, weight their various stats, abilities and items and even keep a running log of their playing tendencies (ie which commands are used the most frequently) and customize the encounters and challenges based on these metrics. I guess they just haven't evolved to that point yet, although reading the article it sounds like DDO might be headed in that direction. The only way to cut through the cheerleading is to actually play it for a while.

Sounds great, excpt for the Turbine part

[MBraynard]

Turbine's involvement with this project is problematic. While AC was very revolutionary for it's day and had a tremendous amount of creativity (and creative use of an extremely limited game engine), Turbine did not do a good job of avoiding pain in the rear issues for players.

There are a lot of routine tasks that outside third parties made applications to help with. I'm not talking about gold farming, but more like efficient self-spell casting. For every thirty minutes to hour of play in AC, you had to spend approximately 5 or more minutes 'buffing' yourself with spells - at least, when done efficiently with the third party app, the buffing was done very efficiently. Doing it manually could take up to twice as long and could also require you to waste spell slots on your casting bar. When the app was buffing you, you could take that as an opportunity to chat with your party - doing it manually? no chatting.

So every month Turbine would BREAK this app with their update. Finally the developer got tired of fixing it every month and quit. This also blew other apps for quickly sizing up what treasure is valuable (Turbine would often dump 200+ pieces of treasure in front of you and expect you to take 1 minute to sort through all of it - 95% trash - before it decomposed on you).

If I ever was going to go back to AC, the lack of Decal (and Turbine's decision not just not to incorporate these applications into the game but to permanently break the third party apps) means I definitly can't go back and I am not alone.

Re:PnP or DnD?

[DrEldarion]

hopefully not taking it too seriously

This where MMORPGs fail in my eyes compared to PnP. Besides the fact that a significant portion of the people you're playing with take the game FAR FAR too seriously, the games don't have anywhere near the flexibility that PnP has to allow for actually having fun rather than another day of stats++.

Once when I was playing Shadowrun with a couple friends, we decided just to screw around for a bit. My character ended up getting killed because I angered a lady in a high apartment - she threw her toaster down at me, and I botched the roll.

Sure, MMOs give you the fantasy experience, but if I can't have random shit happen like getting killed by flung appliances, it loses a lot of the fun that PnP is capable of bringing you. No MMO has ever given (or likely will ever give) me half as much fun as that day brought.

MMOs are too static. Neverwinter Nights had the right idea with allowing human DMs into the mix. I know it seems like it would cut into profits, but if game companies hired a platoon of creative people just to interact with their players, I think people would stick around playing the game far longer.

Have humans controlling the big boss fights. You think you've gotten an enemy on "farm" status? Sorry, he just completely changed his strategy. Of course, maybe he wants to bargain with you first this time. How would you like your pick of certain items just for NOT killing him? Who says he won't kill you anyways after you've taken it and aren't expecting to be attacked?

Have humans controlling in-city events. An army of zombies has spawned and they're attacking the city - it's your job to defend it. You think you've gotten them all? Some are actually hiding in buildings waiting for the excitement to die down.

Etc. It could make games AMAZINGLY fun.