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

Not a color anymore?

[Anonymous Coward]

But the more pressing question is: will people everywhere learn how to spell "rogue" and stop saying "rouge"?

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.

[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.

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.