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The Dilemma of Level vs. Skill In MMOs
Karen Hertzberg writes "Since MMORPGs became a mainstream medium, players have debated the two primary methods of advancement. Which is better? Is it the level-based system that is so dominant in today's MMORPGs, or the lesser-used skill-based system? This has been a strong subject of debate on many forums, blogs, and gaming sites for as long as the genre has existed. Ten Ton Hammer's Cody 'Micajah' Bye investigates the two concepts and gathers input from some of the brightest minds in the gaming industry about their thoughts on the two systems of advancement."
Relatedly, I've seen a growing trend of players saying that such games don't really take much skill at all. The standard argument is that it just boils down to "knowing how to move" or "knowing when to hit your buttons." In the MMO community, people often make references to FPS or RTS games, saying they have a higher skill cap. However, the same complaints also come from within those communities, with comments like "you just need to know the map," or "it's all about a good build order." At what point does intimate knowledge of a game's mechanics make a player skilled?
3. It's all about how much money you fork over for premium content.
It's all about how many leet hax you have.
Ze Atomic Device! It iz Ztolen!
They are games for a reason. They're entertaining. They do not require a great deal of skill, or they would be a sport. While I am sure there are plenty of us who like to tease ourselves into believing we have "l337 sk1lz", the truth of the matter is that we are still involved in low base entertainment designed to appeal to as many people as possible. Successful games are the ones that sell the most, thus they have to be designed for the lowest common denominator.
There are plenty of other past times that do involve skill.
How is this different from any skill? Skill is the knowledge and execution of when/what/how to do things. I can bake a great loaf of bread if I follow a recipe exactly, but I'm not a savant who can stray from the recipe and make novel things taste good. Is following a recipe skill? Some would say yes, some would say no. Same with the "skill" of grinding your elf warrior to high scores or levels.
I was hoping from the title that this would be a discussion of "advancement through earned level rankings, or advancement through earned skill attributes," you know, actual game design theory.
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it's more about gaining levels, skill has nothing to do with it. it's a game.
From the article itself:
"To ensure that we're being absolutely crystal clear, this article isn't focused on the discussion concerning the differences between the pure RPG leveling system versus "player skill-based" games. That's a completely different conversation altogether, and - unfortunately - some of our paneled public and developers thought that was where the discussion was leading, and thus some answers from particular teams won't be printable...at least in this article."
FPS: Knowing where the power weapons are on the map. (Halo 3: Shotgun whore wins)
MMORPG: Its knowing which class is overpowered. (Vanilla WoW: Nerf Warlocks)
RTS: Its all about who is Korean. (I'm new to SC, want to play? I'm a nub go easy)
I'm rather good at FPS, but I find it quite boring when, well, you know the map well enough that you don't play the game but the map.
Likewise optimal RTS strategies can be plotted down to seconds making it pretty predictable. Boring.
And then, in MMOs, its either who brings the best equipment (ie, who spent their lives grinding for gear) or who has the biggest zerg.
At what point does intimate knowledge of a game's mechanics make a player skilled?
I'd say that this is the definition of skill for an online game.
Literalism isn't a form of humor, it's you being irritating.
It sounds like the article is talking about character advancement mechanics being based on skills (you use a sword, your guy gets better with a sword) instead of levels (you character suddenly gets better at everything). The editor writeup, however, is a commentary on player skill.
My take on the situation:
Mix the two. I'd just love a game where I have both approaches available. Where I could bring my personal skills to the game, but where I don't have any or find it too exhausting (i.e. not fun) to use them, compensate with points, levels, whatever.
The main problem of game design is to make sure it's a complementary, but not additive system. You should be able to offset lack of skill by points, but not have it add up. Someone with the maximum level but no skill should be equal to someone with the highest skill but no level, should be equal to someone with both the skill and the level. If you make it any other way, the game will simply change into one where you need both instead of either.
Most of today's FPS games have such a design in one aspect: You can fire single shots or short bursts and aim them well, or you can fire more or less blindly in long bursts. Due to the random spread increasing with fire rate, you can't do both. It's not the perfect example, but serves to illustrate what I mean.
Adapting that to some MMORPG concepts is, of course, non-trivial. The combat, weapon, magic and other systems of these games are very strongly geared towards level-based playing.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
Hey, i think we can all agree that WoW seems to have the best of all the worlds.
12 million can't be wrong....and on top of that there is still 2 expansions left before they defunct the game.
Although i am sure they will keep servers rolling, or offer server solutions to those who want to host their own gaming server.
I am not talking the hacked kind either...!
No it doesn't take skill, in these games, to go from level 1 to whatever. Even in warhammer online where you have ranks (level) and renown ranks (primarly, but not always, levels from pvp) it doesn't really take skill. Even a computer nub can hang out in pvp areas (in the warhammer example) and lose every single game and eventually get a high level. It will take him a long time but he will have it. So no these are not measurements skill but are measurements of level. Yes the game is button pressing and doing it in the correct order and when to do it - but isn't that the basis of EVERY SINGLE video game? Pacman...when to move left, when to move right....Counter-strike...when to jump, when to crawl, when to duck, when to shoot.
The only way to truely measure someone's skill in these games comes in two area's 1) pve and 2) pvp
1) PVE - Skill...if you can accomplish the quests, missions, raids, etc then you have skill in pve. In the long run (once a mob is on farm status) it is easy. The tactics are the same...just follow the formula and you should win each time (obviously bad electronic rolls can kill you). But to get to that forumla you have to play and in a lot of games (world of warcraft) you have to play well and you have to play well with others. Meaning - you could be the best fighter in the game, but without a good healer you are screwed....same goes the other way....you could be the best healer in the game but if the fighter doesn't know what equipment to use, abilities to purchase, and buttons to press (and when to press them) then you are screwed. A skill player in this category is one who can successfully beat the monsters over and over. Once a monster is on FARM status that player mastered the skull of beating it. From then on it should be easy (as long as the formula is followed)
2) PVP - Skill is a bit trickier here because it not only requires knowledge of your enemies you get a lot of randomness. Even if you play the same opponents every single time (most likely NOT the case) and you realize you are playing that opponent (most likely NOT the case) people are random. They may learn a new trick, or hell even learn YOUR tricks (most likely not the case). They may have a new mod to help them or new gear. Things fluctuate. You obviously will learn that when you, a fighter, encounter a mage there are certain things you can do which help you vs that mage. The mage will try and counter based on the things they learned (e.g. mage should probably not go toe-to-toe with the fighter). Once you have mastered the basic knowledge you have gained a lot of skill - then it is just your ability to act react. The only way to really quantify how good you are is to record your win/loss ratio, kills/death ratio, etc. There are all kinds of meters. A player who just goes into a pvp area and is totally skill-less will probably have way more deaths then kills while a good player will have a better ratio.
These games require a lot of knowledge and a lot of skill...as you play them you gain both until they are second nature. Remember when people look at their playtime for these games it generally is really high (e.g. many players can say they have played over 100 days of their character...that is 2,400 hours of game play).
I do not support "The Man". I also do not support your irrational stupidity
The problem with too many RPGs is that easy encounters are easy, and hard encounters are impossible until you level up, at which point they are easy. It FEELS like you are gaining skill at the game, which is enjoyable, but in fact your character is just tougher. You didn't learn shit.
It makes sense for your character to change over time: that makes the game keep feeling new. But the best system of all is one where your new characteristics are a tradeoff, and every player's capabilities remain somewhat balanced. Success should be from solving a problem in novel ways, not grinding. Like TF2, StarCraft. It is of course very hard to build games like this.
This has come up for me playing crap iPhone games. Since there isn't enough development time for them to put in real challenge, every goddamned thing has a level up mechanic. And certain things are just unbeatable until you level up, and then they are beatable through button mashing. It is lame as hell and apparently the customers don't care.
There are no trails. There are no trees out here.
Just a quip about it. The editor is thinking about 'Skill as in I twitch faster or know the map', whereby rather I believe they are referring to a Skill Point mechanic instead of a Leveling Up mechanic... that is, I have a "46.5% skill in Swordmanship" instead of "I'm a level 20 Swordsman". Usually a Level based mechanic has some aspects of a Skill Based system as well (but usually it's relegated to Crafting in online games like WoW or DAoC); but to me the main difference was rather looked at as a "Class Based System" vs a "Skill Based System", which has been a debate in gaming long before computers came to the genre with things like "DnD" being a CBS and "Star Frontiers" being a Skill based system. Personally, I generally perfer a Skill based system for a variety of small reasons.
----- The internet has given everyone the ability to have their voice heard equally as loud.. even if they shouldn't be
The goal of MMORPGs are to make money. Because of that they need to reward those who have kept paying their fees and keep buying the expansion packs. As long as the subscription and expansion pack models stick around, you will see that the only methods that get used are those that reward play time with the best characters. Really, Blizzard wants you to have a better character if you are a person terrible at WoW but have been playing for the past 3 years, then the person who is amazing at RPGs and has only been playing for ~3 months.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
Asheron's Call was probably the best known MMO with PVP in terms of balancing in game skills with real life player hand/eye coordination skills.
Think in terms of FPS skill... In Asheron's, your player's abilities grew as you spent the experience points on your "skills," but that meant nothing if you "sucked" at the game. In this case "sucking" at the game meant that your control over your avatar's movements were insufficient to "win" regardless of your avatar's level or in game skill level.
"Be prepared, son. That's my motto. Be prepared." --Joe Hallenbeck
One simple change could be to make progression depend on skill, not trivial success and grinding.
Or, in simpler terms, something that every dofus could do should give no XP at all. And yes, that includes the death of a monster. Instead, why not give XP for successful attacks, combos, or whatever defines your class? Balancing would be a lot more difficult than the current "monster is worth 123 XP, share between party members" system, but it could be more fair and more rewarding, and eliminate grinding.
What if combat would not give you XP for killing monsters, but for how well you fought? You get XP for every attack, depending on your skill of execution. Of course, that would require replacing the simple "click here for an attack, you'll automatically hit" system. But it would allow you to gain your XP slowly by very low XP per boring standard attack, or more rapidly if you know how to fight. Healers, mages, etc. would get XP for their successes, i.e. healing wounded party members, etc. - again, not on a flat system, healing someone who really needed it would give more XP than the standard "I'm throwing a group heal around, just in case anyone needs it".
Absolutely non-trivial to implement and balance, so it's probably not the end of the idea. But it might be a start.
Basically, imagine Oblivion where your athletics skill doesn't increase just because you bunny-hop through the world, but only if you actually use it for something useful.
Reward not use, but useful use.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
A game is a game, even a grandmaster at Chess isn't necessarily going to be good at anything else. I would argue that anything that beats the other player (short of cheating/exploting/etc) comprises skill at that game. Of course, that doesn't do you any good outside of the game, so I hesitate to call it a skill. Unless you're one of the few who makes money as a professional gamer, being good at CS/WoW/SC/whatever is just being good at killing time.
Skill systems can work, so can level systems... it depends a lot of game mechanics.
UO back in the day had a system that incorporated twitch skill, combo skill (ie, street fighter), tactics, teamwork, etc to make the game interesting. Everybody would max out eventually and then the game would have balance amongst EVERYBODY.
The thing in level based games, there are also 'classes', so one class may not be well balanced against another class. For example in WOW, a rogue generally can own a mage pretty fast, while a mage can own large swaths of players too. It's balanced overall, but not balanced for 1v1. UO was balanced for 1v1 as well as team fighting for tactics.
Either way though, I am looking forward to Mortal Online which is supposed to have balance for individuals like UO did, but we'll see how that works out.
The price is always right if someone else is paying.
That it boils down to "knowing how to move" and/or "knowing when to hit your buttons" is a vast over-simplification of finesse in video games, and can really be applied to anything. I mean, if you say that these two are not examples of "skill", then what is an example of skill? I am an IT professional, you could simplify my job to "knowing where to click the mouse" or "knowing where to plug in the cables" and say that my job is not therefore "skilled".
Level-based advancement is fine-and-dandy -- it's a heuristic thrown in your way for several reasons -- but the fact-of-the-matter is, is that most MMORPGs have a level cap. Once you've leveled so far you cannot level any further and therefore this level-based advantage you once had over other players becomes moot, and it's all about skill (or gear). To say that games like FPSes and RTSes have a higher "skill cap" is largely inaccurate, they just rely on different skills and, in many [read: most] cases, are divorced from RPG-exclusive concepts such as "gear".
Years ago, at the release of D&D 3.0, my friends and I got fed up with the class/level approach in the tabletop games to the point where we decided to develop our own system. To us, it just didn't seem to make sense that you picked a class and then that class defined all that you could do. In real life, it would seem that your individual skills would come together to form your class (job), not the other way around. So, we took that model and developed a system from it. Our original goal was just to have a system that we could play ourselves that treated us like intelligent adults. Now, eight years and hundreds, or perhaps thousands of hours, later, the system has become pretty solid. We took a big cue from the old Fallout games, which did a good job of having the skill drive the character. The book-in-progress can be downloaded at pinwheels.org. We'd love to get some feedback on it.
We've found that skills driven system are significantly more pleasing to play because they give the player flexibility to be an individual and not solely defined on what items they are carrying.
Once again I think this is an area where Guild Wars does well. There is a lvl20 cap on all players. The game mechanics become very important, it's all basically rock, paper, scissors. Everything has a counter. It makes for a much "tighter" pvp game if that makes any sense. Basically all you have is what's on your bar, and it's only eight skills max, and in pvp you want one of those skills to be resurrection signet. It becomes a game of how much power you can pack into those by "chaining" them together. There's no changing armor in pvp, no potions or elixers to boost your health; those have to be fit into your skillbar as well. I think it's a fine balance that takes so much of the grind out of the game, at that point it's all up to how you like to play, and GW gives you tons of options there through different ways to pvp, pve, and in some circumstances pva(all).
put the what in the where?
Lurk through any competitive community and you'll see a trend. Those who spend countless hours dissecting the game to understand its mechanics tend to be the ones who never really develop any skill in the game. Much like playing an instrument: You can spend your lifetime studying theory, scales, and progressions, but if you never pick up the instrument and play it you'll never be worth a damn.
You guys notice they are talking about skill 'levels' in games and not skill in the sense of a twitch gamer, right?
The article is talking about skill-based character progression systems in RPGs (e.g., Elder Scrolls), not player skill in the general sense. There's a goddamn paragraph on the first page that clarifies this, but apparently that wasn't enough.
"Sufferin' succotash."
The problem is that levels themselves are throw back to a system where it would be very difficult to measure success another way on pen and paper.
Since the first MUDs and CRPGs just emulated the pen and paper systems, they never considered that there might be better ways.
Ultima Pagan and Ultima Online (and plenty others that it would take too long to mention) tried other system, but it developers unfamiliar with anything else kept with the old model in future MMOs because the formula worked.
Now the key problem with leveling in MMOs is that it first and for most segregates your gaming populace with what content they can share and interact with.
Warhammer Online resolves this simply by making it easy to grind to level 40 so everyone really just play the games at that point. The games go other problems but player segregation isn't one of them.
Now this is nothing to be said about skill at this point, but there other ways a game can have progression rather than arbitrary levels.
Personally if a publisher handed me a bunch of cash and said "Go make a game" I would opt for something along the lines of giving out 1000 skill points to a player at the character creation and that would be it. They could design him anyway they choose (and go back and redesign later) and let them go with that instead of level grind. There would need to be something else that involves them to keep playing so you would have to create player made content and politics at the same time finding a way to prevent over greifing with said content.
People are getting bored of the level grinding for sake of leveling... I mean I'm bored it of it. I don't want to play those games anymore. Give me a breathing world without mob killing to level.
Maybe Ultima Online spoiled but its been 10 years and no developer has done better.
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-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
I'm asking because really I can't imagine any MMO getting popular if players had to do something repeatedly based on actual skills earned through playing the game itself.
Imagine a lush fantasy setting with all the higher level players as thoroughly addicted CounterStrike players.
crazy dynamite monkey
Please fix the summary. Nobody is going to RTFA and now we'll never have an interesting discussion. Stats vs Twitch is an old convo that happens every time games are even discussed on slashdot. Ultima Online skill system vs Everquest leveling is something that would be interesting though.
Fixing it is easy, just compare it to winning Megaman 2 without cheating. That game is so hard, there is no way to win just on getting items alone. It will take you multiple tries, and there is not a video game expert in the world that could sit down cold and beat even the last "level" of that game without having to try at least twice.
Button-mashing won't do it, knowing the timing of things won't do it, you still can easily slip and miss a jump, select the wrong weapon, or any number of other things, and then bam, dead.
However, if you actually beat the thing, you really feel like you did something that not everyone can do just by dumb luck or gold farming or whatever gameplay your choice of modern games has.
stuff |
Are you serious?
WoW is considered the MMO for the masses. It is boiled down to cater to the casual or unskilled gamer. My 5 year old was able to level a hunter into the later game with only occasional input from me. It largely has very little to do with character skill, let alone player skill. Admittedly, some of the instances and raids require both....but for the most part the game caters to simple enjoyment. It's like CSI on television....formulaic and boring on the outside, but somehow enjoyable while you're doing it.
To address the remainder of your post.... They will not defunct the game as long as it is profitable. Considering tha SOE still has EverQuest up and running, I think we can all rest assured that you will see WoW servers up and running for another 5-10 years easily. And unless you're new here or to gaming in general, you cannot be serious about thinking that Blizzard will allow for your own gaming server. After their bloodthirsty legal pursuit of Bnetd and the recently reported lack of LAN play for Starcraft?
Blizzard has become the cliche evil moneygrubbing corporation....having evolved from a hip, community loving game shop. It reminds me of Games Workshop on the tabletop..... Kind of ironic that Blizzard stole all of GW's IP to create the original Warcraft....now they've stolen their outlook on milking their now enamored gaming community.
If I were doing a system of ranking and the like, I would create some sort of standardized testing that would include areas of knowledge and different types of skills. It would be only through testing that players could advance themselves to different tiers.
This would nearly eliminate the need to "build and grow" characters and bring it back to the player himself. This would be rather like the martial arts ranking system of belt color ranking in a way. So you could still have achievements and stuff, but people could classify themselves through testing and train themselves more to achieve those higher ranks. This way a user who wants to create a new character in WoW, for example, could immediately bring him up to "black belt" (or whatever equivalent) by running through some tests that he had passed before using an older character. The age and experience of a character might still be factored in there somehow as well, but it would really go a long way to eliminate some of the tedious aspects of the games that lead to gold farming and the like.
You had levels which gave you experience points which you used to buy up skills with. The levels gave you points in which to buy skills. At first the points to buy skills come quickly but quickly tapered off to 1 skill point per 5 levels, the highest priced skill was 16. Since not all skills shared the same attributes you could not be totally reckless with your points. Also, buying up the skill also slowed as each point cost more and more experience.
What did it lead to that was negative. Well since both stats and skills cost experience to raise people would have absurd starting stats. You initially were given 270 points to spend across six stats (or was it seven?) which meant that 10/100/10/10/100/100 combos appeared. (think strength endurance quickness coordination intel and self:wisdom) . It was easy to over come the low stats with just a few levels worth of experience to bring them up to comfort levels. The reasoning behind this was that there was a cap to what you could spend experience wise in any stat - once it was hit no more could be bought so you started it as high as possible. Stats contributed to the base rating of each skill you bought - which again had a cap on how much they could go up.
Overall it was a great classless system. It however was placed in a world of great lore but the mobs were different enough to keep people from readily connecting to it. Tradeskills worked just like any other skill so it was not uncommon to have trade only characters who got experience by pass up through allegiances. Initially allegiances acted like the worst MLM, the guy at the top got a portion of everyone below, at different ranks in the chain you got percentages of everyone below you. They tweaked it later to prevent the huge trees people built out of allegiances to exploit experience pass up.
By giving people distinct classes and levels it does provide an ease of entry for new players. They know their role and how to progress. It does make for a simpler game - which hopefully has complexities elsewhere to make up for it . Think WOW. While many begrudge the ease of play they ignore the complexity of raiding.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
It's quite possible that I don't understand the problem put forth. Some people seem to be speaking of skills as in player skills, while other are speaking of skills as in character skills.
Either way, I think it's important to realize that some games play better using one form or another. Likewise, most games can benefit from a leveling up type feature. For two examples, consider:
1. Legend of Zelda: Adventures of Link. This game could be completed (theoretically) without leveling up, but a leveling system is included in the game to help the player overcome difficult challenges, speed up gameplay, and provide the user with a sense of satisfaction as Link becomes stronger.
2. Asheron's Call (1): This game uses both a character level and a character skill. Much like an above poster suggested, player skills are increased when the player uses that skill (for some skills). At the same time, when the player kills an enemy, that player gains experience to increase his level, which provides basic status boosts (more health, more strength, etc), but that experience can also be used to increase a character's skills or attributes. This allows players to customize their skills and create a niche for playing. Certainly this still follows the level-up notion to an extent, but the levels transition from your character level to your skill levels, so it feels more rewarding that way.
I think it's pretty clear that both systems have a market, and a dual system can work as well, so long as the player skill can be executed within a latent environment.
Dark Age of Camelot is too this day the most PVP intense MMO. I had a level 50 Scout in DAOC, one of the hardest classes to level up because NOBODY wanted you in a group with them ever.
Anyway, it came down to click on enemy, load a crit shot, fire, repeat, stealth, run away.
Skill amounted to almost nothing. The only "skill" I saw was knowing how to exploit the engine, such as having certain items you can use even when stunned/mezzed even tho you are not supposed to be able to do ANYTHING when Stunned/mezzed.
Battles also came down to this:
A group of 20 runs into a group of 14, guess who wins 95% of the time unless the group of 14 don't press their hotkeys fast enough.
Now compare that to a 5 vs 5 counter-strike matches where you actually have to know how to aim and such.
MMO PVP is not a skill based game.
What it really comes down to is an awareness that these games are all about playing with other people. Human interaction is rich and nuanced; yes, there must be a minimum level of game mechanics to play effectively. However, there have been numerous times when I, as a lower character level/skill level player, will go out and beat higher level players in resource collection/pvp/what have you, simply because I try to figure out how they will approach this challenge, and act accordingly. To make a WoW analogy, just like the game of WoW really begins at max level, a player's skill in a multiplayer game merely starts with an understanding of game mechanics.
As such, future mmo's looking at skill or level based character development should really look at the context in which this system operates. What system will be more fun for the player?
It seems to me that there are very few games that award advancement based on skill, as the summary seems to indicate. To do so would imply that there is a test of some sort before the character advances (after having proved said skill is possessed). I actually can't come up with any. The skill needed to play a game comes from knowing what you can do, and how to use those abilities to most effectively achieve an end. It's not used to literally advance a character as much as it is used to simply play the game and gain experience (not the level up kind, the life's lessons kind). To remain on pseudo topic, a skill based advancement, such as in UO, would be great if it could be combing with the vision of the WoW dev team in that 'every character should feel powerful'. Imagine taking each of the talent trees in WoW and turning them into a set of skills. Now take another, more basic, set of skills that would determine the type of armor you could wear, the schools of spells you could cast (if any), the weapons you could use, and combine it with the talent 'skills' to give you a mesh of player class creation that provides a wide berth of possiblity and customization. Of course, you'd have min-maxer combos, but properly balanced you'd only have a few real powerhouses (and that would be expected). Still, the devs would be able to nerf or buff abilities to taste. The players would be able to drop the abilities they didn't like or didn't want, and take the abilities that were needed for the actions they wanted to perform (pvp, pve, whatever). I picture a balance concept in this case similar to the way the colors are set up in magic: the gathering. You'd probably get 3-7 top performing 'builds' with counter-talent/skills for the other top builds, and still have others sacrificing 'top 5 power' for their preference. Who knows, maybe player SKILL (as in the ability to play a game) would allow one who played a style that fit them to triumph over one who picked a build purely because it was one of the 'top 5'.
Damn.. wall of text... It's kind of entertaining to read, honest. I'm just not good with /. posting. Sorry. :(
Training all the skills to their maximum level is impossible so most people get a core and then begin to specialise. One nice thing about them is they train up in the background, even offline. Most skills are easy enough to get to level 3 or 4 but level 5 can take days. So if a skill took 10 days to learn you could plan it to coincide with a real life holiday, or just have it going while you do something else.
So there is no levelling. There is no class system either although there are factions and you can put points into attributes that make a character for certain roles over others.
I see this as a question of Difficulty vs Market. Blizzard had done a very good job positioning here.
Skill you can define in any "game" by using knowlege correctly.
Leveling is progression of Avatar to "harder" portions of a game or sometimes just "different"
portions of a game.
Basically in WOW you have two types of people (there are more I know, but in a very high level general sense only two).
One are those players Leveling. The other are those players who are finished leveling and are now raiding.
They are two significantly different portions of the game and really have little to do with each other, other than one must do one before the other (wow three "others" just like that!, that's gotta be bad English).
Leveling is pretty easy and really doesn't take much skill. It is more about learning the controls and spending time. Raiding is about knowing what to do, teamwork and social networking, and does take some skill.
Not everyone is all that serious about it. So you keep you high level players happy by having content that rewards skill, while at the same time have some non-skill related game play for those that just want to play a bit.
If you think about it, the skilled players are going to storm through the leveling to get at the end game raiding part of the game, while those that are not really into that will likely take some time just to finish leveling. So you keep both segments of your market busy and playing, and paying until you come out with your next expansion. Then you raise the level bar by 10 and repeat.
Its more about knowing your market and keeping players happy than skill vs leveling. Blizzard is interested in making money, and keeping people happy to come back for more so they can make more money. Its not really an academic discussion on game type, it really is moot.
There is a reason a system based upon actual skill by a player is not implemented in MMOs. The appeal of an MMO stems largely from the fact that the ability to succeed in the games comes from the time and hard work put in, not from the level of natural skill a player possesses. This puts it at odds to almost every other activity we partake in - from real life where the most naturally gifted (and fortunate) succeed, to an fps, where those with a naturally lower reaction time flourish. MMOs, on the other hand, level the playing field - beating the hardest bosses is just a matter of grinding and learning strategies. This approach appeals highly to a world in which perhaps 1% of people are naturally gifted, and the other 99% of the population can toil endlessly without any great success.
I don't think anything out there requires skill besides quake
I would have said kaboom from the Atari days, but I dont think many gamers would remember that
ahhhh, those were the good ol' days
now get off my lawn!
You speak London? I speak London very best.
Don't play MMO's. Seriously - I don't know what else to say... Being a FPS guy from when id first released wolfenstien, I never could understand the point of a chat room with graphics where you are rated on your popularity by how long you've played the game.
If you like to see how a "system of play time vs skill" is done properly, look at Battlefield : Heroes.
No - I don't particularly care for the game, but when it starts up it matches you up against people of similar level and skill so you aren't getting pummeled by a level 20, and you are a lowly level 3 or 4.
'The standard argument is that it just boils down to "knowing how to move" or "knowing when to hit your buttons."'
That sounds like the very definition of skill to me.
The real metric is adaptation. I remember being a rogue in WoW back in the day and evasion tanking MC bosses. Not because that was part of the game plan but because the tank would die and the raid needed to adapt to the situation. When the tank got back up and was healed, I'd vanish and let him start tanking again. Raids are saved by peoples ability to adapt to the situation as it unfolds. It doesn't matter how fast you can click your buttons if you don't understand the situation you are in and how you should act during that situation. Although, I suppose you could actually qualify that as skill.
I really think Guild Wars is the only MMO where something like skill, as opposed to bunny hopping, loot gathering, and spending 3 weeks of your life getting a character up to 80, only to discover the class categorically sucks at PvP. I also think the class definitions are more complex than the traditional tank/healer/dps.
I also really really love the multiclass aspect which yields a much larger amount of viable and interesting builds, combined with the free skill rebalancing, makes tweaking your character/skill setup part of the game. Unlike other MMOs where you essentially go to a website and download the build for your class based on the most recent patch.
-- Political fascism requires a Fuhrer.
" To ensure that we're being absolutely crystal clear, this article isn't focused on the discussion concerning the differences between the pure RPG levelling system versus "player skill-based" games."
Yet that's exactly what the article mainly focuses on., even after taking out the most obvious comments by contributors that "cross the line"
It's a pointless debate really, because unless all things are equal (same level, same class, same gear, same skill tree, same amount of skill points or whatever other flavour of advancement/customization the game might have) and there is minimal RNG, "player skill" can always be called into question.
Simple fact is, once you know a game well, you know who is good and who is not, at least in your opinion, because if you ask around you will probably find 20 people in a few minutes who disagree with you
Certain aspects of any MMO will require player skill, majority will not (otherwise they will locking out too many potential paying customers).
Best to just accept it and move on as debating who/what/where requires/has skill or not, especially on such a grand scale, is totally pointless
Q: At what point does intimate knowledge of a game's mechanics make a player skilled?
A: When you play EVE online.
The same argument can be made (more accurately even!) about chess. That doesn't mean chess isn't skill based, knowing how to move is a skill. The Heigan fight in World of Warcraft proves it. I think knowing the mechanics of ANY game, be it an mmo or a board game or poker, is absolutely key to being a skilled player. How can you be particularly skilled if you don't understand how the game works?
Relatedly, I've seen a growing trend of players saying that such games don't really take much skill at all. The standard argument is that it just boils down to "knowing how to move" or "knowing when to hit your buttons." In the MMO community, people often make references to FPS or RTS games, saying they have a higher skill cap. However, the same complaints also come from within those communities, with comments like "you just need to know the map," or "it's all about a good build order." At what point does intimate knowledge of a game's mechanics make a player skilled?
Wrong skills. They aren't talking about player skills vs. character level in game... They're talking about character's skills vs. character's level in game.
Some games use a level system. You kill rats for a while, get XP, and eventually ding you're level 2. You get more HP, you do more damage, etc.
Some games use a skill system. You swing your sword for a while, and your sword skill gets better, so you do more damage. You hide behind a shield for a while, and your shield skill gets better, so you take less damage.
Personally, I prefer a purely skill-driven system as it puts fewer restrictions on the player. You want to swing a sword and wear plate armor? Go right ahead. You change your mind and decide you want to hurl fireballs instead? Sure thing. The problem is that this almost invariably leads to some kind of "perfect" build. Someone decides that the best way to do it is to put 10 in swords, 11 in shields, and 15 in fireballs...and all of a sudden that's what everyone is playing. So you wind up with absolutely no variety. The counter to this is to make cross-training painful. Make it take enough time/effort/money/whatever to develop your sword skills that you'll have to actually choose whether you want swords or fireballs.
Player skills certainly enter into the equation... Though I don't know if I'd call them skills so much as knowledge. Someone who knows where the best place is to hunt will do better than someone who doesn't, regardless of how powerful their character is. Someone who knows what kind of damage to use against the monster will do better than someone who doesn't, regardless of how powerful their character is.
"Work is the curse of the drinking classes." -Oscar Wilde
Just play the role of someone who is skilled and of high level.
Think about Sudoku for a second. Let's say you never played it before. Someone gives you a board and the rules. The first step you have is to figure out how to solve it. Eventually you develop an algorithm that can solve any sudoku. Once you have developed this algorithm, sudoku is no longer an intellectual exercise. It is no longer a matter of solving a problem, but merely executing an algorithm. It becomes manual labor. Likewise, if someone gives you the algorithm, you can bypass the first part entirely.
An MMO is very similar. In the beginning you don't know what to do. You have to learn the game and solve problems. Many of the rules of the game are hidden or secret. Thus, it can take awhile. However, eventually, you learn it. You know exactly what to press in order to do the maximum damage per unit time in any given situation with any given character. You don't even need to learn this, either. Someone can just tell you.
At some point you switch from developing an algorithm to executing an algorithm. You switch from developing a solution to executing a known solution. You switch from skill to knowledge.
This is why there is such an attraction tïo eurogames like Puerto Rico, Agricola, Caylus, Power Grid, Tigris and Euphrates, etc. These games tend to have little to no randomness, so they aren't games of chance. They are complex enough that it is very difficult to solve them, though perhaps not as complex as Go. They also have a significant theme and other elements that make them more "fun" than a game like Go or Chess.
Even so, many eurogames are solvable. We have a shelf full of games, but we only actually play about half of them. For the other half, everyone already knows the algorithm for optimal play. When we play with each other, it becomes a perfect Nash equilibrium. When we play with anyone else who hasn't solved the game, they are completely crushed.
The answer is to never play a game you have solved, and never play games that are easily solvable.
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The Jade Empire system ruled and should be used more often, but please do it in a nonsucky way. Thanks
There's a word at the beginning of the editor's first sentence that clarifies this, but apparently that wasn't enough.
...and anyone that doubts the level of skill required by [some] MMOs should seriously try holding an administrative position in a top 1% tier guild. Taking 50 random people from across the globe and getting them to move and work seamlessly as a team is quite a feat.
But even on the ground level, some of the most skill-intensive games I have ever played were Korean MMO betas. Helbreath, for example, had PvP so demanding that I could regularly get a full-on adrenaline rush from it.
In D&D, your character's progression was level-based. Your character performed the actions, while you did the thinking, the plotting, the decision-making, the talking. But sometimes even your decisions depended on a dice-roll, depending on how you explained yourself:
"I try to convince the blacksmith to sell me the sword." "That's a charisma roll," says the DM.
"Hmm, this sword has a notch near the hilt...how about I take it off your hands for 2 silver?" "Thou art frugal!" and here's your sword.
With MMORPGs, the concept is the same -- but you're even more limited to dice rolls. You can harangue the blacksmith all you like, he's still going to charge you 10 silver. Crack all the jokes you want, the NPC baker won't sleep with you and won't drop the price on her cherry pie.
With a skill-based system, the results are the same though people will argue they aren't. Skill-based is essentially a custom template rather than a pre-defined one. But the results are the same, even if the method of arriving is varied. Both disallow the n00b halfling from backstabbing the sitting ancient warrior for 1000 points of damage. But that makes sense -- an ancient warrior is always aware, and wouldn't let someone sneak up behind him. Irritating for the halfling as this creates that gap between friends who don't keep up.
I used to have all these great* ideas for MMORPGs but I realize they all require that players put in a lot of time. I choose not to anymore, so it's tough to get behind those ideas. Getting rid of hit points in place of genuine damage, relating the environment, levels matter less, etc etc.
I think the overarching question ought to be what you define skill as.
Premise 1: Skill is not time.
Or is it? One of the largest complaints about a level-based system is that without a significant penalty for failure, eventually, everyone can pass the level. Therefore, anything that anyone can do does not require skill.
The counterargument is that time builds muscle memory, which is a vital element for most games. Though I hate to draw the comparison, professional athletes use repetition to increase performance. Care to guess at the number of balls that Tiger Woods has hit in his life? Thousands? Hundreds of thousands? Now, Tiger Woods is an awe-inspiring athlete. He has natural talent and is (arguably) the most skilled golfer of all time. How much of that "skill" is based on repetition?
Do you think the world's best Starcraft player is actually looking at what he's building? Do you think the top Counterstrike team is actually thinking about the menu structure when purchasing weapons at the start of a round? Similarly, take World of Warcraft PvP. It's not enough to understand that the Warlock counter to a Death Knight's Death Grip is Demonic Circle. You have to have the presence of mind to see the spell graphic and immediate react with the teleport. Regardless of your understanding of the mechanic, it's muscle memory that will play the primary role. So, in a way, time breeds skill.
Premise 2: Skill is not money.
Or is it? It's easy to empathize with the anger of people who expend a lot of energy (I'll refrain from calling that energy "time", see above) competing with others who take the shortcut of using cash to upgrade their avatar. Regardless of the morality of a game company allowing such actions or the potential effects on the game's economy, it cheapens the former's accomplishment when it is made to be easily accessed by those who have the resources to skip the work.
The counterargument has two basic facets:
Now, apply that logic to other games. If you've been playing FPS's for the last ten years, how much practice would you really need to become familiar with Team Fortress 2?
Plus, you mind telling me how me doing so affects you in any way? Even if my gear doesn't mark me as a twink and we look the exact same, what were you hoping for? Recognition of your accomplishment from other players? Seriously, is that what you're playing for? Validation that all that time (see above) was well-spent? Are you really that desperate for popularity that you'd waste months of your life trying to garner it from people you don't even know?
Personally, I'd like to see a variable level system. In theory, you would enter level 1 an
So what this sounds like is kinda like WoW level based versus EVE Online individual skill based leveling. I've played EVE Online and as I have played City of Heroes among other level based games, and I see the advantages and downfalls of both. It would be nice to see skill based leveling more often as I believe it allows more variety of game play options and more thought in your ability selections.
MMOs often don't really encourage the players to acquire skill, because in many parts of the game you just don't need it. The target audience are noobs.
In high-end PvE areas or PvP however, you'll quickly notice the difference between a good healer and a bad one. Same goes for most other classes, although some classes are definately easier to master than others.
When you compare MMOs to FPS/RTS games, you have to consider that in FPS and RTS all players have pretty much the same setup (balanced for 1vs1), while in MMOs the classes are mostly designed in a scissors-stone-paper way (balanced for mass battles). That means a certain class may have an advantage over the other in small scale battles, no matter how skilled the players are.
This often leads to the conclusion that the game doesn't take any skill, because one class always wins, but actually the losing player just picks a bad matchup.
The main skills in MMOs, except knowing the game of course, are timing and good positioning. These skills won't make you invincible when you're alone, but the more good players play together the bigger the difference will be.
Skill based vs level based: I prefer level based games... in skill based games' PvE you rely more on other players and I don't like to rely on noobs (target audience, remember). Play Guild Wars with random groups and you'll kn- ... no, don't. It'll give you nightmares.
There's the caginess of veterans who know the best sniping spots and combinations of casts that'll set up an opponent for the fatality. There's also the developed muscle-memory that helps you cycle through weapons in a close-in fight while dodging bullets. Caginess is far more important to the mechanics of WoW, while reflexes are more important in Battlefield. But, you can't treat either as mutually exclusive. I could be a complete noob sitting in the best sniping spot in the game, but not have the coordination to get the kill shot from range. Or, I could have the fastest mouse in the west yet always go for the knife kill when a cagey vet knows that the pistol is the right call.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
Of both game mechanics. The difference is that when you join, and everyone has advanced weaponry you are forced to develop the skills which will make you a better player, and gain the advanced weaponry that much faster as a result. You may have to spend the first few days helping out with a medkit or resupplying before you get to have a cloaked sniper, but those actions are still valuable and required. Depending on how your team is playing you may not end up using your higher end level based unlocks because thats what the situation calls for.
Actually, I think the problem is that the summary makes a hash of it. The "advancement through skill" from the quoted part, is not the same meaning of "skill" that the following submitter rant uses.
The "skill" in the "skill-based vs level-based MMO" debate, is not about the [b]player's[/b] skills, but about the [b]character's[/b] skills. _Major_ difference.
A "skill-based MMO" (or MUD) does _not_ mean you have to learn to circle-strafe or be a cyber-athlete or anything. They can be just as mindless affairs as WoW. (And I'm actually not saying that as a bad thing: I actually like WoW.) They just mean it has no levels, but they have a bunch of skill numbers and you spend your xp directly on the skills and stats.
Heck, you could even make a turn-based skill-based games if you wanted to, and in fact some have actually been made.
A good example of a skill-based system is Vampire: Bloodlines. It doesn't have levels at all. You get some xp and you spend it directly on raising your strenght, or your dexterity, or your melee skill, or your lockpicking skill. Having more experience doesn't automatically make you tougher at some point. You could buy only social abilities for a long while for example, and be an elder vampire that can't fight worth Jack, but could probably convince the Pope and Arafat to get married to each other. Or instead you could be the toughest kung-fu master but unable to talk even your best friend into seeing things your way. Or learn a lot of spells right from the start. Or anything in between.
A good example of a level-based game are most old D&D games. You inherently have a to-hit modifier or access to spells based on your level. Inherently being higher level makes you better.
And Fallout 3 is actually a hybrid rather than just level-based. At its heart, what matters are your character skills, not your level. The level just gives you points to put in your skills.
Or if you want an example based on WoW, imagine a game that plays exactly like WoW, but has no levels. Instead of your sword skill automatically raising its cap by 5 points each time you level up, you don't level up, but spend xp to buy more sword skill. Or instead of getting a new spell every 2 levels, you have no levels, but buy spells with xp. You don't get +1 this stat, and +2 that stat, etc, when you level up, you buy stat increases with xp.
That would also mean that all restrictions on equipment have to be skill based instead of level based. In a skill-based game you don't have some sword that requires minimum level 39, you have a sword that requires, say, minimum 195 sword skill. If you want to use it, you dump your xp into sword skill. If you want to be a mage, you dump your xp into spell skills instead and don't get to use that sword too soon.
That's really what a skill-based MMO would look like.
But other than that, the game would still play exactly like WoW. You wouldn't need any more player skill to go do the Lakeshire quests in that setup, than you need in the real level-based WoW.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
It should be about skills, both user skills and numerical skills. But numerical skills should be conservative: The base skills (before magical items are taken into account) should sum to the same number. Improving in one area comes at a cost of atrophy in another area, so that no matter how powerful your character becomes, there's always some kind of weakness that you need to overcome through cleverness or friends. Even magical items should always come with some kind of negative effect, even if it doesn't affect your stats.
Also, the RNG shouldn't be involved in the damage equation. The NPC move-decider, sure, but the damage equation should be deterministic based on the actions you and the thing you're fighting with decide upon.
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
If by "skill" they mean twitch-based skill, then any game that's too skill-based is going to drive me away.
Yeah, I can play those games, and I can do decently at some of them even on high difficulty settings sometimes (XB360 achievements sometimes prompt me to do this), but the effort-to-fun ratio just isn't there for me, and such games don't keep my interest for long.
But if "skill" means min-maxing, unraveling hidden game mechanics, optimizing progression paths, et cetera, then that's incredibly fun for me.
Basically, think of skill in three areas: strategic, tactical, and execution. I'm a big fan of things that require skill in strategy ("cut off the supply lines before attacking the base", "if a faction controls a resource you need, either build a good relationship with them or destroy them utterly"), and also of things that require skill in tactics ("fight ice-based foes with fire", "attack from stealth where possible", "don't get within arm's reach of the ogre"). But I do not want to be bothered with games that require too much skill in excecution (ie. reflexes, physical coordination, reaction time).
Take an article that goes out of its way to state up front that it isn't about player skill since that would be an easy mistake to make.
And have the slashdot discussion torpedoed (for those of us who find the actual article topic interesting) anyway by an idiot editor who decides to write about that completely unrelated aspect of video games.
But I guess "relatedly" makes it all fine, even though it's not even vaguely related other than happening to use the same word in the description.
Having both played Guild Wars and World of Warcraft, I would have to say skill based is the funnest, but unfortunately requires the most content to keep the player occupied. Without the gratification of a skill level to display to others, you are left with the need to conquer more and harder areas and wear more unique and rare gear. If you're a business, having a level based game is the smartest most economical solution.
I'd disagree. Take Chess or Go.
Mechanics are simple, but it takes a lifetime to master.
Take WoW. The mechanics are complex, require a tome, a wiki, and a calculator to figure out.
Trying to figure out "where can my king move to get out of check" is infinitely easier, and requires fewer mechanics than "How much damage does my mage's spell do?" ("Which spell?" "Frostbolt level 8", "What stats do you have?", "[stats]", "Can you give me your build?", "Man, you'd get +1.429% DPS if you used this staff I read about that came out yesterday!")
The only thing up for debate then, is whether rote memorization is a skill, which I'd say it's not.
Versus, ya know, actually figuring out complex strategies, using psychology to outwit your enemy, and hell, even twitch gaming.
-- Political fascism requires a Fuhrer.
As noted in the article, EVE isn't a classic example of skill-based levelling because in EVE skills level in real time only and independent of what you do in the game. There's no skill "grind", for better or worse. The more classic example would be UO.
You have WoW (and most other MMOs) where you gain XP from almost everything you do, and with enough XP you advance a level and your character gets better in many ways. Or you have UO where if you hit something with a sword you get better at swords, if you block with your shield you get better at shields, etc. Or EVE where you get better at whatever skill you specify, regardless of what you're doing in game (or even, in EVE's case, if you're not playing at all).
101010, 222, 52,
The choice here is not really "level vs skill" but "stone games vs clay games":
Stone Games: Your character's abilities are set in stone when you choose a class, and you level up to grow those abilities and you can equip the items of your class.
Clay Games: You choose your character's abilities and grow them with time independently, sculpting your creation like clay, and choose the items that fits your own style and planning.
I'll never go with a Stone game when there's a Clay game available.
Working to work less.
The "skill" issue has only ever really been brought up by FPS gamers who have a need to feel superior to everyone else.
Truthfully, I've always tended to believe that WoW's pre-Arena PvP actually involved a lot more skill than the FPS games I'd played prior to that. The simple reason is actually because in WoW's PvP, you were able to stay alive for a certain period of time.
In a conventional FPS, it's one hit = dead. You don't have time to be skilled or unskilled; most of the time, death has absolutely nothing to do with you at all. You'd still die whether you were a decent player or not.
The FPS demographic won't agree, of course; and they have now destroyed WoW's PvP as well. The Arena was brought into the game specifically to cater to them, and it destroyed the game not long after.
So it's a moot point either way. The CounterStrike crowd get listened to and get what they want because they scream the loudest, not because they're actually right. Blizzard (sorry, I mean Activision) listened to them with regards to the Arena, because they thought that's where the money was.
Also, for any Arena players who feel like responding to this and telling me about what awesome fun the Arena is, and how I'm wrong about that, etc etc, don't bother. The entire thing is exploit based and always has been; it's based on composition and healer skill if anything, not offensive player skill. It's CounterStrike with bubbles and HoTs if the Priest or Druid you've got with you is able to get them off in time.
If you don't have a healer in your comp, you're screwed, and it won't matter how good you are.
The class-based system lets the developer balance whole sets of skills at once, which means that the advantages of one skill could be offset by the disadvantages of a lack of skill or even a penalty in a class. This means that not every skill has to be balanced relative to each other; only the classes themselves need to be balanced.
Disadvantages include stuff like, inability to wield bladed weapons, or inability to wear armor, etc.
Disadvantages are difficult to incorporate into a purely skill-based system because nobody is going to pick a disadvantage unless forced, and so the developer has to arbitrarily staple them onto a skill. Like, wielding weapons means you suck at casting spells, or wearing armor means you can't sneak around. Congratulations, you've just implemented classes in a skill-based system.
It seems like most games these days are using primarily a class-based system with some "accessory" skills, which is essentially a class-based system with some extra flavor. It's because people haven't really figured out how to balance a purely skill-based system.
WoW is a great example of money centric MMO game: everything else is secondary. Every change and addition they make to it, is to get more players and more playtime sold.
It follows a philosophy of 'good profit means good product'.
With that philosophy, some of the most significant movies, books, music would be bad.
The concept of levels in RPGs primarily arose from the table-top pencil and paper versions like Dungeons and Dragons as a way to reduce book-keeping. The actual meaning of levels is rather ludicrous, but they eventually became a motivating force for players of those games as a way to measure their progress, and often to boast.
In a computer-based RPG, there is absolutely no need for this type of book-keeping convention. The computer can easily track minute details across all manner of character actions & statistics. As a result, levels could be (and IMHO should be) abolished entirely. A game using a skill-based advancement system (which tracks all these minute character details) is much more dynamic and offers a greater range of customization and choice for the player.
Unfortunately, decades of games featuring levels have in-grained player's thinking that levels are the be-all, end-all of RPGs, and it is very difficult to explain to them that levels are actually an archaic and unnecessary way to track character advancement. In addition, the term "skill-based" is often confused with playing skill, which is mostly unrelated to a skills-based advancement system in an RPG. Even the original summary seems to show this confusion.
I'd like to see more RPGs that ditch levels entirely, and switch to a skill-based advancement. It's time to move past the outdated level-up...ding!
What's the maximum number of players that can participate in same battle at once?
Isn't it even less than what Counterstrike has, for example?
Is GW a MMO game at all?
First a simple example:
* WOW (worldofwarcraft.com) - level based combat
* VO (vendetta-online.com) - skill based
Reasoning:
WOW:
Now matter what you do, there is a higher chance of hell freezing over or world peace tomorrow then you beating a level 80 character with your level 20 character. PERIOD!! Hell, there's pretty much no chance of beating anyone more then a level or two above you. This logically implies that the combat model is based purely on levels and not on skill. I'm not gonna argue if WOW actually requires skills because it doesn't matter, unless you're a level 80 like all the other endgamers there's really absolutely nothing you can do to beat them, no matter how good you are.
VO:
When I first tried this one I leveled up all my licenses (these are used to unlock better ships/weapons), when I finally did you know what? I got blasted by someones alt, he was in a free ship with free guns vs my super leet top-of-the-line technology. It's not only possible to kill someone in a bigger/badder ship then the one you are flying, it happens every day! And you don't need a large possy of noobs in with free ships to do it, you just need skill that comes from experience and practice and a single ship.
Don't get me wrong, even in a skill based game it's very unlikely (arguably impossible) to just jump into the game and attain this skill in minutes and start killing long time players. Skill, in the case of VO anyways is twitch reflexes and 3d orientation/strategy, much like flying a real plane or driving a car. The first time you jump behind the wheel of a car and race against a seasoned pro you'll lose, aside some sort of freak-of-nature cat-gene reflexes there's nothing you can do about this.
The real difference between skill and level based games, skill based games you practice to get good, level based games you practice to get levels. Levels are like a fake skill reward for practice that anyone can get, thus keeping the "skill" for that game based more-or-less on how much you've played it (or in the case of games like EvE, how dedicated you are with logging in and setting your account to auto-grind the next skill, funny game that one where you don't even really play to gain skills or levels), and not transferable to other characters even in the same game. Both types of games will end up with some grind, just one is a grind where you're guaranteed to improve (your level), the other is like practicing a piano for years (you will get better, but some people are just more capable in the end then others). I think that's the real distinction between skill and level based, and also the reason level based games are generally more popular, that in a level based game anyone can become godlike to those less powerful then them (those that haven't played as long) while a skill based game not everyone is guaranteed to attain this level of power over others (you need to actually be godlink to appear godlike which is somewhat rare these days).
To me the whole leveling idea is just a brute force solution to the problem of how do we reward people for spending a LOT Of time in the game grinding away. Which makes sense if you're charging them 20-30$ a month to level up and want to keep them paying. But as an occasional game player (occasional due to a lack of interesting games to play) I really wish they would a) take more of a skills based approach (which is still leveling, but in a more discreet fashion) and b) have more open ended game play so that those skills could be used cleverly, i.e. setting traps, using illusions, using spells in interesting ways and so on (basically all the stuff that makes tabletop D&D fun). In other words take out the suck and replace it with some fun. My solution to this desire to game but lack of fun computer games has been simple: I bought myself some games like Risk and invite friends over to play and drink and eat every once in a while. Personally I've pretty much given up on computer games (even my Nintendo Wii sits unused), there's a real lack of open ended games (which is understandable since that type of problem is surprisingly difficult to program for).
There's a word at the beginning of the editor's first sentence that clarifies this, but apparently that wasn't enough.
So, let me get this straight, you're expecting Overly Critical Guy to be fair in his criticisms?
This is just wrong on both counts:
Are you adequate?
Contrary to what the original poster posted in the summary, the article is not relating level-based MMOs to games that require player skill (the FPS/RTS reference in the summary). The article is referring to games like Ultima Online that use a character skill-based system. For example, Ultima Online uses skill-points and Guild Wars uses a low level cap(tutorial i a sense) to emphasize the skills you pick up. I believe EVE is also skill-based in the sense that you build up your characters in-game skills as you play. That is not something really related to most FPS/RTS games since they arguably rely on out-of-game player-based skills, not in-game character-based skills.
"Knowing the map" -- "knowing the build" -- "following the recipe" -- these are the first layer of understanding the mechanics of the game. They are learning to balance a bicycle or to push off with roller blades.
There is almost always deeper mechanics involved with a game.
The layout of a map may favor a particular weapon, but that weapon will have its weaknesses. A shotgun can be kited. A sniper can be ambushed. The accuracy and evasiveness of the player are infinitely improvable.
The long build strategy can be rushed. The rush strategy can be blocked. The short range unit can be defeated by the long range unit. The long range unit can be defeated by the stealthy unit.
The more mechanics that are included in the game, the more skill is required to be competitive. Some people enjoy a game requiring high skill, but most people do not.
Most people play games for success-gratification, and not for quality-of-success.
That's why the kid likes to cheat. He just wants to win and he doesn't care if it was fair for the computer.
That's why people like MMOs. The game presents a system where success is guaranteed as long as you put time in. Players don't feel like they are cheating, and they constantly get the gratification they desire.
I used to be an MMO addict when I was a teenager, but now Guild Wars PvP is the only MMO I've touched in years and I play it maybe a couple hours every few months. I think it has something to do with the fact that at the time I needed to feel successful because my life sucked. -- I'm a level 55 in real life now, so I don't really feel the need for extra gratification.
Given the state of the net, it's not really built for twitch gaming, at least in certain mmo's. Eve Online makes you fly your ship through autopilot. How fun is that? I want a joystick! Well, joysticks would suck. The game is laggy and you couldn't possibly enjoy it like that. Using autopilot and hotkeys, less twitching is required.
That being said, there were specific reasons why I found EVE difficult and un-fun and quit. The ship customization system didn't make a whole lot of intuitive sense to me. A lot of people enjoyed it but I found it illogical and counter-intuitive. The grinding to get anywhere lost appeal and I didn't have the time to devote to becoming a member of an elite company to do stuff. Then there's also the amount of time it takes to build a character. You need to be familiar with the game or have a friend who knows how to advise you to become useful at anything. Players said they could get a month-old account combat-worthy with the right skills learned but someone trying to make a rounded character would suffer for it. Obsessives would multi-account and have a miner, fighter, industrialist, etc.
In EVE you could really stack things against noobs. PVE setups aren't always good for PVP. The PVP guy comes into the fight with the ship rigged for exactly that. Carebear goes lowsec to hunt pirates, the PVPer is sitting there running probes. Finds out where the noob is, warps in, noob starts to panic because he sees a new hostile. PVP guy already has scramble drones out, has a real good chance of nailing the target down before he can warp out. He has optimized weapons for the fight, knows how to tank his shields or armor, carebear is soon dead. Carebear likely won't know why he's dead but is furious that he lost a ton of isk just trying to get rats.
The problem with EVE is that a certain set believe that harshness is a good thing and want as grim and unpleasant an environment as possible. But to have fun with that, the wolves need sheep -- carebears in this case. And so carebears just want to have some fun, build up some nice ships, not do anything hasty or risky. But it's difficult to get anywhere in highsec and so forays into lowsec are made, wolves pounce and say the game is great. Carebears eventually get fed up and leave.
I gave up on EVE because it required a ridiculous investment of time to learn the ropes and get everywhere. Yes, I could probably have mastered all of the intricacies of politics and equipping my ship and learning how to pvp properly but jesus christ, I've got shit to do! Real life shit! I want my video games to be relaxing, not a second job.
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
I've been watching a lot of pro Starcraft casts lately (hooray for Cholera!), and to me it's clear that skill is a major factor.
Using a build is just like using an opening in chess. It helps you make the first, say, ten moves. After that you're in uncharted territory. In fact, Starcraft players have it harder than chess players when it comes to the opening. If the player isn't timely with a scout into the enemy base, and then skillful with microing it, the player will have no idea what build the other player is using. Chess players can just see it on the board without any effort or probe/drone/scv micro skill. If you don't have that skill, you're not going to be able to adjust your strategy to account for the other players strategy.
A lot of the game also depends on your meaningful APM (actions per minute). Pro players have an APM around 250-400. The sheer concentration and quick thinking needed to maintain such a hectic rate of play isn't something that just anyone can step up and do. Using a good build has nothing to do with it. If you don't have good APM one or both of micro and macro will suffer.
Along with APM comes micro. In Z/Z, for example, a single well-placed plague can turn the game. For protoss, micro of a shuttle/reaver combo or of high templar storms can be crucial. I can't come up with a good example for Terrans, but basically in Starcraft your units are only as good as your micro.
Personally I'd take a skill-based game like CounterStrike or Starcraft over a level-based game like WoW any day.
but it's much harder to implement and balance and developers always have to get lazy and take the easy route: Capping skills based on a level.
Skill based is better because they allow for a more diverse player set.
For example:
Lets say the skill range is 1-1000, and you have 200 different skills.
So I can have my sword master spell thrower. By the very nature of skills, the character would progress towards being a master swordsman/spell slinger slower then some one just focusing on swords.
Of course, if you only ahve 9 skills, then it doesn't really matter. I would prefer a skill for every type of item. For example: you wouldn't have a sword skill, you would ahve a long sword skill, short sword skill, dagger skill, and so on.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
My main problem with MMORPGs is that everyone is a cookie cutter image of one an other. everyone eventualy gets to the top level, and gets most of the same top end gear as everyone else, and uses their skill/talent/whatever points that they are allocated in the same exact way as everyone else. ... where you can log into an instance over and over any time you want with your guild/group and kill the Bosses over and over.
I think instances ruined MMOs
I miss the original Everquest. Only a select handfull of players got the top gear, the end game encounters were incredibly difficult, loot drops were rare, and everyone had to compete for the bosses. No instances, the top end boss spawned once a week ..total .. no instanced copies. You were either on a server where people behaved in a civil manner and guilds rotated the opportunity to attempt the boss each week, or you were on a pvp server where the best guild would dominate the zone and keep the other guilds out while they farmed the boss. If you were good you were good, and if you could get into the best guild you could get the good loot. .. to me WoW is like socialism/welfare whatever you want to call it, blizzard just hands out gear. thats what is not fun. getting stuff handed to you. and having it be basicly the same stuff as everyone else.
Remember in Everquest the ONE guy that had the Soulfire or Fiery Defender or whatever that palidin epic was. That was cool.
Not to mention in that game when you died you lost about a weeks worth of EXP lol, so there was incentive to NOT die. I.E. fight skillfully and learn when to RUN.
Anyway, I guess in summary the main problems with the newer MMOs are that there are no truly rare items most of the time, everyone gets the same stuff, and the risk vs. reward is non-existent.
I play WoW. I used to play UO. Skipped EQ/EQ2 altogether. I think a combination of things should result in a character gaining a level. It should be XP + some other requirement. Some ideas off the top of my head would be a certain amount of XP plus, raising some other set of skills to a specific point and you gain a level. So in WoW, you to go from level 10 to 11 you would maybe need 20,000 XP, plus your cooking and one of your weapons skills must be at x amount of points and you must have earned Y amount of gold. As you gain more levels, the requirements to go to the next level increase. By the time you hit the level cap, you would have really learned all aspects of your character, become a productive member of at least your guild and truly get a sense of accomplishment.
80 levels of button mashing isn't an accomplishment.
I read Slashdot for the headlines, because the headlines, unlike the articles, are usually original and never duplicated
Indeed, they've been done for ages in pen and paper games. Thanks for making that point.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Many typical RPGs and like games, such as Crossfire, have a level system. This system frequently has levels that can go as high as in the 100's or as low as ten (but frequently this number is scaled up and up in order for the developers to create more content without doing any real work). When a character gains a level, she also gains stats. She might gain in strength, dexterity, intellect, or whatever other attributes are put into the game. The problem is she has 100 levels, so say she starts with 20 strength, and then gains a point in strength every level, now at level 100 she has 120 strength. The newbie character logs in with his 20 strength newbie. The problem is she is going to really be 6 times more powerful, so then, what happens if she decides now that she has maxed out her character, her new mission in life is to grief newbies. The newbies don't really have much of a chance against her.
But the real issue is that instead of 100 levels, there might be thousands of levels. By the time you get a maxed leveled character, that is several years of work. No lifers play day in and day out to get max level, and some games don't even really have a cap on levels, so the no lifer has this character that is several times more powerful than that of the casual player. The no lifer then dominates everyone, and everyone else realizes they will never get that powerful, so they quit. This is bad for the game, because eventually the no-lifer realizes that he is the only one left playing it, and he would rather rank up on a chart where he has some real competition, not just who had no life for so many years.
Ultima Online did it well. Swing a sword, gain points in dexterity and strength, cast a spell, gain a point in intellect, up to a reasonable cap for your total stats. I think it was something like 255 total, with a max of 150 in any given stat, and up to 25 more points with stat scrolls. But this way there were no uber l33t character with thousands more hit points than the newbie. Sure, maxed our characters were more powerful than the newbies, but anyone could easily get a maxed out character with just a little bit of time and effort, so most people had maxed out characters. The games focus was not on character development, beyond tweaking your template for a given game play change. The focus was on actually playing the game, going to dungeons, finding loot, crafting, and finding resources, socializing, and trading. People did not think of it as a grind game where the primary focus was character development. How you played your character mattered far more, as did customizing your template and equipment for your play style.
I've also reposted this in my blog http://wogralddev.blogspot.com/ , along with a lot of other game development and design posts.
Skill is a pretty generic term when you think about it for really, there are different types of skills; mainly motor vs academic. RPG is mainly bound to the academic skills; computation and critical reasoning. ... well getting
old and the evolution in FPS in general.
FPS on the other hand, is more of a mix of both motor and academic skills. Being an old school FPS gamer, I found this conversation interesting in light of
There is little doubt to the significance and magnitude of online multiplayer Quake2.
Even today, I would rank Q2 as one of pre-eminent motor skill FPS games. Power ups did not come in some sort of coded advantage such as access to better weapons or increases in probability skills, but manifested themselves in proficiencies in the mechanics of the game.
The fast mouse, slightly exaggerated jumping and, of course, the game changing grappling hook allowed for players to develop some truly sick skills over time that could even be appreciated by those who would end up being abused by them.
Perhaps no greater example of an earned motor skill in FPS was the legendary Railgun.
Easy to use, difficult to master, the Railgun was rarely used (although available) by novice or intermediate players but could dominiate in the hands of an expert.
While there were certainly academic skills involved, Q2 was truly one of the great motor skill FPS games.
I see Team Fortress in the same class as Q2 but for very different reasons.
While motor skills have always played a significant part in the game, it really was the FPS to introduce game changing academic skills into the mix. I think that trait has only gotten stronger TF2.
Having said that, there is really a sliding scale of motor vs academic skills based on character selection in TF2.
At one extreme you the highly motor dependent scout character and at the other, the highly academic dependent engineer class, with the other characters falling somewhere in between.
TF2 is perhaps the poster child for the motor vs academic balanced game, there is truly something for everyone.
Thinking about it, you might be able to say that tactical FPS really defines the pinnicle of academic skills in FPS.
Whether it be CounterStrike, Rainbow6 or COD tactical the idea of stratigic positioning (i.e. cover) being the game changer has finally emeraged as a viable skill.
I find in my older age and declining motor skills, this to be the venue where I can still truly dominiate 0.00009 sec reaction time of 12 year old.
Interestingly enough, I also find COD (esp. non tactical) to perhaps be the most collaberative FPS with respect to age. I tend to gravitate toward support roles, holding strategic positions, while my younger and more agile minded teamates initiate the attacks.
I think academic skill will continue to push the FPS paradigm in the future. Of course, motor skill will always play a significant role but in general, I think we will see more tactical advancements such as command structures and coordinated attacks as the future of FPS.
End of Message.
I've been playing fantasy role playing games for years. Both on-line and the more traditional face to face type.
I started with D&D, then AD&D, then MERP, then finally Rolemaster. They all have their strengths & weaknesses. After a *lot* of playing, I and a few friends eventually got tired of having to look stuff in the 30 different volumes and the artificial concept of levels.
We eventually decided to take the best of the stuff that we liked, and ditch the rest. What we ended up with was a game where skills end experience progressed as skills were used. The entire concept of levels were abandoned and things just seems to run smoother now.
The other thing the we cut back on were the concept of professions (or classes), there are just a few very basic classes and everything else is a sub-class.
The difficulty of actually learning a 'skill' is based on a characters physical stats. Stats are loosely tied to a player class. Best stats are given in the areas that are advantageous to a players character class. So the result is that the difficulty of learning a skill is directly related to the players stats & class.
Clear as mud?
The game balance seems to be pretty good.
Eventually, we plan on perhaps publishing the system either as shareware or whatever.
There's one MMO I play that balances Level and Skill somewhat. It's called Pangya. It's a Korean Fantasy Golf MMO with some RPG elements (levels, stats, equipment, items, etc). However, while having good stats and using items can be beneficial, they are not required to play well. Nor does having a high level say anything about how well you play. In Pangya, the lowest level player with no items, base stats, and no equipment could defeat the highest level player with high stats, the best equipment, and all the items the game has to offer. Sure, that high level player can make all those special shots a lot easier, and maybe have better curve and spin, but while that's all fine and dandy, the low level player can do those same things (with some added difficulty mind you, but it can be done). Like with many golf games, it's all about the calculations and math; something that requires skill. Take a look at player records to tell how skilled someone is, rather than looking at their level. You can see their win rates, putting success rates, chip ins, hole in ones, and etc. I've seen my share of 'National Pros' with such low success rates that rely on items and equipment to substitute doing the math and calculations, but that doesn't work too well and it shows. There should be more MMOs that show you a list of things that the player has done rather than just showing you their level.
Once upon a time in that game what mattered was real player skill solving game puzzles. Even if you create a new char or a new account, what matters is your own skill, and you get some sort of status and even better chances of in game profit because of that. Then they added poker and what mattered most was accumulated wealth and puzzles went into second row.
Granted, that was one of the strengths of WoW after the Burning Crusade expansion, in that there were much less "tank and spank" encounters and more requirement for interaction amongst members of the group and their environments. You could read all about encounters on wowhead and thottbot and have all the right gear and still end up dying repeatedly if... well, how hard was it to NOT move when flame wreath is cast?
Libertarians somehow believe that private businesses should be stronger than governments but weaker than individuals.
I've always found that the people "on top" in an mmorpg, are those that stay ahead of the knowledge curve.
You gain that knowledge by researching, socializing/networking, and coming up with effective strategies to use that knowledge.
The advancement system really doesn't matter when talking about what takes more skill. Either a level based or skill-point based system could be implemented requiring equal skill to play, assuming the learning curve and required knowledge set was equally large.
"knowing how to move" or "knowing when to hit your buttons." Congrats! You just described video games.
If you want enjoy playing with people online and taking your time with no where to go or nothing in particular to kill then play an mmo, if you want immediate hack and slash action and gratification then play a rts or fps or something other than an mmo.
I don't understand why this topic keeps coming up UGH I AM PUKING NOW.
Ave Molech Setting
Table top RPGs have the same divide. Take D&D and Gurps for example. The first started out as a purly class and level based system. the Latter started out as a purly skill based system. In practice they have tended towards eachother with D & D adding multiclassing and eventually a skill system to give more flexibility. While GURPS added a system of racial and career templates to give some consistency and make NPC creation easier.
Incidently I believe that class & level based systems came first. and Skill based system came later. Perhapse we will see the same thing with MMORPG's
In terms of rules on paper a class based system is harder as you need a lot of special case rules for different classes. Original D & D had a lot of mechanics. While Skill based system are easier and can get down to we have contested and uncontested skill checks. end of story.
When you move to writing software the class and level system is much simpler to implement. the ruels are fairly clear cut about what each caracter can do. And Individual character profiles are reletivly simple.
Skill based systems are harder as their is a lot more combinations of skills actions to take into account, and the abilities of particular caracters are more variable. At the table top heavy reliance is made on the players and game masters understanding of how skills can be used. Computers do not however possess common sense so every permutation needs to be coded.
read my mind at http://the-willows.blogspot.com/
One thing people seem to be forgetting is that level is supposed to represent skill of your character. Personally I believe balance is required--your character shouldn't be able to get new skills unless he or she masters her old skills. Some people will argue that low level skills are pointless at higher levels and some people just want to master the higher level content...but I see that as a problem of level based games in general vs. point-buy style games.
Unfortunately, making a game too challenging to enforce this idealism would drive away a large customer base. In fact, it would only attract a certain type of elitest/"hardcore" consumer that, given its naturally small base, would likely cause the game to die due to lack of players and income.
Some people will argue that making an ability harder to use might help this. Make it harder than a single click and people will have to practice mashing the keypad in a particular rhymthm...of course then one has to wonder what the point of calling these games "-RPGs" is in the first place. Most tabletop RPGs tend to reward creative players who can combine one of nearly countless amounts of skills, feats, attributes, etc... to get different types of abilities that are neither stronger nor weaker than other abilities. While this seems nearly impossible to do in an MMORPG (which, having access to the internet, would wind up with everyone getting the optimal abilities), it could be done with a complicated enough elemental/rock-paper-scissors type system. Of course, then the game becomes "you don't need skill to win, just the luck of having the right elemental caster at the right time".
But I see that as the core problem with MMOs in general.
Anonymity + Opportunities to Show Off + Ability to Use Other's Ideas = Everyone Being the Same
Ginga no Rekshiya Mata Each page.
It's not just the level/gear gap in MMOs that muddies up the actual skill difference between players. The typical MMOs Auto-aim + 1.5 second global cool down = less aiming and fast reflexes/button presses required = less skill than other real time games. One of the reasons MMOs are so appealing is that players are guaranteed to have more in-game power the more time (and money) they spend in it, allowing them to 'pwn noobs' in a way they would never be able to in a game of Quake Online or Starcraft.
Subbie didn't read article, but I have something to say about the subject anyway.
I worked at a couple of has-been MMO shops that either could not publish or published poop-in-a-box that could not keep them in business.
Either way, their game design is the same as the big popular/profitable MMOs. MMOs are NOT written made to challenge the player in anything more than a very trivial way.
MMOs have certain aspects that require some critical thinking and basic challenge, but that goes back to what "success" is in the game. Often, it's open-ended. The story for most MMOs is so weak you hardly know what the point the stupid game is anyway, but it doesn't matter, because that's not why you're there...
MMOs are just a big, fancy, complicated chat client. It's the social experience that counts, and not much else. When one game shop's product drifted too far from focusing on the social aspect of the game, I knew it was a looser product because people would not play it.
Nobody needs hand-eye coordination to play most MMOs. They make it complicated to seem like you do, but timing matters little due to uncontrollable network latency for the players. Thus, levels are needed to determine how much time you are willing to invest to have a higher social status.
As for mental challenge,.... well, you can't be much dumber than the customer base that I know of.
The point is to throw a bunch of people in a room, make THEM do all the work of entertaining each other, and you get paid the subscription costs to sit in the room and play tea party with each other.
I've played in competitive gaming since Quake 1 hit the internet. I've also played every big RTS and MMO game to hit the net. IMHO the best way to go for competition is FPS > RTS > MMO. Does anyone really want to sit around and WATCH a WoW Arena match? Unless you play wow and just like drueling over gear and seeing high numbers pop up I don't see how. I mean its just a bunch of tunes running around casting spells and spamming macros. In Asia they have almost made Starcraft a sport to watch just like soccer. Here in the US, I remember when Quake and Tribes matches were broadcast like huge sporting events. Huge prizes like Ferraris and thousands of dollars. You will not and will never get that level of excitement in watching a competition in MMO. It's the difference between watching baseball vs football or basketball. The plays and "Ooohs and Ahhs" that you get from watching a high level FPS is just amazing. I think a lot of the unskilled players tend to sway toward MMOs because, honestly losing sucks so they just go to the easiest medium for them to succeed. I've never seen people have world wide reputations in the MMO community such as Thresh did for Quake or Agent911 for Starcraft. When you play against those players, it's not their gear, everyone knows they are good so they almost have an aura when you play against them unlike in MMOs on who had the right paper rock scissors combination. You know you have to be smarter and play better than them to beat them, and for this reason, MMOs will never have true super stars that emerge from higher skill based games like FPS or RTS.
The amount of time invested in a MMO is all that matters (assuming that time is actually spent doing things which benefit your character). You pay for game time so the company rewards you for buying more time than others. That's why I quit WoW and why I'm afraid of Diablo 3 (damn you D1 $ 2 for all those hours you stole from me!). I don't feel so bad about being addicted to Starcraft because that's all strategy, reflexes, and control. Realtime chess :) But yeah, MMO's are pretty much a contest of who's got the most time to blow.
"From the depths of my skeptical and rationalist soul, I ask the Lord to protect me from California touchie-feeliedom."
no, mr julesh, i expect him to die
"you just need to know the map," or "it's all about a good build order." At what point does intimate knowledge of a game's mechanics make a player skilled?
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OP logic is flawed:
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Know the map or the build order or any game mechanics IS part of the skills. This is like saying, knowing which bus to take or knowing the operating schedule of MacDonald's guarantees a fat ass. Wait...
I use walkthroughs (mostly in single player RPGs) for exactly one reason. I hate missing out on content.
It's very annoying to find out later on that if you had just taken the other road in the beginning of chapter 3 you'd have found the rare weapon X. Or that gaining skill Y would have required you to choose the third conversation option with NPC Z.
Sure you could find many of these hidden extras if you played through the game several times, searched everywhere and tried everything but how many of us has time for that?
What a player wants in any game is control. Control of their player, control of a situation, control of a powerful weapon, what have you. All progression does is limit players from being able to function at their maximum potential. I see "skill-based" progression as being the exact same as "leveling up" or any other term you want to stick on doing something for the purpose of making your character be better at it. When you do something, you as a person in real life should get better at doing it. "Learning" a skill should consist of a player actually learning how to do it, what ingredients are required for a potion, what materials are required for a legendary armour, or whatever. When you attack with a sword, you as a player should learn how to more effectively handle the sword. The game shouldn't have to say, "Hey! You're better at using a sword now!" and you give more damage. When I play any game that requires leveling up, I drone on about how boring it is to level up, then there isn't much for me to do when I've fully leveled up. This system is inherently flawed because I'm not really having fun. It is extremely fun and satisfactory to be good at something. Being good at something means having the same chances as somebody else, and winning by either a hare or complete domination. It doesn't mean you've spent 3 months of your life toiling about doing something boring then being able to easily dominate somebody without trying.
It's all about innovation rather than algorithm. PvP vs PvE not MMPOG vs RTS or FPS
PvE MMPOG, RTS, and FPS are all the same. You are presented with an algorithm that you need to learn. Once you've learned it you adapt your behavior in a way that the algorithm can't handle. Then you win.
PvP MMPOG, RTS, and FPS are all the same. You are presented with an innovating opponent. One able to both present new and unique challenges and to adapt. You cannot come up with an algorithm to beat it.
A computer program is programmed to be challenging.
A human wants to beat you.
I find being offended by me offensive.
Skill in WoW PvP doesn't exist. Why? Because you depend on this:
Even in case to duel against the same class b,c,d,e are still valid.
Countless times I've been able to pwn opponents with lesser gear, or I've been pwned by people with better gear or luck.
In vanilla WoW, where the infamous CC trinket wasn;t the same for all classes the usage of some abilities required skill/originality. But since the new PvP trinket all came down to a,b,c,d,e.
If you compare this to a proper PvP game like Street Fighter 4 or Warsow only e is valid.
Even in Arena factor a,b,c (and even d) matter a lot most of all given the fact that the combo of classes can be a win-win situation.
Add to all this racial abilities, or some other factor, like some items that allowed you to jump from one side to the other of the arena map, forcing the opponent to follow you while you have DoTted him...
What ruined the PvP part of WoW has been pretending to fix these points, while given the nature of the game can't be fixed.
Blizzard should have focused on PvP or PvE.
Nothing more nothing less.
I bet when a good PvP game comes out for PC (StarCraft II rings any bell?) they will lose all the PVP playerbase.
They tried to make WoW a e-sport but they miserably failed.
My 5 cents,
The point of MMO's isn't skillful play. MMO's are more like Snakes and Ladders, keep rolling the dice until you get to the top. And yet, Snakes and Ladders is still a successful game, you can still go out to a Toys R Us or Walmart and purchase it. The real draw of Snakes and Ladders, (like MMO's) is that everyone can win, and it's something you play socially.
Ingredients: Turkey, Mechanically Separated Turkey, Water, Salt, Flavour.
Sprocket, 8 small questions (& please, no wall of text w/out documented backing @ least - quit evading answering them, especially the 1st one, & then we can refer to what is @ the bottom of my "p.s." below, vs. your evasive walls of text):
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1.) DEFINE THE WORD PERFECT or PERFECTLY, won't you? (which is what Mr. Ken Richmond, VP of market data systems @ NASDAQ said MDDS performs like, verbatim quoted below & that it provides "Enterprise Availability")
2.) CAN YOU PROVE THAT NASDAQ IS NOT SEEING 99.999% UPTIME ON MDDS? (NASDAQ's OFFICIAL TRADE DATA DISSEMINATION SYSTEM (which is what I said from the get go, not anything else, though you attempted to IMPLY that I did, & yet you had to admit I did NOT say that here -> http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1290967&cid=28583581, lol))
3.) Did I ever once say that MDDS is the quote system @ NASDAQ? If so, SHOW US ALL, where I did... (you already admitted I did not, right here -> http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1290967&cid=28574671 so that "argument" of yours (straw man type b.s.) fails on that alone - failure to provide PROOF, which is also what you also fail to provide to prove that MDDS does not give 99.999% uptime for NASDAQ, lmao! Sprocket? Putting words in others' mouths they never said is NOT good debate, it always FAILS, as you have, because you do that)
4.) Does any other program @ NASDAQ do what MDDS does @ NASDAQ? (composed of SQLServer 2005 + Windows Server 2003) inclusive of the TIBCO + custom programmed trading floor quote system?
5.) Did you have to ADMIT that SQLServer 2005 + Windows Server 2003 can provide 99.999% uptime? Sure you did, right here -> http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1290967&cid=28582575 especially after the XEROX example, which does many orders of magnitude more transactions PER DAY than NASDAQ's MDDS even (& that alone says NASDAQ is pulling that easily enough, alongside the QUOTED testimonials of Ken Richmond of NASDAQ below (which is what I always provide, quoted verbatim testimonials, & All YOU have? Is what your "trollish delusional brain" interprets (without backing & purely opinion - don't like that? Well, show us PROOF that NASDAQ's MDDS is not doing 99.999% uptime then, simple!)))
6.) What EXACTLY is your role in this field/science (computing), professionally, & how many years of it do you have under your belt, + how many degrees around it or certs @ the very least also?
7.) Have you EVER been published in written publications such as "trade rags" as they are often called, for work you have done?
8.) Has work you done ever been featured as a finalist @ Microsoft "tech ed" or like trade shows, & for 2 yrs. in a ROW, as a finalist in that show's hardest category?
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You're going to love his evasions - they're classic humor! Get ready for a "wall of text" style evasion, everyone... lol!
(However, of course, our "favorite troll" will evade answering them, short & sweet style, because all he will be able to do, lmao, is put up a 'wall of text', complete with evasions of these simple questions... like usual: Trolls - they're TOO predictable, easy to manipulate with facts, & TOO easy to "push their buttons" (especially when they're proven WRONG, as Sprocket here has been))
Also, there IS the simple fact that you had to resort to name calling as well, directed MY way, here, which you "prided yourself" on NOT doing, quoted verbatim, below next (but that THIN veneer has been cracked, TOO easily (trolls - they ALWAYS "fold under pressure" & use "pot calling the kettle black" tactics + put words into others' mouths they never said also)):
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"It'
The problem isn't with leveling systems--and I consider skill-based progress a leveling system just as much as "gain xp, increase level." Whether your stat increases come from experience points, usage based skill improvement, or some hybrid, your character is getting better at what s/he does through experience. Just like in the real world. There has to be some system for a character to improve in an RPG, otherwise the RPG fails an the essential realism test. It's also failing to provide lasting interest.
But *that* is where the problem really lies. Game developers do not create enough interest beyond leveling and do not emphasize the experience at *all* levels. As a player at level 1, one's goal is to get to the maximum level and improve one's character's skillset and equipment. All activities really emphasize that goal: kill mobs to gain experience/items, go on quests to gain experience/items Then the player must look at what is left--that is the game's meat and potatoes.
To use WoW as an example, what are players expected to do once they are at a high level? Raid to get more items in order to continue to improve a character whose level has peaked. But people eat this up! Either improving a character is the main attraction of playing a MMORPG or the attraction is the story of each area and community and cooperation required for raiding.
I'd venture to guess it's a bit of both. But, again using WoW as an example, I find that unfulfilling. The community of WoW players, as a group, are immature, insulting, and arrogant (though as individuals WoW players are not necessarily so). Once I realized that, unless I found endlessly tweaking my character entertaining, all I would be left with was interacting with WoW players in raids, I quit playing. There was not enough interest beyond the dubious attraction of obsessively-compulsively improving a character. The quests were only useful as leveling or learning aids and lacked any independent entertainment value.
The games I find most fun are The Elder Scrolls. They aren't perfect by a long shot and each successive generation brings as much devolution as improvement, but they do provide me with enough variety and interest to make improving my character entertaining and playing without paying much attention to improving my character entertaining as well. (Oblivion, for all its advantages in some areas, forgot a lot of the things that make TES *fun*.)
Mod down all you like but that doesn't make what was said incorrect. What was stated was correct in its points and used the poster he was replying to and his own words against him as the backing evidence. These trolls are collecting up mod downs of his posts to use against him is what I see because I have seen them disappear after he does exactly what he has done here, driving them off. Then they simply begin trolling him again under different usernames in order to continue doing so.
Who the HELL modded Sprocket up to +5 Insightful for that line of PURE "b.s."?
I say this, because I play this game avidly, in chess (e.g.-> @ least 1,000 games the past 5-7 yrs. now or so with my pals & for around, oh 35 yrs. total time) & it is a HELL OF A LOT MORE THAN JUST "knowing how to move the pieces around the board"...
It teaches you to THINK, before you move those pieces, and how to setup an opponent as well... which lends itself to many other things in life, if you THINK about it.
APK
P.S.=> This only leads me to believe that either you work in collusion with others for "mod ups", or more likely, that YOU Sprocket-Troll, use "alternate logon sock puppet accounts" to get your mod ups, because it's eithr that, or whoever modded you up for the witless comment is an utter fool... period! apk
See my subject-line, first, & realize something: I am ONLY defending myself, however in THIS case?? You were, way, Way, WAY "off base"!
By the by? I see you are avoiding answering the 8 questions here -> http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1294609&cid=28612123 which were in response to an attack by yourself, upon myself & the points I raised (where you put words into MY mouth I never stated, & my words had verifiable concrete quoted evidences backing them, not from myself only (as YOU are "wont to do"))
I sent you those question, & many times (& you have not answered them @ all, or in 1 place, with actual documented proofs backing your "personal interpretations" which were off, & you ADMITTED it even on a couple of them)
SO... why is this? Why avoid 8 simple questions & answering them, + getting it "over & done with"??
(Oh, I think I know why (hubris & realization you WERE wrong)... & so do you - as does anyone else reading!)
APK
P.S.=> However, in the interests of "enough IS enough"? I will leave you be, & you and I will have to "agree to disagree"... this was only to show YOU, how it feels, when the show is on the other foot, & when the person attacking has no substantial evidences backing he (personal opinions & anecdotal evidence, imo @ least? ARE NOT ENOUGH... men make mistakes or overlook things others may have caught, even if in limited scenarios only, I guess is my point there - so evidences help strengthen a case you try to make (you never provided those, only YOUR view, & doing so my saying I said things I never once did (would you like me to do THAT to you? Probably not!))
Nuff said... apk
APK's quote and evidence are bullshit and his off-topic posts should be modded accordingly.
Yes, it's kinda offtopic, but many of people here already got character\player skills mixed so I'm going to throw my two cents anyway.
MMOs do not take skill. It's a fact. Not that they don't take any skill whatsoever, but they cap the player's skill in so many ways that it's really hard to excel. And it's only natural - today, most popular games are the casual ones (a.k.a. braindead ones. Even FPS'es get stuff like grenade detectors - it's just sad).
Now, there's different games. Take a good 1v1 FPS Deathmatch game for example (Quake Live?). Take a good strategy game (there's only one RIGHT answer for this - Starcraft). There's allso teamplay FPS'es, but they tend to be all about aiming, map knowledge and teamplay - both starcraft and quake require much more. If you think theese are skill-less I dare you play a match of Quake Live against me - and I'm not nearly as good as the worst of the players attending torunaments. And it's not only aiming\micro\macro\etc - there's just so many ways to outsmart your opponent, I was just amazed when I discovered how high level Quake 3 matches are played for example.
The problem is, that apart from few successful titles (starcraft and hopefully, Quake Live as it's the hope for all deathmatch players), they're not really worth the effor balancing\etc - people like simple games and this is how the world rolls. Some would say "Get over it", but I hope that Starcraft 2 and Quake Live will gain some mainsteam success - people should at least know what competitive gaming is about. I'm not saying that everybody should be playing, but those 13-year olds playing every new braindead FPS should either try their chances on a game that takes skill or just shut the fuck up.