6021

Which one did you play first…?

In any case, there are certainly people out there who wax nostalgic about vanilla or even BC WoW just as there are those who wax nostalgic about EQ. When you had to walk uphill both ways through the blizzard to get your phat lewts, and it built character (ha ha).

Your experience doesn’t eliminate such people from the pool of MMO players.

6022

Darkfall has a lot of player skill driven combat.

6023

Yeah JM mentioned it to me before. I’m not sure about it myself, but I’ll investigate it further. A less important but still determining factor in choosing an MMO is that I have to know people who play it…which narrows the field somewhat. But yes, I’ll take a look at Darkfall.

6024

I’m still cringing every time cc goes off in raids. After five years of play, I don’t know if I’ll ever get used to cc not pulling the pack.

6025

As much as a strong skill based game sounds good… it really is not.
Guess what, we get old. All of us… and those skill based games that rely on reaction time or memory along with other versions all become difficult over time.

I used to be pretty good at FPS. I can make due in current wow pvp but I am hopeless in any of the new shooters. My reaction time is awful. It has been too long and I have grown older.

The game that will bring us all back to the MMO table is one in which all of us can progress , possibly in entirely different ways without -having- to do the other aspects of the game that we are unable to do.

LFD has taught me , some folk will not, cannot learn. If they want to jump 30 times in a single spot to get phat loot , fine…make it different colored lewt from mine or something. Twitchers want to lord a spiffy mount over me? That is ok to, let me have some horrid grind to get something that looks remotely similar (or does the same thing whatever).

Games cannot exclude and continue, this is probably the only lesson facebook is teaching us. (thou I am not getting into cliques and how -that- excludes still social friend circles is the absolute bottom of the skill ladder for actual gameplay. One can argue it is a difficult skill on the other hand).

6026

Skill based games don’t have to mean twitch-based games.

6027

I agre with Ryslin. Innovation in MMOs should manage to give a role to varying playstyles. Dunno, like making a healer class with bejeweled-like mechanics, or having a farmville-like management of the ammo depot.
I’m kinda talking out of my ass because I don’t see easy ways to balance/make fun/give appropriate incentives to this framework, but I think it’s an avenue worth exploring.

6028

But if the end rewards are the same for these different paths, won’t one of them be identified as the ‘easy’ route?

At that point, everyone will flock to it and all the others will wither away and be removed over time.

6029

The different roles already create different playstyles (and before Cata, even different classes for the same role played different); they don’t need to be different games entirely.

6030

I don’t think you’re thinking this through here.

There’s plenty of skill in WoW. Don’t believe me? Pick an MMO you haven’t played, get someone to log you into their max level character, and go raid effectively. Hell, if you haven’t levelled an alt of every type, you can get this experience in WoW.

I know I’m no longer an effective raider because it’s been long enough since I played at that level that I don’t know the optimal rotations and I don’t know the fights. Being able to recall all this and apply it while dodging shit on the screen is skill.

I suspect when most people talk about “skill based” MMOs what they mean is “Something where the learning curve and grinding out long levels” are decoupled. However, I can’t say that I think something like WoW, in this stage, has particularly long levelling curves. So what I think most folks are really trying to say is “Something which mimics another game type at it’s base that, if it were a single player game, would be less static than the CRPG base that MMOs currently use.”

Personally, I shudder at the idea of tacking WoW’s current raid mechanic fights onto something like a 3rd person action RPG. The fights are complex enough as they are. (Until, of course, you’ve ingrained all the mechanics and all the specific fight responses and are doing them for the 100th time to get -your- loot to drop. But that’s not a matter of the game not being “skill based”…)

6031

Yes the easy way will end up being the most used way. So?
Trying to make an elite class of persons in a game ends up causing more strife than just giving everyone a blanket reward and say 6 different ways to get there.
way 1 raid this boss
way 2 raid this other easier boss 4 times
way 3 collect bear asses ,4000 over two weeks
way 4 kill 10 ranked players one on one
way 5 win 5 random pvp encounters from this list (ie battleground style)
way 6 win 1 rated bg in -insert time frame-

everyone can get item of awesome, at different times ,different reasons. Give em all different color schemes to indicate where they came from and call it a day.
It is still gated progression , noone moves faster than the “leet raider” / “leet pvper” core

everyone gets shineys in a timely manner and Bob the leet can run the occasional raid with his mom the unleet.

Look to some extent this has worked before, games where everything was made so you had to make deals and friends to get anything done, but nothing was off limits if you wanted to do it. It was instead a matter of how -fast- you did it, and possibly how frustrating the experience was for you.

Everytime I have seen skill mentioned it means , bob can get out of the fire faster, Bob knows how to see his team mates make mistakes and make up for them so on. That is still twitch, perhaps not FPS level twitch ,but twitch. As long as the game requires some sort of mechanical skill that can be different from person to person, you are going to have people better than other people. You cannot avoid it. Why punish them for it? Kill them more or make them farm more or whatever but let them have access.

I am kinda tired of “you don’t have 25 friends so you can’t have this til next patch” in wow. I am tired of “You can’t kill these guys this fast , so you will always have crap gear. Ha ha you are my content now.”

I am that skilless noob who is more than willing to help everyone else get to the “endgame” and always gets left behind. I don’t want free gear , I just want a viable pathway. (And no the 4 years to be a jedi from swg was not a viable path)

My rule of thumb is before next patch of the game everyone should be even on gear , given the same start point. Not my problem if you aren’t in the end yet, but next cycle you should be fine. I may only get my nifty gear for a week , you may have had it since the second week of the patch. Even start at next patch and repeat.

6032

I understand what you mean. The problem is that “skill-based” in the context we meant was not talking about WoW not requiring player ability/thought/competence, but a question of mechanics. Darkfall was mentioned, as it does involve a degree of timing and aim.

However, you can have mechanics along those lines without making it into a “twitch” game like Quake.

It wasn’t an attempt to badmouth WoW - I’ve been on your side of the argument in this same discussion on QT3 in the past. I’ve raided a decent amount. I can tell the difference between a good player and a bad one. But even that can often boil down to good reactions, so anyone who feels marginalised by a realtime game requiring a level of physical competence might be out of luck.

6033

This is true :)

6034

“Bad players” to me are players who know better but play in a way that’s obvious that they don’t care about the rest of the group. Unfortunately players who don’t know the latest spec/glyph/rotation are also lumped in with players who know but don’t care. I really really wish that more WoW players who do know stuff would help out those who just may not know. Instead of immediately assuming the person is an idiot, assume they don’t know. Yes, occasionally it may backfire and they may get upset or whatever. But most of the time you’ll find that if you help out with a positive attitude, you’ll get positive results.

People like me use LFD less and less because I know going in I’m not perfect. I work too hard really at trying to do it right, but sometimes I just fail. And the more people get mad, the less I want to come back and practice more until I get to be good. Cata has emphasized this tremendously. WotlK was far more forgiving of player mistakes so that players like me could do the 5 mans and eventually get better. Now that nearly every mistake results in a substantial hit to effectiveness, I don’t really want to try.

6035

No offence, but that sounds like an attempt to shoehorn a complaint about elitist players into a discussion of skill. Bad players in raids don’t get the excuse of ignorance.

6036

Pressing the right buttons in the right order is also a skill, and shockingly, it’s one that most people don’t have. That’s why not every Rogue does the same DPS; that’s why I could pull 16k on my boomkin in blues when the other boomkin in that Guild could pull 14k in epics.

I am kinda tired of “you don’t have 25 friends so you can’t have this til next patch” in wow. I am tired of “You can’t kill these guys this fast , so you will always have crap gear. Ha ha you are my content now.”

You’re retarded.

Not only do 10man raids give the same gear as 25man raids now, but content is continuously being nerfed. Congratulations; go pug some 10man raids and quit yer bitching.

I am that skilless noob who is more than willing to help everyone else get to the “endgame” and always gets left behind. I don’t want free gear , I just want a viable pathway. (And no the 4 years to be a jedi from swg was not a viable path)

If you can’t stay out of the fire and do decent DPS for your gear level, then yes, you’re asking for free gear.

My rule of thumb is before next patch of the game everyone should be even on gear , given the same start point.

This is not Blizzard’s position. Blizzard’s position is that previous tiers of content should be easily puggable, and current tiers of content should be doable for people in the previous tier’s gear.

If you want otherwise, go play a different game. The game you’re looking for is not, and will never be, World of Warcraft. Thankfully.

6037

Did you read what I wrote? I specifically said 5 MANS. Geezus.

6038

Yes, I know. And I specifically said raids in the post you were seemingly replying to. Which is one reason why I think you’re trying to air a grievance that has little to do with what we’re talking about :)

6039

I could swear this thread is titled World of Warcraft: Cataclysm. Sorry, I guess since I’m not leet enough to discuss raiding I just need to go off and form the World of Warcraft: Cataclysm thread for the rest of us non leet bad players.

6040

Don’t make me turn this car around, kids. I’ll do it, I swear I will!