2. New PvP mode
Because every character class is designed to function equally well as part of a group or in solo play (see #1), the game also works great for player-versus-player (PvP) play. If everyone in your group can play but the DM can't make it, you can play in an arena that pits the player characters against each other in friendly competition. A significant component of our organized play events going forward will be team-based PvP events, including both battlegrounds and world-based PvP set in our established campaign worlds. (DMG 195 on playing without a DM, PH 15–16 and DMG 10 on character roles and party-building)

3. Monster aggro
Every monster in the Monster Manual now has a specified aggro radius. When a character comes within that radius, the monster attacks according to an AI built into its stat block. Beyond that radius, monsters are unaware of PCs, and even of fights going on within line of sight. (MM 6 on reading monster stat blocks, DMG 36 on monster readiness and surprise)

. Gear is everything
Magic items have never been so important to player characters in D&D, particularly once they hit the level cap at level 30. As a result, just about every monster drops items of some sort, determined on a random table after the monster is killed. Often these are junk items that characters can sell to vendors in town, but high rolls on the table can generate magic items—usually below the character's level, but occasionally truly epic gear. Characters can get decent gear by grinding, but the best loot appears only in adventures published by Wizards of the Coast that you play with a DM. To help players deal with all the unwanted magic items they find we've also created an online Auction House where characters can buy the items they want. (DMG 125 on awarding treasure)

5. Fast leveling
Everyone knows that the leveling-up process is just training wheels for the real play experience, or "end-game." Characters should expect to hit 2nd level after their first encounter, and skilled groups combined with sufficient grinding should be able to hit 30th level in about 150 hours of play. If you only play 4 hours a week (n00b), it'll take you the better part of a year, but skilled players can do it in a couple of weeks. Then the fun really starts. At 30th level, you'll be able to play the majority of WotC's published dungeons, which you can play repeatedly until you get the drops of gear you need to optimize your character. (DMG 121 on rate of advancement, DMG 146 on epic play and 147 on end-game)

6. Massively multiplayer
The new assumed setting for D&D is a world that's populated with hundreds of thousands of heroes. Now, when your characters visit the great cities of the world, they'll see more adventurers running around than common folk, and most of the commoners are there only to give quests to the adventurers. Of course, the primary reason to visit these cities is to buy and sell in the auction house and to learn the new powers and feats you get for leveling up. Our dungeons are sprawling sites crawling with adventurers, who organize massive raids into their depths. (DMG 150 on the D&D world and commonplace adventurers, DMG 138 on "super adventure" dungeons)

7. Professions
Crafts and professions have been lifted out of the skill system and put in the limelight where they belong, as a way for characters to earn the money they need to buy the best items at the auction house. While they're grinding through monsters for XP, characters can also improve their profession ranks and find the materials they need to make items using those professions. (DMG 11 on the importance of character professions)

OK, taking my tongue out of my cheek now, I have to close with the way I like to think about the relationship between D&D and games like World of Warcraft. When I play WoW, it's like looking in a mirror. Fantasy MMOs were clearly created and crafted by people who love D&D and tried to replicate some of the experience of playing D&D in a very different environment. Sometimes, the ways they mimic D&D are instructive to me: There are benefits to defining and naming character roles. Quests are a great way to think about story rewards, the mechanical framework for adventure story. There's nothing foreign to D&D in those things (everyone knows that an adventuring party needs a fighter, cleric, thief, and magic-user!), they're just examples of things that MMOs have borrowed from D&D and expressed in good ways. No harm in us borrowing them back.

Fortunately, D&D is still the tabletop roleplaying game we all know and love. As much as I have sometimes enjoyed storyless, combat-focused, DM-less lunchtime games, they'll never replace the real D&D experience, which is far richer than any online, computer-run game will ever be.

your words are wise banana-guru. nice to see some rational thought.

Are you purposefully being ironic, or are you unaware that all this applies to 3E infinitely more than 4E?

>>2684273
I first saw this post and thought "ugh, over long, over thought neckbeard diatribe", the kind that nerd hobbies get to much of. Then I saw the summary post, its the most enlightened take on the MMO-P&P relationship I have seen.
<3

Archive?

>>2684279
Heed the words of Wise Banana Guru.
His Words are Wise.
His Seat is Banana.

Well-said, Banana guru.

BUT CHARACTERS HAVE POWERS

AND MMO CHARACTERS HAVE POWERS

OMG IT'S THE SAME

I see what you did there.

tl;dr. Its all wrong anyways.

>>2684323
>didn't read
>stating opinion as fact

ITT: people who will only read first post, then rage.

10/10.

>>2684341
>>2684355

Online... auction-houses?

>>2684402
PROTIP: It's a satire, retard.

>>2684402

> 10/10.

I see 4e as a completely different game. To me it's not even dnd, just a different tabletop game that I play as well as 3.5

>>2684423
That's because you're a retard. You're adventurers who fight kobolds and orcs and dragons and shit, take their stuff, gain levels... it's the same fucking game, just with somewhat different numbers.

All D&D is like WoW its just a big faggoty grind filled with shitty combat. Real men play games that actually encourage roleplaying. Like WoD.

everything after 2nd ed was shit.

>>2684456
Stop ruining the good thread.

>>2684440
I didn't meen it as a negative thing. Sheesh.

>>2684456
>Real men play games that actually encourage roleplaying. Like WoD.

Real men go outside and talk to people.

>>2684473
Real men are too busy working to talk to people.

Work, drink beer, sleep, repeat.

>>2684473
But... I rot in sunlight. Fucking ROT.

>>2684482
True.

>this thread
>BAWWWWWWWWWW

How do I archived thread?

>>2684508
Go to 4chanarchive.org There's a 'request interface' Follow the directions. I suggest opening the site in a tab.

Its not that 4E isn't D&D, its that 3E isn't D&D. 3E plays nothing like AD&D or OD&D, unless you're a wizard.

>>2684534
At least OD&D and 4e are both miniature games at heart.

>>2684482
Seems to me, real men could live their lives a lot better than they think they are.

I guess that's why they call them working men.

>>2684546
That's a bad thing.
How about some fucking support for non-miniature D&D sessions...

>>2684508

Or you can just use suptg.

Certainly it's worth taking as fuel for thought to argue against it being "just like an MMO".

>>2684573

Play a different game, dumbass.

D&D had, has and always will have a considerable miniatures component.

-10/10. And by that, I mean it'd be a 10/10 in a sane grading system that doesn't award high marks for trolling.

>>2684573
Nice try namefag, 4E's less dependent on minis than prior editions
Suck cocks and die.

>4E's less dependent on minis than prior editions

Less so than Chainmail, sure.

>>2684534
fffffffffff-
Oh I suppose you're right.

I guess it's just because 3e was the first edition of D&D I ever got, when I was a little tyke of 11. Got it in 2000 right about when it came out.

Now I got all the editions and shit, and know about D&D more than some of the 35-year-old neckbeards I know.

RIP AND TEAR

4E is still better then 3E.

Nothing can compare to the pure epic that is 1E though.

>>2684724
There is nothing good about 1E. prove me wrong.

>>2684645
-the fuck?

What are you talking about? There's shifting and bursts and so much more maneuvering than there was in 3e!

>>2684728
It laid the groundwork for future editions.

>>2684739
Go ahead and try to calculate cones, bursts, and shit in your head as to how many orcs your wizard can blast, then get back to me. Also, in 3E you can shift 1/round AND move, in 4E shifting takes your whole move.

Why /tg/ loves to rage about WoW? I never really heard that someone explained it except "its ghey" "crack addicts" or "it sux".

>>2684849

It's a really really really bad game.

>>2684849
It's not WoW that makes them rage. It's the comparisons of MMORPG compared to 4e that irritates them.

and sage for stupid people. OP was done, the thread archived, it should have been left at that instead of degenerating into bawwfest #10048573

>>2684849
World of Warcraft is very addictive, and it's addictive because it is fun.

Unfortunately, it's big competition for tabletop games. It's a lot more vivid and in-your-face, so it's generally considered to be crass and cheap.

>>2684775
But maptool calculates cones and blasts for me.

>>2684864
>it is fun

I almost stopped there, but I decided to humor you.

It's not fun; it's satisfying, like smoking a cig. You want to jump that next hurdle, whether it's a level, a creature, or a raid boss. It gets you into this, 'Just one more' mindset that is the absolute opposite of fun. It's work, but people just love to do it. It's baffling why people do it, while at the same time, so simple.

>>2684849
I despise WoW because it set MMO design back by at least 5 years. It too the standard setup that all MMO's had at the time of its development and simply polished it to a mirror sheen and combined it with brilliant marketing. After its success every fucking game wants to emulate it, or goes with the Korean MMO model.

Of course I'd already basically played that game and tired of it for a while when it came out, and haven't played an MMO aside from trial periods since.

On the upshot I have a fuckload of free time for my modelling habit.

>>2684935
QFT. Many, many modern games are like this, even the single-player ones. this sort of game trope used to be rare, and now it is pervasive.

>>2684973
I think MMO design will turn out to be a cyclic affair. Everquest spawned World of Warcraft, in a few more years we're going to get an MMO that blows your mind away. Probably a remake of Age of Conan, actually, merged with a sort of Second Life where you roll a level 1 noob and get better at doing what you like to do.

>>2684997
Perhaps, but I think it'll require a shift in the under the hood workings of an MMO where companies aren't facing such a massive loss if the game turns out to be a flop. I've heard the average MMO requires 100 million in capital to get to launch day

>>2685034
The problem with MMORPGS is that if you finish them, you'd unsubscribe. Therefore everything must be drawn out into something as long and tedious as possible, so the money keeps flowing.

It would be ok if the fighting mechanics were fun, but MMO combat is the most trivial and dumbed down thing I can imagine.

>>2685034
I thought that was a random statistic a suit pulled out his ass to justify cancelling some MMO or other?

>>2685085
It might take 100 mil if you want to compete with WoW, but you'd be stupid to try, WoW has the market sewn up for now.

MMOS need to get out of the fantasy rut.

I whole heartedly agree with the fantasy thing. As for the 100 mill figure, I dunno. Like I said, I heard it somewhere and it sounded plausible. I wasn't about to sit down and start figuring out how much hardware would run.

>>2685125
WoD MMO?

>>2685163
Trying to create a world destroying black hole of emo angst are you? I'm pretty sure this already exists in Second Life, right next to the furfags.

Still, after 8 hours of killing boars, it's tempting.

WoW is fun, i liked levelling, like PvE and PvP. Some people just like to whine abuout it because its popular.

WoW is an easy game but still a lot of people cant play it because their l2p issues, thats why they rage.

For the disgruntled-with-WoW-fa/tg/uys there, what then would you consider to be a better MMORPG model.

Alternatively, what would you, if given the reins of a new MMORPG, introduce that would, as you guys say, improve the image of MMORPGs?

>>2685198
You misunderstand me. The people how did EVE are already working on a WoDMMO.

>>2685340
>how
>who

>>2685308
Remove the grind so that the game is actually fun from when you buy it.

>>2685356
Good idea. Are there any MMORPGs that have effectively implemented another in-game resource gathering system so that players can earn for their equipment?

>>2685340

I played EvE for like a year, then i realized its a shithole with full of griefing jackasses. The learning curve is even worse than dwarf fortress'

>>2685308

MMOs suck by definition. Has nothing to do with WoW.

>>2685380
Why do I have to 'earn' anything? Other games just say "zombie time, here is a shotgun" and let you go to it.

>>2685389
Eve PVP is all about forming fleets and sitting on the gate. Then the enemy comes in and you die before you un-lag. Sometimes this happens the other way around.

>>2685394

MMOs are fine and the grind stays, live with it. WoW is actually the most grind friendly MMO I ever played.

>>2685412

>live with it.

No. I'd rather play real videogames.

MMOs are fucking traps. Everythin takes forever to do specifically because, the more time you spend playing, the more you have to pay. It's a scam.

>>2685380
>Good idea. Are there any MMORPGs that have effectively implemented another in-game resource gathering system so that players can earn for their equipment?

None that I've heard of. "Unlockable" gameplay is more or less essential for an MMO, because you need something to pace the experience and thus get the people coming back over a period of time.

What I'd like to see would be more of a sandbox/creation game, without sacrificing the fightan and shootan that are the bread and butter of the genre. less company-developed environment, more player-created environment. It would be neat to actually be able to build a world, and probably less expensive for the company also. Second life had something of the idea, but no actual game behind it to back it up. a little more limits, a little more support, and an actual framework of a game there, and you could have something pretty interesting. let the community add textures and models to their areas (moderated, of course), and let them more or less go crazy.

So basicly, imagine Dwarf Fortress, massively multiplayer, built by a team that new what they were doing, on WoW's budget.

THAT would be interesting.

>>2685415

Or real RPGs.

Never got the point of MMORPGs. Paying a monthly fee to watch numbers go up? Pass. RPGs aren't about numbers. They're about storytelling.

You guys like to play sorry? I fuckin hate it,

>>2685431
> RPGs aren't about numbers. They're about storytelling.
How adorably naive.

>>2685441

How typically retarded.

Playing an RPG for min-maxing is doing it wrong. If you want that, play a video game. RPGs are about ROLE PLAYING.

>>2685444
>YOU'RE HAVING FUN WRONG
That's nice, dear. While you figure out that it's OK to enjoy the GAME portion of a roleplaying GAME, I'll be having fun. But have fun with that "story" thing. I hear you don't actually need any game for that.

>>2685428

>built by a team that new what they were doing, on WoW's budget.


I fucking laughed out loud when i read this.

WoW developer team knows very well what are they doing, be assured.

I love when tards who dont even know how to design an FPS level DERPDERP about making an ubah-supah MMO.

Love and waffles from a professional level desinger

>>2685428
The irony of it all is that I would have played a lot longer if it wasn't for the huge timesinks you have to fill to get anything done.

>>2685308
I'd like to make death actually mean something more than a combination 'moar grindan', 'moar walkan' and 'moar repairan'

To that end I propose a system of permanent death and heirs.

When you die, that's it, that character is dead (with the possible exception of if you have comrades who can get you to a hospital within a certain time limit). You now need to roll up a new character, but rather than being an entirely new entity, this character is the old ones heir, and gets to inherit any goods left in the old characters bank, house, titles etc.

This of course begs the question, what of PK? Particularly high level douchebags pickin on the noobs. Answer: A system of infamy. Any time you attack an NPC or another Player you gain infamy with that creatures faction, and to a lesser extent, any allied factions. The higher your infamy the more likely you are to be attacked by NPC's of those factions. Players of enemy factions will also receive less infamy for attacking you than the other way round, and can claim rewards from their factions for doing so.

>>2685455

When the fuck did I say it was wrong to enjoy the mechanics of an RPG system?

Oh, that's right. I didn't. I said that the point of RPGs is to weave a story and play it out with a group of people. You must have had too much monkey cocks in your eyes to read that, though.

>>2685462

tried already, it sounds fun first time be it becomes very very annonying when made into game

>>2685458
Game developers just clone what worked well the last game around. MMORPG gameplay hasn't changed significantly since the DikuMUDs written in 1990. Grindan and levelan.

>>2685458
>I love when tards who dont even know how to design an FPS level DERPDERP about making an ubah-supah MMO.

no, no. built by a team that new what they were doing, refers to DF's incredibly laberynthine game design, not anything about WoW.

>>2685308
A change in the core engine of an MMO. Realistically, cost wise this idea is retarded but a dynamic world which adjusts itself based on player interaction with the world. So if an area is particularly difficult and rewarding, the game monitors a generalized area for traffic and number of kills over how much time and adjusts the difficulty of the area. Farmed areas eventually become desolate while neglected areas grow into vile and hostile cities/squats.

Make basic resource gathering a necessity to some extent versus just a way to earn gold to the status quo. Pull an Ultima and make player created housing possible and have the game monitor areas in high density of housing. Houses require wood, stone, etc. which have to be acquired before creating the house, shop or whatever and is either gathered or purchased. Large concentrations of housing with a high server wide percentile of active foot traffic will eventually evolve into towns and cities unto their own with their own government systems enacted. Player controlled taxes on living and goods leads to cleaning of inactive property and creates a desire to acquire control of such areas. Also allows bad governments to kill long standing cities so new ones have a chance to grow.

Resource gathering should also have an impact -- over forested areas just won't have trees anymore where forests breed wilder monsters. Cities will become increasing docile in that so many players would constantly weed around it and gather from it that no monsters would ever get a chance to evolve and expand.

Time setting and genre would be irrelevant, I just think an evolving world would be awesome.

>>2685474
>>I just think an evolving world would be awesome.

That would involve thinking, work and research and stuff, when the average game dev can't even balance classes. (HELLO WOW WARLOCKS!)

>>2685490

Ever heard of counter class? in wow i kill an S2-3 warlock with my levelling blue rogue.

Anyway, you will always percieve al the other classes stronger just because the neighbors ork is greener and orkier.

>>2685501

>greener and orkier

No need for redundancy.

>>2685474

Good luck making ANY money at all with that system. That's the reason you haven't seen anything like what you described, which I think is really cool btw. It doesn't sell.

Just hope we discover virtual reality in our lifetime and stop hoping for the impossible.

>>2685474
This is a good idea - The original Warhammer Online project was trying to implement something along these lines, where monsters would gather and get bigger and stronger the longer they were left alone.

I'd like to see more meaningful player crafting too. Perhaps you could have it so that enchantments can only be placed on player-made items. This would create demand, especially if the enchantments were on a par with, or better than most dropped loot (which in many MMO's is not the case). In order to fuel enchants, nick Morrowind's enchanting system, whereby players can trap souls in crystals which are then used to power the enchant.

>>2685511
UO had some of those dynamic things (like a food chain!) at the start, but they were stripped out, I can't recall why.

I don't give a fuck about all these interesting and detailed ideas.

WHY HAS KILLING SHIT WITH SWORDS AND MAGIC BEEN MADE SO UNFUN? REMEMBER FUN?

I play City of Heroes.

I RP with a small number of awesome people who make up my supergroup and also overlap with my D&D group.

It's a better goddamn MMO than WoW is. You don't have a whole lot to do except kill shit, but compared to WoW your power level is pretty epic, and they've mostly refrained from the 'lol endgame add more hurdles' thing. You don't have to be max level to do worthwhile shit. Pimping out characters with 'phat lewt' is completely optional, and what lewt there is will work perfectly fine WHATEVER DAMN LEVEL you are without obsoleting itself five levels down the line.

Plus the gameplay is actually, y'know, fun.

>>2685474
yes. exactly.

Imagine your generic fantasy world... perhaps less renaissance and more dark ages. in this world, rather than creating a specific character, you create a clan. let's say starting size is a dozen adults, maybe a few kids. you customize their classes and abilities to whatever you want. You also get a Spirit that owns this clan. The spirit is more like what we would normally think of as a PC in MMOs; it has stats and skills and abilities and so forth. under normal conditions, you simply direct the clan as they find a slice of countryside to live on, and then build and develop and grow. Again, think of a smoother-running, much more polished DF here.

You have to either trade for or physically gather everything you want, but that's what the Clan is for. Put those people to work mining and harvesting and building, and watch your settlement grow.

But hey, you want a bit more of a hands-on experience? Your spirit can posess any member of the clan, one at a time, giving you direct control of them. This allows you to do the usual MMO thing of running about hacking and slashing, if you wish. And there are plenty of monsters about in the wilderness, both in nests and evil cities, and in war-bands and migrations that sweep outward to wipe away the settlements.

The members of the clan level up, marry, have kids, grow old and die. the larger and more prosperous the clan is, the better your spirit's stats and abilities get. You can train and deploy entire armies, together with other clans, and lead them from the front with your avatars. But it's not just "hey, let's raid that epic again today"; you need to actually push the gohblins out of the valley and back over the pass, and then you need to set up a fort to keep them there. that leaves the valley to you.

Tell me this doesn't sound like a fun game.

>>2685539
I find the grind in CoX a bit much, but otherwise I agree with you - I especially like how it scales instances to fit your level and whether or not you have a party

>>2685515
Wait, really? You make me wish I had played the original UO just to have seen that. Lack of utilization of monster factions to create a realistic environment is teh sucks in mmos. If UO actually had something which wasn't just "lol, monster hack slash." I can't even begin to understand why they'd take it out.

>>2685529
You can never stab or shoot or fireball something in a MMORPG. That would be too fast paced. Instead you must whittle down their little green bar, so they they fall asleep with a sigh. Don't worry, they will be back shortly.

>>2685548
An MMO Dorf Fortress would be amazing. Hell, any measure of persistent online nation-building would be amazing.

But I can't imagine any company every making the outlay for such a project. Most consider the RTS to be a niche game, especially after the spectacular failure of Supreme Commander, Universe at War, and Battle for Middle-Earth II on consoles.

To the companies with deep enough pockets to make it happen, consoles represent the mainstream market, and there's no runaway successful title on any of those systems to indicate that a subscriber-based model would be compelling enough to generate profit on a feasible level.

It's very tragic, I think. But no less true for it.

>>2685566

>MMO Dorf Fortress

FUCK YES YOU ARE THE BEST IDEA EVER

>>2685558

Which reminds me. Another reason I prefer CoH to WoW.

Steps to forming a successful team in WoW:
1. Find Good Tank
2. Find Good Healer
3. Find One or More Good DPSer/Nukers

You can skip one of these steps if you *are* a good tank/healer/damagemonkey.

Now, compare the steps for CoH:

1. Find some people.

>>2685566
In b4 "FUND IT".

Also, FUND IT.

>>2685577

Can you imagine the dickery, though? Telling the entire internet 'gee, don't mine out that wall, it's at -25 depth and there's the main shaft of a volcano behind i- ARMOK FUCK I'M MELTING

>>2685577

Can you imagine the dickery, though? Telling the entire internet 'gee, don't mine out that wall, it's at -25 depth and there's the main shaft of a volcano behind i- ARMOK FUCK I'M MELTING

>>2685571

Im a good healer in wow. I play with a few of my IRL friends. We used to steamroll everything n PvP.

Shit is so cash. I prefer games where you actually have to do something for the best stuff not handing it to you in a silver platter.

>>2685559
I remember an old article that talked about how, if you killed all the low level things, the bigger ones would starve, and attack the towns looking for food.

Creatures had preferences, for example dragons like shiny things, and sort of an AI chain which would make them do things even if not specifially programmed. For example they'd try to open loot chests to get at the shinies. Basic AI stuff but could have been fun.

This was all dumped.

>>2685548
Depends if it goes the route of Supreme Commander or Starcraft. Dreamlords did exactly what you just said really well but not MMO enough and way too micro managed. A MMOStrategy would have to veer away from EXTREEMEE micro management and let your civilizations more or less take care of themselves with a natural rate of elimination to weed inactivity lest all space in the world be consumed by those that quit.

Of course without a degree of power beyond just rallying armies and possession, the game would be generic mmoan so it's a delicate balancing act. As it stands with just what you've said, it's the type of game I'd pick up and play through for a good 3 or 4 months then just not bother with again.

>>2685586
>>2685577
>>2685570
I can certainly imagine the awesome. Can you think what it would be like to trek across what would doubtless be a scarred and torn landscape, past burnt-out fortresses, to find unclaimed land?

Can you imagine closing your gate to singed and maddened dwarfs, the sole survivors of some other player's failure?

>>2685594
Well, the perfect MMORTS design would have the civilization decline slowly but surely over time, so that brief breaks are feasible but the player must keep coming back every few days if he wants to maintain the status quo.

And I don't know, when a civ completely decays its inhabitants go horde and join up with other nomad castoffs to form giant NPC nations that provide a PvE element.

>>2685591

Playing is easy. Playing well is hard. Sure, you can put together all slaughtering superteams with ZOMGPWN builds and take on the hardest challenges in the game. But if you don't, you can still progress. It's not like CoH don't have a difficulty slider you can crank up if you're rolling shit. Something I prefer to 'YOU MUST HAVE THESE CLASSES OR YOU WILL FAIL'.

And I was mostly talking PvE. PvP in CoH is a whole different ball game.

This thread is delicious.

>>2684485
>>But... I sparkle in sunlight. Fucking SPARKLE.

How about a kind of build your own skill tree?

Rather than gaining pre-set skills at specific levels, you gain skill points, which you then use by visiting a trainer and then putting together a skill from a list of effects.

Want to create a skill that stuns your enemy for 10 seconds? That'll be 20 skill points

How about a fireball spell that does DoT? 50 skill points

Another thing I'd like to see is proper stealth.

In most MMO's, stealth means pushing a button and going invisible. You can walk up to a monster in broad daylight and masturbate in their face and they still won't see you unless you've already got aggro.

Much better if to sneak you actually had to, you know, sneak and hide in shadows and things

>>2685648
People will minmax the best choices and post them to the internet. Enjoy your 200000 Uberhaliberdtankmages, or whatever.

>>2685662
And people don't already min-max talent tree builds in WoW?

>>2685643
I think you're on the wrong board. Neckbeards, burn, rot, or run screaming "OH GOD THE LIGHT THE LIGHT" when exposed to the sun directly.

>>2685679
Yes, isn't it lame enough already?

>>2685662
I'm not inclined to agree. If you make everything pretty much useful then people will just choose what they like.

Look at Morrowind for instance. You don't really have cookiecutter builds because people will have their own preferences on how they want to play. You want to be a spear wielding fire mage who knows a few debuffs? You got it.

>>If you make everything pretty much useful...

You forgot how much MMO Devs fail at game balance.

>>2684522
Real men use suptg.

>>2685685
Good job missing the joke.

>>2685701

I agree. There's gonna be min-maxing douchebags whatever system you use.

As for balancing skills, well there's a current trend towards using telemetry in games to see what people like and what does and doesn't work, rather than relying on forums which are always full of people with an axe to grind. Hopefully if MMO devs use telemetry to actually look at which skills are over powered, rather than nerfing skill x because some whinger on a forum won't stop crying about it, it'll make the job of balancing actually easier.

>>2685736
>BAWWW, PEOPLE WANT TO BE MORE EFFECTIVE

>>2685474
Mmm...building your own deathtrap and inviting your friends to visit you.

It's like Dungeon Keeper Online!

>>2685741
Letting people "choose" from a variety of unbalanced skills will result in lots of clones. This is exactly the opposite of what we want to achieve, pay attention.

>>2685662
>>2685679

People want to use the best possible talent build.Period.

There is always a best build for something.

>>2685709
Sometimes I think they fuck things up on purpose just to be hailed as heros when they nerf it later

>>2685755
That would be the coolest game EVAH!

>>2685760
With some situations, having someone with power X, and someone else with power Y is more useful than having two players with X, or two players with Y. Sadly this has only ever been class based, not skill based.

>>2685741
>BAWWW someone has suggested that peoples opinions might be biased in some way when it comes to the comparative efficacy of different abilities. I must accuse them of being anti-effective bawwfags

>>2685736

Good dev teams already do.

>>2685766
I can't visualise MMO devs without a cat and a cigar and a swivel chair and "BWAHAHAHAHA".

>>2685760
The problem with MMORPG sklils is that you will sometimes have a very large variety of skills per class that, while intended to promote diversity, will devolve into LOL-SKILL-BUILDS-NERF-SKILL-DITCH-USELESS-SKILL scenarios.

1) Morrowind online.
2) Evolving/strictly-player-based MMOs fail (I'm looking at you, Face of Mankind)
3) Morrowind online.

The great thing about MMOs is even if you experiment with your build and find something that, while perhaps not as effective as the standard cookie cutter, works well and even fills a unique role... you can expect to have a constant stream of LOL NOOB from literally dozens of people for not going with the cookie cutter. And all the lack of parties and friends that follows.

>>2685810

People use cookie cutter builds because those are the most effective. You are less effectice than they.

>>2685810
THis is what I hate about neckbeards

"OMG, how could you spec your character like that? Don't you know that specialising in swords mean you do .001% more damage per second?"

Oh no, I do slightly less damage per second than all the hordes of sword wieldan characters out there, what ever shall become of me.

Doesn't anyone pic a class/skill/weapon because it looks/sounds cool anymore?

>>2685834
except it's not 0.01%, its more like 20%.

>>2685834

yup 20% is accurate, you arent an unique snowflake anyway

>>2685813
That's the problem with skills: eventually, people begin to depend on consensually-accepted skill builds.

I liked Guild Wars' metagames where one skill build cannot dominate the PvP battlefield, as another build will eventually counter it.