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Role Playing (Games)

Design Updates to MMOG Combat Systems 37

Posted by Zonk from the we-come-in-peace-shoot-to-kill-shoot-to-kill dept.
In a nice bit of synchronicity, updates have been posted for the combat designs of two major Massive Games. A thread has been posted on the upcoming combat upgrade to Star Wars Galaxies, discussing design goals and opening up conversation to the game community. The initial post has been followed up by several other developer posts. Meanwhile, the folks at Blizzard have released the second part of their PvP Battlegrounds Preview. The new preview offers details on win conditions in the instanced areas and more information on PvP questing. As an aside, Blizzard is also offering 48 free hours to its customers because of the recent downtime problems.
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Design Updates to MMOG Combat Systems More

Design Updates to MMOG Combat Systems

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  • bad url (Score:3, Funny)

    by Baikala ( 564096 ) on Wednesday January 19, 2005 @11:42AM (#11408461) Journal
    What's up with that "48 free hours" link? The url is completely wrong:
    http://slashdot.org/www.worldofwarcraft.com

  • WoW's Instanced Battlegrounds (Score:3, Insightful)

    by ShortedOut ( 456658 ) on Wednesday January 19, 2005 @11:49AM (#11408537) Journal
    Right now Alliance outnumbers Horde almost 2 - 1, and, in most cases, much more, on almost every server.

    Battlegrounds will only let X number of players in from each side at a time.

    This is an interesting method of population control, and balance, especially for those that don't want to wait in queues to fight pvp.

    Ironically, the company that invented "The Zerg" is working to elminate that tactic in PvP!
    • If you read it more clearly, along with additional info since posted, the main battlegrounds will not be instanced.
      The main one which is persistant and gives bonuses to the currently winning side will be the one with the major queue. While you are twiddling your thumbs waiting you can enter the instanciated areas which will allow just plain PvP for the bonus the points gives your character.
      Or I could be wrong and then WoW would be so much dummer then DaOC, since the battlefields would just be meaningless
  • I suppose these are the same upcoming revisions they proposed last January, which people are still waiting for. No thanks. I'm glad i got out when i did. They need to either fire the management staff or triple their developer staff. There's no excuse for how poorly managed this MMORPG is.
    • I believe your experience with MMORPGs is very limited by the looks of your comment. Just about every MMORPG that comes out has stability issues within the first 3-6 months. They don't need more man power because that doesn't help the issue. Buying better hardware is not the solution either since they probably have the top of the line equipment already

      Everybody has a budget, the trick is to use your resources efficiently. As the server loads go up, you have to manage a way to get your resources to work
      • Hes Talking about SW Galaxies. I was playing through the summer and I understand what he means. It has nothing to do with server stuff. There is a huge combat imbalance. It started off slow. They end up nerfing all the classess because the other class is too strong. They proposed a great shift even before last January. Every month, the devs would point to the upcoming rebalance. In july one of them said that the balance was a myth. No work has been done, and that no-one knew what they were talking about.
        • I use to play SWG too, quit for all the reasons you just stated. It's amazing how fast that game got boring. You mean you didn't like 30 Jedis in every good PvP battle out there and that everyone was one of two classes? hehe.

  • Commander (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Chimp_On_Stilts ( 805726 )
    I would love to see a Commander position implemented for the PVP Battlegrounds in WoW. I am referring to the top-down RTS style view that some other games (ie. Savage) have implemented allowing one person to coordinate the players below. I think this would be perfect for the Battlegrounds considering how disorganized the average players are when left to their own devices. Not to mention that, being Blizzard, I am sure they could get it right without too much difficulty. Does anyone agree that this would b
    • That is an interesting idea!

      So one person would be viewing sort of a world map...(The map of the battle grounds) and have everyone on their side with one colored blip, and the other side would have another colored blip.

      When a member of your team says something in chat, that blip would blink briefly. You could hover over that blip and it would tell you name/level/class.

      You can click on a blip and click somewhere else on the map, and the player would see a directional beacon appear on his mini map as a poi

    • Re:Commander (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Chi Hsuan Men ( 767453 )
      The idea is a very good one; however, how might it be implemented? Is it truly feasible?

      The first problem you'll have is people arguing over who gets to be the commander. You can't necessarily just give it to the person with the highest level, as they don't necessarily make the best generals. I suppose the easiest resolution would be to institute a voting system; however, guilds could easily favor their leader instead of someone who is better qualified.

      Honestly, the only way I see this working is creat

      • Re:Commander (Score:3, Interesting)

        by TychoCelchuuu ( 835690 )
        Whoever gets to the command place first? And if they're a moron, you can vote them off? That's how Natural Selection [naturalselection.com] does it and it works just fine.
        • Agreed. That's what Savage did too, and even on 64 player games (32 vs 32) it worked out fine. And Savage is a game with anonymous people... Considering the reputation you're likely to build up, leveling to 60 in an MMO, I don't think it will be a problem...
    • It would be nice to see something similar to that but not quite RTS persay but more like a commander on the battlefield that fights along side the others and has special skills based on his class. I guess almost a whole new group leader class would be nice to see.
    • I think a commander is not only cool, but necessary. Everyone in the instance wouldn't listen to the commander, but most would. A voting system with a karma system would work well. If a guild overloaded the battleground and voted in their buddy, then that's great. Mainly because that means a good portion of the team is ready to listen to what that commander has to say. I know I wouldn't have a problem listening to a commander who was just voted in by a big guild. Maybe put a time restriction on the vo
  • As an aside, Blizzard is also offering 48 free hours to its customers because of the recent downtime problems. This, after Penny Arcade takes away the title they gave WoW, and Slashdot gripes about it. Goes to show that if enough people bitch, they listen. Apparently.
    • Dont be so sure it was due to the community gripes. Blizzard has been pretty free with handing out extra time lately due to the massive problems they've over the past two-three weeks. Alot of users still feel that 48 hours wasn't enough, considering the game was down or barely usable for almost 5 days, but at this point you take what you're given from them and like it. On a side note, it does seem that they have fixed things. I haven't noticed the massive lag problems that were occuring regularly, and t
  • Livejournal went down for a bit over 1 day, through no fault of their own (their host lost all power, including backup, and most of the downtime was spent restarting and getting up to speed with over 100 servers) and they gave all paid members 2 free weeks.

    That's class.

  • I played the SWG:JTL (Jump To Lightspeed) 10 day demo, and frankly, didn't even make 10 day's. I tried the JTL bit, and it was amusing for an evening. I tried the walk around the planet bit, and couldn't believe what I saw.

    SWG is nothing more than 3D bolt-on to the old text muds, with some StarWars make-up on. You go off to fight the mob's and it's a simple turn based combat thing where you just select what move you want to do. Why couldn't they make it more like an FPS ? Walk out and shoot the Gorgs,

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