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Role Playing (Games)

Rogues Get Some Respect 68

Posted by Zonk from the do-it-from-behind dept.
GamerGod is running an article taking a look at the role of the Rogue in Dungeons and Dragons Online. In their estimation, the Rogue class finally gets to do its thing in an online game. From the article: "What rogue would be worth his salt if he didn't have any traps to disarm or locks to open? What truly sets D&DO apart from the competition is the need to find and disarm various traps, snares, and pitfalls. Again, the game's set-up and design makes this an invaluable part of game play. No regeneration of spell points results in limited heals, and no regeneration of hit points makes getting blasted with a trap actually MEAN something." Been playing the preorder Beta this weekend, and it does a surprisingly good job of recreating the PnP experience. Review upon release.
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Rogues Get Some Respect More

Rogues Get Some Respect

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  • Not a color anymore? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 02, 2006 @02:46PM (#14380064)
    But the more pressing question is: will people everywhere learn how to spell "rogue" and stop saying "rouge"?
    • "Lol warrior noob rouges pwn you" I laughed for hours at the guy who told me that in WoW. It was just evidence to support my theory that ~80% of WoW rogues were dickheaded 14 year olds. (possibly a higher percentage depending on your country/server).

    • I'm not going to rant (this time) about how every RPG (PnP or C) always has the same classes and variants of the same races (seriously, why do priests always heal? I've never met a priest who heals better than a doctor). That aside, why do they always call them rogues? Now, english isn't my first language, but I am fluent in it. Rarely do I encounter the word "rogue" outside of the RPG-sphere. You never hear that a rogue has been terrorising London, picpocketing and backstabbing...

      I did a quick synonym.com

      • That's why I stick to the Role-Playing servers. The title the game gives your "class" has very little meaning. Everybody is an individual. You define what you are. Anybody that takes part in combat can be called a warrior/fighter, whether you take part by spell or sword is of no consequence. Any abandon can be called a rogue, they don't have to be able to hide in shadows.
  • I thought we were talking about a game.

    • Re:PnP or DnD? (Score:3, Informative)

      by Kazzahdrane ( 882423 )
      Are you trying to be funny? PnP - Pen and Paper DnD - Dungeons and Dragons Zonk is saying that the new game does a good job of recreating the Pen and Paper experience in the form of an online game. Apologies if you made a joke and I just didn't get it though.
      • Yea, Zonks little comment at the end seems like praise devoid of meaning, as if I recall, the best part about PnP D&D is that you were sitting around with friends, having a good time, hopefully not taking it too seriously. I want to know how an MMORPG is going to recreate the PnP environment, as the statement means more than just replicating all the PnP calculations on the computer, it means recreating the atmosphere that made it fun to goto someones unfurnished basement for the night and play a somewha

        • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

          by account_deleted ( 4530225 )
          Comment removed based on user account deletion
          • Its funny you hit upon that line in my response as thats probably one of my biggest problems these days with the multiplayer games in general is that people take it way too damn seriously, to a degree that it actually becomes stressful to play. Given that I've just come home from working all day in an office with its own stresses due to deadlines, etc, why the hell would I want to actually pay money to experience further stress from players who for some reason think their character's level is going to affec
    • DND = Drag'n'Drop
      D&D = Dungeons and Dragons

      There is no abmiguity here, so the joke isn't funny to people who know even a little about the topic at hand.

      (PNP is Plug'n'Play; PnP is just something Zonk used for "pencil and paper", though many people also simply say "tabletop". Usually you don't need either one, since the context is clear.)

  • I wasn't looking at playing another MMORPG for a long time, probably checking out Star Trek Online in a couple of years, but the work Turbine is putting into the Rogue class is making me have second thoughts. I've never been very attracted to playing a rogue in RPGs, but it looks like they're giving rogues a lot of freedom. If they do that with all the classes and make them all as seemingly interesting to play, I might give the game a go. Fancy posting some first impressions, Zonk?
    • Ehh? I can quite easily see it being just another class, and from what I have read the new MMORPG is heavily party-only (no soloing). They added traps so rogues would be a requirement in a party instead of a you-can-come-too class.

      In a tabletop game the rogue has capabilities that enable interesting roleplaying scenarios and outside of the box style plans.

      In a combat oriented MMORPG, the D&D rogue doesn't have the same combat firepower as any frontline fighter class or offensive magic user. So, they h

  • Thoughts on necessity of rogues in a group. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by WizardofWestmarch ( 614827 ) on Monday January 02, 2006 @03:21PM (#14380236)
    The problem I have with this is it may make rogues TOO required. If you can skip the traps entirely but it make the dungeon take longer (read: the long way around) I don't have a problem with it. Otherwise you risk everyone rolling rogue because they are so needed.
    • Perhaps clerics will get their "detect traps" spell (I'm sure it's called something like that), an alternative to having a rogue but using up one of the cleric's spells when they could have another healing one. Stuff like that is fine by me, but yeah there's a problem of making a class *too* useful. Still, I'm hoping they make all the classes just as useful in cool ways as the rogue, so that they are well balanced and groups have different makeups.
      • Yeah that I can get behind 100%, with clerics having to use up a spell that could have gone to healing, and other similar tricks from other classes.

        and I DEFINETLY agree there needs to be similar abilities/needs from other classes. Make it so there are a lot of ways to complete any given dungeon based on what group make up you have.
    • Well, we always had a rogue or rogue-like in every PnP D&D game. There is a certain percentage of people that like the way of the stabbity.

      There's also race/class combos, since certain races get certain default abilities, a good substitute for a rogue would be an elven ranger or a bard(the gods of shmoozing, bard's were the UBER class in D&D 3.0, you had to throw deaf-dumb-blind-senseless things at them by the time they hit level 6 if you went strictly by the book, and they didn't entirely fix that
    • And thus arises one of the main problems of the MMO. When I DM a game, I can alter the dungeon so that it works better with the skills of the players. If I have a group of rogues playing, I can add several traps on doors, and some areas that require quick reflexes- I can do it on the fly and still keep the overall feel of the game. If I want to make it harder on the group I can forego the traps and maybe throw in magical beasts that would be better handled by a magic user.
      If I have a dungeon with a lot of traps and the party doesn't happen to include a rogue, then I can quickly alter the dungeon so that traps are replaced with simple puzzles or melee encounters that better play to the skills of the players. If there are no rogues and I want to weaken the party to make an encounter more dramatic, then I can throw in a couple of traps- knowing the party is unlikely to be able to detect or disarm them.
      This isn't really possible in MMOGs. While it's theoretically possible to create multiple versions of a dungeon and then use the one most fitting for the given parties makeup- it would double or triple the amount of work that goes into designing the quest- and it would probably be exploited easily too.
      • Its really hard to believe that this kind of customization can't be handled by typical MMOs, especially with the rise of instancing. You'd think they could take a party, weight their various stats, abilities and items and even keep a running log of their playing tendencies (ie which commands are used the most frequently) and customize the encounters and challenges based on these metrics. I guess they just haven't evolved to that point yet, although reading the article it sounds like DDO might be headed in
        • The code complexity to do this right, not to mention having to work out what statistics to take into account for such a system and how to properly measure them, would delay the development of already long taking and complex games by a great degree I would have to think, which is why the odds of seeing such a system anytime soon are not high.

          Though something like a PSO or maybe GA could have some interesting results, given enough (read: LOTS) of testing.
        • I think it is certainly possible for a MMO to handle this. I think it is unlikely that a MMO will implement it in the neat future though- for several reasons. The first is that, while it's possible to chose a dungeon (or even a given room) to match the abilities and play style of the players, it would lead to either much easier or much harder dungeons (either all the obstacles are tilted towards or away from the parties abilities). It could be interesting to create a dungeon that uses abilities that the
          • Also an important aspect of MMOs seem to be cooperation. So it really makes more sense to have a dungeon present a specific challenge. If the adventurers don't match up then they'll have to overcome that or find additional players to help them out.

            Kind of the point of the game really. (Well, theoretically anyways.)
        • Unfortuanately that would make it too contrived. You wouldn't be exploring a living, breathing world, rather than exploring some ancient historical cave, you'd be exploring an artificial cave made up just to suit you. As if there was a god following you around setting you challenges like in Jason and the Argonauts or something.

          It would get a bit dull in the end if the world didn't have any continuity, but was just a series of contrived 'challenges'.
      • The feature you implement in PnP is a common one and has always seemed like the wrong answer to me.

        The party should be able to realize when the challenge before them is the wrong one for the current group. When the world adjusts for the player you lose many valuable artifacts to enhancing realism - consistency, consequences and the thrill of the unknown.
        • The #1 rule of being a DM is "Make the game fun".
          If the game is not fun, then you have no players to play in your consistant, consequence filled, realistic world. A lot of it comes down to how good of a DM you are. An excellent DM can probably create a quest beforehand that needs very little modification for the players, and a poor DM will refuse to change the quest no matter what. Most DMs fall inbetween however- and admit that they are not perfect and cannot forsee how the players will play- and they
  • Hallelujah! I think we just found the first MMORPG I'll ever play!
    • I was gonna say kinda the same thing, only instead of "ever" I was going to say "never." It sounds great, and all, and it appeals to me as my preferred class in tabletop rpgs is a thief, or fighter/thief. However, it still doesn't make me want to start plunking down a monthly fee for the experience. If I was putting monthly money into a game, I'd play it non-stop just to get my money's worth out of it, and that's just not something I want to do.
      • You pay monthly for Internet access, does that mean you're at the computer 24/7? Does paying rent mean you never leave the house?
        • It's more to do with the relationship with how I currently game. I buy a game for $30-$50, play when I want, for how long I want, or as infrequently I want. I can take over a year to finish the game if I want, and it still only cost me my initial $30-$50.

          In an online game, I can do the same, except I'm paying $15 a month, or whatever, and all the time I'm not playing other people are advancing past me. After I've spent the equivalent for a conventional game, my relative position depends on how mu
  • "What truly sets D&DO apart from the competition is the need to find and disarm various traps, snares, and pitfalls."

    It's been done in Phantasy Star Online, if I remember correctly.
    • PSO was pay-to-play but not really massive as you're restricted to four players per "instance" and the only area where more players can hang around is the lobby. Kinda like Guildwars with a monthly fee.
    • Comment removed based on user account deletion
      • "Thiefs are the only class who can pick locks though about everyone could disarm a trap."

        FFXI? What locks? What traps? The only locked things are chests and coffers, and I've yet to hear of anybody opening those things without a corresponding key.
        • > The only locked things are chests and coffers,
          > and I've yet to hear of anybody opening those
          > things without a corresponding key.

          Thieves can use thieves' tools, living keys, or skeleton keys to open them, but a lot of the time you get a mimic or cursed, and you don't even get the contents when that happens.

          Chris Mattern
      • The only player-assist thing that rogues can do in WoW that other players can't is open lockbox drops.

        D&D is going to have locked doors and traps, things that WoW doesn't have (apart from little PvP trap things, not the same as your classical PnP poison spiked pit trap with snakes in it).
      • Yeah, I can't believe the number of times we wiped in a WoW instance because we couldn't disarm traps...

        Wait, what traps?

  • Sounds great, excpt for the Turbine part (Score:5, Interesting)

    by MBraynard ( 653724 ) on Monday January 02, 2006 @03:57PM (#14380437) Journal
    Turbine's involvement with this project is problematic. While AC was very revolutionary for it's day and had a tremendous amount of creativity (and creative use of an extremely limited game engine), Turbine did not do a good job of avoiding pain in the rear issues for players.

    There are a lot of routine tasks that outside third parties made applications to help with. I'm not talking about gold farming, but more like efficient self-spell casting. For every thirty minutes to hour of play in AC, you had to spend approximately 5 or more minutes 'buffing' yourself with spells - at least, when done efficiently with the third party app, the buffing was done very efficiently. Doing it manually could take up to twice as long and could also require you to waste spell slots on your casting bar. When the app was buffing you, you could take that as an opportunity to chat with your party - doing it manually? no chatting.

    So every month Turbine would BREAK this app with their update. Finally the developer got tired of fixing it every month and quit. This also blew other apps for quickly sizing up what treasure is valuable (Turbine would often dump 200+ pieces of treasure in front of you and expect you to take 1 minute to sort through all of it - 95% trash - before it decomposed on you).

    If I ever was going to go back to AC, the lack of Decal (and Turbine's decision not just not to incorporate these applications into the game but to permanently break the third party apps) means I definitly can't go back and I am not alone.

    • Re:Sounds great, excpt for the Turbine part (Score:1, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      AC is ancient and should be used as an example of how succesful Turbine could be at creating an MMO. They just released another expansion for the game, and it is still going strong. AC2 on the other hand was a flop and they just shut the AC2 game worlds off completely. While AC2 had the pretty graphics, and better engine they really broke gameplay.

      Combine the experience gained from thier success, and thier failure, and you have a good shot at making a game (or two) that will be the better for it. The Turbin
      • Whell, SOE sure learned a lot from EQ2 and SWG - are you looking forward to signing up to their next learning experience?

        Look, just saying, if you are a hard core DND guy you are probably going to at least try the demo. Everyone else should probably find something else.

    • This was hardly a case of turbine going out of thier way to break that software.
      The way the program worked was by using an offset, and that had to found out every time there was new compile of the code, this happened mostly on a monthly basis because they released a new version with new content and features.
      To explain why it would take so long for people who did not play AC, designed what around 6-7 years ago. You had around 10 pieces of clothing you could wear, and a weapon. Spells exists that could bu
      • You had to cast (IIRC) about 8 spells on each of those ten pieces of armor. Then you had to cast about another 20 spells on yourself, then maybe another couple on your casting implement, plus a bunch of mana management spells to make all of that possible.

        Yes, there was an offset, but Turbine could have easily accomdated by making Decal PART of the game or better incorporating it. They didn't realize that the decal was what made their game playable.

  • In their estimation, the Rogue class finally gets to do its thing in an online game.

    Apparently, leading the pack in terms of damage output isn't enough anymore.

    Still, traps can be fun little additions that generally get neglected in MMOGs, and you generally wouldn't expect the fighter to take the delicate approach, at least not in a D&D game.

    • I play a rogue in WoW (like 90% of the population =/ but I always play rogues) and one of the most useless "skills" I have is find and disarm traps. Why is this useless? I have yet to encounter a trap except for one quest which was given right after learning the "detect traps" skill. I am glad D&D online is doing that and actually making the rogue class usefull. Why aren't there more traps in WoW?
      • For the exact reasons spelled out by other posters:

        Putting in traps for the sake of making a single skill useful means adding in content that negatively affects n-1 classes, where n is the total number of classes in the game.

        • But it also negatively affects *realism*. You want to stop someone going through point X in a dungeon, do you (a) install a large monster, or do you (b) put in a door which triggers an alarm when opened, so that your bodyguards are ready and waiting further down the corridor?

          The reason traps make sense is that they're an automated way of stopping people getting in. Build them once, and that's it. Stopping people going through by putting in a monster lair is all very well, but it kind of impacts on *your*
          • But it also negatively affects *realism*. You want to stop someone going through point X in a dungeon, do you (a) install a large monster, or do you (b) put in a door which triggers an alarm when opened, so that your bodyguards are ready and waiting further down the corridor?

            Alarm traps are crap. You can just pick up your monsters with the Hand of Evil and drop them on any intruding heroes. What you want to do is to fortify your dungeon walls, and have the only approaches be via very long, snaking corrido

    • "Apparently, leading the pack in terms of damage output isn't enough anymore."

      Since when do Rogues get to backstab with every attack? They need to be undetected, and it only works against humanoids. Furthermore, fighters and their ilk have plenty of damage-buffing skills and feats.

      Yes, a backstab can be a devastating attack. However, it's usable only in rare situations.

      "you generally wouldn't expect the fighter to take the delicate approach, at least not in a D&D game."

      Depends on the player
    • Rogues were never supposed to be uber-damage dealers. This happened because SOE could not implement rogues correctly, and had to give them something to make the class viable. The rogue as it is being implimented in DDO is what they were supposed to be in the first place.
  • Off-topic:

    I searched their site for any indication of system requirements. Evidently they don't think it's important to indicate what platforms their game runs on...I had to go to Amazon to find out. PC-only, Mac users out of luck.

  • Nexus... (Score:2, Offtopic)

    by SanityInAnarchy ( 655584 )
    In Nexus [nexustk.com], Rogues are the most overplayed class for completely different reasons.

    First of all, it sounds cool, especially when you go and read in the description: "The magical fighter, unmatched in single combat."

    Rogues do the most damage to a single target, knocking it down twice to three times as fast as a Warrior can. This is balanced by Warriors being capable of hitting in all four directions, and being able to actually take quite a few hits.

    Rogues don't get hit much. When they do, it hurts a LOT, but
  • Just a 10' pole to find traps. I always wondered how people carried those in the tabletop game (especially the halflings).
  • Turning something that's defective with the game (too many traps; no way to deal with them except using a rogue) into a "feature" with spin. That's about what I'd expect from them really.

    Oh, and expect all the sociopathic assholes (and griefers) to play rogues. Then they can inflict maximum pain on everyone else but know they'll always get party invites (since you have to have a party) because every party MUST have a rogue.
    • You don't /need/ a rogue to get through traps. Watch IGN's video archives regarding this game. A set of repeating blades slice out of the walls and floor in a specific pattern. The player memorizes the pattern and makes his/her way through the trap without injury.

      They go inside to encounter a large ogre(not sure what it is, just that it's about 4 times the size of the cleric).

      They mix it up a little, before the cleric flees out through the trap once more. The trap skewers the player for quite a bit of damag

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