Combat Styles in MMOs
Well, I took a look at storytelling, so why not look at combat in the MMOs I've played?
WoW: This is the first MMO I really picked up, so I may be biased. It's sort of the baseline in my mind. It's not perfect, but it works well.
Bottom line in my book is that it works. I rarely had any trouble targeting what I wanted to target. Abilities and auto-attacks hit your active target or specified area. Facing is important (especially as a shield-user). AI aggro mechanics are mostly pretty basic, straightfoward, and built-in with tanks having specific aggro-boosting abilities. With rare exception, abilities both have a cooldown and are limited by a global cooldown. There's some difference between classes with a secondary resource - mana, rage, focus, etc.
And there are a lot of abilities. I had... 4 bars? Six? Eight? It sure felt like a lot, though some of those were regularly-used non-combat things like mount summoning.
Boss fights, however, got interesting. "Tank and spank" fights were sort of an exception, there was usually something else going on - additional mobs, effects to dodge, or even much more complicated things, especially in raids. I'm actually a bit amazed at the variety of mechanics that showed up over the years. Of course, on the down side, that made it difficult to go in blind on some encounters, but I think the variety was a good thing.
GW: Okay, it's only sort-of-kind-of an MMO, but I played it alongside WoW and it felt boring by comparison. Being limited to one bar of active skills gave it a deck-building quality, but the fights themselves felt either trivial or hard-because-they-just-throw-more-enemies-at-you. The only fight that was remotely interesting to me from a mechanical perspective was Abaddon at the end of Nightfall.
GW2 (Rogue): I understand there's a difference in play styles between classes. Rogues are resource-based, with regenerating Initiative used for abilties. Secondary abilities are on cooldowns, primary ones are not. Active dodging is a nice addition and generally the game feels much more mobile to me. Abilities are limited in number, but that doesn't really seem so bad. Targeting is sometimes very hard, though attacks can hit based on position anyway.
The de-emphasisis of "healers" and "tanks" is odd to me, and makes combat in the game feel less tactical/group-based and more free-for-all. Some classes can go with builds that offers more healing to others or have a degree of area control. Rogues get... uhh... I can swap out a good personal heal skill for a mediocre area heal skill, and I usually run with Shadow Refuge, which is an area invisibility + regen, but that's the extend of my ability to aid others, really.
Overall, I like the quick, mobile feel of rogue combat.
On the other hand, I find bosses to be disappointing more often than not. There's no way to solidly tank them, making their attacks feel more random. They frequently have AOE effects punishing to melee characters. World bosses are generally beaten by zerg rather than tactics (Tequatl being the only major exception), and what mechanical "tricks" some dungeon bosses have feel very plain and flavorless to me nine times out of ten. I have, however, seen signs that the developers are experimenting some with patterned and phased combats in some content releases - but none of them feel very polished or fun to me.
Also the quick pace of combat is a little bit of a drawback in my mind in that buffs/debuffs go by so fast it's hard to see what they're doing and such.
FFXIV: The game is definitely a more "classic" style of MMO, going back to tanks and healers and such, along with cooldowns and secondary resources like mana and TP. Tank abilities deal additional threat, and facing matters in a lot of cases. It's also a return to multiple bars-worth of abilities. Many abilities are based on use in sequence, getting a "combo bonus" for going from one to the next.
On the down side, this also means getting stuck in spot for abilities with cast times (or moving and interrupting them). Most dragoon abilities keep you moving, though, as some key off flanking or rear attacks.
I'm kind of surprised that you can succeed against most bosses blind by going in with the unterstanding that you 1) avoid telegraphed AOEs, 2) kill adds that spawn, then 3) kill boss. There certainly are boss fights that break that mold in some way, but I'm impressed by how often those rules hold true and yet the fights don't feel repetitive. The fights don't feel quite as varied as WoW's, but they're pretty good.
One stand-out element of combat encounters in the game is the "Trials." A Trial is a single boss fight for a group of 8. They're tied to the story and unlocked as you go along, but skip the cut scenes and you can get in and out fairly quickly (at least in the hard modes, not sure about extreme). I really enjoy the Leviathan and Shiva trials, and the fact that you can finish them in under ten minutes (plus queue time) is awesome in my book.
SWTOR: I have to admit it's been a while since I've played, so it's not fresh in my head. Lots of abilities, tank specs, healing specs - fairly traditional there. I remember being quite taken with being able to run-and-gun rather than being rooted to a spot for ranged combat.
Most notably, I didn't do very much group content, so I can't really say anything about dungeon/raid bosses, so that makes it hard to compare a lot of elements.
WoW: This is the first MMO I really picked up, so I may be biased. It's sort of the baseline in my mind. It's not perfect, but it works well.
Bottom line in my book is that it works. I rarely had any trouble targeting what I wanted to target. Abilities and auto-attacks hit your active target or specified area. Facing is important (especially as a shield-user). AI aggro mechanics are mostly pretty basic, straightfoward, and built-in with tanks having specific aggro-boosting abilities. With rare exception, abilities both have a cooldown and are limited by a global cooldown. There's some difference between classes with a secondary resource - mana, rage, focus, etc.
And there are a lot of abilities. I had... 4 bars? Six? Eight? It sure felt like a lot, though some of those were regularly-used non-combat things like mount summoning.
Boss fights, however, got interesting. "Tank and spank" fights were sort of an exception, there was usually something else going on - additional mobs, effects to dodge, or even much more complicated things, especially in raids. I'm actually a bit amazed at the variety of mechanics that showed up over the years. Of course, on the down side, that made it difficult to go in blind on some encounters, but I think the variety was a good thing.
GW: Okay, it's only sort-of-kind-of an MMO, but I played it alongside WoW and it felt boring by comparison. Being limited to one bar of active skills gave it a deck-building quality, but the fights themselves felt either trivial or hard-because-they-just-throw-more-enemies-at-you. The only fight that was remotely interesting to me from a mechanical perspective was Abaddon at the end of Nightfall.
GW2 (Rogue): I understand there's a difference in play styles between classes. Rogues are resource-based, with regenerating Initiative used for abilties. Secondary abilities are on cooldowns, primary ones are not. Active dodging is a nice addition and generally the game feels much more mobile to me. Abilities are limited in number, but that doesn't really seem so bad. Targeting is sometimes very hard, though attacks can hit based on position anyway.
The de-emphasisis of "healers" and "tanks" is odd to me, and makes combat in the game feel less tactical/group-based and more free-for-all. Some classes can go with builds that offers more healing to others or have a degree of area control. Rogues get... uhh... I can swap out a good personal heal skill for a mediocre area heal skill, and I usually run with Shadow Refuge, which is an area invisibility + regen, but that's the extend of my ability to aid others, really.
Overall, I like the quick, mobile feel of rogue combat.
On the other hand, I find bosses to be disappointing more often than not. There's no way to solidly tank them, making their attacks feel more random. They frequently have AOE effects punishing to melee characters. World bosses are generally beaten by zerg rather than tactics (Tequatl being the only major exception), and what mechanical "tricks" some dungeon bosses have feel very plain and flavorless to me nine times out of ten. I have, however, seen signs that the developers are experimenting some with patterned and phased combats in some content releases - but none of them feel very polished or fun to me.
Also the quick pace of combat is a little bit of a drawback in my mind in that buffs/debuffs go by so fast it's hard to see what they're doing and such.
FFXIV: The game is definitely a more "classic" style of MMO, going back to tanks and healers and such, along with cooldowns and secondary resources like mana and TP. Tank abilities deal additional threat, and facing matters in a lot of cases. It's also a return to multiple bars-worth of abilities. Many abilities are based on use in sequence, getting a "combo bonus" for going from one to the next.
On the down side, this also means getting stuck in spot for abilities with cast times (or moving and interrupting them). Most dragoon abilities keep you moving, though, as some key off flanking or rear attacks.
I'm kind of surprised that you can succeed against most bosses blind by going in with the unterstanding that you 1) avoid telegraphed AOEs, 2) kill adds that spawn, then 3) kill boss. There certainly are boss fights that break that mold in some way, but I'm impressed by how often those rules hold true and yet the fights don't feel repetitive. The fights don't feel quite as varied as WoW's, but they're pretty good.
One stand-out element of combat encounters in the game is the "Trials." A Trial is a single boss fight for a group of 8. They're tied to the story and unlocked as you go along, but skip the cut scenes and you can get in and out fairly quickly (at least in the hard modes, not sure about extreme). I really enjoy the Leviathan and Shiva trials, and the fact that you can finish them in under ten minutes (plus queue time) is awesome in my book.
SWTOR: I have to admit it's been a while since I've played, so it's not fresh in my head. Lots of abilities, tank specs, healing specs - fairly traditional there. I remember being quite taken with being able to run-and-gun rather than being rooted to a spot for ranged combat.
Most notably, I didn't do very much group content, so I can't really say anything about dungeon/raid bosses, so that makes it hard to compare a lot of elements.
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