MT's Gaming Compendium™
Posted: Thu Jul 12, 2012 7:17 pmNow this thread is going to talk about both MMORPG gaming and FPS/TPS games, before I start this information is both things from my point of view and what a huge amount of other players commented on.
I don't prefer one game play to the other, each has it's nice and weak spots.....i will be going into detail of the many flaws games have and that we just continue seeing games with the same critical flaws
I will also be talking about a few specific games even some that don't follow the traditional game pattern that most games follow.
Many general word use will also be explained briefly
DISCLAIMER: This is a "compendium" it will contain huge amounts of information, most likely some videos, this will remind you of what people here now call a "dreads" post, but far worse, it contains EVERY SINGLE DETAIL there is
NOTE: I will be updating this compendium either with changes or things I may have forgotten to mention
Now i will start with First person shooter and/or Third person shooter games(FPS/TPS)
Play style:
Generally the play style is fast-passed, reflexes are needed, quick-aim quick-movement, always on your guard.
Different styles can be found for any preference, some people prefer close combat, others prefer to stay at the farest distance away from others, there is a good amount of customization depending on the game, and you can totally switch play style most of the time and in many games just after you die.
Now in FPS games generally the way you go is you take a class, customize guns, to your preference, rush into a fight, do your thing, you die you respawn second later just to start it again.
You don't really "build" anything, and in the end you play the same thing over and over again, at some point these games get a little boring, however, if you have a busier life(family, job, kids, dog, friends) basically anything that keeps you from playing a lot(imagine you have only about 45M a day playtime) then FPS games are pretty good for you, it doesn't "require" you to spend a lot of time in the game, and generally having the skills(reflexes, and aim) can get you far in almost all FPS games(there are other FPS's that require more thinking and strategic tactics)
The issue you have in PVP in both FPS and MMORPG games are the gamers themselves, which brings us to
Gamer types
So ill simplify it in a few weapons:
For a bit more fun detail on these tough not as similar:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Cjrp23lBSM
Bigger issues
Now this is an issue seen in most FPS games, I'm a new player, and I'm up against a more experienced player In that game, he's highly ranked and I'm not, besides experience in the game he also has all the gear unlock, so outskilled and outgeared?
This reminds me of a game which many of you guys know "crysis" in their PVP system they had a huge map, 2HQ's 1 for each team with the objective to take out the opposing teams HQ
There were a lot of buildings across the map that could be captured and had it's own purpose, from making vehicles to spawning and other things.
TO take out the opposing team's HQ you had to make a weapon of mass destruction(radioactive or alien tech) and use it on the opposing teams HQ till it was destroyed.
In the game there were ranks but reset per match, you would spawn with X amount of points minimum to spend it on gear or making vehicles, more points per kill or capture, and these also would increase points towards ranking up.
Each rank increases the amount of minimum points you spawn with, so if in a match you did a lot for your team you would spawn with such an amount of points you could get whatever gear you wanted.
So basically gear depended on the player on that match not the amount of time that one spent in his life playing.
Then came crysis 2 and they nuked the idea of this kind of PVP and just went with the flow, a BF2 ranking system unlocking gear as you go.
And more issues arise, teamwork, has never been too vital in FPS games, i mean I've been told many times before in the past that as an example BC2 was different, but it wasn't a single chopper with a very experienced player could dominate maps, as well as epic snipers...... teamwork exists yes, but a few single epic players can drag your team threw the fight....
Teamwork isn't promoted like this, and even staying close to others can kill you as easily as it can save you, as rewarding in points as teamwork can be, it's not often brought me to victory....sadly
Another thing is, if your in a bad team, you lose since it's 1 team vs 1 team, so the most dominant team wins by default, imagine 1v1v1 3 teams, a better team would have to fight against more numbers, meaning they get a challenge and the game isn't rigged like that.
Another big issue is balance, overpowered weapons, people that don't use it tend to rage when they get killed by such weapons and would stop others from using them, this creates flame wars....
I'm not going more into detail of imbalances in FPS games....
Money money money, must be funny -->http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ETxmCCsMoD0
Right now we've come to the part in how FPS game designers(or companies whatever you want to call it) make their money and what kind of support they give the gamers.
In FPS games you generally buy the box and are free to play from there, prices range in between 50-70$/€ on release, months after release the price goes down or generally goes down drastically.
Usually after release there are a few patches, and that's about all the support you will get, more patches would mean more money cost and unless companies make more money they quit caring fairly quickly, the only way to boost sales again is by releasing an expansion pack.
This is another way of bringing some extra cash before the company says, "okay the goldmine is depleted let's start making a new game"
Luckily if you have a good group of modders many games have an auto-download function so modded maps, changes patches can all be made and auto-downloaded.....(heck COD2 has this )
Coming up is MMORPG games.
Since I believe there is more to cover with MMORPG's I suggest yall take a break and play something :P
Massive multiplayer online role-playing games(MMORPG's)
That's a mouthful anyhow MMORPG games are very different in many ways of FPS games
For starters there are 2 different kind of modes in MMORPG games:
PVE: player vs environment, this is the base of any MMORPG and generally how the game is designed to be played, don't let the whole Players killing NPC's thing fool you, these isn't the NPC's found in a FPS game but rather very challenging boss fights where everybody has to be on the ball or you will all end up dead, I'll get into more detail soon
PVP: No need to explain, but I'll get into details in how MMORGP pvp works soon.
Now there is a lot to cover with MMORPG's so this might sound a bit confusing I guess I'll start with "roles"
Roles:
In MMORPG's every class has its own role to fit, in almost all currently released MMORPG's every class has its primary role fixed, meaning it's the only viable thing to do, sure you have secondary roles, but your secondary role is never going to as good as a different class that has that role as a primary role, since it's all about being in a group and playing roles, you will always be asked to play your main role.
Types of roles/The holy trinity
The concept of an MMORPG is the following, one person made to withstand damage draws attention to himself making opponents attack him, and him only, meanwhile damage dealing classes ditch out as much damage as they can, while a or various healers keep everybody alive.
The objective being that the person drawing attention survives long enough for the rest of the group to kill the boss or normal NPC's
These 3 roles are called the holy trinity, in game terms.
Tank:
Basically this role is a class based on taking a ton of damage, he/she will "taunt" enemies into attacking them, usually they have heavy armor and are also known by the name "meat shields"
DPS:
Literally "damage per second" these are the most frequently found roles, and they tend to be the easier role to play, there are usually various classes that have this role as primary role.
The reason to this would be that generally in MMORPG's there are different types of Damage dealing classes generally these 3 are known:
Support:
As the name says it these serve to support the rest of the group, in LOTRO for example there are several support classes, one of them Buffs everybody else
Buffs are temporal enhanced stats like Health, or increased defenses or increased damage etc)
This particular support role called a "captain" is also referred to as a jack of all trades yet master of none, meaning, he can play all the roles, at the same time yet not as effectively as people that play their primary role, the good thing is he can just switch whenever he wants or needs to.
A debuffer: the opposite of a buffer, he does things to opponents that either make them take more damage, make them do less damage, slow their attacks, make their attacks miss more ETC....
There is a third class but I'd prefer not to go into detail unless anybody really wants to know :D
MMORPG games really work different from FPS games, for starters you don't just start with a class, you build your class, customize it, when you log in you pick up where you left before, getting weapons and armor depending on your needs.
Questing to get XP which you level up with, the general idea of this game is keeping you busy for thousands of hours, a never-ending game generally.
The idea of what to do in this game is leveling up, till you reach the level cap, at this point people tend to concentrate on getting gear.
How you acquire gear depends entirely on your MMORPG, some gear or the more basic required gear can be crafted, generally crafting involves gathering materials, and with the right tools, recipe and materials you can make your own things.
There is a lot of brainwork involved rather than the fast paced FPS games
Now it's time to talk about how combat works:
Combat:
Combat works entirely different from FPS games, instead of being fast passed it feels much slower, and almost feels like turn fighting, if anyone has ever played KOTOR you should know a bit how it feels.
In front of your screen under your third person character you should see your UI with skills, and quick slots for items an example:( i think that's WoW
Pressing those icons or using a hotkey of the keyboard or side-mouse button will trigger these skills W
hen activated your character uses them, combat isn't as realistic as FPS games, far from it, which puts a lot of FPS gamers off MMORPG games
After using a skill you lose an amount of mana or power represented by the blue bar on your top left on that image, and many skills have a "cooldown" basically a time is needed before they can be used again,
some skills can be spammed, other skills are so powerful they sometimes take 5-30Minutes before being active again.
Be careful tough, if you have no mana/power you can't use any skills, it should recharge over time and some "consumables" like potions or even some skills can restore this.
Here is a video of WoW onyxia raid, against a huge dragon:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9hawLauJG3s
You also have "critical" hits, imagine a headshot on FPS games tough it doesn't instantly kill things, as an example(it's actually more in some cases) if a normal hit does 1000 Damage points, a critical hit does 2000, and a devesatating critical hit does 3000, so you have something called "crit rating" call it luck but you can increase it with gear.
BPE's (Block, parry and evade)
If any of your characters does any of these they will completely avoid taking damage:
(note this is also game dependent)
BPE's are a "chance" of luck you don't generally trigger one, you have an X% chance of doing them, tough depending on the class you can have some increasing the chances of doing them drastically for a small amount of time
As you can see 1 person at the head the rest either on the side or behind him which i will explain later, i just said a "raid" so going over to talking about raids
Now we go over to the main MMORPG PVE end-game content
Raids:
This involves in a group of generally 12 players entering a huge instance with NPC's that are extra tough, and with a big boss at the end of the fight, a balanced group is required, role-playing is required to get anywhere, at the end of a raid if completed there should be a treasure chest with a few rewards in them, generally luck-based and with unique gear in them generally for specific classes.
Raids can be extremely tough to complete, and from time to time a raid leader can go a bit nuts, I will show some videos later on, on some cases of the game being taken too seriously.
But of course you will have this in any game.
The reason that you don't see for standing behind enemies are "AOE's" (Area of effect)
Many bosses do a frontal "AOE" attack that hits everybody in front of him, so everybody stands somewhere away from where the tank stands....
The MMORPG's PVP
Oh well, after a while of PVE some people wanted to see PVP in an MMORPG game, PVP trashes the role in MMORPG games, PVP is often very unbalanced since it all depends on the skills from PVE, if any change is made they may affect what happens PVE-Wise causing disaster to people into almost leaving the game or even doing just that......
There are many PVP systems to cover from 1vs1's 2vs'2 etc to open world maps with keeps etc.....
There is literally too much too cover since every MMORPG has some kind of a different aspect of PVP
Before i go over to some issues there is one last thing "guilds"
These are basically clans in games, groups of friends or people that work well with others, they can be based on PVP, PVE, or a bit of both, however some guilds are just social, a bunch of people having a laugh and not really doing either of the ones I mentioned.
Issues with MMORPG's
Oh gosh, here we go.... I'd like to start on the whole concept of tanks/DPS/Healers.
If you've read this far you must be tired of reading, so instead a video of a person that knows what's he's talking about should do the trick
Also add "combat delusion" to the holy trinity system.
A tank knows what he's doing, and sees the difference in what he does, a healer as well, but a damage deal doesn't, you won't notice the difference that much or won't see what you do, this is called "combat delusion"
Questing: you go to a guy that tells you he's under attack, and sends you to a field and asks you to kill a bunch of stuff go back and tell him you did, it's not happening, if you don't do anything nothing changes in the game world.....frustrating as well to do the same thing again when your making a second character
Crafting: usually involves mining iron ore, or chopping wood, or anything related to that, yet only 1 person can do this then it disappears and the "node" respawns somewhere else.....an Massively multiplayer online game where only 1 player can get resources of 1 node.
Tagging enemies, the first one to engage combat gets the experience and the loot from the kill regardless of the kill unless your grouped up.....so your going to have to go to a place where no one else is in a MMO game? yup makes sence....
In MMORPG's you will generally see game designers making epic bad choices, for instance something called nerfs and revamps:
Nerfs: generally decreases potency(if were talking classes) of certain aspects of your class making it harder to do what it does, or simply removing things that are said to be overpowered, however many times these decisions are made based on all of the whining of players and isn't necessary.
Revamps: Generally boosting or completely changing something or a class, you might think it's always a good thing, but I can assure you, waking up, auto-downloading a patch and finding out you have relearn your class from scratch just because some game designer didn't like it is frustrating as hell.
Game designers tend to make a lot of stupid choices along the way creating frustration and making people want to quit this game
There are many more things in MMORPG games that up till now have gone completely wrong, things that were near perfection destroyed.....
Game designers as of late don't change anything in the game unless they feel like they can make a bunch of money out of it.....depending on the game of course.....
In LOTRO terms one senior player described "turbine's" money making as the following:
They pick up a player from the street, shake him as hard as they can, beat the money out of him, and when he's tired of it and has nothing more to give them, they throw him back on the street and go on the next victi....customer
Content scaling, basically I'm max level and older content, such as lower level content is useless to me, i just 1-hit kill things.....
Grinding:
Grinding makes players play the game for thousands of hours, ill just give an example of LOTRO grinding:
If your already geared out to almost the max then you can do the ultimate raid, a Tier 2 raid making everything much harder especially since there is also an optional challenge.
Now what people want from this is a component to make a legendary weapon of "the first age"
There are 3 ages of weapons 3rd age being common 2cd age being rare or actually normal for raiders and first agers being extremely rare to get.
Now this is the point, besides the excruciatingly difficult raid, you only get 1 item
Who gets it? em, the person that "rolls" the highest if you have your 12-man group and since you have 2 legendaries(weapon +item) they made an extra thing, after successfully doing a raid you get "raid locks" so you can't do it till the rest which is every week at the same time.....
So how long does it takes for me and my team to get our items?
7 days(raid locks) * 12 players * 2 items = 168 days
This isn't 100% accurate for whoever plays the game, however it gets fairly close.
This is supposed to be the hardcore stuff, but to get gear your required to get "tokens" however they are called in your MMORPG, which you get from running the same thing over and over and over again, issue being is if you don't get a group you can't do it.....
Grinding, as far as running the same thing over and over and over again, is addictive, yet not fun....
Roles: you can't switch in order to do so you need to make a new characters and start again on building it(tough you save your previous one.
Money
How do MMORPG games get their money off players? the traditional way has been subscriptions requiring you to pay an amount of monthly fee, this is generally misunderstood, most of this money goes to the Game masters that need to be paid, maintenance for the server, making new content which you get for free when it comes out, and other things.....in FPS games this isn't the case, however if your hosting a server, your paying monthly as well....
And now we go on the final part of this compendium.....
People say the whole concept of MMORPG's is going to change on the 28th august of this year.
Arenanet developers have noticed the things players want and the MMORPG issues, and of course other game developers doing the same thing every time, they looked at their game and noticed all of the above issues, and decided, to make a new game altogether GW2
So what's different?
Everything, for starters combat is now dynamic combat, skills fire from every range, however it's dynamic, so i can block, parry or evade the attacks myself, get out of the way from an attack, basically a mix of an MMORPG and a TPS game.
Also they've gone further and added cross-profession combination, a wall of fire cast by an elementals while a ranger fires arrows threw it means the arrows catch on fire doing additional damage, a great amount of combinations have been added for extra teamwork.
There is also a concept of environmental weapons, from a mortar just sitting there waiting to be fired, to an elementalist summoning a weapon and you being able to pick it up and use it regardless of your class, changing all your current skills, to even a thief able to steal a weapon and store this environmental weapon for later use
The concept of the holy trinity is removed, everyone can play every role, and switch roles.
Raids are now 5 manned, so you can punish weak links, and this removes the issue of combat delusion
Nodes can be mined several times before disappearing so no more competing with others for them.
Defacto grouping, so no more "tagging" NPC's your automatically get rewards for helping others with killing.
Dynamic events, no more quests popping up being unrealistic, at any given time a town can be under attack and if you fail to defend it, it can become occupied.....defacto grouping applies for both defenses and offenses as any other quest
Grinding removed, in both raids and leveling, if you complete a instance, everybody gets rewarded with the same things, tokens which can be bartered
Many other cool stuff, they actually listened to what players have to say, and what we want
Money
Unlike other MMORPG games, there is no monthly fee, it works like a mix of a FPS and a MMORPG, you buy the box, then if any expansions come out you will have to buy them to play them, however the servers are maintained by them....
So it kinda works like a FPS only you don't pay the monthly server hosting fee
And this concludes my compendium for now, I have kinda a headache after spending hours on this thing, feel free to mention thoughts, ask questions, or just troll it because you don't know what to say :D
MT/EX
PS. if anyone was wondering, not incluiding this PS the total amount of words used in this compendium is 4845 words exactly, so do i get an A+++ swine?
I don't prefer one game play to the other, each has it's nice and weak spots.....i will be going into detail of the many flaws games have and that we just continue seeing games with the same critical flaws
I will also be talking about a few specific games even some that don't follow the traditional game pattern that most games follow.
Many general word use will also be explained briefly
DISCLAIMER: This is a "compendium" it will contain huge amounts of information, most likely some videos, this will remind you of what people here now call a "dreads" post, but far worse, it contains EVERY SINGLE DETAIL there is
NOTE: I will be updating this compendium either with changes or things I may have forgotten to mention
Now i will start with First person shooter and/or Third person shooter games(FPS/TPS)
Play style:
Generally the play style is fast-passed, reflexes are needed, quick-aim quick-movement, always on your guard.
Different styles can be found for any preference, some people prefer close combat, others prefer to stay at the farest distance away from others, there is a good amount of customization depending on the game, and you can totally switch play style most of the time and in many games just after you die.
Now in FPS games generally the way you go is you take a class, customize guns, to your preference, rush into a fight, do your thing, you die you respawn second later just to start it again.
You don't really "build" anything, and in the end you play the same thing over and over again, at some point these games get a little boring, however, if you have a busier life(family, job, kids, dog, friends) basically anything that keeps you from playing a lot(imagine you have only about 45M a day playtime) then FPS games are pretty good for you, it doesn't "require" you to spend a lot of time in the game, and generally having the skills(reflexes, and aim) can get you far in almost all FPS games(there are other FPS's that require more thinking and strategic tactics)
The issue you have in PVP in both FPS and MMORPG games are the gamers themselves, which brings us to
Gamer types
- Casual players: you will see them around once in a while, in FPS games this doesn't really mather, casual players can be really fun to have around, they don't take things seriously, and are alwayes good for a laugh
- Hardcore players: Basically players that can't go a day without the game, they would play hours every day, more experienced players, there are some sub-categories
- Addicts(sub-category of hardcore players): i call them addicts like it's a bad thing
Players that just love the game so much their on it all the time, fun players in it to play a GAME - Pro's(subcatagory of hardcore players): I call them pro's i just mean that these few players have mastered every aspect there is to know about playing the game, they are extremely hard to kill up front and you can expect different things from each individual
- Crybabies: now there are players that will whine about how they got killed, there is an "excuse" list somewhere, i just have to make it
Generally excuses range from "OMG 2v1 3v1 4v1 the sever vs me" "OMG Ganging up on me"(yea teamwork is totally for inexperienced "Noobs")
Now crybabies are very frequent and they can be in every group of players. - And last but not least EGOTRIPPERS: basically players that think they're the best of the best, feeling superior to others all of the time talking down to people,
they usually think they belong to the "Pro" group, however a very small % of these belong there, most are just in the crybaby group, getting in touch with these players, or just killing them can trigger a flamewars usually involving in how "noobish" you are in the way you killed them.
Either it can be funny, disturbing, or downright sad, especially in the case of a 40-year-old acting like a kid(maturity-wise not insulting-wise)
So ill simplify it in a few weapons:
- Assault-weapons:
generally front-line fighters that cover medium to long range fights, good for players that want to be versatile as well, since they can do a lot even at closer ranges.
Now don't underestimate the infiltrator part of this, good players can go behind the line and take out groups because they evade them and get them when they have no wall to cover behind, this is as much as a turn of event as a well timed grenade - SMG's/Shotgun:
Very short range only, they pack a good short range punch and able to take on several players at the same time unless they have the same equipment, also good for flanking and moving on, the issue being that at longer range they lose both precision and raw firepower, in some games these are primary weapons, in other games these are secondary's..... - MG's:
For the people thinking they can never have enough bullets in a clip, these weapons are fairly heavy, go over to long ranges, and have a great amount of bullets(I've seen from 100-250) they can provide an effective assault weapon since you have that amount of bullets and would need no reload anytime soon, they tend to shoot quickly, however be careful, 1v1 in direct combat a MG can fail easel against experienced players with Assault-weapons, MG's are very effective flanking since it's known that if you flank you tend to be reloading before everyone is dead, which means you're sitting ducks, not with an MG
Also an epic suppressive fire weapon, no good player is going to stick his head up when he hears the sound of an MG while the bullets are flying all around him, this leaves opportunity for teammates to advance - Sniper rifles:
Oh gosh, sniper rifles are designed to take out enemies before they even know where your are, a supportive weapon picking of stray enemies or even take out the player with a flag if you're playing CTF.
- However, there are 2 types of snipers:
- Assault snipers: basically few play this way, the assault snipers don't go up in a tower and hide the whole map while picking off people, they follow the lines, high skill requirement
- Camping snipers: this is frustrating, having someone sit there doing nothing just waiting for someone to come along just to shoot them, they won't move the whole match.
For a bit more fun detail on these tough not as similar:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Cjrp23lBSM
Bigger issues
Now this is an issue seen in most FPS games, I'm a new player, and I'm up against a more experienced player In that game, he's highly ranked and I'm not, besides experience in the game he also has all the gear unlock, so outskilled and outgeared?
This reminds me of a game which many of you guys know "crysis" in their PVP system they had a huge map, 2HQ's 1 for each team with the objective to take out the opposing teams HQ
There were a lot of buildings across the map that could be captured and had it's own purpose, from making vehicles to spawning and other things.
TO take out the opposing team's HQ you had to make a weapon of mass destruction(radioactive or alien tech) and use it on the opposing teams HQ till it was destroyed.
In the game there were ranks but reset per match, you would spawn with X amount of points minimum to spend it on gear or making vehicles, more points per kill or capture, and these also would increase points towards ranking up.
Each rank increases the amount of minimum points you spawn with, so if in a match you did a lot for your team you would spawn with such an amount of points you could get whatever gear you wanted.
So basically gear depended on the player on that match not the amount of time that one spent in his life playing.
Then came crysis 2 and they nuked the idea of this kind of PVP and just went with the flow, a BF2 ranking system unlocking gear as you go.
And more issues arise, teamwork, has never been too vital in FPS games, i mean I've been told many times before in the past that as an example BC2 was different, but it wasn't a single chopper with a very experienced player could dominate maps, as well as epic snipers...... teamwork exists yes, but a few single epic players can drag your team threw the fight....
Teamwork isn't promoted like this, and even staying close to others can kill you as easily as it can save you, as rewarding in points as teamwork can be, it's not often brought me to victory....sadly
Another thing is, if your in a bad team, you lose since it's 1 team vs 1 team, so the most dominant team wins by default, imagine 1v1v1 3 teams, a better team would have to fight against more numbers, meaning they get a challenge and the game isn't rigged like that.
Another big issue is balance, overpowered weapons, people that don't use it tend to rage when they get killed by such weapons and would stop others from using them, this creates flame wars....
I'm not going more into detail of imbalances in FPS games....
Money money money, must be funny -->http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ETxmCCsMoD0
Right now we've come to the part in how FPS game designers(or companies whatever you want to call it) make their money and what kind of support they give the gamers.
In FPS games you generally buy the box and are free to play from there, prices range in between 50-70$/€ on release, months after release the price goes down or generally goes down drastically.
Usually after release there are a few patches, and that's about all the support you will get, more patches would mean more money cost and unless companies make more money they quit caring fairly quickly, the only way to boost sales again is by releasing an expansion pack.
This is another way of bringing some extra cash before the company says, "okay the goldmine is depleted let's start making a new game"
Luckily if you have a good group of modders many games have an auto-download function so modded maps, changes patches can all be made and auto-downloaded.....(heck COD2 has this )
Coming up is MMORPG games.
Since I believe there is more to cover with MMORPG's I suggest yall take a break and play something :P
Massive multiplayer online role-playing games(MMORPG's)
That's a mouthful anyhow MMORPG games are very different in many ways of FPS games
For starters there are 2 different kind of modes in MMORPG games:
PVE: player vs environment, this is the base of any MMORPG and generally how the game is designed to be played, don't let the whole Players killing NPC's thing fool you, these isn't the NPC's found in a FPS game but rather very challenging boss fights where everybody has to be on the ball or you will all end up dead, I'll get into more detail soon
PVP: No need to explain, but I'll get into details in how MMORGP pvp works soon.
Now there is a lot to cover with MMORPG's so this might sound a bit confusing I guess I'll start with "roles"
Roles:
In MMORPG's every class has its own role to fit, in almost all currently released MMORPG's every class has its primary role fixed, meaning it's the only viable thing to do, sure you have secondary roles, but your secondary role is never going to as good as a different class that has that role as a primary role, since it's all about being in a group and playing roles, you will always be asked to play your main role.
Types of roles/The holy trinity
The concept of an MMORPG is the following, one person made to withstand damage draws attention to himself making opponents attack him, and him only, meanwhile damage dealing classes ditch out as much damage as they can, while a or various healers keep everybody alive.
The objective being that the person drawing attention survives long enough for the rest of the group to kill the boss or normal NPC's
These 3 roles are called the holy trinity, in game terms.
Tank:
Basically this role is a class based on taking a ton of damage, he/she will "taunt" enemies into attacking them, usually they have heavy armor and are also known by the name "meat shields"
DPS:
Literally "damage per second" these are the most frequently found roles, and they tend to be the easier role to play, there are usually various classes that have this role as primary role.
The reason to this would be that generally in MMORPG's there are different types of Damage dealing classes generally these 3 are known:
- Melee classes: generally with blades, swords, knives, axes whatever you can think of that works melee.
- Ranged Classes: these classes generally shoot arrows(depending on the MMO) towards the enemy from a safe distance, depending on the game generally these are easier to kill then melee classes, tough the fact they stand at a safe distance compensates a lot.
- Magic damage dealers: Aka casters, these are also generally ranged damage dealers they use magic or knowledge of nature(like a biologist or chemist) to deal damage.
Support:
As the name says it these serve to support the rest of the group, in LOTRO for example there are several support classes, one of them Buffs everybody else
Buffs are temporal enhanced stats like Health, or increased defenses or increased damage etc)
This particular support role called a "captain" is also referred to as a jack of all trades yet master of none, meaning, he can play all the roles, at the same time yet not as effectively as people that play their primary role, the good thing is he can just switch whenever he wants or needs to.
A debuffer: the opposite of a buffer, he does things to opponents that either make them take more damage, make them do less damage, slow their attacks, make their attacks miss more ETC....
There is a third class but I'd prefer not to go into detail unless anybody really wants to know :D
MMORPG games really work different from FPS games, for starters you don't just start with a class, you build your class, customize it, when you log in you pick up where you left before, getting weapons and armor depending on your needs.
Questing to get XP which you level up with, the general idea of this game is keeping you busy for thousands of hours, a never-ending game generally.
The idea of what to do in this game is leveling up, till you reach the level cap, at this point people tend to concentrate on getting gear.
How you acquire gear depends entirely on your MMORPG, some gear or the more basic required gear can be crafted, generally crafting involves gathering materials, and with the right tools, recipe and materials you can make your own things.
There is a lot of brainwork involved rather than the fast paced FPS games
Now it's time to talk about how combat works:
Combat:
Combat works entirely different from FPS games, instead of being fast passed it feels much slower, and almost feels like turn fighting, if anyone has ever played KOTOR you should know a bit how it feels.
In front of your screen under your third person character you should see your UI with skills, and quick slots for items an example:( i think that's WoW
Pressing those icons or using a hotkey of the keyboard or side-mouse button will trigger these skills W
hen activated your character uses them, combat isn't as realistic as FPS games, far from it, which puts a lot of FPS gamers off MMORPG games
After using a skill you lose an amount of mana or power represented by the blue bar on your top left on that image, and many skills have a "cooldown" basically a time is needed before they can be used again,
some skills can be spammed, other skills are so powerful they sometimes take 5-30Minutes before being active again.
Be careful tough, if you have no mana/power you can't use any skills, it should recharge over time and some "consumables" like potions or even some skills can restore this.
Here is a video of WoW onyxia raid, against a huge dragon:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9hawLauJG3s
You also have "critical" hits, imagine a headshot on FPS games tough it doesn't instantly kill things, as an example(it's actually more in some cases) if a normal hit does 1000 Damage points, a critical hit does 2000, and a devesatating critical hit does 3000, so you have something called "crit rating" call it luck but you can increase it with gear.
BPE's (Block, parry and evade)
If any of your characters does any of these they will completely avoid taking damage:
(note this is also game dependent)
- Block: only a character with a shield can use this, and you can block both ranged and melee attacks
- Parry: the same thing as a block but with melee weapons, however ranged attacks for obvious reasons a cannot be parried
- Evade: Literally avoiding a hit, works the same as block but every character or class can do this
BPE's are a "chance" of luck you don't generally trigger one, you have an X% chance of doing them, tough depending on the class you can have some increasing the chances of doing them drastically for a small amount of time
As you can see 1 person at the head the rest either on the side or behind him which i will explain later, i just said a "raid" so going over to talking about raids
Now we go over to the main MMORPG PVE end-game content
Raids:
This involves in a group of generally 12 players entering a huge instance with NPC's that are extra tough, and with a big boss at the end of the fight, a balanced group is required, role-playing is required to get anywhere, at the end of a raid if completed there should be a treasure chest with a few rewards in them, generally luck-based and with unique gear in them generally for specific classes.
Raids can be extremely tough to complete, and from time to time a raid leader can go a bit nuts, I will show some videos later on, on some cases of the game being taken too seriously.
But of course you will have this in any game.
The reason that you don't see for standing behind enemies are "AOE's" (Area of effect)
Many bosses do a frontal "AOE" attack that hits everybody in front of him, so everybody stands somewhere away from where the tank stands....
The MMORPG's PVP
Oh well, after a while of PVE some people wanted to see PVP in an MMORPG game, PVP trashes the role in MMORPG games, PVP is often very unbalanced since it all depends on the skills from PVE, if any change is made they may affect what happens PVE-Wise causing disaster to people into almost leaving the game or even doing just that......
There are many PVP systems to cover from 1vs1's 2vs'2 etc to open world maps with keeps etc.....
There is literally too much too cover since every MMORPG has some kind of a different aspect of PVP
Before i go over to some issues there is one last thing "guilds"
These are basically clans in games, groups of friends or people that work well with others, they can be based on PVP, PVE, or a bit of both, however some guilds are just social, a bunch of people having a laugh and not really doing either of the ones I mentioned.
Issues with MMORPG's
Oh gosh, here we go.... I'd like to start on the whole concept of tanks/DPS/Healers.
If you've read this far you must be tired of reading, so instead a video of a person that knows what's he's talking about should do the trick
Also add "combat delusion" to the holy trinity system.
A tank knows what he's doing, and sees the difference in what he does, a healer as well, but a damage deal doesn't, you won't notice the difference that much or won't see what you do, this is called "combat delusion"
Questing: you go to a guy that tells you he's under attack, and sends you to a field and asks you to kill a bunch of stuff go back and tell him you did, it's not happening, if you don't do anything nothing changes in the game world.....frustrating as well to do the same thing again when your making a second character
Crafting: usually involves mining iron ore, or chopping wood, or anything related to that, yet only 1 person can do this then it disappears and the "node" respawns somewhere else.....an Massively multiplayer online game where only 1 player can get resources of 1 node.
Tagging enemies, the first one to engage combat gets the experience and the loot from the kill regardless of the kill unless your grouped up.....so your going to have to go to a place where no one else is in a MMO game? yup makes sence....
In MMORPG's you will generally see game designers making epic bad choices, for instance something called nerfs and revamps:
Nerfs: generally decreases potency(if were talking classes) of certain aspects of your class making it harder to do what it does, or simply removing things that are said to be overpowered, however many times these decisions are made based on all of the whining of players and isn't necessary.
Revamps: Generally boosting or completely changing something or a class, you might think it's always a good thing, but I can assure you, waking up, auto-downloading a patch and finding out you have relearn your class from scratch just because some game designer didn't like it is frustrating as hell.
Game designers tend to make a lot of stupid choices along the way creating frustration and making people want to quit this game
There are many more things in MMORPG games that up till now have gone completely wrong, things that were near perfection destroyed.....
Game designers as of late don't change anything in the game unless they feel like they can make a bunch of money out of it.....depending on the game of course.....
In LOTRO terms one senior player described "turbine's" money making as the following:
They pick up a player from the street, shake him as hard as they can, beat the money out of him, and when he's tired of it and has nothing more to give them, they throw him back on the street and go on the next victi....customer
Content scaling, basically I'm max level and older content, such as lower level content is useless to me, i just 1-hit kill things.....
Grinding:
Grinding makes players play the game for thousands of hours, ill just give an example of LOTRO grinding:
If your already geared out to almost the max then you can do the ultimate raid, a Tier 2 raid making everything much harder especially since there is also an optional challenge.
Now what people want from this is a component to make a legendary weapon of "the first age"
There are 3 ages of weapons 3rd age being common 2cd age being rare or actually normal for raiders and first agers being extremely rare to get.
Now this is the point, besides the excruciatingly difficult raid, you only get 1 item
Who gets it? em, the person that "rolls" the highest if you have your 12-man group and since you have 2 legendaries(weapon +item) they made an extra thing, after successfully doing a raid you get "raid locks" so you can't do it till the rest which is every week at the same time.....
So how long does it takes for me and my team to get our items?
7 days(raid locks) * 12 players * 2 items = 168 days
This isn't 100% accurate for whoever plays the game, however it gets fairly close.
This is supposed to be the hardcore stuff, but to get gear your required to get "tokens" however they are called in your MMORPG, which you get from running the same thing over and over and over again, issue being is if you don't get a group you can't do it.....
Grinding, as far as running the same thing over and over and over again, is addictive, yet not fun....
Roles: you can't switch in order to do so you need to make a new characters and start again on building it(tough you save your previous one.
Money
How do MMORPG games get their money off players? the traditional way has been subscriptions requiring you to pay an amount of monthly fee, this is generally misunderstood, most of this money goes to the Game masters that need to be paid, maintenance for the server, making new content which you get for free when it comes out, and other things.....in FPS games this isn't the case, however if your hosting a server, your paying monthly as well....
And now we go on the final part of this compendium.....
People say the whole concept of MMORPG's is going to change on the 28th august of this year.
Arenanet developers have noticed the things players want and the MMORPG issues, and of course other game developers doing the same thing every time, they looked at their game and noticed all of the above issues, and decided, to make a new game altogether GW2
So what's different?
Everything, for starters combat is now dynamic combat, skills fire from every range, however it's dynamic, so i can block, parry or evade the attacks myself, get out of the way from an attack, basically a mix of an MMORPG and a TPS game.
Also they've gone further and added cross-profession combination, a wall of fire cast by an elementals while a ranger fires arrows threw it means the arrows catch on fire doing additional damage, a great amount of combinations have been added for extra teamwork.
There is also a concept of environmental weapons, from a mortar just sitting there waiting to be fired, to an elementalist summoning a weapon and you being able to pick it up and use it regardless of your class, changing all your current skills, to even a thief able to steal a weapon and store this environmental weapon for later use
The concept of the holy trinity is removed, everyone can play every role, and switch roles.
Raids are now 5 manned, so you can punish weak links, and this removes the issue of combat delusion
Nodes can be mined several times before disappearing so no more competing with others for them.
Defacto grouping, so no more "tagging" NPC's your automatically get rewards for helping others with killing.
Dynamic events, no more quests popping up being unrealistic, at any given time a town can be under attack and if you fail to defend it, it can become occupied.....defacto grouping applies for both defenses and offenses as any other quest
Grinding removed, in both raids and leveling, if you complete a instance, everybody gets rewarded with the same things, tokens which can be bartered
Many other cool stuff, they actually listened to what players have to say, and what we want
Money
Unlike other MMORPG games, there is no monthly fee, it works like a mix of a FPS and a MMORPG, you buy the box, then if any expansions come out you will have to buy them to play them, however the servers are maintained by them....
So it kinda works like a FPS only you don't pay the monthly server hosting fee
And this concludes my compendium for now, I have kinda a headache after spending hours on this thing, feel free to mention thoughts, ask questions, or just troll it because you don't know what to say :D
MT/EX
PS. if anyone was wondering, not incluiding this PS the total amount of words used in this compendium is 4845 words exactly, so do i get an A+++ swine?