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  1. #1

    Would you play an entirely skill-based MMO?

    This has probably been discussed before, but I was just thinking about this.

    If there was an MMO where everything you did and all of your success/failure within the game was based on how well you could perform with your character. For example, there was no gear and all of your stats would scale with your level. Raids would have multiple difficulty levels which would all be possible for any max level character, just that the easiest was for leisurely players and the hardest would require extreme min/maxing and awareness to succeed. I guess gear would be in the game, but purely for vanity and being able to customize the appearance of your characters. Mounts and other things for fun would mostly be the rewards or finishing raids and what not.

    This obviously would be really boring to some as acquiring gear is a fun part of most games, and it's one of my personal favorite things about WoW is the massive amounts of gear you can get. That is what makes raiding and other things in games worth it is the loot to be had. I just think it would be cool to not be able to just outgear content and be required to do it with skill and practice.

    Obviously my game model could use some work, but personally I would play a game with similar characteristics, but I would not play it as much. It would be more like a game that I would play through once and beat all of the encounters on the hardest settings and then not play for awhile.

    Overall, I think it would be cool for awhile but the replayability and motivation to actually would be the biggest turn-offs to me personally.

    Anyone have any thoughts or ways a game could be purely skill-based AND successful as well?

    ---------- Post added 2012-12-08 at 05:48 PM ----------

    Wow! Fail on my part . . .
    "Would you PLAY an entirely skill-based MMO?"
    I apologize I am posting from my phone.
    "Would I rather be feared than loved? Easy, both. I want people to be afraid of how much they love me." - Michael Scott

    "You miss 100% of the shots you don't take. - Wayne Gretzky" - Michael Scott

  2. #2
    You mean like a MOBA in MMO form? Could be interesting, could be boring. I'd at least try it out.

  3. #3
    Probably not. Skill is great and all but it can't be everything or that's not fun. Some of the enjoyment in WoW raiding, for me, is maximizing gear and actually acquiring it.

    I mean, it depends on what level of skill is available in the game. The meter has to be huge, where some guy pressing 4 buttons correctly is doing 10% of what a guy pressing 40 buttons could do. If you get what I mean.

  4. #4
    For skilful MMO play most people expect character progression. While a skill based MMO sounds great on paper, alot of people would be put off by the lack of progression in my opinion.

  5. #5
    so most people qq "omg it's too hard nerf plz"?

    yeah I don't think so
    "We live in a world where a style of play that uses posession and passing to try and make spaces is made fun of.
    While a style of play where a team sits back for 90 minutes and breaks away in 1v1 situations is respected."
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  6. #6
    Bloodsail Admiral Taros's Avatar
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    Isn't that what everyone dreams of? Like UO used to be?

  7. #7
    Over 9000! Milchshake's Avatar
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    I would, but it needs content! WAR felt kind of close, but failed at content.

  8. #8
    Yes, immediately, but this generation is a tainted one, people will cry for nerfs and complain when they get said nerfs saying the game is "too easy" then it will cycle to the point of ruining the game & company image for trying to please the crybaby playerbase



    I'd say wait for awhile sadly for this generation to grow out of it and hope for the best for the next

    Going to be awhile :/ but heres to hoping!

  9. #9
    Pandaren Monk Ettan's Avatar
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    Yup,
    definitely if it is a strategy game, perhaps an fps but unlikely if it is an rpg.

    For strategy games you are required to learn a bare minimum of skill to control you units ,but ultimately only the sky is the limit; providing a nearly unlimited skillcap.
    In fps games the skillcap is limited, yet it can be very very high especially in terms of reaction time.
    In an rpg like wow, the skillcap is the bare minimum and nothing more.

    To base a game on that minimal skill required I think would be a bad idea. You would have to find a way to dramatically increase it. As the only way someone is rewarded in a game based on skillcap alone is by increasing their skill, becoming better. With a low skillcap you would then end up with a very short lived game.
    If it adapted into a real mix between fps and startegy I would consider playing it, yet only for awhile. Unlike strategy games there would be a skillcap and I would eventually reach it, get bored and quit.

  10. #10
    The Lightbringer barackopala's Avatar
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    there is already one doing that, it's named forge, just got on steam after greenlight

  11. #11
    Dreadlord Rainec's Avatar
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    Of course, but not in an FPS form
    Quote Originally Posted by pucGG View Post
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  12. #12
    Deleted
    Quote Originally Posted by Shink View Post
    Yes, immediately, but this generation is a tainted one, people will cry for nerfs and complain when they get said nerfs saying the game is "too easy" then it will cycle to the point of ruining the game & company image for trying to please the crybaby playerbase



    I'd say wait for awhile sadly for this generation to grow out of it and hope for the best for the next

    Going to be awhile :/ but heres to hoping!
    If people won't play it than it is a bad concept. I'd try it out for sure, but I'm not sure I'd have fun if I couldn't slack once in a while. In a new game people don't "cry" for nerfs unless the game is unplayable.

    The only reason people bitch atm is because Blizz gave them reason to do so...if welfare epics weren't present in the game than people wouldn't be complaining about farming 7 dailies for a week for a few epics.

  13. #13
    No, because they won't exist ever again now because MMO's main demographic are now "casuals" and they quote and quote don't have enough time to get better.

    Actually, instead of calling them casuals, they should be called lazy stupid entitled morons, because that's exactly what they are.

  14. #14
    The Lightbringer Lovestar's Avatar
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    I would love that.

    The one thing I hate about WoW and WoW-modeled MMOs is the gear grind, and the fact that often your intelligence and competence is secondary to your ability to stack stats and enchantments. It's tedious, tiresome, and annoying to me.

    But I like the social aspects and the general gameplay, so I put up with it. And I'm aware that most people have this OCD materialistic need to collect "stuff", even imaginary stuff, so a design lacking an appeal to human greed would probably not be successful.

    But in a hypothetical floaty pink dream world, yes, that would be perfect. Gear = cosmetics. You collect it to be pretty. Character performance? Everyone's on even footing. You win or lose because you know what the hell you're doing. Period.

    And I'll admit straight-up that in a game like that, I'd only achieve modest levels of performance — I'm not the smartest or most skilled player by a long, long measure. But it's much more fun for me to struggle to get better at actually using my character, rather than realize most of the struggle is in getting better at using ReforgeLite and winning loot rolls. Whoo hoo.

  15. #15
    Quote Originally Posted by wombinator04 View Post
    No, because they won't exist ever again now because MMO's main demographic are now "casuals" and they quote and quote don't have enough time to get better.

    Actually, instead of calling them casuals, they should be called lazy stupid entitled morons, because that's exactly what they are.
    Can anyone understand this guy? All I keep reading is
    Waaaaaa! Waaaaaa!
    Infracted
    Last edited by Remilia; 2012-12-09 at 07:28 AM.
    "I just wanted them to hand us our award! But they were just talk!, talk!, talk!......" - Wrathion

  16. #16
    Guild Wars 2 is extremely close already. Gear is for the part horizontal after a certain point, the majority of skills are skill shots and every stat is linear and opposed.

    Power <--> Toughness
    Critical Strike <-->Vitality

    Further those stats are very small and don't effect the majority of content. And there is down scaling such that you can't ever truly steamroll content by virtue of those stats alone. The advantage in terms of stat gains is very small.

    The biggie is that most skills/abilities can be used freely and travel through the game space. That is 100% skill based as there is no "to hit", "to block" or "to evade" stat roll. The only stat rolls are directly opposed and linear.

  17. #17
    Quote Originally Posted by Landin55 View Post
    Can anyone understand this guy? All I keep reading is
    I'm going to take a shot at you and say your one of the people I just described.

  18. #18
    Quote Originally Posted by wombinator04 View Post
    I'm going to take a shot at you and say your one of the people I just described.
    What you said up there has nothing to do with the topic at all. A no-gear based MMO would probably attract MORE casual players, due to the fact that you don't have to gear grind. They could simply play the game rather then "getting ready to play the game". As long as their was progression system through the content (cooler looking gear, achievements, and the like) it could give them something tangible to hang on too, to show that they did it.

    EDIT: On topic, Im not sure I would. Im not gonna use GW2 as an example because i didn't like that game for reasons other then the no-gear based gameplay. I love progression systems as a whole and I find it hard to play a game if I am not "progressing" in some way or another. Perhaps something that you would get some sort of character upgrade as you progressed, but not something you could bring back and use in earlier content.
    Last edited by Vongimi; 2012-12-09 at 05:02 AM.
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    My God, what a horrible creation. People seeing what they want? Thank God they tried to shy away from that. I know it pisses me off when I'm in an heroic raid, yet in the back of my head all I can think is 'some casual player is playing a heroic dungeon and not wiping.' -Vodkarn

  19. #19
    I am Murloc! Terahertz's Avatar
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    I wouldn't. What I prefer is a game that does have character progression like WoW has, with gear requirements for stuff BUT with balanced combat in the end. I would love to play a skill-based WoW.

    The problem with just skill-based games is that you get bored of them rather quickly and theres barely no customization to stats/etc. I'd like to reforge/gear more defensive when playing a squishy spec while reforging/gearing more offensively when playing a tanky spec/class. I know Forge (or at least when it was still in alpha) said they would allow you to change some stats to your likings when you got higher ratings etc.

    But the two things that put me off to playing Forge is that they scammed Reckful and his friends out of money (note: reckful and his friends actually helped with the development of Forge and didn't get payed) AND that it is EXTREMELY laggy and EXTREMELY graphic intensive.

  20. #20
    Quote Originally Posted by Vongimi View Post
    What you said up there has nothing to do with the topic at all. A no-gear based MMO would probably attract MORE casual players, due to the fact that you don't have to gear grind. They could simply play the game rather then "getting ready to play the game". As long as their was progression system through the content (cooler looking gear, achievements, and the like) it could give them something tangible to hang on too, to show that they did it.

    EDIT: On topic, Im not sure I would. Im not gonna use GW2 as an example because i didn't like that game for reasons other then the no-gear based gameplay. I love progression systems as a whole and I find it hard to play a game if I am not "progressing" in some way or another. Perhaps something that you would get some sort of character upgrade as you progressed, but not something you could bring back and use in earlier content.
    What he said up there is accurate in some scenarios.

    At first it's just the "omg I don't have time to get gear". Then it turns in to "I don't have time to get better". An MMO like that will be catered to an exceptionally small playerbase because no players like what Womb described are going to stick around for long at all. Blizzard is damn good at guaging their demographic and catering accordingly. I don't hate those types of players, I might just be one of them. But when push comes to shove VERY few players are willing to stick to a game that repeatedly proves that they really aren't all that skilled at (some) games.

    MMO's get their longevity from grinds, not skill. Overdo the skill, underdo the grind and you don't get players sticking around. Overdoing grind and not doing skill was how most MMO's worked up until WotLK which set the precedence for all of the latest MMO's catering to a similar demographic.
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