Octopus Overlords

Just read this in a review of a game on Steam called The Fall of the Dungeon Guardians: http://store.steampowered.com/app/40945 ... d_Edition/

"Combat: MMO style combat. Leave this to MMOs please, it's just not fun in a single player RPG."

At first I didn't understand, but then I thought back a couple of years when I tried playing The Secret World, and could not figure out why combat felt so different than normal FPS games. Just could not adjust for whatever reason. I remember asking here, and someone said something to the effect of "that's very normal for this type of game".

I guess my question is "why?" Why would the controls be different between an MMO and a FPS? Both are first person? Probably missing something obvious here, just don't understand why MMO's would be any different.

Latency and lag. It's a lot less frustrating when your attack is dependent on a 2-second reset timer than having to twitch yourself around a server that is simultaneously trying to serve a thousand other people at a time.

FPS players bitch about lag in 8v8 games. Now scale that up to your standard server population. It's a legacy of 1990s internet, but it still has impacts in today's Internet.

When I hear "MMO style," I think cooldown timers.

AWS260 wrote:When I hear "MMO style," I think cooldown timers.

I think of locked-on, stat-based rng hits rather than hit boxes and ballistics.


Basically you target something and then attack and the game rolls to see if you hit, based on stats. With traditional FPS, you shoot something and the game calculates the trajectory to see if you hit.

Interesting. I was actually referring to the controls themselves which seemed foreign to me coming from non-MMO 1st or 3rd person shooters.

Didn't even think about the stats behind the combat being different.

I really need to try again, but it appears it's a different game now?! WTF. So Legends has replaced the previous, vanilla version?

Not sure I have seen that before, where an existing version of a game gets completely replaced by a different one (and doesn't leave the old one).

LawBeefaroni wrote:

AWS260 wrote:When I hear "MMO style," I think cooldown timers.

I think of locked-on, stat-based rng hits rather than hit boxes and ballistics.

And I think locked-on white-damage auto attacks with the player mixing in timed abilities.

I agree with BH - I think of:

1. tab-targeting and auto attacks with cycling of other abilities and cool downs.

I would add:

2. Managing aggro and the traditional 3 roles tank/dps/healer in something like WoW. Alternately there might be 5 roles (tank, healer, controller, ranged DPS, melee DPS) in an MMO like City of Heroes. Aggro management and pulling are big aspects of MMO-style.
3. Combat movement is more about positioning for range, facing or AoE than it is about actual aiming or cover. Positioning is also about picking up buffs and avoiding enemy/environment hazards and debuffs. Its also about avoiding AoE mob damage.