Why is combat in MMO's such garbage?

[Holding These Alligators Down]

I've tried a few MMO's and the main thing which stops me from getting truly invested in any of them is the combat. In a lot of them the combat involves just clicking on an enemy and watching an attack animation and even the one's which claim to have full action hack and slash style combat like Tera don't really. It's all so shallow and there's no weight or impact to any of it.

[※Tapu Lele※]

Gotta get the $$$

[Pizmo]

I totally agree

I hate the "press (insert button) to perform (insert attack)" type combat. I find it extremely boring. I like to feel like I'm actually controlling my characters moves

[tmwfte]

Left mouse click is a so much more satisfying button click, eh?

[Holding These Alligators Down]

Escrito originalmente por Pizmo:

I totally agree

I hate the "press (insert button) to perform (insert attack)" type combat. I find it extremely boring. I like to feel like I'm actually controlling my characters moves

Exactly. I'm looking for an MMO with Dark Souls or Devil May Cry style combat but i don't think any exist.

[myrymyry]

Because it's not main focus of the game?
MMO intends on KEEPING players attached. Main goal of player (in developers perspective) should be to get feeling of achieving something. Hence the grinding, extended & complex quests and massive amount of items.
To use analogy, it's not about how stylish you take turns in race, it's about being ahead of someone, winning.

[Naedmi]

Guild Wars 2 has action combat where you're more likely to lose 50% of your health or die instantly if you're not actively moving around and dodging massive attacks.

WildStar furthers the action combat of an MMORPG where you have to line up and aim your attacks for them to even connect to the enemy, while enemy NPC's and human controlled players also have to do the same.

Elder Scrolls Online also has action combat but I wouldn't recommend it because I didn't have a good time during my short time of playing it at release.

[Holding These Alligators Down]

Escrito originalmente por Marysia:

Because it's not main focus of the game?
MMO intends on KEEPING players attached. Main goal of player (in developers perspective) should be to get feeling of achieving something. Hence the grinding, extended & complex quests and massive amount of items.
To use analogy, it's not about how stylish you take turns in race, it's about being ahead of someone, winning.

I get that but if i'm going to be spending 100+ hours in a game killing possibly thousands of enemies then the act of killing them has to be fun. I don't care how many fancy hats or multi coloured mounts i have if the gameplay is trash.

[myrymyry]

Well, grinding is meant to be fast, not fun. It get's progressively faster as you get more experianced (outside of the game, ergo creating alts/twinks). Usually the end-game content offers pvp and raids which are the "fun part". You just got to get there.

[Pizmo]

Escrito originalmente por Kung Fu Treachery:

Escrito originalmente por Pizmo:

I totally agree

I hate the "press (insert button) to perform (insert attack)" type combat. I find it extremely boring. I like to feel like I'm actually controlling my characters moves

Exactly. I'm looking for an MMO with Dark Souls or Devil May Cry style combat but i don't think any exist.

I've never played Devil May Cry, or Dark Souls.

Skyrim would have made an awesome mmorpg IMO

[😼Studio Cat😼]

Escrito originalmente por Marysia:

Because it's not main focus of the game?
MMO intends on KEEPING players attached. Main goal of player (in developers perspective) should be to get feeling of achieving something. Hence the grinding, extended & complex quests and massive amount of items.

Well... I do agree that their goal is to keep players engaged for a very long time, pretty much your three key interactions in an MMO are Click Yes for Quest, Click a reward for that quest, after killing everything involved in said quest.

Combat is pretty key to the whole experience. But they way of combat in an MMO, and I am assuming you are referring to an MMORPG, is different that a regular games, and is, in fact, more in line with traditional RPGs with more of a touch of the tactical RPG than your more common FF style game.

The combat is far more about timing and strategy than it is about running around and swinging a sword. Healers need to pay more attention to health bars, spell rotation, debuffs and buffs. Warriors need to keep up a steady rate of agro while watching surrounding enemies and the other members health bars for them accidentally pulling a nasty. Damage dealers need to keep a tight rein on their damage rotation and output lest they become the main target. It breaks down into a very precise science. Although it can get fairly fast paced and stressful, you know if you have an experienced person on your side, not matter their twitch skills or hand-eye coordination, you have a very good chance of succeeding and having the fun you came after.

ANd I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but I don't trust the average more action filled game player to be able to manage switching from their weapon to a health pack, much less managing a proper collection of abilities while handling their assigned role on a quest or in an instance. I pretty much dropped Pick Up Games online all together because of that. But I still do them in MMORPGS. Because people tend to learn their place in a group or they stop being let in groups. And Lets face it, in faster paced, manual combat games, while some team work is involved, people tend to get far more aggressive and it always leads to personal glory hunting. The slower more tactical thinking of the traditional MMO tends to lead to more solidly built teams, where everyone has a place and a job.

And aside from my opinion on the matter, the big truth behind it is that when MMOs came into being, we were all on dial up. tracking a thousand players in an area required a bit of simplification. A single key input. So the genre built on that which EQ and Ultima Online built. And MMORPG genre was born into what it is today!

Sort of.

TLDR Edition: That is how MMOs are played. They are not action games. They are RPGs. You don't like the style. Stop playing them. Go Play Monster Hunter.

[myrymyry]

Mmm, ultima online. Good times : )

[😼Studio Cat😼]

Escrito originalmente por Marysia:

Mmm, ultima online. Good times : )

I did have me some fun.

[Lusus Symphonia]

The goal of an mmo is to make you spend as much time as possible doing stuff thus becoming cheap for people who don't want to pay £50 for 6 hour games over and over and instead can pay £9.99 a month for easily fifty times that many hours.
The combat in MMOs is also balanced to allow team play, a hands on game like dark souls as an mmo wouldn't work as of yet because of the amount of Enemies vs players to make it an mmo just.. Well in other words, our computers are strong enough yet.

[Ailes]

Maybe because of lag, or the fear of it. If you have hundreds of players bashing into one big enemy I suppose it just won't work for the overclocked fridges some people have if things were happening in true real-time.

[Elreido]

I don’t know if anyone’s said this but there’s this mmo coming out in august called new world I played a tiny bit in the beta when I was at a friends house because I didn’t have my pc yet but got in the beta and I think it’s exactly what you’re looking for there’s plenty of videos showcasing the combat check it out on YouTube.